www.wheresthepaper.org/nyshouldnot.htm
2/3/05
Teresa
Hommel
admin@wheresthepaper.org
New York Should Not Acquire or Use
Electronic Voting Systems
Table
of Contents
A.
Requirements for legitimate, democratic elections.
B. How can
computers serve the requirements for legitimate, democratic elections?
C. What is
an audit?
D. Problems
with surprise random recounts.
E. When
technicians handle systems for non-technical staff, this opens the door to
fraud.
F. Other
problems with electronic voting and vote tabulating systems.
G. Voters
with disabilities.
H. Why the
alternatives are better: Lever machines, Paper ballots and optical scanners.
I.
Computerized elections are a political problem.
J. Best sources of news and information.
A.
Requirements for legitimate, democratic elections.
When
election procedures are concealed from public view, errors and fraud can occur.
The use of computers makes elections vulnerable to fraud in new and profound
ways compared to older technologies, and therefore if computers are used the law
must require appropriate security.
Vote-recording
and vote-counting must be directly observed by citizens as a routine matter.
Participation in the conduct of elections, observation, and verification of
outcomes should not require expertise in computers or other technical
disciplines. Election outcomes must be easily verifiable without technological
or legal obstacles.
Elections
should be about voters selecting our public servants, not about computers and
technology. Elections should not require citizens to trust the word of
technologists that computerized procedures were appropriate and
computer-generated outcomes accurate, or force citizens and candidates to try
to prove irregularities with circumstantial evidence (such as disparity between
exit polls and announced outcomes) because of technological or legal barriers
to direct observation of ballot recording and vote counting, or barriers to
obtaining or viewing documents from Boards of Elections.
B.
How can computers serve the requirements for legitimate, democratic elections?
People
cannot observe what a computer is doing in its internal memory. This is a
problem if computers are used to record and/or count votes.
To solve the
problem, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri developed the concept of voter-verified paper
audit trails or VVPAT.[1] The proper use of VVPAT converts both vote-recording
and vote-counting to paper-based procedures, which enables people to observe.
1. Problem:
A voter can't tell if his or her ballot is being correctly recorded in computer
memory.
Solution:
During the election, the voter-verified paper ballot enables each voter to
observe that his or her votes are recorded correctly on paper (a permanent,
non-electronic material).
2. Problem:
No one can observe the computer’s internal tally process or confirm its
accuracy.
Solution:
After the election, an audit of the VVPAT enables election observers to
observe that the votes on paper ballots are tallied correctly, and that any
discrepancies between electronic tallies and paper tallies are reconciled.
C.
What is an audit?
An audit of
an election conducted with electronic voting systems with VVPAT starts with a
recount of the voter-verified paper ballots, after which all discrepancies
between the computer tally and the VVPAT tally are reconciled.
Dr. Douglas
Jones of the University of Iowa and three-time chairman of Iowa's board of
voting system examiners, in a recent email, described part of the
reconciliation. (Dr. Jones’ web site is
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/ )
The electronic record and the printed record are both viewed as
fallible and subject to subversion. A
hacker can hack into a computer and corrupt data. A counterfeiter can print up counterfeit ballots and swap them
for the real ones. We can adopt
technical means to defend against either attack, but if we adopt laws that say:
In the event of a disagreement, the paper dominates.
Then all you need is a good counterfeiter, while if your rules say
In the event of a
disagreement, the electronic copy dominates.
Then, all you need is a good hacker. The rule I would prefer to see says:
In the event of a disagreement, an investigation must be
initiated in order to
determine which copy is most likely to be correct...
The rules could go on at length about what other things to
examine, such as poll books, event logs, exit polls, and other evidence that
could serve to corroborate one or the other copy.
In other
words, there should be both an investigation into the conduct of the election
(to determine whether there were irregularities by people) AND examination of
the computer hardware and software (to
determine whether the computer was hacked or made an error).
