In Defense of Lever Voting Machines

[helderheid]

by Richard Hayes Phillips Page 1 of 2 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

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Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D.
Presented to the Regional Mensa Convention
Columbus, Ohio, July 26, 2008

I am a native of upstate New York. I have been voting on lever machines since 1972. They may be old-fashioned, but their durability is proven by the very fact that they are still in service. I am not alone in trusting them. So does Bryan Pfaffenberger, Professor of Science and Technology at the University of Virginia, who was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study lever machines. Pfaffenberger agrees that the reliability of lever machines, which were expressly designed in response to fraudulent counting of paper ballots, "has been proven in a century of service." He concludes that, "the lever machine deserves recognition as one of the most astonishing achievements of American technological genius."

I am on record as an advocate of paper ballots, counted by hand, at the polling place, in full public view, on Election Night, no matter how long it takes. I arrived at this position as a direct result of an audit of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, undertaken at an unprecedented scale, under my direction. Rady Ananda, an election integrity advocate and a veteran of the Ohio investigation, is quite correct in stating that "our call for hand-counted paper ballots is directly related to our distrust of computerized voting systems."

Pfaffenberger believes "that there would be no such call for paper if the ugly history of fraudulent practices enabled by paper ballots were known." To the contrary, I am well aware of an astonishing variety of fraudulent methods utilized in Ohio, where, in the 2004 election, 85% of the votes were cast on paper -- 70% on punch card ballots, and 15% on paper ballots run through optical scanners. The other 15% of the votes were cast on electronic voting machines.

These methods of vote rigging are set forth in relentless detail in my book "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election," which comes with a CD containing 1200 photographs of altered ballots and other forensic evidence from Ohio. But this is no reason to abandon paper ballots. To the contrary, it is the very reason to keep them. The existence of paper ballots is the very reason why we were able to prove that the 2004 Ohio election was fraudulent. Electronic voting machines were rigged as well, in Youngstown, Columbus, and Auglaize County, but in the absence of paper ballots, we have only eyewitness accounts and precinct canvass records to tell the tale.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/In-Defense-of-Levers-by-Richard-Hayes-Phil-080727-985.html

[helderheid]

1. Couldn't agree more with this:

The most important aspect of our proposed solution is that the votes be counted at the polling place. The minute the ballots leave the polling place, chain of custody questions arise, and the opportunity exists for ballot alteration, ballot substitution, ballot box stuffing, and ballot destruction, all of which we have documented in Ohio.

Crime scene investigators, in addition to collecting forensic evidence, look for three things: motive, means, and opportunity. There will always be a motive to rig an election and win the count. There will always be a means – whatever method of voting is used. Our only hope is to stop the opportunity. Breaks in the chain of custody are what provide the opportunity – whether at the factory, or at the polls, or during transportation of the ballots, or after the ballots arrive at a central location.

[Muttocracy]

2. I like our old lever machines! nt

[helderheid]

3. I know very little about the system, but this sounds great:

The only way to have "mechanically caused" undervotes, or to shift votes from one candidate to another, is to tamper with the gears or levers themselves. This would be readily apparent at the end of the day, at the polling place, where the votes are observed and recorded, because some viable candidate would end up with zero votes on that machine. There is no way to shift some of the votes without shifting all of the votes. These are levers and gears, not computer programs. Forensic evidence of the tampering would be left behind. Lever machines are mechanical devices. Tampering with a lever machine is like tampering with a car.

Rady Ananda has well explained the fundamental differences between mechanical devices and software engineering. "One is physically lockable; the other is electronically mutable. Physically locked levers will reveal tampering; software driven systems will conceal it." Lever machines are "testable, durable, and very difficult and time consuming to rig. Proof occurs in the testing of its ability to increment correctly. ... The machine stops counting – and that is immediately obvious."

[Muttocracy]

5. it's kind of satisfying clicking pieces of metal into place

and at the end you move a big lever to simultaneously finalize your vote, reopen the curtain, and reset it for the next person.

It all depends on the trustworthiness of the volunteers at the polling station, but I suppose all the other systems depend on that too.

I also voted by a scanned paper sheet in Minnesota, and that made sense to me too (like our scan-tron tests in school) - speeds up the counting but there's the paper if need be.

I'm baffled by how our students can spend years filling out paper test sheets and then we don't use that for voting. Or have those standardized tests gone electronic too?

