The Silver Lining inside the Dark Cloud of Our Broken Election System

[Time for change]

A recent article by Adam Cohen of the New York Times, titled “The Good News (Really) About Voting Machines”, begins by noting how far we have come in the past two years:

In the summer of 2004, I attended a national meeting of state election directors, and one of the biggest laugh lines was how activists were demanding that electronic voting machines produce a paper record of every vote cast.

An election official stood in front of the group, produced a roll of paper and started to unroll it while saying, to the delight of many in the audience, that the paper record would have to be mighty long to record all of the votes on a California ballot. Ha! Ha! Ridiculous!

The tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nuts who hate electronic voting could complain all they wanted, the consensus in the room seemed to be, but paper records for electronic voting were impractical and unnecessary, and they were not going to happen.

What a difference two years makes.

Cohen goes on to explain in his article, in great detail, why electronic voting machines that lack paper trails are dangerous to our democracy, and the reason for his optimism regarding how far we have progressed and where we are heading.

I basically agree with him, and in this post I will summarize the reasons why we should be very wary of our current situation, as well as the reasons for optimism, and I will end by making some general recommendations. Much of this includes information that Cohen talked about in his article, plus I’ve added a few things.


A brief summary of the problems with electronic voting machines with no paper trail

These machines are referred to as direct-recording electronic machines, meaning that the voter’s vote is recorded directly electronically, and there is no other record of the vote. Therefore, there is no way to verify whether or not the voting machine accurately recorded the votes intended by the voters.

Professor Edward Felton, a computer scientist at Princeton, and Professor Aviel Rubin of Princeton both showed that it is easy to hack our current DRE machines to change an election result, without leaving a trace of the crime. A recent report by our National Institute for Standards and Technology, using the simple logic demonstrated by Professors Felton and Rubin, explained in detail why in is not reasonable to trust the results of a DRE machine.

In addition to the potential for purposeful fraud, these machines frequently break down or exhibit other serious problems (which may be merely accidental or may be indications of fraud). For example, reports of “vote flipping”, where a voter intends to vote for one candidate but the machine registers for another candidate, were common in both the 2004 and the 2006 elections. And Voters Unite! collected 248 reports of election problems, including 155 involving machine malfunction, from last November’s election.

Also, there was evidence of election fraud in the 2006 election: In the Florida District 13 U.S. House election, an extremely high undervote (no vote recorded for the House candidate) rate was recorded with the ES & S electronic touch screen machine, selectively in heavily Democratic areas. The Democratic candidate, Christine Jennings, lost by just a few hundred votes, where a near normal undervote rate would clearly have resulted in her victory. However, since there was no paper trail there was no opportunity to perform a recount. I describe the Florida District 13 race in detail in this post (See “Solid evidence of electronic vote deletion in Florida”).

As in 2004, there was a substantial exit poll discrepancy in 2006, with exit polls showing a Democratic victory of 11.5% (for nation-wide House races), compared to an official vote count that provided a nationwide Democratic victory of only 7.6%. As noted by Jonathan Simon, this difference of nearly 4% was well beyond the margin of statistical error. And pre-election polls of the generic Congressional ballot showed almost the same discrepancy (Yes, I know, the use of the generic Congressional ballot polls to predict election results is controversial, due to the difficulties of deciding which ones to use and questions about their accuracy. But there is evidence that they are reasonably accurate, the exit polls showed a substantial last day surge for Democrats, and the pre-election polls in this case are quite consistent with the exit polls. They do not constitute proof of fraud by themselves, but when added to and consistent with other evidence, they certainly add to the suspicion).


Progress towards addressing the problem and hopes for future progress

Numerous national organizations have done much work on this issue and have provided much information on it. These include Voters Unite!, US Count Votes, the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, MoveOn.org, wheresthepaper.org, BlackBoxVoting, Vote Trust USA, and many more. The Election Defense Alliance, for which I am doing volunteer work as a data analyst, is currently analyzing large amounts of data in order to identify additional problems, which will be publicized when available. Between the publicity generated by these organizations, plus progressive blogs such as the DU, even our corporate media has done some reporting on the problem.

Consequently, 27 states, including large ones such as California, New York, Illinois and Ohio, now require a voter-verified paper trail for electronic voting machines. And legislation that would require the same thing is pending in a dozen additional states.

The main groups who have stymied efforts to require a voter-verified paper trail for our voting machines are the voting machine companies, election officials, and our Republican Congress. Now that we have a Democratic Congress, that could and should change. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the new Chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, said that she intends to introduce legislation that will require a voter-verified paper trail plus random audits for electronic voting machines. And Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) will push for his bill in the House, which will do much the same thing.

