NY: Planned Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of E-Vote Counting

[Wilms]

Election Integrity: Fact & Friction

NY: Planned Lawsuit Challenges Constitutionality of E-Vote Counting

by Howard Stanislevic

An open letter to New York's election commissioners, citizens and poll workers, penned by Andrea T. Novick, Esq., the attorney who filed the amicus brief in the US Dept. of Justice's lawsuit against the state, suggests that, among other things, electronic vote counting violates the state's Constitution.

In addition to the constitutional claim, the letter also makes the following claim about New York's current voting system, which is comprised almost entirely of non-computerized mechanical lever machines used to count votes only on election day:

The present machines are legal under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), as long as Accessibility requirements are met with at least one accessible ballot marking device per polling place to accommodate voters with disabilities.

snip

Reading law is hard work

Any reasonable reading of HAVA seems to confirm Kellner's assertion that levers are compliant, since Section 301 of the HAVA statutes, "Voting Systems Standards":

* does NOT require voter-verified paper audit records or ballots (which would make many DRE (usually touchscreen) voting machines non-HAVA-compliant);
* does NOT require the voting system to use a printer to produce the paper records required by HAVA; and
* does NOT contain accuracy requirements that are applicable to either lever machines or hand counted paper ballots.

snip

Novick wrote of the decades-old machines:

"Levers in their mechanical simplicity have a transparency that enables regular human beings to observe both foul play and innocent failures. The evidence of the failed votes can be proven in court just the way the evidence as reflected by the hand-count tally sheets could prove that the people's will may not have been realized."

snip

In its litigation in the Dept. of Justice case, NY State failed to make the case that levers are in fact HAVA-compliant, even though the attorney for the United States admitted recently in his remarks to the court that HAVA does not require voter-verified paper records to be produced. The issue of lever machine compliance therefore remains unadjudicated.

snip

Should New York not wish to return the HAVA money earmarked for lever replacement, Novick says that there is another possible remedy that would satisfy both HAVA and the state constitution: hand counting paper ballots for federal elections, while the lever machines could continue to be used for state and local elections that are not subject to federal law. This would involve at most, three hand counted contests, and in 2008, would involve only two, since there is no US Senate seat up for grabs this year. Under this plan, the lever machines could be used as privacy booths, allowing most voters to hand mark their paper ballots for the one to three possible federal contests, and then proceed to vote in other elections on the familiar mechanical ballot displayed on the lever machine. A supply of federal ballots, pens and clipboards would be the only required changes to the current voting system -- and of course the hand counters for the federal elections.

snip

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2008/03/ny-planned-lawsuit-challenges.html

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. I'm afraid your post doesn't make a lot of sense ... what do levers have

to do with counting?

[texpatriot2004]

2. Hi Wilms, I think your post makes sense. HAVA! What a piece

of BS legislation that was/is. HAVA is unconstitutional and the lever system is not great although they are better than electronic voting. Hand counting paper ballots is superior. Of course, HAVA was never intended to benefit the voters IMO. Thanks for your post.

[kster]

3. ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x499457

K&R

[Wilms]

5. Yeah, I know.

I think Fredda needs to adjust the rabbit ears on her internets.

:hi:

[Kurovski]

4. K&R. (nt)

[Stevepol]

6. What I still don't understand is how the DREs can possibly be constitutional.

Here you have the vote counted in total secrecy, for the most part, without any verification at all, even when there's paper to do the audits, and in those cases where there is auditing, it is minimal and not likely to be a satistical check of the results.

Every time I think about it, I have to do a double-take just to take in the fact that anybody could be so easily scammed. Are we living in Cold War Russia or China?

One of the interviewees in the "Uncounted" documentary noted that if any so-called business man proposed to do the books for a banking firm and didn't provide paper for a thorough and regular inventory of the results (as happens with our bank statements) would be laughed out of the room.

Then, after the so-called businessman left, they would call the FBI and tell them to check this so-called business because it stinks of corruption.

Yet when it comes to our vote, we glibly accept vote counting without verification or even in some cases even the possibility of verification.

It is, IMO, the biggest scam and con game in American history.

[Bill Bored]

7. kick nt

[Wilms]

8. Kick

[Wilms]

9. There must be one accessible voting machine in each POLLING PLACE.

That doesn't mean you have to get rid of lever machines.

Now the EAC issued an opinion, and the Bush Administration DoJ agreed, but noe one can point to a law that says levers must go.