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Edited on Wed Oct-08-03 11:43 PM by DEMActivist
Note to mods: I am reprinting the entire email with permission.
Today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard the appeal of the Susan Marie Weber lawsuit against electronic voting machines. Below is Susan's report. Be sure to read to the highlighted section at the bottom!!!!! This MAY be good news (assuming they aren't talking about the VoteHere 'audit trail')
Re: Weber vs Jones
This memorandum contains an account of my oral argument before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and a few comments about what might take place in the future..
I'm still catching my breath. My mind is a whirl and I'd better wait until I receive a copy of the audio recording of the oral argument before I try to piece the exchange together. But here are a few of my remarks as I prepared them, and we’ll see/hear when we receive the audio tape what I REALLY said.
May it please the Court, my name is Susan Marie Weber, and I am the appellant in this case. I would like to take one minute to explain why the lower court was wrong, and reserve the rest of my time for rebuttal.
I filed this lawsuit after reading the report by the computer science experts at CalTech/MIT, who warned of the possibility of an entire election being overturned without being detected, and of the need to take steps to prevent this. (NOTE: a judge interrupted me here and commented that the CalTech/MIT documents were not part of the record – so I had to explain that I knew that, but was merely giving background)
(so I continued after the interruption)
I was appalled to hear of this possibility. Friends asked me, "But Susan Marie, what is the real probability of the voting system being manipulated and an entire election being overthrown? Is it really all that likely?"
There are four people who are not qualified to answer that question: The Plaintiff (Me), The Defendants (the Riverside Co. Registrar of Voters, (Mischelle Townsend), and the Secretary of State), and Judge Stephen Wilson.
The only people who are qualified to answer a question about a computer voting system are computer science experts.
What do these experts say?
Almost unanimously, they agree that an election run by a computer without a voter verified audit trail is unreasonable.
· The risks are there
· The chances of detection are minimal
· The stakes are high.
Using a computer to create ballots for voters and then count them is simply not a reasonable system in the absence of a voter-verified audit trail. Not reasonable.
The defendants refuse to add a voter-verified audit trail to this system, and the Burdick case clearly states that such a policy must be reviewed under "Strict Scrutiny." This means the State must offer a "compelling state interest" for NOT adding a voter-verified audit trail.
It doesn't take a team of computer science experts from government, academia and the private sector to see that no such "compelling interest" exists.
This means the order of summary judgment by the lower court was wholly inappropriate.
Regrettably, what I had written out to say, and what I actually said do not quite match, because I was interrupted within 15 seconds after beginning, and there were several other questions as well. Equally a problem, I was 5th out of 8 on the schedule, so, while the first case was presenting, and thinking I had at least 40 minutes, was writing out my notes and had papers all over the bench, when they unexpectedly called our case as the second presenter, causing me to rush up there, not as prepared as I would have liked.
After I receive the Oral Argument Tape, I will be able to transcribe and verify what was actually said by both me and the defendants’ attorney, Doug Woods.
In his response, Counsel for Defendants gave the same sales pitch we’ve heard all along, with the same irrelevant features of the touchscreen machines: (my comments in parenthesis)
· It’s easier for voters to cast a ballot (even though it may not be faithfully recorded)
· Votes can be cast in many foreign languages (which can then be recorded by the machine as a vote for a rival candidate)
· “Ballot images” are protected by “redundant memory” (even though they don’t reflect voter intent)
· The “ballot images” are then counted “accurately” (“garbage in, garbage out”).
All of this completely misses the central, undisputed material fact in this case: these machines have no voter-verified audit trail, and are regarded by the overwhelming majority of computer science experts as an unreasonable voting system.
Below are some of the rebuttal comments I was able to get in.
The government claimed the touchscreen machines counted “ballot images,” with a HIGH degree of accuracy. But the machines were also creating these ballots
Without ballots verified by the voters, the voting rights of a huge percentage of the electorate is negated. And the ease with which their right to vote is negated, is greater than the ease with which that negation can be detected.
No audit is possible. No recount is possible.
The Lower Court completely missed the issue of auditability and instead ruled on such issues as
· counting accuracy,
· over-voting and under-voting,
· and so-called “redundant memory” systems of security.
My expert witnesses gave admissible evidence on the issue of auditability, testifying that a computer system without a voter-verified audit trail can never be secure and was not a reasonable way to conduct an election.
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One of the three judges was visibly unfavorable to our position and favorable toward the vendors’ claims on behalf of the touchscreen machines. The other two judges were open, and questioned defendants’ counsel from a position favorable to ours.
We expect an opinion that is favorable to our position, but we do not expect the Court to remand the case to the District Court. This is not entirely bad news. Here’s why:
At one point in his final rebuttal, Defendants’ Counsel assured the Court that we were now “preaching to the choir,” and that the Secretary of State was preparing to implement a timeline to require a voter verified audit trail.
We were gratified to hear this. This is a rather stunning reversal of position, given that we were originally characterized by the defendants as a bunch of Luddites who were “resistant to change.” Our experts, such as Kim Alexander, and Prof. David Dill, whom we mentioned in our final brief to the 9CA, served on the Secretary of State’s task force on touchscreen voting (which we also feel was formed partially in response to our lawsuit) and have impressed the Secretary of State with the need for a voter-verified audit trail. We have clearly had an impact on the system.
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