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.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008 ES&S Opti-Scans Found Miscounting by 4% (8% margin-swing)
The ES&S M100 is used in some or all counties in a long list of states. Voter marked paper ballots, even if the machines that count them are inaccurate,are more auditable because accurate vote counts can always be recovered by hand-counting the paper ballots,unlike with touchscreen voting systems,but machine counts are not to be
Sunday, August 24, 2008 MSM comes out against computerized voting, finally (3 comments)
Scientific American, CBS News, AP, CNN, Wash.Post, NYTimes, a top Republican cyber-security expert, and others, discuss U.S. Voting Machine Flaws
Thursday, April 5, 2007 "Lucky 13" Amendments to Current Election Reform Proposals
Congress will get greater support from both election integrity groups and election officials if it makes these "lucky thirteen" amendments to current election reform proposals which would ensure public oversight of elections, adequate manual audits to ensure accurate election outcomes, sufficient funding, reasonable time frames, and flexibility.
Thursday, March 29, 2007 Four Election Integrity Groups Release A "One-Page Concept Proposal For Federal Election Reform Legislation"
Leaders in four election integrity organizations are delivering a proposal to the Congress calling on the members to sponsor better election reform legislation. National Election Data Archive, Black Box Voting, Democracy for New Hampshire, and Citizens' Alliance for Secure Elections OH call for better legislation.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007 Federal Election Reform: Fax or Call the US House Administration Cmte
Urgent Call to Weigh in on Federal Election Reform Legislation. Call or Fax US House Administration Committee Members. Fax numbers and a sample letter summarizing major flaws with currently proposed legislation.
Monday, March 19, 2007 Federal Election Audit Costs
Congressman Rush Holt, Senator Bill Nelson, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Congresswoman Cynthia Tubb-Jones are all proposing the same election audit. A cost estimate using 2002 and 2004 election results show that their proposals are more ineffective and more costly than a 99% success rate audit.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 Action Alert! Anyone near DC to attend HR 811-Sales-Hearings
C-Span is unlikely to cover these "HR811-Sales-Hearings" because the
House Admin Committee has yet to announce them publicly, even though
one is tommorrow (Thursday)!
The Hearings before the House Administration Cmte. on Electronic
Voting are stacked with testimony by HR811 and DRE supporters (see
list below).
Wednesday, March 7, 2007 Avoid Another HAVA Train Wreck: Software Disclosure Requirements
The software disclosure requirements in election integrity legislation proposed by Congress are unenforceable and would make another HAVA-like mess. Please contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and speak with their staffers who work on election integrity legislation.
Thursday, March 1, 2007 Fooled Once: Checking Vote Count Integrity
A new report shows how to evaluate the effectiveness of election audits; evaluates the audits proposed by U.S. Representative Rush Holt and Senator Bill Nelson (HR811 and S559); gives alternatives; and invites citizen action.
Friday, February 9, 2007 The Flaws that Need Fixing in Holt's HR811
Holt's HR811 is a big improvement over HR550 because it takes away the power to audit from the Election Assistance "Commission"; and requires archival weight ballots that protect privacy, but it still has flaws that must be fixed prior to passage.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 The Circular Firing Squad of the Election Integrity Movement
Battles over the FIVE METHODS to Verify Election Outcomes. CAN WE STOP THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD of election integrity activists long enough to achieve election outcome integrity by the 2008 election? If you would like to join a work group of election integrity activists who agree with the above, in order to explain the possible solutions to ensure election outcome integrity, please send an email to
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 "Tiered Election Audits" for the Lay Person (27 comments)
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, if Congress specifies a fixed rate manual election audit of 2%, there will be less than a 50% chance to detect miscount in close elections.
Monday, January 15, 2007 It Is Not Whether Or Not To Audit Elections, But HOW! (9 comments)
The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) has released a short paper explaining a new formula developed by Ronald Rivest of MIT to estimate the minimum audit amounts that are mathematically sufficient to detect vote count errors that could seat wrong candidates. NEDA's paper and an easy-to-use spreadsheet to allow any layman to calculate how many vote counts to audit for a particular election contest, can be found at ElectionA
Sunday, January 14, 2007 CT: National Model for Election Security - 20% manual Audits (9 comments)
20% is sufficient to ensure integrity of outcomes in almost all
federal elections for most election systems, although it would fall
short of ensuring election integrity in small close local races. CT's
new procedure is a vast improvement in the sufficiency of manual
audits. This is a terrific step forward by Susan Bysiewicz who also
had the smarts to select optical scan voting systems (no DREs) for CT!
