VotersUnite.org: Miami E-Voting Audit Bug Nationwide + Call for Paper Ball

[the ether]

VotersUnite.org: Miami E-Voting Audit Bug Nationwide + Call for Paper Ballots



From http://www.votersunite.org.....


We have two important items of business today.
- ES&S iVotronic audit problems
- A call for paper ballots hand counted.

ES&S iVOTRONIC AUDIT PROBLEMS

Perhaps you are aware of the severe audit problems recently disclosed about
the iVotronics in Miami-Dade County, Florida. If not, here's an excerpt that
gives a quick summary.
*********************************
In an audit performed by Orlando Suarez, division director of Miami-Dade
County's technology department, after a May 2003 election in Miami Beach,
the event log scrambled the serial numbers of the voting machines, making it
difficult to figure out which machines were being audited.

In an October audit of the Homestead election, Suarez found that the event
log failed to account for 162 votes that had been cast.

'I believe that there is/are a serious `bug' in the program(s) that generate
these reports, making the reports unusable for the purpose that we were
considering (audit an election, recount an election and, if necessary, use
these reports to certify an election),'' Suarez wrote in a memo to Kaplan on
June 6, 2003.
*********************************
Read the whole article here:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8904999.htm

If your state uses ES&S iVotronic voting machines, it is extremely important
for you to let your chief election official know about this problem. Doug
Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa went to Miami
to help figure out how they might deal with the problem. He said, "Quite
frankly, I believe that the bugs that Miami has found are present in all
iVotronic systems deployed nationwide." But we have discovered that many
people outside Florida don't even know about the problem. The EAC didn't
even know about it until John Gideon told them.

Professor Jones has written a report of his recommendations, and your
officials need to know about it. Please contact them and pass on this
information.
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/miami.pdf








VotersUnite.org is preparing a press release announcing the groups who are calling for
paper ballots and other essential election protection measures for the
November 2004 election and beyond. If your group agrees with the statements
below and would like to be included in the press release, please reply to
this email with your endorsement or to [e-mail].

Please pass this email on so we can gain
the endorsements of a large number of groups.

- The "central finding" of a 2001 CalTech/MIT study was that, of all voting
systems used in the United States, hand counted paper ballots have the
lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots.
(http://www.hss.caltech.edu/%7Evoting/CalTech_MIT_Report_Version2.pdf. Page
2)

- Errors in both DRE and optical-scan voting machine software, firmware, and
election-specific ballot programming have caused hundreds of election
problems in recent years, including high levels of uncounted and unmarked
ballots. It is unreasonable to believe that all such errors have been
detected.

- Manual recounts of optical-scan ballots have overturned initial,
inaccurate machine results in many such cases. It is only reasonable to
believe that the outcomes of many other elections (both DRE and optical
scan) have been inaccurate and the inaccuracies were not detected.

- Computer miscounts, whether through error or fraud, have a much greater
potential impact than manual miscounts.

- The electronic voting systems used in the United States, both optical scan
and DRE, have severe and unresolved security and accuracy flaws that are not
being remedied by election procedures.


Therefore, in order to protect the accuracy of our election outcomes, we
demand the following:

- All ballots shall be paper ballots and hand counted.

- Any use of electronic voting systems, whether DRE or optical scan, shall
provide a paper ballot for every vote cast, at the time the ballot is cast,
and that paper ballot shall be used for the original vote count, audit, and
final record.

- While we advocate the use of computers to assist people in marking their
ballots, computers shall not be used to count those ballots.

- Ballot counts shall be done by precinct with public oversight.

- Ballot-count results shall be made public immediately at each precinct.

- Media outlets shall wait until all polling places close before reporting
any election results or outcome predictions.