Election Defense Alliance Blog
NYT_Ed_030308
Source: NYT Editorial, March 3, 2008, with comments by CACEO official Steve Weir, corrected by EDA Coordinator Tom Courbat
A New Role for Defense Contractors?: Counting Votes
By The Editorial Board
There has long been good reason to worry about Diebold voting machines. Many are “black box” electronic machines that do not produce paper records, so voters have to accept the results they report on faith.
Diebold, however, has not inspired much faith. It has been accused of illegally using uncertified software on its voting machines,
exposing elections to possible tampering, and of making glitchy machines that misrecord votes.
Then there’s the little matter of the company’s CEO signing a letter before the 2004 election — in which his machines would be counting many
of the votes — saying that he was committed to helping deliver Ohio to President Bush.
(The Onion has a hilarious video up on Youtube, a mock news report about Diebold accidently releasing the results of the 2008 presidential
election before the voting occurs. View it here.)
Humboldt Democratic Party and Redwood ACLU Resolutions for Hand-Counts
Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:07 pm (PST)
Dave Berman and the Voter Confidence Committee have won two significant allies in the battle for transparent vote counting. In his essay, linked below, Berman further clarifies the concept of uncertainty inherent in computerized voting systems:
"The Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee (HCDCC) by a vote of 7-4 adopted a resolution calling on the County of Humboldt, CA to ditch Diebold by the June Primary Election and commence hand-counting paper ballots.
The resolution (see full text link below) also states that the HCDCC 'will commit some of its resources to educating the community about the benefits of this change, and to recruit registered voters to serve as pollworkers and/or voter counters.'
....
If you really want to get to the core of what has plagued our elections most, beginning with the 2000 presidential election, the crux is that we don't all agree on the outcome. Why is that? More than any other reason, it is secret vote counting.
....
Current elections require our blind trust, or faith, rather than providing us with a reason to believe the reported results, a rational "basis for confidence."
....
Instead, inherent uncertainty is created, waters intentionally muddied to the point that we can't know for sure. This happens everywhere, not just with "elections." It is not an accident or unintended consequence.
....
What we get is a rift in the perception of reality. Matters of fact become differences of opinions that can never be resolved, like paperless electronic voting and other secret vote counting systems that create unverifiable "elections," events that are not really elections but resemble them closely enough to fool most people."
Read the full Resolution adopted by the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee 2/13/08, at
SC
"The ballots shall not be counted in secret."
South Carolina Constitution
 
An Appeal to John Edwards to Take a Stand for Voting Rights
Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, DC
Media, election, and judicial reform advocate Mark Adams, JD, MBA of Tampa, Florida discovered something very important in the South Carolina Constitution. It provides for secret voting but bans secret vote counting.
All elections by the people shall be by secret ballot, but the ballots shall not be counted in secret. The right of suffrage, as regulated in this Constitution, shall be protected by laws regulating elections and prohibiting, under adequate penalties, all undue influence from power, bribery, tumult, or improper conduct.
South Carolina Constitution, Article II, Section 1
Friday, January 18:
The Outsourced, Unaccountable New Hampshire Election System
and Implications for the Recounts Underway
by Bruce O'Dell, EDA Co-Coordinator for Election Data Analysis
It's disturbing but hardly surprising to hear that LHS, the vendor that runs New Hampshire elections, took custody of the Diebold optical scan memory cards after the 2008 primary election.
In New Hampshire, LHS uses the notorious GEMS central tabulator software to program individual memory cards for each optical scan device that will be counting votes in each voting location. The memory cards contain ballot definition files that are used by the optical scan software to interpret
which marks on the ballot correspond to which candidates on the ballot at that location. The memory card also contains software, but of course, we know that software is perfectly benign... if you believe the vendor, because of course no one is allowed to independently examine those cards before or after the election. Oh, yes, the memory cards also store the"results" of the election.
