A newly revised "Tiered Election Audits" paper for the lay person was released by the National Election Data. The new paper includes a section listing measures required to enable citizen oversight of election audits. Click here to read the brief four page Tiered Election Audits paper.
If the goal of elections is to ensure the will of the voters, then the goal of election audits is to ensure that voters determine who represents them. It seems simple. However, the US Congress may be planning election audits that are not designed to ensure that voters always determine election outcomes!
According to analysis by Kathy Dopp, President of National Election Data Archive,
"If Congress specifies a 2% fixed rate manual election audit, with a minimum audit of 6 vote counts, that would only result in a 56% chance for detecting when election outcomes are inaccurate in races with 5% margins between candidates; and would provide under 50% chance of detecting inaccurate election outcomes in races with 4.2% or less margins between candidates."
Dopp says, "We have a choice: To achieve fair elections now, or to put it off for another election cycle and hope that we will have another opportunity to achieve fair elections."
People who want to influence Congress to require sufficient election audits can act now by contacting their US Senators and House Representative and Representative Rush Holt D-NJ at
Congressman Rush Holt D-NJ could be considering the same 2% flat rate audit that was in his former HR550. Holt's new proposal is due to be released to the House floor this week after which it will become difficult to alter its audit provisions.
A "tiered" election audit specifies audit percentages in a small table along with minimum numbers of vote counts that must be manually audited to ensure correct outcomes, according to specific margins between candidates, as seen in the initial election results. The closer a race, the more vote counts must manually counted to find a small amount of miscount that could wrongly alter the outcome.
A tiered election audit is a compromise between audits which simply require that "large enough size samples of vote counts are manually counted to ensure 99% scientific certainty that the election outcomes are correct" but which must be calculated individually for each race; and audits which simply require that a flat rate of "2% of all vote counts are manually counted" but are insufficient to ensure the integrity of election outcomes in all cases.
A tiered audit requires that a minimum "amount" of vote counts be manually audited for any particular margin to prevent audits from being subverted by aggregating ballots into a small number of larger-size vote counts which could cause a flat percentage audit to be ineffective. These required minimums sometimes will result in 100% hand counts of 100% of vote counts whenever it is necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.
Today's utterly flawed electronic voting systems provide no means to determine who did what and when on a voting machine after an election, so that a fraudster would never be caught. A flat 2% audit would announce to a vote fraudster exactly how and when fraud would be most likely to succeed in rigging an election.
Dopp encourages all election officials, election integrity activists, and U.S. Senators and Representatives who are concerned about election integrity to read "Tiered Election Audits" and to implement its recommendations.
To achieve the necessary effective public oversight over manual audits of elections, audits must be independent, verifiable, transparent, scientific, and used to detect and correct any errors found in initial election results that might wrongly put a candidate into office that was not selected by voters.
Founder and President of US Count Votes, dba The National Election Data Archive and volunteer for honest, accurately counted elections since 2003. Masters degree in mathematics with emphasis on computer science. Has written numerous academic and scientific papers with computer scientists, statisticians, and mathematicians on election integrity topics, inluding how to calculate minimum manual audit amounts necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.
There is a cheaper, more effective way, you know, Kathy.
Kathy wrote:
These required minimums sometimes will result in 100% hand counts of 100% of vote counts whenever it is necessary to ensure election outcome integrity.
If we required that all votes be counted manually at the precincts on election night in the first place, with full citizen oversight including videotaping the count, we could ensure election outcome integrity without having to maintain, repair, and replace expensive voting machines, hire technicians to train people to operate them, hire qualified expert auditors to investigate whether or not the machine counts were accurate, and then (when it is probably too late to effect the outcome of an election anyway) have to perform manual handcounts anyway, as they are really the only reliable way of ensuring honest election outcomes.
Today's utterly flawed electronic voting systems provide no means to determine who did what and when on a voting machine after an election, so that a fraudster would never be caught. A flat 2% audit would announce to a vote fraudster exactly how and when fraud would be most likely to succeed in rigging an election.
