Tuesday's election marked the last time paperless electronic voting machines will be used in a California election. Ian Hoffman of the Oakland Tribune wrote an article about the end of the era. Excerpts are below.
-----------
Elaine Ginnold awoke in a darkened home with no electricity - a harrowing way for the Alameda County elections chief to launch Tuesday's special election with fully electronic voting machines.
No power, no votes.
Ginnold muttered an epithet but relaxed later when driving past her local polling place, a fire station with its lights blazing. Her Election Day opened with the usual headaches: no-shows of poll workers, polling places still locked and a smattering of technical problems such as inoperable electronic voter cards and a few inoperable e-voting machines. The days of those last glitches, and worrying about power outages, are on their way out. The era of paperless, fully computerized voting machinery ended Tuesday in California.
Ginnold for one isn't sorry to see a return to paper balloting.
“I'm looking forward to it,” she said. “I don't see that we're going backwards at all."
Soon after voters in Piedmont tried their hand at paperless, touch-screen voting in 1999, electronic voting soared in popularity. It was easy as an ATM. The curses of paper balloting multiple languages, multiple districts, multiple parties, paper jams would vanish, along with the hanging and pregnant chad so reviled from the 2000 elections.
E-voting had none of these ambiguities: The memory either stored a vote for, a vote against or none at all.
E-voting makers and elections officials talked of near-instantaneous results, beamed wirelessly from polling places to central elections offices for immediate posting on the Internet. Paperless voting was the way of the future.
But in 2002, criticism arose from an unlikely quarter: Computer scientists who had written software for NASA moonshots and Star Wars missile-defense systems said computers were too subject to programming error and too unsecure to rely upon them solely as arbiters of political power.
More detailed analysis of e-voting software at Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere revealed vulnerabilities to hacking.
The new voting machines also brought their own drawbacks. They were expensive, often costing $4,000 apiece, and while the touch screens themselves had relatively few problems, related hardware and software breakdowns thwarted voters in several large counties in 2004.
In California, voters wary of politics and government latched onto the controversy and to one solution proposed by computer scientists: Add printers to the electronic voting machines and provide a printed record of the ballot for voters to check and elections officials to recount.
In six months, the state became the first to require a voter-verified paper trail for all e-voting machines. Last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill requiring elections officials to use the paper trail in recounts.
“It's been a long road to get where we are now, where the use of paperless electronic machines is on the decline,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonprofit California Voter Foundation and a leading advocate of paper trails.
----
Starting Jan. 1, all electronic voting machines must produce a paper trail that will be used in automatic recounts of 1 percent of precincts, as a check of computerized vote tallies, and in full recounts in the event of an election challenge.
Alfie Charles, an executive with Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems and a former state elections official, said he thinks paperless e-voting is gone for good.
“It worked well and served its purpose but unfortunately was not trusted, for either perceived or valid reasons,” he said. “And in elections, perception is critical.”
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Thursday, November 10, 2005
Monday, August 22, 2005
Diebold hires former Democratic Party chairman for PR campaign
Saturday's Oakland Tribune featured an article by Ian Hoffman about Diebold's new public relations effort, being headed up by Joe Andrew, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His article is featured below.
----------
With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.
O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said.
His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken.
``Even if you have tremendous success every place else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell technology in California, you're in trouble.''
The rest of the voting industry is selling technology here. Millions in federal dollars sit ready for counties to put at least one high-tech, handicapped-accessible voting machine in every polling place by January.
But in California, Diebold can't sell its touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor can counties that bought thousands of the machines in 2003 used them in elections.
More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit in three counties' warehouses, unapproved for actual voting. More than $15 million worth of earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot be used after January.
Andrew said computer scientists and e-voting activists are standing in the way of a promising technology, an ATM-like voting computer with such a low error rate that more votes count. And that, said Andrew, should work to the benefit of Democrats.
The tour pairs Andrew with former Republican congressional aide Melissa McKay, now working for the public-relations firm, Ogilvy PR. But California and its Democrats were clearly Andrew's show.
Diebold's new charm offensive for Democrats strikes some as a public-relations gambit, a segue from mishaps and mistakes in its voting business to the uncontroversial notion of making more votes count for the elderly, minorities and disabled voters.
``This is a new tactic, a new solution for a company that, unlike other electronic-voting companies, has a continuing public-relations problem, certainly in California,'' said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting-reform information.
``It's not based on nothing,'' Seligson said. ``It's based on the problems they've had.''
In three years in California, Diebold voting devices have awarded thousands of votes to the wrong candidates and broken down in two large counties during a presidential primary. Two successive state election chiefs, a Democrat and a Republican, both have rejected the TSx.
Former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley suggested criminal prosecution, citing misleading statements by Diebold Election Systems executives and ``reprehensible'' tactics. The state joined a false-claims suit against the company and won a $2.5 million settlement.
Last month, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson cited poor performance in state testing, with paper jams and software crashes in 28 percent of machines used in a mock election.
But Andrew isn't traveling the nation to talk about that or even to talk much about Diebold. So why is a ranking Democratic operative who was convinced Republicans ``stole'' the 2000 election working for Diebold and O'Dell, a battlestate fund-raiser for Bush-Cheney 2004?
It is Andrew's message - that paperless electronic voting is good for Democrats - and his connections in Democratic circles.
``Joseph's a smart guy and has a lot of contacts out there,'' said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a Washington-based consultant on elections.
Andrew is tapping reliable Democratic constituents - civil-rights groups, minority groups such as the NAACP and the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and such disability groups as the Council for the Blind.
