My county just switched to ES&S Ivotronic. Shd I be happy about it?

We have been Micro-Vote and I've written a number of LTTEs to the paper about the fact that the vote on the MV cannot be "voter-verified" and MV has been involved in a couple widely publicized miscounts and bribery cases.

But my question is about the Ivotronic. Apparently, it has a paper print-out that the voter verifies at the time of voting. The lady I just talked to at the Elections Commissioners office seemed very proud of the new machines and I complimented her, saying it was definitely an improvement on the old machines. But I said I was concerned about auditing.

Is that the whole story? How is the print-out printed? It seems I read somewhere that some sort of easily smudged and not very durable ink is used to print on the paper.

I just called the Election Commissioner and left my number for him to call back.

Of course, the big problem is that audits are not required almost anywhere in the country and I'm sure they aren't required in Sedgwick County. But what about the machines?

Feedback appreciated.

Look at the postings in BradBlog, the problem log in VotersUnite.org - then do some google searches.

It's a mess

Asked him if he was aware of the problems ES&S was having nation-wide. They've evidently over-sold their computers and are having trouble servicing all their accts nation-wide.

He said that the county tries to keep everything at the local level, to do everything on their own and not rely on the ballots to be printed out by the vendor, etc.

The Ivotronic evidently uses thermal paper. I asked him if it wasn't true that the print out on this type of paper only lasts about 6 months. He didn't know about that.

Their proud as peacocks of their shiny new machines.

The way it supposedly works in KS is that the SofS's office opens the state for bids among the companies that are certified and then the best are chosen and then the local people choose among those certified.

I asked about Avante VoteTrakker, which is by accts I've read cheaper than the bigger names and one of the only ones I would trust if I had to have a voting machine. The commish didn't know anything about Avante.

Anyway, I thanked him for getting a paper trail, told him that was an important step.

Also suggested that he might present the idea, if he decided to do an audit, of using high school civics classes, which I think would be very willing I'm sure to do the counting for free. It wd also be good publicity for the Elections Division. I recommended at least 5% and since Sedgwick County is rather a small population, maybe even higher, 7 or 8% maybe. Told him about how it was handled. He didn't know if other places around the country used the audits. I cdn't give him any specific places but I think NC now has an audit requirement. CA was going to have one when Kevin Shelley was there, but don't know what happened to that.

Read about his suit against the ES&S machines that cheated for Dino Rossi in Snohomish County in 2004.

If there is no requirement to audit the paper, you're not much better off unless there's a recount. The current version of iVotronic prints out everything the voter does instead of just the summary screen that shows the final vote. This is said to be annoying, difficult to audit and use too much paper! Until this is fixed, this could cause longer waits as the paper runs out and has to be replaced. Storing all those rolls is a pain too. The VVPAT should only print out the summary of the votes, void it if necessary, and print it again when changes are made. Those who oppose the VVPAT will seize upon any opportunity to convince anyone who will listen that it's a problem, and design their machines accordingly.

Black Box Voting
Two voting companies & two brothers will count 80 percent of U.S. election using both scanners & touchscreens
By Lynn Landes
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

April 28, 2004—Voters can run, but they can't hide from these guys. Meet the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. Their respective companies, Diebold and ES&S, will count (using both computerized ballot scanners and touchscreen machines) about 80 percent of all votes cast in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Both ES&S and Diebold have been caught installing uncertified software in their machines. Although there is no known certification process that will protect against vote rigging or technical failure, it is a requirement of most, if not all, states.

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Yeah, right.

Bob:


Todd:

The fundamental problem of all these machines is that they are general purpose computers. These sorts of machines can be programmed to steal elections.