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Edited on Tue Jan-06-04 01:17 AM by BevHarris
Well gee, the book is done, so I have launched a new phase, funded by contributions, called "Black Box Investigative Reports." Various researchers work with me. People have criticized me for pairing up with democratic candidate for secretary of state Andy Stephenson, saying it mixes the BBV movement and his campaign too much, but the fact is, I'll work with anyone who wants to do credible investigative work, and Andy is fantastic to work with. Today, he brought a videographer to capture the whole thing on tape. Some of our "investigative reports" may be less than thrilling, because they are day to day grunt work that will yield the ammunition we need to know just how to agitate the system to help it become more responsive to our needs. We won't always get the answers we expect. Today, we made a total of five visits. They were pretty interesting (to us, anyway). The following report represents just one of our five visits. It provides a rare look into the innards of the still-common punch card systems, plus details on the chain of custody and attack points for absentee ballots. At the bottom of this report you'll see the preview of our next report. More information can be found at http://www.blackboxvoting.org.BLACK BOX INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS — Monday Jan. 5, 2004
Citizen Audit: Thurston County, WA by Bev Harris, Andy Stephenson, with videographer Kathy Walker We are launching a citizen audit project to identify risk areas for upcoming elections. Today, we did a citizen audit of Thurston County (Washington) election procedures. We encourage you to pair up and visit county election offices to ask questions. This meeting was videotaped by the wonderful volunteer, Kathy Walker, and the notes below are rough and not a transcript. Q: What voting system do you use? A: Punch cards. Will be switching to optical scan system to comply with HAVA Thurston County has not yet selected the vendor for the optical scan purchase, and just put out its R.F.P. documents to solicit bids.
Q: Who prints your punch cards?
A: Sequoia Voting Systems. This is because the punch card ballot order goes to Intab (sp?) out of North Carolina, and this firm uses Sequoia.
Q: Can you tell us about the life of an absentee vote, from start to finish?
A: The punch cards are received from Sequoia. They come in a deck. (She showed us the punch card sample deck and how its parts can be used in auditing procedures.)
The voters complete the punch card and mail it back in. After the post office receives it, two members of the Thurston County elections office go pick up the trays of absentee envelopes from the post office.
(Stephenson): Do you have citizen observers, or a Democrat and a Republican, observing chain of custody when the two people pick up the ballots from the post office?
A: No. But we would love to do that. There hasn't been much interest.
(Stephenson): Do you know if the Post Office has done a criminal background check on the people with access to incoming absentee ballots? And do you do criminal background checks on election division employees, like those who go pick up the incoming absentee ballots?
A: No. But on the application we ask if they have ever been convicted of a crime. They could lie, I suppose.
(Harris) How many ballots fit in a tray, and what is the maximum number of ballots that would arrive in a day -- and by the way, how many absentee ballots does Thurston County typically receive?
A: About 250 ballots per tray, and the most we would ever receive in a day is about 20,000, and Thurston County gets about 85,000 absentee ballots in
(Harris) Is there any sorting that happens at the Post Office?
A: We have four post office boxes. We color code the ballots too. So there is a very rough presort into four groups, usually based on where the ballots come from.
(Harris) Does the Post Office log the incoming ballots in and give you a receipt with the number received, which you match up to the number that arrive at the elections office?
A: No -- well, not sure about that. Maybe. They probably could.
(Harris) Since the ballots are roughly presorted, the simplest attack point would be for someone to disappear some of them before they get to the elections office. A simple and cheap deterrent might be to require an incoming count report from the Post Office and compare it with the number that arrive.
A: Agreed.
(Stephenson) After the ballots come back to the elections division, are they outsourced for sorting?
A: Not in Thurston County. We do send them to another facility, which is part of the Elections Division. It is in Tumwater.
(Stephenson) Can you tell us about the security procedures at that facility?
A: They have extensive security features. A key code to get in, everyone in and out is logged in, no one is ever there alone, at night the ballots are put in bins and locked individually.
(Harris) When you say multiple people are there, how many?
A: It varies.
(Harris) What is the fewest?
A: Oh, two.
(Harris) So an attack point could be when one of the two go to the bathroom, or when one looks away, correct?
A: Oh no, I don't think so.
When the ballots are processed, we use a bar code on the outside of the envelope to call up the computer screen with that voter's signature and we compare every signature.
(Harris) I'm sure you'll tell me this, but what if I attack the system by discarding a whole lot of "unmatched" signatures in key precincts?
A: You can't just discard them. They have to go through several levels of review after the first person fails them, and only the canvassing board can make the final decision.
(Harris) Good answer. OK, continue...
A: After matching the signatures, and getting precise counts, we separate the ballot from the envelope. After this point, all we have is blank envelopes containing anonymous voted ballots, and we do keep all the signature/ID envelopes until after the election, just as a precaution.