And the voting rights organizations are doing much more than publicizing problems. For example, Pollworkers for Democracy ran a major effort this November to blanket election polling places with poll watchers to identify and report on suspicious occurrences. As part of that effort, I observed election officials in a Maryland precinct allowing a voting machine to remain in use despite a broken seal for the voter access card. I reported the problem, and lawyers were sent to the Board of Elections to deal with it. At the end of the day, the machine with the broken seal registered the highest vote count for Republican candidates of any of the machines in that precinct.


Recommendations

For the foreseeable future there will always be those who continue to argue that there is little or no evidence that massive election fraud due to electronic voting machines has not yet been demonstrated. It is time to put those arguments aside and proceed to correct this major threat to our democracy, regardless of whether or not one believes that massive election fraud has already occurred. A true democracy must have elections that produce results that are verifiable.

We need to continue to push our elected representatives to support meaningful election reform. The use of voter-verified paper ballots wherever electronic voting machines are used is absolutely essential. But that is not enough. There are other mechanisms for election fraud, such as voter suppression, illegal purging of registered voters, and manipulation of central tabulators.

Furthermore, voter verified paper ballots alone are not enough to prevent fraud associated with the use of electronic voting machines. In Cuyahoga County, for example, it was found that large numbers of paper ballots were blank or unreadable. And of course paper trails are of no use whatsoever if they are not used. In the controversial special House election of 2006 between Busby and Bilbray, despite the fact that election officials took the voting machines home with them prior to the election, they refused to perform a recount.

Therefore, it would be far preferable not to use electronic voting machines at all. Optical scan machines are a much better choice, since they provide a more reliable paper trail and are much less susceptible to breakdown than are electronic machines. But even then there must be assurances that the paper trail will be utilized to perform a recount when the election results are in question. Therefore, the direct use of paper ballots for voting is the most reliable method of all, since it doesn’t depend upon technology which can potentially be manipulated to produce widespread fraud. Nevertheless, if electronic voting machines are used, the requirement of a voter-verified paper trail plus a mandatory random audit in the event of a contested election, will do much to decrease the possibility of massive election fraud.

[billybob537]

1. Do you think you can beat evil by being fair and Honest

Maybe you should read this.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/011958.php

[Time for change]

7. No, I don't

But I don't understand the point of your question.

I agree that they are evil, as I note here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=1761034

And I don't think that one should be obligated to be honest with with evil.

But what does that have to do with my post?

[eridani]

13. That's why you need AUDITS, dammit!

The whole point of auditing ANY system is that you NEVER assume people are honest and that they don't make mistakes.

[Time for change]

15. Absolutely

Democracy cannot be based on trust, and that is why our Founding Fathers put a system of checks and balances into our Constitution and went to such pains to prevent the accumulation of too much power in the hands of a single person or group.

But our Constitution won't ensure democracy by itself. It takes people to make democracy work -- and if they are too complacent to care they will lose their democracy.

[troubleinwinter]

2. K & R

[renate]

3. thank you so much for putting this together...

...and laying it out so clearly.

I doubt that I'm the only one who was so relieved by the Democratic takeovers of the House and Senate that I didn't focus on what the discrepancy between the exit polls and the final counts might be. A difference between a margin of victory of 11.5% and one of just 7.6% is really significant--i.e., it should have been 50% larger than it ended up appearing. That's a lot, even if it's only about 4% of the total votes--and hacking more next time would be easy, if nothing is done.

Thanks again for the jolt out of complacency!

[Time for change]

9. Yes, that's the way I feel about it too

I think that we should feel proud and grateful for the progress made, while at the same time realizing that our system is far from fixed, and the fact that the Dems won in 2006 certainly doesn't mean that there don't remain very serious problems.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Excellent post, Time for Change! I would add two points...

1. These machines--touchscreens (DREs), optical scan machines, and central tabulators--are all run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--with virtually no audit/recount controls--owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations. And they are...

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; until recently, they were run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. (One of them recently got outa Dodge--can't recall which one.)

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy--and who still have "trade secret" control of our election system. Recently, in the FL-13 case, ES&S refused to provide its "trade secret" code for inspection, despite 18,000 'disappeared' votes for Congress in Democratic precincts. What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture is that there should be NO SECRECY in our election system, and it is utterly absurd and outrageous that there is.


2. In Venezuela, they hand-count FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT of the vote, because they don't trust the electronic voting machines. Why don't we hand-count 55%? Why is there zero audit in many states, and only 1% in the best of the states? And why wasn't a substantial audit required from Day 1 of use of these extremely unreliable, insecure and insider hackable voting machines?

