Demonstration of HAVA compliant machines

[Lefta Dissenter]

In a couple of weeks I am going to see the demonstrations by four different companies who are trying to get contracts with the State of Wisconsin for the machines that we'll need in order to be HAVA compliant. These will basically be the handicapped-accessible machines, but for many of the little Wisconsin municipalities, including ours, these will be our ONLY machines.

Voter-verified paper trail is obviously the first thing I'll be wanting to see, but if anyone has more specific input as to what I should try to push for in selection, please speak up. My understanding is that the State will approve any of the machines that meet the requirements for accessibility, and then the municipalities will be selecting their preferred machines. HOWEVER, the County is trying to coordinate so that all of the municipalities select the same type of machine, so ballot-printing is more efficient and cheaper.

As soon as I get into work and re-read the email that lists the companies that will be represented that day, I'll post them here. I know that two are ES&S (which we now use for Mark-Sense ballots), and Populex (which I had not heard of before).

Thanks for any and all input! :hi:

[Cookie wookie]

1. AutoMark is being marketed by ES&S

(http://www.automarkts.com). It isn't a DRE because it doesn't record any votes electronically, but is used to mark the ballot for the voter, and then scanned with OptiScan machines (ES&S only).

AutoMark has been federally certified and received the highest score on usability by citizens with disabilities in a recent Oregon study: http://www.uhavavote.org/vendorfair/survey_results/survey_results.html, and is mentioned at the National Federation of the Blind website (http://www.voiceofthenationsblind.org/transcripts/80/automark-voter-assist-terminal-demonstration). Also off the automark website is a link to a recommendation letter from the NFB.

ES&S seems to be making it difficult for people to test and buy AutoMark (a company they purchased) because they want to sell their DREs -- much more money and absolute control of the vote counting process.

However, activists are being amazingly persistent, and that's what it takes. The State of Florida, for instance, has been holding up state certification of AutoMark, which resulted in Volusia County having to fight an NFB lawsuit because the county refused this month to buy Diebold DREs that the state and those members of the blind community who have received money from Diebold (Jim Dickson, the AAPD), and thus have conflicts of interest, were pushing on them. A county group, the Handicapped Adults of Volusia county (HAVC) support Volusia's decision, and on Thursday, July 21, the Federal Court upheld Volusia's decision (http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001616.htm). This gives Volusia time to push the state to certify AutoMark so they can purchase that system. A great article on this with background is at the Bradblog link.

With an AutoMark system, states or counties will have voter verified paper ballots, accessibility to meet HAVA Section 301 requirements, and if the states/counties added hand counts of the ballots to audit the Optiscan, they would have elections that were not only accessible to the disabled community but also transparent, accurate, and auditible.

The costs of using the AutoMark and Optiscan are significantly lower than using DREs. Even if states contend that the feds will reimburse some of the upgrade costs, that money still comes from taxpayers even if it's federal taxes, which drains the coffers. Also the ongoing costs of running and maintaining DRE systems, though it's difficult to get exact figures, are high, and these are costs the states will have to wear like an albatross, like Georgia. Once you buy into the monster how do you untangle yourself?

Information coming out from Georgia over the next weeks will demonstrate to the country that contrary to the marketing and pr being done by elections officials and Diebold, electronic voting in Georgia, which has been used as a model to sell the systems to other states (Mississippi just fell for it), is after all, not transparent, not reliable, not auditible, and not secure and we're now coming up with enough documentation to prove it. Stay tuned as this information can be used in your fight if we can get the word out in time).

States have not been told that none of the DREs currently being offered to them are certified to 2002 VSS, which the EAC will require. Also technology like the Diebold printers that are being used to offer voter verified paper ballots are designed badly. The paper scrolls up on big wheels, which by the way means that the votes are stored in the order voted so that secrecy of the ballot is lost !

