Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org
A special hat-tip to citizen journalists K. Shawn Edgar and Shawn Waldow who produced and edited this piece and, of course, to the voters and staff of the Washington County, Oregon elections office.
Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org
A special hat-tip to citizen journalists K. Shawn Edgar and Shawn Waldow who produced and edited this piece and, of course, to the voters and staff of the Washington County, Oregon elections office.
(Comments are now closed.)
(Comments are now closed.)
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These election officials need to be forced to take a computer and networking security class to put a little scare in them. Sheesh. They just don’t seem to understand it only takes one security hole to change the results of the entire election; just one.
One thing I think would be an excellent extension to this process is the ability to check if your envelope has been received via the web and/or email, not just by phone.
(To those that haven’t watched the video: In Oregon you place your ballot in a “secrecy envelope” which has no identifying information. You then place the secrecy envelope in an outer envelope. The outer envelope has your name, address, a bar code, and a place where you sign. When the county receives your envelope, the bar code is scanned to record that your envelope was received, and the signature is verified. Some time after verification, the inner secrecy envelope is separated from the outer envelope, making the ballot completely anonymous.)
To me, there is a “confidence” hole in the system… many people don’t know they can call their elections office to make sure the envelope was received and that there were no signature verification or registration problems, so they have an uneasy feeling after mailing their ballot, wondering if it ever got where it was supposed to go. That’s why a lot of folks prefer to use the drive-up boxes near election day.
Educating people that they can call isn’t a fantastic solution, because the counties are not equipped to take calls from hundreds of thousands of voters.
But who did or did not vote is already a matter of public record, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to make a web-based interface where people can check for problems.
Every registered voter already has a unique number (that’s the bar code on the outer envelope). You could use this number as a way to access a state web site which could tell you A) envelope received, B) registration problems, C) signature problems, D) envelope mangled, etc. For people who vote early, this would be a great way to spot trouble in time to correct problems or at least vote provisionally, and would add confidence to the system.
Note that this proposal is not the only thing we could use to strengthen the system — but it requires no significant changes to existing procedures and makes the whole system more transparent and accessible to voters.
Regarding tampering with counting machines and networks, this is a finite practical possibility.
However, a new Oregon law mandates that every county elections office perform an administrative recount, by hand, of three randomly chosen precincts, as well as three races also chosen at random.
These random recounts create a risk to those who would tamper with machines — a mandated random recount would catch a significant difference in vote totals, either at the precinct level or at the race level.
The key here, of course, is that the chosen recount precincts and races are truly “random”. I’m unfamiliar with the procedure for picking the “random” recounts — this _must_ be transparent and non-machine, or the whole safety net collapses.
One more thing regarding my idea for online envelope-receipt checking: This also provides voters a mechanism to discover if someone _else_ has inappropriately voted in their name.
I know of at least one person who has been contacted by phone by their county because there was a problem with their signature — this is good — but the self-service web method provides greater confidence in case there is some question about whether voters are contacted in a timely manner (or at all) in the event of problems.
Am not so sure about this…
Voter only has the system’s assurance that his/her vote has been received, and that it has been counted.
Manufacturer makes money; voter still has to rely on faith.
Voting machines suck! Optical scan isn’t much better than touchscreen because of network connections and central tabulation (the most likely source of monkey business). Hand counted paper ballots always match the exit polls. Electronic voting machines often times do not for some reason. You can live in your soft cozy fantasyland if you want to, but most computer security experts do not like computerized voting.
Hey peoples. I found this very interesting article on “Benford’s Law”. Yes it has applications in combating election fraud. it’s a short article, go read it article explaining how Benford’s law can be applied to precinct data to catch fraud.
Very fascinating. Then go over to Wikipedia for more info if you are interested here for wikipedia: Benford’s Law
It has to do with counting the number ones, twos, threes, etc. that are the very first digit in the precinct data. There should be this many ones, this many twos, etc.
I watched this clip, and I watched this one too:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/A...aise_1121.html
The Washington State clip makes me think this: would you trust an ad hoc bank? I mean, these folks (volunteers mostly) throw together an ad hoc branch bank for a day and expect to be secure, accurate, prompt and courteous, and auditable to a tee. It isn’t that they don’t or can’t do a great job. It is that the task in all out of proportion to the skills and training and policies. I know they train and I know they have dedicated people—but it’s like an ad hoc bank. And I fail to see why we should bank there with confidence.
… gtash said…
You’ll either have to trust them… or a dedicated (and paid) vote-counting caste… or diebold…
The problem is that they (and we) are dealing with a concept that is inherently trouble-prone, and one in which any fact-based operational norms are under constant pressure by various parties to shift to “norms” that are not fact-based… but suit the various parties own interests.
As for the folks in Oregon?