You're right, Kathy. Even the most accomplished forensic computer software auditors can not always find malicious code that has altered an election and then erased itself so as to be untraceable. In cases like that, only a hand count can prove that there were irregularities, so why not do the hand count to begin with?
Removing all machines from our elections would eliminate the ability of fraudsters to hack the machines, while simultaneously removing the expense of maintaining, repairing, replacing, and auditing the machines.
Allowing machines to remain in our elections process, and then mandating manual (hand) counts after the election, because manual handcounts are the only way to ensure honest election outcomes, is more expensive and less effective than simply removing all machines from our elections and requiring that all votes be manually counted in the first place. Of course that would take place with full public oversight and videotaping to prevent small-scale fraud, but it would eliminate the possibility of wholesale fraud that is inherent in optical scanners, touch screens, and central tabulators.
See the links in this article for the research and opinions of a highly credentialed computer security professional on the subject of e-voting.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 12:48:13 AM
You want to put off having fair elections and hope that there is another chance, after the 2008 elections simply because you think that there is only one way to achieve fair elections - no election audits and no voting machines.
Again, you didn't bother to read the brief easy-to-read four pages of my paper "Tiered Election Audits" before you took a position against having fair elections by the 2008 election like you always do.
The risk to civilization could be very great to throw away this opportunity for fair elections at this time.
by
Kathy Dopp (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 11:30:39 AM
Are you saying that elections in Canada, Australia, Germany, and everywhere else that they use hand-counted paper ballots at the precincts, are not only not fair elections, but are a threat to civilization?
Please don't try to limit my choices to machines with audits, or machines without audits. Those are not the only two choices, although the elections industry, whose vendors, software developers, technicians, bureaucrats, and auditing experts would not like to be deprived of their financial bonanza by allowing us to return to inexpensive hand-counted paper ballots at the precincts with full citizen oversight, would like us to think those were our only choices.
I would never dream of telling you that you could wear black lipstick or green lipstick, but that red lipstick was not one of your choices. And I think you would have every right to be indignant and outraged if I attempted to limit your choices in that or any other way.
My choice is to get all machines out of our election process, and return to a process so easy to understand that people were using it long before computers were invented. A process so transparent that nobody has to rely on experts to tell them whether or not it is reliable. A process that has been time-tested, and is less expensive than any process involving machines.
Hand-counted paper ballots at the precincts, with full citizen oversight including videotaping, is one of our choices, Kathy, and while your attempt to limit our choices may not be a threat to civilization, it sure doesn't do much for democracy. Given the results of machine elections over the past six years and their consequences, there are many people who believe that voting machines are at least as great a threat to civilization as nuclear bombs, since they can place such weapons in the hands of irresponsible decision-makers.
Oops, I forgot that the preferred term these days isn't decision-makers, it is "deciders." You know, people who decide what our choices are and don't allow us any other options.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 12:20:00 PM
No I am saying that that is NOT an option now in the US
You seem to have great difficulty with reading comprehension.
You want no machines and no audits or nothing so you would throw away the opportunity to have fair elections in 2008 and thus risk that there may not be another opportunity again.
Why are you against having fair elections in 2008?
by
Kathy Dopp (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 1:03:44 PM
but tiered election audits are not an option now in the U.S. either.
You would like them to be, but as of this moment they are not.
Since you seem to believe that change is possible, why not push for change that would ensure that our votes counted?
Of what use is even the best possible audit if the wrong candidate has already been sworn into office and cannot be removed?
As long as machines count our votes, our votes won't count.
Why are you so opposed to removing machines from our elections process?
Is it possible that your connection to open source software developers influenced your decision to narrow your options to only those which include voting machines, because without those machines they would have nothing to write software for?
Is it possible that your expertise in auditing systems influenced your decision to narrow your options to only those which include voting machines, because without them the auditing experts would have nothing to audit?
