NY CD-23: Questions Remain About "Pilot" Federal Election

[Wilms]

NY CD-23: Questions Remain About "Pilot" Federal Election

Howard Stanislevic

November 21, 2009

snip

So the following unanswered questions remain about the electronic vote counts and the voting system used in CD-23 and elsewhere in New York:

Election Security Concerns

1. Was the uncertified Sequoia Bridge Tool program used by any third-party vendors to program any CD-23 ImageCast machines in past elections or the current one? If so, what was the method by which the ballot definition files were transferred to the ImageCast machines and how do we know this did not deliver malware to the scanners? (It's been claimed that because the scanners are Linux machines, it's unlikely that a "wild virus" was introduced. But this does not rule out malicious configuration files. Also, note that the Election Management System PCs that configure the Linux scanners run Microsoft Windows -- NOT Linux.)

2. Are there any internal USB ports in the ImageCast scanners, besides the one the SBoE says is used only for the printer?

Election Integrity Concerns

1. If the problem was caught by a pre-election logic and accuracy test as claimed by the State Board of Elections, then why wasn't the problem caught on every machine where it existed? The SBoE has said that not all machines with multi-winner races were identified, but all machines were supposed to be tested. This means that the tests may not have been run as required; or the tests may have failed to detect the problem in all cases; or the test results may have been ignored. (These are not mutually exclusive.)

2. Why did it take so long for the reported bug to be discovered? New York is supposed to have the most rigorous certification process in the nation -- yet these machines can't even support a simple "Vote-for-2", "Vote-for-3", etc. contest on the ballot. They crash.

3. Were all the relevant election officials informed about the discovery of the problem? If so, when?

4. Why wasn't this problem widely publicized before the election so that voters and candidates -- and not just election officials, vendors and other insiders -- could have known about it?

5. What exactly was changed in the ballot programming (which is not the source code), to serve as as a workaround for a reported bug in the source code? How was this done without preventing voters from voting for as many candidates as they were entitled to vote for (a violation of NY's Election Law and Constitution), or allowing voters to overvote without notifying them (a violation of State and Federal Law (HAVA))?

6. Were all emergency ballots counted at the polls on election night, or were they removed from public view and counted later?

7. Will there be a full hand count; a hand count of all the ballots cast on the machines that had the problems; a 3% hand count; or some other hand count based on the grossly inadequate Part 6210.18 audit Regulations?

8. If not a 100% hand count, will all the machines selected to be hand counted be chosen randomly with respect to the entire set of machines that counted the CD-23 race in each county, or will the machines be chosen because they are needed to audit other contests as provided for in the 6210.18 Regulations? (These regulations are written so as to require a great deal of non-random selections of machines with respect to an individual contest. This not only makes a lot of busy-work for the counties, but undermines the effectiveness of the random audit.)

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2009/11/ny-cd-23-qestions-remain-about-pilot.html

[Bill Bored]

1. kick nt

[emlev]

2. This situation is waking up people who haven't 'gotten it' before

Kick!