The answer is the $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding, in the "Help America Vote for Bush Act" of 2002, a bill engineered by the biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney (abetted by corporatist 'Democrats' like Christopher Dodd)--to fast-track this crapass hackable voting technology, controlled by Bushites, all over the country, along with lavish lobbying and other corruption, in time for the 2004 election, and to entrench the corruption so quickly that it would be nearly impossible to dislodge. These Bushite corporations LOBBIED for no audit. They are receiving BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars (--some of which their CEOs and backers are turning right around and pouring into rightwing causes and candidates), and stand to receive billions more, if the optiscans and central tabulators are permitted to continue. We are paying these people--who have nearly destroyed our election system--MORE money? For upgrades? For printers? For their not-quite-so-hackable election theft machines? For expensive long term servicing contracts? We're rewarding them for their extensive corruption of our election system!

I'm sorry, but I just cannot get past this. ANY compromise on the secrecy or the corporate profiteering in our election system is not acceptable. Obviously, a compromise is in the works. I will and do support any progress that can be made on transparency, but we really need to face the fact that it IS a compromise on our most fundamental right--and the foundation of all other reform--our right to vote--that is necessitated by entrenched, bipartisan corruption. And until we have 100% fully transparent vote counting, in a manner that everyone can understand, and conducted in full public view, we are not a free people. We are a people living under corporate tyranny.

[Peace Patriot]

5. I realize that the stance outlined above--no compromise on our right to vote

--presumes an honest, objective, fair-minded, pro-democracy political class that does not really exist any longer in the U.S. What we have in politicians (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S, for the most part, are people who are thieves and death-dealers or the mitigators of thievery and death-dealing. The worst and the not so bad. We wonder how it is that 70% of the American people want the Iraq War ended, and Congress can be waffling on this matter? This is why. Even with the Democratic victory, Congress is still not very representative of the American people. Diebold/ES&S is putting a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists--added to all the other ways that our election system is skewed to the rich and powerful. So I think I understand what election reform activists in Washington DC are up against. Anything they get short of fully transparent elections is going to be criticized, and even getting a compromise--partial transparency--in these circumstances, is very difficult.

I just have to say it, though. I cannot let it remain unsaid. Transparent vote counting is not just any reform. It is all reform. It is the fundamental condition of democracy. And the Democratic compromise in Congress--of a meager paper trail, and a bit of an audit, and maybe banning the touchscreens--tells us who they are.

I AGREE we've made progress. What tells me this, more than anything, was the huge amount of Absentee Ballot voting that occurred in the mid-terms--a dramatic increase--ordinary voters trying to figure out a way around the rigged electronics. This is a credit to the election reform movement--to you, Time for Change, and others like you who have done so much to educate the public. It is the American people I look to, to undo this disaster, not Congress. And I think we can do it--or start getting it done--by pressure at the state/local level to handcount all Absentee Ballot votes.

[Time for change]

16. Absentee voting

I'm not sure that absentee voting is an answer to the problem. Prior to the 2006 election I received e-mails from some reputable sources, including Bruce O'Dell (head data analysis coordinator for the Election Defense Alliance) and Mark Crispin Miller, warning us not to vote absentee in Maryland or Ohio because of the potential for fraud. I posted that information on DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2328220&mesg_id=2328220

In some cases absentee ballots are handled electronically (after being received), so the same potential for electronic fraud exists as with voting on site. At least if you vote on site, and if you verify a paper trail indicating a vote for your candidate you have some observation of the process. But this is too technical of a matter for me to have a definitive opinion on.

[Time for change]

6. Thank you Peace Patriot - I fully agree with you that changing secrecy for

transparency is of the utmost importance. Our voting MUST NOT be done in secret.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "meager paper trail". If the law requires a paper trail, as it now does in 27 states, and if the paper trail is readable (unlike the fiasco in Cuyahoga County), which it must be if it is to be of value, and if random audits are required by law for all questionable elections, and if they are actually done as the law specifies, and if the law also requires that discrepancies in the random audit must be followed with full hand counted audits of the whole state (which also must be required, though I neglected to specify that in my OP, and I'm not sure if Holt's and Feinstein's bills will require that, but I think they will), then the system should work pretty well to prevent the kind of fraud we're worried about.

[nicknameless]

12. Some of the problems with "paper trails"

as I understand them.

In some states, the paper trail is just a receipt, printed (correctly or incorrectly) by the voting machine ... provided that the machine and the printer boot up properly and the printer doesn't jam. The paper isn't used for the original count. Plus, the paper trail could be printed on thermal paper, which fades very quickly over time.

Why on earth should machines be used instead of voters to mark ballots? Why should any voter have to rely on a machine and its printer to function properly and print their vote correctly?

Better idea: paper ballots with pens to mark them. The tried and true method of voting. Nice and low tech.

