HOLT'S RESPONSE!: MARK IT UP!

[Bill Bored]

http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/2243

HR 550

I’d like to start with two words: thank you. I deeply appreciate your commitment to open, honest, and auditable elections. I also appreciate your recognition of H.R. 550’s great promise and good intentions. For several years, I have been working on this issue with an army of citizens, voting experts, and computer scientists from across the country, and H.R. 550 is the product of their thoughtful analysis, hard work, and grassroots advocacy.

I know that others in the election reform community have already addressed your concerns in detail, but I wanted to take a moment to just reinforce a few key points. For more detailed comments, people should read analyses by Verified Voting and VoteTrustUSA.

I will just make four points of rebuttal, and then a comment. Before I do, however, I would ask that you join me in urging the House Administration Committee to mark-up H.R. 550 immediately. If the House takes no action at all, the 2006 elections – and perhaps the 2008 elections – will once again be un-audatible and un-verifiable. H.R. 550 is by far the strongest bill on the table, and blocking committee action on it is a surefire strategy to maintain the status quo.

A few points:

1) Neither the EAC nor a state may pick and choose where audits will be conducted. Selection of precincts for audit must be done at random. In other words, the EAC has no authority here. H.R. 550 is explicit on this point.

2) An audit is not the same as a recount. A recount seeks to determine the actual results of an election. By contrast, an audit ensures proper functioning of a voting system by spot-checking its tally against the voter-verified paper records. By testing randomly, an audit deters malfeasance because potential bad actors won’t know which 2% of precincts could be audited. If discrepancies are found, a larger audit follows, and potentially a recount.

3) H.R. 550 does not open the door to EAC contracting. Rather, it limits the EAC’s already existing power to do so by requiring public bidding on all contracts. This makes it possible for established citizen groups (perhaps such as your own) to bid for audit contracts. This is exactly what we want: regular citizens protecting the integrity of our elections. If we left it to the states to do audits, the results would be as we’ve seen in the past.

4) H.R. 550 does not call for DREs with printers. The bill only requires a voter-verified paper audit system that is accessible to all eligible voters. Section 2 of the bill explicitly contemplates paper ballots such as optical scan, mail-in, and those made by accessible marking devices. The bill would allow DREs only if they include a paper record.

In closing, H.R. 550 is the product of citizen activism in the greatest tradition of grassroots involvement. I reject, and in fact take umbrage at, any suggestion that the bill has been “hijacked.” To assert so is not only wrong, it is an insult to the thousands of people who have put in so much time, thought, and effort to improve and advance H.R. 550.

Sincerely,

Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12)

[spooky3]

1. k&r

[autorank]

2. The bill doesn't have to be perfect -- it's an ESSENTIAL start

New Mexico went to paper ballots. Not because of a logical choice but because there was a major law suit and a lot of pressure. As things evolved, Gov Richardson got the message and did the right thing.

We need points on the board, this represents major points.

Recommended.

[truckin]

4. Autorank, you hit the nail on the head. I was in DC lobbying for

this bill and Congressman Holt himself said that his is a first step in election reform. The bill would eliminate paperless electronic voting and allow election officials to review the code in the machines in certain instances. While it is wrong to think that passing this bill will end all of our election problems, I can't see how anyone can believe that we are better off with paperless DREs in states like Georgia and Maryland than if we had paper and 2% audits. In addition, the states can increase the audit requirements. In CT we passed a bill that requires 10% of the machines to be audited.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

6. Conn may lead the way for the rest of us

Congradulations on your efforst in CT!

My state had paperless voting for nearly 20 years in almost half of the state.

The public didn't know there were problems because no way to tell.
No auditing of undervotes overvotes, no auditing of elections by
our SBOE.

The reporters always took the word of election officials that
"there was just a minor glitch, no votes were lost, and the outcome
of the election was not affected (if votes were lost)."

If NC had been able to recount the 2004 election because of lost votes
in Carteret, many anomalies would have been discovered, and the jig would be up.

The 10% undervote in Burke could have been investigated, if they
had VVPB. Perhaps fraud would have been proven, if there were a paper ballot.

But alas, they coudn't recount the ballots, and election officials said
that 1 out of 10 voters in Burke really went to the polls to vote for the county commissioners,
and not for the President. 7% didnt' vote for Governor!