Or is it simply that you want to retain the machine technology, despite its proven vulnerability, because referring to voters, citizens, constituents, ordinary people, and just plain folks, as "laymen" makes you feel superior?
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 2:14:17 PM
Whether it truly is or not, it should *not* be up to anyone but the voters to decide what "voting system" should be used to cast their votes. The hubris!
Another note. We are the citizens of these United States. We prefer to be called voters, citizens, constituents, people, or even just plain folks. Anything but "laymen,".
I assume, likewise, that you (and those of your "professional" ilk) do not want to be referred to as "geeks" and "wonks", right? Well then, pay the enfranchised citizens a little respect, and stop treating us like chattel or second class citizens.
To assume that there is some group of hierophants who are to administer and control elections, announcing the results to the citizenry, is the next thing to seditious (IMHO).
That our government posits that the citizens are both able to, and supposed to, decide who their representatives are supposed to be, but are unable to understand who they have chosen without the intervention of hierophants is just bloody stupid... and presumptuous.
Seeing is believing. *Show US the votes*!!
by
Phil Lindsey (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 2:21:46 PM
I understand that you do not want fair elections in 2008
unless you get it your way.
Again, the critically important question that keep ignoring is why would you want to delay fair elections until after 2008 when we could have fair elections now?
Since everyone, except for you two, agree that elections should be subjected to independent audits, then why are you against having independent audits that would give us fair elections now?
Why are you willing to throw away a chance to have fair elections and risk never having the opportunity again?
by
Kathy Dopp (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 2:31:14 PM
You state:
Again, the critically important question that keep ignoring is why would you want to delay fair elections until after 2008 when we could have fair elections now?
I say:
We *could* have fair elections by adopting HCPBs Now! You, instead, try to define the *fairness* of elections for everyone else and you
1) fail to include transparency,
2) citizen control over their own elections, and
3) require an anointed priesthood of electoral aristocracy to preside over it and announced it results (personally, I'd rather "interpret the disemboweled animals" myself... or however you "divine" the portents and results)
You State:
Since everyone, except for you two (BTW do you have the results of that survey? The one showing only Mark and galloglas, alone, against whatever you think we are against?), agree that elections should be subjected to independent audits, then why are you against having independent audits that would give us fair elections now?
I say:
Once they are handcounted at precinct (that is a 100% audit), rechecked (a second 100% audit), and the results posted on the precinct door, as far as I am concerned, you can count them until the cows come home.
BTW, where is your remedy to unseat officials in the unlikely event your "audits" reveal that "the winner actually lost".
You state:
Why are you willing to throw away a chance to have fair elections and risk never having the opportunity again?
I say:
I am not willing to do that.
That is why I oppose these efforts of yours to tacitly, but unquestioningly, support the privatization of elections by what you have termed "the election industry".
by
Phil Lindsey (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 3:38:19 PM
You are right, Mark. Kathy Dopp is dictating to us what our options are. It's very undemocratic of her, I know. But consider what's at stake. We simply must have greater voter confidence in our election system. Kathy's tiered audit proposal is meant to achieve that, at least incrementally. If what you want is increased voter confidence, maybe it's a good idea.
Personally, I think building voter confidence is the wrong goal. Voter confidence only indicates how people feel about voting, quite apart from any real understanding of the voting system they're participating in. It's like consumer confidence: people may be quite prepared to go out and spend money on consumer goods, but that says absolutely nothing about their understanding of banking, corporate capitalism, economics or even of how or where the goods in question were manufactured.
Voting system integrity is what I think we should all be striving for. A truer democracy. And that requires two things: Public oversight and freedom of access to elections information. Our current system is an opaque technological and beaurocratic labyrinth in which citizen oversight and access to elections information is systematically minimized. No level of audits would change this because the outcome would still be someone in a privileged position of oversight and access dictating to us what the results are. To the best of my knowledge, the system of publicly hand-counted paper ballots is the only system that satisfies the democratic requirements for public oversight and access. Needless to say, voter confidence would be maximized with such a system.
