CTVotersCount.org

How not to audit, Chicago style vs. Connecticut style

This video has gone viral over the last week. It is a hearing of a public comment at the Chicago Board of Elections.

This would not normally, exactly, happen in Connecticut

This video has gone viral over the last week. It is a hearing of a public comment at the Chicago Board of Elections.

In summary:

The audit consisted of counting paper records.
The public was not permitted to observe the paper records, to confirm that they were counted correctly.
At the end of the count, the counters compared the result to the machine tape result.
It showed that the counts were way off.
The officials simply erased enough marks from one candidate and added enough to the other to make the audit count equal to the machine count.
And the Election Board apparently saw no reason for concern with the audit or with the election results.

This would not normally, exactly, happen in Connecticut

We do have procedures that require that observers be able to be close enough to see ballot marks etc.
In some audits when counts do not match, officials recount until everyone is confident in the result.
In some cases officials work to make the counts match in ways that are hard to follow, and provide little confidence in the reported results.
Some audits result in high differences between the scanner counts and audit counts reported on official forms to the Secretary of the State, most, with no confirmation, attribute the differences to “Human Error”.
Others reported without indicating “Human Error” result in the Secretary’s Office calling local officials to ask if they agree that the cause was “Human Error”.
We do not have an Elections Board that officially reviews and accepts the audit result.
We have a mandated audit report after each audit, with no specified deadline for its completion. The last such report released was for the November 2011 election.

EDITORIAL: General Assembly heading the wrong way on post-election audits

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

The Connecticut Senate has passed S.B. 252. If the House passes and the Governor signs the bill it will be another national embarrassment for Connecticut, doing the wrong thing at precisely the worst time.

We have voter-verified paper ballots. To be valuable and provide confidence they must be used for strong, publicly verified, post-election audits. You can help. Tell your legislators that you want stronger audits, not weaker audits. Tell them to oppose S.B. 252. Then consider volunteering one day after each election and primary to observe with the Citizen Audit.

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

S.B. 252 would cut our post-election audits from 10% of voting districts to 5%. S.B. 252 was originally intended to strengthen the audits, while providing savings for municipalities. The current version eliminates all the features in the original bill that would make the audits stronger. The current version saves, at most, just $15,000 more annually statewide over the original bill.

Those paying attention to the news in this primary season have heard many charges of potential election fraud, along with calls for post-election audits in Arizona, New York, and elsewhere. There is an embarrassing video of a faulty presidential primary post-election audit in Chicago, where the public was barred from observing the votes as they were being tallied by officials. Worse the counters had the original numbers in front of them. When their counts did not match by a wide margin, they added counts to one candidate and deleted counts from the other, so that the manual counts would exactly match the machine counts. Over the years there have been similar problems with the audits in Connecticut.

For the first couple of years in the Connecticut audits, some local officials barred the public from observing the ballots as they were counted, some made it very difficult for the public to determine the time and place of the audits. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz fixed those problems in procedures, which officials have since followed, for the most part. Other problems have not been effectively addressed.

The Citizen Audit’s observations of Connecticut’s audits have shown that many are conducted well, yet many are not. Many are, at best, only marginally better than the one in the video from Chicago. Connecticut election officials often do not double check counts; they are often aware of the original totals as they count, and work to match machine counts rather than accurately count the paper ballot votes. Frequently officials use confusing, ad-hoc, non-transparent methods for combining totals from multiple ballot stacks and teams of counters. Local officials in their reports and the Secretary of the State’s Office in statewide reports attribute all differences in counts to “Human Error”. The last official statewide report released by the Secretary of the State was for the November 2011 election. Five years is too long to wait for reports on a critical aspect of democracy.

S.B. 252 is still entitled “An Act Concerning Post-Election Audit Integrity and Efficiency”. The original proposed bill was the result of a long negotiated compromise which would have strengthened our audits in return for a reduction in the audit of polling place optical scanners, a change long sought by the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC). Among other reforms to strengthen the audits, the bill would have subjected centrally counted absentee ballots to audit, subjected originally hand counted ballots to audit when there were large numbers of them, mandated investigations of significant discrepancies in counts, required stronger ballot security, and timely reporting of results by the State. Municipalities would have saved 40% of their current costs, reducing relatively low annual statewide audits costs from at most $150,000 annually to less than $90,000. The revised, one-sided, bill provides none of the benefits while providing just $15,000 more in annual savings across all municipalities in the State.

