My election judge experience at a fully HAVA compliant precinct.

[crispini]

Holy cats. It was complicated. We have three fully distinct voting systems now. Each one with its own attendant paperwork.

Our main voting method on election day is paper ballots with an optical scan counter at the precinct. (ES&S) Our county elections administrator likes this system and I tend to agree with him. If the machine goes down you can keep voting, and you can always recount the ballots if you need to. This USED to be the only method available to the voters on election day. At the end of the day we print out polling tapes, box up the ballots, & seal them, pull the card & seal it, fill out reports, and schlep everything over to the office. Polling tapes for everyone who wants them, including observers, etc. Yes, of course, the flash memory cards or tabulator software could be tampered with behind the scenes but from the viewpoint of the election judge, at least there is always the paper backup. The new optical scanners will beep if there is an overvote or a problem reading the ballot and apparently all of my precinct's voters had no problem with the ovals since nobody had a ballot kicked back to them.

In 2004 we added the provisional balloting. This is a completely different ballot box, with its own set of paperwork and seals to be applied at the end of the day. I didn't mind provisional balloting, though, because it helped us serve the confused voters. We voted 10 or 12 provisionals in 2004. This system is 100% paper.

This year we added the ADA accesible voting machine for the blind. Ye cats. This thing is heavy. We had to take it home with us when we picked up our supplies (one got stolen out of a judge's house) and schlep it to the polling place and set it up. Initialize it, verify the opening count at the beginning of the day, and then it sits all day and nobody votes on it and then you have to close it up, seal it all up, and schelep it back to the office.

I have to admit, I think that the requirement to have an accesible voting machine for the blind at every single voting location is kind of annoying. It's expensive as hell and it is not utilized. I am in a large urban county. In the previous election we had 70,000 votes and we had 12 people vote on the ADA machines. I can understand why the blind might wish to vote unassisted but why not have certain polling locations which are designated for the visually impaired? You could have 30 or 40 of these locations in a county and you'd pretty much cover it. We opened something like 80 polling locations and since this is a primary each one of these had to have TWO of these machines. These were ES&S iVotronics and were basically not used. Yes, a nice $4000 paperweight.

And after that we held our precinct convention, where we passed this resolution:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=180&topic_id=27643&mesg_id=27645
I like it. We're trying to make progress at least.

[The Straight Story]

1. Good for you!

And keep up the good work and post more as things progress! Do you have a blog?

It is fascinating to see 'inside' some of this stuff.

[Peace Patriot]

2. "...(ES&S) Our county elections administrator likes this system and I...

tend to agree with him."

ES&S, a spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), like Diebold is run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. ES&S was initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the nutso "christian" Chalcedon Foundation (which, among other things, touts the death penalty for homosexuals). Diebold, as you may know, until a few months ago, was headed by CEO Wally O'Dell, who promised in writing to "deliver" Ohio's Electoral Votes to Bush/Cheney in 2004, and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, as Bush/Cheney campaign chair in Ohio. ES&S and Diebold have an incestuous relationship--they are run by two brothers, Todd and Bob Urosevich.

These are the people who are "tabulating" our votes behind a veil of secrecy. Together, these two rightwing corporations "counted" 80% of the nation's vote in 2004.

This non-transparent, rightwing Bushite-controlled election system was brought to you by the two biggest Bushite crooks in Congress--Tom Delay and Bob Ney--who designed the so-called "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA) as a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle to corrupt election officials on a bipartisan basis all over the country, with no controls on partisan vendors, no controls on lavish lobbying or "revolving door" employment, no controls on secret industry 'testing' of the machines, no paper trail requirement, and underfunded regulators. The result is that our election system was taken over, in a short period of time (2002-2004), by extremely hackable, insecure electronic voting machines and central tabulators whose programming is in private partisan control.

I don't see how you can say that you "like" this system. It is the most non-transparent election system ever devised. Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny.

The only way for the great American progressive majority--which is reflected overwhelmingly in issue and approval polls over the last several years--to take back Congress and restore democracy in this country is by a huge turnout, bigger even than 2004, which might overcome the fraud in some cases, if the percentage advantage that is given to Bushites and warmongers has to be pre-programmed, which I believe was the case in 2004. I would suggest planning for--and trying to generate--at least a 10% margin of victory, in order merely to win.

Long term, we must get rid of these machines--county by county, state by state--and return to TRANSPARENT elections. Private partisan control of the vote tabulation with secret programming is simply not acceptable. It is fundamentally undemocratic. Its results can never be trusted. Paper trails don't matter in secretly programmed voting machines that operate at the speed of light, in which thousands of votes can be changed in a split second, and with serious recounts almost never occurring (too expensive and difficult to obtain).

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

----------

Some resources:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.UScountvotes.org (monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

[crispini]

3. See, I don't think you even read my post.

You're just kneejerk spitting out stuff you read on DU.

Here's the deal:

My precinct votes on election day on PAPER BALLOTS. Yes, that's right, honest to God paper ballots. These are the LEGAL BALLOT. The voter runs them through the counter themselves and the counter spits them back if they are overvoted and the voter has a chance to fix them. They are tallied right there by the machine. I printed out a zero count poll tape there at my precinct before the election began.

At the end of the day they spit out a poll tape with the totals. I can, and do, take the poll tape home with me and compare the results of my precinct with the results from the elections office as they are posted on the web. I can, and do, post a poll tape on the door of the polling place. If somebody cared to come to the polling place they could do the same. If somebody screws with the tabulation of the ballots, I will know.

