Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As reported by VoteTrustUSA, “The Financial Services Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on "Ensuring the Integrity of Elections" on Wednesday March 7 at 2:00 PM in the Rayburn House Office Building. Witnesses for this hearing will be EAC chair Donnetta Davidson, former EAC commissioner Ray Martinez, Randolph Hite, Director, Information Technology Architecture and Systems, United States Government Accountability Office and Avi Rubin, Director of ACCURATE and professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.”

David Allen of BlackBoxVoting.Com has stated about the possible sale of Diebold’s election arm, "It would be easier to sell Titanic brand cruise ships, or Hindenburg brand zeppelins than a Diebold voting machine company.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

There are many good provisions in the new election reform bill (HR 811 introduced by Congressman Rush Holt D-NJ), called the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.” There is significant momentum in the U.S. House to pass the bill as written; and it is on a "fast-track."

BUT, the bill allows the continued use of electronic "ballots" --- invisible data on a computer --- as the ballots of record. Democracy demands that voters can know the selections on their own ballots. This means all ballots must be cast on paper and only paper – no electronic ballots, which keep the ballot secret from the voter.

The members must hear from us - NOW - that the bill urgently needs an amendment to ban electronic ballots.

We are not seeking to "kill" the bill, but to gain support for an amendment banning electronic ballots and the use of Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting machines, which create them. We believe we have a chance!

Here's what you can do: Go to VotersUnite.Org and take part in the action to ask Congress to support an amendment to ban DRE voting machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Miller Co. Arkansas Election Administrator Robby Selph resigned from his job saying this about Election Systems and Software, “The reason I am leaving is the provider of the Ivotronics and related software lacks competency to make their equipment work timely and effectively. They ... make a difficult job impossible to do. They can’t spell, meet deadlines, send documents to the right address or code elections correctly. They leave races off the ballot for us to correct, they can’t program their software to work and you have to hand add the results. And they don’t return phone calls. The ES&S people in Arkansas are capable but the people I have dealt with in the home office in Omaha prevent them from being effective. They are also mean-spirited when you try to get them to correct the numerous and recurring errors.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In a disturbing article from Chicago, IL, it is revealed that Cook County will pay Sequoia for their voting machines based on a sliding scale that will be controlled by how quickly machines transmit results to election headquarters and also by how quickly those votes can be tabulated. The county does not seem to care as much about accuracy or security as it does for speed. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

LINK There are many good provisions in the new election reform bill (HR 811 introduced by Congressman Rush Holt D-NJ), called the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.” For example, it would ban wireless communications to reduce the possibility of some types of hacking; it would prevent Diebold, Sequoia, and other voting machine companies from using secret software on the voting machines; and it would require partial hand counts to check the accuracy of the machines.

However, the primary problem with the bill is that it allows the continued use of Direct Record Electronic (DRE), or “touch screen” voting machines, as long as they print out a copy of the electronic record of your vote for you to approve (called a “voter-verified paper audit trail” or “VVPAT”). But this “band-aid” cannot solve the systemic problems inherent to DREs. Democracy demands that DREs be banned from all American elections.

It has been said of those calling for a “ban DREs” amendment to HR 811 that we intend to “kill” the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not seek to remove this bill from consideration; we seek to correct a fundamental omission, which we believe presents a grave danger to all future elections....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an excellent, must-read, article in “The Free Press” authors Victoria Parks and Paddy Shaffer relate, “The Squire v. Geer case is more than just a mere election challenge lawsuit; the reliability of electronic voting was on trial last week in a small courtroom in Franklin County, Ohio. Voting rights activists see the issues before the court as going to the heart of democracy itself and whether or not election results obtained through the computerized voting machines can be trusted.”

And they sum-up their article thusly: “Electronic voting seems more questionable than ever as vendors pass on the substantial costs of software service contracts to taxpayers in already financially cash-strapped counties. Electronic voting also appears more vulnerable than ever at this time of slumping voter confidence. In the final analysis, the integrity of electronic voting continues to dog this industry — a private industry that holds so much power over a democratic process meant to be fully transparent and accountable to the public. The trial reconvenes Wednesday, February 28, to hear final arguments. Afterwards, Sacco's findings go before a three judge Appeals Court panel which will decide to accept or reject his recommendations. All Franklin County judges have been removed from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

“Florida's Congressional District 13 race and the report of conflicts between the paper trail records and the electronic ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio are only two recent examples of how elections using DRE technology cannot be trusted and how confusing the technology can be to voters. Evidence overwhelmingly confirms that, even with the addition of a voter-verified paper audit trail, DREs cannot be made to serve our nation's need for universal citizen enfranchisement. It would constitute a grievous error to further codify the use of DRE systems, as is currently done by the redefinition of "voter verified paper ballot" found at the beginning of HR 811's Section 2(a)(1). We believe that all voters should have equal access to accurate, secure, meaningfully observable, and verifiable election systems. DREs have been touted as providing this kind of election system, but America’s experience with hundreds of documented DRE failures and thousands of voters disenfranchised by them proves otherwise. Any voter required to use a DRE is at once relegated to second-class status, given that other voters can vote on voter-marked paper ballots. Evidence shows that voter-marked paper ballots, combined with existing ballot-marking interfaces, provide both equity and parity to disabled and language minority voters in full compliance with ADA and HAVA.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

While organizations like People For The American Way, Common Cause, and Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition argue that the continued use of DRE voting machines is necessary to support the foreign language speaking minority, they ignore that those machines may, in fact, serve to disenfranchise more voters from that community than they help. A new study from VotersUnite.Org proves that the undervote rate in minority communities in New Mexico plummeted when those communities changed from DRE to optical scan voting systems.