They rallied in 2001 under the umbrella of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to rid the nation of reviled punchcard voting, and Andrew worked pro-bono as their lawyer. He delivered bipartisan support for the Help America Vote Act. Behind the act was the presumption that electronic voting was salvation from the dimpled and hanging chad and from having to resort to the Supreme Court to decide the presidency.
But Congress delayed 16 crucial months in setting up a new federal agency to oversee and enforce standards for the new voting equipment. By 2003, the debate over voting equipment shifted from civil-rights groups and their lawyers to computer scientists who argued that electronic voting was too vulnerable to breakdowns, errors and fraud, at least without any backup paper record of the vote.
So far, they've been winning. Despite resistance from Diebold and some other e-voting suppliers, lawmakers in 25 states have passed laws requiring a paper backup, for review by voters and in most cases recounts by elections officials. Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia are debating such a requirement.
While Ohio, Mississippi and Utah are considering large purchases of touchscreens, sales of paper-based optical scanning machines so far are outpacing sales of electronic-voting machines since the 2004 election.
In California at least, Andrew sees civil-rights leaders abdicating from a worthy cause. ``The great irony is, it's the progressives - my side of the aisle - who are against electronic voting but have the most to benefit from it.''
The odd couple of Diebold and Andrew have ``their work cut out for them,'' said Kim Alexander, president of nonprofit California Voter Foundation.
She acknowledges that electronic voting has plenty going for it, such larger type for elderly voters, ballot displays in multiple languages and an audio ballot for visually impaired voters.
``But the way it's been implemented has been irresponsible and reckless,'' Alexander said. ``What we've seen all across the country are numerous examples of glitches and problems. I wish that Diebold would put it's effort into making better equipment and making its paper trail work, rather than a PR campaign.''
----------
With a phone call and a retainer, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell has launched former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew on a 50-state ambassadorship for electronic voting.
O'Dell said he ``wanted to reframe some of the issues,'' Andrew said.
His first stop: California, the nation's largest market for voting machines and the place where Diebold's fortunes as the largest supplier of electronic-voting machines in the nation could be made or broken.
``Even if you have tremendous success every place else,'' said Andrew, ``if you can't sell technology in California, you're in trouble.''
The rest of the voting industry is selling technology here. Millions in federal dollars sit ready for counties to put at least one high-tech, handicapped-accessible voting machine in every polling place by January.
But in California, Diebold can't sell its touchscreen voting machine, the AccuVote TSx, nor can counties that bought thousands of the machines in 2003 used them in elections.
More than $30 million worth of TSx machines sit in three counties' warehouses, unapproved for actual voting. More than $15 million worth of earlier-generation Diebold touchscreens in Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties cannot be used after January.
Andrew said computer scientists and e-voting activists are standing in the way of a promising technology, an ATM-like voting computer with such a low error rate that more votes count. And that, said Andrew, should work to the benefit of Democrats.
The tour pairs Andrew with former Republican congressional aide Melissa McKay, now working for the public-relations firm, Ogilvy PR. But California and its Democrats were clearly Andrew's show.
Diebold's new charm offensive for Democrats strikes some as a public-relations gambit, a segue from mishaps and mistakes in its voting business to the uncontroversial notion of making more votes count for the elderly, minorities and disabled voters.
``This is a new tactic, a new solution for a company that, unlike other electronic-voting companies, has a continuing public-relations problem, certainly in California,'' said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for voting-reform information.
``It's not based on nothing,'' Seligson said. ``It's based on the problems they've had.''
In three years in California, Diebold voting devices have awarded thousands of votes to the wrong candidates and broken down in two large counties during a presidential primary. Two successive state election chiefs, a Democrat and a Republican, both have rejected the TSx.
Former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley suggested criminal prosecution, citing misleading statements by Diebold Election Systems executives and ``reprehensible'' tactics. The state joined a false-claims suit against the company and won a $2.5 million settlement.
Last month, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson cited poor performance in state testing, with paper jams and software crashes in 28 percent of machines used in a mock election.
But Andrew isn't traveling the nation to talk about that or even to talk much about Diebold. So why is a ranking Democratic operative who was convinced Republicans ``stole'' the 2000 election working for Diebold and O'Dell, a battlestate fund-raiser for Bush-Cheney 2004?
It is Andrew's message - that paperless electronic voting is good for Democrats - and his connections in Democratic circles.
``Joseph's a smart guy and has a lot of contacts out there,'' said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, a Washington-based consultant on elections.
Andrew is tapping reliable Democratic constituents - civil-rights groups, minority groups such as the NAACP and the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and such disability groups as the Council for the Blind.
They rallied in 2001 under the umbrella of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to rid the nation of reviled punchcard voting, and Andrew worked pro-bono as their lawyer. He delivered bipartisan support for the Help America Vote Act. Behind the act was the presumption that electronic voting was salvation from the dimpled and hanging chad and from having to resort to the Supreme Court to decide the presidency.
But Congress delayed 16 crucial months in setting up a new federal agency to oversee and enforce standards for the new voting equipment. By 2003, the debate over voting equipment shifted from civil-rights groups and their lawyers to computer scientists who argued that electronic voting was too vulnerable to breakdowns, errors and fraud, at least without any backup paper record of the vote.
So far, they've been winning. Despite resistance from Diebold and some other e-voting suppliers, lawmakers in 25 states have passed laws requiring a paper backup, for review by voters and in most cases recounts by elections officials. Fourteen other states and the District of Columbia are debating such a requirement.
While Ohio, Mississippi and Utah are considering large purchases of touchscreens, sales of paper-based optical scanning machines so far are outpacing sales of electronic-voting machines since the 2004 election.
In California at least, Andrew sees civil-rights leaders abdicating from a worthy cause. ``The great irony is, it's the progressives - my side of the aisle - who are against electronic voting but have the most to benefit from it.''
