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Tag(s): Election Reform; Election Theft; USA United States Of America
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March 22, 2007 at 14:37:10

Halting Holt Thoughts

by andi novick Page 3 of 4 page(s)

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In 2004, John Gideon of Voters Unite wrote to the EAC cautioning about the Davidson-Wilkey-Lewis controlled Election Center, warning, AIn accepting funds from the voting machine industry and putting on a program that is strongly sponsored by the same industry, Mr. Lewis and the Election Center are violating their own principles and standards of conduct.@ Lewis sent out a "HEADS UP' notice to his buds, Davidson and Wilkey, warning that the attacks from the "crazies" was about to escalate.

So that means Lewis and Wilkey and Davidson were all involved or in control of NASED during the entire period that HAVA mandated the purchase of these voting machines. In fact they were responsible for the control, selection and oversight of the voting machine test labs.

Responsibility for accrediting these ITAs has now been transferred from NASED to the EAC, where there is a huge scandal unraveling, exposing the incestuous relationships among the federal government, election officials and the voting companies who worked together to create the appearance of a certification process when nothing could be further from the truth (the Brad blog is covering this extensively).

Things were apparently so bad under Doug Lewis’s and presumably Davidson’s and Wilkey’s watchful eyes, that even the EAC was forced to acknowledge with regard to Ciber, the main testing lab selected by R. Doug Lewis’s Election Center, that there are no independent requirements for testing and:

"the testing for a product tends to either use vendor developed tests or new tests developed specifically for the product-they have no standard test methods defined. This makes their testing dependent on vendor input and vulnerable to unique vendor interpretations rather than a core validated set of internal references for training and testing."

(http://www.eac.gov/docs/Ciber%20&%20Wyle%20Assessment%20%28July%202006%29.pdf)

So there it is, the Davidson-Wilkey-Lewis controlled Election Center

(emphasis on the controlled). That’s who testified today. Doug Lewis represents the best of those that have made sure only the most profitable “product” should be seriously considered. The NASED/EAC/Election Center is not interested in optical scanners and they are definitely not interested in permitting people to count their own votes by hand (how would Doug’s other buddies make any money that way?). Besides why would we want to discuss a hand count system for ensuring that votes were actually counted as cast, when we can have the counting go on in secret within the opaque walls of these machines controlled by Doug and his extended group of friends (that would include those with a vested interest to sell the most expensive machines and have no accountability for their shoddiness as well as those who have a vested interested in staying in power).

In reading Doug Lewis' testimony, now you can gain some perspective into where he's coming from. Doug Kellner has told us where he’s coming from. Avi Rubin has permitted us to observe his learning curve. For full disclosure, this is where I’m coming from: I would concur with Doug Lewis on certain objections to the Holt bill.

Doug Lewis’s Testimony Regarding the Holt Bill:

"The process described in HR811 is unworkable and unnecessary."

"it is my understanding from my colleagues around the nation there is no state

yet which could comply with the paper trail system as specified in HR811. So the 27 states that have previously taken action would have to scrap what they have already done and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to revamp once again. Surely this Congress does not intend for that to happen. And what could they buy if they wanted to continue with DREs? From what we=re told, nothing currently manufactured as a DRE can comply."

I agree- Holt's bill is unworkable and creates unfunded mandates, requiring us to purchase machines that don't exist and we can't afford. But does that mean we should conclude, as Doug Lewis does, that therefore we should hang on to our malfunctioning DREs, which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has now told us on two occasions, are so pervasively problematic they "could damage the integrity of ballots, votes and voting-system software by allowing unauthorized modifications." See October 2005 Report http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf, and the latest study, PDF format released March 7, 2007, wherein the GAO Information Technology Architecture and Systems Director, Randolph C. Hite, testified that electronic voting systems can break an election! (It should definitely be observed that the GAO report refers to electronic voting systems, which includes both DREs and Optical Scanners as being unreliable, but Holt’s Bill focuses on DREs). From Hite’s testimony:

“[E]lectronic voting systems are an undeniably critical link in the overall election chain. While this link alone cannot make an election, it can break one. The problems that some jurisdictions have experienced and the serious concerns that have surfaced highlight the potential for continuing difficulties in upcoming national elections if these challenges are not effectively addressed”

If the GAO told you the cars you’re driving are likely to blow up when you hit 50 miles/hour or that they break down with regularity while you're driving, would you keep driving? If there was no safe alternative and you had to take your child to school- would you a) take public transportation; b) walk; c) risk yours and your child's life?

