Hallelujah!
Voters with disabilities are finally beginning to speak out against the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, often known as “touch-screen”) voting systems!
After years of DRE supporters, and indeed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, using the canard that blind and disabled voters must use DREs to vote privately and independently, a number of leaders in the disabilities community are speaking out against their having been used as a wedge to force the nationwide implementation of such disenfranchising, dangerous voting systems.
Two different landmark statements on the issue have now been released, The BRAD BLOG has learned. One statement [PDF] released last week by the Disability Law Center and the ACLU speaks in support of the decision by the Massachusetts Secretary of State to approve the use of ballot marking devices, as opposed to DREs, for use by the state’s disabled voters.
The second, released today to The BRAD BLOG in advance of Congressional subcommittee hearings tomorrow, is signed so far by more than 20 leaders of the blind and disabled communities and calls for “an immediate ban” on DRE voting systems. Like the release from the Disability Law Center, the newly released statement crushes the long-overused myth that such unsecure, disenfranchising, failed technology is required for disabled access to private, independent voting. (The complete statement is posted at the end of this item.)
“Providing secure voting machines for voters with disabilities is part and parcel of protecting [disabilities voters’] rights to equal access to the ballot and to having their votes reliably counted,” said Stanley J. Eicher, Executive Director of the Disability Law Center in their March 5th statement.
“The decision by the Secretary shows that it is both possible and essential to build common ground between the disability rights community and the growing number of citizens who are concerned that many of the proposed new technologies are subject to tampering and error,” said Eichner, adding notably, “We must debunk the myth that we have to choose between accessible voting and verifiable voting. Democracy requires that we have both.”
The brief but no-uncertain-terms statement today from the disabilities advocates calls for a nationwide ban on the use of DRE technology.
“Electronic ballot systems such as the direct record electronic (DRE) machines…now in use,” the statement reads, “have quickly proven to be neither fully accessible to all voters nor secure and accurate methods of recording, tallying, and reporting votes. While the goal of private voting has been achieved by some voters, this has often been without meaningful assurance that our votes have been counted as cast.”
The disabilities leaders go on to point out that verification of ballots and the accuracy of their tabulation need not be sacrificed for accessibility or privacy. A similar point was at the heart of a report recently released by one of the letter’s authors, blind technology expert Noel H. Runyan. His report, published simultaneously by both Demos and VoterAction.org, concerns the failure of DRE systems to meet both HAVA requirements and the accessibility and verification needs of disabled voters.
The statement further describes DRE electronic balloting systems as “inappropriate for use” and calls on “all disability rights groups, other civil rights groups, election protection groups, and elected officials to recognize the necessity for an immediate ban” on such dangerous, unreliable, and unsecure technology:
…
We leaders and members of the disability rights community assert that neither accessibility for all voters nor the security of the vote can be sacrificed for the sake of the other. Fortunately, true accessibility and election security can both be achieved; there is no inherent incompatibility between voting system accessibility and security.
We recognize that electronic ballot systems are inappropriate for use, because these systems make it impossible for voters to verify that their votes will be counted as cast. We call upon all disability rights groups, other civil rights groups, election protection groups, and elected officials to recognize the necessity for an immediate ban on any voting system that fails to meet the twin requirements of full accessibility and election security.
This new and most welcome statement from this particular community is in stark contrast to the only other major voices previously allowed to testify before Congress on such matters, such as the National Federal for the Blind (NFB) and Jim Dickson of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD).
Despite both of those groups having received large donations from voting machine companies such as Diebold, Inc., both have been granted extraordinary access to Congress and have leveraged that access to call for the use of DRE systems for their communities (and even paperless ones at that).
The NFB received $1 million from Diebold, and Jim Dickson’s group, although he lied to The BRAD BLOG about it previously, received at least $16,000 from the voting machine vendors, according to the New York Times.
We are happy to see new, uncompromised voices from this important community finally speaking up and adding their concerns to others such as Johns Hopkins computer scientist Avi Rubin, who testified last week that DRE systems, with or without a so-called “voter verified paper audit trail,” are “not a reasonable voting system.”
It would be nice if Runyan and some of the other signatories were invited to testify before Congress as well, and equally nice if Congress held hearings devoted to the issue of the safety, accuracy and accessibility of DRE systems before moving forward on Election Reform bills such as Rep. Rush Holt’s HR811, which unfortunately falls short of banning DRE technology in American democracy.
NOTE: We will be Guest Hosting Cynthia Black’s Action Point this Sunday 3/18/07 @ 3pm ET (12noon PT) on Phoenix’s Air America/NovaM affiliate 1480 KPHX. We hope to have Runyan as one of our featured guests.