The odd couple of Diebold and Andrew have ``their work cut out for them,'' said Kim Alexander, president of nonprofit California Voter Foundation.
She acknowledges that electronic voting has plenty going for it, such larger type for elderly voters, ballot displays in multiple languages and an audio ballot for visually impaired voters.
``But the way it's been implemented has been irresponsible and reckless,'' Alexander said. ``What we've seen all across the country are numerous examples of glitches and problems. I wish that Diebold would put it's effort into making better equipment and making its paper trail work, rather than a PR campaign.''
Saturday, June 12, 2004
E-voting profits no pot of gold
By Alec Rosenberg, San Mateo County Times, June 12, 2004
Excerpts:
Electronic voting looked to be a gold mine for vendors after the hanging chad fiasco of the 2000 presidential election led the U.S. government to set aside a few billion dollars to pay for new voting machines.
But the business has yet to deliver on the bottom line, bogged down by politics, reliability problems and a growing concern about security, highlighted by leading vendor Diebold's problems in California, where the Secretary of State banned its machines in four counties.
Even vendors that have avoided Diebold-style controversy are finding it difficult to reach profitability.
Oakland's Sequoia Voting Systems, the No. 2 e-voting vendor, said its sales rose 75 percent last year to $81 million, but margins fell and it had a $3.5 million operating loss.
Parent company De La Rue, based in England, took a $23 million goodwill write-down on the Sequoia business and expects Sequoia's losses will increase this year.
A London Times Online report last week said a broker suggested caution after De La Rue's new Chief Executive Leo Quinn "may consider the closure of Sequoia, its loss-making U.S. electronic voting business."
Sequoia refuted the closure report, saying it was supposition from an analyst.
-----
The company remains committed to e-voting, but Graham acknowledged it is a tough business.
"This industry has been in turmoil," Graham said. "Who would have ever anticipated the series of events as they unfolded?"
------
The U.S. e-voting machine market is led by Diebold with sales of about 55,000 e-voting machines (18,000 in California), Sequoia with
50,000 (14,000 in California) and closely held Election Systems & Software with 35,000 (440 in California).
Diebold Elections Systems' 2003 operating profit dropped 32 percent to $6.4 million as revenue fell 10 percent to $100 million, and the firm significantly scaled back its 2004 election systems revenue and profit projections.
Diebold and Sequoia are each part of profitable, billion-dollar-plus companies that focus on cash and security.
In May 2002, De La Rue paid up to $35 million for an 85 percent stake in Sequoia, which has more than 100 employees in seven U.S. locations. De La Rue attributed Sequoia's operating losses to "intense price competition over the last 18 months with unit prices falling by an average of 25 percent" and cited the "uncertain legislative environment and political resistance." Sequoia's biggest test may come in September, when it debuts 3,500 machines in Nevada with paper printouts.
Excerpts:
Electronic voting looked to be a gold mine for vendors after the hanging chad fiasco of the 2000 presidential election led the U.S. government to set aside a few billion dollars to pay for new voting machines.
But the business has yet to deliver on the bottom line, bogged down by politics, reliability problems and a growing concern about security, highlighted by leading vendor Diebold's problems in California, where the Secretary of State banned its machines in four counties.
Even vendors that have avoided Diebold-style controversy are finding it difficult to reach profitability.
Oakland's Sequoia Voting Systems, the No. 2 e-voting vendor, said its sales rose 75 percent last year to $81 million, but margins fell and it had a $3.5 million operating loss.
Parent company De La Rue, based in England, took a $23 million goodwill write-down on the Sequoia business and expects Sequoia's losses will increase this year.
A London Times Online report last week said a broker suggested caution after De La Rue's new Chief Executive Leo Quinn "may consider the closure of Sequoia, its loss-making U.S. electronic voting business."
Sequoia refuted the closure report, saying it was supposition from an analyst.
-----
The company remains committed to e-voting, but Graham acknowledged it is a tough business.
"This industry has been in turmoil," Graham said. "Who would have ever anticipated the series of events as they unfolded?"
------
The U.S. e-voting machine market is led by Diebold with sales of about 55,000 e-voting machines (18,000 in California), Sequoia with
50,000 (14,000 in California) and closely held Election Systems & Software with 35,000 (440 in California).
Diebold Elections Systems' 2003 operating profit dropped 32 percent to $6.4 million as revenue fell 10 percent to $100 million, and the firm significantly scaled back its 2004 election systems revenue and profit projections.
Diebold and Sequoia are each part of profitable, billion-dollar-plus companies that focus on cash and security.
In May 2002, De La Rue paid up to $35 million for an 85 percent stake in Sequoia, which has more than 100 employees in seven U.S. locations. De La Rue attributed Sequoia's operating losses to "intense price competition over the last 18 months with unit prices falling by an average of 25 percent" and cited the "uncertain legislative environment and political resistance." Sequoia's biggest test may come in September, when it debuts 3,500 machines in Nevada with paper printouts.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Recount changes one Franklin Co. race
Associated Press, November 12 2004
A computerized vote counting error in Franklin County, Indiana, provides a good example of the value of paper ballots. Had this counting error happened with an all-electronic voting system, the county would have had no independent audit trail to rely on once the vote-counting programming error was discovered.
Excerpts:
A Democrat gained enough votes to bump a Republican from victory in a county commissioner's race after a recount prompted by a computer glitch in optical-scan voting.
The glitch in the Fidlar Election Co. vote-scanning system had recorded straight-Democratic Party votes for Libertarians.
When votes in southeastern Indiana's Franklin County were recounted by hand Thursday night, Democrat Carroll Lanning leaped from fifth to third in the three-seat commissioners race and Republican Roy Hall fell to fifth.
