New Voting Systems in CA a Total Shambles

KFI 640am | March 2, 2004

[Cinnamon Girl]

KFI's reporter Eric Leonard was reporting various problems at polling places around CA, this morning. San Diego county, which invested millions in the Diebold touch screen computer system, is having problems with screens freezing up or computers being completely inoperable.

In Westminister and other parts of Orange County, voters are typing in the voting pin numbers and ONLY Democrat ballots are popping up.

Los Angeles County, which could not afford computer touch screen systems at this time (fortunately) is using the Inka system, which marks ballots with an ink mark in a circle. Someone who voted today told me his ink spots were outside the circles and, when shown to poll workers, was told it didn't matter. Does anyone know if these votes will still register?

It really seems that the punch card chad system was fine and good and there was no reason to revamp the system. With a punch card, there is physical evidence of the vote, and the voter can check to see that only the holes are punched out that they want. What was wrong with that?

I'm about to go vote. Please check in with your voting reports.

[Centurion2000]

paper ballots ... anything less will lead to false elections.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Hi. I just got back from voting. There were 11 Dem booths and 3 Rep. booths. I had to wait to use the one Rep booth set up for my district.

From what I saw, the elderly ladies with blue, purple, pink, or orange hair were out voting in FULL FORCE.

I liked the punch cards better, but I was able to work the inka circles. I recommend checking to see that you actually did mark in the circle you wanted, though.

My vote counts about 10 TIMES! Yeay!

[daviddennis]

My polling place workers seemed absolutely thrilled by the new "no more chads!" ballots, but I can't say I saw a frightful lot of difference. Looked like essentially the same system to me.

I did notice that the pen they issued was marking the ballot, insofar as I could tell correctly.

Where is your district? Mine's Woodland Hills up in the hills.

D

[sphinx]

Time to use simple, handwritten ballots, and the heck with all this machine or computer based stuff which are too easy to hack or malfunction on their own.

You have obviously never counted paper ballots.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Yeah, it puts a dot on the ballot, but you do need to make sure it marked fully the circle that you wanted. That's all. Not a big deal.

[calcowgirl]

The Demonrats were the ones pushing for this system, right?
The Demonrats have just disenfranchised the Republican voters. I demand reparations!!!!

I smell a rat, but unfortunately, they may be among us. Our own Republican candidate for US Senate, Bill Jones, was certainly not looking us.

San Diego Union-Tribune February 9, 2004

In September 2001, former Secretary of State Bill Jones ordered San Diego and eight other California counties to end their use of their punch-card voting system.

The order came in the wake of the controversy over disputed ballots cast in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. Also, at the time, a coalition of organizations had sued the state to end the use of punch-card ballots.

LA Times February 26, 2004

Jones went to work for a short time last year as a $10,000-a-month consultant to Sequoia Voting Systems, a touch-screen voting machine company. His primary responsibility: giving the company entree to officials in other states. Jones and the company parted ways shortly before he announced his run for U.S. Senate, and after news reports critical of his consulting work so soon after leaving office.

[Carry_Okie]

what would you like to see the system do?

You asked. ;-)

Here's a pertinent piece I wrote in December 2002.

Ballot Transparency to Eliminate Fraudulent Counts

Voters have read and seen all sorts of assurances that the new touch-screen balloting systems are fool proof, tamper proof, and nothing to worry about. Many, including those who are familiar with the technology, are not at all reassured.

The concerns are on two levels. First, from the perspective of those not familiar with the technology, it is a device whose inner workings and inherent security they cannot possibly understand. If they can't understand it, how can they be assured that it is honest? Second, those who DO understand signal processing, software, and communications technology know that is far too easy to defraud the system in a way that would be irreversible and undetected. Either way, touch-screens are a loser.

Now, as users of ATMs, cell phones, the Internet, and other electronic media, it might at first seem a little strange that so many people have such concerns. Upon further consideration however, the key distinctions between voting and a service handling mere money become obvious:

• Customers have a choice of banking vendors. Citizens don’t have a choice of governments.
• There is a major difference between mere financial assets at risk, and a risk to individual liberty.

Governments are monopolies. One can go down the street to another bank and take the offending bank to court. An evil government can land you in prison (or worse) because they ARE the court. The stakes associated with voter fraud are far higher than with an ATM and so is the temptation to defraud the system.

