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New from States -
Maryland
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By Maryland Attorney General
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December 24, 2008 |
State Seeks to Recover Costs Incurred to Provide Voters an Accurate, Reliable, and Secure System
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler today announced that the State of Maryland has presented Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Global Election Systems, Inc. and Diebold Elections Systems, Inc.) with a claim to recover costs the State incurred to correct flaws in the touch screen voting system supplied by the company.
In December 2001, the State contracted with Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (Diebold) to provide a touch screen voting system including hardware, software, documentation and support services. The State’s payments to Diebold under the voting system contract have totaled approximately $90 million. After the State’s initial acceptance of the new system, expert, independent investigations revealed concealed security vulnerabilities in the voting system. In response to those investigations, beginning in Fiscal Year 2004, the State and Diebold implemented measures to cure the deficiencies that were identified.
“The citizens of Maryland must have a voting system they can trust, and Diebold promised to provide such a system,” said Attorney General Gansler. “Yet the equipment supplied by Diebold had vulnerabilities that needed to be fixed before it could be used in State elections. Under the terms of the contract, the company must reimburse the State for its costs of fixing Diebold’s voting system to make it more accurate, reliable, and secure.”
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New from States -
Minnesota
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By Mark Halvoson, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota
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December 22, 2008 |
This editorial appeared in the Pioneer Press and is reposted with permission.
As nonpartisan election integrity advocates with front-row seats at the U.S. Senate recount, we believe Minnesotans can be confident the process has been methodical and fair. The intense scrutiny given to each step of the process and to each vote in the Senate recount has provided an incredible civics lesson for Minnesotans and the nation.
Hundreds of Minnesotans have volunteered as nonpartisan observers in at least one of four statewide manual counts — the 2006 and 2008 post-election audits, the 2008 judicial primary recount and, now, the U.S. Senate recount. These efforts were organized by Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota in partnership with the League of Women Voters Minnesota and Common Cause Minnesota.
Our volunteers who were trained to be impartial observers signed a code of conduct and completed observation surveys. According to one observer, "After my first day I felt proud that our process was so transparent in Minnesota and confident that our election could not be stolen by one party or another because we had such a good recount process."
Here's what we've learned:
Our current election laws effectively prevented the chaos that could have clouded the process.
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New from States -
Pennsylvania
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By Voter Action
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December 19, 2008 |
State’s Highest Court Denies Pennsylvania Secretary of State
Permission to Appeal Lower Court Ruling in Voters’ Favor
Case Challenging the Use of Electronic Voting Machines Now Moves Toward
Trial
Pennsylvania voters challenging the continued use of
unverifiable electronic voting machines in their state won another
major round on Tuesday when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued a
ruling allowing their case to proceed toward trial. The state’s highest
court, in a one-sentence order, denied the Pennsylvania Secretary of
State’s petition seeking permission to appeal a lower court ruling
decided in the voters’ favor. In April 2007, the Commonwealth Court of
Pennsylvania had ruled that voters have a right under the Pennsylvania
Constitution to reliable and secure voting systems and can challenge
the use of electronic voting machines “that provide no way for Electors
to know whether their votes will be recognized” through voter
verification or independent audit. Following that ruling, Pennsylvania
Secretary of State Pedro Cortés filed his petition before the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court and further proceedings in the case,
Banfield v. Cortés, had been suspended pending the outcome of the
petition. The order issued on Tuesday gives a green light for the
voters to pursue their claims.
“We
now look forward to moving this case toward trial,” says Mary Kohart, a
partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, one of the lawyers
representing the voters. “There is overwhelming evidence showing that
electronic voting machines are unreliable and insecure for the counting
and recording of votes. We are pleased that our clients will now have
the opportunity to present this evidence to the court and to
demonstrate why these machines should be decertified in Pennsylvania.”
In their complaint, the voters allege that the electronic voting
systems, otherwise known as Direct Recording Electronic voting systems
or DREs, have failed during elections in Pennsylvania and in other
states by losing votes; registering votes for one candidate when the
voter was attempting to vote for another candidate; causing high
“undervote” rates; failing to register votes when the ballot contained
only one question; counting votes twice; failing to print “zero tapes”
to demonstrate that no unlawful votes were stored on the machine prior
to the election; printing “zero tapes” after votes had been cast; and
reporting phantom votes and other irregularities. Fifty of
Pennsylvania’s 67 counties use electronic voting systems without a
voter-marked paper ballot.
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New from States -
New Jersey
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By The Times of Trenton
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December 15, 2008 |
This editorial appeared in The Times of Trenton.
Today, the state Legislature is expected to consider a bill to remove the requirement that voting machines produce voter-verified paper records by Jan. 1, 2009, and to replace that re quirement with a pilot program for adding printers to a few of New Jersey's voting machines.
If the results of that pilot program prove acceptable, the rest of the state's electronic voting machines will be retrofitted with the printers that would allow voters to see their recorded votes, but would not give them actual paper receipts. All that is expected to take years and cost millions.