Fidlar confirmed the error on Wednesday, a day after Democrats raised questions about preliminary results that included a Libertarian candidate for Congress winning 7.7 percent of the vote in Franklin County. That was more than four times the percentage of votes he had won across the entire district.
No programming problems were found in Fidlar's optical scan Accuvote 2000 ES system, said Dana Pittman, an account manager for the Rock Island, Ill.-based company.
However, Fidlar also is verifying programming of its optical scan equipment in Wisconsin and Michigan, which, like Indiana, have straight-party voting, Vern Paddock of Fidlar technical support told the Palladium-Item of Richmond.
-------
Franklin County Democratic Chairman Jim Sauerland had questioned the local results Tuesday after seeing information on the final tally he could not decipher, county Clerk Marlene Flashpohler said.
Preliminary tallies showed Libertarian Chad Roots had received 740 votes, or 7.7 percent, of the 9,609 votes cast in Franklin County for the 6th District congressional seat, which Republican incumbent Mike Pence won by a wide margin.
Roots received 1.8 percent of the vote districtwide.
Kate Shepherd, a spokeswoman for the Indiana secretary of state's office, said the state Election Division was aware of the vote-counting problem in Franklin County. She said tests with Fidlar's optical-scan equipment before the election found no problems.
A computerized vote counting error in Franklin County, Indiana, provides a good example of the value of paper ballots. Had this counting error happened with an all-electronic voting system, the county would have had no independent audit trail to rely on once the vote-counting programming error was discovered.
Excerpts:
A Democrat gained enough votes to bump a Republican from victory in a county commissioner's race after a recount prompted by a computer glitch in optical-scan voting.
The glitch in the Fidlar Election Co. vote-scanning system had recorded straight-Democratic Party votes for Libertarians.
When votes in southeastern Indiana's Franklin County were recounted by hand Thursday night, Democrat Carroll Lanning leaped from fifth to third in the three-seat commissioners race and Republican Roy Hall fell to fifth.
Fidlar confirmed the error on Wednesday, a day after Democrats raised questions about preliminary results that included a Libertarian candidate for Congress winning 7.7 percent of the vote in Franklin County. That was more than four times the percentage of votes he had won across the entire district.
No programming problems were found in Fidlar's optical scan Accuvote 2000 ES system, said Dana Pittman, an account manager for the Rock Island, Ill.-based company.
However, Fidlar also is verifying programming of its optical scan equipment in Wisconsin and Michigan, which, like Indiana, have straight-party voting, Vern Paddock of Fidlar technical support told the Palladium-Item of Richmond.
-------
Franklin County Democratic Chairman Jim Sauerland had questioned the local results Tuesday after seeing information on the final tally he could not decipher, county Clerk Marlene Flashpohler said.
Preliminary tallies showed Libertarian Chad Roots had received 740 votes, or 7.7 percent, of the 9,609 votes cast in Franklin County for the 6th District congressional seat, which Republican incumbent Mike Pence won by a wide margin.
Roots received 1.8 percent of the vote districtwide.
Kate Shepherd, a spokeswoman for the Indiana secretary of state's office, said the state Election Division was aware of the vote-counting problem in Franklin County. She said tests with Fidlar's optical-scan equipment before the election found no problems.
Thursday, October 7, 2004
Study: Voting technology needs work; Scientists say more research is needed to prevent problems
By Ian Hoffman, Alameda Newspaper Group, September 26, 2004
Excerpts:
An all-star cast of elections scientists holed up last weekend to examine the state of voting technology and elections. It's not disastrous, they concluded, but hardly a pretty picture either.
The prescription: More research, naturally.
"There's a clear message here that there's a lot that we don't know that can get us in trouble," said Shirley Malcom, head of education for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society and sponsor of last weekend's workshop.
If this sounds like an echo of four years ago, it is.
Scholars of American democratic practice rallied after Florida's chad-filled nightmare with a lofty goal: to rid America of bad voting technology and ambiguous elections. Congress promised tens of millions of dollars to put U.S. voters and voting technology under a microscope, then $2.8 billion to buy new voting equipment.
But the research money never flowed. And consensus on a voting system capable of accurate, verifiable and secure recording of the nation's political desires remains elusive.
------
Despite more than 200 years of honing, the tools of U.S. elections are hardly the best in the world and remain vulnerable.
"Basically, we should be serious about this like other countries," said MIT computer expert Ted Selker. "We are the most complex voting country in the world, but we are not the most sophisticated at all."
Absent systematic and federally funded research, a handful of small and mid-sized firms designed the new voting systems for the 2004 elections in secret. The most vigorous testing is by private laboratories hired by the voting-machine vendors.
Federal standards for voting machines were updated in 2002. Yet all voting machines slated for use in large numbers in November only meet 1990 standards or are grandfathered, exempt from any standard. States offer a mixed bag of requirements for additional testing and approval.
Security vulnerabilities and outright mistabulation errors slipped past certification testing and approval.
"What's still frustrating and difficult is the certification process," said Stephen Ansolabehere, an MIT political science professor and co-director of a joint MIT/CalTech voting research project . "If there was one thing the state and federal government really got distracted from that was unfortunate, it was the development of the standards and testing process."
------
Where Washington lost interest, private organizations such as the Carnegie Corp. and the Knight Foundation supplied close to $1 million a year for scientists to study elections matters. MIT's Selker said he thinks at least 10 to 20 times that amount is needed.
But where will the money come from, if a divisive, court-mediated result in 2000 and a high-stakes election in 2004 were insufficient to pry funds loose from Congress in the interim?
MIT's Ansolabehere says it may take "another big mess.".
