A. We are challenging the use of these machines in our state. We are challenging their use and we are saying that we will find the community counters, so we can all enjoy democracy in New Hampshire the way it is supposed to be – without secret vote counting.
We are challenging the state because we don't believe that the optical scanners meet the constitutional requirement for sorting and counting in open meeting. That challenge is going to play out in the coming year in the legislature, with the Ballot Law Commission (which approves the machines) and, if necessary, in the courts.
The point of all this is to say that in New Hampshire we have this tradition of grassroots democracy, and we all believe we run clean elections. New Hampshire has more recounts than any other state in the nation. We make it easy and financially feasible to hold recounts. Our recounts have never revealed any problems with the scanners. But that doesn't mean our elections are safe. As long as we use those computers, they are not safe.
So our complacency in New Hampshire about our clean elections, even while we allow the use of secret vote counting, is coming to an end. It is coming to an end because of our challenges to the system that allows secret vote counting in 55% of our polling places.
We know that if any place can deal with this issue, it is New Hampshire. Because we know how to run clean, hand counted elections. We are already doing it. We just need to make it happen throughout the state now.
Q. What can we learn from New Hampshire, when the vast majority of us come from states that are decidedly bigger, more urban and more diverse?
A. It’s not the size of the state or even its population. All that matters in order to conduct hand count elections is that you have a reasonable amount of ballots in your polling place. Then you just need good management and good methodology. To hand count your election, you need to manage people, process, papers, and numbers. That’s it. Any good manager can accomplish this, and most of the polling places in the nation process a very manageable number of ballots. Good managers can reach out to their communities to recruit the right help too. A lot of schools have community service requirements now. Most states allow 17 year olds to work in the polls, so that’s a perfect fit.
Here are a few excerpts from my Hand Count Primer, which will be released and available online for free at OpEdNews and other sites at the end of this month. I think this will help clarify what I mean:
Nearly 100% of America's polling jurisdictions have hand counted paper ballot elections within living memory. And nearly 27% of America's polling jurisdictions are already utilizing hand counted, paper ballot election administration; it's simple, it's cost effective, and eminently do-able in every polling place in the country. The New Hampshire experience, described in detail in this Primer, proves this out.
Let’s go back to what we currently do in New Hampshire. Publicly observable hand counting works in large precincts. The average number of ballots processed through any polling place in the country is under 1000. But New Hampshire towns hand count up to 3,600 ballots on any given Election Night! And at a cost that is less than the average cost paid to private corporations to program a single machine in a single election. The costs of printing paper ballots, hiring local community hand counters, and even bringing in a specialized manager, if need be, are much lower than the investment in computerized voting equipment requiring continual upgrades, maintenance, and specialized storage space.
Transparent hand counting works with complicated ballots. New Hampshire's ballots are among the most complex ballots in the nation, because we have the largest citizen legislature and many multi-member districts. But we still manage to hand count 3-4 times the national average of ballots in any given polling place, and wrap up the counting to announce our results on Election Night.
Q. Your view, then, in a nutshell?
A. If New Hampshire can do this, with our large polling places and our complex ballots, then any place can.
Q. Let’s go back and talk about dollars and cents, so often the bottom line for those making these decisions. What evidence do you have about the costs of hand counting paper ballots? Where can people see this? Can you provide a link for our readers?
The Hand Count Primer, when it is released, will also have some number projections for the national cost for replacing all touchscreen systems with paper. We have cost projections for replacing with optical scanners or with hand count systems. Our projections show the cost for replacing with optical scanners at $1,170,821,250 and to replace with hand count we project those costs to be only $208,020,950. You can see the difference in cost savings right there.
Q. Before I let you go, I have two more questions in the “what makes you tick” department. First of all, why do you do this?
Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. We aim to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Electronic (computerized) voting systems are simply antithetical to democratic principles.
CER set up a lending library to achieve the widespread distribution of the DVD Invisible Ballots: A temptation for electronic vote fraud. Within eighteen months, the project had distributed over 3200 copies across the country and beyond. CER now concentrates on group showings, OpEd pieces, articles, reviews, interviews, discussion sessions, networking, conferences, anything that promotes awareness of this critical problem. Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005.
"Nearly 100% of America's polling jurisdictions have hand counted paper ballot elections within living memory. And nearly 27% of America's polling jurisdictions are already utilizing hand counted, paper ballot election administration; it's simple, it's cost effective, and eminently do-able in every polling place in the country."
