People And Paper Save The Election In Arkansas!!!

The ballots were incorrect, the machines were not programmed correctly. But election officials noticed the ballot problem in time and after the election discovered the machine problem. Because they had a paper record the election was able to be correctly decided. <read>

Haggard says the night before the election, officials noticed that the electronic ballot on two machines slated to be used at East Cadron B was missing the State House District 45 race. So officials printed up paper ballots to be used just for that race in that precinct.

Voters cast electronic ballots on the voting machines for other races, then cast paper ballots for the District 45 race. At the end of the day, Dr. Terry Fiddler (D) had beat Linda Tyler (D) for the House seat with 794 votes to Tyler’s 770. But a post-election examination revealed that despite the fact that the electronic ballots on the two machines at the East Cadron B precinct didn’t display the District 45 race, the machines recorded votes for that race anyway…

“Somehow the recording software had tabulated it into the wrong race,” Haggard says. “Thank goodness for the paper trail. We went to the paper trail and could show how people actually voted.”...

ES&S machines were also at the center of the controversy over the 13th Congressional District race in Florida in 2006 when more than 18,000 ballots cast in Sarasota County

But in Sarasota they had no paper trail <read> and a huge loss for democracy in the polling place, in Congress, and in the courts.

Some say that Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Arkansas in between. I guess not! In Pennsylvania they don’t have the paper to protect the vote <read>.

Update: As other advocates have pointed out, all is not rosy in Arkansas:

  • A DRE should always exactly equal the paper record, the same machine prints and tallies both – it should not mix up candidates and print a record for a candidate not on the ballot
  • The paper record is subject to the problems of voters not really checking – an optical scan paper record completed by the voter would provide much more confidence
  • What if any pre-election testing was performed – this is about the easiest error to spot, other than the machine failing to start or catching fire

You Can’t Always Trust The Paper

When it comes to paper ballots, trust comes from:

  • An easy to understand ballot
  • A private ballot
  • A strong chain of custody
  • Transparent counting of the ballots, or sufficient transparent audits – followed by appropriate action

When it comes to media we need all the facts, correct facts, and many usually reliable sources of news. We can’t rely on even the New York Times to get simple facts straight. Bradblog summarizes the story as reperted in detail at Smirking Chimp <read>.

“In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by The New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied.“
— Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May 23, 2008 in a review of the HBO television movie, Recount

That’s not true.

The New York Times did not do its own recount. It did participate in a consortium. Here’s what they actually said:

“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards, and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won, by a very narrow margin.“
— Ford Fessenden And John M. Broder, New York Times, November 12, 2001

Why did Ms. Stanley make such an important and fundamental error?

It is not a trivial matter. It is a common piece of misinformation. Many, many people believe it. Now a few more do, as a result of Ms. Stanley’s review.

It is not a trivial matter. Because that misinformation was created by one of the most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalistic events in modern times.

Here’s what happened.

Hard to fathom the New York Times being exposed by a Chimp – worth remembering this the cautionary tale.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates

Another effort in a long history of knee-jerk reactions to address public concern with voting by throwing expensive, inadequate, unproven, and unnecessary technology at the problem. The better solution is a stronger “Holt” bill banning DRE’s, mandating paper ballots, and strong, effective audits.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett issued a press release purporting to enhance voting integrity by a bill to be offered (text not yet available) <read>. Unfortunately, this bill as described in their press releases is wholly flawed.

For the last couple of years voting advocates have been split on bills by Representative Rush Holt proposing federally mandated paper ballots followed by audits. While supported by many advocates as useful improvements, others have opposed these bills for not going far enough.

We confidently predict that the new Feinstein/Bennett bill will unite all voting integrity advocates against their flawed assumptions and inadequacy.

Continue reading “Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates”

Revised November Audit Report – Suffers From Legendary Computing Problem

Earlier this week Dr. Alex Shvartsman of UConn sent us a revised, Version 2, of the Statistical Analysis of the Post Election Audit Data, November 2007 Elections <read>

This report is based on the added investigations of the discrepancies reported in the initial audit data reported in the Observation Coalition Report <read> followed by the original UConn Report.

