New Independent Report on FL CD-13 and Other iVotronic Problems

[Bill Bored]

Florida Fair Elections Center

Sarasota’s Vanished Votes

An Investigation into the Cause of Uncounted Votes
in the 2006 Congressional District 13 Race
in Sarasota County, Florida

January 2008

by

Susan Pynchon, Executive Director

Kitty Garber, Research Director

-snip-

Regardless of the motivation of any of the involved parties, however, the fact
remains that the breakdown of the iVotronic system was not disclosed, or even
acknowledged, by those responsible for determining what went wrong in
Sarasota County in the Congressional District 13 race in the November 2006
election.

PDF: http://www.floridafairelections.org/reports/Vanishing_Votes.pdf

[Stevepol]

1. This is far too scientific and academic to be trustworthy.

Why didn't they interview the marketing director for ES&S?

They just assume that the best science available is all it takes to study the Ivotronic. But there's more to this machines than just how well it works. Looks for example. The Ivotronic looks great. It has a colorful screen and the gboxes look good and the voter really gets excited about voting when they see the Ivotronic. Sure it screws up now and then, but there's always a good explanation.

Always.

Usually it's a human error, poll workers not understanding how to deal with the new technology. ES&S can't help that. Better trained poll workers could help. ES&S can train the workers for a small fee. Check their price list. (Actually for as little as $10,000 per poll worker per day. See ES&S's marketing director about this if you're interested).

Sometimes it's a glitch that could not be helped. If you use a #2 pencil you're going to have some glitches, and a pen raises the stakes even more. You're likely to have a whole handful of glitches right there.

One of the problems is you always want to have a perfect election, but there's no such thing as perfection in this world. You have to just accept the fact that now and then 18,000 undervotes get recorded whether they happened or not. Get used to it.

Move on.

[Bill Bored]

2. Spoken like a true Political Scientist (with some exceptions). nt

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. consistent undervotes in Miami Dade

Miami Dade had something like a 4-5% undervote for most major contests.

[BeFree]

4. ES&S report

http://informedconsent.typepad.com/informed_consent/2007/03/another_ess_let.html

An interesting factoid about the Sarasota fiasco, found at the link above

First, here's the list from the ES&S letter:

* No statements about possible "vulnerabilities"
* No statements about the "style" of the source code
* No statements commenting on the use of less desirable techniques, instructions, or constructs
* No statements regarding conformance to source code standards of any type or kind
* No statements regarding ES&S hardware or software engineering practices or design methods
* No statements regarding the use of preferred or non-preferred data structures, data types, data formats, databases, storage methods
* No statements rendering opinions on security techniques employed or not employed
* No statements discussing presence or absence of cryptography or other security methods and techniques
* No statements discussing relevance of any discoveries made in this review to any elections or contests outside the 2006 Sarasota General Election, U.S. House of Representative District 13 race
* No statements discussing the use or manner in which system passwords are used, constructed or stored.
* No statements regarding conformance to source code standards of any type or kind.
* No statements regarding use of desirable or undesirable style, techniques, instructions, logic, architecture, or implementation.
* No statements regarding the use of preferred or non-preferred data structures, data types, data formats, databases, storage methods.
* No statements regarding the fit and applicability of electronic technologies or this class of voting machines (i.e., Direct Recording Electronic, Touch Screen Systems) for elections in general.
* No statements regarding ES&S hardware or software engineering practices or design methods.