VotersUnite (http://votersunite.org) reported recently on Nevada's recount of 1268 ballots from the 2004 election: the counting process took 2 days with a total man hours of 320. Teams of 4 people worked per roll, with one reading all the selections on each ballot in order as 2 people manually tallied the votes.

So although recounts can be done when ballots on on this big wheel, which is better than nothing for states that are stuck with totally paperless systems, the design creates unnecessarily labor intensive auditing process.

Although the DRE companies are pushing states to buy equipment now, the deadline for HAVA 301 implementation of accessibility is not until January 2006.

State decision makers on voting systems need to be reminded too that HAVA does not mandate electronic voting, DREs, or against paper based systems. Mythbreakers (http://www.votersunite.org) spells this out clearly.

[Bill Bored]

2. Mark-Sense is Op Scan

So these aren't DREs are they? And you mentioned ballot printing so this also implies Op Scans.

I think the only accessible ballot marking devices are the Automark, which ES&S are trying to market exclusively, and Populex, which I don't know much about.

Since you're talking about Op Scans, you'll want the scanners to count the ballots at the precinct. You'll want there to be a way to conceal the ballot after the marking device spits it out so that the votes can't be seen as the disabled voter or poll worker transports the ballot from the marker to the scanner for counting. I would NOT rely on un-printed ballots for this as it will be impossible to hand count them in the event of an audit or recount. The better solution is a box or sleeve to conceal the printed ballot.

You'll want the marker to reject undervoted and overvoted ballots to give the voter a chance to fix this so they don't have to take the ballot to the scanner, have it rejected there, take it back to the marker to fix it, take it back to the scanner, etc. Automark does all this as fas as I know. Not sure about Populex.

Now if you're talking about DREs as the only machine in a rural polling place, that's another story. The VVPAT should NOT be thermal paper. It should be printed permanently with ink. The machine should then cut the paper into sheets and shuffle and/or drop them into a box after the voters verify them because if the paper is left on a roll in the same order in which the votes were cast, on a single machine the ballot is no longer secret! If the sequence of the voters can be compared to the sequence of the votes, then votes can be associated with individual voters. So unless the DRE cuts the paper into sheets and randomizes the order, you will need >1 DRE per polling place to maintain ballot secrecy. This could make it cheaper to just get an an Automark or something similar to use with an existing Op Scanner.

Hope this helps.

What do you think?

[Stevepol]

3. I'm very curious why I've never seen Avante approved by anybody.

It's my understanding that Avante's touchscreen is one of the best if not the best of the machines available. It prints a voter-verifiable paper ballot at the time of the vote, has a set up that prevents over-or under- votes, is very much approved by the voters when they use it, something like 95% approval of the voters using it. The computer geeks that see it demonstrated are (I've read) much impressed.

I also saw somewhere that its cost is not much, if any, higher than the Diebold and ES&S models.

So why not ask about this? You might go on the internet first and find out a little bit about the machine.

I'm sure they don't give the bribes and hand-outs and free wining and dining of secys of state that Diebold, et al. do, but at least they should be recognized for what they've done, for the fact that theirs is the superior machine (if it is indeed the best of the lot).

[Lefta Dissenter]

4. thanks so much

for the responses so far, everyone!!! I'm printing these up and taking them in to the office. I'm pretty sure we had specific model names listed on the emailed invite to the demo, so I'll post those here as soon as I can.

I also signed up to participate in the early testing of our Statewide Voter Registration with Accenture, since Dane County is the pilot group for the new system. So far, the data conversion has been glitchy at best, but that was a different thread.

I'll post an update as soon as I can.

Thanks again for the advice!

:hi:

[FogerRox]

5. Avante is very open and invited 2 of our

group to visit the factory in Princeton NJ. thewy looked at the Avante vote trakker---
is a full face DRE - 30" screen ! ! With the printer is $8,000.
My county Essex and Warren in NJ are looking at this machine.
The Federal 2002 certification is due sept, '05, which maybe why it isnt being used yet-