MCM: Full Report on NY BoE’s Approval of Op-Scans

[Wilms]

Full report on NY BoE’s approval of op-scans
Posted by mcm
December 19, 2009

From the Election Defense Alliance:

The NYS Board Of Elections certified both the Dominion ImageCast and the ES&S Electronic voting systems at 1:10 p.m. on Dec. 15th, noting in the process that the machines were still “non-compliant.” The state passed an additional resolution requiring the operations department to work with the two vendors to bring the machines into full compliance.

http://markcrispinmiller.com/2009/12/full-report-on-ny-boes-approval-of-op-scans/


NY Board of Elections Says Ballot Scanners Switched Votes in 2009 General Election
by Howard Stanislevic

The Help America Vote Act does not require computerized vote counting. But earlier this year in US District Court, the New York State Board of Elections (SBoE) and the U. S. Department of Justice agreed that the Board would certify a new optical scan computerized voting system by December 15, 2009. As that date approaches, the Board is displaying a dismissive attitude toward the risks and problems encountered with the systems they say they will certify.

http://e-voter.blogspot.com/2009/12/end-of-innocence-ny-state-board-of_14.html

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Comments

Comment by Howard S. on December 20, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

Just a quick note to say that this blog post is not originally from the Election Defense Alliance, but rather, the E-Voter Education Project, as the link in MCM’s post clearly indicates.

The editor’s note about the certification decision, that precedes the blog title about the switched votes, was written by Nathan Barker of the Gouverneur Times.

While the information contained in this post and the preceding note is valuable and under-reported, like most criticisms of e-vote counting systems, I do not consider it to be a full report on the NY BoE’s approval of op scan voting systems.

A complete report would include a lot more about what they say they’ve done to ensure safe use of these systems at elections, along with a critique of why their procedures might not be sufficient or enforceable.

A soon to be published document from NYSTEC (the State Board’s security consultants), obtained from the State Board of Elections, generally reveals some security flaws in the systems that they say will be compensated for by various procedures and controls.

We still have no vendor-specific information that could be used to make a determination as to whether one vendor’s software-based vote-counting system is any more or less secure than the other’s.

One major issue that remains is that the City of New York’s Board of Elections has not yet chosen an e-vote counting system. They have asked for comments from the public, and will hold a hearing on Dec. 29th. But the State BoE has kept the public in the dark by not publishing any vendor-specific test results.

[clear eye]

1. Approving a voting system you know to be defective should be impeachable

for a BOE official. How can it be legal to certify something that malfunctioned until you know for sure it CAN be fixed, and until it IS fixed?

[Wilms]

2. They can legally do it because it isn't against the law.

Yep. It's voluntary.

[clear eye]

3. I mean from the point of view of upholding one's oath of office.

Doesn't it seem like some sort of malfeasance?

[Wilms]

4. To me it sure does.

That's why I keep hoping someone will sue them.

[Wilms]

8. Oops. I got something wrong. It's NOT voluntary. It's a regulation.

Still not a law, but I'm told the Board can change the regs at will.

[sabbat hunter]

5. I personally like this plan because

in case of a recount, a hand count will override the machine count.

[Bill Bored]

6. NY has no plan for hand counts except for absentee and emergency ballots.

Some have tried to persuade the State Board of Elections to require larger hand counts for close races, but so far, all the Board seems to want to do is trust the computers instead. There is a temporary provision for a full hand count when the margin of victory is 1% or less, but this provision is too vague and only applied to the op scan pilot election of 2009. Besides, if the margin is 1.1%, the hand count reverts to a measly 3%. Real crap.

Efforts to create permanent hand-count audit regulations based on the risk of incorrect winners of elections have failed. The State Board of Elections says they won't do that.

Some election officials have even considered counting digital electronic ballot images instead of paper ballots. This is how DREs work, but we've managed to blur the distinction between DREs and optical scanners quite effectively in NY. (Voter-verified my ASS!)

All the while "paper ballot" advocates have been cheering this on, thinking that they will actually have their paper ballots counted by something other than a computer. Talk about naive!

All the State Board of Elections seems to be interested in is replacing lever machines with computers and rolling over for the US Dept. of Justice and an uninformed federal judge, who have never understood (or even inquired about) the risks inherent in e-vote counting, or even the meaning of the provisions of the Help America Vote Act itself, which do NOT require that votes be counted by computers, and do not ban lever voting machines either.

The result is that New York's elections are looking more and more like Florida's everyday. Our election officials joke about this because they are too lazy, arrogant and ignorant to do anything about it.

[Wilms]

7. Can you tell me where you got that idea. n/t