[I should have posted this last week.]
For the most part, King County Council asked us great questions during our testimony opposing forced mail voting. If you haven't watched it, please do (online here, fastforward ~40 minutes). Below is my response to Kathy Lambert's specific questions:
I know this is inside baseball stuff. But it's important. The push for touchscreens, based on misunderstanding the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), has panicked counties nationwide. Faced with huge expenses and serious legal threat, many counties are turning to forced mail voting as a way out.
So we're given the false choice between touchscreens and central count op-scans? Both are expensive, unauditable, and error prone. Some choice.
The correct decision is to keep our current voter correctable precinct-based optical scanners. If we decide wrong, based on what's happening nationwide, I believe the decision will be made for us.
The take away point is that we're buying Diebold touchscreen and central count op-scan gear that we'll probably have to junk in the very near future. And then we'll have to pay to replace what we just threw away.
More...
To: King County Councilmembers
cc: John Gideon, Holly Jacobson, Paul Lehto
Date: June 10th, 2006
Subj: HAVA Complaint, Stewart v Blackwell, Waste of Money
KC Councilmember Kathy Lambert-
As you know, I oppose both forced mail voting and touchscreen voting. You asked great questions at the King County Council meeting last Monday (6/5). As a followup, here are my references. (Sorry for the delay.)
HAVA Complaint and Accessibilty
John Gideon of Voters Unite filed the HAVA compliant in Washington State.
Washington Voter Files HAVA Complaint
Do They Really Allow Individuals with Disabilities to Vote Independently?
John Gideon testified during the public hearing certifying these machines (Jan 20th, in Olympia). He stated the machines did not meet either the HAVA or our state's requirements. The SOS's Office acknowledged that John was correct. But certified the machines regardless. It was amazing. I wrote about the experience here:
Report: Public Examination of Diebold and Hart Systems
Stewart v Blackwell and Central Count Op-Scans
Attorney Paul Lehto explained the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeal's decision in Stewart v Blackwell to me. Because the central count op-scans have a different (higher) error rate than the alternatives, it unconstitutionally disenfranchises voters under the equal protection precedent set in Bush v Gore.
Here's the court's decision:
Here's just some of the analysis by election law experts:
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/2006/05/petitions-for-rehearing-in-ohio-voting.html
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/stewart.php
http://electionlawblog.org/archives/005460.html
Waste of Money
You expressed concern of spending $5.5m dollars for touchscreen machines that don't meet the reliability or accessibility requirements specified in HAVA. I agree. But it's worse than that; we're buying junk that will be thrown away shortly.
Holly Jacobson's group Voter Action has been successfully preventing the procurement and use of touchscreen voting machines across the country. It's only a matter of time before Washington State throws away our touchscreens, willingly or unwillingly. And this whole snipe hunt will be a huge waste of time, effort, and money.
King County's Election Office originally researched the touchscreen voting machines. Said thanks, but no thanks. And wisely chose in 1997 (?) to use the voter correctable precinct-based optical scanners. Our current system. So, in fact, King County WAS ahead of it's time. And only recently got off track. We should note what's happening across the nation and save ourselves the trouble.
Thank you for your time. I hope these references help with your efforts.
Cheers, Jason Aaron Osgood / Seattle WA
Washington Citizens for Fair Elections
That's my current position. Spoken as a computer guy who was a QA Manager for a while.
There are many types of testing. The name blackbox voting is very apt. Today, our only option for testing is comparing inputs with expected outputs.
Not good enough.
We election integrity activists use the term "performance audit". It's a form of blackbox testing. Take large random sample of ballots, count them by hand, compare the total to machine count.
Maybe, someday in the future, op-scans will be auditable. Auditable means you look at the hardware and software. Kind of like a security audit.
Today, the counties are not even required to do performance audits on the op-scans. Toby Nixon's legislation for that died in the Rules Committee last session.
So pleased don't get worked up about the definition and nature of audits. The point is we're not adequately testing these things. With the touchscreen, it's not possible. With the op-scans, at the very least, it's not feasible.
Posted by: Jason Osgood on June 17, 2006 09:05 AMI have posting a number of times about the inability to audit, and track an electronic vote.
As long as the vote, the counting, and verificaction is electronic we are at mercy of the software and sysops.
When a voter marks a piece of paper we have a trail to follow, to go back to and see what happened.
Posted by: JCM on June 17, 2006 09:36 AMIt's good to see you're keeping this alive. Thanks.
-Fred-
http://unreliableinformation.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the support. I recently heard the phrasing "private voting, public counting." Seems so simple when you hear it. That's my new mantra. I had been saying "secret ballots" and "public vote count". A large part of our problem today is from letting people make the issues sound more complicated than they are.
Fred-
Good to hear from you! You and your work on the Open Voting Consortium project are a large part of why I'm involved today. You stepped up while most of us were still sitting on the sidelines, scratching our heads.