Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 01/28/07 - What Are Tiered Election Audits?

Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 01/28/07 - What Are Tiered Election Audits?


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Tiered Election Audits: New Report Issued by National Election Data Archive

eMediaWire.com
January 27, 2007
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/1/emw500351.htm

A recent report released by the National Election Data Archive (NEDA) entitled "Tiered Election Audits" suggests a tiered tabulation system for election audits may be the solution to ensuring the integrity of election outcomes.

(PRWeb) January 27, 2007 -- A recent report released by the National Election Data Archive (NEDA) entitled "Tiered Election Audits" suggests a tiered tabulation system for election audits may be the solution to ensuring the integrity of election outcomes.

Tiered Election Audits: New Report Issued by National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/release/Release-TieredElectionAudits.pdf

In light of the increase in contested elections since 2000; the 18,000 missing votes in Sarasota FL in 2006; the introduction of new voting technology that many reputable scientists insist is flawed; the decertification of the testing lab that certified a majority of US voting machines by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the conviction of two election officials in Ohio for rigging the 2004 presidential recount, concerned citizens are questioning the integrity of our voting systems.

According to Kathy Dopp, President of National Election Data Archive (NEDA), citizen oversight of tiered election audits is needed to ensure that election outcomes are accurate. "If the goal of elections is to ensure the will of the voters, then election audits need to be designed to ensure that election outcomes are correct", stated Dopp.

An election reform bill sponsored by Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) is being released on the U.S. House floor, perhaps as soon as this week. If Holt's new bill requires election audits whose goal is merely to ensure that a certain percentage of votes, say 95% of votes, are accurately counted, this would allow 5% of votes to be switched to the wrong candidate and leave any race with less than 10% margins between candidates open to vote fraud.

In close elections, a smaller amount of vote miscount can wrongly alter the outcome. A flat 2% or 3% audit of vote counts would often be insufficient to ensure accurate election outcomes. Also, in addition to a percentage, a minimum number of vote counts must be manually audited because some election races involve fewer total number of vote counts. For example, if one-in-20 vote counts were corrupt (altering a race within a 10% margin) then at least 20 vote counts must be sampled to have a reasonable chance to detect at least one of the corrupt counts. A 10% audit of 500 vote counts would sample 50 counts and be sufficient, but a 10% audit of 20 vote counts would sample only 2 counts and have little chance of detecting the corrupt vote count.

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2007/1/emw500351.htm

Legislators plan a fresh look at election reform
To avoid voting glitches, new machines that leave paper trails could be part of the solution for 2008

Etan Horowitz
Orlando Sentinel
January 28, 2007
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-vvoting2807jan28,0,6156007.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state

When Florida voters go to the polls in 2008, they could be casting ballots on new machines designed to boost their confidence.

State legislators are poised to tackle election reform during this year's legislative session, hoping to prevent an election glitch such as the one in Sarasota County last year, when 18,000 voters did not register a vote in a contested congressional race.

With about five weeks until the start of the session, at least five bills -- including two by Central Florida legislators -- have been filed proposing changes in the way votes are cast. Unlike his predecessor, Gov. Charlie Crist has said he supports a paper trail for electronic votes, which means it could receive serious consideration this year.

"I truly believe there are things we can do to improve the election process this year," said Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, chairman of the Senate's ethics and elections committee, which had a 21/2-hour meeting last week on paper trails, touch-screen machines and other election issues. "The paper trail is an issue that will be a hot topic this session." The bills require all votes cast on an electronic machine to have a paper trail.

Legislators and election officials say that in addition to the urgency created by the Sarasota situation, election reform must occur this year for changes to be implemented for the 2008 election.

"You will see some type of modification or change in direction when you go to the polls in 2008," said Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles, legislative chairman for the state elections-supervisors association.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-vvoting2807jan28,0,6156007.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state

Count every vote

Opinion
Miami Herald
January 26, 2007
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16548678.htm

OUR OPINION: BALLOT MISCUES ARE UNACCEPTABLE WHEN FIX IS POSSIBLE
Will all of the people in Miami-Dade County who went to the polls on Tuesday to cast a vote on the strong-mayor charter question but chose not to vote please raise your hand?

Election officials say you took the trouble to go to the polls but didn't cast a ballot because you want to keep your voting record perfect. Or, they say, you think you have to make it look like you voted in order to be able to vote in the next election. Really. These are the reasons given by new Secretary of State Kurt Browning for several hundred undervotes in an election that had only one item on the ballot.

It is beyond disappointing that Mr. Browning would blame voters rather than find ways to prevent undervoting -- such as, for example, requiring that Florida's electronic voting systems have a paper trail.

We have no way of knowing why the votes of so many people on the iVotronic touch-screen machines weren't counted in an election that had a small turnout. The machines have no paper trail. In contrast, absentee-ballot undervotes in this election are paper forms that are optically scanned. Some people may have misread the directions or put an X or some other mark on their ballot that couldn't be read by the scanner. Their votes could be counted if a recount were necessary.

