I went to Washington, DC last week. Our nation's capital. I wish I could say that I went solely to enjoy the warm and nourishing hospitality of my food and lodging angel, Arlene. Or that I went to enjoy the May roses not found in New England until much later in the summer. I wish I could say that I went to embrace the massive willow oak in the park outside the congressional office buildings, or that I went just so that I could lie on my back on the grass in the park and feel the rays of the DC sun melt into my face.
But I went to DC for other reasons. I went to attend a meeting of the technological advisory group (TGDC) to the white house agency that oversees the nation’s voting systems, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), also known as the Commissioners of the Count. There, in the building where museum-like displays remind us of the accomplishments of our National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in areas as abstract and all encompassing as measuring time and space, the federal agency controlling how our votes are counted convenes periodically to review and authorize their ongoing plans for transforming the elections of the United States of America.
Last week, the techno-advisory group for the Commissioners of the Count was putting the final touches on a draft of the next version of their “Voluntary Voting System Guidelines”. Once the work of the techno-advisory group is completed, the Commissioners, four white house appointees, have the final say in approving these standards for e-voting equipment to be used in America's elections.
The guidelines are called "voluntary" because the US Constitution empowers the states, and not the federal government, to administer our elections. Theoretically the Commissioners of the Count can only "recommend" voting system standards to the states. But the reality is, their "guidelines" are nothing less than specifications for voting system technology. The "guidelines" are, in fact, the Commission’s authorized blueprint for our election systems, which the e-voting industry uses to develop their products.
Additionally, there is an uncomfortable confluence between the Commission’s "voluntary" voting system standards and federal law. Congress stands ready to vote on a controversial piece of election reform legislation known as HR 811, aka the Holt Bill. Within its 62 pages of convoluted language, the bill has a little provision for all voting systems in the nation to convert ballot text into what Holt calls "accessible form". This means that voting jurisdictions must have technology that converts written ballot text into other media such as audio, pictures or multiple languages. This is fairly complex technology. If the Holt bill passes with this provision, our cities, towns, and counties will be forking over substantial sums of cash for the privilege of adding an exceedingly opaque layer of technology to our elections.
This odd provision did not come out of nowhere. It came straight out of the techno-advisory group’s "voluntary" voting system guidelines, where it was inserted in 2005, against the advise of the nation's top state and local election officials. And there it sat, until along came Mr. Holt, who decided this "voluntary" standard would become the law of the land.
Effectively, the "guidelines" are not voluntary at all. They are the industry specifications that become the products sold to jurisdictions using e-voting equipment rather than hand counting their elections. And they become the law of the land whenever any particular congressional rep decides to toss them into the election reform law du jour.
Which is why I go to these meetings. The techno-advisory group consists of fourteen "specialists," appointed by the Commissioners of the Count, and is chaired by the Director of NIST. I go to observe the manner in which they fulfill their charter to "act in the public interest to assist the Executive Director of the Commission in the development of the voluntary voting system guidelines." I could sit home and watch their webcasts, or read their transcripts, but going in person to the meetings allows me to observe how these decision makers interact with each other. Who is friends with who. Who dares express independent thought, who goes along. It allows me to chat with them during breaks, or with others in the audience, such as senior executives from ES&S and Diebold, two of the larger e-voting companies in the nation.
Two months ago, I went to another of their meetings. I was taken aback at the opening remarks of EAC Chair, Donetta Davidson, who stood up, took the mike, and declared her concerns with paper ballots. "We must address the problems associated with counting paper ballots," she said. This surprised me because these guys are mostly interested in technology-related voting, and I couldn't quite figure where the matter of paper ballots fit in to their scheme. It surprised me too, because of all the problems we hear about in our election systems, rarely are they tracked back to paper ballots. More often than not, the problems have to do with electronic vote flipping (voters press the button for Candidate A but see Candidate B get their vote), machine failures, or anomolous but untrackable results lost in the inner ether of e-voting machines.
Coming from a state like New Hampshire, where hand counting of paper ballots is a time honored tradition and practice, I was confused about the intention of Chair Davidson's assertions. We know in New Hampshire that the tried and true methods for counting and handling paper ballots have stood us in good stead for hundreds of years. Contrary to the picture painted by Chair Davidson, the New Hampshire experience has shown that the public counting of paper ballots delivers integrity of election results far removed from the questions of fraud or failure found in many electronic voting systems.
