Code Red: CA Special Election Recommendations

[Einsteinia]

CODE RED: Special Election Recommendations
by Einsteinia

Mon Oct 24, 2005 at 07:43:39 AM PST

NEWS: We DO NOT and CANNOT know if our votes are counted as cast.

Seeing Red:

Why is California about to have an election, as the wine maker so famously said it, Before its Time?

Just ONE MONTH before the mandatory voter verified paper trails go into effect?  On January 1, 2006, the required paper trails will make it possible to audit for all to know whether their voting machines are accurate.

But. . . you say. . . at least the voting systems must first meet rigorous certification standards BEFORE use in our elections?

OUR SECURITY PROBLEMS--THE LIST:

The Foxes are Guarding the Hen House: Our voting equipment is certified by faux independent laboratories that receive at least 1/3 of their funding by those they certify.

Further, California's antiquated Election Code 15360 remains the heart of our voting equipment checking protocol.  Adopted into law in 1965 as a means to check the integrity of the earliest mechanical voting devices, it requires a 1% mandatory manual random audit, as follows:

CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS CODE SECTION 15360

15360. During the official canvass of every election in
which a voting system is used, the official conducting
the election shall conduct a public manual tally of the
ballots tabulated by those devices cast in 1 percent of
the precincts chosen at random by the elections official.
If 1 percent of the precincts should be less than one
whole precinct, the tally shall be conducted in one
precinct chosen at random by the elections official.
In addition to the 1 percent count, the elections official
shall, for each race not included in the initial
group of precincts, count one additional precinct. The
manual tally shall apply only to the race not previously
counted. Additional precincts for the manual tally may be selected
at the discretion of the elections official.

Election Code 15360, the heart of election integrity, needs an emergency replacement if we're ever going to have a functioning democracy again.

Here are just some of the security gaps that this Election Code 15360 has created:

"One percent of the precincts " for the mandatory audit to catch fraud is, according to many statisticians, inadequate to reveal fraud. Even worse, Los Angeles will spend over a million dollars to encourage early voting in the upcoming Special Election, and the Registrar's office claims that all early voting is completely exempt from the 1% audit.   (Why is unverifiable voting encouraged?   Why is it exempt from the Election Code safeguards?) >

"Random " is ultimately left to the discretion of each county's election official, which is NOT random (For Example, officials have alerted precincts--BEFORE the audit--that they will be audited.  Also, in San Diego County they just select the nine smallest precincts.)

Then there's Diebold's Vote Remote system that Conny McCormack has admitted she will be using in the next election. This system some how has managed to avoid certification scrutiny by some loophole in the Election Code. Vote Remote is a signature matching scanner system that is used to authenticate signatures on absentee ballots. It can be set at high, medium and low to calibrate how close of a signature match is desired. But it obviously could have an ulterior vote spoilage use as well.

The " Manual Tally " that serves as a check against the machine's tally has been interpreted by election officials, such as Los Angeles' Conny McCormack, to mean a MACHINE manual tally. Los Angeles just re-feeds the election data through the exact same voting system a second time, which is NOT a manual tally. In a 60 Minutes interview last year, McCormack defended her actions. She said a manual tally would likely lead to another result that would "shock" people, and we don't want another Florida debacle.
(See, http://avirubin.com/vote/60minutes.mov )

Much Ado About Nothing? Incredibly, after exploring all these holes we've hit the ultimate in the no there there:

There is NO recourse even if Election Code 15360 exposes an error. None!

OUR SOLUTIONS TO THESE PROBLEMS--THE RECOMMENDATIONS:

We've come a long way from a one-step Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) election strategy. Expert opinions now are advising us that we must have three steps to achieve campaign success:

Phase I: The Time-Honored GOTV Process

There are no short-cuts to reminding people that we're doomed to failure if we don't show up in the poll booths. But to win, no matter how successful this phase may be, it can no longer be relied upon as our sole strategy. In light of the security gaps exposed in Election Code 15360 we must now add two more steps, as follows:

Phase II: Election Day Protocols

We need for poll watchers who will sign up with the county clerk's election office, in advance, to observe the election practices at the precincts. Also, need our activists to sign up as poll workers , and really--ideally--in the best of all worlds--activists should conduct well-orchrestrated surprise parallel elections in at least 20% of all precincts. Parallel elections are similar to exit polls. If they are conducted with enough care, they can serve as credible evidence of voter's intent for post-election lawsuits.

Phase III:  Independent Audits

Get-Out-the Vote must now also include counting the votes as cast. Why?

Because after researching the California Election Code, interviewing political insiders, as well as election officials, nothing other than blind trust in our institutions exists to assure the California voter that their vote was counted as cast. The California Election Protection Network, over 25 organizations across California coming together to achieve their mutual election integrity goals, will soon propose legislative remedies in the coming months, but in the meantime, here are our suggestions:

1) Inform paperless voting counties' voters that they must vote on paper - if they want their votes counted. Every voter is entitled to a paper ballot upon request. 17 counties in California will be voting on paperless, inauditable, voting systems.

2) Every county's activists or concerned citizens must be prepared to request audits post-election pursuant to California Election Code 15621: Following completion of the official canvass, any voter may, within FIVE DAYS beginning on the 29th day after a statewide election ,file with the SECRETARY OF STATE aWRITTEN REQUEST for a recount of the votes cast for candidates for any statewide office or for or against any measure voted on statewide. . . .

3) We need to advise our "deep pockets" with vested interests in the outcome of these elections (e.g. unions )to pay for these audits in lieu of few extra television spots. I understand that the Alliance for a Better California has agreed to pay for some of these.