In a world where we've all seen the Blue Screen of Death, why go electronic?

[helderheid]

11. My concern with scanners is that you are counting with a computer that can easily be tampered with,

[Muttocracy]

12. yeah, at least there's paper - but when I heard about the stuff in Florida in 2000

after only having voted on levers in NY and scanned paper in MN, I was astounded! :)

[Wilms]

4. This is an important read given all the disinfo about levers.

RHP is right to challenge members of the election reform movement that actually argue, like the Bush Administration's DoJ (go figure), against the retention of lever machines.

The RHP referenced article, "Machining the Vote: A brief history of lever voting machines", is another bit of needed schooling. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Machining-the-Vote--A-brie-by-Rady-Ananda-080628-791.html

On a related note, HAVA DOES NOT call for the retirement of levers nor did a judge in a NY case rule that levers are non-compliant as members NYVV argue.

Pity so many states that took the money HAVA did offer if they wanted to replace these machines. NY took it too. And ought to give it back!

Thanks for this helderheid.

K&R

[helderheid]

6. This is very educational:

A number of unfounded attacks on lever machines have circulated lately on the internet. Most that I have seen are hopelessly uninformed rants by activists who have never seen a lever machine, much less voted on one. I regret that I must respond to them at all.

Writer #1 alleges that lever machines "produce" exit poll discrepancies. This is silly on its face. Exit polls are quite separate from the machines. Moreover, in the infamous 2004 presidential election, when the exit polls in nine of ten battleground states showed Kerry winning a much higher percentage of the vote than he was awarded in the official results, there was no discrepancy in New York State. The exit poll had Kerry winning by 17.3%, and the official results had Kerry winning by 17.3%. The same writer alleges that "programmers" "know" that lever machines are not to be trusted, and that those who do trust the lever machines are "ignorant." To the contrary, it is Writer #1 who is ignorant. Lever machines are not "programmed" at all. They are mechanical devices, not computers.

Writer #2 states that although the "lever voting machine is not quite as inscrutable a closed box as an electronic voting machine and does take more work to reprogram in bulk, such things can still be done." He gives no examples of such reprogramming of vast numbers of lever machines. I doubt that he can. They are mechanical devices, not subject to "programming" as are electronic devices. The only two vote-rigging methods he suggests – "zeroing the vote incorrectly, or messing with the adder gears" – are exactly what election observers check for. The writer claims that lever machines are "an invalid mechanical solution" without offering any proof. He later acknowledges that he does not have research to support his position, and then restates it anyway, claiming that "The machine count cannot be observed without taking apart the machine," and that this would have to be done while the votes are being cast, which would violate the voter's right to a secret ballot. This argument is specious. It is rather like saying that cars cannot be trusted to function properly unless somebody is looking under the hood while the car is being driven.

Writer #3 alleges that lever machines "break the chain of custody," and that they "sit between the person and their vote." This is an unfortunate misuse of terminology. The lever machine tallies are observed and recorded right at the polling place, in full public view. The chain of custody is not broken unless and until the lever machine is taken away from the polling place and removed from public scrutiny. The writer later states that "lever machines transfer voter intent to a ballot," and then the ballot is deposited by hand into a ballot box. Clearly this writer has never seen the lever machines that she so vociferously attacks. There is no ballot at all. The votes are tallied by levers and gears. The writer then raises the case of a candidate (obviously Paul Harmon) who lost a close race in Licking County, Ohio. The writer claims that Harmon "forced a look at the actual lever machines (and) when he took them apart he saw where the teeth that were supposed to poke holes in the ballot were filed down to a nub and those ballots (only on the Democratic levers) were seen as undervotes where a person did not vote at all." This writer is confusing lever machines with punch card machines. Licking County used punch cards in the 2004 election to which this writer refers. Moreover, punch card ballots are punched by hand, by the voter, not by some mechanical device hidden within the machine.

Writer #4 attacks lever machines because "voting cards" can be laminated "to make some punches almost impossible to make, while others would almost drop out, of themselves." The writer makes the same mistake regarding Dan Rather's expose of "clearly defective punch cards" in South Florida, concluding that "the history of levers is a very sullied one," and that "lever machines are entirely riggable and unreliable in their performance." Clearly this writer, as with Writer #3, does not know the difference between lever machines and punch card machines. I rest my case.

