ELECTRONIC VOTING:  WHAT WENT WRONG AND HOW TO FIX IT

by

Garland Favorito

Voterga.org founder

  

In 2004, Free Congress Foundation rated Georgia dead last nationally in voting systems and procedures just 2 years after our electronic voting systems installation. The reasons are simple:

      ·       No Georgia voter can verify that their ballots were cast correctly;

      ·       No poll worker can verify that any voting machine counted votes correctly;

      ·       Recounts are not possible since we can only reprint previous unverifiable results;

Computer professionals and concerned citizens, such as our chairman Michael Opitz warned election officials in advance of what would happen. I explained both verbally and in writing to state election officials and Professor Britain Williams who headed the evaluation that:

      ·       Voting machines can be accidentally or intentionally programmed in a variety of ways

               to count differently on election night then than during a certification;

      ·       The machines selected for evaluation had no external audit trails to verify their accuracy;

      ·       Two other machine vendors offered external web based or printed ballot audit trails;

When Elections Director, Kathy Rogers, claimed in a recent SB500 hearing that no machines with external audit trails existed in 2002, Sen. Horecena Tate chastised her. Tate is one of several legislators who have complained bitterly for years that they approved the purchase because they were assured that the selected machines had appropriate external audit trails.  County election officials who knew better were assured that certifications are adequate to verify accuracy. Once they complied, the Secretary of State (SOS) promptly reduced auditable ballots cast in Georgia from 82% to 0% by eliminating all direct physical evidence of voter intent.

The Diebold AccuVote TS series machines she purchased have been the subject of scathing reviews by universities and state reports nationwide. For example, Johns Hopkins found that the software had “gross design and programming errors” and the Nevada Electronic Sys. Div. Chief reported to the SOS that they were “a legitimate threat to the integrity of the election process”. California, Ohio, Nevada and Maryland have officially concluded that machines and procedures similar to those used in Georgia are inadequate to conduct elections in their states.

When faced with a similar situation, other state officials took action. Ohio halted deployment and California sued Diebold, winning a $2.5 million out of court settlement. Maryland Gov. Ehrlich wrote that: “I no longer have confidence in the State Board of Elections ability to conduct fair and accurate elections in 2006” and the House soon voted 137-0 to replace their Diebold machines with leased optical scan equipment for the 2006 elections. Here is Georgia’s record:

      ·       In 2002, SOS Cathy Cox ignored the 21st Century Voting Commission recommendation that: “the chosen system should have the capability to produce an independent paper audit trail of every ballot cast”;

      ·       Cox and Rogers still adamantly oppose voter verified paper ballot audit trails (VVPBAT) and election night verification at the legislature while they publicly claim to support them;

      ·       The State Elections Board spent $17 million in funds available for printers on electronic poll books over unanimous objections of citizens who testified at a March 2006 meeting;

      ·       In 2004, Democrat leaders approved an SB500 amendment that forced statewide audit trails to be dependent upon federal funds and then refused to hear the bill in the House;

      ·       In 2006, Republican leaders did not allow votes on SB591 and HB790, bi-partisan bills with external audit trails and vote verification procedures that gained the support of 10 civic organizations and independent parties I helped coordinate;

      ·       In 2006, House Republican leaders rejected an amendment to restore statewide audit trails that Sen. Stephens stripped from his SB500 bill as “redundant language”.

      ·       In 2006, a House/Senate Conference Committee stripped House vote count verification procedures from SB500 upon Sen. Stephens request and then passed the self-repealing 3-precinct audit trail pilot that does not solve the problems described;

      ·       In 2006, Gov. Perdue, who recently signed SB500 into law, passed the buck back to Cox in response to our direct appeal to eliminate unverifiable voting by executive order

The cost of printers is now cited as the reason Georgia will get an external audit trail pilot in only 3 of over 3,000 precincts, however, each of our 25,000 voting machines already has a printer. We offered at a House Government Affairs Committee meeting to write software that will print ballot summaries on our existing machines and to donate that software to the state. But for the SB500 pilot, Rogers has insisted on purchasing newer Diebold equipment that cannot produce an easily auditable ballot. These machines roll voting results into a sealed canister instead of cutting them into ballots like grocery store or gas pump slips. We have explained to House and Senate Conference Committee members that these machines are just as inappropriate for use in Georgia as the unverifiable voting machines that were installed in 2002.

But the time for pilot tests and cost debate should have been in 2002. Errors and fraud are now virtually undetectable statewide. Citizens must understand that external audit trails will not prove that machines count accurately unless the paper ballots are used to verify the machine count on election night. Therefore, we must:

      ·       Implement optical scan or VVPBAT technology that either reads or writes ballots, respectively, as required by the Georgia Constitution;

      ·       Perform a random, public, precinct level audit count of at least one race on election night to ensure that machines counted votes accurately as required by Georgia law;

      ·       If discrepancies exist across precincts in a race, allow a full race recount at no charge to the candidates and parties involved.

These are basic protections that any Georgia citizen would expect to have in an election. Election officials who balk at precinct hand counts must realize that elections are not conducted for their convenience. They are for the proper, peaceful transfer of power.

Garland Favorito

Voterga.org founder

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