After the election, each optical scan machine prints out a "poll tape"which reports the vote totals by race and candidate for that machine at that location. The poll tapes are signed by local election officials and couriered to the Secretary of State by NH state troopers. Unlike most jurisdictions, New Hampshire does not use GEMS to tabulate the vote; elsewhere, in most places that use Diebold optical scan voting equipment, the memory cards are couriered to the county election office and plugged
back into the county's GEMS server for upload and "automatic" tabulation.In New Hampshire, the poll tapes are manually tabulated by an individual using Excel.
Thanks to Blog for Arizona (Michael Bryan) for coverage of today's groundbreaking decision: http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/pima-county-boa.html
Pima County Board of Supervisors Advances Election Integrity
Votes Unanimously to Release All 2006 Election Databases
At today's hearing at the Pima Board of Supervisors, after a number of false starts, the Board voted unanimously to release the entire database series from the 2006 primary, general, and RTA elections and to drop the appeal of Judge Miller's ruling. The records release greatly exceeds the records required to be released by Judge Miller's ruling, demonstrating a great deal of leadership on election integrity by all the members of the Board.
A consortium of technical experts of the three recognized political parties will work with Pima County's technical advisor John Moffitt to provide the records to all the parties as soon as practicable. The parties should have access to the databases by the end of the week.
This decision by the Board to drop the appeal and release more records than required by court order is a major statement of openness and transparency by the county. Providing the entire series, rather than only the final election file as ordered by Judge Miller's ruling, allows forensic experts from the parties to verify that database contents that should not vary during the counting of an election have, in fact, not been altered. Such verification is a critical piece of evidence whether or not an election has been tampered with by insiders. It also allows further investigation of forensic methods by which to test and verify that elections insiders have not acted improperly in running the election.
Election Defense Alliance Wishes You
Original posted at http://www.miamiherald.com/516/story/323853.html
Associated Press, Wed, Nov. 28, 2007
TALLAHASSEE -- Democrat Christine Jennings has withdrawn a lawsuit over her 369-vote loss in a 2006 congressional race because a federal investigation will meet the same goals as the court case, her lawyers said.
Jennings withdrew the suit Monday in state Circuit Court here as the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, began testing electronic voting machines she claims malfunctioned in Sarasota County last year.
State testing previously failed to disclose problems with the touch-screen machines that could explain why they failed to register results from up to 18,000 voters in the 13th District race between Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan.
State officials declared Buchanan the winner, but Jennings challenged the result in court and the House of Representatives.
Jennings' lawyers wrote in court papers that the congressional investigation will accomplish the same objectives by trying to determine why there were so many non-votes and whether Buchanan is entitled to the seat.
The withdrawal does not affect another challenge by 11 voters still pending in the same court. Republicans, though, hailed Jennings' decision as a victory.
''While Christine Jennings finally did the right thing by giving up her frivolous lawsuit, it comes a year too late,'' said Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer.
Jennings was traveling Wednesday and not immediately available for comment.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Nicole Winger
November 19, 2007 (916) 653-6575
CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen Sues ES&S
Over Sale of Unauthorized Equipment to California Counties
Secretary seeks at least $15 million in penalties and reimbursement for counties
SACRAMENTO – Secretary of State Debra Bowen today filed suit against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for nearly $15 million after a four-month investigation revealed the company had repeatedly violated state law.
Secretary Bowen is suing ES&S for $9.72 million in penalties for selling 972 machines that contained hardware changes that were never submitted to, or reviewed by, the Secretary of State. Furthermore, she is seeking nearly $5 million to reimburse the five counties that bought the machines believing they were buying certified voting equipment.
“ES&S ignored the law over and over and over again, and it got caught,” said Bowen, the state’s top elections officer. “California law is very clear on this issue. I am not going to stand on the sidelines and watch a voting system vendor come into this state, ignore the laws, and make millions of dollars from California’s taxpayers in the process.”
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, D.C. Saturday, 20 October 2007
Letter from an Ohio Board of Elections (Holmes County) on missing 2004 ballots.