Now, of course you are going to say that somebody could have screwed with the counts on the cards, or the way that the tabulator at the precinct itself works. Yes, I wish we had a publicly posted system of random audits in place to verify the paper ballots against the count. If we could get that, it would be perfect. We have tried to get this legislation passed last year but we have a Republican controlled legislature. Hopefully next session we can try again; the woman who was chair of the elections committee at the Lege has left and maybe someone more amenable will be the next chair.

You know, instead of just ASSUMING that I don't know what I'm talking about, why not try assuming that I DO, and ask me some questions rather than simply regurgitating stuff at me.

Have you ever served as an elections judge yourself in your county?

[eomer]

4. Self delete of critical post, and let me try it again...

On edit: I only now followed the link you provided and read the resolution you passed. I see it calls for a random audit based on looking at the paper ballots so I'm editng this post to basically delete everything I said the first time and give it another try.

My impression from your OP was that you thought the system used in your polling place was sufficient but now I see (based on the resolution) that you think it needs improvement. You're aware apparently that it needs one more step -- an audit based on the paper ballots.

[crispini]

7. Thank you.

I am very excited about the next legislative session since we have some good Democrats on the Elections committee and the annoying Republican chair is gone. So maybe we can get our bill out of committee this time.

[BeFree]

5. Peace Patriot is right

Don't take it personally. It's not your fault the secret counting takes place.

The poll tapes you have are useless. As you admit, an audit is the only real way to know. An proper audit is not secret, and not controlled by a company. But you don't have an audit, do you?

Without an audit, the count from the electronic machine has a level of NO confidence. So, don't be happy. Don't let them pull the wool over your eyes. Complain loudly and clearly that we won't be happy until a proper audit is instituted.

Tell you what, ask if they'll let you do an audit of the ballots. I bet you they say no. Then wonder why they won't.

[crispini]

6. I will find out.

Our Elections Administrator is very open and helpful and tries to be a fair guy. This should be an interesting conversation.

What I found annoying about the post was the assumption that because I'm not frothing at the mouth dying to get get rid of our ES&S machines, I don't know anything about the issue. I do. I have already read many of the links that Peace Patriot has posted, and our elections department has a copy of "What Every Elections Administrator Should Know." I am happy with our system because I think we have a lot of what we need in place already, and with that last step of the random audit, which should be fairly inexpensive to add, we will have a very good system. Contrast this with counties who have already gone to 100% DRE's. If we should succeed in getting a statewide law passed to require paper ballots to be the legal ballot of record, which is something that Common Cause in our state is working on, then these counties are going to have to get rid of their DRE's or buy lots and lots printers. At least we're not in that boat.

Edited to add: Now, do I THINK that we should go to a fully open-source software system? Yes, of course I think that. I am not happy with corporate control of the ballot counting. But the reality is that our elections officials have to tabulate their votes somehow. I believe the only open-source software vendor just went out of business -- correct me if I'm wrong on that and there is another one out there. The reality is that our elections administators and officials in our county are doing their best in the environment that they are in right now, which includes the universe of laws and vendors.

[AtLiberty]

8. No recounts when votes are scanned to fall outside margins --

Please don't drink the "recount" Kool-Aid with opti-scan.

Clint Curtis testified under oath before Congress that votes can be programmed to flip and/or stay outside the margins. You won't be able to obtain a court order necessary for a recount if the votes were scanned to fall outside the margins. The judge will look at the margins when making his/her decision.

[crispini]

9. That's not what our resolution says.

• Require random checks of the physical ballots against the computer system totals for system audit purposes.

Audits, not recounts, right?

[AtLiberty]

10. There was alleged "auditing" done in Ohio in 2004...

We soon learned that random wasn't truly random...that even that process was manipulated.

It was a joke.

[crispini]

11. So what's your solution?

[liam_laddie]

12. Hart Intercivic "Ballot Now" opti-scan system?

Crispini, or anyone who's had recent primaries...
Does anyone know if this relatively recent addition to Hart Intercivic's
line of voting machine systems was used in any of the TX primaries?
Other than John Gideon's October 2005 entry on VotersUnite, I can't
find any comments about this system. We in Hamilton County, Ohio
will be using this county-wide for the first time in the May primary.
It was used Feb 7 in a seven-precinct "special" election (local school
tax issue) and apparently raised no objections.
We have one scanner per precinct, as I understand it. I don't know
if there is a printout at precinct level, or memory cards are taken to
the BoE, or if there are any wireless ports built-in (IR, RF...)
Will post to the TX state forum, too. Thanks to all!

[crispini]

13. I answered you in Texas

because I saw this there first. My county doesn't. Harris uses Hart Intercivic, but they use the eSlate, I don't know if they have scanners or not.

[Junkdrawer]

14. In the opinion of many, the whole ADA "angle"...

was to lay the legal groundwork for the Federal government mandating DRE machines for everyone.

Now, HAVA only mandates one machine per precinct, but in PA, that was used to mandate them almost everywhere for almost everybody.

Traditionally, the Feds only used their Article I powers to mandate the day of Federal elections (first Tuesday after the first Monday). Now, they have grounds to sue anyone who doesn't comply with HAVA (like New York).

[crispini]

15. Goes to show that the devil truly is in the details.

And how important local activism and citizen involvement is. I think my county is very fortunate to still have paper ballots, and it's pretty clear from things our elections administrator has said and done that he wants to keep it that way. There are a couple of local citizen's groups that dialog with him on a regular basis about technology. I don't envy him; that is a very responsible and very scary job.

[Junkdrawer]

16. Yep. And the details of the audit is what I think about most...

Especially the timing...

Audit too soon and a non-audited precinct will be hacked later...

Audit too late and the fix will have been covered up...

Spot checks leave lots of opportunities for those that know (and possibly write) the procedures.