Necessary and Sufficient

So, given that we are still smarting over hanging chads, what are the alternatives? Let’s begin to answer that question by looking at the requirements.

1. The system has to be simple and familiar to the voter.
2. There must be NO SOFTWARE involved, because it is too easy to change.
3. The system must be capable of completely manual operation.
4. The count must be capable of being validated by all parties involved and each count must be separate and distinct.
5. There must be no possibility to count a ballot twice or "lose" counts along the way.

Electronic sensors and interlocks are permissible as long as they can be duplicated manually.

Here is my proposal for a system that meets these requirements:

At the Polling Place

1. Ballot boxes are preprinted, serialized and tracked by a physical chain-of-custody document.
2. The box must be destroyed to be opened.
3. The box is locked under a ballot receiving machine.
4. The ballot receiving machine at the polling place reads the box number and records it on the ballot in Scantron form on the back side (fill in the dots). Note that one could do the same manually under observation.
5. The voter completes the standard optical ballot and delivers it to the receiving machine.
6. The machine prints the box number on the back of every ballot it accepts with a Scantron dot pattern. This too can be both read and performed manually. Then a dry film coating (basically an adhesive or heat activated tape) is applied to the ballot on the way into the sealed ballot box.
7. The coating is transparent but reveals a "watermark" when exposed to UV light. The ballot is now tamperproof.
8. The receiving machine totals the number of ballots in every box. The total is read manually and a receipt is delivered to each political party and candidate detailing the box numbers, precincts, and tally of ballots in every uniquely identified box.
9. Representatives of all Parties check the box tallies before the boxes leave the polling place.
10. If they agree on its accuracy, they record the ballot tally on the box using Scantron dots, initial it, and put a similar dry film over the number.

Note that the Scantron pattern is the perfect bridge between human and machine. It is readable by people for manual counting but does not require an optical character reading machine that needs cameras or software.

Both parties thus know the EXACT number of ballots cast in every precinct and in every box. Every box is signed. All parties can thus run check sums at the processing centers and verify the chain-of-custody.

At the Ballot Counting Center

1. The total of the ballots on the box is read by the counting machine. It would be very similar to the existing optical reader and might only require very minor modifications.
2. The counting machine reads the box code for precinct and ballot count or accepts that data input from a keypad read off the box by at least two witnesses with keys. The machine will not count the ballots without the UV visible watermark on the ballot over the votes AND matching precinct codes on the box and the ballot.
3. The machine halts and will not display the vote totals if the number of ballots recorded on the box and the number it counts do not match.
4. The ballots leave the counting machine get a NEW ballot box. Counted ballots are stamped again with output box number, recoated, and then deposited into the new sealed ballot box.
5. The new coating was applied in case of a recount, thus each ballot thus maintains a recount history.

[Deo volente]

My ballot wasn't perfectly aligned with the machine, so all my pen marks were partly in, partly out of the circles. I asked a poll worker if that was a problem, she said "No."

There were about 5 Democratic booths, and only 2 Republican booths. The poll worker announced out loud , "He's a Republican", and she told me, "Go down there to the end of the room. There's your booth."

After I finished, they just matter-of-factly thanked me, and didn't even give me that little sticker that said I voted.

All the poll workers were over 60, except a young woman about 20 with a little baby who was chewing on a piece of campaign literature.
I commented to the young mom, "I feel the same way" and she just stared at me.

Definitely felt the cold shoulder.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Well, the good news is, if you use the touch screen system, you can get $40 cash back.

[js1138]

I'm thinking he machines are difficult to hack; that's why they quit working when you try

The paper ballots that you mark are the only way o go. They have everything: security recountability. All they need to be perfect is a "none of the above" slot to prevent null votes from being filled in by election workers.

[kevkrom]

I went to the polls in Maryland today and was offended three times in five minutes:

1. The voting machines were electronic-only touch-screen devices. No hinto of any type of paper trail or accountability. I am left to hope that my vote was correctly recorded and that it will be tabulated, because I don't see a person (or persons) responsible for chain of custody.

2. The "I Voted" sticker they slapped on me as I left was bi-lingual -- English and Spanish. Isn't the ability to speak English a requirement for the citizenship exam? If so, then why do election materials have to be bi-lingual?

