electionline Weekly - September 28, 2006
http://www.electionline.org/

I. In Focus This Week

Paper Trails, Electronic Machines Get Pre-Election Hearing

By Dan Seligson
electionline.org

Little more than five weeks away from the general election, members of a House panel heard agreement from advocates and experts on the need for a means to back up electronic voting machines with some verifiable and independently auditable method.

But members of the Committee on House Administration also received a clear signal from the six panelists that there is no consensus on how best to verify those votes - just a gnawing public unease with electronic voting that seems more widespread than ever as Nov. 7 approaches.

"People are wary of voting [machines] and they're just not sure whether they are working," said Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Calif. "Many problems remain, as we witnessed during the 2004 election and during primaries this year. I hope that this oversight hearing will serve as a forum for the American people to gain confidence in direct recording electronic (DRE) machines."

The hearing, however, would have offered little upon which to build confidence, particularly after a live demonstration of how to introduce a virus into a voting system in a short period of time.

The first to offer testimony, Princeton University computer scientist Edward Felten, took slightly more than one minute to compromise the accuracy and integrity of a Diebold touch-screen machine by installing a virus that altered vote totals in what appeared to be an undetectable way.

"Every record in the machine is consistent with the fraudulent result," he said, after completing the "hack" and revealing the switched votes. The steps were detailed in a study he released earlier this month.

Diebold has contested Felten's findings, saying he used a machine with outdated software and had access to the machine that would have been impossible at a polling place.

Felten spoke about the need to pass H.R. 550, a bill that would require all electronic voting machines to produce voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs), though the hearing was not specifically about the legislation. Sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., the bill now has 215 sponsors. While predominantly Democrats, some prominent Republicans, including Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. and Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., have signed on as well.

Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist, challenged the use of VVPATs and the renewed emphasis on paper to secure elections.

"The proposed bill, which presumes paper is more secure than electronic, is a proposition shown repeatedly to be wrong throughout history," Shamos said. "I am in favor of voter verification, but H.R. 550 does not come close to providing real voter verification. Once polls have closed, the voter.is powerless to find out whether their vote was part of the final tally."

A recent audit of Cuyahoga County, Ohio's VVPATs by the Election Science Institute found large numbers of uncountable paper trails - 10 percent of ballots - for reasons that included printer jams, inexplicable blank spaces and incorrectly loaded thermal paper spools. (Click here for previous electionline.org coverage of the report.)

Shamos said other ways of verifying votes that do not involve paper are forthcoming, that could include video captures of voting that would use an independent camera and screen, along with a tamper-proof digital record of each vote, to allow the voters to confirm their ballots before casting them. A DVD or other video record of the vote could then be used in a recount.

Barbara Simons, a former researcher for IBM and former president of the Association for Computing Machinery, said the current crop of DRE thermal "reel-to-reel" printers used to produce VVPATs have been plagued by "a number of problems." But the idea of using paper to verify electronic ballots should not be abandoned because of the current VVPAT offerings by major voting machine companies.

"There are high-quality printers that are much more reliable, that produce easy-to-use text, and could print voter-verified paper ballots that are easy to count manually," she said." Our voting systems should not depend on mediocre equipment."

That equipment, both DREs with and without paper, will be used by millions of voters in November. And while paper-trail advocates have said the current units are not ideal, they are better than the alternative of no paper record.

For the coming vote 40 days from now, the DRE machines, often with the printers in question installed, will be used by voters around the country. It has been enough of a concern for some members of the U.S. Senate to hastily write a bill that would help cover costs for jurisdictions with DRE machines that make emergency paper ballots available.

Senators Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., proposed to give localities 75 cents per ballot if they provide a paper backup. An estimated 27 million voters will use DRE machines in the upcoming election. Passage of the bill would require intense efforts on both sides of the Capitol, as most lawmakers could have their bags packed by the weekend.



Suffolk
County Executive threatens fight to keep lever voting machines
Nearly $50 million at stake in gamble to keep lever machines

By Kat Zambon

As New York advances towards compliance with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), one local official in a populous county said he wants to keep using lever voting machines, a move that could potentially cost the state $50 million in federal money.

Earlier this month, Suffolk County Executive Stephen Levy (D) sent a letter to election commissioners Robert Garfinkle and Anita Katz requesting that they consider telling the state Board of Elections that the county will continue to use lever voting machines. Levy explained in his letter that neither HAVA nor New York State election law explicitly ban the use of lever voting machines.

"We in Suffolk County should not be inconvenienced or forced to spend millions of our precious taxpayer dollars because counties in Florida had troubles with 'hanging chads.' Our lever machines are easy to use, they work, and they are inexpensive to maintain," Levy wrote.