One problem
is that few if any Boards of Elections have the staff, expertise, or resources
to examine or correct their own election software. This would require thorough
knowledge of the software used, and yet all major vendors claim that their
software must remain a trade secret. Errors found but not corrected would
continue to cause problems in later elections.
In the
Information Technology world, we recognize that computers provide speed but
audits provide accuracy. Companies do complete audits of their computer systems
on a continuous basis, because that is the only way to find and correct errors
which would otherwise cause customers to take their business elsewhere. Those
customers can discover errors through the use of receipts, tracking numbers,
invoices, monthly statements, etc.
In
elections, because of the secret ballot, there are no comparable ways for
voters and candidates to detect errors and fraud. This is why proper use of the
VVPAT as described in section B. is needed.
Due to the
need for audits of elections run with electronic voting systems, it is clear
that computers make the election process more complex, costly, and
time-consuming. It would require significantly less effort to fully restore and
maintain our lever machines, or to securely guard paper ballots that were
marked by hand and to recount such ballots by hand before an audience of
observers.
D.
Problems with surprise random recounts.
If a
surprise random check of a small percentage of transactions could ensure the
accuracy of a computer system, no bank or other company would ever spend the
time and money to perform a complete audit.
In February,
2004, our NY State Assembly and Senate both passed bills that would require
electronic voting systems to provide VVPAT. However, neither bill required an
audit or reconciliation of discrepancies. Instead they required 2% and 3% surprise
random recounts, respectively, and did not require 100% accuracy.
Assuming 2%
recount, problems with this approach include the following.
1.
Trust-the-statistician vs. observation. If observers can watch a count of 2% of the ballots cast, then
the election has 2% legitimacy.
After the
November, 2004, election, discussions about "statistically significant
percentages" flooded the internet as experts tried to analyze the numbers,
but most citizens are not statisticians.
If only 2%
recount is required, and is considered significant, most citizens would be
forced to trust the statisticians that 2% is in fact a statistically
significant percentage, and would be unable to confirm the math or the theory
of statistical significance. In effect, a degree in math or statistics would
become the new requirement for voter confidence and election transparency.
Moreover,
statistical significance may be an inappropriate consideration. Each different
ballot design involves different computer programming for vote recording and
vote counting. There is no reason to believe that if ballots are counted
correctly in one district, they would be counted correctly in other districts
where the ballot design is different, requires different programming, and can
generate different errors.
2. Corporate
control of vote-counting. With
a 2% recount, 98% of vote counting would be in private rather than public
hands, raising questions of corporate partisanship, as well as motivation and
opportunity for fraud.
3. Some
types of computer errors and fraud may not show up in small recounts. These include:
a.
Intermittent
errors or fraud triggered by particular combinations of votes and/or particular ballot
designs.
b.
Legally
"insignificant" vote switches per machine. A recent Yale Study showed that with a single statewide
system, centralized manipulation is facilitated and can swing elections with
one or two vote switches per machine. This is why, when computers are used,
100% accuracy must be mandated. The study[2] and commentary[3] are attached.
4. Creation
of two classes of voters. 2%
of voters would cast ballots that were confirmed to be tallied correctly. 98%
of voters would cast ballots that were not.
5. Mandate
for unverified elections. The
requirement for 2% recount puts the burden on candidates and voters to pay for
recounts, or to struggle in the courts for the right to verify an election in a
timely manner before certification of outcomes.
One trigger
for recounts is a “close election,” but this concept is appropriate only to
paper ballots and lever machines. With computerized voting, falsified tallies
can easily be made to provide any margin of victory.
Another
trigger for recounts is disparity between pre-election or exit polls and
announced outcomes. In 2004, we saw manipulation of pre-election polls[4], and
in November, 2004, we saw that the exit polls as reported in the
major media were changed to match the announced tallies.[5]
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04025.html
6.
