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Tag(s): 2008 Election Congressional; 2008 Election Presidential; 2008 Election Presidential Primary; 2008 Elections; Election Reform; Election-Voting Issues
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July 18, 2007 at 08:11:19

ON-SITE OBSERVATIONS OF THE HAND-COUNTING OF PAPER BALLOTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 2008

by Sheila Parks Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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ON-SITE OBSERVATIONS OF THE HAND-COUNTING OF PAPER BALLOTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 2008

INTRODUCTION

Between May 2, 2006 and November 7, 2006, I observed the hand-counting of paper ballots in three elections in two New England states. The purpose of these observations was to gather first-hand data concerning the feasibility, effectiveness and accuracy of the use of HCPB. These elections were as follows:

(1) Rockport, Massachusetts (MA), on May 2, 2006, Town Election

(2) Hudson, MA, on May 8, 2006, Town Election

(3) Acton, Maine (ME), on November 7, 2006, General Election

All three hand-countings of paper ballots were conducted smoothly and were finished in a timely manner. This paper describes the various protocols used and presents recommendations for the use of hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) in the upcoming elections of 2008. Absentee ballots, provisional ballots and chain of custody of the ballots are not dealt with in this paper, although they are also crucial elements of an HCPB system.[1]

Much has been written about the fraud and error associated with the use of electronic voting machines – both Direct Recording Electronic (DRE’S/touchscreens) and Optical Scan (op scans/opti scans).[2] Because of this fraud and error, HCPB have been put forth as an alternative to electronic voting machines.[3] The use of an HCPB system will ensure that each vote is counted as intended and as cast by the voter. Although HCPB do not address the egregious suppression of the vote (mostly of people of color, elders and low income people), partnering a solution to the elimination of this suppression with the use of HCPB is the only way to have honest and transparent elections.

The jurisdictions that I observed were not selected randomly. They were places that I could drive to comfortably from my home in Boston, MA. Moreover, I was interested in observing an election in Acton, ME because the Town Clerk had told me that after the first hand-counting, the ballots would be hand-counted a second time.[4] I received permission to observe the elections from each Secretary of State, or their assistants, and from each Town Clerk. For full transparency, I introduced myself as an advocate of HCPB, who wanted to observe an HCPB election. I was very well received and felt comfortable in all places. All three Town Clerks were very generous with their time and expertise.

In each of the three elections observed, number two pencils were used by the voters to hand mark their paper ballots. In each of the elections, the counters worked in teams of two. In addition, the counters were told that it was the intent of the voter that was to be counted, and when in doubt, the counters called over the Town Clerk or Warden[5] to ask questions about specific ballots and how to count them. Finally, in each of the elections, the counters were able to hand-count the paper ballots in a short time (see specifics below).

ACTON, ME, NOVEMBER 7, 2006, GENERAL ELECTION

I will first describe the HCPB election in Acton, ME on November 7, 2006 because this protocol used a procedure that would produce the most accurate count of the votes - namely, a second hand-count was done immediately after the first hand-count.

The ballot box was a plain, wooden box with a slot into which voters put their ballots. There were six teams, of two counters each, doing the hand-counting. The counters came in specifically to count; they had not worked at the polls earlier in the day. Each team consisted of a Republican and a Democrat. The teams first counted the ballots into batches of 50, and then these batches of 50 were counted again.

The teams then hand-counted the votes cast in each contest for each batch of 50 ballots in the following manner: One member of the team would read out loud the name marked off for each contest; the other member of the team marked the vote on a tally sheet that corresponded to the ballot. A voter’s entire ballot was tallied for all of the contests before the counters went on to tally the next voter’s ballot. The talliers counted each vote by making a hash mark (small, straight vertical line).[6] After four vertical lines were made, a fifth line was made diagonally through the first four marks. For each person running for office (and for each initiative), the tally sheet was marked off into five columns vertically and two rows horizontally, providing 10 rectangular spaces in each of which five hash marks could be written – a total of 50 hash marks - i.e., votes - per contest or initiative. A dark horizontal line separated the names in each contest. At the end of the counting of all of the races in a batch of 50 ballots, the counters totaled the hash marks for each race on the tally sheet and entered that number on the tally sheet in the “TOTAL VOTE” column. There was a special sheet for write-ins.

Immediately after the first hand-count of a batch of 50 ballots, a second hand-count, on a new tally sheet, was done of this same batch of 50 ballots by these same counters. Again, the entire ballot of each voter was tallied before the counters proceeded to the next voter’s ballot. This time, the person who had read the names out loud marked each vote on the tally sheet, and the person who had tallied read out loud the ballot choices. After the votes on all 50 ballots in a batch were marked on the tally sheet, the totals for each contest were obtained and written on the tally sheet. If the totals for the candidates in any contest or for any initiative were not exactly the same on the first and second tally sheets (i.e. on the first and second countings), these contests or initiatives were counted a third time. I observed such a situation two times.

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Sheila Parks, Ed.D. is a researcher, writer and fundraiser who lives in Boston,MA. She is a long time feminist and peace & justice activist/organizer on many issues and has been involved in the current wave of voting rights for six years. She is an advocate for hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) now.

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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

Washington State election for Governor, 2004 - HCPB

A participant’s detailed report

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. [except in three counties where a few DREs were used]. State-wide, Gregoire won by about 130 votes after a hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots. The result was contested; it was finally settled in Court.

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 handled as described here.