Jim
by
Jim Eldon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 2:43:40 PM
"Why are you willing to throw away a chance to have fair elections and risk never having the opportunity again?"
For the same reason I'm willing to stay away from the poker table and throw away a chance to win a million dollars with a Royal Flush in spades. Because that "chance" is so small as to be meaningless.
I don't want "a chance" to have fair elections, I want guaranteed fair elections. Using machines even with mandatory audits cannot do this even in principle.
As long as you're in the game for "chances" of fair elections, you're in the game only for degrees of voter confidence. We're not interested in degrees of voter confidence or chances of fair elections, we want a democratic voting system with public oversight and public access to elections information.
What you are saying is that our only options are a system that provides little chance of fairness or a system that provides little chance of fairness, audited.
I reject this as a false dilemma.
Jim
by
Jim Eldon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 4:55:57 PM
You are Provably Incorrect & are Mischaracterizing
It is provable fact that tiered audits can give as high as desired a probability for detecting any vote miscount that could wrongly alter any election outcome. Your reading comprehension seems to be very limited (if you even read the "Tiered Election Audits" paper. The fact that you constantly invent fiction and mischaracterize to make your points, show that you don't have anything substantial to say.
I'll ask again,
Why do you want to postpone having fair elections until after the 2008 election when we could have fair elections now?
by
Kathy Dopp (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 5:05:34 PM
Since you insist on demeaning everyone's reading skills, could you please do us the small favor of capitalizing Luddite? It is, after all, an eponymous noun, like "Napoleonic".
It will help us idiots read gooder.
by
Phil Lindsey (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 5:28:42 PM
Assuming that you are not a professional spellchecker, your spelling is pretty good for a layman.
It is your logic that is faulty. People who want fair elections are not opposed to fair elections.
People who prefer proven systems of hand-counted paper ballots at the precincts with full citizen oversight including videotaping of all parts of the election process are not Luddites. Luddites wouldn't want to use anything as modern as videocams.
But then a mathematician and computer scientist isn't necessarily a professional logician either, so your insistence that we have no choices when we do, that if we oppose your system we oppose fairness, and all your other illogical assumptions are probably not that bad for a layman either.
Give yourself some credit. Maybe you can't make a logical argument or spell very well, but you are representing the election industry with the best tools at your command: false assumptions and ad hominem attacks.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 8:13:51 PM
You are mischaracterizing Why don't you want fair elections?
Since I was always the top student in my entire highschool in math logic and proofs was always the top student in my college classes in logic, math logic, proofs, including in the math logic class and was commonly was better than my professors in math and computer science in algorithms and logic, it is obvious that you are once again mischaracterizing and inventing fiction since my logic skills are considerably greater than yours. If you had a smidgeon of logic skills yourself, you would understand that I've mathematicall proven how to achieve the integrity of election outcomes.
You wouldn't have to invent fiction and mischaracterize if you had valid points to make.
Again,
Why are you so opposed to having fair elections in 2008?
by
Kathy Dopp (31 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 49 comments)
on Wednesday, January 24, 2007 at 8:42:36 PM
Election Attorneys Amplify Importance of Convictions
for Recount Rigging in Ohio 2004 Presidential Race
Even in Democratic County, They Rigged To Avoid The Extra Work and Embarrassment that Finding Discrepancies Would Bring
a news analysis
by Paul Lehto, Attorney at Law
THE BASIC NEWS:
The verdict is in on whether the November 2004 presidential election recount in Ohio was "illegally rigged {by election officials} in what was supposed to be a random sample recount in {order} to avoid a time-consuming hand count of all votes." link
Verdict: Two officials found Guilty of felony level negligent misconduct in elections. The lowest level manager of the three officials charged was acquitted on all counts.
