Common Cause Blog :: Great News on the Election Reform Front

Great News on the Election Reform Front

By Barb Burt
Posted on Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 01:32:44 PM EST

It's been a great seven days for election reform. Last Thursday, Florida's governor Charlies Crist teamed up with long-time paper ballot advocate Representative Robert Wexler to announce support for a plan to scrap Florida's infamous paperless DREs by the 2008, and replace them with optical scan machines.

Then, yesterday, Representative Rush Holt introduced the latest version of his bill, "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007," H.R. 811, which already boasts somewhere in the neighborhood of 170 co-sponsors.

Finally, this morning, Sen. Diane Feinstein held a hearing on the voting machine issue. She has promised to introduce a bill soon that would be the Senate counterpart to Holt's House bill. For more on the hearing, and to hear a recording of it, go to VerifiedVoting.org's webpage.

There is no doubt that these changes are happening at least in part due to the intense citizen lobbying pressure voters have exerted in recent months. Our GetItStraightBy2008.org campaign has logged thousands of emails and phone calls to Florida and the U.S. Congress. We haven't won yet, but victory is definitely within reach.

Tags: election reform, Florida, voter verified, paper ballot, paper trail (all tags)

Great News on the Election Reform Front :: 8 Comments

Some SERIOUS problems with Holt bill's drafting

Although 34 citizen election organizations and many others besides signed a joint letter in December demanding a "paper ballot", the "paper Ballot" actually delivered by the Holt bill is not something that any reasonable person would consider to be a ballot"

1. The Holt paper "ballot" is NEVER counted on the first count.

2. The Holt paper "ballot" is NEVER reported in election night results, or the day after the election.

3. Although a sign mandated by Holt for each polling place would inform voters that the paper ballot is merely the ballot of record for "ALL recounts and audits" even that is not true. If your state has an automatic recount law under state law, then there will be no Holt audit of the paper ballots. Your state will do its usual, and defective, machine recount, just printing out the DRE results slips again (just hit "PRINT") or in the case of opscan voting systems, just using the same opscans with the bad programming - again.

So, in a state with automatic machine recounts, like FL and OH where they prohibit hand recounts, your Holt paper "ballot" will NEVER be counted in a CLOSE RACE.

But hey -- who needs paper ballots in close races with recounts cause it's close, right?

In fact, because a reasonable person would expect a "ballot" to count BOTH on the first count AND on ALL recounts and Audits (just like the Holt sign says) the actual wording of the Holt bill is misleading and deceptive.

I litigate consumer protection cases, and there's another word that applies in the consumer context, and that's FRAUD. Regardless of whether it was intended that way or not, if the reasonable voter/consumer would be deceived by this bill's use of "ballot", then consumer fraud would be proved. It's just that congress's lawmaking functions are exempt from the truthiness laws we insist used car dealers operate by. And that's too bad.

by PR Finn on Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 11:26:11 PM EST

Misinterpreting Holt

H.R. 811, the new version of the Holt bill, doesn't preclude paper ballots with optical scan machines; in fact, that's the easiest way to comply with its tenets. Any jurisdiction would be free to hand-count its paper ballots and report that number. But whatever counting method is used, random audits must be done in statistically significant quantity to ensure the veracity of the count.

Federal election bills, like all legislation, are never perfect. Election bills in particular face many constraints -- there's the whole states' rights/federal mandates issue, for example. This bill will change in committee -- and advocates should work hard to see that the changes they want are incorporated.

Common Cause believes that H.R. 811 is the vehicle most likely to make headway in the House and Senate. Upon introduction, it already could list almost 40% of the House members as co-sponsors. Rep. Holt has worked for years on this issue and has gained credibility from his peers.

Barbara Burt, Common Cause Election Reform Team Leader

by Barb Burt on Thu Feb 08, 2007 at 12:38:17 PM EST

Holt NOT Needed for opscan paper Ballots

Holt is not needed for opscan paper ballots - opscans have ALWAYS featured paper ballots.

This can not possibly be a defense of HOLT, because Holt does nothing to allow that -- for the simple fact that it has existed for a long time.