You gots e-voting being mandated as intrinsically secure. You gots hidden vote counting by software being mandated as “open and transparent”. You gots secret vote-counting software being mandated as secure because the corporations said so. You gots an insecure chain of custody for the ballots being mandated as secure…
… so what more can you expect these people to do when they have been forced to accept those kinds of starting premises?
Hi John!
Thanks for posting this. Shawn contacted us at the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition to let us know about his documentary and we were glad to post both his video and his report called Vote By Mail Election Day: An Interloper’s Journey at our site. So if you’d like to check that out please do. He laments not having a copy of the “Everest” Report on hand to help some of these officials and election workers “get it.”
You may want to post his written report in this blog post to go along with the video to help give context. (Side note for citizen vloggers — when you can’t get it done via Youtube due to their draconian “10 min. rule” try out http://www.blip.tv. Good service and large files are allowed. I turned Shawn on to Blip.tv and hopefully we will be seeing more democra-mentaries from him again soon!)
Thanks and continue resting Brad — Happy Thanksgiving all!
Ginny Ross
Oregon Voter Rights Coalition
Bob R.,
The key here, of course, is that the chosen recount precincts and races are truly “random”. I’m unfamiliar with the procedure for picking the “random” recounts — this _must_ be transparent and non-machine, or the whole safety net collapses.
Outstanding work, K.Shawn and Shawn! I just learned a TON about VBM thanks to your video–so helpful/ thank you so much.
Despite my skepticism of the process, I’m delighted to see the Oregon Elections Staff so willing to show you around the elections office, answer your questions, allow you full ‘back-stage pass’ access. (What a night/day difference from Florida, where election observers are now being arrested for trying to do just that.)
If only every citizen in every county in the country would make videos just like this, we could get a much better idea of how/ where our efforts are most needed. Great educational tool for less-savvy election enthusiasts, too.
Fantastic last frame/ the look on your face as voter confidence is being discussed–priceless.
(Thanks John, for bringing this to our attention, and Ginny for the bliptv tip!)
“Democra-mentories”! HA~! Nothing could be more perfect. Great new word for the day (month/ year), Ginny…
Ginny – Thanks for the reply. I’ll check out your link.
Further to my comment #4 about vbm ballot tracking systems–
Suppose the system tells the voter his/her ballot has not been received? counted? What can she/he do? Ask the staff to check? Aren’t they in the same bind? If they query the system and confirm that it does not have the ballot listed, then what? Or, if it tells them that the ballot HAS been received and counted, how can they be sure? and how can they convince the voter that all is well?
HCPB at the polls…
The music in the video is “Ain’t Misbehavin'”. Thought it was appropriate.
Jeannie Dean, thanks for the compliments. Glad you noticed the last frame. While editing, when I saw the look on Shawn’s face, I knew it was a good ending moment.
We’re planning a follow-up, and going to try to interview state officials too.
As for all-access to the process, I think there’s more we could have seen/covered, like the Unity Election Management System.
Ok, out there.. try this one….
Take two sheets of paper, sit down, and draw each step in the vote by mail process, from start to finish.. can you do it?
When you can and cover all the steps, you may understand the cost and complexity of the Vote by Mail processing …. and then look at the weak points in security..
go ahead and try it…….
We already know for a fact that VBM is far less expensive than many other forms of voting. As for the “weak points in security” most of these weak points are not “caused” by VBM but are part of all voting processes. All voting processes MUST have appropriate tracking, chain of custody and oversight as part of the checks and balances. VBM does not claim to provide these checks and balances, the state election officials, appropriately dogged by citizen patriots, must provide this oversight and set up procedures for a reviewable, transparent and secure processing of ballots. The pros of VBM, in our state with our set of checks and balances and oversight, vastly outweigh the cons when all is said and done. Our main and most serious problem is secret, unreviewed, and unverified counting of all elections by private corporations. Absolutely unacceptable and far worse than any problems related to VBM per se.
I have the County Hand Count Schedule for Oregon. Looks like it started on the 17th and runs through 25th. I plan on heading to the Washington County office tomorrow to video tape as much as I can. The PDF link was sent to me by:
Summer Davis
Compliance Specialist
[ed note: Please do not put people’s phone numbers in comments. Thank you. –99]
Read it HERE.
As to the number of precincts in each county in Oregon that were “randomly” selected:
Each of the 36 counties is required to conduct hand counts on a specified number of ballots. In all but three counties three percent of the precincts must be hand counted. In Curry and Yamhill counties five percent of the precincts must be hand counted and in Polk county 10 percent of the precincts.
Summer Davis (Compliance Specialist):
“The hand counts are being conducted in accordance with law. And what the law required was a simple hand count of ballots to determine if the machines were tabulating correctly, not a more rigorous audit that would provide statistically meaningful results.”