The two convicted Election officials face terms of 6 to 18 months in prison. A third assistant manager was acquitted on all counts. link
The recount was originally requested by the Green and Libertarian presidential candidates, David Cobb of the Green Party and Michael Badnarik for the Libertarians as a statewide recount. The felony convictions represented misconduct only in Democratic-vote-rich Cuyahoga County, located in and around Cleveland. link
===========================================
THE NEWS ANALYSIS
"If any intelligent and loyal company of American citizens were required to catalogue the essential human conditions of national life, I do not doubt that with absolute unanimity they would begin with free and honest elections. "And it is gratifying to know that generally there is a growing and nonpartisan demand for better election laws; but against this sign of hope and progress must be set the depressing and undeniable fact that election laws and methods are sometimes cunningly contrived to secure minority control, while violence completes the shortcomings of fraud."
--Remarks on the Tariff and On Voting Rights, From the Second Annual Message to Congress, by President Benjamin Harrison, on December 1, 1890.
As an election attorney, in response to the above news of the convictions of Ohio Elections officials concerning the 2004 presidential recount, I talked briefly with some other election attorneys that could be reached on short notice. Unless otherwise noted or quoted, the following news analysis is mine.
First, the prosecutors in Ohio did not seek to prove that the criminal misconduct affected the election – but this does not mean the presidential election wasn't affected by the recount shenanigans. As any lawyer knows it would be foolish to set out to prove more than one is required to prove by the elements of the offenses charged. Moreover, charges of partisan intent would likely fall flat with a jury in a Democratic county like Cuyahoga, so the prosecutors played it mostly by the book in alleging only a motive of avoiding work. That motive would apply statewide, but additional partisan motive would be present in other places.
Ohio attorney Bob Fitrakis, an attorney involved with 2004 election-related litigation in Ohio, commented:
"The rigging of the recount was the NORM in Ohio, and the Cleveland convictions are just the tip of the iceberg. The recount rigging came right from the top with Ken Blackwell saying that the definition of "random" recount was whatever the locals decided -- including nonrandom selection of ballots and allowing private vendors to pick the precincts to be recounted. I think Blackwell (who was co-chair of the Bush Cheney campaign) knew that a proper recount would have revealed that John Kerry was elected by Ohioans in 2004, and not the candidate Blackwell represented in Ohio. As attorneys in pending litigation in Ohio, in our case it is our goal is to continue to preserve the ballots in Ohio so that citizens and scholars can determine the true count someday soon. As a matter of fact, limited proper recounts have been performed and wherever we've counted we've found discrepancies in favor of Kerry."
According to the Free Press Defense attorney Roger Synenberg, who represents {election official} Dreamer, told the jury that the recount was an open process, and that his client and the others "were just doing it the way they were always doing it." link
These and other defense excuses were either rejected, or else the jury impliedly also found that Ohio's recounts have always been criminally negligent.
I am involved in congressional election contests in California and state election contests in other states, and it seems to me that it's especially important to note these convictions come in a Democratic County, showing that Democratic officials could not be trusted to recount DEMOCRATIC votes. For these election officials, avoiding the personal embarrassment, avoiding the fishbowl, and avoiding being "another Florida" all combined to inspire criminally negligent misconduct on the part of elections officials, and thus obviously trumped both any desire the election officials may have had to get at the most truthful honest total as well as any desire they may have had to see Democrats prevail, if any.
