Verified Voting/Common Cause's screwball report on election risks

[Peace Patriot]

Verified Voting/Common Cause's screwball report on election risks

See Verified Voting/Common Cause Press Release 1/31/08:
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6550
(Click at the bottom for the full report in pdf form.)

Verified Voting/Common Cause's list of state voting systems at risk of error or fraud in the Feb 5 Primary ("SuperTuesday"), and in other upcoming primary elections, starts with extremely over-simplified criteria for what state election systems are at risk, and, like our current "skewed-way-to-the-right" political spectrum--which simply blots out the left side of the spectrum, and pretends that it doesn't exist--concludes that certain states are at "low" risk of election miscounts or fraud because they have a paper record of the vote and do some kind of audit. They omit any category of fully transparent elections. According to them

Low risk of error/fraud: CA, CT, IL, MO, NC, WV.

But they don't say what the audit generally is--a mere %1 of paper ballots--in systems that use an electronic scanner and an electronic tabulator, both run on "trade secret" code. Nor do they say what that really means: that 99% of the ballots are dropped into a box to gather dust, and are never seen again, except in rare circumstances, and it is the electrons that are tabulated, not the ballots.


They say that at "mid" risk are states that do have some kind of a paper trail but do no auditing at all, except in the rare circumstance of a recount. These states get rewarded with a middle rating because they could count the votes if that difficult, expensive and rare circumstance--a recount--arises.

Mid-risk of error/fraud: NH, MI, AL, AZ, MA, UT, OK, WI, OH, VT, RI, OR, SD, MT, ID, NM, NE.

That is their only criteria. And the states that get a "high" risk rating (of error/fraud) are those in which all or part of the state doesn't have any paper trail at all, and cannot be audited (comparing paper ballot to machine totals) or recounted.

High-risk of error/fraud: SC, FLA, AK, DE, GA, NJ, NY (huh, NY? see below), TN, LA, DC, MD, VA, TX, MS, PA (yup), IN, KY.

And here's where their assessment goes even more haywire. They include New York in the "high risk" of a miscount or fraud category, because New York doesn't have a verified paper audit trail--that is, a piece of paper in the voter's hand with their vote on it. That's true of New York. They have the old mechanical lever voting machines. You pull a lever next to your candidate's name, and your action punches your choice into the lever machines' mechanical talliers, and you never touch a piece of paper. But the difference between this system, and Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia touchscreens, for instance, is vast, beginning with those notorious corporate names. Notorious for lying. Notorious for non-transparency. Notorious for fraud. And, in a lot of peoples' opinion, notorious for stealing elections.

Nobody manufacturers the old lever voting machines any more, so there is no corporate interest in bilking the public of billions of dollars for shoddy, new, "trade secret" code electronic technology. The older half of the population in the few states still using lever voting machines understands this older mechanical technology--lever machine voting--and is not mystified by it. People of all ages and education levels can understand it. Election officials, citizen monitors, political party observers--everybody knows what the deal is. Yeah, lever machine elections can be stolen--just as with any of the older voting methods--but familiarity, knowing the "tricks," established practice, and everybody understanding the system prevents it, almost always. It is therefore not at "high risk" of error and fraud.

Read the report's page 5 (NY), and you will see how nitpicky they get in order to force NY into this "high risk" category. NY has none of the vulnerabilities of the others' electronic systems, and long- time use has proven the old lever machines to be reliable and trustworthy. And you know that, if they were not, New Yorkers would not be quiet about!

Further, messing with lever machines sufficiently to alter an election involves visible people--and takes some effort, with every step of it potentially visible. Electronic vote stealing is completely invisible, can happen at the manufacturer (with their secret code), occurs at high speed (the speed of light), and can affect millions of votes at a time. One hacker, a couple of minutes and a few lines of secret code--that's all it takes, and an entire state's votes can be changed in sophisticated, undetectable ways, that only high tech experts and mathematicians understand. Can you write code? I can't. I've seen code. It looks like Greek to me. So, too, with probably 80% or more of the voters.

But a lever machine I can understand. By just looking at it, I can tell you where the vulnerabilities are.

The Verified Voting/Common Cause assessment leaves out the human factor.

It also leaves out the money.

It also leaves out the corruption that the money has brought--which is endemic among our election officials, many of whom now owe their allegiance to high tech corporate vendors, not to the voters.

And it leaves out something else--the election integrity activists--and they are many and passionate-- in NY and PA who are fighting the corporate take-over of their elections systems with these highly riggable electronic machines, and are trying to hang to the old reliable lever machines (or return to hand-counted paper ballots, or go to a well-audited "open-source" code electronic system--no "secret code," no big corporate interests involved).

And talk about motivation to steal elections! How about the motivation of (s)electing county supervisors, state legislators, secretaries of state and members of congress who favor larding these big corporations with billions of taxpayer dollars?

For starters. And when you get into the political partisanship of these corporations--all three major corporate vendors with very close ties to the Republican Party and rightwing causes--it makes your hair stand on end.

