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Missing Votes in Ohio Call Races Into Question •
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Sarasota County and the Debate Over "Paper Trails"
By Warren Stewart
VoteTrustUSA
Wednesday 03 January 2007
The disputed election for Florida's 13th Congressional District has ramifications
beyond who ultimately occupies that seat in the 110th Congress. Though Democrat
Christine Jennings has challenged the election in state court and filed a formal
contest of the election with the Clerk of the U.S. House, the new leadership
has made it clear that Republican Vern Buchanan will be sworn in when the session
begins on January 4th. Rep. Rush Holt has announced that he will file a Parliamentary
Inquiry as soon as the new Congress convenes, clarifying that the seating of
a Member-elect does not prejudice a pending contest over final right to the
seat."
At issue are over 18,000 undervotes - votes that were lost or never recorded
at all on the ES&S iVotronic touchscreen voting machines used for early
and Election Day voting in Sarasota County, the largest of the five counties
in the 13th District. After a mandatory recount, Buchanan held a razor-thin
369-vote margin of victory over Jennings but there has been no satisfactory
resolution of the implausibly high undervote rate on the iVotronics.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of the legal action and election contest, the
experience of Sarasota County in 2006 should serve to focus the larger debate
about the appropriate use of computerized equipment in the election process.
There should no longer be any question that the use of entirely software dependent
voting systems, which, like the 'paperless' touchscreen machines
used in Sarasota County, provide no independent means of verification, is unacceptable
in a democracy that depends on transparency and accountability in the election
process.
There seems to be little doubt that federal legislation requiring the minimum
safeguard of a voter verified paper audit trail and mandatory hand counted audits
will pass in the coming months, but many look at the situation in Sarasota County
and question whether this is an adequate response.
How We Got Here
While direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems have been in use in
some jurisdictions in the country since the 1980s, their use has increased significantly
since 2000. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 set in motion the most
dramatic change in voting technology in the nation's history, with more
than a third of American voters using new equipment in 2006, and many states
and counties choosing to implement paperless DRE systems. These changes have
been accompanied by a growing awareness and concern among citizens about the
accuracy and integrity electronic voting in general and DREs in particular.
Facing what seemed to be an inevitable wave of touchscreen machines, the initial
response of computer scientists and election reform activists was to require
that these machines produce a contemporaneous paper record that the voter could
verify before casting a vote electronically. This "voter verified paper
audit trail" (VVPAT) would be retained and used in audits to verify, at
least to some degree, the accuracy of the electronic tallies.
After initial resistance to VVPAT the four largest voting machine manufacturers
developed printer attachments to their preexisting equipment. These printers
were designed in the absence of standards or guidance and, not surprisingly,
have proven to be disappointing at best. Many use thermal paper that cannot
withstand multiple counts and most utilize a reel-to-reel mechanism, similar
to cash register tapes that make auditing and recounting cumbersome. Many of
the printed records are difficult to read or require the voter to constantly
shift focus from the screen to the paper record. In practice the printers have
proven to be prone to paper jams and other malfunctions that compromise their
integrity and value as a check on electronic tabulation.
Many of the advocates and activists who initially supported the addition of
VVPAT printers to DRE voting machines are now questioning the wisdom of the
solution. The reassessment is based not only on the inadequacy of the current
generation of printers, which presumably could be improved, but rather on a
more fundamental rejection of the practice of direct electronic recording of
votes.
Would a "Paper Trail" Have Helped?
In Sarasota County thousands of voters apparently failed to notice that their
vote did not appear on the touchscreen review screen and there is no compelling
argument to suggest that those or other voters would have noticed the missing
vote on a VVPAT printer. If those voters were too rushed or inattentive to heed
the undervote warnings presumably displayed on the summary screen, there is
no reason to assume that those same voters would have made the effort to verify
a VVPAT, or that having made that effort they would have spotted that they had
undervoted.
Already during early voting, hundreds of voters in Sarasota County reported
that their votes for the Jennings-Buchanan race disappeared from the screen.