"If things don't go well in some of the states, then there will be an added impetus," he said. And if the election goes smoothly? "It will take some of the pressure off."
Excerpts:
An all-star cast of elections scientists holed up last weekend to examine the state of voting technology and elections. It's not disastrous, they concluded, but hardly a pretty picture either.
The prescription: More research, naturally.
"There's a clear message here that there's a lot that we don't know that can get us in trouble," said Shirley Malcom, head of education for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest scientific society and sponsor of last weekend's workshop.
If this sounds like an echo of four years ago, it is.
Scholars of American democratic practice rallied after Florida's chad-filled nightmare with a lofty goal: to rid America of bad voting technology and ambiguous elections. Congress promised tens of millions of dollars to put U.S. voters and voting technology under a microscope, then $2.8 billion to buy new voting equipment.
But the research money never flowed. And consensus on a voting system capable of accurate, verifiable and secure recording of the nation's political desires remains elusive.
------
Despite more than 200 years of honing, the tools of U.S. elections are hardly the best in the world and remain vulnerable.
"Basically, we should be serious about this like other countries," said MIT computer expert Ted Selker. "We are the most complex voting country in the world, but we are not the most sophisticated at all."
Absent systematic and federally funded research, a handful of small and mid-sized firms designed the new voting systems for the 2004 elections in secret. The most vigorous testing is by private laboratories hired by the voting-machine vendors.
Federal standards for voting machines were updated in 2002. Yet all voting machines slated for use in large numbers in November only meet 1990 standards or are grandfathered, exempt from any standard. States offer a mixed bag of requirements for additional testing and approval.
Security vulnerabilities and outright mistabulation errors slipped past certification testing and approval.
"What's still frustrating and difficult is the certification process," said Stephen Ansolabehere, an MIT political science professor and co-director of a joint MIT/CalTech voting research project . "If there was one thing the state and federal government really got distracted from that was unfortunate, it was the development of the standards and testing process."
------
Where Washington lost interest, private organizations such as the Carnegie Corp. and the Knight Foundation supplied close to $1 million a year for scientists to study elections matters. MIT's Selker said he thinks at least 10 to 20 times that amount is needed.
But where will the money come from, if a divisive, court-mediated result in 2000 and a high-stakes election in 2004 were insufficient to pry funds loose from Congress in the interim?
MIT's Ansolabehere says it may take "another big mess.".
"If things don't go well in some of the states, then there will be an added impetus," he said. And if the election goes smoothly? "It will take some of the pressure off."
Monday, April 24, 2006
Several counties returning to paper ballots
Today's Contra Costa Times features this article by Chris Metinko describing how several California counties are moving from electronic to paper voting systems for the upcoming June primary.
The California Voter Foundation has been surveying all the counties over the past week and will be updating our county-by-county directory of voting systems as well as our statewide voting technology map soon. Today's story provides a preview of the changes ahead. Excerpts are featured below.
---------------
One of the first counties in the state to embrace electronic voting is headed back to paper -- and it's not the only one.
Alameda County residents going to the polls June 6 will be asked for the first time in five years to fill in ovals on paper ballots rather than casting their votes on costly touch-screen machines.
"It's a little bit of back to the future," joked Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of voters.
The decision to go back to paper stems from changes in state law that toughen requirements for touch-screen machines and render the county's equipment inadequate.
Merced and Plumas counties also will switch back to paper ballots. And earlier this week Los Angeles officials agreed to upgrade their current optical scan system that counts paper ballots instead of spending more than $100 million to buy a touch-screen system.
"The laws for electronic voting are changing at a dizzying pace," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and clerk for Los Angeles County. "We've seen how other counties have gone out and bought systems and in a few years they can't even use them. For us, with the kind of financial commitment we'd need to make, it doesn't make sense at this time."
All of this contrasts with the rush to touch-screen voting after the Florida ballot-counting fiasco in the 2000 presidential election. To be sure, none of the California counties will return to the famous punch-card systems that made "chad" a regular part of the political lexicon.
After that election, many counties bought electronic systems. Since then, however, experts have raised questions about the accuracy of the machines and state officials have imposed new requirements, including mandates for a paper trail to prevent voter fraud. At the same time, more voters are turning to mail-in ballots, which makes the future of electronic voting murkier than ever.
"The rules have changed for e-voting," said Stephen Weir, clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County. "Now they need to have a paper trail and that means major modifications done to these machines. That isn't a simple process. It's very awkward. That said, e-voting technology is continuing to grow. It's not finished."
There are counties in the state that agree. At least 13, including Santa Clara and Napa, plan to use electronic voting as their primary system in June. Some of those counties retrofitted their machines to make them eligible for the June election, while others bought newer, updated versions.
Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore Alameda County's move back to paper. While it is not the first Bay Area county to go back to paper -- Solano County did the same after its machines were decertified in November 2003 -- Alameda County is especially interesting because it was the first in the region to move to electronic voting and the second in the state behind Riverside County.
The county purchased its now-outdated Diebold electronic voting system for $12 million in 2001. However, the equipment had glitches. Diebold eventually agreed in 2004 to pay the state and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to the county.
The settlement came after local and state officials found that Diebold had installed uncertified software in the county's touch-screen machines and that its system was vulnerable to computer hackers. County elections officials also found the system's vote-tabulating program gave several thousand absentee votes to the wrong candidate during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election.
Now the county is hoping to put those problems in the past. It plans to borrow optical scan equipment to count the paper ballots in June and is in negotiations with two vendors for a "hybrid" or blended voting system it hopes to use in November that would also rely heavily on paper.
That system -- which could cost between $8 million and $18 million -- would require most voters to use paper ballots but would supply a small number of touch-screens, mainly for the disabled.