As a practical matter those paper ballots or trails with opscans rarely get recounted, and in a contested or corrupt race you will be lucky to get at them in time -- so we should not put too much stock in the recount-ability of paper, especially since jurisdictions are now attempting to charge such high fees to prevent recounts and the possible embarrassment they entail to the election officials responsible for the first count.

by PR Finn on Thu Feb 08, 2007 at 06:57:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

With all due respect, there's no misinterpretation

of Holt. And while it may be true at some level that no piece of legislation is perfect, we are very far from that state of affairs, and we are dealing with voting, often called the right that protects all other rights -- so we ought to be striving for the very best we can get. I suspect Common Cause would share that view if not bogged down defending the original form of the bill, so maybe just discussing likely amendments would be a good approach.

by PR Finn on Thu Feb 08, 2007 at 07:02:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

PR Finn is Right. Common Cause- Wake up Please !

Supporting a bill for political expediency when serious flaws still exist rather than lobbying to close loopholes is a serious abdication of responsibility, particularly with such a critical issue. Barbara you say "This bill will change in committee -- and advocates should work hard to see that the changes they want are incorporated."

Why isn't Common Cause taking an active role rather than simply asking members to blindly tell their representatives to support this bill in its current form? Barbara, can't you commit to lobbying to fix the following and urging your members to do so? (thanks to others who have posted similar information on these flaws):

1. Section 327 is a LOOPHOLE ALLOWING MANUAL AUDITS TO BE BYPASSED.
HR811 permits states to avoid any manual audits when conducting state
"recounts". Many state "recounts" involve no manual counts of
voter-verified paper ballots, or involve fewer manual counts than
HR811 requires or, like Utah, involve limited manual counts but never
compare the manual counts with the electronic tallies used to count
votes on the central tabulator. This exemption permits states to
avoid independent audits altogether by redefining when they'll do
"recounts". Independent audits should "always" be required, no matter
whether election officials do "recounts" or not.

2. NO RECOGNITION OF CITIZEN RIGHT TO OVERSIGHT. HR811 provisions do
not require timely citizen or candidate access to election records
necessary to verify electoral integrity, voter roll accuracy, or
manual audits. Some states, like Utah, prohibit access to all
election records, even records that the National Voting Rights Act
requires to be publicly available; and other states only release
election records long after election results are made official.
Candidates have nothing to judge the integrity of their election
outcomes with, when access to election records is lacking.

3. EQUIPMENT REQUIREMENTS ARE UNDER-FUNDED: $300 million is not
enough to fund the purchase of precinct-based op-scan machines and
ballot printers for voters with disabilities and non-English-language
voters, for all precincts who currently have voting machines which
lack paper ballots. (although the amount may be enough to purchase new
machines for jurisdictions with paperless DREs like MD, GA, FL,..) If
there are approximately 185,000 U.S. polling places, and even if only
approximately one-third of them are defined as remedial and it costs
$10,000 per polling location for a ballot printer and op-scan device,
then it would cost approximately $650 million to replace all the
electronic ballot voting systems which currently do not cast votes on
archival quality paper ballots, are not fully auditable, and violate
voter anonymity. It also seems to require text conversion technology
in every polling place for voters with disabilities to independently
verify their ballots. At up to $7000 per machine for 185,000 polling
places, you do the math.

4. INSUFFICIENT AUDIT AMOUNTS: Fans of audit solutions recognize that
Holt's audit amounts (10% audits for races with margins under 1%, 5%
audits for races with margins between 1% and less than 2%, and 3%
audits for races with margins 2% or greater) are inadequate. These
numbers were pulled out of thin air, often giving under 50% chance for
detecting even one vote corrupt vote count (count with error) in cases
where just enough vote counts are corrupt to alter outcomes in U.S.
House races. (I would need to know the number of precincts in all US
House districts to do a thorough mathematical analysis of this.)