Electronic voting and vote tabulating systems should not be treated as
exceptions to professional Information Technology standards, which require 100%
audit, 100% accuracy.
100% of
computer systems comparable to voting systems are 100% audited, and
discrepancies are reconciled to achieve 100% accuracy. The phrase
"comparable to voting systems" means computer systems that capture
transaction information from the human world into electronic memory (such as an order to purchase by mail, or a
financial transaction).
The idea
that 2% recount is sufficient to prove integrity of 100% of computer operations
is based on several false premises.
a.
Computers
are accurate and secure unless proven otherwise.
b.
If one
computer is proven accurate, hundreds of other similar computers are also
accurate.
c.
Elections are
like a court of law where a piece of technology, or an unobserved procedure,
should be assumed accurate until proven inaccurate.
These and
other false premises, such as “if the chief election official of a jurisdiction
trusts the computers, the computers are trustworthy,” have been used to evade
the routine auditing to which all commercial systems are subject.
Computer
systems are merely tools created by people, and are always error-prone and
vulnerable to manipulation by insiders. 100% audits, including reconciliation
of discrepancies to achieve 100% accuracy, have been the only way to achieve
accuracy of operation. In the Information Technology world, one common
definition of computer security is "the results of normal operation have
been proved correct by independent audit."
Most people
understand that 100% audits with 100% accuracy are needed to prevent or detect
financial fraud, but don't apply this understanding to computer systems used
for voting and vote tabulation. Obviously audits are needed in both worlds for
the same reason.
If you find
an error on your bank statement, and a bank officer says, "our records are
never perfect, and we didn't audit your account this month because our random
check said we were accurate enough," that would be unacceptable. It should
be unacceptable in elections.
One unspoken
argument is that elections CANNOT be held to routine Information Technology
standards. This idea is based on the unspoken acknowledgement that Boards of
Election in real life cannot perform computer audits. They lack not only the
intention or will, but the legal mandate, expertise, staff, and funding.
E.
When technicians handle systems for non-technical staff, this opens the door to
fraud.
The vast
majority of election professionals are not computer experts. Once they acquire
and begin to use electronic voting systems, they become dependent on vendor
technicians to handle the computers. They can’t monitor what's going on because
they don't know the technology.
For example,
a technician might say, "I better check the files." Who would
question that? Or understand the answer if they do ask? Yet a brief
unsupervised access to the computer is a large-enough window of opportunity for
someone to falsify an election.
Given the
public exposure of voting systems, and the fact that in most cases they are
overseen by non-technical staff, it would be impossible to control what
software is in the computer during the election, or to prevent falsification of
electronic ballots and tallies by insiders or technicians.
Large Boards
of Elections have computer staffs, but these employees aren't running elections
and overseeing the handling of the voting or vote tabulating equipment. Also,
these employees may not be security experts.
Two
affidavits from Ohio in December, 2004, provide an example. A technician said
the computer needed a new battery and took it apart.[6] Dr. Douglas Jones said
that the incident may have compromised the statewide recount.[7] The deputy director of elections said the
vendor “ran” the
elections
for the county.[8]
F.
Other problems with electronic voting and vote tabulating systems.
1. They
don’t work reliably.
Attached is
a list of documented failures of electronic voting systems as of Dec. 20,
2004.[9] Only six vendors are represented. There are 22 pages for Sequoia, and
these pages are first because many people think Sequoia will be the vendor
selected if New York goes to electronic voting. http://www.votersunite.org/info/messupsbyvendor.asp
Also
attached is a paper called “Recurring Themes in Electronic Voting System
Failures” which lists and discusses the recurring problems revealed by the
documented failures.[10] Only in the field of elections have such repeated
computer failures been ignored or tolerated, as well as defended with unfounded
assertions such as “The election outcome was not affected” and “the problems
were caused by voters (or poll workers, etc).”
