Cliffhanger in a Sea of Blue: Charlie Brown (D) Refuses to Give up in California's 4th Congressional District

After 23 days of counting, there are still 17,000 uncounted votes.  The current standing in the race is Charlie Brown (Dem) 182,967 with 49.7% and Tom McClintock (Rep) 184,543 at 50.3%.  The 1,500 vote lead for the Republican represents 11% of the estimated 17,000 ballots left to be counted.  Of the 17,000, 2,000 are provisional ballots cast by voters who show up at the wrong precinct or claim they're registered despite not showing up on the voter rolls.  Fifteen thousand of that total are ballots that were rejected for some reason and need to be re-examined.  (See chart of vote count by county with turnout and count status).

Brown's web site post on Nov. 25 indicates his campaign will continue.  In addition to discussing the information above, he's requesting voters check the status of their votes and contribute funds to support his election protection efforts.

Given the difficulty of overtaking McClintock in the remaining count, Brown appears to be readying for a recount of all the votes.  All of this effort will gain him access to the true process of seeing a hand count of paper ballots in his race.

Recounting the Votes - A Good Idea

California allows a recount under three conditions.  The Secretary of State can order one based on malfeasance by election officials or other criminal activity that may alter the results.  A citizen can request a recount and a court may order one.  The third option allows a court to order a recount if it finds improper or negligent procedures that would alter the true outcome of the vote.

In the case of the Brown campaign, the most likely option is a citizen request.  Once the request is made, each county board of elections sets a price.  Then the process begins -- hand counting each paper form used for the optical scan readers.  In the case of this district, all but a few of the ballots are counted by optical scan readers using voter completed paper forms.

Why is this good idea?

First, the difference in victory margins is likely to be less than half of one percent.  There are more than enough examples of computerized e-voting machines making much higher than 0.5% errors.

Second, there are problems with each of the e-voting vendors that recorded and counted the votes.  Premier Elections Solutions (formerly Diebold) counted 80% of the votes, Hart Inter Civic 15%, and ES&S 4%.  (See chart of voting systems and votes counted)

They were all tested (and failed) in a major effort in 2007 conducted for the state by the University of California.  Premier Systems optical scanners counted the majority of votes despite this problem previously identified in the 2007 testing:

"The Red Team was able to verify the findings of some previous studies on the AV-OS (Premier AcuVote OS) unit; the impact of these was to alter vote totals in order to change the vote results on that machine." (Author's emphasis) Executive Summary 2007

The machine that counted 80% of the votes in the 4th is vulnerable to changes that can alter vote totals.  That should be sufficient cause to mandate hand count the entire 80% regardless of the closeness of the race.

In response to certifying the three voting machines used in the 4th, Republican Secretary of State McPherson said local officials could manage the security risks each presented but warned about the vulnerability of the machines in large contests.  Apparently it was too much trouble for the state to ask that the vendors provide a quality product that was secure against malicious alteration.

Why Not Just Count the Paper Forms and Bypass the Optical Scan Computers

Unless there is a hand count of the paper forms used for the optical scan readers, we will never know who won in the 4th district.  In fact, unless we utilize hand counted paper ballots without optical scans or other computerized e-voting devices, we'll never really know who was actually chosen by a majority.  The vendors who produce these machines are politicized.  The equipment is sub par technology riddled with vulnerabilities for hacking and errors.  The problems are rarely fixed and when they are, there are always new problems.  Vendors are allowed to hide critical data due to "proprietary" interests.

Citizens can't observe the process in a meaningful way and candidates can't truly prove that they were elected.  Elections in which votes are counted in secret by computerized machines produce questions that cannot be resolved.

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