(A Sad Tale by Stanislevic) H.R. 811: Fact & Friction -- Part I

A quasi-insiders view of the making of Congressman Rush Holt's election reform bill, H.R. 811 (son of H.R. 550 in the last congress). Stanislevic hits on a number of subtle, yet crucial issues...and a few gaping holes too.

Read it. Weep.



"And the drafting process itself, while being somewhat open to the EI community, was not as open as advertised. Many important leaders in this movement had not even seen the drafts but more importantly, it was not possible to tell who had and who hadn't because there was no coordinated effort to make this known. This made meaningful collaboration and discussion rather difficult because no one knew who else had a copy of any particular draft and who did not." -Stanislevic

H.R.811: Fact & Friction -- Part I

by Howard Stanislevic

March 4, 2007

snip

Despite the best intentions of many in the election integrity (EI) community, there has been a relative lack of attention paid to certain crucial problems with the new Holt bill and their potential solutions. I'm speaking primarily about software-independent audits and recounts -- not just "auditability" -- a buzzword bandied about in Congressional testimony and elsewhere.

snip

One such example is the new language that makes the so-called paper "ballot" the ballot of record only in the event that irregularities are found in an audit or recount. The problem is there is nothing anywhere in the bill to require a recount, no matter how closely a race appears to be decided!

Therefore we are left with at most, a 10% manual audit standing between a correctly tabulated federal election outcome and an incorrect, possibly fraudulent one. Such an audit, which is the only requirement in the bill for a software-independent count, may not be enough to detect an outcome-altering discrepancy, or any discrepancy at all for that matter.

While some states may conduct manual recounts, others will not, or may only conduct recounts using software-dependent methods such as counting cast vote records from DRE memories or rescanning paper ballots.

snip

As I've said on several occasions in correspondence about H.R.811, the minimum audit is too big; the maximum audit is too small; sometimes the audits will be just right, but this will be purely coincidental.

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2007/03/hr811-fact-friction-part-i.html

Hand Count For Accuracy, this way no one can BITCH about the time it takes to Hand Count the ballots. any difference in the Count, Hand Count Becomes The Ballot O Record, For OBVIOUS reasons (PERIOD) How simple is that?

K&R..



"The bill with all its faults still has the potential to help solve the e-vote-counting problem by requiring voter-verifiable paper records, but it also has the potential to do away with software-independent recounts of those records in federal elections by sending a clear message that a 10% hand count is good enough for the US Congress.

The bill's supporters are quick to point out that it's "better than nothing", but personally, I expected more from a member of Congress such as Mr. Holt who, to his credit, has taken so much of an interest in this issue -- especially now that his party is in power".

vendors will not be accountable to the electorate:(

like Optiscan for speed, Hand Count For Accuracy, takes a whole lot of the "it will take to long to hand count the ballots" debate away, Scan the ballots first, then hand ALL them ballots over to our hand count groups, Because our groups don't mind how long it will take to hand count ALL the paper ballots, or give a complete AUDIT of the machine.
:)

the machine count is. Not a good idear to get speedy results that are known and then try to have a "pure" hand count.

How simple it is: Hand Count the Paper Ballots after the privately owned scanners have had their way with our votes!

In my state, and most others as far as i can tell, the official results aren't certified until seven days after the vote, so there is plenty of time.

I'd even settle for independent statisticians developing, in a public meeting, a method whereby only a fraction of the votes are hand counted and extrapolating those public results into a determination wherein it is decided if there needs to be a full hand count or the fractions were decisive of an honest tally.

BTW: finally saw "Man of the Year", the Robin Williams movie.... one of the most important movies I have ever seen. But then I am kinda biased towards full, open and honest democracy. If we had an honest democracy Gore would be serving his 6th year these days and we'd all be feeling a whole lot better, eh? Well, we've work to do and getting the count right is job one.

Qualifying Standard??

-- at least, as far as the audit percentages go, although I agree with all of Howard's criticisms of the audit percentages.

But, here's some audit math to think about. There are about 180,000 precincts (or equivalent) in the country, so a 3% audit would be about 5400 precincts. If there's a truly random and unrigged audit of 5400 precincts, and it comes back basically OK, then we could infer with great statistical confidence (about 99.8%) that at least 999 out of 1000 precincts were counted basically OK. (We should be so lucky.)

So as long as we are arguing about whether the election results are mostly sort of accurate, or off by many percentage points, a minimum 3% audit would be huge -- as long as the audit is sound (which I'm not taking for granted).

The problem is, a national precinct-miscount rate of even one in a thousand could be enough to make the difference in several races, if the miscounts were concentrated.

<<The problem is there is nothing anywhere in the bill to require a recount, no matter how closely a race appears to be decided!

This has to change. In local races I follow, just in the last few years, a mayorial race that was lost by a small margin did not achieve a recount because the mayorial candidate asking for the recount would have been forced to assume all the costs - this even though he had lost a portion of the absentee voters due to their not being sent out the absentee ballots on time for the election.

In a different race, the candidtate requesting the recount would have had to pay over $ 161,000 to recount the 101,000 votes. He lost by 600 votes. Doesn't it seem better to have the County assume the costs? If the marginis are that excruciatingly narrow.

States have been given discretion over many aspects of election administration, including the circumstances under which they award (or don't award) recounts in close races. I don't have deep thoughts about the theoretical rationales for that, but generally I like the principle that close races ought to be recounted. I'm not sure where I would set the threshold. Maybe at half a percent, in which case that last candidate you mentioned would just miss! Being a crazy empiricist wonk, I would want to know and think more about the history of recounts before really forming an opinion, but my sympathies are with the apparent loser(s).

Of course, HR 811 doesn't even try to mess (directly) with elections that aren't for federal office.

To circumvent a recount all the thieves have to do is to steal big in several ways as they did in Florida 2000. I'm recalling that you have to show cause about how votes were taken from your candidate IN A VERY SHORT TIME FRAME and these alleged votes have to be enough to swing the election your way. Others may remember more about this.

In State races, esp with a state as large as Texas where I live, the cost for recounts at the state level is prohibitive, except for the most well funded of candidates which are typically not our Dems.

I think this example is a bit too hypothetical unless we do away with the Electoral College (but that's hypothetical too of course).

It's quite consequential whether the precinct-level massive-miscount rate nationwide is nearer one in a thousand or, well, whatever the exit poll true believers think it must be in order to support their conjectures. (Somewhere above one in ten, at least, I suppose.) I'd rather live in a country where the first one is true, for sure.

That's very reassuring but I had no idea they had so much influence with the powers that be.

It's a lot easier to detect widespread, systemic fraud/miscount than miscount concentrated or targeted in particular small races.

But I couldn't resist mentioning the exit poll true believers because it seems like a lot of them are saying that the HR 811 audits are way too small -- but the HR 811 audits would be more than large enough to find out whether the exit poll true believers are right. (That's on the assumption that EPTBs are going to claim after every election that the exit polls point to massive fraud, which seems likely the way things are going.) Sometimes I think that EPTBs don't actually want to know whether they are right.* Of course, if the audits are no good, then it doesn't matter how big they are.

*EDIT TO ADD: Don't get me wrong, I'm not applying that to anyone and everyone who thinks the audit sizes are messed up. As far as I can tell, everyone who has thought about it agrees that the audit sizes are messed up -- people mostly disagree about whether somehow they are the best we can do right now.

(Excerpt)



What an effing disaster!