Letters from the Edge - Part 1
"Overall this blatant destruction of evidence only reinforces the widespread belief that the 2004 election was stolen."
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Free Press
August 2, 2007
The 2004 presidential election was mired in controversy all over the country. Candidate Kerry's legion of volunteer lawyers was ready to fight anticipated election fraud. Serious challenges were defused when Kerry conceded the election in the early morning of November 3, 2004. Failing to recognize that candidates cannot concede the votes of citizens, the news media and political parties called it a night.
© 2004-06 Rand Careaga/salamander.eps
With Permission
Making the World Safe
For Voting Machine Vendors
Michael Collins
Scoop Independent News
Washington D.C.
At a New Jersey town meeting this July, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) said of his bill, House Resolution 811, “It’s not my bill anymore.”
Why shouldn’t the world be safe for vendors? Microsoft in particular? After all, they pay the bills. Just let them have whatever they want and let the rest of us be thankful we’ve got jobs. This is the prevailing philosophy in Washington, DC, your capitol and the supposed heart of modern democracy.
House Resolution 811 (“The Holt Bill”) is coming up for a vote this week, word has it. The questions are stark. What will our Congress be voting for? Whose interests are represented in the final mark up of this legislation?
Original article published at Bradblog.com: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4985
ES&S Facing Massive Fines, Possible Decertification in CA for Use of Uncertified Modifications to Voting Systems
Illegal Changes to Company's AutoMARK Ballot Marking Device Could Bring $10,000
Fine Per Machine, Full Refund of Purchase Price, Prohibition from Doing Business in State of California...
By Brad Friedman from St. Louis, MO...
  ES&S, the country's largest distributor of voting machines, looks to be in a lot of trouble in California. A public notice from the CA Secretary of State's office was posted this morning by Thad Hall of CalTech announcing that the company "has violated" CA Elections Code by modifying "hundreds of units of a version of the AutoMARK ballot marking device" without certification or permission of the Secretary of State...
On August 3, 2007, Secretary Bowen announced her decisions regarding which systems in the review will be permitted to be used in the 2008 elections and beyond. The following documents detail Secretary Bowen's decisions.
Decertification/Recertification Decisions Issued August 3, 2007,
by Secretary of State Debra Bowen
Diebold Election Systems, Inc.
Hart InterCivic
VS Review page 080307
Below are the conclusions from Bowen's three source code reports
posted at http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm
Thanks to Jim Soper, (Voting Rights Task Force, Alameda Co. CA) for providing this digest of the individual vendor system security reports. http://www.CountedAsCast.com
Public Comment Still Being Accepted
Comments e-mailed to votingsystems@sos.ca.gov or phoned into voicemail at (916) 651-7834 will still be considered in advance of the certification decisions Sec. Bowen will announce later this afternoon. (Thanks to Jennifer Kidder of VRTF for this info).
UPDATE on today's Sacramento press conference regarding Secretary of State Debra Bowen's voting system certification decisions...
We do not have an exact time yet, but it will be in the p.m. and not a.m.
Thank you for your patience,
Nicole Winger
Deputy Secretary of State, Communications
Office of California Secretary of State Debra Bowen
DIEBOLD, pg 65
Our study of the Diebold source code found that the system does not meet the requirements for a security-critical system. It is built upon an inherently fragile design and suffers from implementation flaws that can expose the entire voting system to attacks. These vulnerabilities, if exploited, could jeopardize voter privacy and the integrity of elections. An attack could plausibly be accomplished by a single skilled individual
Post Rides Offered or Needed
to CA Voting System Hearing
This is a quick and simple ride board, built on a blog form that should enable posts and replies.
Thinking ahead to the ES&S Decertification hearing that has been rescheduled to October 15, 2007, use this space to post requests and offers for shared rides.
Drivers: List how many passengers you can take, and your location and time of departure
List whatever form of contact information you wish.
Riders: State how many in your party, and your approximate location of departure
List whatever form of contact information you wish.