5. UNDER-QUALIFIED COMPOSITION OF STATE AUDIT BOARDS: HR811 proposes a
composition for state audit board members that does not allow
much-needed mathematicians, computer scientists, election activists,
and gaming experts to be on the election audit boards, and does not
allow smaller party members of the Green, Libertarian, Constitution,
or other small parties to be on the state audit boards. The
mathematics of election audits is quite different than in other
industries and can be quite complex due to the variations in the
margins between candidates, size variation in the numbers of ballots
in each vote count, and other factors.

6. EXCEPTION ALLOWS LOSS OF SECRET SECURE BALLOTS for the Military
voters, who are "allowed" to vote via email.

7. LOOPHOLE ALLOWS MACHINE COUNTS TO SUPERCEDE VOTER VERIFIED PAPER
when fuzzily described circumstances arise. Legislation should instead
say that: "In the event of any inconsistencies or irregularities
between any electronic records and the voter-verifiable paper records,
the paper records shall be the true and correct record of the votes
cast, except in the case where evidence exists that indicates that the
paper record has been tampered with or damaged, in which case, if an
outcome is in question, then a court will decide."

8. LOOPHOLE ALLOWS INTERNET CONNECTIONS for central tabulators and
ballot definition software. This is unnecessary since portable media
can be used to transfer vote counts from the central tabulator or to
the ballot programming devices.

9. NEGLECTS TO OUTLAW ELECTRONIC POLL BOOKS. Having paper ballots for
voters in case of power failure or electronic failure does little good
if there are electronic poll books. Voters can be disenfranchised, and
have been disenfranchised in both MD and CO due to the use of
electronic poll books.

10. LOOPHOLE ALLOWS MANUAL AUDITS TO BE GAMED: Vote miscounts could
be hidden and have a higher chance to escape detection in two or more
large-size counts of absentee, mail-in, overseas, or military ballots.
Must change "and" to "or" in Holt's language, or simply require that
all mail-in ballots are to be counted in batches of the same size as a
median-sized precinct.

by Bob Schlesinger on Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 12:47:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

H.R. 811, another HAVA disaster in the making

If Common Cause were truly "committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy," you would not be supporting this bill. Have you even read it?

Thanks to Bev Harris and others working with Black Box Voting, here's a nonexhaustive list of problems with the bill:

1. DECEPTIVE LANGUAGE. Calls a paper TRAIL a paper BALLOT.

2. BILLION DOLLAR UNFUNDED MANDATE: Requires text conversion technology in every polling place. At $7000 per machine for 185,000 polling places, you do the math. See this article for documentation on the billion-dollar boondoggle:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/46649.html

The bill is not talking about scanner wands, folks. Or if it is, they'd better specify that, and soon! Except that apparently, it's too late to make changes.

Note that only two vendors currently manufacture the needed technology, and one (Populex) has as head of its advisory board Frank Carlucci, the former chairman of the Carlyle Group, former CIA director, who was Donald Rumsfeld's roommate in college. Every polling place in America. Is this really what you want? Isn't it time to read the fine print on this???

3. MAKES THE SCANDAL RIDDEN EAC A PERMANENT FIXTURE AND INCREASES ITS POWER. Alan Dechert, from the Open Voting Consortium says it best: "Holt contemplates the invasion of these United States by the Federal government. If passed, it would BREAK the voting system in the states while establishing a dictatorship to handle things: the Election Assistance Commission ("EAC" or just "the Commission") with its four commissioners appointed by the president of the United States." Bradblog on latest EAC scandal: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4119

4. ALLOWS LOSS OF SECRET BALLOTS for the Military

5. NO RECOGNITION OF CITIZEN RIGHT TO OVERSIGHT. Audit provisions do not allow either citizens or candidates access to any records for meaningful audits.

6. CONFLICTING REQUIREMENTS -- ie, must have text converters by 2008 and must study how to best do the conversions by 2010.

7. LANGUAGE ON DISCLOSED SOURCE CODE CONTAINS AN ERROR in that it doesn't deal with COTS - meaning, any electronics component with a chip on it would be required to disclose source code. There are literally hundreds of commercial off the shelf components in the system -- printers, video drivers, motherboard components -- that contain firmware, and these are manufactured all over the world. The bill would require Hitachi, Seagate, Fuji, Western Digital to open up their code for their commercial products if used in voting machines. Effectively eliminates the use of electronics while at the same time mandating electronics.

