Reasons for Opposing King County's Plan to Buy Diebold's New Ballot Counter
Response to the King County Business PlanKing County Elections has published a Vote By Mail Transition Plan and a High speed Tabulator Business Case. The following is a summary of concerns for election integrity activists.
Fallacy of Early Election Results The primary justification for buying Diebold's new tabulator is the need for early election results on election day. You cannot count ballots you have not received. Most ballots are received on or near election day.
Further, during crunch time, processing ballots typically takes 3 days. That includes pickup, sorting into batches, signature verification, reconciliation, opening, squishing, and tabulation. So ballots received on election day won't be counted until 3 days later.
Troubling Ballot Image Scanners Diebold new ballot counters (tabulators) takes a digital picture of the ballot and stores it. The software recognizes the voting marks and creates a database record of the votes found.
Counting Ballots Before Election Day: Our state's Attorney General was asked for an opinion on "pre-processing" ballots before election day. The answer is if ballots are simply scanned, no problem. But actually counting the votes is not legal. KCE intends to "adjudicate" ballots before election, which first requires a ballot's votes to be counted. Therefore, how KCE intends to use the new system would be illegal.
"Cheat Peeks" : Pima County Arizona also uses a ballot image scanner system. Pima County "pre-processes" their ballots before election day, as King County intends to do. The temptation to "cheat peek" at their early returns proved too great for the elections officials in Pima County to resist.
No Manual Recounts: Under current laws and procedures, ballots are manually duplicated as needed to honor the voter's intent. Diebold's new system will be used to modify the database record for the ballot, not that ballot image itself, a process called "adjudication." In the event of a recount, KCE proposes printing modified ballots from the database. There will not be a control number to link the modified ballot to the original paper ballot, as required by law.
Manual recounts happen nearly every general election.
Computerized Voting Machines Regional Voting Centers will not have paper ballots, only computerized voting machines. Diebold AccuVote TSx touchscreens have been proven insecure and unreliable. There is a nationwide movement away from computerized voting machines, Recently, both Florida Governor Crist (R) and New Mexico Governor Richardson (D) have banned the use of these machines.
Provisional Voting on Touchscreens Provisional voting on computerized voting machines sacrifices voter privacy. If it was private, there would be no way to accurately remove a challenged provisional ballot from the election.
All electronic with no contingency plan There will be no paper-based system at the Regional Voting Centers. That includes poll ballots, poll books, inspector's lists, etc. What happens in the event of an emergency? There is no contingency plan.
Using Uncertified Software and Hardware Voting and counting systems are certified for use as a whole system, not in parts. Under the current rules, the new system, including Diebold's new tabulator and upgraded touchscreens, cannot be tested and certified in time for the April 2008 election. To do so, the Secretary of State would have change the rules, ignore the rules, or both.
Diebold Security Myth All independent security reviews of all the voting and counting systems have found fatal and irredeemable security flaws. This includes all of Diebold's products. Diebold's new tabulating system hasn't even been certified, let alone independently inspected. Therefore, no one can claim it is secure.
Guinea Pig King County would be one of the first customers of Diebold's new high-speed tabulator. Previously, our state's rules required our voting and counting systems to be used by two other states before our state would certify a system. That's still a good idea.
Inappropriate Use of HAVA Grant Money Help America Vote Act was authorized by the US Congress to enable disabled voters to vote in private. Appropriate expenditures are ensuring wheel chair accessibility, assistive voting technologies, and voter education. Spending HAVA Grant money on unrelated items is grossly inappropriate.
GEMS Database Limitation KCE claims that we need a completely new system because our current Diebold GEMS database can't handle our elections.
In other words, we need to spend roughly $5,000,000 to work around a flaw in a $200 database. However, the new system would also use GEMS. LA County, which is fives times larger that King County, uses GEMS. Easy workarounds exist, such as splitting the election into "north" and "south" King Counties or increasing the size of the batches (making larger, fewer batches).
Old Equipment Needs Replacing KCE claims that our existing optical scanners are old, failing, and must be replaced. Five units apparently had to be replaced during the March special election.
Fortunately, under KCE's current plans, we'll have a stock of ~600 replacement units once the poll sites are closed. Assuming 5 fail per election, we own a 20 year supply.
Jason Aaron Osgood
206-784-9416
zappini {at} gmail.com
Resources Ballot Rate of Return by Mail 2006
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/pdf/Ballot_Rate_of_Return_by_Mail_2006.pdf Pre-Election Vote Total Access in Pima County AZ
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/46569.html Vote By Mail Transition Plan
www.metrokc.gov/elections/votebymail/
High speed Tabulator Business Case
http://www.metrokc.gov/elections/votebymail/Project_Business_VBM_TabulationFINAL_2_.pdfFlorida Moves to Paper Ballots! (May 3, 2007)
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2429&Itemid=113
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