The huge resistance by some politicians and some election directors to VVPB
shows me that there is great fear of the paper.

The paper can show that "the loss of votes DID affect the outcome"

I don't know if our 2006 election will actually represent the will
of the people or the will of the corporations.

Passing HR 550 would make the general population aware of the problem.

Right now, only a small percentage are aware.

[FogerRox]

9. I had a similar talk with Michelle Muldur July 2005

Its a start.

[autorank]

11. It's a start...It will help us when the sh** hits the wall in 2006...

...and you know it will. There are too many trains headed for the cliff to have this be anything other than a disaster in certain places. This bill will be in place and then have to get much tougher. The critiques of the bill by LandShark and Garybeck are fine also. It's all part of a process to refine what we really need...all paper, all the time. If Canada can count their votes in 4 hours and do it all on paper, what's our major malfunction?

Thanks for your efforts.

[Kelvin Mace]

15. Exactly

If we are going to waiut for a perfect bill, we will be waiting a long time.

This is a damn good effort and a wonderful foundation to build from. Nothing in the bill preclusdes states from adding TOUGHER measures to their own laws.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. good advice

This is how you get good legislation passed.

If handled thoughtfully and lobbyied for by a unified voice there is a better
chance of protecting not just the 23 states with no paper ballot requirement,
but of making things better all around for all 50 states.

HR 550 has alot of support - 177 congressman.

With coherent lobbying and communications in favor of the law,
it has a chance.

It doesn't take anything away from anyone.

If there is a state in the country with a better law, they can still
keep their higher standards.

It might even mean that many of us can quit working 7 days a week on this issue,
and go back to our normal lives.

[BeFree]

5. I like #3

3) H.R. 550 does not open the door to EAC contracting. Rather, it limits the EAC’s already existing power to do so by requiring public bidding on all contracts. This makes it possible for established citizen groups (perhaps such as your own) to bid for audit contracts. This is exactly what we want: regular citizens protecting the integrity of our elections. If we left it to the states to do audits, the results would be as we’ve seen in the past.

-------------------

That is our goal: "established citizen groups ... bid for audit contracts."

This is the kind of involvement that each and every one of us can do so we can look over big brothers shoulder as his machines count our votes.

".. regular citizens protecting the integrity of our elections."

[Stevepol]

7. Let's use this article to send to the editors of our newspapers. Beg them

to publish this, to let it be known that a vote on this issue is forthcoming. Only if the light is shone on this will it get through. If it goes to Congress under the radar, without any fanfare, in the dark so to speak, it will be very easy for the anti-democratic forces to block it.

[sellitman]

8. K&R n/t

:toast:

[garybeck]

10. does not address one of the main concerns that people have

2% is not enough.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

12. 2% is better than anything you can provide

some folks can't accomplish anything, and lack the vision on how
you get from point A to B.

They are the proverbial dogs in the mangers - they don't want
anyone to eat, so all starve.

The paperless states need help, and you are not offering any.

A smart person would get this thing heard for a vote, and try to
up the audits some, if possible.

Until HR 550 gets heard on the floor, the congress will be allowed
to ignore the gaping hole in our elections.

[Land Shark]

13. If an HR 550 audit is actually UP AGAINST a real fraud or big malcfunction

it will be challenged. It will fail.

We say "private vendors can not count votes invisibly with secret software" and "we must count 100% of all votes" but we say DREs count none of these votes, at least not that we can tell. apparently we all agree on that.

But now, if another holt PRIVATE VENDOR/Contractor with no transparency requirement does an audit that's potentially even proprietary, that makes it all ok.

Holt = privatized auditing. Do two wrongs make a right. Of course our own HOPES are harnessed against us in this form: we hope and imagine that citizen groups will win the bidding process. Howe many citizen groups are prepared to audit an entire state, if that is the package in which the work is offered? How many citizen goups want to struggle with UBIT tax issues (unrelated business income tax) because their nonprofit is working for profit?

If the audit isn't done correctly, it doesn't tell us ANYTHING about the electronic ballots on the DREs, at least not anything that will matter against legal or other challenge. This is because the Audit has to have a strong nexus or connection to the ballots and if that is broken, there's trouble.

We haven't learned yet what happens when there is the slightest defect in a sampling regime such as exit polls, the powers that be are readily able to find their own experts and make sure the story goes nowhere.