For every
documented failure we can assume that there were many other failures that went
undetected because they would be revealed only by an audit: votes recorded
incorrectly, and wrong final tallies. Since no electronic voting system has
ever been audited, we can't know how many errors of these kinds have occurred.
2. Federal
Certification does NOT mean that a voting system works.
Despite
hundreds of documented failures of certified voting systems, some people still
believe that certified systems are guaranteed to work -- until they read an
interview in which an authoritative person states that certification does not
involve comprehensive testing and does not require the system to work.
Federal
certification means that “[an electronic voting system] has to have [certain]
functions. But it doesn’t have to work."
This candid
statement comes from page 2 of the I-Team interview with MicroVote
Executives[11] (attached). MicroVote makes electronic voting systems.
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647598&nav=0Ra7JXq2
3.
Unintended use of uncertified systems.
Another
problem is that vendors can deliver or install uncertified versions of their
hardware and software. Due to the lack of computer knowledge within Boards of
Elections, uncertified systems have been used without anyone noticing until
after one or more elections. This has occurred in California, Indiana, and
other states. In the absence of an independent audit of the election, there is
no remedy other than to run another election. This has not been done. Instead,
the public is given the unfounded reassurance that “We are sure that the
election outcome was not affected.”
4.
Communications devices, Flash memory devices.
Communications
devices, especially wireless ones, in voting and vote tabulating equipment
should be banned because they enable undetectable modification of all software,
ballots, and tallies by individuals in remote locations.
Regular
expert inspection of electronic voting systems must be required and funded to
ensure that wireless communications devices do not somehow appear. There must
be criminal penalties for violation of this ban.
Dr. Mercuri
told a story once of inspecting a particular machine. The sales material and
the salesman had said there were no communication devices in the voting system.
She asked to look inside the machine; the salesman opened it up, and there was
a wireless communications device. She said, Oh, I see you have a
whatever-it-was. The salesman slammed the unit shut and escorted her to the
door.
Communications
devices also make the secrecy of the ballot increasingly vulnerable as vendors
create “integrated election systems” that verify the identity of the voter,
present the correct ballot for their election district, and then record their
choices.
Flash memory
devices pose another danger. These devices now look like wristwatches, pens,
and cigarette lighters, and would be unrecognized by non-technical staff. A
technician who is not supervised by knowledgeable staff can copy the entire
election software and data, including ballots and tally sheets, etc., in less
than a minute. Later the technician can return and restore a modified copy of
the software, ballots and tallies. An entire county or state can be affected.
In contrast,
imagine someone walking off with all the ballots for a county or state.
Everyone would understand what they were seeing.
5. They are
easily corrupted.
A person
with moderate computer skills can read information that has been on the
internet for over a year, and then hack these systems to give falsified
election results. The hacks require only brief access. Direct physical access
is not needed because hacks can be done over a phone line and modem, a wireless
communication device in the voting system, or over the internet.
In
September, 2004, in Washington D.C., Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org held a
press conference where she demonstrated how to change the votes in a Diebold
GEMS central tabulator and in a Sequoia system.
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/BBV_GEMSreport.htm She was dismissed by the major media, but in fact the
"Trusted Agent Report" commissioned by the Maryland General Assembly
said the same thing in January, 2004, about the Diebold GEMS central tabulator
(they used more technical language, and didn’t publicize the exact methods like
Bev Harris did):
"Given either physical or remote access ... it is possible to
modify the GEMS database ... without detection. Furthermore, system auditing is
not configured to detect access to the database."
-- Trusted Agent Report,
http://www.raba.com/press/TA_Report_AccuVote.pdf , page 21
Additional vulnerabilities were found in a study
done in Ohio, which discussed Diebold Election Systems, ES&S, Hart
InterCivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems. The Ohio Secretary of State's DRE
Security Assessment, Volume 1 of November 21, 2003, is a 46-page Summary of
Findings and Recommendations produced by InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. http://serform.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/files/infosentry1.pdf
The full report is 280 pages.