I generally make it a point not to publicly criticize election integrity advocates. But these rants are just plain wrong. I have voted on lever machines in New York State since 1972. I know what they look like, I know how they operate, and I surely can distinguish them from punch card machines. These misguided activists who are slamming lever machines without ever having seen one, and who do not even notice when the accounts they are citing are actually describing punch card machines, should just shut up before they cause further damage. They are playing into the hands of a federal government that is presently suing New York State to force us to abandon our beloved lever machines and replace them with optical scanners or electronic voting machines. We don't want or trust either of them, and we don't like being told what to do by the federal government or by people who don't know what they are talking about.

[Wilms]

10. Educational...and depressing.

:(

There's more than a few election reform advocates, particularly in NY, who think we're better off melting the levers and using optical scan. Worse are reports of those who'd rather levers but don't want to offend the advocates who call for their retirement.

Really disappointing.

[Madrone]

7. Levers can be tampered with as well - personal experience.

My dad ran for office a total of 3 times in Michigan. State senate, and US Congress. During one of these elections he got a call from a voter in a small town who was freaking out because she said something about the machine "felt wrong" and that she didn't think her vote for my dad had been counted.

Long story short - they got people down there to investigate and upon opening the machine they found a small screw behind the lever with his name that had been unscrewed *just enough* to stop the lever just before it got far enough to register the vote. No idea how many people thought they voted but didn't, but in the end (in our situation) it was dropped because there wouldn't have been enough votes in that area to change the outcome anyway.

That said - I'll take levers over any electronic device, any day of the week.

[Wilms]

8. Great story that underscores an important point.

Large scale attacks are possible with electronic voting, but not-so-much with levers.

[Madrone]

9. And I agree.

As an IT nerd, I agree x1000.

[Bill Bored]

33. Michigan has TONS of paper ballots and NO audits.

So what's the difference between that and voting on DREs? I hear all kinds of allegations of fraud from the folks in MI because they don't check their scanner counts with hand counts. Let's see if they can pass a decent audit law, but meanwhile, NY has levers and they count the votes. If they didn't, we'd see much more undervotes and they would stick out like a sore thumb.

Now, I have to go read RHP's article, because I hear he likes levers too. Fancy that!

[eridani]

55. Audiits MUSTbe required.

It means fuckall to say a system is "auditable" unless regular audits are actually performed.

[Muttocracy]

13. stories like that make me think about how we need more volunteers

to test and watch security on machines. That's probably true of any format.

But your story is a good one to keep in mind.

[SoxFan]

41. 1988

We had more votes in a county commissioners race than for president (keep in mind that county commish is an obscure, weak position in NH). Lo and behold, there were dozens of votes cast ONLY for a particular county commissioner candidate. Not for Bush or Dukakis, just for a fourth string race that only impacted nursing home and county jail employees.

Since Manchester switched to optical scan paper ballots, this sort of crap has become far less common. The optical scanner gives you a quick count, and the paper ballot allows for a manual recount.

[Wilms]

42. Was the machine investigated?

Did that sort of thing happen in other elections?

Of course a paper ballot allows for a recount. How does a candidate get one by law in your state?

[SoxFan]

44. It was a shady ward moderator

As it turned out, one polling place wasn't going to come close to impacting the outcome of that race.

As for recounts, a candidate is entitled to a free recount if the margin of victory/defeat is within 1%. In races where the margin exceeds 1%, the candidate can still request a recount, but he or she has to reimburse the secretary of state for the cost of the recount. The actual cost will vary widely, depending on the number of votes cast.

Ralph Nader paid for a scaled-down recount in 2004, and Dennis Kucinich did the same thing in the 2008 primary. In both cases, the manual count was in line with the scanner count. The differences that did pop up were either due to unavoidable glitches (two ballots being run through at once because they were stuck together) or because of stupid transcription errors, ie, Aunt Mildred misreads the tape and says "462 votes instead of 642 votes.

[Wilms]

48. Thanks.

It is one of the strong points that with levers it takes a lot of work to rig a lot of machines. Not so of course with optical scan and DREs. That said, with a small race, it's not necessarily harder but would still be detectable.

Those Aunt Mildred foul-ups are possible with levers too. And I don't hold a vote or two against any system.