8. MUSH LANGUAGE. (Example: "The manufacturer shall provide the appropriate election official with the information necessary for the official to provide the information...")

9. UNREADABLE: People complain about their legislators not reading the bills -- well the way this is written, it guarantees they won't read it. No Appendix, so sections of the bill require the reader to actually go find a different bill and look up sections in it in order to make sense of the current bill. (example: "Section 301(a)(1) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 15481(a)(1)) is amended (A) in subparagraph (A)(i), by striking "counted" and inserting "counted, in accordance with paragraphs (2) and (3)");

10. AUDIT PROTOCOLS NO ONE AGREES WITH, even fans of audit solutions

11. LOOPHOLE ALLOWING INTERNET CONNECTIONS for central tabulators and ballot definition software

12. LOOPHOLE ALLOWING MANUAL AUDITS TO BE BYPASSED states with computer-only recount protocols

13. LOOPHOLE ALLOWING MACHINE COUNT TO SUPERCEDE VOTER VERIFIED PAPER when fuzzily described circumstances arise. Los Angeles Registrar Conny McCormack already has tried to co-opt this (Feinstein senate hearing yesterday) into meaning when there is a printer jam damaging the paper, the machine count will trump.

14. SUPPORTS DREs (Touch-screens and other on-screen voting techniques that are NOT recommended by NIST)

This is a devastating development. So many people worked so very hard on this bill, but in the end it isn't about who worked hard. It's about getting it right. We can't afford another set of HAVA problems.

And if it's got this many problems now, just wait until the lobbyists carve it up.

by J Skinner on Thu Feb 08, 2007 at 06:47:33 PM EST

In elections, election riggers use the unlocked

window, kind of like burglars. They are quite adept at finding weaknesses and there is, after all in American elections, control of the world's richest country and sole military superpower (and therefore arguably world control) at stake in our presidential elections. So it is naive, after reading history, to maintain that "good enough" is just fine. Whatever weaknesses that leaves where people can do things unobserved via electronics is a threat to American liberty, in the final analysis.

by PR Finn on Thu Feb 08, 2007 at 07:05:00 PM EST

Holt II an abysmal failure

Below are some critical points against Holt II. DREs are left in place, and at most we'll get a hand count of ten percent of their output. That means we'll be stuck with the suspect machine count as the "official count" regardless that Holt II "says" the paper record is the official one.

I have no objection to the use of DREs as an assistive device for visually impaired or non-English speaking voters, but it needs to output a paper ballot which is counted. I have an adamant objection to votes being counted on DREs which is the reality with Holt II.

Sec. II (A)(i) states "The voting system shall require the use of or produce an individual voter-verified paper ballot . . . " (p. 2). But at (B)(III)(iii) "the individual permanent paper ballots shall be the true and correct record of the votes cast and shall be used as the official ballots for purposes of any recount or audit . . ." (pp. 4-5). Thus, while Holt can say the paper ballot is the ballot of record, only in the case of a recount or audit will we know it has been counted. That means the vote count we get on election night and the certified count will in reality be the machine count. That's what we have now.

Sec. 322 spells out mandatory audit procedures for several vote margin scenarios, 10% random audit for a margin less than one percent; 5% for margins greater than 1% and less than 2%; and 3% audit for margins 2% or greater (pp. 35-36). But Sec. 327 exempts from these requirements those elections subject to an automatic recount under state law. In Ohio that means federal elections decided by 0.5% or less will not use the Holt audit method, but follow state law. Thus, the closest elections, in which we would be most interested in a valid audit, will not have one.

In brief, paper ballot and audit are great ideas, but in most cases (1) we will get only the machine count, and (2) the closest elections will not be audited. I think those are significant limitations in Holt II.

by John in Cincinnati on Fri Feb 09, 2007 at 12:23:03 AM EST

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Great News on the Election Reform Front

By Barb BurtPosted on Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 01:32:44 PM EST

By Barb Burt
Posted on Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 01:32:44 PM EST