If I were running, knowing what I know nowadays, I'd want to get a copy of the election official and security procedures to ensure that the chain of custody of the ballots is maintained, and that there's oversight from when the ballots are received by the elections office to when they're distributed to the precincts, and the process of collecting those ballots back again.
Understanding what the chain of custody is for all ballots is pretty important and tends to be overlooked. It doesn't make any difference what kind of fabulous machine you use if you can't guarantee that the ballots that they count are the correct ballots.
It boggles my mind how many election officials don't have a clue what chain of custody means. For some it's, "Well, people had it." That's not good enough. Chain of custody is number one.
Find out what kind of audit laws are available in the jurisdiction. Florida has a terrible election audit. If I was running, short of my race being selected as the one for the random audit, then you have no confidence. The audit simply does not represent enough ballots of a precinct to give you any kind of confidence level. Find out what kind of audits may be done in that jurisdiction.
I do know of a case here in North Florida where a candidate contacted the election officials and arranged for a manual recount after the election, (and that recount was) not sanctioned by the state.
When a recount is invoked, I have to follow the state procedures for a recount. However, if there's no recount, I actually have more authority to do a full-blown recount. If the issue is to confirm whether it [the vote count] is valid or not, then I don't really need official results. That's if you can work with your election official. An election official may have the authority, and to ease your mind they may do an audit or a recount. Look at the applicability of audits and how robust they are. I would want to know what kind of audits can I get for my race, in my jurisdiction.
John Bonifaz, Constitutional law attorney, Voter Action legal director
The most important way that candidates can protect themselves from electronic voting problems is to demand that jurisdictions using electronic voting machines provide emergency paper ballots to voters in lieu of using the machines. Given all the evidence demonstrating the unreliability and insecurity of these machines, voters should be given the opportunity to cast their votes on emergency paper ballots. That would provide the opportunity to count those votes in a meaningful way. We simply cannot trust that electronic voting machines will properly count or record votes. So it's critical that we do what we can prior to the election to demand that emergency paper ballots be made available to voters.
At minimum, such ballots should be available to voters when electronic voting machines break down and cause long lines, which ultimately can disenfranchise voters in a different way by turning them away from the polls. People are busy. They may have other work to do and may not be able to stay in line.
If the jurisdiction refuses to provide this kind of safeguard -- and it has its own limitations, certainly, as a safeguard -- then I think it's critical that candidates be vigilant in demanding random inspections of these machines after the election to investigate whether or not these machines have malfunctioned or, even worse, been hacked. People have to understand that at the end of the day, it is very difficult to detect a hacking of an electronic voting machine when it's been done in a certain way, and that's been demonstrated by computer scientists who have shown how the machines can be hacked and be undetected.
There are other things that leading computer scientists have suggested, such as reconciling the number of voters that come into a precinct with the number of votes counted on the machine. But none of those safeguards will erase the overall vulnerability of this technology, which is a direct threat to the integrity of our process.
At a minimum, we must demand meaningful audits in every jurisdiction that uses an optical scan system. Because we have the paper ballots to count. We audit anything of value, and that should include our elections. In the case of an optical scan jurisdiction, the election is in fact auditable. It's important to take a meaningful percentage of the ballots and hand-count them. It should be higher than the 1 or 2 percent some jurisdictions use, if at all. That has to be done regardless of how the election turns out and regardless of the margin of victory in each jurisdiction. If a jurisdiction is not going to conduct a meaningful random audit, then I think it's incumbent upon the candidates to demand a recount in any optical scanned jurisdiction for at least some of the ballots so as to ensure that an audit actually takes place.
Finally, I think it's very important that candidates who are facing a close election result -- and at the presidential level this means any state where there's a close outcome -- that they not concede right away. The evidence of voting irregularities often does not come at the same speed that the TV coverage wants it to come. Which means that there's this rush to issue the declaration of who won before we know whether there were questionable actions that occurred in any particular state. In 2004, Senator Kerry conceded before much of the reporting had come in regarding widespread voting irregularities [in Ohio]. Evidence [later] came forward that demonstrated that there were real questions as to whether or not the votes had been properly counted. They [candidates] should not concede any state that is a close outcome until they are given ample time, along with their supporters and independent observers, to determine whether or not there are any questions as to the result.
CONCLUSIONS
At least 55 percent of Americans voting this November will vote on paper ballots that will be counted by optical scanners, according to Virginia-based Election Data Services, Inc. Our panelists agree that it is critical to election safety that a significant percentage of these paper ballots be randomly audited by hand -- at least 5 to 10 percent. Other key recommendations include urging the use of paper in any way, shape or form over touch-screens, increasing awareness of candidates, election officials, and the media as to e-voting vulnerabilities, and most importantly, urging the candidates not to concede until every last ballot has been counted and counted accurately.
But there is one other problem with taking on the machines. "Candidates are incredibly vulnerable to allegations of being a poor loser or conspiracy theorists if they challenge," says Ardizzone. "Many candidates who want a political career often choose not to challenge, but to keep their credibility for the next election. It's just unrealistic to ask them to sacrifice their political career for a completely non-vote-winning issue like election reform." Despite that, he recommends candidates ask as many questions as possible when discrepancies occur, and they should make the answers public.
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