CA Sec of State completes random test report of CA touch screen voting

[chorti]

<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/touchscreen.htm>

<http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/november2004_pmp_report.pdf> (203 pp with appendices)

The California Secretary of State has completed their report of testing in the ten California counties that used touch screen voting - six were Sequoia, two were Diebold, one was Hart/eSlate, and one was ES&S. The accuracy was near 100%.

But the state was clear that this level of testing was not enough. On the first page they wrote: "Notwithstanding this additional level of testing, there are forms of malicious code that could affect the accuracy of a voting system that would not be detected by federal, state, local or parallel testing. Other detection methods, such as the Accessible Voter Verification Paper Audit Trail (AVVPAT), are necesary to expose these types of election tampering."

The machines were selected, at random, approximately two weeks before the election. They were then sealed and segregated from the remainder of the touch screen machines. The testing occurred on November 2 with teams of local testers.

I would think that this type of random testing would catch any problems emanating from the source code, i.e. the manufacturer or distributor, but not any tampering that may have occurred between the date of selection for the test and the election. Nor would it catch any tampering with the central tabulator/memory card reader at each county.

In 9 counties the printout of the test results was made at the end of the day and all testing materials, including the printout, were taken by the test leader personally to Sacramento, delivered to the state the next day, Nov. 3. The exception was Riverside. A printout of the test results could not be made in Riverside because their DREs did not have printer capability. Instead, Riverside overnighted the memory card of the DRE to arrive at the state on Nov. 4 and the test results were printed out there.

The report summary says there was 100 % accuracy (after resolving - by videotape - some cases of voter/tester error), but the report detail says that in one case (Merced) the tester attempted to vote for Bush (confirmed by videotape) but instead was recorded as for Peroutka. It was not a case of voter (tester) error.

I'm glad the state took this step and I'm glad that all California DREs will require an AVVPAT by the 2006 election. But this testing still had too many loopholes to be completely convincing.

[gWbush is Mabus]

1. doesn't the Diebold machine require you to enter a code before you test

making the test basically meaningless?

[blm]

2. That doesn't catch fraud in machines not sealed off. It only proves

that if you check for a proper program in a small number of machines and then seal the machines off from tampering, you get accuracy.

What about the majority of machines that were accessible to the companies' "special" forces?

[global1]

3. CA IS A Blue State - They Wouldn't Think of Trying Anything .......

there.

Was there ever any question about problems in CA?

This report is potentially damaging. Repugs could cite this report and say that - "See nothings wrong with electronic voting."

We need to get the same things done in the Red States that used Electronic Voting with the funny results.

[BlueCaliDem]

5. Blue State of Not...CA's 55 Electoral Votes *are* Tempting...

...and don't forget the systemic problems during the 2003 CA Recall, with problems like 200,000 votes vanishing in Los Angeles County alone, and votes going to highly unknown gubernatorial candidates of other counties.

I remember being utterly shocked, that Darrell Issa (R-CA) launched the 2003 Recall against Gray Davis with a confidence I thought was odd. It was as if he knew there was NO WAY the Republicans would lose, and that Schwarzenegger would win the governorship.

These are questions still unanswered even to this day.

Republicans so want California back in their column; the state that gave them their "messiah" Ronald Reagan; their Republican equivalent to J.F. Kennedy.

One of the many reasons, I suppose, why it's the Republicans, not the Democrats, who are pushing aggressively for immigration "reform".

What I also thought was odd, is, that Californians struck down a measure that would have forced medium to large companies to pay for health insurance for their employees, instead of having California taxpayers foot the bill to the tune of billions, like Wal-Mart has been doing.

It was voted down by a huge 70% + in the last election.

That voting down in the best interest of taxpayers against corporate greed alone, should make it curious, no?

[chorti]

7. Some blue some red

CA has a Democratic Sec of State who is very vigilant on this issue, to his credit. But we have the Guvernator. And some counties are very red - Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern and San Diego. They have been fighting the Sec of State on this. So, yes, a county could consider trying it if there is no paper trail and therefore no chance of being caught. Why? Not just to boost Bush in the general but also to have more impact in state and local races/propositions.

Oh, I forgot to say in my summary that LA county also used touch screen in the early voting in October. These machines were not tested. I'm trying to get information on how many early votes there were and the manufacturer.

I don't think Republicans will use this report too much because they don't want even this level of testing and scrutiny into the process. In fact, I think what the CA SOS office is doing could be a model for other states.

[caligirl]

4. Technicians were on standby in our county which was the subject of big

interest. I found an article that quotes the assist ROV saying this.

Anyone know how I might find out who these techs were? Where they came from?

[Ducks In A Row]

6. dose the report say what the testing consisted of

because that can be programmed in to a machines.

if ("test ballot") then
noproblems
else
whoreforbush
fi