This cold, limited, cleansed view of the new electronic voting technology, that Verified Voting/Common Cause presents in this report, serves the corporate vendors--those who got billions of dollars for selling us the unverifiable, shoddy, error-prone, touchscreen systems (--in the case of ES&S, manufactured in sweatshops in the Philippines!). They're getting billions of dollars for replacing those with optiscans, or upgrading touchscreens with printers. They're getting billions of dollars for long-term contracts for maintenance, for code patches and upgrades, for "training," and even for printing optiscan and mail-in voting ballots (which are scanned right into the riggable, "trade secret" code electronics, just like the optiscan votes).

I'm surprised at Verified Voting. I'm not surprised at Common Cause, which has been into cleansing this corporate scam for a long time: hit us with touchscreens; then, when the citizens cry foul, hit us with optiscans, which are only slightly less riggable, because they have a ballot that might be counted--in a rare circumstance--and are also very expensive.

Their categories of risk--High, Medium, Low--should be changed, and shifted far toward the risk end, thus:

Super-duper high risk (of error/fraud) such that we must assume that it will occur.

Extremely high risk (of error/fraud) such that we must assume that those who own and control the code (or other hackers) will be sorely tempted.

And high risk (of error/fraud), such that it can easily occur and go undetected, but carries some minimal risk to the hacker (and his/her puppetmaster) of getting caught. In the latter case, the stakes of the election would be relevant. What is worth that minimal risk? (The presidency, for instance; or five pivotal senate seats in a 55-45 pro-war senate, or, locally, say, a particularly lucrative real estate development, dependent on a county supervisor's vote?)

There is hardly a state in the union that could be considered "low risk." If I had been asked the question, I would have answered: New York, if they can hang onto their lever machines. The Bushite Justice Department sued them--sued them!--to shove these riggable electronics down their throats. Verified Voting/Common Cause reports this as if it were a neutral event. It is not. It is a vicious event to pressure local people into spending a lot of money for voting machines they don't need, that will put them at "high risk" of election theft.

Our elections are largely being run by three partisan Republican corporations, using "trade secret" programming code to 'count' the electrons, in ways that most of us don't understand, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

The risk to voters with the old lever voting machines pales in comparison to this--and this Verified Voting/Common Cause report's lack of perspective on the dreadful risks in all "trade secret" code vote tabulation, in its omission of the human factor, the money factor, and the fraud motivation factors, and its throwing New York in with the highest risk e-voting systems (such as Georgia and South Carolina) , and Pennsylvania as well (similar situation to New York)--seems very ill-intended. And the intent may in fact be to defeat the active election integrity groups in those states, who are trying to prevent this corporate takeover.

The report serves the interest of corporate election system profiteering.

I've just completed a lengthy assessment of California's election integrity (can we trust the vote counts?) in anticipation of the Feb 5 Primary. On a scale of -5 to +5, I gave it a 1, because the new Secretary of State is trying to reform it, the election integrity movement in very strong in the state, and it is now going in a positive direction. But California has a long way to go, due to the high riggability of the system, and the resistance of corrupt county election officials, who just sued the SoS trying to stop minimal new auditing reforms. I would by no means give California a "low risk" rating, as to electronic error or fraud. It is highly vulnerable to both, as well as to reversal of SoS reforms if they encroach too heavily on corporate profits and power.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=141x29363

The cauldron of corruption that this corporate-run system has inflicted on our elections, and on our political culture, has cost us an incalculable price in lives, in the massive looting of our federal treasury, in our self-respect as a people, and in our bankrupt and vanishing state services. And it certainly has also cost us the disinterested public service, not only of many of our election officials, but also of many big non-profit groups, who specialize in "white-washing" and "green-washing" issues for large corporations, including this vital issue: our right to vote.

Indeed, this report reminds me of similar reports I've read by slick P.R. firms working for big logging corporations, who calculate the loss of a species of bird or fish, that has been in existence and evolving with, and intimately interacting with, the local ecology, for many millions of years, as "high," "medium" and "low" risk. "Low" risk of extirpation, when there are a few hundred of the species left in a devastated, largely deforested, vast swath of the environment. The "low" risk of more clear-cutting! The "low" risk of more pesticide use!

Tell that to the fish.

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. This post is such a joke. First of all, our lever machines have no

trail at all, so your judgment is obviously cracked. And if you want to stack your credentials against those of Dr Dill of Verified Voting ... I'm all ears, but I do this stuff for a living and know an expert when I see one.

[Wilms]

3. Actually, lever machines DO have a paper trail.

And as best I can read the OP missed that point. Perhaps you assumed they didn't and you wanted to stomp out any discussion surrounding the fact that lever machines are HAVA compliant in that the "voting system" produces a paper record. In this case the record is the one created by poll workers when voting has ended and the machine tally is recorded.

Many here are careful when reading your pro-electronic voting posts. Still I'm glad you finally admitted that you "do this stuff for a living".