The new system also would provide scanners at polling sites to help count ballots while also reading each ballot to see if it was filled out properly. Under federal law, voters can receive a new ballot if the scanners discover an error has been made.
The California Voter Foundation has been surveying all the counties over the past week and will be updating our county-by-county directory of voting systems as well as our statewide voting technology map soon. Today's story provides a preview of the changes ahead. Excerpts are featured below.
---------------
One of the first counties in the state to embrace electronic voting is headed back to paper -- and it's not the only one.
Alameda County residents going to the polls June 6 will be asked for the first time in five years to fill in ovals on paper ballots rather than casting their votes on costly touch-screen machines.
"It's a little bit of back to the future," joked Elaine Ginnold, the county's acting registrar of voters.
The decision to go back to paper stems from changes in state law that toughen requirements for touch-screen machines and render the county's equipment inadequate.
Merced and Plumas counties also will switch back to paper ballots. And earlier this week Los Angeles officials agreed to upgrade their current optical scan system that counts paper ballots instead of spending more than $100 million to buy a touch-screen system.
"The laws for electronic voting are changing at a dizzying pace," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and clerk for Los Angeles County. "We've seen how other counties have gone out and bought systems and in a few years they can't even use them. For us, with the kind of financial commitment we'd need to make, it doesn't make sense at this time."
All of this contrasts with the rush to touch-screen voting after the Florida ballot-counting fiasco in the 2000 presidential election. To be sure, none of the California counties will return to the famous punch-card systems that made "chad" a regular part of the political lexicon.
After that election, many counties bought electronic systems. Since then, however, experts have raised questions about the accuracy of the machines and state officials have imposed new requirements, including mandates for a paper trail to prevent voter fraud. At the same time, more voters are turning to mail-in ballots, which makes the future of electronic voting murkier than ever.
"The rules have changed for e-voting," said Stephen Weir, clerk-recorder for Contra Costa County. "Now they need to have a paper trail and that means major modifications done to these machines. That isn't a simple process. It's very awkward. That said, e-voting technology is continuing to grow. It's not finished."
There are counties in the state that agree. At least 13, including Santa Clara and Napa, plan to use electronic voting as their primary system in June. Some of those counties retrofitted their machines to make them eligible for the June election, while others bought newer, updated versions.
Nevertheless, it's hard to ignore Alameda County's move back to paper. While it is not the first Bay Area county to go back to paper -- Solano County did the same after its machines were decertified in November 2003 -- Alameda County is especially interesting because it was the first in the region to move to electronic voting and the second in the state behind Riverside County.
The county purchased its now-outdated Diebold electronic voting system for $12 million in 2001. However, the equipment had glitches. Diebold eventually agreed in 2004 to pay the state and Alameda County $2.6 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it made false claims when it sold its equipment to the county.
The settlement came after local and state officials found that Diebold had installed uncertified software in the county's touch-screen machines and that its system was vulnerable to computer hackers. County elections officials also found the system's vote-tabulating program gave several thousand absentee votes to the wrong candidate during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election.
Now the county is hoping to put those problems in the past. It plans to borrow optical scan equipment to count the paper ballots in June and is in negotiations with two vendors for a "hybrid" or blended voting system it hopes to use in November that would also rely heavily on paper.
That system -- which could cost between $8 million and $18 million -- would require most voters to use paper ballots but would supply a small number of touch-screens, mainly for the disabled.
The new system also would provide scanners at polling sites to help count ballots while also reading each ballot to see if it was filled out properly. Under federal law, voters can receive a new ballot if the scanners discover an error has been made.
Monday, October 25, 2004
60 Minutes to broadcast story on e-voting, Wednesday, October 27
CBS News: Is E-Voting Secure?
This Wednesday, October 27, "60 Minutes Wednesday" will broadcast a segment on electronic voting, and the concerns about paperless voting systems' vulnerability to software bugs. The segment will feature interviews with many prominent computer scientists working on electronic voting reform, including CVF Board member David Jefferson.
Here are excerpts from the article on the CBS web site promoting the story:
--------
One of the 29 states using the new electronic voting is Florida. Charlotte Danciu's father ran for the Palm Beach city council in 2002, the first election that used the new electronic machines. He lost the election, but what upset Danciu even more were the calls she received from voters after Election Day.
"There was this elderly woman on the phone. and she's like, 'Miss Danciu, you don't know me but I kept trying to vote for your dad last night,'" recalls Danciu.
"'I kept pushing his name on the screen and the opponent's name kept registering.' People were calling and telling me that they would touch the screen, and it just wouldn't do anything, and they would call over a poll worker, who would do such things as punch the machine, hit the machine, unplug the machine."
Despite the poll worker's alleged attempts to get the machines to work on election night, Danciu asked for a recount. "The supervisor's position was that, 'Well, when you push this button, the computer will recount,'" says Danciu. "Well, it just re-tabulates and spits out in a nanosecond what it said the nanosecond before. There is no recount. There's no physical evidence to recount."
Without physical evidence, the computer runs the same data through the same software and, therefore, gets the same result every time. "Do people really want to get a different answer?" asks Conny McCormack, who runs elections in Los Angeles County.
"What we saw four years ago in Florida was a recount that was done where people got a different answer, chad[s] fell out and the numbers were different. This shocked people. The recount doesn't match and yet, in electronic, the recount matches and everybody's critical of that."
One of the critics of e-voting security is David Jefferson, California's top technical adviser on computer voting. He calls voting a national security issue and worries about the possibility that a rogue programmer could corrupt the votes in thousands of machines.