Lewis says stick with the car that could kill you because he’s comfortable denying reality (see his testimony on how well the elections went in 2006 and how infallible machines are). Holt says we have a new model—it’s not ready yet and you won’t be able to afford it when it comes out, but whenever it does, it’s still going to be likely to blow up when you hit 50/ mph and it’s going to keep breaking down while you’re driving it, but we’re improving things—we’re putting in a couple of air bags and a fancy new navigator that can talk to you (in 8 different languages) [see Ralph Neas testimony- the transcript and the audio are at Brad Freeman’s article http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4299] I don’t believe that would be considered “effectively address[ing]” the problem, pursuant the to the GAO’s wake up call.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

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Andi Novick Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media www.re-media.org

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5 comments

Graduate of MIT and Stevens; 50 years as systems engineer on cutting edge projects, civilian and military; Fifth Air Force, WWII; sworn defender of the Constitution
abacusGraduate of MIT and Stevens; 50 years as systems engineer on cutting edge projects, civilian and military; Fifth Air Force, WWII; sworn defender of the Constitution

Hand Count Works!

Hand count works!

The contrary is simply indefensible. The data and the record are absolutely clear. Those who think not must be classified as either [a] vastly uninformed or [b] working as hired guns for interested parties - whose interests are NOT honest elections.

Let’s first just look at what working on the recount of a major, high-profile real-life hotly-contested governor’s election was like.

Then we should note: a CalTech-MIT study; and a little common sense.

Washington State election for Governor, 2004

In 2004 here in Washington State we had an election for Governor which made headlines everywhere for the extraordinarily close result. The election was conducted with hand-marked paper ballots and opscan machines. [primarily; [1]] State-wide, Gregoire won by about 130 votes after a hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots. It was finally settled in Court. [2]

Here is how it looked in King County, in which Seattle is located.

We had 594,000 absentees’ ballots and 305,000 polling place ballots, about 900,000 total here.

—Begin clips [3]

My team of three sorted and counted 5,544 votes during a nine-hourshift. We agreed unanimously - the Republican, the Democrat and I, the county worker - about who should get every one of those votes.

Each ballot was counted by the Republican appointee: McClellan, 21, a recent University of Washington grad who applied to be the Rossi family nanny and got this job because her brother-in-law works for the campaign.

Then the same stacks were counted by the Democratic appointee: John Reese, 53, a Seattle pro-Palestinian activist who said he was "way left of liberal; I guess I'd call myself a radical."

They kept their counts secret and gave them to me. If the numbers matched, we reported the results and resealed the box. If they differed, we started over. If the second counts still didn't agree, we were instructed to return the box to be given to a new team.

The system of checks and double-checks didn't stop there. If our tallies for a precinct varied by even one vote from the machine recount, another team would later reopen the box and count the entire precinct by hand again.

...With all the recent news about uncounted votes and ballots being found in the side pockets of precinct machines, I expected a slipshod operation. I was completely wrong.

I am now convinced that in the counting of votes, humans are unquestionably superior to machines.

..."I'm so impressed with this system," McClellan said. "It's near impossible to corrupt, and it seems much more sensitive than a machine count. All the criticisms I hear about what we're doing are wrong."

Reese agreed. "I don't have much faith in the American political system, but I have faith in what we're doing here," he said. "I would put people counting over machine counting any time."

...those critics who are blasting the manual recount on the face of it don't know what they're talking about. Such as former Gov. Dan Evans: "Can you imagine 300 newly hired, ill-trained, overworked people counting by hand with people looking over their shoulders and getting accurate counts? It's ludicrous."

I can do more than imagine it, governor. I saw it with my own eyes.

===End of clips

CalTech-MIT

Clip
“The central finding of this investigation is that manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots, followed closely by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. Punchcard methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices (DREs) had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems.” [4]

Common Sense

People count paper currency world-wide to the satisfaction of all concerned [aside from occasional disputes over poker ...].

Canada, Sweden and other nations, all around the globe, hand count paper ballots routinely.

Canada’s Paper Ballot System [5]

Summary numbers:
Registered voters - 21,243,473
Number of polling stations - 60,728
Average of registered voters per station (minimum of 250 per precinct)-350
Total ballots cast - 12,997,185
Average ballots cast per polling station - 214
Ballots rejected - 139,412 or 1.1% -
Voter turn-out - 61.2%

Within four hours after the last polls closed in Canada's parliamentary election, officials had hand-counted virtually every one of nearly 13 million paper ballots.

Sources; Notes

[1] Three counties had DREs as well as opscan systems used for both polling place and absentee voting. Some aspects of the results were interesting; and there was a court case. But none of this is really relevant to our present concerns.

[2] “Tedious hand recount begins,”
Seattle Post-intelligencer 12/9/04
click here

“Counter for a day finds few bugs in recount process”
Seattle Times 12/18/04 Danny Westneat
click here />click here />
[D. Westneat is a very well-regarded long-time staffer for the Seattle Times.]