[Fredda Weinberg]

4. Lever machines produce a paper record? Bwaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

Oh nutz ... we've gone off the deep end. You have no idea what it's like to sign the register, walk up to a malfunctioning machine which won't accept your vote and have no option ... because you've already signed. You can fill out an affidavit ballot, which probably won't be counted - at least, that's the history.

[Wilms]

6. As an expert, I would have thought you'd read more carefully.

I even emphasized the comment with quotation marks.

[Fredda Weinberg]

12. Well, since I never advocated electronic voting ... are you incapable

of reading or just making crap up? Optical scans can count faster than humans and more accurately ... and can be audited. That's not electronic voting.

[Wilms]

14. Pardon. Electronic Vote Counting. n/t

[Bill Bored]

24. Oh, but doesn't HAVA say you need a PRINTER to create your paper audit trail? nt

[Wilms]

25. As a matter of fact, no. HAVA requires no such thing.

I double checked that with someone smarter than me.

Elections aren't the only thing worth verifying...you know. ;)

[Bill Bored]

29. Get outta here! No PRINTER? Just a paper audit trail, and not even a record of very vote?

Then the levers are a shoe-in!

Someone should tell the DoJ about this!

Wait....they already know!:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/HAVA_2002.html

[Wilms]

30. Ya think!?!

Someone oughtta cc Bo Lipari, too.

Unfortunately, it's not clear that'll sit well with many over at New Yorkers for Electronic Vote Counting.


I feel bad for PA, CT, and the other lever jurisdictions that didn't figure this out.

[Bill Bored]

34. Bo is focused like a laser beam on stopping DREs at any cost.

The choice between DREs and ballot scanners is easy. But what if there's a choice between DREs and Levers?

At least CT are hand counting 10%, but PA? They got nuttin'!

[UALRBSofL]

10. In florida we seem to have learned our lesson

We had the option of voting paper ballot or electronic. Of course I picked paper because I knew there would be a trail. :)

[Wilms]

15. Actually, you haven't learned yours.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x496597#496602

Why don't you look up Florida recount law for yourself. It'll wipe the smile from your post.

[Land Shark]

2. Seems like a screwball report for sure, i'll leave NY's unique circumstances out of it

And I'm sure Dr. Dill knows computers but it takes several other major disciplines to understand the elections systems - basically nobody has them them all. Law would be a good example. Perfect computer science may not "compute" at all through the lenses of law.

[Fredda Weinberg]

5. The applicable statutes are quite simple. I've had no trouble, and Dill has other

academicians. But if you want to drink the Kool-Aid ... you're officially part of the problem.

[Kurovski]

7. K&R.

Is there a Kool-Aid made that can match the poison that seems to run through your veins?

[kster]

8. Give me your paper audit trail, or tell me what randomly selected

places you want to hand count and I will make sure everything matches your Hacked electronic total...

http://www.wecount.com/products.htm

Hand Count the Ballots before they leave the polling place SAFETY AND SECURITY IN NUMBERS, ONLY WAY TO GO.

K&R

[Helga Scow Stern]

9. Thanks for your dilligent work, Peace Patriot. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

11. Hey, Ojai Person! We've missed each other on this board for quite a while now.

Great to see your name! It brings back memories of the "old days" at the DU election forum, when we figured out the 2004 election scam.

This VV/CC report really ticked me off. It's so smooth, so slick, so corporate and so-o-o-o optiscanny. And the biggest trouble is, it sets the criteria for election integrity so low. It starts at the wrong end, really--risk of error/fraud. It should start at the top: 100% certainty--full verifiability, full enfranchisement, in an election system with a culture of public service (rather than a culture of secrecy and corruption), and on THOSE criteria, MOST states hover in a negative category. Verifiability is almost nil, and the thrust of the system is to disenfranchise.

Low to high risk of error/fraud just doesn't cut it. It excludes too much. It doesn't aim high enough. I like my scale better (developed for the California assessment): -5 to +5 election integrity.

-5: No verifiability (all touchscreen, no paper trail), culture of hostility to voters, culture of secrecy (corporate culture), across the board. Few or no signs of rebellion in the citizenry. The "risk" of fraud is 100%, and WILL occur (that must be the assumption). (Georgia, South Carolina)

-4: The above, with maybe an election integrity group active. Electronic fraud will occur, but somebody's watching, gathering data and saving pennies to file a lawsuit (which will fail in courts with e-voting 'elected' judges, but the citizens will learn a lot).

-3: Shades of the above, slight improvements.

-2: More improvement. Say, printers are added to the touchscreens (cuz citizens raise hell).

-1: Optiscan system (ballot) to begin with, but tends toward the above, with ZERO auditing. (New Hampshire.)

0: Optiscan (ballot), but election officials are a mixed bag, some into public service, some very corrupt, much citizen activity, signs of hope. Maybe one of the officials caught on, early, and put 1% audit into law. Risk of fraud is still extremely high. California, before Bowen.

+1: California with Bowen--improving. Fraudsters put on notice, but fraud still easy. Citizens up in arms.

+2: Improving. Fraud made difficult.

+3: Improving (or never got corporatized). Fraud nearly impossible. (New York.)