"The electoral weapon of mass destruction, if you will, would be if you were able to modify the software at the source where the vendors write it and insert either a bug or some piece of malicious logic that was distributed to every state that used electronic voting machines," says Jefferson.
This Wednesday, October 27, "60 Minutes Wednesday" will broadcast a segment on electronic voting, and the concerns about paperless voting systems' vulnerability to software bugs. The segment will feature interviews with many prominent computer scientists working on electronic voting reform, including CVF Board member David Jefferson.
Here are excerpts from the article on the CBS web site promoting the story:
--------
One of the 29 states using the new electronic voting is Florida. Charlotte Danciu's father ran for the Palm Beach city council in 2002, the first election that used the new electronic machines. He lost the election, but what upset Danciu even more were the calls she received from voters after Election Day.
"There was this elderly woman on the phone. and she's like, 'Miss Danciu, you don't know me but I kept trying to vote for your dad last night,'" recalls Danciu.
"'I kept pushing his name on the screen and the opponent's name kept registering.' People were calling and telling me that they would touch the screen, and it just wouldn't do anything, and they would call over a poll worker, who would do such things as punch the machine, hit the machine, unplug the machine."
Despite the poll worker's alleged attempts to get the machines to work on election night, Danciu asked for a recount. "The supervisor's position was that, 'Well, when you push this button, the computer will recount,'" says Danciu. "Well, it just re-tabulates and spits out in a nanosecond what it said the nanosecond before. There is no recount. There's no physical evidence to recount."
Without physical evidence, the computer runs the same data through the same software and, therefore, gets the same result every time. "Do people really want to get a different answer?" asks Conny McCormack, who runs elections in Los Angeles County.
"What we saw four years ago in Florida was a recount that was done where people got a different answer, chad[s] fell out and the numbers were different. This shocked people. The recount doesn't match and yet, in electronic, the recount matches and everybody's critical of that."
One of the critics of e-voting security is David Jefferson, California's top technical adviser on computer voting. He calls voting a national security issue and worries about the possibility that a rogue programmer could corrupt the votes in thousands of machines.
"The electoral weapon of mass destruction, if you will, would be if you were able to modify the software at the source where the vendors write it and insert either a bug or some piece of malicious logic that was distributed to every state that used electronic voting machines," says Jefferson.
Monday, December 13, 2004
More Questions for Florida -- Clint Curtis' allegations
By Kim Zetter, Wired News, December 13, 2004
Excerpts:
A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.
Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida.
He said his employer told him the code would be used "to control the vote" in West Palm Beach, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer's claims and said the meetings he described never took place.
Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn't know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn't stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.
Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.
The FBI in Tallahassee, Florida, has set up a meeting with Curtis, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said it was trying to corroborate his claims about possible election fraud and NASA spying.
The group hopes that even if the election allegations aren't proven, they will inspire legislators to pass a law requiring voting software to be open to public inspection to help deter fraud and restore public confidence in the election process. The software code used in voting machines is considered proprietary and it is protected from public examination -- an issue voting activists have been trying to address.
------
In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company's president, to request the voting software.
At the time, Feeney was Yang's corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida's legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida's House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.
Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.
Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate's total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.
Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren't looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn't be found.
"Her words were that it was needed to control the vote in West Palm Beach, Florida," Curtis said. "Once she said, 'We need to steal an election,' that put me back. I made it clear that I could not produce code that could do that and no one else should."
Curtis says he left the company in February 2001 because he found its ethics questionable. He doesn't know if his code was ever used.
Neither Feeney's spokeswoman nor election officials in Palm Beach County returned calls for comment. But a man who identified himself as Mike Cohen, Yang's executive assistant at the time whom Curtis said was in the meeting, told Wired News the meeting never occurred. Cohen said Curtis was "100 percent" wrong and that Cohen didn't attend such a meeting. He added he knew nothing of any meeting on the topic that occurred without him.
Yang attorney Michael O'Quinn called Curtis' assertions "absurd and categorically untrue." He said Curtis is an opportunist and a disgruntled former employee furthering an agenda by telling lies. According to O'Quinn, Curtis tried the same tactic in 2002 when he leveled other charges against Yang and Feeney.
Some details of Curtis' statements don't check out. West Palm Beach city didn't use touch-screen machines in 2000, something Curtis didn't know when Wired News spoke to him. It was the pregnant chad controversy in that year's presidential election that led Palm Beach county, where West Palm Beach resides, to replace its much-maligned punch-card system with touch-screen machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems in December 2001.
But Curtis said the program could have been adapted for use in the counting software used with punch-card machines and optical scan machines, or it could have been used on the new touch-screen machines in 2002, the year Feeney was elected to Congress.
Adam Stubblefield, a graduate student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored a now-famous report (.pdf) about Diebold's voting machine code last year, thinks the chances that Curtis' code was used in a voting machine are nil.
"(Curtis) clearly didn't have the source code to any voting machine, and his program is so trivial that it would be much easier to rewrite it than to rework it," said Stubblefield.
Stubblefield also found fault in Curtis' statement that any malicious code would be detected in a source code review. This would be true only for unsophisticated malicious code, like Curtis' prototype.
Despite Curtis' concerns about statements Yang and Feeney supposedly made regarding election fraud, Curtis didn't tell the FBI or election officials in West Palm Beach about them, even after the 2000 election thrust Florida into the international spotlight.
He said he didn't worry about the code or Yang's statements because he believed if anyone installed malicious code on a voting machine authorities would find it when they examined the code. It wasn't until he read a news story last spring indicating that voting software is proprietary and is not open for inspection once it's certified that the earlier conversations began to concern him.
