Blue Ribbon Committee to Riverside County, CA Board of Supes: Dump DRE Touch-Screen Voting Systems

Source: BRAD BLOG

'Blue Ribbon' Committee to Riverside County, CA Board of Supes: Dump DRE Touch-Screen Voting Systems!
Enormous Victory as Dogged Citizen Advocacy Finally Pays Off!
Committee Also Recommends Security Audit of Registrar's Office in First County in America to Move to Touch-Screen Voting Systems...
-- Guest Blogged by Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE

ED NOTE: Courbat and his band of intrepid Election Integrity advocates are owed a huge debt of thanks and an enormous congratulations for their effort. This recommendation, and indeed the creation of the "Blue Ribbon" commission itself, only came about due to the dogged, week-in, week-out, year-in, year-out persistence of Tom and the Riverside County advocates of SAVE R VOTE. We're happy to run his first-hand, guest blog contribution on this tremendous victory, as Courbat's group and efforts serve as a role model for citizens in every county in the nation. -- BF

Next Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the Riverside County, California Board of Supervisors’ hand-picked “Blue Ribbon” Elections Review Committee will present the Board with recommendations to “Move as quickly as possible to a hybrid voting system…on paper ballots…counted by optical scanners.”

For Riverside County, the first in America to move to touch-screen electronic voting systems, the importance of their findings cannot be understated.

With the exception of omitting the words “Digital Imaging” from the term “optical scanners” (aka “DIOS”), this is exactly the recommendation made to the committee by Finnish Computer Voting expert Harri Hursti to the Elections Review Committee in Palm Desert, CA on March 30th of this year. Hursti came to Riverside after Supervisor Jeff Stone had laied down a "1000 to 1" challenge, as covered in detail by The BRAD BLOG, that we'd be unable to manipulate the county's Sequoia touch-screen voting system. Hursti was happy to take up the challenge, but Stone demurred.

Stone is reportedly "surprised" by the findings of his hand-picked commission...

COMPLETE REPORT:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4816



Read more: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4816

DREs can perform miracles for the disabled and ESL voters. Why not use 'em for smart printers, as they are now? All we can expect is a VVPT, else we run afoul of federal protection for the handicapped.

You may wish to check your laws (such as the Help America Vote Act). There is absolutely NO requirement to use dangerous, disenfranchising DRE for the blind or disabled. Thank god.

DREs are not mandated nor precluded. If something better comes along, they advise adopting it. But there's nothing wrong with using touch screens to print optically scanned ballots and you know it.

Ah, you're talking about assistive electronic ballot marking devices for the disabled. Fine by me. A DRE (Direct Recording Electronic device) is not necessary to achieve a printable ballot to be counted by another device.

There is no reason to directly record an electronic ballot. Ever.

That Holt's bill allows them to continue to be used is a disaster. Had he (or anybody else) advocated for BMDs and banned DREs we wouldn't be in this mess.

And, btw, that section of HAVA you're referring to (Sec. 301a) requires that a voter be able to verify their ballot as accurate before it's cast and counted. Impossible to do on a DRE system.

I concur with Drs Dill of Verfified Voting and Rubin of Johns Hopkins. They have been heeded by the authorities and deserve our public support.

What miracles for the disabled? If you are referring to the blind, then say so.

It really chaffs my paralyzed hide to hear such crap.

DREs are easily fitted with accessories to ease selection as well as increase ballot access.

I'm sorry to hear about your disability, but I wear corrective lenses to deal with my legal blindness. Maybe that's why I'm not as quick to dismiss accessbility issues.

And I do wish you would stop repeating Jim Dickson's lies.

What accessories? What increased access?

FYI, most PWDs use absentee ballots. I did until I moved to a state that votes by mail.

Accessibility for individuals with disabilities, 116 STAT. 1666,Title III,Sub A,Sec301(a)(3)


Here's one "other voting system " (previously rejected via efforts of former CA SoS "Gov Ahnuld"-appointee Bruce McPherson) that current SoS Debra Bowen may wish to include in her Top-to-Bottom re-assessment of voting equipment for California: Vote-PAD

Automarks aren't considered DREs because "direct-record electronic" means that the machine records the person's vote -- and Automarks don't record or tally the votes. The Automark prints an optical scan ballot that is then deposited in the same precinct-based scanner with all other ballots - hand marked or printed by Automark.