ACTION ALERT: CT General Assembly Should Not Be Weakening Election Audits

Amid charges of voting integrity lapses around the country, the Connecticut General Assembly is on its way to weakening, our already weak post-election audits. The Senate has already passed substitute S.B. 252. Please call your State Representative and ask them not to make that same mistake. Find your rep and their contact info at: https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp Tell them:

As a concerned constituent, I urge you to oppose S.B. 252. The committee bill weakens our post-election audits. In a time of public concern with the primary process in several states, we should be strengthening, not weakening our post-election audits.

Call Today. The bill could be called for voting in the House at almost any time!

As a concerned constituent, I urge you to oppose S.B. 252. The committee bill weakens our post-election audits. In a time of public concern with the primary process in several states, we should be strengthening, not weakening our post-election audits.

Call Today. The bill could be called for voting in the House at almost any time!
Details:

For several years CTVotersCount, the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit, and others have been calling for stronger audits. The current audits do not subject all ballots to the potential for audit. The audits are poorly conduced and not reported upon accurately or in a timely manner by the state. (See Citizen Audit reports at: http://CTElectionAudit.org)

In 2015, we offered a compromise bill with several key reforms to strengthen the audits. The bill received uniform supporting testimony by the Registrars Of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC), the Town Clerks Association, and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM).

In 2016, the bill was improved to address some concerns of ROVAC. Yet the improved bill opposed by ROVAC and the Town Clerks. It was labeled as too costly by the Secretary of the State because it would require her office to report comprehensive results publicly. Interestingly, the Secretary is now touting an almost equivalent capability, recently implemented by her office, which has been under development for several years at $400,000+.

Instead of strengthening the audits, the Government Administration and Elections Committee has stripped all the strengthening provisions, leaving only the weakening reform of cutting the audit in half,

Amid positive systems news, SOTS recognizes online registration issues

As we mentioned earlier in the week, Connecticut State systems are an embarrassment and our Online Voter Registration system was down Saturday morning. Apparently it has been down more than that. Yesterday the Secretary of the State took note in a press release

It has come to the agency’s attention that there were intermittent slowdowns and disruptions to the online voter registration system.

UPDATED

It has come to the agency’s attention that there were intermittent slowdowns and disruptions to the online voter registration system. It is now back up and running and we encourage people to use the system. We are working with our IT specialists to identify the issue. At this point, there is no evidence that any agency is to blame. We are working with our vendor to ensure that any problems that arise are addressed immediately. Thousands of people continue to use the system successfully.

Perhaps it took a while to notice the problems amid the interviews touting its success <e.g.>

And touting the success of the new election night reporting system, which has yet to be used in a real election. The real test will come in November <e.g.>

We strongly support an online reporting system. The SOTS Office failed a couple of times when they did not listen to legitimate concerns of registrars of voters across the state. We are hoping this one works well or that they continue until they listen and fix any problems.

Meanwhile another Justice Department investigation. This one regarding compliance with the Motor Voter Law <read>

The section of the law the Justice Department is accusing Connecticut of violating is related to motor vehicle registration.

“Our investigation indicates widespread noncompliance with Section 5 in Connecticut,” Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general

Update 4/21/2016*********************************************

The Hour has more details <read>

Connecticut Makes National Short List – Embarrassing

Yesterday the Connecticut Online Voter Registration System was down for the morning. Reminiscent of last fall when the system was down for most of the last day local election officials had to print voter lists for polling places in the November election.

Last week Reuters covered a study of cybersecurity and Connecticut was cited as one of the weakest states. It also cited the U.S. Government as worse than most U.S. Corporations.

We sadly await the Election Day when the Connecticut voter registration system is down, especially with no contingency plan for Election Day Registration. Don’t say “Who Could Have Imagined”, we did.

Last week Reuters covered a study of cybersecurity and Connecticut was cited as one of the weakest states. It also cited the U.S. Government as worse than most U.S. Corporations: U.S. government worse than all major industries on cyber security <read>

U.S. federal, state and local government agencies rank in last place in cyber security when compared against 17 major private industries, including transportation, retail and healthcare, according to a new report released Thursday.