He claims he did later tell the CIA, the FBI, an investigator for Florida's Department of Transportation and a reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal about the voting issues when he gave them other information about Yang and Feeney. But so far this has not been corroborated. The FBI did not return calls for comment. The Department of Transportation investigator is dead. And writer Laura Zuckerman who worked closely with Curtis on several stories for the Daytona paper, told Wired News he never mentioned the voting software code.
Excerpts:
A government watchdog group is investigating allegations made by a Florida programmer that are whipping up a frenzy among bloggers and people who believe Republicans stole the recent election.
Programmer Clint Curtis claims that four years ago Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Florida) asked his then-employer to write software to alter votes on electronic voting machines in Florida.
He said his employer told him the code would be used "to control the vote" in West Palm Beach, Florida. But a fellow employee disputed the programmer's claims and said the meetings he described never took place.
Many questions have been raised about Curtis, the 46-year-old programmer, who said he doesn't know if anyone ever placed the prototype code on voting machines. But this hasn't stopped frustrated voters and bloggers from seizing his story. Daily Kos mentioned the allegations, and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog has written extensively about them.
Staff members for Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) met with Curtis last week to discuss the election allegations. Representatives for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Florida) inquired about other allegations from Curtis that his former company spied on NASA.
The FBI in Tallahassee, Florida, has set up a meeting with Curtis, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said it was trying to corroborate his claims about possible election fraud and NASA spying.
The group hopes that even if the election allegations aren't proven, they will inspire legislators to pass a law requiring voting software to be open to public inspection to help deter fraud and restore public confidence in the election process. The software code used in voting machines is considered proprietary and it is protected from public examination -- an issue voting activists have been trying to address.
------
In September 2000, Curtis was working for Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, Florida, a software design firm that contracts with NASA, ExxonMobil and the Florida Department of Transportation, among other clients. According to Curtis, Feeney met with him and Lee Yang, the company's president, to request the voting software.
At the time, Feeney was Yang's corporate attorney and a registered lobbyist for the company as well as a member of Florida's legislature. A month later, he would become speaker of Florida's House of Representatives. In 2002 he was elected to Congress.
Curtis said Feeney asked for code that could go undetected on a voting machine and be easily triggered without any devices by anyone using the machine. Curtis had never seen source code for a voting machine, but in five hours, he said he designed code in Visual Basic that would launch if someone touched specific spots on the voting screen after selecting a candidate.
Once the code was activated, it would search the machine to see if the selected candidate's total was behind. If it was, the machine would award that candidate 51 percent of the total votes recorded on the machine and redistribute the remaining votes among the other candidates in the race.
Curtis said he initially believed Feeney wanted the code to see if such fraud were possible and to know how to detect it. The programmer told Feeney that such code could never be undetectable in source code, and he wrote a paper describing how to look for it. But when he gave the paper and code to his employer, Yang told him he was looking at it all wrong. They weren't looking at how to find code, Curtis said she told him. They needed code that couldn't be found.
"Her words were that it was needed to control the vote in West Palm Beach, Florida," Curtis said. "Once she said, 'We need to steal an election,' that put me back. I made it clear that I could not produce code that could do that and no one else should."
Curtis says he left the company in February 2001 because he found its ethics questionable. He doesn't know if his code was ever used.
Neither Feeney's spokeswoman nor election officials in Palm Beach County returned calls for comment. But a man who identified himself as Mike Cohen, Yang's executive assistant at the time whom Curtis said was in the meeting, told Wired News the meeting never occurred. Cohen said Curtis was "100 percent" wrong and that Cohen didn't attend such a meeting. He added he knew nothing of any meeting on the topic that occurred without him.
Yang attorney Michael O'Quinn called Curtis' assertions "absurd and categorically untrue." He said Curtis is an opportunist and a disgruntled former employee furthering an agenda by telling lies. According to O'Quinn, Curtis tried the same tactic in 2002 when he leveled other charges against Yang and Feeney.
Some details of Curtis' statements don't check out. West Palm Beach city didn't use touch-screen machines in 2000, something Curtis didn't know when Wired News spoke to him. It was the pregnant chad controversy in that year's presidential election that led Palm Beach county, where West Palm Beach resides, to replace its much-maligned punch-card system with touch-screen machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems in December 2001.
But Curtis said the program could have been adapted for use in the counting software used with punch-card machines and optical scan machines, or it could have been used on the new touch-screen machines in 2002, the year Feeney was elected to Congress.
Adam Stubblefield, a graduate student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored a now-famous report (.pdf) about Diebold's voting machine code last year, thinks the chances that Curtis' code was used in a voting machine are nil.
"(Curtis) clearly didn't have the source code to any voting machine, and his program is so trivial that it would be much easier to rewrite it than to rework it," said Stubblefield.
Stubblefield also found fault in Curtis' statement that any malicious code would be detected in a source code review. This would be true only for unsophisticated malicious code, like Curtis' prototype.
Despite Curtis' concerns about statements Yang and Feeney supposedly made regarding election fraud, Curtis didn't tell the FBI or election officials in West Palm Beach about them, even after the 2000 election thrust Florida into the international spotlight.
He said he didn't worry about the code or Yang's statements because he believed if anyone installed malicious code on a voting machine authorities would find it when they examined the code. It wasn't until he read a news story last spring indicating that voting software is proprietary and is not open for inspection once it's certified that the earlier conversations began to concern him.
He claims he did later tell the CIA, the FBI, an investigator for Florida's Department of Transportation and a reporter for the Daytona Beach News-Journal about the voting issues when he gave them other information about Yang and Feeney. But so far this has not been corroborated. The FBI did not return calls for comment. The Department of Transportation investigator is dead. And writer Laura Zuckerman who worked closely with Curtis on several stories for the Daytona paper, told Wired News he never mentioned the voting software code.
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