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/hava/files/compuware.pdf
6.
Procedures other than auditing cannot ensure election integrity.
A variety of
activities can reduce the number of errors and discrepancies than may occur
during elections, but these activities cannot ensure election integrity.
a. Hardware
and software testing. Such
testing, if accompanied by correction of all errors that are found, can reduce
discrepancies and computer errors found during an audit. Due to certification
requirements and the length of time required for certification, however, such
errors are likely to remain uncorrected.
b. Use of
open source software. Open
source software is software that is posted publicly for technologists worldwide
to read. When errors are found they are discussed on the internet and
suggestions for correction are made. Again, however, due to certification
requirements and the length of time required for certification, such errors are
likely to remain uncorrected.
c. Reading
and examination of software. If reading and examining software could eliminate errors, no
company would ever perform continuous audits. Professor Aviel Rubin, the
computer security expert who headed the Johns Hopkins team that wrote the first
report revealing the insecurity of Diebold software, has stated publicly that
no examination of software of the size and complexity of voting systems can
guarantee that the software does not contain fraudulent parts.
http://avirubin.com/vote/analysis/index.html
d. Escrow
copies of software. The
idea of keeping copies of software in escrow has many flaws. First, it assumes
that the escrow copy has no errors or backdoors in it. Second, it assumes that
if software in an election system is changed once, it cannot be changed back to
the original escrowed version. Neither assumption is true. Comparing software
escrowed one day to what is in the computer on another day will reveal only
very sloppily performed fraud.
G.
Voters with disabilities.
1. The
"private and independent vote."
The Help
America Vote Act requires voters with disabilities to have a private and
independent vote. Some accessibility advocates have urged the use of electronic
voting systems with accessibility attachments and without voter-verified paper
ballots.
Unfortunately, one strategy for disenfranchising
voters in 2004 was to focus attention on the experience of voting and to gloss
over the question of whether the votes would be counted. This was done with
provisional ballots. These were called “placebo ballots” in a report by Demos.
http://www.demos-usa.org/pubs/HAVA%20-%20Placebo%20Ballots%20bw%20101904.pdf
A problem
similar to uncounted provisional ballots faces voters with disabilities, for
whom the “private and independent vote” cast into an unaudited computer may
mean nothing more than a private and independent experience in a voting booth,
fiddling with some assistive devices. This is why
accessibility within the voting booth needs to be combined with verifiability
AND actual verification when computers are used to record and tally the votes.
Moreover,
electronic voting systems don’t give anybody a private and independent VOTE.
Every vote
cast on a computer is handed over to a large number of anonymous technical
people who have been responsible for the system from its initial design,
programming, testing, maintenance, storage, programming for the ballot,
transportation, and installation in the polling site. And another cast of
characters after the election.
A computer
is only an instrument created and managed by people. Every voter using the computer is being assisted by these people,
so the vote is not unassisted, private or independent. Without the complete audit,
we can’t know if these assistants are recording our ballot choices, or counting
our votes, honestly and without mistakes.
Voters who
are blind, or have visual impairments, would get accessibility, privacy, and
security if they mark paper ballots by using ballot templates like those in use
in Rhode Island and in other countries. There are data-to-voice scanners that
can read the paper ballot back to the voter through headphones. There are
accessible ballot-printing machines, such as Populex, and ballot-marking
machines such as the Automark, that can assist voters with a wide variety of
disabilities. Their web sites are http://www.populex.com/DPB_Intro.htm
http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html
2. Can all
voters use the same voting technology?
Some people
have suggested that all voters should use exactly the same voting technology.
This may not
be practical or possible, because not all voters require accessibility devices
or non-English language displays.
When voters
with and without disabilities use what appears to be "the same
machine," they are not using the same software.