The analysis, from venture-backed security risk benchmarking startup SecurityScorecard, measured the relative security health of government and industries across 10 categories, including vulnerability to malware infections, exposure rates of passwords and susceptibility to social engineering, such as an employee using corporate account information on a public social network.

Educations, telecommunications and pharmaceutical industries also ranked low, the report found. Information services, construction, food and technology were among the top performers…

Other low-performing government organizations included the U.S. Department of State and the information technology systems used by Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Washington and Maricopa County, Arizona.

Bloomberg Businessweek: A Decade Hacking Elections

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…
“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

We note that similar issues have been raised in our current primary season. With charges and verifications that Twitter followers of at least one candidate appear to be largely fake accounts, along with unverified accusations that campaigns and their databases have been infiltrated, web access disrupted at critical times. Given the current state of web security, we see no reason that the same has, is, and will go on in our U.S. Elections.

It is best to be skeptical of anything you read in any media. On the campaign trail assume the video is always on and every keystroke is captured by the opposition, media, and Government. As always authenticity makes life simpler.

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors… Returning the party to power on that night in July 2012, Peña Nieto vowed to tame drug violence, fight corruption, and open a more transparent era in Mexican politics…

When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives, hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.

For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political campaigns. With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory. On that July night, he cracked bottle after bottle of Colón Negra beer in celebration. As usual on election night, he was alone.

Sepúlveda’s career began in 2005, and his first jobs were small—mostly defacing campaign websites and breaking into opponents’ donor databases. Within a few years he was assembling teams that spied, stole, and smeared on behalf of presidential campaigns across Latin America. He wasn’t cheap, but his services were extensive. For $12,000 a month, a customer hired a crew that could hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package, at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and defense. The jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met only a few…

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…

“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

For doubters:

Sepúlveda provided Bloomberg Businessweek with what he says are e-mails showing conversations between him, Rendón, and Rendón’s consulting firm concerning hacking and the progress of campaign-related cyber attacks. Rendón says the e-mails are fake. An analysis by an independent computer security firm said a sample of the e-mails they examined appeared authentic. Some of Sepúlveda’s descriptions of his actions match published accounts of events during various election campaigns, but other details couldn’t be independently verified. One person working on the campaign in Mexico, who asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety, substantially confirmed Sepúlveda’s accounts of his and Rendón’s roles in that election.

Study Shows Connecticut Municipal Websites Do Not Serve Voters

Most fail to provide information voters need to register and vote
Citizens must be better served and municipalities could save money

From the press release:

April 6, 2016: The Connecticut Citizen Election Audit released a study evaluating election information provided to voters by Connecticut’s 169 municipalities. Information was collected by volunteer evaluators just prior to the 2015 November election.

Citizen Audit spokesperson Luther Weeks stated, “Many towns do not provide the information most sought by voters across Connecticut, such as ‘What is on the ballot?’ or ‘Where do I vote?’. Many failed to inform citizens of online registration, which could increase registration and cut municipal expenses.”

Municipal website findings include:

Only 33% answered “What is on the ballot?”
Only 56% answered “Where do I vote?”
Only 58% provided the date of the next election.
Only 28% provided registration deadlines.
5 provided an incorrect election date.
2 provided incorrect registration information.
51% had no link to Online Registration. 28% had no link to Online Registration or to a Mail-In Registration form.
Only 17% posted results of their 2014 election.
Only 15% provided Voter ID information.

Weeks said, “The Secretary of the State’s web has much of this information, yet studies show that voters go first to their local web. Registration information is important for new voters, and all voters want the election date, ‘Who is on the ballot?’, ‘Where do I vote?’ and voter ID requirements.”

The report also includes recommendations to municipalities, the Secretary of the State, and a low-cost sample website for a whimsical town, http://NutmegtonCT.wordpress.com

Most fail to provide information voters need to register and vote
Citizens must be better served and municipalities could save money

From the press release:

Municipal website findings include:

Only 33% answered “What is on the ballot?”
Only 56% answered “Where do I vote?”
Only 58% provided the date of the next election.
Only 28% provided registration deadlines.
5 provided an incorrect election date.
2 provided incorrect registration information.
51% had no link to Online Registration. 28% had no link to Online Registration or to a Mail-In Registration form.
Only 17% posted results of their 2014 election.
Only 15% provided Voter ID information.