+4: Venezuela--"open source" code electronic system with a whopping 55% handcount. High citizen participation. Culture of public service.

+5: 100% hand-counted paper ballots, with maximum citizen participation, and fraud nearly unthinkable. (Germany, Scotland, maybe UK and Canada. Any other candidates?)

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

Virtually ALL states in the U.S. would be rated -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, or +1 on this election integrity scale, and only a handful would be on the positive side of the scale higher than a +1. (New York, and maybe VT, ORE, PA and one or two others, with NY and PA under assault by the election theft industry, and ORE--all mail-in--something of an illusion of integrity, since the mail-in ballots are scanned into an electronic system--ORE's safety is the smallness of its population and economy). And MOST of the U.S. is on the NEGATIVE end of the scale--either LOSING election integrity, or it's already lost, or taking a few baby steps up the scale on the negative side, toward the positive (states switching from touchscreen to optiscan, so they at least have a ballot TO count--though it still takes lots of money and lawyers to get even a limited number of ballots counted).

You could also include how exit polls are handled in this scale. Exit polls in the U.S. are DOCTORED to fit the official results (of "trade secret" code voting counting), and are therefore useless for verifying the vote (unless someone like Jonathan Simon comes along and grabs screen shots of the real exit poll numbers). In other democracies, this would be unthinkable. Exit polls are used to check for fraud--and if they differ from the official results, recounts are required (or demanded). They are NOT used to "verify" fraudulently tallied results, as they are here.

Verification. That should be a chief criteria. Is the vote verifiable--and was it, is it VERIFIED? On this criterion: 0 to 1% in most of the U.S. 55% in Venezuela (five times the minimum needed to detect fraud in an electronic system).

Basing the criteria on risk of fraud or error--with no other factor included (such as corporate-corrupted officials, or citizen activism) favors the corporate vendors, because all they have to do is produce a "paper trail" that nobody checks! That's your current "optiscan" system. They "scan" your ballot and basically throw it away, and the "trade secret" programmed electronics tells you who won, with the corporate-consortium exit pollsters "adjusting" their data to conform with that result.

There is therefore virtually NO state in this country at "low risk" of fraud or error. Almost all are extremely high risk.

[Helga Scow Stern]

13. That is a rating system that makes sense!

Of the few national election integrity reform efforts from 2004 (and earlier), have any of them adopted this or anything comparable? I apologize for being out of the loop. I keep having the sense this election cycle that the manipulation is getting more skillful and will involve Dem results as well as Republican. When corporations own both parties, it is much less a partisan matter, as we've seen by the lack of Democratic cooperation we've gotten since 2004. And thank you for speaking to how these nonprofit organizations have become corporate mouthpieces. Wasn't Common Cause the one that supported Schwarzenegger's redistricting plan a few years ago? That made me very suspicious of them then. We need to keep naming these heads of the beast as they appear.

The manipulation of the Dem primary is so high in terms of propaganda, it makes me wonder what sleight of hand will emerge on Super Tuesday. It is important that we stick to the issue of election integrity, no matter who wins. Makes me want to change my avatar, because this issue is more important than any candidate!

You are a genuine patriot and treasure to our country, Peace Patriot! Bless you.

[Yellow Horse]

17. Common Cause does not take corporate money. FYI . n/t

[Wilms]

18. Hey. If I don't like their decision, they get labeled as suspicious or even corrupt.

The opposite is true, as well.

It's vital that we "keep naming these heads of the beast as they appear"...or make shit up based on "the sense" we have while "being out of the loop".

It's so simple that I'm surprised you didn't know. :spank:

[demodonkey]

16. Pennsylvania higher than a +1 ? Huh? Say WHAT? What planet are you on?

Pennsylvania is SO incredibly ripe for an electoral disaster it feels like I am sitting here on the cone of a rumbling volcano.

Pennsylvania is a very big, targeted swing state, with 21 electoral votes at stake. Very highly divided politically between the SW and SE urban areas (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) and "the T" which is a T-shaped, mostly rural region that has traditionally been very conservative (but pockets here and there are changing and that is causing its own political stresses.)

TWELVE different voting systems. As of this coming week 52 counties (with luck, only 51) will still be on totally paperless DREs (BIG counties, too, including those that contain Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.)

Huge party machines operative in many areas, all working hard to squelch candidates they don't approve of. Very entrenched "good old boy" system with a full-time, very partisan Legislature.

Antiquated Election Code (and, until recently, the only way to get a complete copy was to buy a $130 law book from the private corporation that printed it.) No public oversight of testing and counting, only partisan observers (have to have a Watcher's Certificate and represent a candidate or party to be allowed to observe anything.)

Many PA county and state election officials are totally complacent to the dangers of electronic voting. Total trust in their testing program which is NOT robust. Only 17 rather minor points checked, and one examiner -- usually Michael Shamos, otherwise Glenn Newkirk -- does a little hands on, such as voting twelve (yes 12!) ballots.

SHALL I GO ON?