While I have no reason to question the revised data or results, overall I see little reason to change the earlier Coalition conclusion that:

The audit statistics and observations leave us without the information necessary to vouch for the accuracy of many of the hand-counting results, whether those results indicated discrepancies or agreement with the counts obtained by the optical scanners.

I find no obvious flaws in UConn’s portion of the work. Nor do I question the integrity of the Secretary of the State’s Office. However, the report suffers from the legendary computing problem of “garbage in, garbage out”:

1. Since the discrepancy review, as I understand it, was conducted by a single person, no matter how trustworthy and reliable, it lacks the necessary transparency that would support credibility.

2. Since the review was conducted with ballots no longer under seal, such a count could use ballots that could be easily altered by insiders after the fact. Of course, modification is unlikely to occur in cases where the count was simply done inaccurately. However, modification after unsealing would be a very important part of covering up a programming error or fraud.

(Connecticut law is unclear if ballots need to be sealed after 14 days, while post election audits cannot begin until 15 days after the election. In addition to chain of custody concerns before and during the post election audits, most municipalities did not maintain ballots under seal after the initial audit count was conducted)

3. Our understanding is that many of the explanations reported in the review were not based on a review of actual ballots but a review of numbers reported looking for reasons that would provide differences that would approximate the difference between the machine and the hand counts, and attributing any such errors to inaccurate hand counting.

While hand counting errors might often be the actual case, if there were machine errors they could easily go undetected: Many such errors in programming could be expected to be approximately the same size as those attributed to human counting errors, since in both cases discrepancies would likely be caused by the same errors made consistently.

4. An investigation and report concluded some five months after an election falls far short of time-frames necessary for serious action based on significant reported discrepancies that might indicate errors, fraud, or the possibility incorrect election results. (As we have indicated occasionally, the motivation and paradigm of the current Connecticut audit law seems to be based on finding general flaws in voting machines, rather than anticipating, reacting to and correcting individual race results)

Warning: This Elecition Will Not Be Audited

The following report about a recent election in Plainfield raises several issues:

  • The Help America Vote Act does not require electronic voting. All paper balloting for federal elections is OK. But according to this article not in Connecticut.
  • In general we have no problems with all paper ballot elections, although there is attraction to the security of counting by machine followed by a sufficient audit involving a strong chain-of-custody (since errors or fraud would be harder to accomplish, requiring multiple independent mistakes, or coordinated machine and paper fraud.
  • But we do raise a concern with any vote “election”, “primary”, “special election”, “question”, or “referendum” that is not audited. Like every “question”, “special election”, or “referendum” in Connecticut, this one will go entirely unaudited.
  • We have an especial concern with paper ballots that are not audited. We have gone through two major post-election audits and several public hearings where election officials in towns and at the state level have consistently claimed that election officials in Connecticut are unable to reliably count paper ballots.
  • While we believe that paper ballots can be counted accurately by Connecticut election officials, unless the officials believe it is possible and take the appropriate precautions it is very risky. (Actually it should be easier to count during audits rather than on election night with possibly tired election officials who have had a long long day.)
  • In the February Presidential Primary several towns had a shortage of ballots, necessitating hand counting of copy machine ballots — they were never audited. This is a very big vulnerability and loophole in our election laws.

PS: I personally observed the February Presidential Primary Post-Election Audit in Plainfield. Of the twelve audits I haved observed it was one of the most transparent and reliable counts I have seen. So I have no reason to doubt the result in this case.

Plainfield budget clarification: Paper ballot use was OK <original>

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Norwich Bulletin
Posted May 20, 2008 @ 05:02 PM
Plainfield, Conn. –

The Board of Selectmen’s decision to not use the electronic voting machine at Monday’s referendum on the $44.4 million budget was not in violation of Connecticut state statues, a spokesman from the Secretary of State’s office said.