3. I caught a glance at the Democrat primary sample ballot while I was waiting for Mrs. kevkrom to finish voting -- there are actually separate sections for delegates to the convention for male and female delegates! So much for affirmative action not meaning quotas...

[GregD]

Was this a radio guy? Did he refer to anything on which he bases this statement? That is the first I have heard of such a discussion, and I run www.verifiedvoting.org so I am surprised to hear this. Not unpleasantly surprised, just uhhh, shocked.

As far as I am concerned, Diebold is evil and should have nothing to do with our elections. And that is NOT intended to be a partisan comment, their e-mails and their overall behaviour reveal that they simply appear to be completely and thoroughly corrupt.

We have been screaming for months that these paperless machines should not be used. Again, it's not a partisan arguement - it's just a reality that these machines are not worthy of ANYONE's trust.

To resolve this, other than throwing the silly things away, we need to pass HR2239 and S1980. Those bills require a voter-verified paper ballot for these touchscreen systems, and a paper-based backup for November (if the VVPB cannot be installed by that time.) If you will help us do that, all of us: "left, center and right" will win. Democracy will win.

Please visit www.verifiedvoting.org and become involved. You are more than welcome, we need you badly. We are a non-partisan effort. Hope to see ya there.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Eric Leonard is a reporter for KFI. He's been following the whole diabold scandal. John & Ken, who are on right now, are continuing the discussion of this touch screen trash.

[Cinnamon Girl]

The reporter I refer to says part of the problem is that the Diebold system is EASY to hack. I suspect, if some freshmen in high school can hack their school computer system and change grades, there are plenty of nerds in this country who could change the vote tallies.

[Hildy]

What happened to me was weird...I have always been a registered Independent, and there fore been able to vote whichever primary I wanted. When I got my electronic card and inserted it, the candidates for the AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY came up. By that time it was too late to take the cards out. The poll workers had no idea what to do. Once the card is in it won't come out until you cast your ballot. Once I casted my ballot, I couldn't do another one. Sensing the poll workers were getting a little nervous, I just said it was ok, but if my candidate lost by 1, I'd be really mad! I was still able to vote for the judges and propositions. It was weird. But the machine itself was very easy to use. If they can figure out a way to make all of this work, I do think it would be good.

[Cinnamon Girl]

My understanding is that if you are registered Independent, then you are voting for the Independent party. If you want to be an "independent" then you have to register "decline to state."

[Hildy]

If that's the case, with the old ballots it didn't matter, because I just asked for a Republican balliot and I got it. I've never had a problem before.

[Cinnamon Girl]

I didn't think you could just ask for whatever ballot you wanted. They're supposed to check and see what you are registered as and give you the appropriate ballot.

[joanofarc]

Voted today in Chino Hills,CA via touchscreen.
If voting could be made any more simple, chimpanzees could vote.

[Andy_Stephenson]

Hi Andy here....

I am a researcher on the BBV problem. I am running for office in Washington state as a Democrat on this issue. But the issue I am running on is non partisan! I would lay down my life for every Americans right to vote. The systems being deployed across the nation right now, are error prone and have been soundly denounced by every major computer expert in the country.

Diebold's software was left on the internet. We have all the release notes and bug tracks available for public scrutiny. It has been examined tested and vetted and found to be unsafe for elections.

Today there were problems with the smart cards all over in Md, GA, and CA. Read this note, one of 15k leaked to Bev Harris it refers to the smart cards.

"Do not install the windows software that comes with the Spyrus reader. If you install it, then COM1 will be locked out by the driver, and downldr.exe won't work. My hope is that the Spyrus CD and instructions be removed from the box in McKinney before shipping so this confusion is avoided.

Note that distributing this software is extremely dangerous. Our smart card format has absolutely no security, so if someone were to get a copy of this software and a reader, they could stand at the ballot station and quietly burn new voter cards all day. Of course that's also the case with PollBook.exe, but a notebook computer is a little harder to smuggle into a polling place, and besides most of our staff has trouble setting up a poll book, let alone outsiders. The Card Manager (Spyrus) is actually simple to use. Anyway, I can see the cover of USA Today in my head. Consider everyone warned.

Good luck,

Ken"





http://www.blackboxvoting.org/smartcardmemo.html


We must all agree to

Paper Ballots not vapor Ballots

Andy