Letter To NY's Governor Urging Him to Lead the Nation towards a Democratic Electoral System: Hand Count Paper Ballots

There is nothing more fundamental than the people's right to vote. There is no one who has demonstrated greater appreciation for and commitment to the importance of ensuring the integrity of those who serve this state and this nation.

It makes a mockery of our law, our values and our revolutionary heritage if we insist that government be open, transparent and accountable, but permit the means of choosing that government to be closed and concealed; the right to information as to how the elections are run and our votes counted, " thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality". 2

New York's laws also recognize that public officials, who are entrusted with running our elections, must be able to operate free of any irreconcilable conflicts created by private interests.

McKinney's Public Officers Law, § 74 (emphasis supplied)

The nation has slumbered for too long. California has made notorious what a myriad of university studies had previously exposed. No one can now claim to make a decision about the voting machines out of ignorance. Both the California research teams as well as our own Board of Elections Commissioner Douglas Kellner have noted that none of the voting machines on the market today comply with HAVA federal standards. Even if they could comply with either the federal or New York standards, as SOS Bowen observed, the certification process is not well suited to software. Computerized voting machines can never be tested and made secure the way a mechanical lever machine can. 3

We have struggled with the problems of election theft as long as we have had elections. New York's legislation, until now, had always reflected an intent to minimize the possibility for theft as much as humanly possible. Computers enable the greatest propensity for theft this nation has ever seen. What voting system currently exists where the people's civil rights, as owners of the government, are preserved by enabling their scrutiny and oversight in a transparent election process? We all know the answer but we have been manipulated to believe that hand counting our ballots is somehow a step backwards.

The people must remain the masters of their technology and their government, both of which are there to serve the people. Until such technology exists that we can use to serve our interests with the level of assurance that is required by a people who mean to retain their freedom, we should proudly insist on our right and ability to count our votes by our own hand, with our own eyes. We look to you to lead New York and to be a beacon for the nation.

Respectfully,

Andrea Novick

Footnotes:

1. Oklahoma is the only state to have created a state-owned paper ballot optical scan voting system.

2. See McKinney's Public Officers Law, § 84:

3. See blog of Avi Rubin, professor of computer science and John Hopkins,

The current certification process may have been appropriate when a 900 lb lever voting machine was deployed. The machine could be tested every which way, and if it met the criteria, it could be certified because it was not likely to change. But software is different. The software lifecycle is dynamic. So, you cannot certify an electronic voting machine the way you certify a lever machine. Once the voting machine goes through a lengthy and expensive certification process, any change to the software requires that it be certified all over again. What if a vulnerability is discovered a week before an election? What about a month before the election, or a week after it passes certification? Now the point is that we absolutely expect that vulnerabilities will be discovered all the time. That would be the case even if the vendors had a clue about security. Microsoft, which arguably has some of the best security specialists, processes and development techniques issues security patches all the time.

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ElectionTransparencyCoalitition.org

Andi Novick Election Transparency Coalition, www.etcnys.org, http://nylevers.wordpress.com/

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