The intention, to provide paper evidence that a vote is recorded as the voter intends, is admirable. The technology is not.
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New from States -
New Jersey
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By US Representative Rush Holt
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December 13, 2008 |
 Chairman Scutari, Vice Chair Weinberg, and honorable Members of the New Jersey Senate State Government Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today on the matter of S. 2380, a bill to remove the requirement that voting machines produce voter-verified paper records by January 1, 2009, and to replace that requirement with a pilot program for paper records or ballots. I want to commend Assemblyman Reed Gusciora for his leadership and commitment in securing passage of New Jersey’s paper record requirement in 2005, and to express my very deep disappointment and concern not only that New Jersey has failed to implement it, but is now considering possibility of abolishing the requirement and its timetable for implementation altogether.
Voting must not be an act of faith, it must be an act of record, and that is why we must implement requirements that make computer-assisted elections independently auditable, and we must do it without further delay. I will explain my concerns in detail below, but let me dispel some possible misconceptions at the outset. First, as you know, I am a physicist, and so I am not arguing in favor of paper-ballot-based voting out of some fear or lack of understanding of the technology we vote on. Second, the original group of experts who helped me draft my legislation when I first introduced it in Congress in 2003 were computer security experts – among the best and most highly-credentialed computer security experts in the country. Therefore, I would also like to think it is obvious that the driving force behind my legislation is not a lack of understanding of computer security risks, but rather a long experience and familiarity with computers, computer security and computer experts. And finally, as you may recall, I have personally experienced human error in vote counting: in my very first run for the seat I now hold, one of the county clerks in my district ascribed my vote totals to my opponent, and newspapers reported that I had lost the race. In fact, you might even say it runs in my family, because my own father was the apparent victim of the theft of paper ballots when he ran for office. So I am not operating under the assumption that human beings are automatically more reliable than computers, nor that paper ballots are fraud-proof and computer tallies are not. The point is – voting must not be an act of faith, it must be an act of record, and independent audit records (voter verified paper ballots) must be required.
New Jersey enacted such a requirement in 2005. But inexplicably, although more than half of the country has succeeded in implementing such requirements since I first commenced this effort in 2003, New Jersey – once a national leader – is slow to act. Do people in those other states know something we don’t? Say what one will about Frank Hague and wandering paper ballots, if it had been pocket-sized memory cards or cartridges we were using back then, that’s what would have wandered off. Or software would have been modified, if that is what we were using. Whatever the ballots are recorded on, theft is possible and rigorous chain of custody must be required; this is just as true for memory cards and cartridges as it is for paper ballots. |
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New from States -
New Jersey
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By US Representative Rush Holt
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December 13, 2008 |
Chairman Scutari, Vice Chair Weinberg, and honorable Members of the New Jersey Senate State Government Committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today on the matter of S. 2380, a bill to remove the requirement that voting machines produce voter-verified paper records by January 1, 2009, and to replace that requirement with a pilot program for paper records or ballots. I want to commend Assemblyman Reed Gusciora for his leadership and commitment in securing passage of New Jersey’s paper record requirement in 2005, and to express my very deep disappointment and concern not only that New Jersey has failed to implement it, but is now considering possibility of abolishing the requirement and its timetable for implementation altogether.
Voting must not be an act of faith, it must be an act of record, and that is why we must implement requirements that make computer-assisted elections independently auditable, and we must do it without further delay. I will explain my concerns in detail below, but let me dispel some possible misconceptions at the outset. First, as you know, I am a physicist, and so I am not arguing in favor of paper-ballot-based voting out of some fear or lack of understanding of the technology we vote on. Second, the original group of experts who helped me draft my legislation when I first introduced it in Congress in 2003 were computer security experts – among the best and most highly-credentialed computer security experts in the country. Therefore, I would also like to think it is obvious that the driving force behind my legislation is not a lack of understanding of computer security risks, but rather a long experience and familiarity with computers, computer security and computer experts. And finally, as you may recall, I have personally experienced human error in vote counting: in my very first run for the seat I now hold, one of the county clerks in my district ascribed my vote totals to my opponent, and newspapers reported that I had lost the race. In fact, you might even say it runs in my family, because my own father was the apparent victim of the theft of paper ballots when he ran for office. So I am not operating under the assumption that human beings are automatically more reliable than computers, nor that paper ballots are fraud-proof and computer tallies are not. The point is – voting must not be an act of faith, it must be an act of record, and independent audit records (voter verified paper ballots) must be required.
New Jersey enacted such a requirement in 2005. But inexplicably, although more than half of the country has succeeded in implementing such requirements since I first commenced this effort in 2003, New Jersey – once a national leader – is slow to act. Do people in those other states know something we don’t? Say what one will about Frank Hague and wandering paper ballots, if it had been pocket-sized memory cards or cartridges we were using back then, that’s what would have wandered off. Or software would have been modified, if that is what we were using. Whatever the ballots are recorded on, theft is possible and rigorous chain of custody must be required; this is just as true for memory cards and cartridges as it is for paper ballots.