We as Pennsylvania citizens are doing our best here, but what on God's green earth would give ANYONE the notion that Pennsylvania is some sort of bastion of election integrity?

No offense intended, but as I said -- what planet are you on?

Marybeth Kuznik
Executive Director, VotePA
http://www.VotePA.us

[Wilms]

19. Perhaps Peace Patriot doesn't realize the PA levers were scrapped. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

20. So Sorry for that mistake! I was thinking it was a similar situation to NY and CT

where the old lever machines are being pushed out, and much more riggable electronics brought in--or where the struggle against this unnecessary and very expensive change, especially in NY, is on-going. I didn't know that PA was so advanced along the election theft industry path. I was aware there is a big fight going on--which, in my assessment criteria, is a very positive development, even if the state is currently a corporate mess (like CA)--but, from your description, I should not have given it a +1. It's not going in a positive direction yet, with official leadership. Leadership is all on ordinary peoples' heads, who have great odds against them. It's a good sign, though. Citizen activism has long-range ripple effects. It changes consciousness. It empowers people. It gives that assistant county clerk, who might be questioning things, a boost, at least emotionally, and maybe some clout--to have citizens up in arms in the front offices. It reaches people almost by osmosis. Change is possible. Change is in the air. It even affects other issues--reminds ordinary people that they have rights, and are entitled to watch over their government and influence policy, in every sphere. And, let me tell you, it ripples beyond your state's borders, all over the country. I remember hearing about your fight in PA early on, and it gave ME heart, way the heck out here in CA.

Things sometimes get worse before they get better, in this situation. You describe corrupt, entrenched officials, and lax, uncaring party leaders. The county officials, from what I've seen in CA, are "circling the wagons" to protect their little corporate fiefdoms--and some may be real bad actors, indeed (colluding on election theft). And some of the Dem leadership seems to be scared pissless by these big election theft corporations--or else are in their pockets. A very difficult situation. We expect the party to protect our right to vote--and certainly not to obstruct us when WE try to defend it. Well, we've all learned a lesson on that one. But please do know how profoundly your activism is affecting people, even if it's not obvious to you "in the trenches."

And thank you very much for the correction on PA. VV/CC is right about that one--"high" risk of fraud/error--although their reasons are so simplistic and, oh, optiscanny--as if optiscans (because they have ballots) will create transparency, like magic. That is just so not true. You have to COUNT the ballots--or else it makes almost no difference whatever. And you have to restore a public service culture, and high citizen participation. As long as private corporations are thickly involved, and hugely profiting, secrecy will prevail, and elections will be stolen. Not to say a ballot is not important. If you have a ballot, then you can lobby for more counting of them. But it's a first step back toward transparency--and it is by no means enough by itself. This is why I argue with VV/CC's criteria so much. A state is NOT at "low risk" of fraud/error because it has a ballot! And a state with an active, kickass election integrity group, like PA, might actually be at less risk, ultimately, than a state that has a ballot but little or no strong activism to push for counting of them, and to watchdog the system in the future, and pull other citizens into the process. The feds could impose a ballot nationwide, for instance. Would that improve transparency? Not necessarily. Corporate skulduggery, and election official corruption, can still be very much at work.

The VV/CC criteria fail to credit YOU--the essential component of transparent elections: an active citizenry. They speak only of officialdom. They speak in ITS language. And they greatly limit their criteria for election integrity so that it favors MORE corporate involvement. They leave out most of the context. Their slipping New York in there, as "high risk," tells us the probable reason. They are trying to counter those citizen activists in NY who are resisting corporatization. They want NY to buy into the expensive corporate electronic system--thus they ignore issues like voter usage and familiarity, the simple, mechanical nature of the existing system--that everyone can see and understand--and the importance of citizen participation, activism and alertness. The NY case makes clear that it is not a paper ballot that is the critical issue; it is citizen involvement.

YOU are the difference. YOU will change PA, eventually. And YOU get A+!

[payin attention]

21. The report gets in right: lever machines ARE vulnerable to fraud

Douglas Jones is a computer scientist, but also an expert on the history of voting in America. See what he has to say about lever machines.

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/congress.html

Lever voting machines offer excellent voter privacy, and the feel of a lever voting machine is immensely reassuring to voters! Unfortunately, they are immense machines, expensive to move and store, difficult to test, complex to maintain, and far from secure against vote fraud. Furthermore, a lever voting machine maintains no audit trail. With paper ballots, a it is possible to recount the votes if there is an allegation of fraud. With lever voting machines, there is nothing to recount!

In effect, lever voting machines were the "quick technological fix" for the problems of a century ago; they eliminated the problems people understood while they introduced new problems. Because they are expensive to test, complete tests are extremely rare. The mechanism is secure against tampering by the public, but a technician can easily fix a machine so that one voting position will never register more than some set number of votes, and this may not be detected for years.

In effect, with lever voting machines, you put your trust in the technicians who maintain the machines, and if you want to rig an election, all you need to do is buy the services of enough of these technicians. This is quite feasible for a metropolitan political machine.

