Noel Runyan rocks!

[Melissa G]

We just finished a full day of testimony down at the State capitol with lots of folks including:

Bruce Funk: 23 year veteran Emery County Utah election official

Clint Curtis: Computer programmer from Florida who designed “vote-flipping” software while employed at Yang Enterprises in 2000; became a whistle blower who gave a deposition about this in court. (Clint was invited by the State to testify)

Noel Runyan: Expert on evaluation of accessibility of electronic voting systems for the disabled. Wrote the 2007 report for the University of California stating that NONE of the e-voting systems currently in use: Hart, Sequoia, or Diebold/Premier, fulfill the HAVA mandate for the disabled. He has also confirmed this for ES&S.


I got to spend the evening hanging out and playing chauffeur for Noel since he came down to Texas to testify at the legislative hearings and he will meet again tomorrow with some select folks from Travis County elections office (including Dana De Beauvoir, herself) and even some state examiners.

Noel's wife is also a computer professional. He said that of the last 7 times he voted, the machines were broken 5 of the seven times. The staff could not fix them. One time he fixed it and another time his wife fixed them, but he wryly noted that most disabled voters did not come equipped with their own computer professional.

It was a really cool experience. Noel even managed to convert my 15 year old skeptical elder daughter who has been very dismissive of my election reform work. Plus, he does great magic tricks!

Bruce Funk was also very interesting and pleasant person to hang out with. I missed Clint Curtis who was just there for a short time while I had to take a work break. ( It's so annoying when regular life interferes with my election reform time.)

The evening also allowed me about an hour and a half with the aide from the SOS's office who organized the hearing. I enumerated my concerns about the entire election management process and we had a great dialog.

Anyway, just wanted to share 'cuz it was fun and productive!

[Stevepol]

1. K&R. What state? TX? PA?

[demodonkey]

2. We WISH it was in PA, but PA is so deep into being the State of Denial we aren't even having any....

.....hearings in the foreseeable future.

:-(

We need help here. With 21 electoral votes at risk and over 7 million votes on paperless DRE, come the morning of Nov. 5 you may all end up becoming Pennsylvanians if we go goofy and become the next FL or OH.

http://www.VotePA.us

[sonias]

3. Hearings won't necessarily get us legislation though

First question out of Chair Leo Berman's mouth was what is the status of the federal legislation that would help us pay for any changes in Texas.

This hearing was an interim hearing, meaning that the Texas Legislature is not in session. They do this in the interim to study things they can bring up in the following session. Texas won't go back into session until 2009.

The biggest roadblocks to any action here in Texas are the country clerks who are for the most part "deliriously happy" with their DREs.

You can view the archived video here. Warning the video is about 7 hours.
Real Audio of TX hearing on 6/25/08

My election administration official actually said that DREs are more secure than ATMs! And she's also the head of the association of county clerks and administrators for the entire state.

Six hours 22 minutes (6:22) into the testimony Chairman Leo Berman says something like this to the Vote Rescue people:
"Even if such a bill (hand counted paper ballots) came out of this committee, I doubt it would ever pass this legislature"

:hi: Mary Beth!

Sonia

[Fly by night]

4. If Texas has any unspent HAVA $$, they can be used to replace DREs.

Tennessee requested and got that ruling change from the EAC back in the spring. If you need the link to the EAC letter, let me know.

Sorry you missed Clint. Even my hard-bitten attorney brother said that Clint's portion of "UNCOUNTED" was the most persuasive part of the film.

[Melissa G]

6. Hi Fly, I'll search through the archive and catch the Clint part of the testimony this weekend.

Sure, send me the link to the EAC letter and I'll send it to Lon Burnam who is our champion on that committee. :hi:

[sonias]

8. They know about it FBN

I've taken it by their offices.

Their original estimate was something like $50 million for Texas to mandate a switch like Florida did, then at yesterday's hearing the new number is now $200 million. Inflation you know. :eyes:


Sonia

[Melissa G]

5. Sonia is absolutely right about how 'deliriously happy' the clerks are about

the machines and they all paraded up there to declare their confidence and deep satisfaction with those blankety blank machines- coordinated, en mass, with examples from each part of the state. Well, it was challenging to sit through, to say the least.

A particularly challenging part was the SOS office claiming that they had no specifics of machine or process error for them to fix or investigate. Many of us who were there in the room listening to them say this had read hours of specifics into the records and those same 4 SOS people denying knowledge of specifics were the ones moderating the meeting and recording our testimony. :grr:

I have not heard how the pow wow with Dana went this morning. I hope they made some headway convincing her that the Hart machines are a lot less safe than ATM's. I was very disappointed in Dana and all those other clerks who were going on and on about how fast they were done with the counts (9:15, one bragged!)and in finishing elections faster, rather than focusing on security and the possible problems with the machine count. They were definitely drinking the Vendor Koolaid!

It is very sad when I appreciated the testimony of the chairwoman of the republican party of Wharton County (she testified about vote flipping and tossing out the machines) as being more effective in trying to secure my vote, than my own Very Blue Travis county elected official.
Very Sad.

Good assessment of the day though, Sonia. :hi:

[Melissa G]

7. TX n/t