If you think exit polling papers were successful in raising the public's awareness and getting media attention to defeat DREs, then perhaps this will help a bit

Why are we reassured by far more defective "audits' that use the same cluster sampling techniques as exit polls?

[Febble]

14. Sampling

The exit polls (sorry Bill, but honestly, it's not a hijack) used a precinct sampling technique that was designed to ensure that all voters in a state had an equal chance of being polled. This meant that the randomisation protocol involved weighting by expected turnout. There was no "clustered" sampling of precincts. It was the voters who were "clustered".

And in fact, it turned out that the actual selection of precincts was pretty good - the sampling protocol worked, and the precincts turned out to be, on the whole, representative of each state. And that was with far fewer than 2% of precincts (state wide) selected.

I'm not sure if you want your audit to weight precincts by number of voters. In some ways it makes sense, as it would mean that every voter in a state has an equal chance of having their vote audited. On the other hand, it might encourage fraudsters to target fraud in smaller precincts (less likely of being detected). And as one unit of fraud is the precinct (rather than the vote) it probably makes sense to make sure that every precinct has an equal chance of being selected. But note that no clustered sampling would be involved in either system.

The more I think about it, the more it seems to me that what is required is a minimum sample size, rather than a minumum percentage. And the sample size you need will depend on a) the confidence limits you want and b) the magnitude of corruption you want to be able to detect and c) the size of the jurisdiction you want to be your unit of analysis.

My first thoughts were that the unit of analysis should be the county, i.e. the BoE, as fraud might tend to be "clustered" by county. But I think it is also arguable that your unit of analysis should be the level of the race.

OK, here's a scheme: for a presidential election (state level race) you need a sample size to give you enough statistical power to detect 1% or more corrupted precincts (say a random sample 500 precincts per state). But you also want to do a check on BoEs; so you randomly sample, say 5% of counties, and in those counties you sample enough precincts to give you enough statistical power to detect, again 1% or more corrupted precincts with 99% confidence.

That would be a powerful disincentive to fraud: you'd be able to have confidence that not more than 1% of precincts were corrupted state wide; but all your BoEs would know that there was a 1 in 20 chance that a county audit would specifically search for more than 1% of corrupt precincts within the county.

Well, I'm just thinking here, but it seems to me that a bit more thinking might improve that bill. Although 2% statewide doesn't seem nearly as bad as I first thought, at least for state-level races.

[Bill Bored]

20. Not sure yet, but I think your suggestion is what MIGHT happen

if Holt's audit is combined with a state audit.

E.g., in NY, we will audit 3% of machines/systems in each county.

If Holt passes, we would have an additional federal audit of 2% statewide, also including at least 1 precinct per county.

As far as sample size vs. percentage, isn't this apples vs. apples?
If the sample size varies as you say, if can be expressed as a percentage too. The hypergeo spreadsheet I'm using (a modified version of Dopp's work) states both. But you could rewrite it so that the sample size becomes the user selectable variable. Right now, I have it set up so one can select both percentage and total precincts, which in my version of Excel tops out at about 7000 with a 2% audit.

So are you suggesting anything radically different from this?

[Febble]

21. Sample size v percentage

My point is that with smaller jurisdictions, a mandated percentage won't yield an adequate sample size.

Sure, you can do the math any way round. I just found it useful to pose the question slightly differently, viz. to ask: how big a sample, for a given size of jurisdiction, would you require to be able to conclude (from a clean audit) with a given degree of confidence that no more than a given proportion of precincts were corrupt?

But to translate that into law, you might have to mandate statistical power, rather than a percentage! Which would probably leave legislators thoroughly confused.

So perhaps it has to be a percentage, in which case, it probably needs to be a sliding scale, depending on the size of the jurisdiction being audited. But one precinct per county minimum, while sensible, still won't tell you much about any given county. It will just send a message to BoEs that for sure, one of their precincts will be audited. Whereas what I was suggesting would give BoEs a warning that there was a 1 in 20, say, chance that their county would be audited at a much more stringent level, e.g. on a level with a good chance of detecting any substantial degree of corruption.

[Bill Bored]

22. Ah, got it. I missed this bit first time around:

"you randomly sample, say 5% of counties, and in those counties you sample enough precincts to give you enough statistical power to detect, again 1% or more corrupted precincts with 99% confidence."

So each local BoE won't know if they're going to be audited, but if they are, it will be a big one! Interesting. Let me sleep on this.