While Sarasota County Election Supervisor Kathy Dent had acknowledged these
reports in a memo before the election, she refused to investigate or take the
machines out of service. The final results showed that over 13% of the county's
voters (over 18,000) hadn't registered a vote in the Congressional race countywide.
But it's actually worse than that.
The undervote among Sarasota county voters that voted absentee - on paper
ballots - was under 3%, similar to the rates among all voters in the neighboring
counties of the 13th District, who voted entirely on paper ballots. This has
the effect of lowering the countywide undervote rate. With absentee voters taken
out of the equation, the official results would suggest that of the voters that
used touch screen machines in Sarasota County, over 16% declined to state a
preference in one of the most hotly contested Congressional races in the country.
While several explanations ranging from poor ballot design to voter disgust
with negative campaign ads have been proposed to shift blame from the machines
to the, the fact remains that the votes of many thousands were simply never
recorded. The results of minimal official testing and audits of some voting
machines supported the winner's claim that one in six of the voters in
Sarasota County chose not to vote for either candidate, but experts and many
Sarasota voters remained unconvinced. Their voice in choosing a representative
in Congress was denied.
Marking vs. Reading
The problem is in the way voter intent is initially recorded. Whenever electronic
voting machines are used, the initial count is generated with software, whether
that count is derived from marks on paper or electronic impulses transmitted
from a touchscreen to create a wholly digital record. VVPAT, at least theoretically,
provides a "software independent" record that can serve as a means
of verification for use in audits and recounts. (Paper ballots, of course, serve
that function in situations in which ballots are counted by scanners.) But is
that independent paper record a reliable record of voter intent and, given the
considerable problems experienced with paper jams and other printer failures,
would the primacy of the paper ballot hold up in court?
Many who have observed the implementation of electronic voting machines over
the past several years, have come to the conclusion that a paper ballot, marked
by the voter, whether by hand or through an assistive device when necessary,
will more accurately reflect voter intent than a paper record that is merely
read by the voter. Over a third of the states have already come to the conclusion
that a paper ballot voting system, with ballots either counted by hand or with
optical scanners is not only more accurate and reliable but it is also significantly
less expensive.
Innovative ballot marking devices and telephone assistive systems have allowed
17 entire states and jurisdictions in another 16 states to retain paper ballot
systems while still providing voters with disabilities and, where necessary,
language minority voters with the opportunity to cast their votes privately
and independently. Other states seem certain to follow the lead of New Mexico
and Connecticut, where initial plans to purchase touchscreen voting machines
were abandoned in favor of paper ballot systems.
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Missing Votes in Ohio Call Races Into Question
By Bob Fitrakis
The Free Press
Tuesday 03 January 2007
While Democratic Party supporters celebrate their success in Ohio, where their
statewide candidates won four out of five executive offices and they now control
both the U.S. House and Senate, they are ignoring massive and verifiable irregularities
in the 2006 election. Similar irregularities - including missing votes, undervotes
and overvotes - may come back to haunt the Democrats in the 2008 general election.
The only statewide partisan loss for the Democrats was also the closest contest.
Republican Mary Taylor defeated Democrat Barbara Sykes for State Auditor by
an official vote of 50.64% to 49.36%. Taylor prevailed by 48,826 votes. The
Columbus Dispatch's final poll, usually the most accurate in the state for candidate
races, predicted Sykes would win by 10%.
An analysis by the Free Press documents massive discrepancies between the unofficial
turnout reported by Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately
following the election and the official general election turnout numbers reported
in December 2006. These discrepancies may help explain Sykes' unexpected loss.
In Cuyahoga County which contains the Democratic stronghold of Cleveland, immediately
following the election 562,498 votes were reported cast with 30,791 listed as
absentee or provisional ballots. The official results show 468,056 counted in
Cuyahoga. This means that 94,442 ballots cast in the unofficial total disappeared
in the official tallies. This represents a shocking 16.8% of all the votes cast
in Cuyahoga.
Sykes won 62% of the vote in Cuyahoga County.
Cuyahoga County uses the controversial Diebold touchscreen voting machines.