One benefit to going to optical scan ballots is that if the machines aren't working, voters can still mark their ballots and deposit them in a locked ballot box. Election judges can push them through a scanner when it is working again. If we require all voters to use Automarks (or DREs) and the Automark does not work, then we are more likely to have voters who are disenfranchised because they can't wait.

Finally, if all voters have to use DREs then we have long, long lines waiting for the machines. If voters are, instead, given optical scan ballots to mark by hand then 20-40-60-100 voters can complete their ballots at the same time - virtually eliminating waiting to vote.

Dumping DREs does not limit accessibility -- Automarks will keep voting accessible and optical scan ballots + audits make voting verifiable.

DREs conflate voting and tabulation by definition, and are for all practical purposed unauditable. There is no conceivable reason why a touchscreen could not be designed to print a paper ballot for scanning and/or handcounting just like every other ballot. The problem is that Diebold refuses to do it.

Ironically, Diebold boasts on its own website of its open source code for ATMs. Seems that banks refuse to tolerate being held hostage to an outside company. They specify exactly what they want for ATM designs, and Diebold and other manufacturers comply. Elections officials in contrast just buy whatever crap gets shoved down their throats by Diebold and the like.

Did you watch the congressional and HAVA commission hearings? The representatives for disabled organizations wanted the ability to directly cast their vote - hence the need to retain the DRE option. For the rest of us, the printer would produce a ballot that could be handled ... only by the voter.

I wish there was a proper counter-argument, but in fact, VVPT systems can be audited to a reliable standard. I do this for a living and have been paying close attention. In fact, I'm satisfied that misguided efforts like scrubbing voter lists won't be repeated, but I won't sit by while misunderstandings disparage otherwise suitable technical solutions.

As for open source voting systems, I wish it were so simple - but if you are open to constructive suggestions, we could see greater progress.

And using the results recorded therein for preliminary returns might be OK,
but the real results should be from ballots counted by hand. The counting
process should be under continuous video surveillance, with the results fed to
local access cable.

I don't trust optical scanners either, since their software can be compromised.

A fully electronic system must be open-source. If it is proprietary, how can
we be sure that the software will count the votes accurately? Even then, ensuring
that the software has not been modified is difficult — the software can be digitally
signed and the hardware can check the signature — but the hardware could be
hacked too. I do computer security for a living too, and I know it is not simple.

Since there is no fully electronic voting solution that would pass muster with either
of us at this time, what alternative is there to counting the ballots (yes, all of them)
by hand?

OCR would be a great improvement over our lever machines that invite dirty tricks. The question comes down to the handling of the official record - for their own reasons, the handicapped have expressed their strong opinion through their representatives and for security considerations, computer experts who testified agreed.

As I noted, this is my profession, I've explored the options and while the status quo is not the best of all possible worlds, we've had considerable positive influence. In my state, for example, we've forsaken federal funds for the sake of getting a replacement system we can live with. A certain amount of failure is anticipated; the immediate problem is the non-political weakness of technology to deliver vital services.

I know we could agree on an approach that addressed all concerns, but I suggest the final compromise would approach my original endorsement: DREs that produce a VVPT.

And by law in a lot of places you can't have a recount unless the tally is really close —
so if they steal a lot of votes, they're home free.

VVPT, by definition, can be counted - whether it will has nothing to do with the technology and the issue at hand is the DRE. Your objection is irrelevant to the method, OCR, punch card or DRE - recounts will be limited by local authorities.

What I want is the capability to count all legal votes. VVPT satisfies that requirement and addresses the needs of the disabled.

Shouldn't it read the importance of their findings cannot be overstated? Great report. Great news.:)

The importance of a good editor cannot be OVERSTATED either! :-)

Thanks. Will correct that line in the story.

is what can't be overstated. Thank you.:hi:

paperless, unauditable, unrecountable voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations.