===Begin clips

My team of three sorted and counted 5,544 votes during a nine-hour shift. 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 clips. The newspaper accounts have more details.

Ex-governor Rossi, the losing Republican candidate, challenged the process in court. At the appelate level the judge approved the process and rejected the challenge. The language of the opinion led the challengers to forego further action.

Sources
“Tedious hand recount begins,”
Seattle Post-intelligencer 12/9/04
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/203043_governor09xx.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=11

“Counter for a day finds few bugs in recount process”
Seattle Times 12/18/04 Danny Westneat

by abacus (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 58 comments) on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 2:10:45 PM

Born in 1942 in NE Oklahoma, educated and raised in NE California, joined the Navy at 17 and was shipped to Yokosuka, Japan. There I was able to buy all the books that were banned in the USA. Married & divorced twice, AA degree in Lib. Arts. Now disabled w/ COPD, I live in the house that my mother left me and spend a lot of time on the computer and reading.
Chuck GarnerBorn in 1942 in NE Oklahoma, educated and raised in NE California, joined the Navy at 17 and was shipped to Yokosuka, Japan. There I was able to buy all the books that were banned in the USA. Married & divorced twice, AA degree in Lib. Arts. Now disabled w/ COPD, I live in the house that my mother left me and spend a lot of time on the computer and reading.

A treasury of sources - definitely a keeper!

Thank you Sheila - now all we have to do is make sure everybody gets a chance to read them before our elected representatives, if I can make that assumption, hand over our elections to the computerized voting machine industry. Two bills, one in the House which got "modified" by Microsoft and Diebold, HR 811, and one in the Senate, S. 1487, will guarantee permanent Republican control of our government. The election last November was supposed to be a landslide but it was prevented by the same people who count our votes in private. The elections used to belong to us; now if you try to see how the votes are tabulated, you will be arrested for interfering.

by Chuck Garner (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 118 comments) on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 at 11:52:19 PM

I am a freelance writer located in New York City. I am also a Certified Lay Speaker in the Metropolitan District, New York Annual Conference, United Methodist Church. I am considered a Jewish Christian or Christian Jew, whichever you prefer, having been Bar-Mitzvahed in 1970 into the Tribe of Levi (making me a Levite). Plus, I'm the son of a Holocaust Survivor.
Kenneth BarrI am a freelance writer located in New York City. I am also a Certified Lay Speaker in the Metropolitan District, New York Annual Conference, United Methodist Church. I am considered a Jewish Christian or Christian Jew, whichever you prefer, having been Bar-Mitzvahed in 1970 into the Tribe of Levi (making me a Levite). Plus, I'm the son of a Holocaust Survivor.

Small vs Large

The elections observed were in relatively small towns and for a limited amount of offices. As an election inspector in a precinct in New York City, hand counting paper ballots would be incredibly slow and subject to all sorts of outside influences. In 2006, we had 10 offices on the ballot in the General Election, inculding 2 judicial elections where there was more than one vacancy. Considering that New York Election Law demands that each office be counted separately, we would have had to do ten counts, first by tallying the individual ballots and then transferring the totals to the Report of Canvas. The recount, or to be more accurate the Official Canvas, must by law be done within one week of the date of election. Therefore, all ballots would be impunded and recounted at the County (5 in NYC) Boards of Election. This would be incredibly cumbersome and would tax the patience of an already jaded public. In addition, the stuffing of ballot boxes is not unheard of in New York City history. Therefore, while attractive in theory, paper ballots manually counted would not be a practical choice for a large municipality like New York.

The latest I heard is that we will be getting an Optical Scan system. The DREs have many draw backs in addition to their obvious inaccuracies, they are simply too big for our polling places. As it is we will have to adjust polling sites to allow use of optical scan systems. For example, the polling site I work at is too small and will have to be replaced. This will create confusion amongst voters who are not the most adaptable to change. You can notify them as much as you want and they still will not acknowledge any change and then complain mightily that they have to go out of their way to vote. This happens every ten years when we have reapportionment.

I am not a great fan of any electronic voting system. What happens in the case of a power failure, a not uncommon event in New York? I would prefer new mechanical machines since they are tried and tested technology and don't require electricity to operate. While not perfect, they do offer the advantage of being familiar to the voter and having had all the known bugs worked out of them. As I said earlier, paper is just too cumbersome to be used in New York. So, with great reluctance and the sense that I will live to regret it, I must come to the conclusion that the optical scan system, which does offer the ability to manually count paper ballots should the need arise at the Official Canvas stage, is the way to go for us in the Big Apple. While not perfect, it seems to be the one system that can handle a fifteen hour election day and give us an accurate count at the end of the day. Besides, can you imagine four people counting over 300 ballots at least eight times? I shudder at the thought. I come to that figure by counting the number of offices probably being contested in 2008, President/Vice President, Member of Congress, Judges of the Supreme Court, Judges of the Civil Court County Wide, State Senate, State Assembly, Judge of the Civil Court by Municipal Court District, plus any ballot questions or referenda.

The real scandal in New York is the almost total non-action in the State Legislature which means we will not have an election to try out any new system before 2008. This is an off year, we will probably only have one or two offices up for grabs along with a referendum ot two. Yet, Shelley Silver and Joe Bruno still will not allow meaningful election reform to get through the Legislature. That line from "1776" was never more true, "They speak very loud and very fast and talk over each other so that nothing ever gets done."

by Kenneth Barr (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 77 comments) on Thursday, July 19, 2007 at 12:22:34 AM