With a risk-based audit conducted so as to maintain chain of custody, I'd be ok with OpScan. We just don't have that kind of law except in NJ.

[eridani]

54. Not to mention normal wear and tear

A vote is not necessarily recorded just because you hear mechanical noises. There is NO permanent record of anyone's vote on a lever machine.

However, ferchrissakes don't get rid of them unless there is a real improvement available.

[IDemo]

14. We've used these for 30 years, and they work ->

Never a chad or dimple

[Wilms]

15. But those punch-cards are counted by computers. n/t

The voting part may be just fine...but the counting? :argh:

[helderheid]

17. Rep King:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cEgBCkiV4DM

[Wilms]

19. Got a video for you! It's awfully wonderful because it's wonderful...and awful, LOL!

Behind the Freedom Curtain (1957)

Sales film for voting machines, promoting them as engines of governmental efficiency and practical democracy.

http://www.archive.org/details/Behindth1957

[helderheid]

21. Thanks!

:hi:

[IDemo]

20. Optical scanner. It is still a paper ballot

And it prevents Election Day video gaming by vote-swapping Diebold user interfaces.

[CrispyQ]

22. The optical scan ballots provide a paper trail, but

once the ballot is scanned, the vote is digitized & can be manipulated. No electronic voting machines. No electronic tabulators. Wish I could remember the name of the DUer who created this flow chart.

[IDemo]

23. While some of that diagram may be true, the upper left portion is laughable

Obviously the person who created this has little or no knowledge of real world electronics manufacturing (and yes, I do).

[CrispyQ]

24. Make a better one, then. --nt

[Wilms]

25. Obviously it would eleiminate "video gaming".

Now what about software/Ballot Definition gaming, let alone paper gaming. :shrug:

[eridani]

56. If you never audit your system, how the hell would you know? n/t

[Posteritatis]

16. *shrugs* I always wrote an X on a piece of paper (nt)

[helderheid]

18. From this article:

"I still prefer hand-counted paper ballots, but only if they are counted in full public view at the polling place on Election Night. I simply will not defend the use of paper ballots if they are transported to another location before they are counted. I would much rather have lever machines counted at the polling place than any system, paper or paperless, counted elsewhere."

[Breeze54]

26. We use paper ballots here and they are counted right in front of me in a scanbox and the DEMS win.

We barely have any repukes in the state legislature anymore.

You'd need a magnifying glass to find any! :P

[Wilms]

28. "right in front of me in a scanbox"

Proving that you're satisfied with the method and result, but not proving the programming, the count, or ruling out mis-programming in less friendly areas of the country.

"Right in front of me" and inside a software driven device seems a bit oxymoronish.

[Breeze54]

29. It counts them ... that's it.

It's been working for a long time.

Paper & crayons and a counter.

MA is the BLUEST STATE IN THE UNION!!

:hi:

[Bill Bored]

31. Why bother with elections at all then? nt

[Wilms]

34. Why bother having a discussion with that poster?

I think they've got another topic in mind. Though if they saw a post like that on Free Republic it would be labeled as PROOF that repubs steal elections.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Wilms]

49. I don't see where I said you are a troll.

I do think you'd be in your rights to be concerned with someone who cared not for election integrity as long as their side one. Or I'd hope, anyway.

Now. Do you hand count? Or are the paper ballots you fill out optically scanned by a computerized vote counting "scan box"?

[Breeze54]

39. Because we won in 2006 and cleaned house for once, that somehow makes the paper voting bad?

:eyes:

[Bill Bored]

30. In front of me in a "scanbox?" How do you know they are counted at all then?

I'm glad your favorite party and ours is doing so well, although the Greens are pretty good too, but this "scanbox" thing and your apparently blind faith in it is very troubling.

[Breeze54]

36. Blind faith?...like I just heard of Diebold and ESS?

Please, enlighten me.... :eyes:

This state has had many elections where the Rethugs won the State House

for over 16 years and then, finally, in 2006, the Dems took it back!

As far as I can see, the voting is working just fine.

[Wilms]

38. He's talking about the inherent insecurity of electronic voting and the lack of verified counts.

That doesn't mean there's been a problem with your state. But the documentation on screwed up elections is not small. Some may have been stolen. No one knows. That's the point. They're insecure, demonstrably hackable, and largely unaudited in a significant way.