Use the Comment and Reply links at the foot of this window
--Amtrak Train is also an option; the Capitol Corridor line runs up from the Peninsula to Sacramento.
Click here for Amtrak ticket and route information
Click here for the Sacramento train schedule
Click to download Walking Map from the Sacramento Amtrak station to the Secretary of State building (30-minute walk)
Guest BLOGGED BY Tom Courbat ON 7/13/2007 2:46PM at BradBlog.com http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4816 'Blue Ribbon' Committee to Riverside County, CA Board of Supes: Dump DRE Touch-Screen Voting Systems!
Enormous Victory as Dogged Citizen Advocacy Finally Pays Off!
Committee Also Recommends Security Audit of Registrar's Office in First County in America to Move to Touch-Screen Voting Systems
Guest Blogged by Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE
ED NOTE: Courbat and his band of intrepid Election Integrity advocates are owed a huge debt of thanks and an enormous congratulations for their effort. This recommendation, and indeed the creation of the "Blue Ribbon" commission itself, only came about due to the dogged, week-in, week-out, year-in, year-out persistence of Tom and the Riverside County advocates of SAVE R VOTE.
We're happy to run his first-hand, guest blog contribution on this tremendous victory, as Courbat's group and efforts serve as a role model for citizens in every county in the nation. --- BF
Dump the DREs and Minimize Additional Outlays To Go To Paper Ballots
Next Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the Riverside County, California Board of Supervisors’ hand-picked “Blue Ribbon” Elections Review Committee will present the Board with recommendations to “Move as quickly as possible to a hybrid voting system…on paper ballots…counted by optical scanners.”
For Riverside County, the first in America to move to touch-screen electronic voting systems, the importance of their findings cannot be understated.
"Judge Smith's decision in the recount suit vindicates a fundamental right reserved long ago by the People of California to ferret out possible fraud or error in election results," noted counsel for the voters Gregory Luke. ". . . The decision is a firm rebuke to the culture of secrecy that has taken hold in too many election offices around the country."
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
June 12, 2007
Tentative Ruling Finds that County Officials Destroyed Voting Records from Election
Conducted on Diebold Electronic Voting Machines
Election Results May Be Nullified and County Ordered to Conduct Re-Vote on Ballot Measure at Next General Election; Hearing on the Tentative Ruling Tomorrow
OAKLAND, CA - Superior Court Judge Winifred Y. Smith issued a tentative ruling that the Alameda County Registrar of Voters and Alameda County "have engaged in a pattern of withholding relevant evidence and failure to preserve evidence" necessary to conduct a recount of a hotly contested Berkeley ballot measure. As a result, the Court has signaled its intention to void the election and order the County to place Measure R back on the ballot for a re-vote at the next general election.
Judge Smith will issue a final ruling after the Court hears oral arguments tomorrow (Friday, July 13, at 9:30 a.m. at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse, Department 114, 661 Washington Street, Oakland).
"Judge Smith's tentative ruling confirms our contention that Alameda County violated its duty to preserve the critical voting machine data that was the focus of this recount lawsuit and election contest," said Gregory Luke of Strumwasser & Woocher LLP, attorney for the plaintiffs who sought the recount of the vote on Measure R.
Riverside_071307
Original Riverside Press Enterprise article at http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_H_vote13.400853f.html
Optical Scan, Precinct Posting, Video Cameras Among Recommendations
Tom Courbat, founder of SAVE R VOTE, an elections integrity group that has pressed the supervisors to abandon the touch-screen machines, called the panel's recommendations "very bold ... something they knew the Board of Supervisors did not want to hear."
By KIMBERLY TRONE and RICHARD K. DEATLEY
The Press-Enterprise, 10:00 PM PDT on Thursday, July 12, 2007
Riverside County, the first in the state to use electronic touch-screen voting machines, should return to a paper-based voting system, a panel appointed by the Board of Supervisors has recommended.
