Teresa Alice Hommel, Feb. 12, 2009. Updated Feb. 21, 2009.

www.wheresthepaper.org/rebut_NYVV_LWVNYS_Feb12_09.htm

The League of Women Voters’ voting system standards adopted in 2006

were for electronic systems, and never were intended to apply to

non-electronic systems such as lever machines.

Electronic and mechanical systems have different vulnerabilities & security requirements:

· Lever Voting Machines implement “Will of the People” Tallies With Confirmation of Each Vote via an X under the Lever

· Optical Scanner Systems implement “My Vote is Manually Recorded by Me, and Electronically Counted”

THE ISSUE

New Yorkers for Verified Voting and the League of Women Voters of New York State recently published a paper[i] that intended to apply the national League’s voting system standards to lever voting machines. (I will call the national League simply “the League”.)

The paper asserts that lever machines "do not meet current standards for voting systems" and do not have the "higher level of … accountability[ii]" that optical scanners offer.

However, the League’s standards that the paper quotes are an out-of-context portion of the League’s position--which I worked to write and get adopted--that was never intended to be applied to non-computerized voting technology.

WHY IT MATTERS

In the New York controversy between keeping our mechanical lever voting machines versus switching to paper ballots and optical scanners, some people have forgotten the difference between mechanical devices and computers.

Computers are software-dependent. Meaningful audits of computer results must be software independent—hence the need for independent paper records of each voter’s votes.

Mechanical machines can be audited in much simpler ways, since programming errors and tampering can be visually detected by merely looking in the back of the machine and by simple mechanical tests. Confirmation that a vote has been counted is visually apparent to the voter when an X appears under the lever after the voter pushes it down to register a vote.[iii] (Each lever connects to a counter, and each counter connects to an X which appears when the counter advances to register the vote.)

Applying computer standards and requirements to mechanical devices is inappropriate. Opposing the continued use of lever machines because they don’t meet computer standards and requirements is also inappropriate.

20-20 HINDSIGHT

I was part of the small group that passed both the League’s 2004 and 2006 positions. I was credited with negotiating the 2004 SARA test (Secure, Accurate, Recountable and Accessible). However, in 2004 the Georgia LWV, in defense of their Diebold DREs without paper trails (“paperless DREs”), insisted that their DREs’ reprints of tally reports constituted "recounts."

Because the proponents of the 2006 position were reacting against support for paperless DREs, we were not careful enough with the language. None of us at the 2006 convention was thinking about non-electronic voting technology at the time we advocated and passed the 2006 position. Indeed the question of non-computerized voting equipment did not come up because we were focused on the dangers of paperless DREs that the League was aggressively supporting.

In hindsight is clear that the 2006 Resolution needed to have one phrase revised so it more explicitly stated that it was setting standards for electronic voting systems, specifically DREs and optical scanners.

HOW DID NYVV’s and LWVNYS’s SELECTIVE QUOTING COME ABOUT?

The League published a "Report on Election Auditing" in January 2009 that selectively quoted--and changed the meaning of--their position on voting equipment adopted at their 2006 biannual convention, known as the CARL Resolution.

The CARL Resolution was written to oppose touchscreen voting machines without a paper trail, which the League supported at that time. The CARL Resolution said [emphasis added]:

Whereas: Some LWVs have had difficulty applying the SARA Resolution (Secure, Accurate, Recountable and Accessible) passed at the last [2004] Convention, and

Whereas: Paperless electronic voting systems are not inherently secure, can malfunction, and do not provide a recountable audit trail,

Therefore be it resolved that:

The position on the Citizens' Right to Vote be interpreted to affirm that LWVUS supports only voting systems that are designed so that:

1. they employ a voter-verifiable paper ballot or other paper record, said paper being the official record of the voter's intent; and

...

This wording was in reaction to the League’s 2004 and pre-2004 positions. In the quote above, the underlined italic phrase was understood at the time to mean "supports electronic voting systems only if they are designed so that".

It is wrong to say that the 2006 convention intended to oppose lever voting machines because they lack a per-voter paper record of votes. It attributes to the CARL Resolution a meaning that was not intended by the 2006 League delegates that adopted it. (www.leagueissues.org/)

THE TIME LINE

In 2003 the League published a position in support of paperless DREs that was adopted without the League’s consensus process that is normally required before taking a national position.