But in March, 2007, EAC Chair Donetta Davidson was concerned about paper ballots, how they get counted, and how the Commissioners of the Count could address what she described as "the problems people have counting them". So concerned was Chair Davidson, in fact, that she rose to address her advisory group on the issue first thing in the morning of that particular meeting, with the directive that they look into the matter.
Chair Davidson's appeal apparently did not fall on deaf ears. In last week's follow up meeting, the techno-advisory group unveiled a whole new class of standards for their voting system guidelines: the paper ballots class. In conjunction with their declaration that "the entire voting system shall be verifiable," they expanded their purview to the design of paper ballots, which, as one member stated, "can be verified by the voter after he has marked it."
Their resolutions regarding paper ballots were fairly spare, not having, really, too much to say about this relatively simple and straightforward voting mechanism. Paper ballots stand in stark contrast to the high tech voting systems with which the TGDC otherwise engages itself in designing. The 750 pages of high tech software specifications found in the newest version of voting system guidelines is more up their alley.
So what did the techno-advisory group come up with in their recommendations for dealing with the "problem" of handling and counting paper ballots? Paper ballots must now all be technology-enabled.
That's right. It is not enough that the Commissioners of the Count have busied themselves designing extraordinarily complex high tech voting systems, which will lead to the development of outrageously expensive and opaque voting machines.
Now, even the nation's paper ballots must be "machine readable."
Nancy Tobi is cofounder, former Chair, website editor for Democracy for New Hampshire (DFNH), and Chair of the NH Fair Elections Committee. Nancy is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund," "What's Wrong with the Holt Bill," "We're Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit," and "Hands-on Elections: An Information Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People". Her article about election reform fallacies is included in the April 2008 book "Losers Take All" edited by Mark Crispin Miller.
Nancy believes in the principles embodied in our Constitution, and that groups like Election Defense Alliance and DFNH can play a unique role by empowering ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Strong evidence exists that Bush illegally assumed the presidency TWICE because of fraudulently won elections. If we can trace back the spoiled hamburger to exactly which cow had the disease, don't tell me we can't figure out a system that is honest, verifiable, and transparent. With a little creativity and imagination, we must be able to design a process for honest elections.
I've got an idea - do you know how you can go to Google maps and see a satellite photograph of your town, and then you can actually zoom right in and see your house. Why not have everybody who is eligible to vote be issued a unique number - during an election you go online or on the phone, or the local community center or library, and place your vote. A grid of satellites are networked to show in real time every vote being cast along with the location. There's the roof of my house along with a light that shines and demonstrates a colour or code showing my vote. All legally eligible voters have one unique number which corresponds with one vote. This can be verified by the people, by the government, by other governments, by anybody, any time. Of course you don't have to be home to place your vote, but you do have to have one unique, valid number that can be checked against the result during and after the election.
I find it hard to believe that in this age where they can accurately keep track of everyone's credit card debt every second, that we are unable to fulfill the criteria of this seemingly far less complex process in a simple way.
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CasaZaza (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 99 comments)
on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 9:39:18 AM
we don't really need satellites to keep our system honest. We just need the time honored advanced system of checks and balances found in well managed hand count paper ballot elections.
It is the complexity and opacity of high tech solutions that brought us to where we are today.
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Nancy Tobi (69 articles, 4 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 53 comments)
on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 10:04:53 AM
Some election officials are attracted to the latest bells and whistles.
Also, politicians have added on more and more contests to elections, trying to up their voter turnout. Everytime we add on more "conveniences", we seem to create the demand for more "Technology". Early voting or Vote Centers are an example of "reforms" that drive the push for technology.
Compare to many industries that are always seeking technical ways to do simple tasks.
However, with DREs, the person's intent is less transparent.
With a paper ballot marked by a voter, however counted, you will be able to see the voters' actual intent with far less need to "interpret".
Some election officials don't like paper ballots because you will always have some that weren't marked clearly enough, and these will have to be examined by a team to determine intent. They want everything to "match" up exactly. The problem is that touchscreens or DREs don't always reflect the "intent" of the voter, and then we get into the forensic examinations.
The election officials have a sizeable influence in this issue.