Maybe there has been so much resistance in NY to getting rid of these machines because both parties knew how to use them well:)

[Peace Patriot]

22. Har-har! Always a possibility, I guess (that both parties know how to rig the

lever machines). But it is way, way off base to put NY, with its old lever system, in the same category as GA or SC. It's just ludicrous. They have very expensive, paperless electronic voting, on equipment manufactured in sweatshops in the Philippines (ES&S), and by corporations whose CEOs or funders are strong partisans of the Republican Party and rightwing causes (ES&S and Diebold), with no audit/recount controls. ANY voting system can be rigged, if there is the will to do it. The issues are, how likely is it that they will be caught, and what magnitude of fraud are they capable of without detection?

There is just no contest between NY's old lever system, and GA's and SC's e-voting system. The first could be rigged, like ANY system can be, but it takes lots of PEOPLE to do it, in any magnitude. In GA's and SC's system, it takes ONE hacker, a couple of minutes, in secret (at the manufacturer's!), leaving no trace--and millions of votes can be changed in ways that are highly sophisticated and undetectable. The whole state can be stolen, in a second, invisibly, at the speed of light. You'd have to mobilize the entire Teamster's Union to do that in New York. Not that NY is not capable of that. But leaks and stories would abound in every bar in NY!

The raw, old-fashioned nature of the lever system, with its simple mechanism that everyone understands, the visibility of any repairs (unlike a line of computer code inside a "trade secret" code e-voting machine), the amount of people it takes to run it, the amount of people observing everything--and the amount of people it would take to rig it on a large scale--militate against rigging. It is a risk. It is not a "high" risk, like GA and SC. It is not even a medium risk.

And VV/CC places these two systems--NY's and GA/SC's--in the SAME category: "High"risk of fraud/error. That is ridiculous, and it reveals the huge inadequacy of their risk categories and assessment criteria.

A paper ballot system can be rigged--but you've got to stuff the ballots somewhere that you want to get rid of, and create false ballots. People and more people. More risk of getting caught. (And, of course, a paper ballot system in which the ballots are never counted, or only 1% are counted, and the electronic machines tell you who won, can be easily rigged on a large scale.)

With the lever machines, you'd have to re-set the machines in every precinct in NY, or in enough of them to get your false winner, and, if you and your buddies (cuz you couldn't do it alone) didn't get caught messing with that many machines, you've left a trail behind you a mile wide--the re-set machine itself (how do you un-re-set? --more people, more time, more visibility), fingerprints, tool bags, shoe dirt, DNA, your mother's birthday card that you were going to send but didn't have a stamp so it's in your pocket and falls out while you're messing with the voting machine, or your truck parked around the corner that gets a ticket, not to mention strange and anomalous vote totals that anyone might notice, who reads pre-election polls, and starts questioning, and not to mention citizen activists, election observers, the losing candidate and his/her supporters, and many others who might see something, hear something, or have reason to suspect hanky-panky. It's risky and difficult to rig the lever machines on a large scale without detection.

Compare that to ONE computer programmer in the basement of ES&S headquarters in Omaha, NE--who merely has to ship his little disk to all county election officials in South Carolina, and they will put it into the little slot in the central tabulator for you. They may not even know what's up. And they may not have a clue how their system really works--and neither do most of the voters.

The two systems are not comparable. And to put them together in a "high risk" category is false.

And the fact that the one system is very low cost, with machines that were paid for a hundred years ago (well, 50 years ago?), while the other costs multi-millions of dollars for new hardware and software, and on-going "training," maintenance, upgrades and repairs (because they break down so often, and election officials can't fix them) is a big factor in this discussion that VV/CC doesn't mention. The public is being bilked out of billions of dollars, all told, for the simple act of voting and counting the votes. That, too, is absurd, and it has corrupted the whole election system from top to bottom.

What New Yorkers are really at "high risk" for is getting fleeced, like the rest of us, by these rightwing-connected corporations.

[Bill Bored]

26. Oh My GAWD! You mean they're not PERFECT?

What are we going to do? :think:

See if you can understand this:

There are 20-fricking-thousand of these machines in the State of NY. You can't SWITCH votes on them -- only create undervotes. That makes them half as vulnerable as ANY software-driven system to start with. (Every switched vote is worth 2-votes on the margin, and there is virtually no way to detect them.) You detect undervotes by looking for undervotes! Remember FL CD13? That would be unheard-of on lever machines, except in the rare case of a single machine failure. If that happens, it's easy to calculate if there are enough votes involved to change an election outcome. Usually it only affects Dog Catch races because they are run a single machine or 2. Those are the people who want to dump the Levers in NY! People who've lost elections for Dog Catcher. It happens. The machines aren't perfect.

That said, imagine having a technician physically setting up each and every one of these 20,000 machines BY HAND. No software and no opportunity to replicate the fraud on thousands, or more than a handful of machines at a time.

Then, consider that the machines are inspected and tested before each election by OBSERVING the ballot face and the innards of the machines, and casting votes. Lots of votes!