The report also includes recommendations to municipalities, the Secretary of the State, and a low-cost sample website for a whimsical town, http://NutmegtonCT.wordpress.com

Arizona should not go away.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not. Democracy deserves better than this.

It is typically a high bar to re-run an election, maybe too high. Typically you need to prove that enough voters would have been disenfranchised to change the result. Sometimes as far as proving they would have voted for the looser. Arizona’s Democratic Primary is near that bar. In fact, if we consider the number of votes that would have awarded one more and one less delegate to either campaign its not that high a bar compared to the disenfranchisement.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings. And comments from a Connecticut advocate.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not. Democracy deserves better than this.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings: https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=1s So far we are about half-way through. Here is a summary from a Connecticut advocate who prefers to remain anonymous:

POLLWORKER with 18 yrs experience: In the electronic poll book where she was working, when a screen came up for whether the voter was a Dem or R, when she hit Dem, an R ballot was produced. She solved the problem by giving them a Dem ballot any how and noting on the paperwork that the person was a Dem, not R. She said it happened 36 times at their site I believe she said, 21 times in 3 hours of her shift, 18 times where a D input produced an R ballot. I think in the other direction, where it happened from R producing a D ballot, it only happened 3 times. She also commented that in her 18 years of working elections, this was the smallest room for voting polling place she had ever seen.

Somebody else testified that at their polling place, there was no parking because they were repaving the lot! Pure voter suppression.

Somebody else did an overlay of polling places to income levels, and found in wealthy areas the polling places were numerous, but in the poor areas, there were only a handful of polls and many could not be reached by walking.

One person said she used to live in a wealthier part of town, and polling places were within a mile of her house. She moved, and now they were 4 miles from where she lives.

AZ just made “ballot harvesting” a class 6 felony. Angry voters asked, ” If I bring my handicapped husband’s ballot to the polls, I would be a felon. But I want to know: What is the crime for taking away my right to vote?”

One guy had helped register hundreds of students and turned in registrations timely. Then, on election day, they were not in the books. Or course the candidate with the most youth support was affected by this.

One person said that in her polling place there were 9 workers, 6 stations, but only 3 voters voting with three empty stations, even though a long line. There were 2 people at the door controlling the flow to the stations. That right there requires some explanation.

A schoolteacher said she had to apologize to her students, because she always taught them we live in a democracy and they have the right to vote.

SOS office had a chart on website on election day that was designed to show the overall statewide vote. If you pulled it up by county, there was a problem — the counties showed that 100% of the votes were in from early in day onward. AP started calling the race apparently at 1% of the vote. People were deeply disturbed to be standing in line and hearing the vote called so early. They are fixing this chart software now.

Also:

It goes beyond VRA — testimony that somebody entered extremely small polling place, two at door limiting who could enter, 6 polling booths and only 3 people inside.
http://azleg.granicus.com/Mediaplayer.php?publish_id=8

Here is the 18 yr election veteran’s cogent testimony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p-yCMcTm1E

Secretary State admits errors: http://usuncut.com/politics/arizona-election-fraud-primary/

Editorial: We didn’t “Fix this” or was it Fixed? We all lose anyway.

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. Four years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones.

We say:

Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States. Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others. We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. our years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.. E.g. from the Washington Post: Arizona’s voting rights fire bell <read>

In a move rationalized as an attempt to save money, officials of Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, cut the number of polling places by 70 percent, from 200 in the last presidential election to 60 this time around. Maricopa includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city, which happens to have a non-white majority and is a Democratic island in an otherwise Republican county. What did the cutbacks mean? As the Arizona Republic reported, the county’s move left one polling place for every 21,000 voters — compared with one polling place for every 2,500 voters in the rest of the state.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones. It’s an analogy worth thinking about, as there is no right to own an iPhone but there is a right to vote[*]. Many people had to wait hours to cast a ballot, and some polling stations had to stay open long after the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time to accommodate those who had been waiting — and waiting.

* There should be a right to vote. Yet, there is none in the Constitution. In recent years attempts by representatives to amend the Constitution to assure a right to vote have repeatedly gone nowhere.