The tally of undervotes is too small to have made a difference in Tuesday's election outcome, unlike the District 13 congressional race in November. More than 18,000 undervotes appeared in Sarasota County, which uses the same touch-screen machines as do Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The election was determined by a mere 369 votes, spawning lawsuits and controversy.

The persistence of undervotes on touch-screen machines in Florida elections makes a compelling case for a paper trail of votes. The Legislature can remedy this, and it should do so this year.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/16548678.htm

Deal frees 800 machines for March election

Jeremy Wallace
Herald Tribune, Sarasota, FL
January 27, 2007
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070127/NEWS/701270321

SARASOTA -- Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent will get to use 800 touch-screen voting machines for local elections in March, after her lawyers made a deal with Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings.

For months, the county's 1,500 touch-screen machines have been locked up in a warehouse because they are considered evidence in Jennings' lawsuit over the disputed 13th Congressional District election held in November.

Dent says she needs at least 800 machines for the March 13 election.

Items on the March ballot will include Sarasota City Commission races, a Longboat Key special election, the Holiday Park Special Taxing District election and a countywide charter amendment.

If approved by a judge, the deal would allow the machines to be used, but with stipulations. Those include preserving memory cards and replacing hard drives used to tally votes in the disputed Nov. 7 election. Jennings' campaign will pay $382.45 to replace the hard drives.

Dent is also seeking permission from the judge to begin selling Sarasota's touch-screen voting machines.

Jennings' attorneys are opposing that request, arguing that the county should not sell the current system until a new voting system is in place.
...
Jennings is still waiting for a state appellate court to decide whether to overturn a lower court judge's decision to deny her access to the voting machines' computer codes and hardware. Once that decision is made, the case will move back to the trial court, where Jennings is seeking a new election.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070127/NEWS/701270321

New Ruling: Dem Jennings Moves Forward In Push For Congressional Seat Held By GOP's Buchanan...

Melinda Henneberger
Huffington Post
January 25, 2007
Repost
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/25/new-ruling-dem-jennings-_n_39643.html

Democrat Christine Jennings has new reason to hope she may still be seated in the 110th Congress after a Florida court ruled in her favor yesterday, denying a motion that would have ended her appeal for a new election in Katherine Harris's old district in Sarasota.

But the race -- and Jennings's legal case -- is far from decided.

Her appeal is based on widespread complaints that electronic voting machines in Sarasota County failed to record thousands of votes in the race. The official count shows Jennings losing to her Republican opponent, Vern Buchanan, who has been sworn in provisionally, by 369 votes.

According to the official tally, 15 percent of those who turned out on Election Day chose to skip over the Congressional race. But hundreds of voters reported that though they tried repeatedly, they could not get the touch screen voting machines to register a vote in that one race.

Earlier, a Florida circuit judge had denied Jennings's access to the voting machines, citing privacy concerns for the manufacturer, Election Systems & Software. She appealed that ruling, and the district appeals court yesterday dismissed a motion that her appeal be denied, which means that the case can now go forward: "It's a good sign they're open to considering it," said Jennings campaign spokesman David Kochman. "It would have been a tough hit if we had lost it."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/01/25/new-ruling-dem-jennings-_n_39643.html

Other Voices - We urgently need to fix our voting system

Lee Hamilton
Missori Valley Times
January 24, 2007
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=326&dept_id=449009&newsid=17745779&PAG=461&rfi=9

As the 110th Congress convened January 4, its members had only to look around them to be reminded of an issue they should be addressing this session. Indeed, they could look this reminder right in the face.
His name is Vern Buchanan, and he was sworn in as the duly elected representative of Florida's 13th District. He won his seat by 369 votes, but his opponent has called into question why some 18,000 people in the district who voted for other races on the ballot seem not to have cast votes in the House contest.
The questions over whether the computerized voting machines in Sarasota County operated properly are yet another reminder of a serious problem that our representative government faces and that Congress needs to address: Our voting system is fragile and desperately in need of shoring up.
Ever since the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, Americans have been aware that the systems by which we record, tally, and verify votes don't always work. Yet there seems no great sense of urgency, either among the public or in Congress, about making sure we fix things right now. This puzzles me. If elections are defective, our entire system is at risk.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=326&dept_id=449009&newsid=17745779&PAG=461&rfi=9

High time to test electronic voting machines

Thomas Elias, Opinion
Whittier Daily News, CA
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_5095879

LITTLE or no analysis has accompanied the ever-increasing phenomenon of absentee voting in California elections (more than 43 percent of all ballots cast last fall were absentee). Rather, politicians of all stripes are more interested in how to exploit the trend than in why it's happening.

Reasons like traffic, convenience and flexibility are usually given for the vast upsurge in voting off-site, a practice that has doubled during the last three election cycles.

But there may be one other cause no one has noted: trust, or the lack of it.

For the spike in absentee voting coincides with the introduction of electronic voting machines into California elections. For several years, there was not even the guarantee of a voter-verified paper trail when votes were cast on touch-screen machines.