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New from States -
Minnesota
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By Ed Felten, Princeton University
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November 22, 2008 |
This article was posted at Ed Felten's Freedom-to-Tinker Blog and is reposted here with permission.Minnesota
election officials are hand-counting millions of ballots, as they
perform a full recount in the ultra-close Senate race between Norm
Coleman and Al Franken. Minnesota Public Radio offers a fascinating gallery of ballots that generated disputes about voter intent.
A good example is this one:
A scanning machine would see the Coleman and Franken bubbles both
filled, and call this ballot an overvote. But this might be a Franken
vote, if the voter filled in both slots by mistake, then wrote "No"
next to Coleman's name.
Other cases are more difficult, like this one:
Do we call this an overvote, because two bubbles are filled? Or do we
give the vote to Coleman, because his bubble was filled in more
completely?
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New from States -
Minnesota
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By Mark Halvorson, David Klein, and Pamela Smith
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November 22, 2008 |
With a celebrity candidate and record-setting expenditures the race to represent Minnesota in the US Senate captured the nation’s attention even before the historically close margin was announced. An automatic, manual recount of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race that began could last until mid-December. As non-partisan, election integrity advocates in Minnesota, we welcome this attention and hope that one of the outcomes will be lessons learned that strengthen our democracy.
One reason for our optimism is that Minnesota’s election system minimizes problems and circumstances that have historically reduced voter confidence. The occurrence of such problems and circumstances in other states plagued the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The people, procedures, and technology comprising Minnesota’s election system are among the most respected in the nation. Minnesota’s election system has great potential to certify results that accurately reflect the will of the voters and in which voters can have confidence.
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New from States -
New Jersey
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By VerifiedVoting.org
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November 20, 2008 |
Voters to be Let Down Again
Legislation introduced today in the New Jersey Assembly threatens to undo a commitment to verified elections the state made nearly four years ago, VerifiedVoting.org warned today.
“New Jersey threatens to set a new standard for irresponsible delay with this bill,” said VerifiedVoting.org president Pamela Smith. “New Jersey's e-voting machines have reported inconsistent results in both the primary and the Presidential election, and have been found by top computer scientists to be insecure and inaccurate. Adopting a reliable, auditable, verifiable system is the only correct response.”
Following the publication last month of a severely critical study by Princeton University computer scientists, Union County Clerk Joanne Rajoppi acknowledged the machines' problems and encouraged voters to vote absentee rather than use the machines. In the February 2008 Presidential primary, machines in 8 New Jersey counties reported inconsistent totals in the internal memory and removable memory cartridges.
The bill introduced today by Assemblywoman Joan Quigley (A3458) would undo the state's present law requiring voter-verifiable paper records by January 2009. In its place, a pilot program for small jurisdictions in the June 2009 primary would study the “feasibility” of paper records, with the results evaluated over the summer. The timeline would all but guarantee that the 2009 gubernatorial election would be conducted on the state's current electronic machines.
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New from National Issues -
General Topics
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By Kim Zetter
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November 15, 2008 |
This article was posted to Wired.com's Threat Level Blog and is reposted here with permission of the author.
For
years the U.S. has been sending observers oversees to monitor foreign
election processes and help assure that democratic principles are
followed abroad.
But given the problematic elections that took place at home in 2000 in
Florida and in 2004 in Ohio, it has seemed the height of irony to send
poll watchers abroad when the entity that seemed most in need of an
army of observers was the U.S. election system itself.
This year the country got exactly that in the form of a national
hotline staffed with thousands of volunteer legal experts and poll
watchers who answered questions, advocated voter rights and documented
how the world's leading democracy functioned or malfunctioned on November 4th, accomplishing something that no government entity seemed either interested or capable of doing before now.
The Election Protection Coalition,
a network of more than 100 legal, voting rights and civil liberties
groups was the force behind the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline, which provided
legal experts to answer nearly 87,000 calls that came in over 750 phone
lines on Election Day and dispatched experts to address problems in the
field as they arose.
All of this was aided by a back-end system and web site, OurVoteLive,
created and operated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which
logged calls that came in to the hotline and displayed problem reports
in near real time for the media and watchdog groups to observe. It was
largely due to this hotline that the public learned about Election-Day problems
in Florida, Virginia and elsewhere, and the site now offers the largest
database of records documenting election problems and inquiries in the
country. The database can be downloaded in its entirety or in report
form from the search reports page.
The idea for a real-time monitoring system was launched in 2004 when Verified Voting,
spurred by the 2000 election meltdown in Florida, built an open-source
system and coordinated with the Election Protection Coalition to track
reports that were coming in from the field about election-day problems
that year. |
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