I can't wait to read the primer in full.
by
Rady Ananda (127 articles, 289 quicklinks, 37 diaries, 1121 comments)
on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 10:41:02 PM
Joan, this is a very enlightening interview. I like the non partisan approach which makes it much easier to forward to my (still) right wing friends in the south.
DD
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 2:36:34 AM
...what comes to my mind is the time I worked as a civilian on a Navy base. They had been defying EEO laws and consent decrees for years, but they'd finally gotten some female apprentices. Everyone was told that these were the first females to hold those particular positions. Many people, including instructors and shop foremen, said that females weren't suitable for such jobs and couldn't perform them.
I happened to do some reading and I came across the fact that all those jobs were not only done by females during WWII, but that they had set production and quality control standards that have never since been equaled.
I'm 67. I'm one of the youngsters in my senior building and at my senior center. We are the ones who usually are pollworkers, although in the last few years I've been pollwatching instead. We all remember hand-counted paper ballots, none of us have forgotten how to count, most of us do not like the machines, very few of us have ever figured out how to make the machines work (at the last election where two precincts voted downstairs in my building, one precinct inspector only managed to print out and post 4 of the 5 machine tapes, and the other didn't manage to post any tapes at all), and we'd be happy to go back to HCPB[hand-counted paper ballots].
Rumors of our incapacity are probably sponsored by vendors and officials and are, in any event, greatly exaggerated. As for hostile elections officials, many of us have canes and know how to use them on young whippersnappers trying to steal elections. I don't have a cane myself, but I know how to post reports to websites keeping track of election problems.
The resistance from those in government, no matter how they choose to frame it, stems from the fact that they and their colleagues were never legitimately elected and they are terrified of democracy. They depend upon the corporations they are beholden to for getting them into office and they do not represent us, nor do they wish to.
All you have to do is announce that there will be hand-counted paper ballots, and we seniors will march en masse down to our local elections officials and train them. We potty trained the snivelling little brats in the first place and it's time they learned some respect. MS, CA
by
Joan Brunwasser (164 articles, 3538 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 634 comments)
on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 3:12:19 AM
Nancy has been very helpful to us here in Humbldt County, CA
The Voter Confidence Committee is grateful to Nancy for her assistance during our recent eight month study resulting in a weighty "Report On Election Conditions in Humboldt County, CA." We have also recently made available a spreadsheet tool (.xls) for estimating the labor, cost and time needs of a hand-counted election. The tool can be used to customize numbers for any community and it is based entirely on the DemFest presentation mentioned in this interview.
by
Dave Berman (46 articles, 0 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 47 comments)
on Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 3:48:44 PM
Thank you, Joan Brunwasser and Nancy Tobi! Having spent my professional career in computer software development, part of which was as manager of a Florida election tabulation system, the state of our election systems is troubling indeed. And finally it’s being taken seriously.
Still I wonder is anyone focusing on the need to revamp election laws? Until we fix our election laws to be on par with technology, to protect us from machine and human error, and HUMAN INTERPRETION of election results our election process will continue to be broken. The courts should not decide the people’s choice. In 2006, it was the failure of Florida's revised election laws that permitted an election with statistically improbable results to stand (18,000 undervotes). 2000's debacle with the pregnant chads resulted from failure to maintain the voting equipment properly. However it was the failure of Florida's election laws that permitted the chaos that followed. Had Florida's election laws caught up with technology, both elections would have been an automatic re-do.
Also, we seem to be jumping into the middle of the problem… the broken machines. How did we get bamboozled into purchasing them in the first place? If we are to achieve one voter, one vote…every time, we must go back to basics. Apply sound business practices to ensure the voting systems we purchase fully meet our needs for election integrity. And ensure those machines work…all of them. Not just a sampling.Until we implement high-bar guidelines for voting machine providers and elections officials to uphold, no hedging, no exceptions we are at risk. And while the heroine of my novel, "A Margin of Error: Ballots of Straw" scoffs at the notion of a silent coup marching across the country in her fictitious voting machines…. It could happen more easily than any of us want to believe.
Lani Massey Brown, "A Margin of Error: Ballots of Straw," a political intrigue/romantic suspense novel.
by
Lani Massey Brown (14 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 14 comments)
on Friday, August 17, 2007 at 3:25:14 PM
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