Audits, Schmaudits: What about RELIABILITY?

[Wilms]

Electronic Voting Machines: Programmed for Failure?

By Joan Krawitz, Executive Director, VoteTrustUSA

March 13, 2006

Howard Stanislevic's full report, “DRE Reliability: Failure by Design?” can be downloaded here. A second report "Voting Systems Batch Test Results – Reliability," by Stanislevic and John Gideon can be downloaded here.

What if your computer had to be replaced every month or two … ATMs failed to work properly 10% of the time … your cell phone broke down every ten days?

Current federal standards allow almost 10% of electronic voting machines to fail every Election Day, according to “DRE Reliability: Failure by Design?” a new report issued by the VoteTrustUSA E-Voter Education Project. The report notes that the acceptable failure rate is even higher – approaching 25% -- in a 5-day early voting period.

The report was authored by Howard Stanislevic, a network engineering consultant whose experience includes working with the Internet Engineering Task Force on Internet Protocol Performance Metrics. Stanislevic points out that the failure rate allowed for touchscreen voting machines (also known as Direct Recording Electronic or DRE) exceeds the actual failure rate of the 40-year-old lever machines still in use in New York by 44%. The Department of Justice has filed suit against New York State for failure to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA provides funding for states to replace lever and punch-card voting machines with more modern and accessible equipment in time for the first federal election of 2006.

A second paper, "Voting Systems Batch Test Results – Reliability," by Stanislevic and John Gideon of VoteTrustUSA and VotersUnite.org, examines the results from the recently completed "batch testing" of voting systems manufactured by Diebold, Hart Intercivic, and Sequoia Voting Systems, and puts the information from those tests, provided by the California Secretary of State’s office, into the context of the inadequate reliability standards.

The VoteTrustUSA E-Voter Education Project analysis found that federal guidelines would have allowed an Election Day machine failure or replacement every 37 seconds in Maryland, every 23 seconds in Georiga, and every 78-79 seconds in North Carolina and New Jersey.

snip/links to the papers

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1041&Itemid=26

[Amaryllis]

1. Lack of reliability is our best frame. It is now well-documented even

in MSM articles. When we make the fraud argument, it is easy to argue against because it's so hard to prove, and we invite the "consipriacy theory" label.

The proprietary software/secret vote counting argument is much better and much more difficult to debate. No one can argue that secret vote counting has a place in a democracy.

The reliability issues are out there naked in MSM now for all to see. We need to start hitting this argument really hard! Take articles to your congresspeople...have meetings with their staff. Alert them we have a train wreck coming down the track with the 2006 elections and they need to be prepared. They need an action plan BEFORE election night.

[Amaryllis]

2. Wilms, elaborate please on your title...what are you saying about audits?

Understand you are saying we need to focus far more on reliability, but tell me your thinking on the audit part of your header.

[Wilms]

3. Sorry. It was a vague reference to the current supposed audit discussion

The current supposed audit discussion is not really about audits, but about personalites and who can win a pissing match.

Perhaps a little later we can return to a REAL discussion about auditing, which is a very important discussion to have whatever one thinks of Land Shark or his timing.

[mopinko]

4. we need to pound on the why of this.

we need to pound home that when you have a failure, the machine is accessed by a "technician". they come in, they swap cartdidges, they monkey around. although there is usually some sort of log of this event, no one is allowed to really look into what was done to the machine. in the illinois primary, there were lots and lots of machines that failed due to "bad memory". yeah, sure.

[EFerrari]

5. Kick and recommend