This citizen effort--SAVE R Vote--cannot be praised too highly. This is what needs to happen all over the country, in every precinct, county and state election venue. People who are willing to take this kind of time for the sake of the rest of us, for the sake of our country, and for the sake of our children are truly the greatest patriots this country has ever known, and are right up there with Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson and other revolutionary heroes. There is nothing--absolutely nothing--more important than restoring transparent elections in the USA.

I hope the next steps are removal of Barbara Dunmore as Registrar of Voters, and a movement by voters to request and use paper ballots, to demand that those paper ballots be hand-counted in public view, and to have the results posted at the precinct level before any electronics are used.

And I hope that the BoS takes all of the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission, in the meantime, except the one that restricts observer access to the electronic tabulation area. That suggestion is quite incompatible with transparent vote counting, and no doubt is a spiteful sort of item, included by ROV Dunmore, or to please or mollify her, in response to her ridiculous allegations (also included in the report) of "harassment" of election personnel by public observers.

I also take exception to optiscans/w central tabulators--both still run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code--to replace the worst of these election theft machines, the DREs. Optiscans can also be manipulated, as has been proven time and again in other tests, and in actual elections. And the central tabulators are the most likely culprits in stolen elections. There is no place for secret code anywhere in our election system--let alone secret code owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. What this optiscan-DRE switch means (--that is, substituting machines that have a ballot for paperless machines) is that the burden of discovering fraudulent totals and challenging the results still remains with the public, and not with the Registrar where the burden properly belongs. And many, many obstacles are placed in the way of discovering fraudulent totals, including lack of access to the central tabulators, inadequate auditing (automatic recount of a meager 1% of the vote), the high costs in time and money of any challenge, and the culture of secrecy that attends all of these corporate voting systems, which creates many opportunities for arrogant ROVs and private corporate personnel to fiddle the audits, insert and remove malicious code, and cover their tracks.

This matter is so serious that I have no hesitation in declaring that the fast-tracking of these election theft machines all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, WAS the fascist coup. THIS is why we have 70% of the American people opposed to the Iraq War and wanting ended, and a President and a Congress which just ESCALATED the war and have no intention of ending it, or giving up this new US foothold in the Middle East. Our political establishment has built the Taj Mahal of US embassies in Baghdad and they mean to stay--to hell with the American people! Non-transparent vote counting--which was arranged by the Anthrax Congress in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution, and is closely related to it--is their method of shoving this heinous war and other fascist policy down our throats.

So this is what the Save R Vote folks in Riverside County are saving. Our democracy itself. Although going to optiscans is not enough transparency, I know how difficult it has been to get even this concession from our highly corrupt government--and especially in counties like Riverside which have led the way in e-voting corruption, with officials like Dunmore who have been especially vicious partisans of these Bushite e-voting corporations. We can never cease in our vigilance as citizens--that much we have surely learned--and we must keep pursuing the goal of 100% transparency in all vote counting--which I'm sure Save R Vote will be doing. What incredible heroes! I am awed. And I am so grateful for their work, as we all should be.

One final note: The DIFFICULTY of the work undertaken by Save R Vote activists should be an alarm bell to us all that something is very wrong. The people of this country should NOT have to devote 18 hours a day, and three years of their lives, to get us back to Square One: transparent elections, the most fundamental condition for democracy. This is an example of how the fascist/corporate rulers who have taken over our government and our public airwaves have frozen progress, by making us scramble to restore the most basic functions of government, and have pulled the debate on every issue so far to right that the simplest, most commonplace principles of democracy--like vote counting that everyone can see and understand, or the vice president's office being part of the Executive Branch, or government officials having to respond to Congressional subpoenas, or the wrongness of the President using a sentence commutation to cover up the crime of treason, or egregiously unjust, illegal war, or torturing prisoners--have to be endlessly argued about.

It shouldn't be this way. There is something very wrong with this picture. And at the heart of this wrongness lay a Stalinist vote counting system that was pushed into place under the radar of the American people. But it is only through the local efforts of dedicated people like the Riverside Save R Vote activists that this fascist junta is going to be dislodged, county by county, state by state, in a long and difficult struggle to restore democracy.