4) We need to inform all proposition campaigns: NO PREMATURE CONCESSIONS .  Post-election night, the Get-Out-The-Vote  (GOTV) teams must stay in place to provide political cover for election audits and to continue working for the duration, as Kerry said it, ". . . until all the votes are counted." (Only this time, we'll actually do it!)

5) We need to get those vested in the outcome of the election to provide attorneys prepared to sue for violations of the Election Code, e.g. machine "manual recounts, exempting early voting from Election Code 15360, disallowing poll watchers.

Democracy is rare and precious. Vote for it!

[JDPriestly]

1. Vote absentee -- permanent absentee

and make a copy of your ballot before you put it in the mail. If all Democrats did that, we could thwart their system. It's much better than fighting over Diebold. Just vote absentee and copy your ballot. You can still apply for an absentee ballot. Your request must be in by November 1 for the November 8 election. You can apply online.

[Einsteinia]

3. Not necessarily--it depends

If you are in a paperless county that uses Vote Remote, such as Los Angeles, you might be better off asking for a provisional. Does anyone know if they're using Vote Remote on provisional ballots, too?

[Bill Bored]

2. As always, good suggestions Ensteinia.

Ms. McCormack (West Coast Diebold shill) has stated that she does random 1% checks by pulling machines out of the election and having some poor sods stand there all day casting votes on them. IS THIS TRUE? If not, indict her for purgery! She said this in front of a US Senate Committee in her testimony last June.

And if she actually does this, does she use the actual vote counting program and ballots or some so-called logic and accuracy test provided by Diebold? Might be purgery if it's not tested with real votes.

And if they use real votes for testing, what safeguards are there to keep them from actually being counted?

What's on the ballot that's so SPECIAL this time anyway? If the bad guys win will there be any chance of reversing it with a fair election next year, or are they going to redistrict some more hapless Democrats out of existence? Just curious.

[Einsteinia]

4. What you're describing is something different

When Shelley was at the helm and discovered that there was no one minding the store in assuring the integrity of our paperless voting systems, he wrote up the accessible audit voter verified paper audit trail law. He wanted to put it into place right away, but he got talked out of it because the county clerks were crying they couldn't work that fast.

So, he made up what we call his 25 Directives, which applied to FEDERAL elections. (He did this because he wasn't anticpating not being at the helm and there were no non-federal elections anticipated.) Those 25 directives had a lot of cool ideas, such as requiring paperless voting systems to log their software with the county clerk, ban on wireless, and it included PARALLEL MONITORING. Parallel monitoring is what you described (and shouldn't be confused with the exit poll protocols called "Parallel Elections"). Conny only complied with the parallel MONITORING by taking a paperless machine off-line all day to check it because she had to. It's NOT required for the Special Election, because this election is not federal.

BTW, Shelley's directives were never codified into our Election Code and so they've been vulnerable to being overwritten. We managed to get the right to read our paper trails and ban on the wireless, but the others were recently overridden by McPherson's new directives. They're similar to Shelley's but McPherson put a HUGE LOOPHOLE in his that says county clerks can disregard his if it conflicts with their ability to achieve accuracy or EXPEDIENCY.

So, back to the topic, see the 60 Minutes link above and scroll to the very end. There you'll see Conny McCormack explain how she complies with Election Code 15360's 1% mandatory MANUAL recount by just feeding the data through the same machine twice! And this charade would serve to prove what?

[Bill Bored]

5. Right, Parallel Monitoring

First, thanks for posting the link to the 60 Mins. story on Dr. Rubin's site. I was looking for a clean copy of that. Do you know the story of the follow up story that was supposed to take place but didn't? Got any links about that?

So do they really cast actual votes during the monitoring, or do they just run L&A tests all day?

If you have some time and you haven't heard this yet, check out the audio of the Senate Rules Committee hearing from June 21 in which Crony McCormack talks about parallel monitoring. If she lied about using it, she could be in some hot water! Might be worth a listen. She kind of makes me want to puke but Chris Dodd is obviously quite smitten with her and was annoyed by David Dill when he said he knew how to beat the parallel monitoring. Dodd is quite nauseating in this session too.
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5793

[sunshinekathy]

6. Good except for need to call for data & parallel elections are BAD

Good except that because most places in CA are not going to be routinely "independently" audited from the sounds of it, and because a 1% audit, esp if precincts are pre-announced, will not catch all outcome-changing errors, detailed election data must be called for, so we can detect where vote miscounts are BEFORE candidates concede.

Please read this short description:
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/election_officials/ElectionArchive_advice.pdf

Please read this "how-to" collect data:
http://uscountvotes.org/ucvData/US/How2CollectData.pdf

This can be implemented in time for November 2006 IF it is funded, perhaps a rudimentary tool can be implemented with only enough funds for one full-time programmer - say 250 people each pledge $10/month to create a public data collection and public release system. Although we have a legal right to the detailed data not one county in America that I know of posts it publicly yet - so we have to collect it ourselves -- and get county officials used to releasing it.

Second - although I LOVE a lot of these points which are overall excellent - parallel elections are a very bad idea because they are not scientifically valid and will just make us look like fools and not give valid information. To be as valid as exit polls, they need to be exit polls. That is another huge project that will need funding. It is too bad all the funds people give to organizations like Common Cause doesn't instead go to the national election data archive which could examine EVERY PRECINCT IN AMERICA for vote count errors or to creating a public exit polling project which would examine a sampling of precincts - although not as thorough as a national election data archive which would be happy to also accept the public exit poll data and make it publicly available if it were funded.

Thanks for the Other points in this posting - which are great.

Best,

Kathy