UPDATE: Here is my interview on on Action Point with Noel Runyan. MP3 appx. 30 minutes
The complete statement from the disabilities leaders, including Runyan and many others, follow in full below…
Voters with disabilities, sensory impairments, and special language needs have long been disenfranchised in large numbers as a result of lack of access to the voting process. For many of us, the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 held tremendous hope and promise for secure and reliable voting, a guarantee that every voter would have access to the voting process.
Electronic ballot systems such as the direct record electronic (DRE) machines (formerly called “touch screens”) now in use have quickly proven to be neither fully accessible to all voters nor secure and accurate methods of recording, tallying, and reporting votes. While the goal of private voting has been achieved by some voters, this has often been without meaningful assurance that our votes have been counted as cast. Additionally, many other voters have been disappointed and frustrated because we have not been able to vote privately and independently as we had hoped and as voting-system vendors had promised.
It is now clear that in order to guarantee reliability and security in our elections, it is necessary for the voter to be able to truly verify the accuracy of his or her ballot–the ballot that will actually be counted. The only voting systems that permit truly accessible verification of the paper ballot are ballot marking devices. These non-tabulating devices, either electronic or non-electronic, assist the voter in marking and verifying votes on paper ballots that can either be optically scanned or hand-counted. (Some DRE voting machines that have already been purchased may be adapted to be used as acceptable ballot marking devices, assuming their accessibility can be preserved or improved.)
The technology for inexpensively providing good accessibility to voting systems has been commonly available for more than a decade, and it can and should immediately be required for and applied to all modern voting systems.
This is clearly illustrated by the report “Improving Access to Voting: A report on the Technology for Accessible Voting Systems,” by Noel Runyan, (WORD | PDF | large-print | braille) posted at VoterAction.org and Demos.org. Design of new systems must include, from the beginning, accommodations to allow private and independent voting by individuals with a broad range of access needs. These systems must simultaneously ensure secure elections.
We leaders and members of the disability rights community assert that neither accessibility for all voters nor the security of the vote can be sacrificed for the sake of the other. Fortunately, true accessibility and election security can both be achieved; there is no inherent incompatibility between voting system accessibility and security.
We recognize that electronic ballot systems are inappropriate for use, because these systems make it impossible for voters to verify that their votes will be counted as cast. We call upon all disability rights groups, other civil rights groups, election protection groups, and elected officials to recognize the necessity for an immediate ban on any voting system that fails to meet the twin requirements of full accessibility and election security.
List of signatories as of 3/14/07 (affiliations are listed for identification purposes only):
Noel Runyan, voting access technology engineer and author of “Improving Access to Voting”
Roger Petersen, member, Santa Clara County Advisory Commission for Persons with Disabilities and Santa Clara County Voter Access Advisory Committee
Bernice Kandarian, President, Council of Citizens with Low Vision International
Robert Kerr, ACB Maryland
Shawn Casey O’Brien, KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, and California Secretary of State’s Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force member
Suzanne Erb, Chairperson of the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Disabilities
Mike Keithley
A. J. Devies, Past President, Handicapped Adults of Volusia County (HAVOC); Charter Member, Daytona Beach Mayor’s Alliance for Persons with Disabilities; Disability Consultant and Board Member, Florida Fair Elections Coalition
Marta Russell, independent journalist and author
Judith K. Barnes, Life Member, Council of Citizens With Low Vision; Former President, Silicon Valley Council of the Blind
George Moore, Accessibility Advocate, Californians for Disability Rights
Mike May, President, Sendero Group
Margaret Keith, VP, Monterey Co. Chapter, Californians for Disability Rights
Adrienne Lauby, Host/Producer, Pushing Limits, disability program on KPFA fm
David Andrews
Jean Stewart, Writer
Ruthanne Shpiner, Pushing Limits Radio 94.1 FM, Northern California ADAPT
Mike Godino, President, American Council of the Blind of New York, Systems Advocate, Suffolk Independent Living Organization
Louis Herrera
Dawn Wilcox, BSN RN, Past President Silicon Valley Council of the Blind, Board member CCCLV
Barry Scheur, Scheur & Associates
Tom Fowle, Rehabilitation Engineer, The Smith-Kettlewell Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, San Francisco
DEMAND A BAN ON DRE/TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING!
– Email Congress!
– Call you members!
See www.BradBlog.com/Holt for more details, coverage, talking points & information on all of the above!
Bravo, Brad. You deserve the medal of honor for your hard work, trying to maintain this country as a democracy, making sure that all votes count for the candidate voter for.
If there is no assurance that our votes are counted properly, there is no assurance that we are still a democracy.
Woo Hoo!! All American’s are calling for the ban of DRE voting systems!!