One thing that could be a problem is that you may be auditing some counties unnecessarily. Why go to the 1% corruption level unless the election is close? Several counties' resources will be tied up, even if there's no way the outcome could be wrong.

[Febble]

23. Good point

In which case the 2% statewide seems like a good start. Perhaps a close result should trigger a random county selection?

And of course, if the 2% shows evidence of miscounts, then supplementary audits should be done in counties where the miscounts have been identified, and again, sample size would be the important thing at this stage.

[Kelvin Mace]

17. Please show me where Holt mandates private auditing.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

19. The GOP and Diebold appreciate all your hard work

Thank you landshark, Diebold and GOP are in your debt.

Without you, there could be no paperless voting in nearly half of the country.

Your loyalty towards your party is admirable.

[Kelvin Mace]

18. OK, everybody who has pushed an ACTUAL law

through their state legislature and got it passed unanimously, raise your hand.

Let's see, I see WillYourVoteBeCounted, but no one else. So, I would probably take her opinion about supporting HR-550 long before anyone else's.

[truckin]

24. TrueVoteCT helped pass SB55 unanimously through the CT

legislature. This bill requires a paper record for every vote cast and requires that 10% of the machines be randomly audited. It does not include the ability to review the code in the machines that HR550 does though.

[Kelvin Mace]

25. Congrats! Truckin'

I made the remark to distinguish between folks who complain about the legislation and those who actually got off their ass and DID something about it, such as CT and NC. WillYourVoteBeCounted is Joyce McCoy who has been critical to the NC effort (and who received a award from the ACLU for her efforts).

I am rather fed up with folks who get on this forum and carp about what they find wrong with our efforts, but didn't do any of the hard work getting the laws written, protecting them in committees, shepherding them through the legislature, and defending them once they were in place.

[truckin]

26. I knew what you were getting at but I felt it was important to share

that information. After that bill passed in CT, TrueVoteCT has continued to lobby our SOTS to consider Opscan with ballot marking devices for people with disaabilities and not purchase DREs. We should find out soon what she chooses.

The point is you can help get a bill passed that may not solve all problems but make things better and then continue to push for even better solutions. To do nothing because a bill may not be perfect is not helpful, IMO, and I agree with your point about naysayers who do nothing but complain about what is being done. Of course there are a few activists in this forum who have done great things for election reform who just believe this bill will do more harm than good. I would respectfully disagree with that assessment from those activists.

[Kelvin Mace]

27. I try to disagree with respect

but it can be damned hard.

It is easy to sit in front of a computer and criticize a bill as not meeting your standards, but hard work to actually get out into the swamp and cajole, argue, scream, fight, wheedle, and sweet talk a bill into law. It is hard, nasty, and generally thankless work that can make you hate your fellow humans.

At the end, you never get everything you want, and sometimes are damned happy to get 25% of what you want. I think 550 gives us 75-80% of what we want, and I don't welcome comments from the back seat this late into the trip, from people who were not around for the first three quarters of the drive.

[truckin]

28. I often share that frustration. After coming back from DC it was

disheartening to see respected activists on this site slamming HR550. It made me wonder if I didn't just waste two days and a $300. However, I do firmly believe that the bill would be a very positive step in the right direction.

Keep up the good work Kelvin!

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

30. thank you for your work in DC, I heard you got 10 new co-sponsors

Thank you so much for your work, you guys must have done an excellent excellent
job, to get 10 new co-sponsors!.

That is nothing to sneeze at, and worth everything you have done.

No matter how it comes out this year, you educated them, and at the
least, they will realize how right you are when 2006 hits.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

29. how did you get 10% ?

Would love to borrow from you the persuasive argument you used to get the 10%
random audit, that is outstanding.

Do you have some good studies, etc that can be borrowed by other
interested parties?

Congradulations on such an outstanding result!

[truckin]

31. Actually, I don't remember the 10% audit requirement being much

of an issue. Below are links to a letter our group wrote to the SOTS and to the TrueVoteCt website if you are interested in seeing some of the back and forth we had, and are still having, with the SOTS.

http://truevotect.org/resources/TrueVoteCT-letter-to-SOTS-2005.03.10.pdf

www.truevotect.org

[Bill Bored]

33. No offense to the gentleman from CT, but I have never understood

where that 10% figure comes from. It had to do with districts, and auditing 1 machine per district. But how does that equal 10% of machines? Are there only 10 machines per district? What does a "voting district" consist of anyway?