[3] “Judge upholds Gregoire's election; Rossi won't appeal”
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 6/6/05
click here />

[4] “Residual Votes Attributable to Technology - An Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment”
The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 3/30/01
click here />
[5] “Voting Inside-Outside the Box”
League of Women Voters of Washington State Committee - telecon with Pierre Blain, a spokesman for Elections Canada.
click here />http://www.elections.ca/loi/ref/CEA-LEC_e.pdf />

by abacus (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 62 comments) on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 12:12:53 AM

Andi Novick
Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
www.re-media.org
andi novickAndi Novick
Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media
www.re-media.org

cal tech study

I was very interested in following up on some of your links- the cal tech study link doesn't seem to work

I thought one of the most powerful things you said was describing people's reactions to the experience of hand counting- I remember reading a Thom Hartmann article about how Germans experience the week they take to count votes- in a very positive, pro- participatory democracy way

I think that's a good way to have this conversation that people can perhaps hear rather than just thinking and talking about HCPBs in the abstract

thanks

andi

by andi novick (54 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 15 comments) on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 1:08:11 PM

CalTech-MIT Link

Sorry; of course I should have checked it.

Here's another link, but to a secondary document not the original. If I can find one to the original I'll send it.

BTW: thanks for a great piece.

by abacus (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 62 comments) on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 4:36:31 PM

digital programmer turned thought specialist, sorta: rocket surgeon.
meremarkdigital programmer turned thought specialist, sorta: rocket surgeon.

Less talk, more walk.

In New York, and beyond, think outside the box, and in your thinking shift the paradigm.

Have paper ballots on which each voter writes the name of the candidate being voted for. Period. Simplicity everyone understands. Write the name -- Pencil. Paper. Write who you vote for.

But some voters can't spell, or some have handwriting that is difficult to read. So what? And your point is? In a new paradigm, give voters your credence in abilities and voters can, and mostly will, extend ourselves to perform to our expectations of each other. Ask yourself, could you write the name of who you are voting for? Surely, you can. Well, so can everyone else.

But handwritten names would take so long to count. So what? Employ more counters.

But handwritten names is not the way we have always voted. So what? It is the easiest to understand and explain. It is the way voting began. It it universal and uniform. It is fair. It is just.

But it would upset the existing power structure to change over to the new system. So what? And your point is? The new handwritten voting system works better, simplicity is more reliable.

But there are so many names to write. So what? Write your candidates in advance and take those notes with you. Better yet, using Oregon's Vote-by-Mail method, registered voters receive their ballots and have two weeks to consider, decide, and mark their votes.

I claim that young voters would be attracted to handwritten voting, for trusting it more, and so more young voters would vote. Let's ask several of them and see what they say. After all, they are the ones who have to live the most with whatever system is instituted.

Technology's 'automatic'-ness was supposed to make our lives easy. Instead, it has made our lives hasty. As good drivers know: Slow down and live. I claim that haste has made waste of our lives today, and wasting has made our lives hard.

Just saying, outside the (ballot) box, perhaps we can think of what we can do, instead of thinking of what can be done for us and getting what is done to us.

by meremark (1 articles, 3 quicklinks, 26 diaries, 507 comments) on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 12:52:12 PM

In 2004, Rady Ananda joined the growing community of citizen journalists. Initially focused on elections, she investigated the 2004 Ohio election, organizing, training and leading several forays into counties to photograph the 2004 ballots. She officially served at three recounts, including the 2004 recount. She also organized and led the team that audited Franklin County Ohio's 2006 election, proving the number of signatures did not match official results. Her work appears in three books. ...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Rady AnandaIn 2004, Rady Ananda joined the growing community of citizen journalists. Initially focused on elections, she investigated the 2004 Ohio election, organizing, training and leading several forays into counties to photograph the 2004 ballots. She officially served at three recounts, including the 2004 recount. She also organized and led the team that audited Franklin County Ohio's 2006 election, proving the number of signatures did not match official results. Her work appears in three books. ...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Better Link for Annotated Bib of 15 Expert Reports

Annotated Bibliography: Electronic Voting and Fair Vote Counts. http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rady_ana_070117_annotated_bibliograp.htm
Annotated bibliography of 15 Expert Reports on electronic voting and fair vote counts -- summarized and sourced for your reference.

Andi - this article is very comprehensive and well-researched. I appreciate the new sources you provided - especially the GAO's March 07 report.

Above I provide the link to the updated annotated bibliography which you mentioned at the end of your article.

by Rady Ananda (127 articles, 289 quicklinks, 37 diaries, 1121 comments) on Saturday, March 24, 2007 at 10:51:04 AM