Levy's letter also expressed concerns about problems with electronic voting options related to cost, training, and fraud, citing a recent Princeton University study that depicted vulnerabilities in electronic voting machine security.

"As the old saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' I believe I speak for a majority of Suffolk residents who believe that the present system is not broken," Levy wrote.

Suffolk County, on the eastern tip of Long Island, is the second most populous county in New York, home to nearly a million registered voters.

Levy's argument is based on his interpretation of an amendment to the state's Election Reform and Modernization Act (ERMA) of 2005. Ed Dumas, Levy's communications director, said the law gives local boards of elections the authority to keep the lever voting machines.

"The county executive thinks that we can accommodate handicapped voters by setting up a number of centralized locations throughout the county," Dumas said. Scanning devices and absentee ballots could be used for voters with disabilities instead of replacing all voting systems, Levy said.

Bob Brehm, deputy director of public information at the New York State Board of Elections said there is no ambiguity about the statute's requirement that all counties must get new voting machines.

"It [the statute] basically said our target is to replace them [lever voting machines] by Sept. 1 [of this year] but you can use them until you replace them by Sept. 1, 2007 . We don't believe lever machines can meet that statute," Brehm said, adding that state law requires a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, something that lever voting machines don't have.

The Election Assistance Commission, in an advisory issued last year, stated lever machines would probably have to be replaced because they have "significant barriers which make compliance . difficult and unlikely." Those include the inability to produce a paper record of vote totals as well as an error rate that exceeds federal standards.

In an article for Vote Trust USA, Howard Stanislevic wrote that in the 2004 election, Suffolk County had a 0.55 percent residual vote rate at the top of the ticket, while voters had no complaints about machines in the Election Incident Reporting System with more than 600,000 votes cast in 1,037 election districts.

HAVA and ERMA "were designed to encourage localities to buy new voting equipment, not require it," Stanislevic wrote. "With millions of dollars and the very integrity of our democracy at stake, it might behoove other officials to follow Levy's example."

"While it is clear that many New Yorkers would prefer to keep lever machines, New York State law as written and currently interpreted by the vast majority of State and County Boards of Elections, state legislators, and citizen advocacy and good government groups says that we cannot," Bo Lipari, New Yorkers for Verified Voting executive director wrote.

Ellen Martin, Suffolk County board of elections clerk, said that the board of elections hasn't started researching Levy's suggestion and implications as they are still getting organized after the primary election.

In a Newsday article, Levy threatened to sue the state to keep the lever voting machines but expressed hope that a lawsuit would not be necessary. "We're not going to ignore the law. But if we can get a decision that upholds our interpretation of the law, we won't have to expend millions of dollars and create anxiety," Levy said.

While Levy expressed his concerns about the cost of upgrading to a new voting system, the state's failure to meet HAVA's deadline for new voting machines could cost the rest of the state $50 million in machine replacement funds.

An EAC spokesperson said that barring Congressional intervention, "the state will have to repay the federal government in an amount proportional to the number of noncompliant precincts."

II. Election Reform News This Week

• Denver District Judge Lawrence Manzanares allowed the use of electronic voting machines in Colorado for the upcoming November election, but challenged the process by which they were certified for use in the first place, the Denver Post reported. "The evidence is that there were pretty significant areas at the federal level where such testing simply wasn't done," Manzanares stated in his ruling. The state Democratic Party is encouraging the use of absentee ballots. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Hobbs said voters should still have confidence, noting the ruling did not mention systemic problems during the August primary.

• The protracted legal battle over Georgia's photo-only voter ID law took another turn this week as the state says it will file an appeal with the State Supreme Court over an earlier ruling blocking its enforcement, reported The Atlanta Journal Constitution. State officials said they were not seeking any consideration of the case before the November vote.

• Noting growing voter anxiety over electronic voting machines, three U.S. Senators proposed a bill to cover the cost of emergency paper ballots in precincts using electronic voting systems, The Washington Post reported. "If someone asks for a paper ballot they ought to be able to have it," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of the bill, S.3943. With Congress on the verge of recess and a short time frame before Election Day, some aides to Republican leaders say the future of the bill is unclear.

• Embattled Cuyahoga County, Ohio elections chief Michael Vu said poll worker training is the key to avoiding the numerous problems the county had during the May primary, reported the Associated Press in the Akron Beacon Journal. The May primary was plagued by missing memory cards, troubles with new electronic voting machines, poll worker no-shows and difficulty counting absentee ballots. Vu said he hoped a contract to train 7,000 poll workers inked with Cuyahoga Community College will help prevent problems from recurring.