Voters with
disabilities will use accessibility attachments. Internally within the
computer, each attachment is managed by a "driver" (software that
handles communication between the computer and the specific accessibility
attachment) that is different from other drivers (such as those for other
accessibility devices, or the touchscreen or buttons used by voters without
disabilities). A programmer can easily identify which voters are using each
accessibility device. If an insider or technician wishes to switch the votes of
blind voters, for example, these voters can be identified because of the
devices they would be using.
Voters with
non-English languages face similar problems, because each foreign language
requires a separate font. A font is a set of graphic designs for displayable
characters such as letters and numerals. Even Spanish, which has characters
that are mostly the same as English, requires a character consisting of a tilde
~ over an "n" character, etc.
The separate
font and processing needed for the computer to display non-English language
ballots thus provide the opportunity to identify voters of specific language
groups. There have been allegations that some voting systems are designed to
enable an insider or technician to easily switch the votes by language group.
This is done by inserting some lines of Visual Basic Script programming in the
font files. Such programming might say, for example: if vote = Kerry, add 1 to
Bush-tally; if vote = Bush, add 1 to Kerry-tally.
Since paper
ballots can be printed in any language, it seems that the ballots of voters
with non-English languages would be more secure if marked by hand or
ballot-marking machine on preprinted paper ballots.
H.
Why the alternatives are better: Lever machines, Paper ballots and optical
scanners.
Computerized
devices can be used to enable voters with disabilities or non-English languages
to mark or print paper ballots. Computers should not be used to record and
count votes, however, unless they are used according to professional standards
of 100% audit, 100% accuracy.
1. Lever
Machines and accessible ballot-marking devices.
New York can
keep and maintain our old lever machines, and add an accessible ballot-marking
device in each polling site.
a. Lever machines can be repaired to nearly-new
condition.
New parts for lever machines are supplied by
International Election Systems Corp., 1550 Bridgeboro Road, PO Box 70,
Edgewater Park NJ 08010. Telephone
609-871-2100. The president of the
company is Richard Nowetner.
Engineers say that with proper routine maintenance, the lever machines should
work for 150 years. If they aren't working, that is due to not being
maintained. Proper repair can bring them to nearly-new condition. The most
common damage is to the casters they roll on, and the repair is to attach new
casters. Most damage occurs in trucking. Damage to the metal casing is repaired
in a manner similar to car body repair.
b. Three reasons
why lever machines are more secure than electronic voting systems.
(1) Length
of access time required to corrupt one or more machines versus magnitude of
effect.
Lever
machines:
One person
would require access for hours to each machine. Seals outside the machine have
unique numbers, and are not standard products that can be easily replaced.
Seals inside
the machine would have to be broken or tampered with also, which would reveal
the tampering. These are “crush seals” which consist of pieces of lead crushed
over copper wires.
Tampering
with the mechanical parts inside the machine would require disassembly of major
portions of the machine, which would take many hours, followed by re-assembly
which would take additional hours. All this would have to be done within a
month before the election because the ballot is not prepared until then.
Electronic
voting systems:
(a) One
technical insider or hacker using an automated script running in one computer
anywhere in the world would require less than a second access per computer and
can corrupt all similar electronic voting systems in a state through their
communications devices.
(b) One
technical insider with no access to the computers can distribute a corrupt
"patch" which technicians
would install with or without knowledge that it is corrupt. This could have
happened in Georgia, 2002, where allegedly the software in the Diebold systems
was replaced repeatedly up to two days prior to the election.
(c) One
non-technical insider, hacker, or technician can falsify precinct and overall
tallies in the central tabulator, which would require less than a minute access
either directly or via communications devices.
(2) Ease of
detecting corruption.
Lever
machines: With an hour of training, one person can inspect lever machines and
detect broken or wrongly-numbered outside seals. If the outside seals are
broken or wrongly-numbered, an experienced technician can examine the crush
seals and mechanics inside the machine.
Electronic
voting systems: With years of training, one person can read and examine the
software for years and not find all corruption in it.