These machines suffered a notorious meltdown in the 2006 primary where many
machines malfunctioned and an Election Science Institute (ESI) report documented
significant differences between votes actually cast on the machines as opposed
to counted.
Similarly in Lucas County, another Democratic stronghold, 17,351 votes disappeared
(10.6% of the total vote) between the unofficial and official turnout numbers.
An analysis by Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips indicates that Taylor, a first-time
statewide office seeker, ran significantly ahead of Republican incumbent candidates
Mike Dewine and Betty Montgomery, in the Senate and Attorney General races respectively.
Other counties with significant and unexplained loss of votes include: Auglaize
(15.7%), Coshocton (14.1%), Jackson (11.3%), Licking (14.1%), Morrow (17.4%),
and Tuscarawas (11.7%). In these less populated counties, Democratic gubernatorial
candidate Ted Strickland won in five out of six and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate
Sherrod won in four out of the six.
Normally, the official total vote tally increases as provisional ballots are
added to the unofficial total. For example, Franklin County had 342,958 votes
unofficially with 46,458 provisionals and a few late overseas absentee ballots.
The official Franklin County result was 385,863 votes cast, a pickup of 42,905
ballots once the provisionals were counted. Eleven of Ohio's 88 counties reported
this anomaly of fewer votes in the official total than the unofficial total.
Other election anomalies that bear further investigation are six counties with
improbable undervote percentages in the U.S. Senate race. On average in Ohio,
3.9% of the ballots contained an "undervote," meaning no vote was
cast in the Senate race. But, in the Senate race there were significant undervote
totals: Adams County had 14.1%; Darke County had 13.5%; Highland had 13.8%;
Mercer had 11.2%; Montgomery had 13.8%; and Perry had 16.3%. The city of Dayton
is in Montgomery County where more than 30,000 ballots recorded no vote for
Senate. Brown won 53% of the vote in Montgomery County.
In comparison with the undervote in the well-known District 13 race in Sarasota,
Florida, the undervote was 18,382.
In the Sykes race, the undervote for Auditor in Cuyahoga County was 10.7%.
Undervotes were 8.3% of the total vote in Lucas County. Skyes' undervote total
in these Democratic havens should have been examined along with the bizarre
unofficial vs. official vote totals in these counties.
The state auditor's office in Ohio has enormous power to investigate and root
out official corruption involving public funds. Many critics of Republican Party
scandals in Ohio have pointed to the GOP's control of the state auditor's office
as the key to delaying and minimizing public scrutiny.
Franklin County and the Squire Challenge
Although the election numbers are stranger in Cuyahoga and Lucas counties for
the Democrats, an election contest complaint filed in the Franklin County Court
of Appeals by Judge Carol Squire documents in great detail the problem with
electronic voting machines based on the results of her 2006 race. Incumbent
Squire filed the action on December 22 after losing by 13,064 votes to Chris
Geer for a seat on the County Court of Common Pleas.
The action seeks to "declare invalid and set aside" Squire's loss.
The complaint requests a full evidentiary hearing.
Squire hired Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, President and Chief Technical Officer of
Notable Software, Inc. as an expert witness and investigator. The former Bryn
Mawr computer science professor holds a Ph.D. in computer and informational
science from the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University
of Pennsylvania. Mercuri's sworn affidavit contains detailed criticisms of the
Franklin County Board of Elections (BOE) and its conduct of the 2006 election.
Her sworn statements include the following:
- 35 precincts were unable to close "due to problems with printers, machine
malfunctions, infrared readers, PEBs [personal electronic ballots] ...."
Squire paid for a recount of these 35 precincts but the BOE used the real time
audit log (RTAL) paper tapes to recount only 2 of the 35 precincts. The RTALs
are the only way to accurately assess how people really voted on the Election
Day.
- In the BOE warehouse "hundreds of RTAL paper rolls were sitting out
on various tables ... It had been my understanding that sealed containers holding
the rolls would be open only in the presence of observers, but this apparently
had already been done, and the rolls extracted, prior to the observers' arrival."