Friday, January 5, 2007 The Debate Amongst Election Integrity Groups over Federal Legislation Provisions (5 comments)
What are the best ideas for election integrity legislation in the new Congress? Election Integrity groups are debating over what measures are best. "REQUEST BY VOTERS: To amend the bill formerly known as H.R. 550 ..." which is supported by numerous well-known election integrity activists, falls short of a workable solution.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007 ELECTION INTEGRITY EXPERTS OFFER 14 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FEDERAL LEGISLATION (1 comments)
The previous analysis of the under-vote data in Florida's Curtis-Feeney CD24 race has been temporarily withdrawn to allow us to double-check the consistency of the data we were invited to analyze (i.e. were apples [ polling + early votes] being compared to apples [polling + early voters] to calculate number of under-votes?). More on that will be released as soon as it becomes available.
Friday, December 29, 2006 Cuyahoga County Commissioners want to replace Diebold Electronic Voting
Editor's note: Good news, right? Someone's finally getting it. Read on. Utah wants to buy those Diebold Electronic Voting Machines that Cuyahoga County has determined are too expensive, too unreliable and have too many problems. What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong with those Utah state officials? Anything to save money?
Saturday, December 23, 2006 The Revolving Door
Another election official goes to work for Diebold after leaving
office. A former Diebold lobbyist becomes the election official.
This revolving door is common.
Sunday, December 17, 2006 Experts for the U.S. Congress to Consult with on Election Integrity Legislation (4 comments)
The U.S. Congress must consult with independent experts this time when it passes federal legislation to ensure the integrity of our democracy. Here is a list of experts and recommendations for legislation.
Sunday, December 10, 2006 Salt Lake County Mayor Corroon says upkeep of Electronic Voting Machines Costing "Millions and Millions" (1 comments)
Salt Lake County's Mayor, Peter Corroon is asking for more money to pay for the upkeep of Diebold DRE voting machines. Other jurisdictions in Ohio, Florida, and Maryland are planning to scrap their DREs which the National Institute of Standards and Technology says "cannot be made secure".
Wednesday, December 6, 2006 The Urgent Need for Effective Election Integrity Legislation
It is critical to mankind's future that we ensure the integrity of our
democracy in time for the 2008 federal elections, which means that
legislation must be passed by Spring 2007.Please pass this request on to your friends and ask them to also send
letters and include our recommendations for federal legislation to
ensure the integrity of our democracy.
Saturday, November 18, 2006 Election Forum (3 comments)
More on DREs, voting integrity and paper ballots. The Paul that Kathy refers to is Paul Lehto, election law attorney who has taken part in numerous key suits, including the recent one in San Diego, following the June primary in which one candidate was whisked to DC and sworn in before the votes were all counted or the election certified.
Thursday, October 26, 2006 Utah's New Election Audit and Recount Procedures Found Lacking by Utah's Desert Greens Party & Utah Count Votes
Utah's Desert Greens Party, the Utah affiliate of the Green Party of the United States (gp.org), and Utah Count Votes, an election integrity group, after a careful review of Utah's new internal audit procedures for the upcoming November 7, 2006 general mid-term election, feel that Utah's newly adopted election policies weaken Utah's election processes and fail to ensure Utah's election integrity.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 The Election Integrity Audit
The National Election Data Archive's Kathy Dopp and Frank Stenger developed a method for calculating election audit sizes that would detect any electronic miscount that could alter an election outcome, for all auditable voting systems, particularly when voters verify that their paper ballot records are correct.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Princeton Research Group Demonstrates Vote-Stealing and Virus Attacks on Diebold AccuVote-TS (in ONE MINUTE!)
The Diebold AccuVote-TS and its newer relative the AccuVote-TSx are together the most widely deployed
electronic voting platform in the U. S.In the November 2006 general election,the Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine in our lab
these machines are scheduled to be used in 357 counties representing nearly 10% of registered voters.(Ed. note: one more study to tell us what we already sensed. Where's that tipping point already?)
Friday, September 1, 2006 Action Alert! Is Utah Planning Sham Vote Count Audits?
After selecting hack-able Diebold voting systems, Utah Lt. Governor
Herbert is appointing an Election Audit Committee that appears to be
neither independent nor qualified.