(3) Possibility of oversight provided by Board
of Elections staff.
Lever
machines: Boards of Elections have many technicians who can safeguard and fix
them.
Electronic
voting systems: Boards of Elections have few or no computer staff who can
safeguard and fix electronic voting systems, or oversee the work of vendors.
2. Paper
ballots marked by hand or accessible ballot-marking device, with precinct-count
optical scanners.
New York can
convert to paper ballots marked by hand or accessible ballot-marking device in
each polling site, with precinct-count optical scanners.
Optical
scanners are computers, and pose the problem of programming errors, fraud, and
unobservable counting. For example, there were widespread allegations of
falsified tallies from optical scanners in Florida after our November, 2004,
election. These allegations gained seriousness when county officials refused to
comply with Freedom of Information requests to view precinct tally sheets.
Should
optical scanners be 100% audited with multipartisan observation, with 100%
accuracy required? The problems in Florida seem to suggest "yes."
The March
2001 Caltech report called "Revised and Expanded Report: A Preliminary
Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment" said that
hand-marked paper ballots counted by hand or optical scanner rank among the
most reliable of voting systems. This report also said that "the incidence
of [spoiled and unmarked ballots] is highest for voters in counties using punch
cards and electronic machines and is lowest for voters in counties using lever
machines, optically scanned paper ballots, and hand-counted paper
ballots."
Summary:
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~voting/Executive%20Summary.March30.pdf
Full report:
http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~voting/CalTech_MIT_Report_Version2.pdf
A system
using hand-marked paper ballots, optical scanners, and ballot marking devices
for accessibility is:
1) One of
the most reliable systems available.
2)
Inherently voter-verified.
3)
Incorporates paper ballots that are easy to hand-count where necessary.
4)
Precinct-based optical scanners allow automated counting to satisfy election
officials.
5)
Ballot-marking devices meet multilingual and accessibility needs.
6) For
New York State, it's less expensive
than Direct Recording Electronic systems with VVPAT, both in initial purchase
costs and ongoing maintenance.
3. States
and big cities that use paper ballots and optical scanners.
Illinois,
Chicago. 83% of the
population of Illinois (10 million) votes using such systems, including
Chicago. One Illinois County’s
rationale:
http://www.willclrk.com/votingsystem.htm#Why%20was%20the%20optical%20scan%20system%20selected?
80% of
Arizona, including Phoenix.
http://www.azsos.gov/election/voter_outreach/info.htm
Michigan
Secretary of State’s recommendation:
http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1640_9150-43906--M_2001_5,00.html
States that
use mostly precinct-count optical scan systems also include
South Dakota
http://www.sdsos.gov/2000/00pripre.htm
Minnesota http://www.sos.state.mn.us/election/Interactive%20Election%20Guides/HTML/15.htm
Seattle
4. Canadian
elections with paper ballots.
National
elections in Canada are conducted with paper ballots marked and counted by
hand. They use ballot templates for blind voters. Attached is a report on hand
counting methods in Canada. Unlike the attitudes expressed in this country in
recent years that “elections are never perfect” and “we can’t possibly
hand-count paper ballots” Canadians have no trouble hand-counting the votes on
paper ballots. They expect and achieve 100% accuracy.
5.
Hand-count methods.
The report
“How to Hand-count Votes Marked on Paper Ballots” (attached) describes several
easy methods for hand-counts.[12]
Hand counts
are done in Vermont, and the election law of 2003 described in detail their
procedures. Some of those details were omitted in their revised law of 2004,
but the old version can be obtained from the office of the Secretary of State.
I.
Computerized elections are a political problem.
The
Resolution on Electronic Voting, endorsed by thousands of computer
technologists, says "Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject
to programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering."