The Sequoia Voting Systems machines in use by the county since the 2000 presidential elections haven't gained voter confidence and have failed to meet expectations of reliability and cost savings, the five-member panel found.
The panel found no evidence of any errors or defects in the county's touch-screen system, however.
Michelle Shafer, vice president of communications for Sequoia Voting Systems, said late Thursday that she could not comment on the recommendations until she'd had an opportunity to review them.
The decision about whether to scrap the electronic system rests with the county supervisors, who will discuss the recommendations Tuesday. The county has spent about $25 million on electronic machines since putting them to use. The cost to replace them is not yet known.
THE CASE FOR HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS
by Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
February 21, 2007
I remain an advocate of paper ballots, counted by hand, at the precinct level, in full public view, on Election Night, no matter how long it takes. Here is an outline of my reasons:
1. Without PAPER BALLOTS, no election results can be verified by auditors.
“Voter-verified paper trails” do not suffice, because:
(a) not all voters will take the extra time to “verify” each and every vote for a multitude of offices and initiatives;
(b) there is no way to ensure that the vote count reported by the machine actually matches the “paper trail” without looking at the paper record;
(c) contentious court cases will be required in order to look at the paper record during the brief time period when an election can be challenged; therefore
(d) the unverified machine count will likely become official; and
(e) auditing the poll books and voter signature books can only verify the accuracy of the total number of ballots cast, and cannot detect alteration of the vote count for individual candidates.
2. The ballots must be COUNTED BY HAND.
We have examined tens of thousands of ballots from the 2004 general election in Ohio, and have found large discrepancies, errors, and outright fraud that were not detected by the machine counts, including:
(a) hundreds of consecutive ballots cast for the same presidential candidate;
(b) inexplicable voting patterns, such as half of the gay marriage supporters voting for Bush;
(c) outright alteration, such as marks for certain candidates covered with white stickers;
(d) “duplicate” ballots without original “voided” ballots to match them;
(e) unused ballots missing or destroyed;
(f) ballots cast in the wrong precinct, with a different ballot rotation;
(g) far more, or far fewer, voted ballots than the official number of ballots cast;
(h) thousands of “absentee” ballots identified in the same handwriting, with the same writing implement;
(i) absolutely blank ballots substituted for ballots cast by voters;
(j) thousands of ballots punched in advance for third-party candidates, causing voters to spoil their own ballots by casting overvotes, found almost exclusively in heavily Democratic inner-city precincts.
3. The ballots must be counted AT THE PRECINCT LEVEL, because:
(a) hand counting of paper ballots is not manageable at the county level;
(b) the counting takes place before “chain of custody” issues have arisen;
(c) all ballots will be counted in the correct precincts.
4. The ballots must be counted IN FULL PUBLIC VIEW, because:
(a) nothing else will restore public confidence in the veracity of the vote count;
(b) public monitoring of the actual counting of ballots is an exciting opportunity for citizens to engage in participatory democracy; and
(c) if observers are limited to persons residing in the precinct being counted, contentious challenges from partisan lawyers can be averted.
5. The ballots must be counted ON ELECTION NIGHT, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES, because:
(a) again, the counting takes place before “chain of custody” issues have arisen;
(b) the voters have already endured a lengthy campaign, and can wait a while for the unofficial results;
(c) the right of voters to have their votes counted correctly, the first time, trumps the desire of election workers to go home early; and
(d) if election workers are tired after a long day, a new team can be brought in to count the ballots.
"The language of the 62-page bill is so dangerously ambiguous in so many critical areas, that we ought to expose the ambiguities to the light before HR811 becomes the law of the land and our elections are thrown to the courts to decide what means what."
By Nancy Tobi
There is a raging and often destructive debate among voting activists. The source of the discord is "The Holt Bill," a piece of federal election reform legislation named for its primary author, Democratic Congressman Rush Holt from the great state of New Jersey. The destructive nature of the exchanges among activists has led some of us who oppose the bill to propose, in the best of our American democratic traditions, a public debate on the merits of the bill.
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