(Harris) I know you'll have a good answer for this, also. After the ballots are separated from their identifier envelopes, let's suppose we have a conspiracy of two: someone at the ballot printing facility and someone who has access to this absentee ballot facility from the elections office. What would prevent substitution of a batch of ballots? I ask this because we have now discovered that at one point an embezzler, and currently a convicted cocaine trafficker have been printing Diebold punch cards, so that makes me think maybe a ballot printer might be someone who could be compromised.
A: No, it couldn't happen because our people are never alone with the ballots.
(Harris) But at some point one of them might go to the bathroom, and when you are busy looking at signatures or sorting ballots, you are looking at the ballot, not watching what the other person is doing.
A: But we have other measures we do. For example, we do a very careful analysis of the results of each precinct after the election, and we look for anomalies, and any trends that seem discrepant.
(Harris) Oh, that reminds me, what is your comment on the Thurston County results for Maria Cantwell in the 2000 election, that was an anomaly that literally jumped off the spreadsheet at me, especially since Thurston trends Republican and Democrat Cantwell was running neck and neck with Republican Gorton, even in Democratic areas.
(Both Kim Wyman, the Thurston County Auditor, and her assistant, Barb, answered very quickly and with some agitation). "Oh Thurston County always goes very heavily for women who run Democrat."
(Harris) Really? I thought it was a pretty big skew, though, and Cantwell only won the state, including heavily Democratic areas, by half a percent, less than a thousand votes. Didn't she pick up about 20,000 votes in Thurston County?
A: (they immediately ordered the printouts). Cantwell won Thurston County by 8 percent, about 8,000 votes, that's not unusual at all. Gore won by 11,000 votes.
Thurston always goes for the Democrats who are women.
(Stephenson) Back to absentee votes, what happens when you actually count them?
A: Well we have 2-3 computers and a server, none are hooked up anywhere except to each other, and we can see all the wires. We have a program we use for the punch card counter.
Also, we let someone come in and try to hack into the system, someone who was convinced there might be wireless, they were insisting there could be a problem with wifi, and they couldn't get anywhere. That's because it isn't hooked up to anything.
(Harris) Kim, I think you are my hero. You invited someone to try and hack it?
A: Yes. And they didn't get anywhere.
Now, after the computer totals what's in the card reader, we take a disk out of the computer and run it over to a different system, not hooked up, and use that to display results to the press and so forth.
(Harris) Tell me who programs the system. Punch cards don't have a NASED number, or certification like the optical scans or touch-screens, do they?
A: Well the system was certified a long time ago but no, not like the new systems. We have someone who works for us who programs the computer.
(Harris) What sort of auditing do you do to compare the punch cards with the computer tally? I mean, I ask this because King County had Jeffrey Dean programming for them, and he turned out to be a convicted embezzler who specialized in abusing positions of trust to engage in computer fraud. So I know you trust your guy, but what safeguards are there in terms of auditing?
A: Oh no. We trust him. And there are two-three people who would see the computer program, not just him.
(Harris) But if we don't audit the cards, at least some kind of spot check, we all have to just trust him, right?
A: We have logic and accuracy tests.
(Harris) I think L&A tests are good, but they won't catch fraud.
A: But they are very good if there is a mistake or an error in the program.
(Harris) Yes, I think they are important for that reason. They should be able to catch random error or an accidental programming error pretty often, but someone who want to commit fraud can work around them by manipulating date and time or by putting in a triggered event.
A: But we trust our programmers, and the sheriff is just across the street. I'll see that anyone who tries anything is arrested and prosecuted. Also, we do a lot of analysis for anomalies.
(Harris) What kinds of anomalies do you look for?
A: Oh, for example an area with a lot of overvotes could be an indicator of fraud. Or an area where most of the races trend differently than they should.
(Harris) So, that is actually a good answer also for the idea that someone could just replace a batch of absentee votes after they are separated from the ID envelopes, because they'd have to have a darn good idea of the trends in all the races or it might really stick out.
A: Yes.
(Stephenson) I see the Post Office as being one attack point for incoming absentee ballots. I'd like to see more of a chain of custody there. And the pickup by two employees has some risk areas. I'd like to see some criminal background checks. And even that won't prevent a zealot from doing something.
(Harris) Yes, and then I see one of the biggest attack points remains the idea that a programmer has access to the vote-counting program and we don't have auditing in place to deter that, so we are left just having to trust.
A: I absolutely trust our programmers.
NEXT BLACK BOX INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: What happened when we tried to report the use of uncertified election software to the state attorney general's office. (And the guy running out of the room was almost as good as Floridian Clay Roberts bolting upon being questioned about the felons purge.) |
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