Excellent progress this week, lots’o stuff to absorb. Lots’o stuff that can’t keep being ignored! We’ve only got 20 months left to get the actual re-countable, unriggable, hands-on, ballots at the polls so we can clean house (pun intended)… things seem to be moving finally. Brad, you’ll be in the history books :o) my thanks too!
Why didn’t Bob Ney head this off at the pass,..
Oh,.. that’s right,.. Bob Ney’s response time is somewhat hampered by that pesky ball-and-chain. He sure looks good in his striped pajamas though. Will he be voting in 2008,.. can convicted felons from Ohio even step behind the curtain to cast a ballot ?
HAVA – nagila,.. HAVA – nagila,.. venis – mecha – mes – koa – la – gila – eh – heh – eh,..
In honor of this solemn occasion I will now sing 12 choruses of “Happy Happy Joy Joy.” You may join in if you wish.
…
…..YEEEHAAAAH! 🙂
Good stuff, I hate to be the last yellow and Green looker ater but, when the stay on top items are posted, you can’t read it, I didn’t know how the other side lived til now 😛
On the front page, if using the classic Brad blog color scheme, you (err, *I*) can’t read this article very well (at all) because of Dark on dark colors. I use mozilla, but it is just this article, it seems. The responses page views just fine. Just letting you know.
Yabba Dabba Doooo!!!
This is a big story, y’all! Tell all yo Pub friends to prepare to be a huge minority!
Well OK. Now back to work. We still gotta pass a national bill. And a state bill here in TN, just to be sure. We’re on that now.
Then gotta stop the messing around with registrations. Lots to do and little time…
Way to go Brad. Lemme buy you a beer.
shw
Floridiot and Chris Hooten – Thanks for letting me know. Looks like it was something I missed when changing the default color scheme.
Have now fixed the stay-on-top colors in the “BRAD BLOG Classic” color scheme! (hopefully! 🙂 )
Finally, and end to this most disgusting sham of shams!
Or as Woody Allen once said:
“It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockery’s of a sham!”
Checked it this morning Brad, still no workie
OT, but I read how every Democratic candidate is getting hasseled by AIPAC
I think it has been taken over by Republican “Swift-Boat” party hacks…What say you ?
Some Investigative types might want to take a look into that
Any KOs posters dare to delve ?
Went away and came back, I can read it !!!
Thanks Brad
Way cool … consensus … it is the product of peaceful and thoughtful debate.
I’d like to caution the bandwagon that DRE voting machines are not the main problem. Yes, they are inferior technology. No, banning them will not solve our problems, which stem from the inability of citizens to authenticate election results.
This work is good, but must be tempered with the big picture, because many are getting sidetracked into thinking that any method of getting rid of DREs will enhance election integrity. Unfortunate experiments based on this premise include a push for forced vote by mail (an extremely secret, almost entirely privatized, inscrutable method of voting that is wide open for inside fraud), and a concept that once optical scan machines are installed, we’re home free.
We’re not. The entire Busby-Bilbray controversy in San Diego was on optical scan machines.
The real problem there was the inability of citizens to authenticate the results. That’s a deeper issue that can only be solved by making sure the system actually produces the information in a timely manner, and requiring elections officials to cough it up in a timely manner, without charging an arm and a leg.
This is not to belittle the importance of getting rid of DREs. It is to keep it in clearer perspective. DREs are more complex systems, therefore with more breakdown points and more attack points than optical scan systems. But both systems count votes in secret, and neither system, as currently implemented, allows meaningful citizen oversight.
Bev Harris
Founder – Black Box Voting
Hey Folks,
At this hour (2pm Thursday, March 18) there is a Congressional committee hearing just starting which will be discussing this very issue. I don’t know if the current witnesses are DRE hacks, but it might be good to get the above statement in front of this committee. It is Zoe Lofgren’s “Subcommittee on Elections”, part of the House Administration COmmittee, which will be examining H.R. 811 shortly. I include the announcement below.
U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren
16th Congressional District, California
For Immediate Release: CONTACT: Pedro Ribeiro
March 13, 2007 202-225-3072, pedro.ribeiro@mail.house.gov
Subcommittee on Elections: Election Reform Hearing
“Machines & Software”
Thursday, March 15, 2007
2:00 pm
1539 Longworth HOB
Washington, D.C. – The House Administration Subcommittee on Elections is scheduled to hold its first hearing on Thursday, March 15, 2007. The subcommittee will hear testimony on electronic voting machines and voting software.
WITNESS LIST
Machines & Disability Access
o Diane Golden – The Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities
o Kelly Pierce – Cook County State’s Attorney Office
o Eric Clark – Mississippi Secretary of State
o Dr. Ted Selker – Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Open Source Code/Commercial Off the Shelf Software (COTS)
o Brian Behlendorf – Collab.net
o Matt Zimmerman – Electronic Frontier Foundation
o David Wagner- UC Berkeley Computer Science Division
o Minority Witness (TBD)
*************
The members of the House Admin. Committee are listed below, with some contact info.