A recount will not always get us the truth of an election: if you recount a stuffed ballot box ten times, you'll get the same stuffed result ten times, and you'd be a fool to pronounce the election clean. Moreover, if the recount is rigged to match the reported election results, a recount doesn't even prove that the machines counted correctly the FIRST time, which is normally what a recount could prove, because the "adjustments" to the ballots after the first count cover that up. The most important lesson from these Ohio convictions, in my opinion, is that only CITIZEN RECOUNTS can be trusted. Elections officials simply have too many built in unavoidable conflicts of interest. These include not only avoiding work and helping the candidates they voted for (whichever ones they are) but they also include the fact that the government gets all of its power and taxing authority via elections and therefore can not watchdog itself. It's clear that citizen oversight of elections is the one indispensable thing in elections, yet it is virtually extinct in this country. We need to demand that citizen oversight of elections be restored, in full, immediately. Obviously, this must mean ballot counting that citizens can actually see and understand, not secret vote counting on proprietary software on trade secret corporate hard drives. Even if you think Ken Blackwell was a good guy, it's clear that no government officials of any party can be trusted to administer elections without extensive citizen oversight."
Election attorney Ken Simpkins, a veteran of election contest battles in California's 50th congressional District along with me, said "This verdict shows us what is possible when citizens are allowed to seek the truth about the conduct of public officials. Too often, judges are willing to give their fellow public servants a pass when it comes to accountability. Responsible citizens are left wondering what happened to the idea that the government is theirs. I know from first-hand experience in San Diego how hard it is for voters to be heard in the courts on issues relating to how their elections are conducted. Here in San Diego we've got touch screens, paper trails and audits and that system just doesn't work at all, but that message has yet to be heard nationally." The new Holt bill proposes just such a paper/audit "solution" nationally. Simpkins continued: "I am inspired by the group of citizens and lawyers who pursued the truth in this case for two years overcoming, I'm sure, many obstacles to achieve the result reached today."
The lessons of Ohio also point to another important lesson. They support the proposition that any alleged election "safeguard" that is left for a time after the election is over is highly unlikely to be executed properly by elections officials of any party or even nonpartisan officials. This means recounts, "paper trails" "audits" or what have you are often given short shrift.
One partial solution: The press needs to back off its pressure for immediate results on election night and the first count (as well as any subsequent recounts and audits) should be carefully done under citizen oversight
One non-solution: Although it is a good thing for election officials not to be involved with partisan campaigns, it is a formula for false confidence to simply have "nonpartisan" election officials, who will still have the same conflicts of interest the Ohio election officials had, and (if they vote) will simply be "secretly partisan" even if they split their tickets. Even Ken Blackwell and Katherine Harris could run and win as "nonpartisan" election officials and so long as they didn't officially and openly serve as campaign managers, they could have the same corrosive effect on our elections.
Again, this dead horse is worth beating: There is no substitute for robust Citizen oversight of all aspects of elections. No federal bill is currently even talking about this, but it is nevertheless the indispensable condition or factor, the sine qua non of real democracy, which recognizes that power comes exclusively from the people alone, and that legitimate government is government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
Electronic voting, via the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and its billions in federal funding for computerized elections, eliminated and X'd out the people from a meaningful oversight role in elections because they can no longer see the ballots and/or their counting, and therefore the people can not verify that we indeed still have the democracy Lincoln spoke of at Gettysburg.
The truth is that Congress, when voting on elections systems, is voting on the conditions of its own re-election, and therefore they could not FOR THE RECORD expressly favor unaccountable elections systems for their own elections that eliminate public oversight in favor of secret vote counting in their own future elections. This is the ultimate conflict of interest, and as a result of this conflict, legislators can and should be made aware that they are not really free (as they are in other areas) to vote for whatever election system they wish: in elections they must serve the public with a loyalty and selflessness that is unparalleled. Since the government can not watchdog itself in the elections that give the government its power, it is most certain that citizen oversight must be restored, and fully restored.
Barring the illumination of this conflict of interest by thousands of citizens (which has the capability of freeing the Congressional logjam and its baloney about what's "realistic") the restoration of citizen oversight must in any event be obtained, at least for Lincoln's sake, and for the sake of democracy, by all necessary means.
This article may be freely forwarded, blogged or reproduced with full attribution preserved. The author may be reached at lehtolawyer at gmail dot com.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments)
on Thursday, January 25, 2007 at 1:45:26 AM