According to BradBlog; “California's new Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, has flatly rejected a request from Riverside County, CA County Supervisor Jeff Stone to participate in a "hack test" challenge originally proposed to Election Integrity Advocates in response to their concerns about security and accuracy for the county's electronic touch-screen voting machines.” ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Princeton’s Professor Ed Felten said this in regards to the Sarasota Co. Florida voting machine report, “Experience teaches that systems that are insecure tend to be unreliable as well — they tend to go wrong on their own even if nobody is attacking them. Code that is laced with buffer overruns, array out-of-bounds errors, integer overflow errors, and the like tends to be flaky. Sporadic undervotes are the kind of behavior you would expect to see from a flaky voting technology. The study claims to have ruled out reliability problems as a cause of the undervotes, but their evidence on this point is weak, and I think the jury is still out on whether voting machine malfunctions could be a significant cause of the undervotes.”

The town of Putney, Vermont may be about ready to accept a free optical-scan machine from the state. They will no longer count their votes the traditional way; hand counting. Gone will be the crowd of counters sharing pizza and enjoying the community spirit. Putney is not alone as 75 of the state’s 246 municipalities have already made the decision to change over to optical-scan. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, “A state-mandated test of voting machines before the March municipal election went off without a flaw Friday at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, officials said. Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson tested 2 percent of the 830 machines that will be in use during the March 13 city elections, running mock ballots to make sure the computerized voting systems and touch-screen machines are working.” 2 percent? That’s not a test, it’s a spot check.

In a press release today PFAW said, “An audit report released by the Florida Secretary of State’s office regarding Sarasota County’s November election debacle came under fire shortly after its release today. “This audit’s a whitewash. It is the result of a flawed process overseen by people with a stake in the outcome, and it will not be the last word on this matter,” said People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas. “Something went terribly wrong in Sarasota County last November—and voters have provided credible evidence that widespread voting machine malfunctions were part of the problem. Unfortunately, this report papers over that evidence.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, “San Francisco supervisors told representatives of a voting machine company Wednesday that the firm will need to publicly display details of the software it uses to count ballots in order to win a $12.6 million, four-year contract with the city. At a Budget and Finance Committee hearing, Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly urged representatives of Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland to place software codes for touch-screen voting devices and paper ballot-scanning machines on the Internet or in another public forum, so the public can review how the machines tabulate votes.” ... Steven Bennet, a Sequoia representative, said Sequoia won't agree to public disclosure [of source code on voting machines] since it would "jeopardize the security to all of our customers in California and across the country."” ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

An article in today’s Oakland Tribune relates, “In a blow-by-blow on his school Web page and in a separate filing for an electronic voting lawsuit in New Jersey superior court, computer science professor Andrew Appel [Princeton University] details how he was able to purchase five of the Oakland-based company's AVC Advantage machines off a Web site auctioning government surplus items, pry open the backs and access the computer chips that control the vote count. He said security features touted by the Oakland-based company on its Web site were not in place on the machines.” Meanwhile Sequoia ‘spokes-deceiver’ Michelle Shafer ignores the facts and says, "This is not a real-world scenario. The equipment is not kept somewhere where people have unfettered access to it." Shafer does not live in the real-world where counties allow “sleep-overs” or store the machines, in the open, without guard at the polls for days before and after an election. Shafer speaks from a different plane where down is up and up is down....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

USAToday reports, “A study by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University shows turnout in 2004 was about 4% lower in states that required voters to sign their name or produce documentation. Hispanic turnout was 10% lower; the difference was about 6% for blacks and Asian-Americans.” And what do we hear from the Election Assistance Commission that, last year, buried a report that found there was very little evidence of voter fraud, the very reason some say they need voter ID laws? The commission's chairwoman, Donetta Davidson, called the study "premature." More work needs to be done, she said. "You can't make determinations based on one year," she said. "We have new states that have ID requirements now that weren't in that review."” If Davidson can’t bury the truth it appears she will deny it exists....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

There must be no undisclosed voting system software. However, HR 811's proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(9), as currently written, fails to exempt software that is truly Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) from public disclosure. The bill must be amended to require true COTS software, such as the Windows operating system and standard printer drivers, to be escrowed and available to officials under confidentiality, but not publicly disclosed. // Connecting voting system components to the Internet or transmitting system information over the Internet facilitates hacking. However, HR 811's proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(11), as currently written, would allow the central Election Management System (EMS) computer of a voting system to be connected to the Internet. The EMS computer of a voting system is arguably the component most critical to protect from Internet connection. The bill must be amended to ban all Internet connections for all components of a voting system. In addition, the bill should include a ban on the Internet transmission of voted overseas ballots referenced in HR 811's proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(2)(C)....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A judge in New Jersey has threatened to pull the plug on the state’s Sequoia Advantage voting machines. State law requires voting systems be tested and certified by the state yet the only documents the state could find to show they certified the machines was a document from 1987. The judge has given the state 20 days to provide all documents that show there had been further testing and certification of changes to the original system. The judge also seems to have doubts as to whether Sequoia can successfully provide a state mandated vvpat printer for the Advantage machines by Jan. 2008. She has given the state three months to prove to her satisfaction that they have a good back-up plan.

Studies show that most voters do not verify the "paper trail" of their ballot, printed by a DRE; a fact denied by Common Cause and other groups who fervently defend the Holt Bill (HR-811). A voter verified paper audit trail printer on the machines in Sarasota County would have made little to no difference in the undervote rate in the CD-13 race. By contrast, voter-marked paper ballots are inherently verified by the voters, and thus provide a true record of voter intent and they would have made all the difference in the world in Sarasota County. ...