Stanislevic: So Now Can We Talk About Hand Counts?

[Wilms]

Election Integrity: Fact & Friction

So Now Can We Talk About Hand Counts?

Friday, June 13, 2008

Howard Stanislevic

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Thanks to the Honorable Gary L. Sharpe, the judge in the case of US v. The New York State Board of Elections who has previously stated that he gets his information about electronic vote counting from reading the newspapers, the State Board of Elections is now required to send the Court weekly status reports on the progress of, among other things, lever machine replacement testing, also known as "Plan A." According to the report dated June 6, 2008:

SysTest reports that Sequoia/Dominion has 279 open source code discrepancies and ES&S has 915 open source code discrepancies.

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Not that source code is the only way to screw up an election. Far from it! Those of us actually paying attention know that ballot programming, also known as election configuration, is much more accessible and dangerous than mere source code. Anyone with access to an Election Management System such as GEMS, Unity or WinEDS (the big 3) already has all the tools necessary to manipulate election results, even BEFORE the election, by tinkering with ballot programming. But voting system source code certainly has the potential to do just as much damage if it doesn't work the way it's supposed to after it's complied and run a voting system.

As New York prepares to dismantle its lever voting system (which, for some uninformed folks, just can't happen soon enough), the fact is to date, there is still no suitable replacement available. With a total of over 1,000 standards violations, even based on the weak Federal standards, it's hard to imagine how they can all be corrected in time for a 2009 election (2008 is already officially out of the question, except for deployment of electronic ballot markers to comply with HAVA's well-motivated Accessibility requirements).

It's the vote counting (stupid)! That's what needs to be checked by counting enough ballots by hand to see who really won our elections. To that end, the State Board of Elections have proposed some new election auditing regulations. Unfortunately, they are still inadequate, but they can be salvaged if the Board would exercise some due diligence and consult with those who, for years, have been studying the problem of confirming electoral outcomes without having to depend on source code, ballot programming or election configuration and management software. Maybe they will.

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http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2008/06/so-now-can-we-talk-about-hand-counts.html

[Viva_Daddy]

1. I'm all for hand counting

So what if it might take a week or two to find out who won the election. The new president cannot take office until January anyway. At least we'll have a lot more assurance that yet another election wasn't stolen again.

[Wilms]

2. .