It was unclear Monday night whether or not the move, which First Selectman Paul Sweet said was to save money, was in accordance with the statutes.

Adam Joseph, spokesman for Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, said towns must use the new voting machines for elections, but for referenda they may be used at the town’s discretion.

Both the education and general government budgets failed Monday.

Reports of Dead Voters Greatly Exaggerated

Echoing Mark Twain, the dead voter issue has been greatly exaggerated – by everyone involved. Of course dead voters sounds more interesting and is easier for everyone to understand, report on, and react to than voting integrity which requires understanding computers, chain of custody, statistics, and auditing. Here is one of the many reports covering the latest status from the Secretary of the State <read>

On vacation these days so just catching up with the news every couple of days, so posts will be a bit delayed and reduced through the end of May.

Its The Voters’ Fault – We Couldn’t Erase Their Vote

Disturbing article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Following directions counts in vote. Recent recounts show voter errors can change tally <read>

The first disturbing thing is the thrust of the article that the reasons elections get overturned in recounts is the fault of the voters filling out ballots incorrectly. That is one point of view, but another is that the reason we recount close races is to assure that the intentions of the voters are followed. Its not to determine if voters are able to follow directions or if election officials are able to make voting convenient and easy to understand.

With the presidential election and its expected heavy voter turnout right around the corner, municipal clerks must issue a note of caution: If you want your vote to count, be sure to follow the instructions.
In these days of electronic vote counting, it seems a bit unusual for any votes to surface only after a recount.
But, as it turns out, these are mostly all cases of voter error.

But much more disturbing to me is that the “error” mail-in absentee voters make is using a pen, not the specified #2 pencil to fill out the ballot. Do I have to spell this out? Don’t know how to program a computer? Just bring an eraser to the counting room!

More specifically, Rennert said, the problem is the result of voters using a black pen to mark the absentee ballot.
This happens despite very explicit instructions that read in bold type, “Important, please use a No. 2 pencil or marking pen provided only.”
The marking pen is provided to people who vote in their municipal office in person. Voters who mail-in absentee ballots must use a No. 2 pencil.

Science Says We Have A Problem. Can The System Answer?

Is requiring that a vote be overturned in cases where the evidence shows over a 95% chance that the election system failed the voters and democracy a radical solution? When should there be a re-vote? Or simply overturn an election?

Two important articles in the spring issue of CHANCE, from the American Statistical Association present some stark evidence and raise some necessary questions: <read both>

Florida 2006: Can Statistics Tell Us Who Won Congressional District-13?
by Arlene Ash and John Lamperti

Statistical Solutions to Election Mysteries
by Joseph Lorenzo Hall

The first looks at what statistics can tell us about the missing 18,000 votes in Florida-13 in the 2006 Congressional election. Some of its conclusions:

Continue reading “Science Says We Have A Problem. Can The System Answer?”

Readers’ Digest: Quick Study: Voting Machines

I’m no fan of the Readers’ Digest*, but even they have finally recognized there is some concern about electronic voting: Quick Study: Voting Machines

I’m no fan of the Readers’ Digest*, but even they have finally recognized there is some concern about electronic voting: Quick Study: Voting Machines <read>

Some of the definitions and references seem to be a good start. One item that I would disagree with is:

Computer Scientists
From MIT to Caltech, computer science professors have lined up on both sides of the DRE debate. Stars include Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins (anti-DRE) and Michael Shamos of Carnegie Mellon (favors e-voting but critical of DRE manufacturers).

This is like comparing a dusty teaspoon to the sand in the universe. The line of Computer Scientists behind Avi Rubin is almost infinite. The line behind Michael Shamos has perhaps two or three others. In fact, its not just a DRE debate.

* I gave up my subscription to Readers’ Digest several years ago. They keep sending it and I keep trashing it. Every year they ask me to renew and I refuse. I’d change my address to send the free subscription to another, but I just would not want to feel responsible if they actually read it.