- "Many of the rolls" lacked "tamper-proof" tape, which
seals the RTALs at the end of Election Day in case of a recount. Instead, they
had stickers which could be easily tampered with.
- "Some of the [RTAL] rolls did not have a sticker" leaving them
open for tampering or accidental destruction.
- "... Other [RTALs] had a sticker with handwritten initials on it"
indicating that the roll "was replaced by a service person during the Election
Day." This raises questions concerning chain of custody of the rolls, the
functionality of the machines, and identity and background of the technicians
who initialed the stickers.
- "... A considerable number of the rolls were incomplete, possibly because
the paper roll had run out or been changed, although for some, it was evident
that the end of the paper roll had been damaged or ripped."
- "... between five and ten percent of the machines had either not printed
an end tally," or "it was missing."
- In one case, when Mercuri requested the information at the beginning of the
RTAL roll be read aloud during the recount, the phrases "password override"
and "PEB failure" were read from the audit log. Mercuri concludes
that "... this might have indicated a pre-election breach of security or
protocol for that equipment."
- "It was observed that some of the equipment problem report pages had
been previously removed from the pollbooks."
- "The warehouse facility appeared to be shared by other agencies, as
there was a large SWAT team truck behind some of the rows of voting machines
..."
Mercuri's 16-page affidavit concludes that Squire was denied "an appropriate
recount" from a voter-verified paper trail using the RTAL rolls and also
points out that the "voting system was inappropriately configured and improperly
used during the election." The Franklin County BOE used different versions
of hardware that were not certified prior to the election.
"The use of mismatched components violates certification requirements
and also runs the risk of exposure to programming errors (bugs) or security
vulnerabilities that could compromise the integrity of the election and result
in the loss or mistabulation of votes," Mercuri states.
In late November the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),
one of the federal government's premier research centers, condemned electronic
voting machines noting that as presently configured, they "cannot be made
secure."
In an audit of 25% of Franklin County's precinct pollbooks and signature books,
Squire's elections investigator Rady Ananda found massive problems with over
reporting of votes. Only 29 out of 216 precincts matched the number of signatures
to the number of votes cast. Eight precincts reported more than 100 more votes
cast than signatures in the pollbooks.
A similar problem of fewer votes being recorded than voter signatures also
occurred with one precinct having 100 fewer votes on the machine than signatures.
In all, 136 precincts fell into this category. Columbus Ward 66 Precinct G was
missing 123 votes. An audit of Miami County by a Free Press investigation team
following the 2004 presidential election found a similar problem of optiscan
precinct totals not matching signature books. In the spring 2006 primary election,
the ESI audit of Cuyahoga County found similar problems.
Cuyahoga's problems reappeared in the 2006 general election. The Cleveland
Plain Dealer reported that, "Nearly 12,000 people in Cuyahoga County cast
votes illegally on Election Day without signing the election books, or likely,
showing identification as required by a new state law."
"An analysis showed that 533 of the 570 Cuyahoga County voting precincts
reported more votes than voters signed in." The Plain Dealer found that:
"With some polling places, the numbers were off by more than 100."
Beverly Campbell, a 2006 Democratic candidate for the Ohio Statehouse, lost
by 368 votes in Franklin County. She told the Columbus Dispatch that "her
campaign has questions similar to Squire's about vote and signature totals."
In a meeting with the Free Press, she supplied a worksheet from her own investigation
of 98 precincts where there were problems in 88 of them either with more votes
cast than signatures or more signatures than votes cast. In all, she found 483
more votes than signatures and 300 missing votes.
Squire's complaint also asserts that "over 2500 provisional ballots were
discarded with no opportunity for observers to obtain the basis or justification
for rejection."
The voting irregularities in the 2006 election appear to be greater than in
2004, but many Ohio Democrats have chosen to ignore that reality. But one who
hasn't taken that position is newly-elected Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner,
who has pledged a complete review of the electronic voting machines. The facts
remain that not every vote is counted or accounted for in the Buckeye State
and this could be the key factor in deciding the next president of the United
States.
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Bob Fitrakis is the co-author of What Happened in Ohio:
A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election published
by the New Press.
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