[Time for change]

14. Yes, I agree that paper trails can be a serious problem

I noted in the OP that paper ballots is the preferable method.

But if our legislators are determined to use machines, I believe that voter verified paper trails can be very useful in preventing fraud. Of course, as you point out, they would have to be done correctly. There would have to be stipulations in the legislation that required that the voter was able to verify the paper evidence of his/her vote, that the record was legible and permanent, that the paper record is successfully deposited in a place where it can be counted if needed, and that all contested elections use the paper trail to verify the machine vote.

Those are a lot of ifs. Is it possible to ensure all of that? I'm no expert on that matter, but a lot of people believe it is. This is certainly an issue that deserves a lot of discussion.

[nicknameless]

17. NOT reliable... Unless you see 33% FAILURE rate as a success.

The promise of paper trails can lull voters into believing that their votes will be secure.

In a mock election in California, with the voting machine company (Diebold) able to submit into use what they considered to be their most reliable machines, they still experienced a near-33% failure rate.

http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6257

Diebold's Problems Worse Than Reported, Tests Find
System Crashes, Paper Jams Prove Widespread in California Counties
by Ian Hoffman, Daily Review
August 3rd, 2005

Diebold's latest electronic voting machine, desired by dozens of counties nationwide, fared worse in the nation's first mass testing than previously disclosed, with almost 20 percent of the touch-screen machines crashing.

...

California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson ordered the mock election after paper jams plagued Diebold's TSx in earlier tests. The machine is mated to a printer so voters and elections officials can verify electronic votes.

Software problems occurred in those earlier tests, but state voting-systems analysts were more focused in the mock election on paper jams. Yet when Diebold representatives trucked in 96 new TSx machines and local elections officials voted on them July 20 in a San Joaquin County warehouse, nearly twice as many machines froze or crashed as had paper jams.

...

Nineteen machines had 21 screen freezes or system crashes, producing a blue screen and messages about an "illegal operation" or a "fatal exception error." A Diebold technician had to restart the machine for voting to resume. Ten machines had a total of 11 printer jams. Almost one-third of all machines in the mock election had a problem.

Leading Election Protection folks do NOT believe that DREs with paper trails are enough.
34 groups have joined to call for all DREs to be eliminated.

[renate]

18. I think people have astonishment fatigue

There was once a time when a demonstration like this would have put a quick end to any discussion of the merits of electronic voting. That was back when Americans still believed we lived in a democracy where our votes and opinions mattered.

Now there's just a hopeless feeling of "there they go again."

[galloglas]

8. Fantastic commentary

Great follow up to the OP.

ANY compromise on the secrecy or the corporate profiteering in our election system is not acceptable.

The TRUTH popped right out of that paragraph. "ANY compromise". Beautiful!

Then the (inconvenient) TRUTH follows.

Obviously, a compromise is in the works.

Yes. Truly sad.

What concerns me is that there may be soooo many decent, committed activists who will compromise, because they think it is politically realistic. And in their bargain, apparently, is the mandate to eliminate from the ranks any who are not "machine tolerant".

I hope that those who are trying for ER by being politically realistic remember that they are not dealing with (as you so aptly phrased it) "an honest, objective, fair-minded, pro-democracy political class (that does not really exist any longer in the U.S.).

They are climbing into bed with (again, your phrase) "politicians (s)elected by Diebold/ES&S, for the most part, are people who are thieves and death-dealers or the mitigators of thievery and death-dealing."

And they will, if they succeed in their compromise, be viewed as representing the Election Reform Movement, when they are not. They are merely part of it. They are the part who are, against your sage advice above, willing to compromise.

And what worries me most is that they are willing to compromise, full well knowing that they will be viewed as speaking for me.


The cry should be "No pasaran!!"

The only reason a compromise is now in the works is the November Democratic victory, due to an inadequate GOP "cheat level" on the machines.

Why compromise? The Congress feels they must act anyway, why aid and abet their continued skulduggery?

Now is the time for us to be demanding our Rights. Our inalienable rights. Inalienable by Congress OR our machine tolerant colleagues.


Terrific job, Peace Patriot!!

[Patsy Stone]

10. Paper is better than no paper.

No law should prevent people from counting the votes. No voting should be done in a manner which is not completely transparent. Those are such fundamental principles of our republic, and it still amazes me that we have to fight for it to this day, 231 years into this experiment.

[Time for change]

11. Yes, I think that one of the darkest days of our country was when

Scalia led his 4 other Supreme Skumbuckets to choose a pResident for us.

I just hope that after we impeach Bush and Cheney that our Congress will have the good sense to go after those guys next.

[marions ghost]

19. KICK

:thumbsup: