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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 07/14/2003 2:00:54 PM PDT by freepatriot32
A California Libertarian who filed a potentially groundbreaking lawsuit against "touchscreen" voting systems is now waiting to learn whether an appeals court will hear oral arguments in the case.
Susan Marie Weber, a resident of Palm Desert, California, said she hopes to get word any day from the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
"We are awaiting the court's decision," she said. "If they say yes, then I will appear in court. If they decide to hear the case based on documents only, we will be notified to that decision. We check mail every day, having no idea when they will advise."
At stake in the case is whether the government can use Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touchscreen voting machines in Riverside County, California. The machines use an electronic voting system that produces no paper ballots.
Weber said the case is important to Libertarians "because nothing else matters if we have no vote."
"Without transparency in elections, and the ability to see a document to recount, we'll never know for sure" how many votes Libertarian Party candidates receive, she said.
"All Libertarians should be incensed that there is absolutely no way to verify any election that is on an electronic voting system. For a recount, the election officers merely put the cartridges into the counting machine and push the buttons. That is their 'proof' that the count was correct. Anybody who knows a smidgen of programming knows how manipulatable this system is."
A ruling against DRE voting systems could halt their distribution in California, said Weber, and create a legal precedent that could slow their acceptance around the USA.
Weber, who is Chair of the Desert Area Libertarians (Riverside County Region), filed the lawsuit in August 2001. It named California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend as defendants.
The suit was filed after Riverside County installed Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge System DRE voting machines.
Ironically, in an attempt to head off complaints about the system, Townsend demonstrated the DRE machines at a county Libertarian meeting, said Weber.
"She actually came right out and said: 'You need to trust me, I took an oath to the government.' She seemed puzzled when the roomful of Libertarians began laughing."
In her brief to the court, Weber argued that DRE machines, which record and tabulate votes electronically using a touchscreen "ballot," have no hardcopy mechanism to verify the accuracy of votes.
"Voters could never know for sure that their vote had been recorded as they intended, or that their votes, once recorded, would not be manipulated, either fraudulently or by a glitch," she said.
"In the event of a contested election, the absence of an independently auditable 'paper trail' [would] render a meaningful recount impossible."
The lawsuit argues that touchscreen voting systems are illegal under California law and violate the Fourteenth Amendment's "equal protection" clause. According to California Elections Code §19205, all voting machines must be "safe from fraud or manipulation."
At a hearing on May 14 in U.S. District Court (Central District of California), the secretary of state's attorneys countered that the voting machines were tested for accuracy under laboratory conditions.
But such a test could not uncover later software manipulation, or a "real-world" glitch that might occur when millions of people vote, said Weber.
In addition, according to the voting watchdog group, Election Guardians, the Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge System uses proprietary software, which closes "the doors to independent analysis of the source code to see how it actually does -- or does not -- count the votes."
If DRE voting systems are used, Weber asked the court to require printers to be added to the touchscreen machines, to produce a voter-verified paper ballot.
Other California voting systems -- pre-scored punch cards, Datavote systems, and optical scan ballots -- all have a paper hardcopy ballot trail to recount in the event of machine failure, noted Weber.
By contrast, touchscreen voting systems create "unobservable, unverifiable, non-recountable, untestable, non-public voter tallies," she said.
However, Weber lost the first round when Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled against her on September 3, 2002.
In his decision, Wilson said "the state's interest in easy, attractive voting machines which might increase voter turnout outweighed the voters' interest in verifiable results," said Weber.
"We are baffled by his decision," she said. "Convenience won out over verifiability."
The ruling allowed other California counties to proceed with their purchases of DRE voting equipment -- and led Weber to file an appeal with the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
In her appeal, Weber said that DRE voting systems violate "our nation's basic assumptions about human nature and the need for checks and balances to guard against the temptation and corrupting influence of power.
"When politicians routinely raise war chests of tens of millions of dollars, we must consider the ease with which these paperless voting systems can be manipulated," she said. "We need the check of voter verified ballots and the balance of an external audit of those ballots."
Filing supporting testimony for Weber were Peter Neumann (SRI International Computer Laboratories, Palo Alto), Rebecca Mercuri (a computer expert who testified before a U.S. House of Representatives' hearing on Voting Technology), and Kim Alexander (president, California Voter Foundation).
If she loses the current appeal, Weber said she will appeal again -- all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
"More and more people are dropping out of the voting process," she said. "They don't feel that their votes count. This voting system makes it even more difficult to believe that our voices are being heard."
Weber noted that the California LP has also weighed in against DRE voting systems.
At its state convention on February 17, 2003, delegates passed on a 54-14 vote a resolution that stated: "Because computers are subject to fraud and manipulation, we oppose any computer, Internet, or direct-record electronic voting system that does not use a voter-verified paper ballot as the ballot of count, recount, audit, and record."
In addition, Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) has filed a bill, HR 2239 (The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 ), that requires a "voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" of all votes. The bill was filed on May 22, 2003.
Weber holds a BS degree in Business Administration/Computers from California State University (San Bernardino). Professionally, she has been the co-owner of the Corvina Marina, an instructor at the College of the Desert, and the owner of an accounting service for small businesses. She is a past LP candidate for State Assembly and for the Desert Sands Unified School District board of trustees.
For more information on Weber's lawsuit, visit: www.electionguardians.org
So did these republicans
Did Illinois state employees illegally work to keep LP candidates off ballot?
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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It is in the breaking news sidebar! |
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Without a paper ballot, there is no way to recount a vote.
There's no telling where your little electrons went.
I'm in favor of fill-in-the-bubble paper ballots with electronic readers. Fast and there's a paper trail.
If you don't fill it out correctly, tough.
What would happen if our votes were actually counted??? Mind-boggling...
Sadly for the voters, elections aren't conducted in "laboratories."
More to the point, it is impossible to fully test anything but the most trivial computer program; hence, one can never be sure a paperless system such as this does NOT have a glitch or bug that would unexpectedly produce bogus results, to say nothing of opening the door to tampering.
We know this, they know this.
And yet, they actually believe going back to an obsolete system like butterfly ballots will change things.
Tell that to Albert Gore.
And what the hell does "the state's interest" have to do with it? Voting is a right of THE PEOPLE, not the state. The state doesn't have rights, only constitutionally limited powers.
Please, no comments such as, 'That's naive, judges do anything they want.' Such is not germane to a discussion of a ruling based in law as this obviously isn't.
I'm assuming you don't live in a Democrat-controlled area. Otherwise, I would hope you'd feel VERY uncomfortable about a voting system with no paper trail. Either that, or you are a heck of a lot more trusting of Dems than I am.
More like the party in power 'will never loose another election'.
They are counted. Just not they way you cast them!
You want to put a stop to it, and bring integrity to the voting process? Install poll watchers! They won't let you do it? Sue them! Take back the polls!
Don't you live in California? You're going to tell me that you trust the Democratic political establishment there enough to accurately count your vote? You're a much more trusting man than I.
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