Then consider that there is bi-partisan election administration all the way from the TOP down to the lowest poll worker in the system. Not even a partisan Secretary of State. That's NOT how NY runs its elections.

Then consider that even the NY Repukes have resisted electronic vote counting. In the NY Legislature they voted to extend the State deadline for replacing lever machines to NEVER!

If every state made as big a deal of their voting system failures as some people in NY do when a lever machine fails, it would be the lead story on the 11 O'Clock news every night of the week! You have to keep things in perspective.

Computer scientists like Dill have, until recently (and most have been dragged into this kicking and screaming) NOT understood the principles of software-independent statistical auditing. They have not consulted with real statisticians and auditors and they have provided questionable advice to federal law makers with respect to election audits. They are, quite frankly, out of their depth.

We see the results of this in bills such as HR811 and the California 1% manual tally.

Until this situation is corrected, and the auditing standards for elections approach or exceed those of financial and other disciplines, we should keep our lever machines and NOT rely on software to count votes.

[Wilms]

27. Let me guess. You want OpScan. Right?

And "technicians" can't mess with an electronic election? Your pro-forma anti-lever post is as transparent as an electronic election isn't, and an insult to half the forum contributers who know better because they've been paying attention as opposed to lip service.

That's OK for the NYVV pro-OpScan bots. Not for others.

But thanks for sharing.

[Bill Bored]

28. And what was Congress' response to Doug Jones' testimony?

You should know, it was HAVA!

That's going from the frying pan into the fire as far as lever machines are concerned, not that I blame Jones or Mercuri (who also testified on that day in 2001) for that.

Just be careful what you wish for is all I'm saying.

[Bill Bored]

23. Agreed. Levers are low risk, esp. in statewide elections.

Even the Exit-Poll True Believers cannot explain their polls' discrepancies in NY because you can't switch votes (or delete that many) on lever machines.

In one of their previous reports, Common Cause listed NY as low risk because we have an election law with a 3% audit. But there is no paper record of every vote, so I guess they changed their tune. They are missing the point, although a 3% audit in a statewide race in a state with a shit-load of precincts is not all that bad.

However, the point is that the high risk is due to dependence on software and the last time I checked, there wasn't any in those lever machines.

Also, NY has NO Early Voting and NO No-Excuse Absentee voting. So there are very few opportunities to screw around with the ballots or the count that way.

We hand count paper ballots cast by disabled voters using ballot markers and we also hand count any absentee ballots that look questionable BEFORE they are scanned, in case the scanners have trouble reading them. We also hand count absentees when margins are close.

[Peace Patriot]

31. Oh, god, the Absentee Ballot issue!

Calif is now up to 50% AB voting statewide. They used to just toss these ballots aside, for counting "later," and didn't include them in the 1% audit. Due to L.A. activists, the whole state now has to include the AB votes in the 1% audit, and other handling has improved. But it's still a problem--vulnerable in the mail, vulnerable at the Registrar's office (who, all too often, hates ballots), and then SCANNED into the riggable electronics--NOT counted--totally defeating the purpose of many, many voters, to somehow get around the riggable system.

In Riverside County, SaveRVote activists caught election workers TYPING the contents of an AB vote INTO a touchcreen machine!

I was advocating AB voting, before the 06 election, as a protest--because I think this widespread phenomenon in Calif was/IS a protest against the machines--a huge, ad hoc, grass roots protest. And I was thinking: Okay, organize this group of dissenting voters, and pressure election officials to actually hand-count the AB votes. Thus, in Calif, you would get a 50% handcount!

I also thought--and still think--it is the best (temporary) solution if the only other option is voting on a touchscreen (with or without a paper roll)--if your state permits AB votes (about 30 of them do, some more restrictively than others; CA is very easy). And I also thought it might be a way around optiscan rigging--IF we could get the AB votes actually counted (which much of the AB voting constituency clearly wants). A sort of roundabout way to get back to paper ballots/hand-counted. And, in my little imagined revolution, the electronic machines would just "fade away." Nobody would vote on them. Consumer boycott. It was also a way around election official corruption--to not challenge them directly, and call them corrupt--but just to not use their machines.

Well, parts of this could still happen. If we can get the AB votes hand-counted, that considerably improves the standing of AB votes as to the security of the vote. In Calif, you can hand-deliver your AB vote to any precinct in your county on election day (or to the county registrar's office). We could all just get AB's, and not mail them, but deliver them to a precinct--to be hand-counted!

That's 7 to 8 million votes--half the state's votes.

In rural CA counties, they are starting to do forced AB (mail-in) voting, and are shutting down precincts. Bad policy! And they aren't asking the voters if they want this. They're pouring so many billions of tax dollars into Diebold & co.'s pockets, they have no money for inexpensive little precinct stuff--like the pittance pay to precinct workers, and gas to get ballots, machines, etc., out to the precincts. Disgusting corruption. Got to stop that trend. Request ABs. Take them to the precinct on election day. And watch them being counted. And see the results posted.

Instead, AB voting is being used to promote the opti-scam.

