By Andi Novick and Rady Ananda

Let’s Clear the Air distinguishes the facts from the myths about the status of New York State's electoral system.  New York is the only state not to have computerized its electoral system and the only state that still has a secure, reliable, transparent, functioning electoral system.  Since New York is in the process of installing ballot marking devices in every poll site, providing an accessible means for voters with special needs to vote independently, there is no justification for the State to abandon its now HAVA-compliant lever voting system.  

Software-driven optical scanners and DRE voting systems have proven to be vulnerable to undetectable tampering.  New York voters must fight to hold onto their theft-deterring lever voting system before they lose it.  New York courts must defend our proud history of transparent, safeguarded, trustworthy elections and proclaim to the State's legislature and to the rest of the nation:  

Exposing our elections to the risk of massive tampering using hidden, unprotectable vote-counting software is unconstitutional.  

Computerized voting systems disenfranchise citizens in numerous ways, including depriving us of the right to know our votes are counted as cast and by permitting the count to be diluted by undetectable fraud.  Because New York still enjoys a constitutionally-compliant, viable electoral system, we are uniquely positioned to seek a court ruling on the unconstitutionality of the proposed computerized system.   

What happens next in New York will reverberate around the nation.  It is therefore critical that we keep these facts straight.   

In 2005, New York's Legislature passed the Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA), determining that it would comply with HAVA by replacing our lever voting system with a computerized voting system.  Subsequently, it consented to an Order in federal court, implementing a timeline to replace our levers with computerized "crap" by 2009.   

Maybe our legislators didn't realize what they were doing in 2005, but since then, dozens of scientific studies corroborate that optical scanners and DRES are grossly vulnerable to undetectable and massive election fraud.  The computerized electoral system planned by our Legislature eviscerates all that was secure, transparent and constitutional about our lever voting system, depriving New Yorkers of the right to a meaningful vote.  And yet, New York State proceeds with Eyes Wide Shut. 

Petition 

The Election Transparency Coalition is a New York based group, formed to preserve open, secure elections.  It is prepared to commence legal action to prevent concealed, theft-inviting software from replacing New York's secure, theft-deterring lever voting system. New Yorkers interested in joining this effort can this petition.  

If citizens mistakenly believe that a court has already ruled against the legality of our lever voting system, they will give up and accept the unconstitutional system planned for 2009.  

We cannot give up.   

We are the last state with a democratically-compliant, transparent, trustworthy, non-computerized, non-privatized electoral system.  We are entitled to our day in court before we surrender our safeguarded electoral system to one that opens the door to known and new opportunities to fraud.  We must fight to preserve our lever voting system now before it is replaced. 

This is why we believe it is so important to keep the facts straight and accurate in the public's mind.  Accordingly, we have withdrawn the original footnote to Let’s Clear the Air in order to end the distraction over he said/she said.  This diverts us from the facts and harms the efforts of all of us who are trying to secure what each of us believes to be the best voting system for New York.  We are all entitled to our beliefs.  So, in the spirit of respecting each other's beliefs, here are ours: 

Based on 231 years of history in New York State, we know what a secure, transparent electoral system requires because we can look at the case law and statutes and see what has worked for New York.  Relying on the law as written over the past two centuries:   

--We believe a democratic electoral system requires that ordinary people be able to observe that the system accurately counts our votes.

--We believe it requires that many eyes be able to check each other as we witness the process that results in the count.

--We believe it requires the production of reliable, publicly accessible evidence of both how the votes were counted as well as evidence of tampering, should it occur.

--We believe a democratic electoral system must be designed to detect, deter and reveal fraud, without which there is no deterrent to committing fraud. 

--We believe a democratic electoral system must contain safeguards that prevent every known opportunity for tampering.  

According to the law as written by successive legislatures and repeatedly interpreted by the highest court of the State, New York's lever voting system satisfies all of the above criteria and has served us well for a century.         

New York's new law, ERMA, permits software-driven optical scanners or DREs to count our votes.  Computer security scholars and professionals corroborate that software can be undetectably altered before, during and after Election Day, despite the most rigorous certification testing anyone might provide.   ERMA, therefore, fails to ensure that the election night count is reliable.  All we can do to attempt to verify the uncertain computerized count is manually count the paper ballots, but ERMA requires that the "audit" be done after the election is over, after the results from all other precincts are known, after the press has announced the winner, and after ongoing public scrutiny of the ballots has ended.

The entire history of New York's Election Law, until ERMA, recognized that post-election ballot tampering is so probable that it has never permitted post-election verification of the secure, reliable, publicly observed first count.  Under ERMA, not only is the first count (by software) undependable and concealed from the pubic, but the post-election "audit" is also unreliable, since the ballots being hand counted to verify the first count no longer enjoy the security of uninterrupted public scrutiny enabled by the many authorized watchers at the poll site.  Under ERMA, the integrity of the verification is impugned, leaving the entire count unknowable and unreliable. 

Moreover, since we believe that transparency in a public election demands that many eyes be able to observe the process that results in the count, we are opposed to optical scanners and DREs which hide that process. 

Since we believe in the democratic requirement that everyday people be able to witness the process that results in the count, we are opposed to optical scanners and DREs which conceal the count. 

Since we believe that a democratic electoral system requires the production of reliable, publicly accessible evidence of both how the votes were counted as well as evidence of tampering, we are opposed to optical scanners and DREs which computer scientists have agreed can be programmed to destroy evidence of the count as well as evidence of the tampering.  Without reliable evidence of the count or of fraud, there is no way to challenge the results in a court of law, potentially disenfranchising the electorate and depriving them of their legal recourse to vindicate the loss of their constitutional right. Since we believe a democratic electoral system must be designed to detect, deter and reveal fraud, we are opposed to optical scanners, DREs, and election management systems which have been shown to be hackable without detection on a massive, outcome-determinative scale, by a single person who doesn't even have to be physically present.

Since we believe a democratic electoral system must contain safeguards that prevent every known opportunity for tampering, and indeed this is what New York's case law has consistently required of the legislature, we are opposed to optical scanners and DREs which subject the count to known opportunities for tampering and expose the count to new and greater risks made possible by software.  The highest court in New York has repeatedly found that dilution of the count by tampering amounts to unconstitutional disenfranchisement.

We therefore reject software driven voting systems and demand that New York hand count the ballots marked by accessible ballot markers for voters with special needs, and retain its secure, transparent, and reliable lever voting system, with all the attendant laws enacted to secure the lever count.   

Sign this petition if you agree with us (New York residents only).  Residents and non-residents who want to help, contact Rady at j30rady [at] yahoo.com.