And on edit, another thing:

The bill says:

"Such manual audit shall be completed by comparing the votes as recorded on the voting machine and any paper receipts produced by or as a result of votes cast on such voting machine."

But it's not the VOTES that you want to compare, it's the TALLIES of the votes. You want to add up the votes on the VVPATs and compare the tallie to what the machine says. Only if there is a discrepancy would you need to compare individual votes. I hope this works out for you, but you'll probably be using a lot of lever machines for the foreseeable future anyway.

Here's what NY's law says:

1 2. THE MANUAL AUDIT TALLIES FOR EACH VOTING MACHINE OR SYSTEM SHALL BE
2 COMPARED TO THE TALLIES RECORDED BY SUCH VOTING MACHINE OR SYSTEM, AND A
3 REPORT SHALL BE MADE OF SUCH COMPARISON WHICH SHALL BE FILED IN THE
4 OFFICE OF THE STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS.

See what I mean?

[Kelvin Mace]

16. Then get your state to pass a law

making it 3%, or 5%, or whatever percentage makes you feel safe.

2% is a minimum, not a maximum.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

32. An open letter to voters clarifying H.R. 550, From Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)

An open letter to voters clarifying H.R. 550
From Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)


Apr 12, 2006, 01:12

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I would like to thank Bev Harris for her work to improve the integrity of elections. In fact, it was through Bev Harris’ work that I first became aware of the virtual monopoly that only a few voting system vendors have over the vote count in the United States. Her work, and that of many others in the grassroots community, played an important role in my development of a solution to the problem of an increasingly privatized vote count.

I would like to correct, however, a few misrepresentations about my legislation included in her recent article.

First, my legislation calls for a minimum (not a maximum) unannounced manual audit of “at least 2 percent” of the precincts in each state, and the sample must include “at least one precinct” in each county. Precincts must be selected “on an entirely random basis using a uniform distribution in which all precincts in a state have an equal chance of being selected.” This provision is calculated to provide a high level of assurance that any irregularity will be caught, but importantly, nothing in the bill prevents states from passing additional state-based audit requirements. Those who believe the federal 2 percent minimum audit requirement should be higher should join me in getting the House Administration Committee to act on my bill, and then push for an amendment to increase the percentage. Working to defeat H.R. 550 at this critical juncture is tactic that will only cement the status quo.

Second, my legislation does not call for simply “adding a ‘vvpat’” to touch screen (DRE) voting machines. It mandates that there be a “voter-verified paper record” for every vote cast, and explicitly lists as examples “a paper ballot prepared by the voter for the purpose of being read by an optical scanner, a paper ballot prepared by the voter to be mailed to an election official (whether from a domestic or overseas location), a paper ballot created through the use of a ballot marking device.” H.R. 550 allows the use of DREs only if they print out a paper record that the voter can verify, and that serves as the actual ballot of record.

Finally, my legislation is not calling for anyone to “wait a couple years” before it gets committee action. My first bill demanding voter verified paper records was introduced in May 2003, and it had a November 2004 deadline. My current bill was introduced in February 2005, and it has a first-election-in-2006 deadline. Not only are there no delays built into my legislation, but its sound, reasonable audit requirement is helping it gain yet more bipartisan support. Thanks to the continued involvement of many thousands of people from across the country, H.R. 550 is gaining steam every day. Since hundreds of citizen advocates came to Washington, D.C., last week, almost a dozen more representatives have become co-sponsors.

I agree with Ms. Harris that we must demand an end to voting system secrecy while still protecting the secret ballot. My legislation will accomplish this by requiring voter-verified paper records of every vote, requiring audits, and banning undisclosed software and the use of wireless devices. We also agree on the need for increased citizen oversight, which my legislation facilitates by removing HAVA’s exemption of the EAC from the public bidding process, thus enabling established citizen groups to bid to conduct the audits themselves.

As it has been from the beginning, H.R. 550 continues to be the product of an immense amount of thought, work, and advocacy by concerned citizens, voting experts, and computer scientists. I remain open to constructive advice and fair criticism. Further, I encourage all parties to ask the Committee on House Administration and state legislatures to take action on this critical issue now.

Sincerely,

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ)



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