Anyway, friends, AB voting is HERE, big time. Whether you or I think it's a good idea, or not. So what do we do with it? Could it be turned into a hand-counting movement? Could we get what we want by smart use of this voter trend?

[Wilms]

32. As I said before, how the AB movement is interpreted is up to interpretation.

If most AB voters were doing so because they understood the danger of evoting there'd have been a revolution by now...and most of them wouldn't have voted AB realizing their vote may have been put in greater peril.

A paperless DRE is a good inspiration to go AB. Aside from that it's a crap shoot. And in general it remains, as you say, an "imagined revolution".

[Peace Patriot]

35. Wilms, ordinary voters, many of whose minds are elsewhere, get vague feelings,

hear a few bits of news, often from friends, and grok something very general--like, avoid the machines, or, only vote on a paper ballot. These folks--and I think there are many, many of them--aren't stupid, just uninformed, and busy/beset (jobs, families, illness, modern life's many hardships). So your statement that, "If most AB voters were doing so because they understood the danger of evoting there'd have been a revolution," is unrealistic. It presumes that most people know the whole story, and that they have time and energy to "revolt" and also that they feel that "revolt" would be effective. (I think you underestimate the state of despair that most people are in about their government. Many people understand, 1) the country is fucked up; 2) the machines are rigged--that's one of the reasons it's fucked up, and 3) only vote on a paper ballot. I've had people SAY this to me, in so many words. And my gut tells me they are typical of a large group--Democrats, educated, generally well-informed but not on this, because it has been so black-holed in the news (it's almost entirely word-of-mouth, how this has gotten around). And many of this group know diddle-de-squat about how AB votes are handled, they just remember "PAPER BALLOT, PAPER BALLOT, PAPER BALLOT, ONLY VOTE ON A PAPER BALLOT!"

I think many, many people know that something is deeply wrong in the country, so they BELIEVE IT, when some friend says to them, "Only vote on a paper ballot. The machines are rigged."

And THAT explains how it can be that people know and don't know. They KNOW something's wrong. But they don't know specifics. Some people have also heard about the long lines in Ohio (on TV), or elsewhere, due to machine breakdowns or not enough machines. It can take hours to vote. You might not get to vote. They get bits and pieces like this, and develop a distrust of the machines--and think they've outfoxed the system by voting AB. But they have no idea that the AB votes are scanned. Heck, I myself learned that rather late in the game, and only recently learned that it is standard procedure everywhere in CA.

AB voting is also done for convenience (the traditional reason), and, in rural counties in CA, it is being forced. (They're shutting down our precincts.) But neither of these things explains the tremendous increase in AB voting SINCE THE MACHINES WERE FAST-TRACKED ACROSS THE COUNTRY (since 2002). Distrust of the machines is the logical explanation for the great and sudden increase, paralleling the spread of the machines into every state and county. It's what I would do--and what I DID do--in the state of knowledge of the election system that I myself was in, oh, around mid-2003. I'm smart. I've been politically active all my life. And I DIDN'T KNOW ANY DETAILS--just a vague sense of unease. (Kevin Shelley had just become Sec of State.) And I definitely chose to vote AB, during that period, because I thought it was safer. (They didn't shut down my precinct until recently.)

So what I'm saying is that you can build on that unease, and that discontent, that moves people to vote AB, even if AB voting currently ISN'T a solution because of what YOU know about it, and they don't know. You can turn the situation to advantage, by organizing the AB voters to demand hand-counting of all of their votes. I'm not pushing AB voting. I'm saying AB voting is happening. Can the fact that it's happening, in big numbers, be turned to advantage?

[Wilms]

36. Then your "fantasy" has come true.

But I think it's fancy. Whatever many know about the dangers of evoting I'm not getting it's the reason for the AB voting. And if it IS the reason for AB voting, those voters made a terrible mistake, perhaps aided by people (like you) advocating it.

There is ZERO suggesting an absentee ballot is handcounted, except your previous mistaken assertions. I see you've figured out that AB votes in Riverside, CA were keyed into DREs.

I maintain that AB voting, quite the opposite of what you intend, is in most cases, a means to put ones vote in greater peril and fuels the consolidation of precincts into fewer and fewer polling places.

This is why I strenuously object to your advocacy of AB voting. The idea that it represents some sort of protest that will be effective in turning a tide against machines (your so called "bust the machine") is folly...or, to use your candid admission statement, "fantasy".

In most cases, AB voting is really bad for election integrity. Stop advocating it!

[Bill Bored]

37. Hasn't Bowen put the kibosh on the DREs in CA for the most part?

So why vote absentee now? Or another way to look at it is, you're forced to vote absentee. I still have trouble with the idea of voting absentee while not being absent, but let's say you show up at a former-DRE polling place and there's just one touchscreen there now, primarily for use by disabled voters. What do you do, and how does this differ from voting "absentee?"

[Bill Bored]

33. Beware of AB. Seiler in SD claims she's doing "hand counts" by feeding AB ballots into scanners! nt

[Wilms]

38. ABC News picked up the report and parrot the NY is vulnerable lie.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4405861