Accurate and Fraud-Free Elections Now: Florida's Solution

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By William Faulkner (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

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Machines contribute nothing whatsoever to ballot integrity, whether in the casting or counting of ballots. In fact, machines compromise ballot integrity. Studies that show that touch screens minimize errors are of questionable validity, as they compare an electronic ideal against a paper half-measure.

"Retail Fraud" is fraud that is achieved one ballot at a time. For example, when political machines pay individuals to vote the party line, they're operating with a retail format. Ezzie Thomas in Orlando was falsely accused of engaging in such retail fraud with the absentee ballots in the 2004 Orlando mayor's race won by Buddy Dyer. There was never a shred of evidence that Mr. Thomas engaged in any fraudulent activities whatsoever beyond the arbitrary and technical violation of assisting the infirm in sealing their ballots. Similar claims of retain fraud around the country in 2004 amounted to very little compared to vote totals.

"Wholesale Fraud" occurs when entire vote totals from precincts or counties are altered without the cooperation or knowledge of individual voters. Connie Mack was accused of this in his U.S. Senate race against Buddy McKay in 1994, and it is also strongly suspected in the 2000 Florida presidential race.

Retail fraud leaves a trail of breadcrumbs, as each voter knows whether he or she participated in the fraud and thus presents a constant threat of getting caught. Wholesale presents a far greater danger since it requires very few conspirators and may in fact be achieved by a single individual affecting thousands of votes, leaving no footprints at all, and with a high degree of stealth and impunity.

Wholesale fraud can be accomplished even with paper ballots by, for example, stealing entire boxes of ballots before they can be tabulated. But this is far riskier than changing a line in a program code or penetrating a network-connected computer, which is all that is necessary to accomplish even large scale fraud on mechanical or electronic voting devices. The very bulkiness of paper ballots makes wholesale fraud far more difficult to accomplish without detection. The steps required to combat wholesale fraud where paper ballots are concerned are far, far easier to implement effectively than the steps to combat such fraud with electronic balloting or vote tabulation-it is as easy to stop such electronic fraud as it is for you to stop receiving spam emails-quite impossible, actually.

And remember, if an election can be stolen, it will be stolen. The stakes are too high to resist.

Federal Legislation

The main issue that I'm presenting next concerns, "All future designs of Voting System Technology must be based on the use of the manually marked paper ballot," referred to as the Voter Verified Paper Ballot VVPB.

Legislation currently proposed in Washington will mandate VVPB Nationally. So now's the time to prepare with an open Dialog. I urge you to consider this part of what the proposed Holt bill would do, what we would lose for 2008 and beyond when this bill does pass early in the 110th Congress?

A requirement that all voting systems produce or require the use of durable, hand-countable and separate voter verified paper ballot.

A clear mandate that in audits and recounts that voter verified paper ballot is the ballot and vote of record.

The complete elimination of paper roll printers and thermal paper.

A requirement that notification be posted in each polling place informing the voter that the voter verified paper ballot will be the vote of record in recounts and audits and warning them not to cast their ballot before verifying the accuracy of the paper ballot.

I agree with SOS Browning, that until Washington decides which version of those Bills to pass, the Division of Elections should wait to certify any new Vendor products. Especially those which are for attachment and retrofit to Touchscreen DREs. However, the State should be prepared to certify as soon as possible a Ballot Marking Device for the Disabled.

Court Cases resulting from the 2006 Election

Current conditions left over from the Election of 2006, remain unresolved in the courts. One side the "Candidate & Voters" claiming Technology Malfunction with no way to prove it. The Defendants have the Laws of Florida which allows for Human Error/Fraud in the process producing a certifiable Election whether the vote count is accurate or not. Florida's Election Laws as exercised by our courts make Judges decisions invalid because there is no way to distinguish between Human Error and Fraud.

This can be clearly shown by an analysis of the FL-13 case "Jennings & The people versus the State of Florida & ES&S." I'm not here to argue this case, that's the Legal Teams job. I would like to call your attention to ES&S's Defense witness statement, Michael Herron. "An ES&S expert has attributed most of the unusually large (for a high-profile race) undervotes to the design of the electronic ballots. (The expert also suggested that ballot design produced high undervote rates in other counties using touch-screens.) Furthermore, the expert said, he's 90 percent sure Jennings would have won had not up to 14,000 votes been involuntarily "suppressed." That assertion doesn't, however, merit a revote-although it does cast doubt on the efficacy of the results. Case law in Florida is clear that shortcomings in ballot design, alone, don't warrant a revote and the Sarasota County design followed specifications set by the Division of Elections. In addition, Jennings' lawsuit specifically contends that malfunction, not design, was the problem." Orlando Sentinel.

My interpretation of ES&S's motives is to place the blame on SOE Kathy Dent's Human Error of Poor Ballot Design resulting in the Loser Buchanan being certified as a winner. This Legal Argument gets ES&S off the hook for damages, however in the Florida courts our Election Laws prevent Justice from being served. "Because even if it is proven beyond a shadow of a statistical doubt that poor ballot design cost her the race, the courts and Congress (if the decision goes to the House) are going to be very reluctant to challenge the results of this election based on anything short of machine malfunction or deliberate fraud. As we saw in Florida in 2000, results that are influenced by a confusing ballot still stand, no matter what the stakes." Orlando Sentinel.

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I learned at a very young age in the 60's that the press never really understood the War or The anger against the War. The Press paid more attention to the Political Battles, not the people that were actually dying or watching their sons and (more...)

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Book Recommendations for " 2006 Election"

Democracy Under Pressure: An Introduction to the American Political System, 2006 Election Update
by Milton C. Cummings

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Number of pages: 792
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