Give them a call…
Mac Hathaway
Chairwoman Millender-McDonald
Washington D.C. Office
(202) 225-7924
Torrance, CA 90502
(310) 538-1190
Congressman Michael E. Capuano D-MA
110 First Street
Cambridge, MA 02141
(617) 621-6208
in D.C. (202) 225-5111
Rep. Zoe Lofgren D-CA (Chair of Elections Subcommittee)
(408) 271-8700
in D.C. (202) 225-3072
Other members include:
Democrats
Rep. Robert A. Brady, PA-1st
Rep. Mike Capuano, MA-8
Rep. Charles Gonzalez, TX-20
Rep. Susan Davis, CA-53
Republicans
Rep. Vernon Ehlers, MI-3
Rep. Dan Lungren, CA-3
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, CA-22
Bev Harris #13
I could not agree more! While most were closely watching the Dre’s in Florida in 2004, the exit polls indicate that the optical scan machines were busy stealing the votes that gave Florida to Bush. None of these machines can be trusted mostly because of the people who are taking advantage of their weakness. Getting rid of all machines will not solve this problem. Getting rid of all the people would if we replaced them properly. Without an increase in transparency we won’t even be able to tell if we have solved the problems even if we do solve them.
It all adds up to a transparency problem. Without transparency democracy can never be trusted to exit!
#15
“Without transparency democracy can never be trusted to exit!”
Without transparency democracy can never be trusted to exist!
That first claim was about as far from truth as one can get. 😉
In brief reply to Bev Harris’ comments:
I’m happy to concur with your point. But to add an additional thought, the push for “vote by mail” has already begun and will, I’m sorry to say, most likely continue.
While I don’t believe op scan systems mean “we’re home free” by any stretch of the imagination (if I’ve ever given that impression, I assure you it wasn’t on purpose!) I do believe that getting rid of DREs is an important first, incremental step, in moving towards Election Integrity. Reasoning being that before we can actually count a paper ballot, we have to make sure there is such a paper ballot to count in the first place.
With DREs, there is no such paper ballot. Beyond that, of course, as mentioned, I concur with your general and important point.
And just one other point of clarity. You said:
For clarity, the first Busby/Bilbray controversy (the special election last June when voting systems were initial discovered to have been sent home with pollworkers for weeks prior to the election on “sleepovers”) concerned op-scan machines for the most part, and one DRE per polling place.
Later, in the November election, the County went to ALL DRE systems. Just to help keep the details of our various scandals straight 🙂
As lead attorney in Busby Bilbray, I’d say that Bev Harris stated it correctly when she said that the Busby Bilbray “controversy” was on optical scans. No lawsuit emerged from the November election, unlike the June 2006 special election, so June is where the real controversy came from.
That’s not to say November was OK. There was an exit poll discrepancy (covered by Bradblog) and precincts were chosen non-randomly.
Regarding Brad’s invokation of “uncompromised” voices in italics, I don’t know at what point one becomes “compromised” for sure, but I do think it should be disclosed that Mr. Runyan is on ACCURATE’s advisory board, and ACCURATE received a $7.5 million dollar govt grant, and ACCURATE says a lot in favor of technology in elections, in addition to its critiques. Best to just disclose these things and then argue or state “uncompromised.” Other well known folks are on the advisory board. http://accurate-voting.org/people/
Again, without having any idea or expresssing any opinion whether he is “compromised” or not, sitting on the advisory board of ACCURATE is, IMHO, both an honor and a sign of being establishment, so Congress would NOT be reaching WAY DOWN to uncompromised voices per se in calling ACCURATE advisory board members as witnesses.
That being said, I think he SHOULD be called to testify. That would be great. So should some other folks, instead of the rotating but same cast of (mostly similar) characters that have already testified. But the government should REALLY concentrate on getting some voices that are not officially affiliated with organizations that the government has given millions to.
To clarify my comment #18: I think Noel Runyan is an excellent voice to be heard in Congress and elsewhere, but based on his having so MANY honors now, including advisory board for ACCURATE which exists primarily on government grants and is a favorite quoting source for the media and witness source for Congress, to the extent (if any) brad meant to suggest that it would both uncompromising and be reaching “way down” into We the People to have Mr. Runyan testify, I do not agree. I personally want to see Congress reach WAY down to the grassroots for voices too, and it’s just my Opinion that being on boards (advisory or otherwise) for major outfits in an area means it is not grassroots per se, any more. But that doesn’t make it all wrong, or “compromised” either. Perhaps this is too subtle a point, but to avoid misunderstanding, there it is.