In addition we have heard many claims of voter registration changes in party not made or reversed and ballot shortages, potentially disenfranchising additional voters. We agree with the calls for investigation of all the charges to determine the facts:

Why were the polling places actually reduced and under staffed? Were there memos, emails and reports justifying the changes. Did they even consider parking?
Were there massive changes in voter registrations not made? Were there changes dropped from the databases? Any reasonable system with logs and backups should have some evidence.
Absence of evidence should raise questions as well.
Were there significant ballot shortages? Why?
Did all the problems target particular populations, sub-populations, or benefit/harm particular candidates?

Our Editorial:

If anything was done to effectively disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there is a huge problem.
If anything was done intentionally to disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there should be prosecutions AND something done to address the distorted results.
Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in Arizona. Their vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others.
Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States. Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others. We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.

The Risky Way to Make an Important, Costly Decision

On March 11th, Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill, released an RFP along with a Press Release: Secretary of the State Aims to Revolutionize Voting Devices for Persons with Disabilities in Connecticut.

From what I can determine, this is a rushed, unsound plan. It is likely to be wasteful, risks chaos in November, and unlikely to satisfy the needs of those with disabilities, taxpayers, or polling place officials.

On March 11, Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill, released an RFP along with a Press Release: Secretary of the State Aims to Revolutionize Voting Devices for Persons with Disabilities in Connecticut<read> Invitation to bid <read>

We note that:

The whole time from RFP to response gives vendors just 20 days to respond. That suggests that there is some vendor already selected and the process will be superficial.
All vendor questions are due only 6 days after the RFP was issued.
There is a very short two month period between RFP submission and the start of the project, June 1. Leaving little time for things like demonstrations of the system, selection, and then vendor preparation.
The roll-out of this significant system to polling place officials and voters with disabilities is apparently scheduled for the November Presidential Election, with no pilot use.
We question the accuracy of the number of systems to be acquired, since it is significantly less than the number of polling places in the 2014 Federal Election.
Persons with disabilities should also be concerned that their is no system provided today, and none contemplated here, for Election Day Registration (EDR) locations. One of the many shortcomings allowed by not defining EDR locations as “Polling Places”.

A significant portion of my career was spend evaluating and implementing off-the-shelf and custom commercial software products for a large insurance company, with another portion spent developing and marketing software to large commercial and government organizations. From what I can determine, this is a rushed, unsound plan. It is likely to be wasteful, risks chaos in November, and unlikely to satisfy the needs of those with disabilities, taxpayers, or polling place officials.

Clearly, the current system for those with disabilities, the IVS, is unsatisfactory and needs replacement. At most it serves only those with sight impairment, and hardly serves them. It can take a long time to vote, sometimes hours to complete the process, and fails to provide a secret vote as required by the Connecticut Constitution. Most of those who have tried the system have chosen not to use it again. The system is difficult to set-up, is a challenge for officials, and is dependent on dedicated phone lines being installed in every polling place. It is subject to failure in a power or communications emergency. Yet, we are not aware of any people with disabilities pushing for change.

We long for the previous administration of Susan Bysiewicz, and their creative and effective evaluation of HAVA compliant voting systems in 2006. Had they not done such an open careful plan we may have ended up with a monstrosity of a voting system. We came close but the careful process provided advocates the time to make the case that the decision should be reversed and the process restarted. Connecticut cut costs in half and implemented optical scanning voting rather than expensive, unauditable touch screens. Some attributes of that process should be emulated in procuring a system to replace the IVS (which itself was not subject to a thorough public process):

There was much more time for vendors to respond in 2006. There were open public vendor conferences.
Three systems were subject to a large public test in several locations around the state where citizens could try the systems and provide feedback.
The UConn Voter Center tested all the machines and provided reports on their technical suitability.
Focus groups were created to provide more feedback. As I recall, focus groups of Election Officials, Persons with Disabilities, and Independent Technical Experts.
UConn political scientists independently analyzed public input and conducted the focus groups.

Replacing the IVS is a somewhat smaller decision than was made in 2006, yet it deserves time for vendors, input from at least the disability community and election officials, along with a careful thoughtful implementation process. There is no evidence of that in what is apparent in the process as described in the RFP and the press release. Perhaps a sound process would recommend waiting a year of two to possibly obtain a system better than that available today.