The pre-2004 position was quoted and replaced in the 2004 SARA resolution:

"Whereas there is strong disagreement among League members on the interpretation of the position on 'Citizen's Right to Vote' that the LWVUS has taken on whether a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail should be a requirement with Direct Recording Electronic Voting,

Be it resolved that LWVUS remove the following wording from its interpretation:

The LWVUS supports an individual audit capacity for the purposes of recounts and authentication of elections for all voting systems. The LWVUS does not believe that an individual paper confirmation for each ballot is required to achieve these goals. An individual paper confirmation for each ballot would undermine disability access requirements, raise costs and slow down the purchase or lease of machines that might be used to replace machines that don't work. The experts that we have consulted say that there are many safeguards other than an individual paper ballot confirmation that can protect the sanctity of the ballot and that other issues are far more important in safeguarding our election systems.

The LWVUS interpretation of the position on 'Citizen's Right to Vote' will now read: In order to ensure integrity and voter confidence in elections, the LWVUS supports the implementation of voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, recountable, and accessible."

In order to win support of the Georgia League, advocates of the SARA test agreed that a reprint of a tally report by paperless DREs would be acceptable as compliant with the requirement of "recountable." However in the pre-vote floor debate, the Georgia League opposed the SARA test anyway, but the delegates adopted it.

The 2006 resolution, called the CARL Resolution, was intended to alter the 2004 position and SARA test which had failed to reverse the League's support for paperless DREs. In 2005 and 2006, when the CARL resolution was being prepared, advocates still believed that

if DREs had a paper trail then jurisdictions would audit their DREs' results and determine if hand-to-eye-counted tallies of the paper trail matched the electronic tallies from the DREs. (However, no jurisdiction has yet wanted to allow continuous observation of the chain of custody of their paper trail and then count the votes on it.)

voters would be able to accurately verify the paper trail. (However, Sarah Everett's Rice University studies of May, 2007, http://chil.rice.edu/research/pdf/EverettDissertation.pdf, later dashed hopes that voters would have the skill to verify accurately.)

vendors of DREs could be induced to provide reliable paper trails. (However, this has not yet happened.)

The web site www.leagueissues.org/ which was created in 2006 by Genevieve Katz, a CARL advocate from the Oakland CA League, makes clear that both the context and text of the CARL resolution was intended to support a paper trail for DREs. Her web site says:

The attendees at the 2006 LWV Convention, held June 9-13 in Minneapolis, MN, voted to approve a resolution to strengthen the previous resolution passed in 2004, regarding verifyable paper audit trails for DREs. This resolution is presented below:

Sometime during the week of July 13, 2006, the LWVUS published this resolution on their website.

-- NEWS from the LWV Convention 2006 -- "CARL" Resolutionas amended and passed at the 2006 Convention of the LWVUS:(on U.S. Voting Systems Under HAVA)

Whereas: Some LWVs have had difficulty applying the SARA Resolution (Secure, Accurate, Recountable and Accessible) passed at the last Convention, and

Whereas: Paperless electronic voting systems are not inherently secure, can malfunction, and do not provide a recountable audit trail,

Therefore be it resolved that:

The position on the Citizens' Right to Vote be interpreted to affirm that LWVUS supports only voting systems that are designed so that:

1. they employ a voter-verifiable paper ballot or other paper record, said paper being the official record of the voter's intent; and

2. the voter can verify, either by eye or with the aid of suitable devices for those who have impaired vision, that the paper ballot/record accurately reflects his or her intent; and

3. such verification takes place while the voter is still in the process of voting; and

4. the paper ballot/record is used for audits and recounts; and

5. the vote totals can be verified by an independent hand count of the paper ballot/record; and

6. routine audits of the paper ballot/record in randomly selected precincts can be conducted in every election, and the results published by the jurisdiction.

Motion #555, by LWV of Minnesota. Motion APPROVED by Card Vote: Yes 439, No 269, Illegal 4.

MY STATEMENT

As a member of the group that worked to wean the League of Women Voters of the United States away from paperless DREs, I attest that no one foresaw or intended that the 2006 position would be applied to non-electronic voting systems such as mechanical lever machines.