If you are interested in the subject, there are people to help point you toward information.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[helderheid]

46. PERFECT!

[Bill Bored]

27. kick nt

[Atman]

32. 100% agreement on this...I was an Assistant Registrar of Voters.

I was schooled on these machines and how they work. The redundancy is astounding. The fail-safe mechanisms, for a purely mechanical device, are genius. I posted on this A LOT back in the day when Bush forced us all to acquiesce to his crazy maniacal vote-theft scheme. I stand by every word I wrote..."electronic voting" was NOTHING but a means to facilitate vote stealing. Period. No discussion.

.

[Wilms]

35. .

:thumbsup:

[DFW]

43. Tampering is easily discovered, and lever machines are not programmable

At least not in such a way that they will record a fraudulent result without
leaving blatant traces of tampering.

Just look at who makes the electronic voting machines to see why Republicans love them.
Republicans make them, program them and confiscate the hard drives as "private property"
after reporting the tallies, which usually favor Republicans. Elections decided by these
divices are like Republicans calling "heads" using a two-headed coin. There isn't much
suspense as who wins close ones.

[MasonJar]

45. The paper ballot needs to be available for a recount. Each precinct

should post the results on the door; each should have a rep of each party take the results to the central location. The paper trail must be retained for the same as any other proof...5 years.

[csziggy]

47. Our county had a completely botched election due to poorly set up lever machines

That is how Ion Sancho got elected here in Leon County, Florida. It is a long story but the previous Supervisor of Elections failed to have the candidates names aligned with the levers and no one was sure who they were voting for. Lawsuits over that election were used as a precedent for not throwing out the 2000 election.

When he ran for election as Supervisor of Elections, Mr. Sancho promised us that we would never have doubts about our elections here and that has been true. He was chosen to lead the Florida hand count of ballots in dispute in Miami-Dade County.

That is why Mr. Sancho has worked with BlackBoxVoting and other organizations to test the reliability of voting machines and learn the vulnerabilities as he did in "Hacking Democracy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Sancho#Background
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/23355.html

[Wilms]

50. The first link says, "Misaligned levers on machines kept some people from voting."

It also says,

"Some polling places didn't open until noon. A later survey indicated that as many as 5,000 people tried to vote but couldn't."

So I'm wondering about proportion.

[csziggy]

51. Leon County now has just over 150,000 registered voters

Twenty years ago less than half that. In this year's primary elections, just under half of the registered voters cast ballots - probably about the same percentage back then. So of say, 75000 possible voters, 37000 may have tried to vote and 5000 could not vote at all. Then there were the thousands who voted but were not sure if their vote went to the candidate they intended to vote for - I was one of those. It was probably three to four times are many as those who never got to cast a vote - more than half of the number who probably tried to vote.

The back story is that that was the first election held by Supervisor of Elections Jan Pietrzyk - his mother had held the office for something like 20 years and did a competent job so no one ran against her. She announced that she was retiring a very short time (less than a few hours, maybe as little as an hour) before time expired to register as a candidate. Pietrzyk, her son, worked in the Elections Office and signed himself up. No one else really had any chance to even hear about the change and he was the only candidate on the ballot.

Old time voters in Leon County feel very strongly about having verified elections - that is one reason there were so many people picketing in front of the Florida Supreme Court in 2000 - an awful lot of those people were locals.

[Wilms]

52. I think I see.

Everyone has their perspective. I look at FL2000/OH2004 and think about recounts we DON'T get or are tampered with.

:(

[csziggy]

53. While many counties in Florida have election problems, Leon does not

The Black Box Voting article says this: "Since then, he has largely made good on his promise of smooth elections. In 2000, when the presidential election went haywire across Florida, Leon County enjoyed the lowest error rate in the state."

I don't know if it is just my polling place, but I have not had to stand in long lines to vote. When Katherine Harris distributed the voter purge lists, Ion Sancho refused to use them since his first examinations proved they were largely incorrect. He reaches out to the community and works with voter registration drives to get as many voters registered as possible.

But many Leon County voters know how lucky we are - lots of our people go to neighboring counties to work and help.

[eridani]

57. I still like scanning with mandatory auditing

Nothing quite beats using two different tabulation results. It's like dating petrified wood by counting the rings and also by 13C dating. Agreement between two different methods increases your confidence in both data sets.