Many voters believe absentee ballots can be trusted more than those cast by machine because they are paper, and can be physically recounted when election results are in doubt.

Lack of trust also might be a reason many eligible people don't bother to vote at all.

Even with paper trails, which were required for the first time in last year's June and November votes, problems occurred. Printers
malfunctioned, paper jams messed up some vote slips, and a few machines obstinately refused to print at all.

Meanwhile, doubts arose over the reliability of both the touch screen machines and optical scanners that counted paper ballots in many places.

There were questions about the security of voting machines taken home by poll workers days and weeks before election day, both in a summertime special election and in the full November vote.

All of which means it's high time for an official, highly public test of the reliability of electronic voting. And what better place for such a test than Riverside County, which pioneered electronic voting during the late 1990s?
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/opinions/ci_5095879

Election tuneup is called priority

Aman Batheja
Star-Telegram
January 27, 2007
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/legislature/16560389.htm

After a year in which voters across the state expressed a lack of confidence in election returns, several lawmakers are pushing measures including a backup system for electronic voting machines, last-minute registration and required proof of citizenship.

Creating a voter-verifiable paper trail for electronic voting machines in particular is generating strong bipartisan support after snafus in counting the vote in Tarrant and other counties during last year's primaries.

"I am very concerned about the integrity of the vote," said Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, one of four representatives to file bills concerning electronic voting machines.

The three other bills were filed by Reps. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, and San Antonio Democrats Jose Menendez and David Leibowitz. Similar measures failed in 2005, but Peña and Kolkhorst said the chances of passing a bill are better this session.

A paper-trail system would consist of a printer in a sealed case attached to every voting machine that would let voters check their votes against the receipt. The paper trail could then be consulted in the event of a recount.

Calls for better accountability for electronic voting machines have grown louder over the past year as counties across the state tried new equipment, with many Texans expressing concern over whether their votes were properly counted.

In March, Tarrant County election officials initially reported 100,000 extra votes cast. The report resulted from human error and was quickly corrected, but it became part of a litany of incidents nationwide that critics say proved that electronic voting machines can too easily distort the outcome of an election.

Hart InterCivic, the Austin company that manufactures the machines used in Tarrant County, offers an attachment that would provide a voter-verified paper trail, but its use has not been approved in Texas.
...
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/legislature/16560389.htm

Democrats Give Voting Rights to Nonstate Delegates

NewsMax.com Wires
January 25, 2007
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/25/122613.shtml?s=po

WASHINGTON -- Democrats on Wednesday pushed through a rules change giving limited voting rights on the House floor to the chamber's five nonstate delegates. Republicans described the move as an unconstitutional power grab.

With the 226-191 vote, delegates representing the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa can cast ballots on amendments. The lawmakers, however, will not be allowed to vote on final passage of legislation. If the delegates' votes decide the outcome of an amendment, the House immediately will vote again without the delegates' participation.

"This is symbolic. The delegates know it," said Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. "But it is an opportunity for them to participate."

"It's simply the right thing to do," said Virgin Islands Del. Donna Christensen, a Democrat. "We can make this small step toward inclusion of all Americans."

Democrats imposed the rule the last time they were in power, in the 1993-95 session. The qualification that delegates could not determine the outcome of a vote was added to avoid conflict with the Constitution, which says that the House should be made up of representatives chosen by the "several states."

Republicans in 1993 sued to overturn the rule. A U.S. District Court judge, in a decision upheld on appeal, said the rule was lawful because it did not enhance delegate rights to vote on legislation.

Republicans indicated they were ready to pursue it to the Supreme Court this time. "We're going to embark on another legal struggle just as we did 14 years ago," said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., the top Republican on the House Rules Committee.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/1/25/122613.shtml?s=po

And also some of this: :hug:

When are you going to change your name back to frenchfries...I mean, isn't it about time?

freedom from * - fries

right, freedomfries? :evilgrin:

...llghtness on the key board. Dump the trans fatty acids and the guy is off like a rocket.

I still say, Frenchfries - meke 'em with olive oil and it's all a health food experiment.

San Francisco Chronicle

Steven Hill
Sunday, January 28, 2007

Californians and their state government are drifting further apart.

A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found only 20 percent of November voters believe our state will be a better place to live in 2025; 51 percent say it will be worse. Another poll by the New America Foundation found widespread dissatisfaction with the two major political parties, even Democratic and Republican voters indicating their weariness of voting for the "lesser of two evils."

For the first time in modern California history, a majority of adults are not registered with either of the two major parties and say that California needs another major political party.

Why have Californians lost so much faith in their political leadership?

A separate study by the policy institute suggests one illuminating explanation: There is a widening breach between most of the 35 million people residing in California and the fewer than 9 million who actually vote. Today, the California adult population is approximately 46 percent white, 32 percent Latino, 12 percent Asian and 6 percent black. Yet, 7 in 10 likely voters are white while only 1 in 6 is Latino. A third of California adults are foreign-born, but 9 in 10 who frequently vote are native born.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/01/28/INGGPNPCMI1.DTL