NC E-voting bill approved by committee 11-1

[Kelvin Mace]

The NC Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting met today and voted to approve the bill we've been working on and recommend it to the NC General Assembly.

Summary of the bill:

1) Paper ballots mandatory for BBV machines.

2) Source code MUST be reviewed.

3) Vendor MUST affirm (under oath) that code is same as used on "live" systems.

4) Violating this provision is a felony.

5) Vendor most post a bond to do business with the state sufficient to cover a new election if failure of their equipment requires one.

6) SBoE must come up with a new code of ethics concerning election officials and vendors.

7) The SBoE MUST conduct a post election audit of a statistically significant number of precincts in EVERY county to check for error and/or fraud. Significant discrepancies will trigger hand recounts.

8) Vendor MUST notify the state of any known defect in their software/hardware.

Again, I view these new laws as the MINIMUM we Will accept.

Arrogant election officials who think we are all stupid and paranoid are ALREADY out fighting this bill.

If we lose this fight, we lose democracy itself.

Summary of the meeting

First, the final vote pretty much came down as I predicted in that there were two hard negative votes, Cordle and Knight. Cordle didn't bother to show, which was a mistake since they might have avoided having Knights amendment tabled if he had shown up.

Knight's maneuver to amend the bill to allow digital ballots, audio or photographic backup was narrowly tabled 6-5 (I do not know who abstained). Even if they had called for a vote, I had a couple of other bits of evidence to trot out, namely the ACM endorsement.

Mr. Esparza made a good argument or tabling, and I credit his comments for the success of the vote.

Selker's presentation was disorganized and didn't focus much on his anti-paper views until the Q&A. He mostly focused on poll workers and failure to follow procedure, a common problem in elections.

Selker claimed that an audio device of his own design was better and more secure than paper for backing up EVMs.

(Question: Has he patented this device? Would he stand to gain if it were used? He didn't strike me as the type, but you never know).

I asked him whether adding yet another layer of technology (setting a machine to watch a machine) wasn't making things more complicated, more expensive equipment to buy and maintain, more training to perform and more devices which could fail? He basically conceded the point, but said the system was more reliable than paper.

(For some reason he made a couple of jokes that fell flat on the room. One was a comments about "having a PhD means nothing" and "who cares about money" when we addressed the additional expense.) Not good tactical moves, if you ask me.

Mr. Esparza asked him whether his "audio auditing" was available from anyone. He said Hart Intercivic was "testing it". Esparza pursued the issue "as of today, Feb 9th, 2005, isn't paper my best option for an indelible record of the vote?'

"No, the audio auditing is better than paper."

So, I chimed in.

"As of today, is their any vendor who is selling a certified version of your device?"

"No, there isn't."

"Thank you."

And that was the end of that dodge.

There were several minor amendments, wording changes to insure that the state didn't require counties to accept an "unfunded mandate" (by Michael Ashe, Durham Co. election director). An amendment to put back in the language for IRV (rejected) and the above attempt by Knight to undo the paper requirement (tabled).

Sen. Allran moved for a vote on the bill and it was over in an instant.

After the meeting I ran into George Gilbert (Guilford Co. election director) while talking to Ted Selker. Gilbert was barely civil and accused me of being "wrong and knowing you are wrong", which I believe is calling me a liar. He emphatically rejected the idea that paper ballots could be counted accurately and told me that he knew about counting ballots and I was wrong about the accuracy of hand-counting ballots. I then responded "and I know computers and you are wrong to put your faith in computers." This did not make him happy. The argument would have gotten more heated, but Gary Bartlett intervened and said they had to go.

I later was invited to lunch by Sen. Kinnaird and saw Selker, Gilbert and Bartlett in deep discussion over lunch.

Based on Gilbert's reaction, I think it is safe to say that the gloves are off and it is very important that we understand he and the vendors will use every trick at their disposal to scuttle the bill.

Gilbert and his allies have suffered a pretty sound defeat and their egos are stinging. We've just made the issue personal and no quarter will be asked or given.

As to what we should do next, I will find out where the bill goes and will find out who the key people are and where to apply pressure. A billboard would be nice (my suggestion a ballot beside the US Constitution with the text "Paper. Good enough for our Founding Fathers, good enough for our ballot."

I would also suggest post cards and will work to get color postcards with appropriate images (a paper ballots with a Windows error message in the middle. The caption reads "Paper: 200+ years without a general protection fault."

Images are POWERFUL and we must use them to make our argument.

We will have to come up with ways to fund these initiatives.

I have more detailed discussion of the bill here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ncverifiablevoting/message/2075

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

[mdhunter]

1. Awesome report, thanks.

A former Cary resident here.

Good to hear that states are taking matters into their own hands - which doesn't excuse federal lethargy, but it's nice none the less.

[ultraist]

2. Thanks for the report!

[Greylyn58]

3. This is great news for NC

Let's just hope that future elections in the state can adhere to these new rules.

After the troubles we had after these last elections, I'm glad to see that the people in Raleigh took the problems seriously.

[Kelvin Mace]

4. They are taking it seriously

but so are BBV vendors. Grass roots support for this bill is they only way to get it through with all of its teeth.

[blm]

5. Good to hear, David. What was the press coverage like?

.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. AP, UNC-TV and a few local TV

stations. I think the Chalotte Observer was there as well.