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5028
Every study
of electronic voting has said that systems from the major vendors are insecure
and of poor quality. http://www.wheresthepaper.org/links.html#sec
Many people
have trouble with their Windows PCs, and the systems are notoriously insecure,
but several of our major vendors have built their voting systems on top of
Windows.
A study by
Findlaw showed that in September, 2004, 42% of Americans distrusted electronic
voting.
http://company.findlaw.com/pr/2004/090704.electronicvoting.html
A continuous
flow of bad news from around our country tells us that electronic voting and
vote tabulating these systems don’t work.
http://www.votersunite.org/info/previousmessups.asp
In spite of
all this, few government officials with responsibility for elections are
heeding the constant stream of warnings about electronic voting, and the
expressed distrust by voters. The major media and some officials, even here in
New York, still want to convert to electronic voting.
In 2004
Americans witnessed an overwhelming incidence of dirty tricks and failures of
our election infrastructure, and the use of unverifiable and unverified
computers is part of this failure.
New Yorkers
have a real need. We need election systems that work, that can be managed by
the kind of staffs who work for our Boards of Elections across our state, and
that can be overseen by ordinary citizens.
Computers
can be made to work reliably through the use of audits, but no one in a
position of authority is demanding that audits be performed. Around our country
and in New York’s Saratoga County, computers used in elections are being used
incorrectly, accompanied by untested trust, assertions that elections are never
perfect, and statements that elections cannot be run any other way because
Americans are incapable of counting ballots, maintaining lever machines,
recruiting and training poll workers, etc.
In states
with electronic voting, some people have suggested that if any voter doesn't
want to cast his or her vote on a computer, they should request a paper
absentee ballot. But elections are not just about "my vote," they are
about the will of the people--all votes. Unaudited computers are the wrong
technology for elections for all voters.
A broken
democracy can’t be fixed by using unaudited computers to record and count
votes. If democracy is government "of the people, by the people, for the
people," the law needs to put people back into the center of our
elections, and not replace citizen participation by computers.
I urge New
York not to destroy our decent lever machine election system by converting to
electronic voting.
J.
Best sources of news and information.
1.
www.votersunite.org is the best source of organized historical and current
voting system news.
2. Daily
Voting News From votersunite.org - To subscribe send an email to John Gideon at
jgideon@votersunite.org
3. Email
clipping service, newspaper articles on voting machine and election issues from
around the country - To subscribe send an email to resist@best.com
4. Much
information is at www.wheresthepaper.org
and
www.wheresthepaper.org/ny.html
--------------
Attachments:
1. Materials by Rebecca Mercuri, Ph.D.:
"Facts About Voter Verified Paper
Ballots," "Rebecca Mercuri on
HAVA and Electronic Voting," "A Better Ballot Box?,"
"Florida 2002: Sluggish Systems,
Vanishing Votes," and "Hanging bytes, pregnant bits."
Dr. Mercuri's web site: http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html
2. Yale Study http://www.wheresthepaper.org/p43_di_franco.pdf requires Adobe
6.0
3. Commentary on Yale Study
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/CACM_YaleStudy.htm
4. "Gallup defends results against
MoveOn.org attack," USA Today, 9/29/04
5. "Why Did CNN Change Their Exit Poll
Data for Ohio After 1:00 AM?"
6. "AFFIDAVIT December 13, 2004 Sherole
Eaton"
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=494
7. Affidavit of Douglas W. Jones
8. "Ohio Recount Stirs Trouble" by
Kim Zetter, Wired News, Dec. 20, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,66072,00.html
9. "Sequoia in the News - A Partial List
of Events." Note that 6 vendors
are in the
packet. http://www.votersunite.org/info/messupsbyvendor.asp
10. "Recurring Themes in Electronic Voting
System Failures"
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/RecurringThemes.htm
11. “Excerpts from Interviews with MicroVote
Executives”
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647598&nav=0Ra7JXq2
12. How to Hand-count Votes Marked on Paper
Ballots
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/CountPaperBallots.htm