Hopefully, people are learning that higher tech is not appropriate for elections. But we didn't get here over night, and we have had paperless voting in some form since the beginning of voting.
The majority of voters likely are unaware of this great debate, and only learn about paper ballots when their jurisdiction changes to them, as happened in NC. Many of our former paperless DRE counties switched to optical scan. Those not schooled on the subject thought this was a step back.
Some citizens have learned how nice it was to be able to determine intent when we had recounts in some jurisdictions, and audits. There was some agony, too when bi-partisan teams had to argue over what exactly the intent was on some ballots.
The audits showed more discrepancies with optical scan than DRES, but when it came to doing the audits, and doing the recounts, it was a lot easier to do on OS, and we knew for sure (99%) what the intent of the voter was on the paper ballot.
While optical scan and DRES both are counting a digital ballot (OS interprets the paper ballot into a ballot image), the OS uses a simple transparent record that we can examine.
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ncvoter (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 85 comments)
on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 1:08:20 PM
Clearly, before the HCPB movement builds any more steam, the fascists seek to illegitimize them.
I urge folks to run their own paper ballot elections, outside an official polling site. It checks the accuracy of reported results and it trains us in how to conduct an HCPB election. For the October 06 training manual, see http://www.thelandesreport.com/ClevelandPE.pdf altho we are in the process of revising it for 07.
The government model of election control fails democracy. It's time citizens run what is, after our, our election process.
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Rady Ananda (56 articles, 166 quicklinks, 17 diaries, 387 comments)
on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 6:08:10 PM
In the county I live in we have ballots that we hand mark and feed into a scanner that is supposed to tabulate the votes. The ballot have tear off numbers but we must give it back when we hand in the ballot to be scanned. I thought this is kind of dumb. If we kept our numbers and a recount was ordered we could check to see if our votes where counted as we cast them. This is a republican county and I do not trust the scanners that keep track of how many votes are cast, but not who they were cast for. We have to rely on a computer chip to accurately count the ballots, correctly.
Are the precincts so large that a hand count would go on for days. I think not. And the new touch screen did not work at my precinct,seems no one knew how to turn it on. Now if they could make them as accurate as an ATM and give us a paper receipt I might trust them more. But that is the whole point with the tech people . Design it so poorly no one will want to vote. And this is absolutely a states right issue.
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cluelessfl (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 182 comments)
on Saturday, May 26, 2007 at 11:45:32 PM
It has 14 contests on it and also has the option of straight ticket voting.
Here is a sample ballot for Durham Co North Carolina for Nov 2, 2004. (It is typical of other counties)
It has 24 contests on it.
We have straight ticket voting too, with many exceptions including that it doesn't count for president. Attempts to get rid of the straight ticket law have failed year after year. (There is a lawsuit by the Libertarians that might possibly overturn the straight ticket law.)
Here are just some of the instructions on the ballot, I hope they do better in future:
PRESIDENT AND VICE-PRESIDENT ARE EXCLUDED FROM THE STRAIGHT PARTY TICKET. THEY MUST BE VOTED ON SEPARATELY. THE ABOVE CANDIDATES ARE EXCLUDED FROM THE STRAIGHT PARTY TICKET. THEY MUST BE VOTED ON SEPARATELY. INSTRUCTIONS TO VOTER
a. To vote for all candidates of one party (a straight ticket), complete the arrow at the right of the party whose candidates for whom you wish to vote.
b. You may vote a split ticket by not completing the arrow at the right of the party, but by completing the arrow at the right of the name of each candidate for whom you wish to vote.
c. You may also vote a split ticket by completing the arrow at the right of the party and then completing the arrow at the right of the name of any candidate you choose of a different party. In any multi-seat race where a party arrow is completed and you vote for candidates of another party, you must also complete the arrow at the right of the name of any candidate you choose of the party for which you completed the party arrow to assure your vote will count.
d. If you tear or deface or wrongly mark this ballot, return it and get another.
e. If you wish to write in the name of the qualified candidate, you must write the qualified name in the blank space provided and complete the arrow at the right of the name in order for your vote to count. (NCGS 163-165.6(f)) f. A straight party vote does not vote for non-partisan offices.
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ncvoter (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 85 comments)
on Monday, May 28, 2007 at 9:44:39 AM
