Five NY counties to ditch lever voting machines

While many counties are preparing resolutions requesting the State do everything in its power to keep our lever machines, five counties announced they are moving ahead with machines that aren't certified, let alone secure.

Franklin County to ditch lever voting machines - Adirondack Daily Enterprise: "TUPPER LAKE - Franklin County, along with four other counties, will switch to using electronic voting machines exclusively by this year's elections.
'We believe it is time to go ahead and go forward with one voting machine instead of three different ones,' said county Board of Elections Republican Commissioner Veronica King.

The announcement from Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis, Oswego and St. Lawrence counties followed on the heels of Essex County's passage last week of a resolution requesting the state make it legal for counties to keep lever voting machines in addition to the one electronic voting machine that is already available at each polling place in the state."

Teresa Hommel who writes Where's the Paper and chairs the Task Force on Election Integrity at Community Church of NY offered the NY State Board of Elections some sage comments you might want to echo. I know I will.

"I oppose the experimental use of uncertified scanners in real elections without a 100% hand-count on election night of all votes processed by those scanners. The hand-count must be the official tally of those votes for all purposes. Any "pilot program" to introduce uncertified scanners to staff and voters must not be the basis for counting or reporting election results.

In addition, I urge you to use this pilot experiment to implement the recommendation of the New York City Council as expressed in Resolution 228A of 2006 passed unanimously in August, 2006, and quoted below. Otherwise the pilot will be little more than a test of whether voters can insert a piece of paper into a slot on an optical scanner, and the scanner can print a reasonable-looking tally report at the end of the day. "

Conduct a Mock Election Public Test with the objective that such
Mock Election Public Test would demonstrate that:

a. Vendor documentation, training materials, and the ability to train election staff are effective, such that the vendor can train Board staff so that Board staff can: (i) independently perform all tasks to prepare the test machines for the test, including ballot programming, (ii) train election inspectors for the test, and (iii) perform all
post-election tasks to canvass the votes;

b. Votes displayed on screens and voter verified printouts, tallies, and activity and event logs for all systems under consideration are accurate;

c. Tabulating equipment associated with each system under consideration is accurate;

Send your letters to New York State Board of Elections: James A. Walsh, Co-Chair; Douglas A. Kellner, Co-Chair; Evelyn J. Aquila, Commissioner; Gregory P. Peterson, Commissioner; Todd D. Valentine, Co-Executive Director; Stanley L. Zalen, Co-Executive Director

How to test electronic voting systems - the next iteration

I'm catching up on voting system news after being out of commission for a few weeks, so you will probably see a flurry of activity here over the next few days. (Some of my posts may seem backwards since I'm working from the most recent back in my Google alerts.)

Let's start here. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has just issued draft standards for testing voting systems. The public comment period ends July 1, 2009.

NIST Tech Beat - Apri1 1, 2009: "NIST Issues Open and Transparent Methods for Testing Electronic Voting Systems

GAITHERSBURG, MD – The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today opened for public comment detailed new methods for testing future electronic voting systems' compliance with voluntary federal standards. Touch screens, optical scanners and other kinds of electronic voting systems now appear at polls across the nation.

The new draft tests can be viewed at http://vote.nist.gov/voting-system-test-suites.htm."

I haven't looked at the draft yet, and I'm not a geek, so I may not be able to understand them when I do look, but here are the questions that immediately occur to me:

• What can I count on if a machine passes these tests? Does it mean that the machine is tamper-proof?
• Is every machine placed in a polling place certified, or just the company's prototype?
  
• If a machine is serviced for a problem or software update, is it re-certified? If not, how do I know it hasn't been messed with?

I'll be watching and listening to what the geeks have to say, and I'll try to wade through the material myself. If you take a look, please share your thoughts here in the comments.

How SysTest Lost Its Certification to Test Optical Scanners

If you've been wondering what SysTest could do to lose its federal certification, this report on the suit Premier Election Solutions (formerly known as Diebold) filed against SysTest last month provides a glimpse.

Federal certification of election systems by independent voting system test labs is supposed to assure voters that these systems can't be hacked. The test labs are certified by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) with the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST).

Last October, they revoked SysTest's certification. The testing program is now suspended in New York and many other states.

According to the report from the Courthouse News Service, the EAC began questioning SysTest's procedures and requesting additional information that was not forthcoming as early as last July (08). The National Institute of Standards and Testing finally suspended SysTest last October, after an on-site review. You can read the full article by following the link, but here's an excerpt.

Courthouse News Service: "The [Premier] complaint then cites five paragraphs, attributed to the NIST report, on 'serous concerns about SysTest's performance of voting system testing.'
Excerpts include: 'the test methods being used were not fully developed, validated, mapped to the requirement of the applicable standards, and controlled under SysTest's document control policy ... it was unclear who at SysTest had the ultimate responsibility for test method development ... During the observed tests, it appeared that the testers were running the tests for the first time. ... Basic tests, such as the system ready test, were not conducted successfully. ... Some anomalies or potential problems during testing were not reported by the testers but were pointed out by members of the on-site team.' These citations are from the first two of five paragraphs."

It sure doesn't make this voter feel warm and fuzzy about the optical scanners that SysTest was certifying to replace our lever machines in New York. How about you?

What 's the Value of "Certification" for Voting Machines?

Image by DoubleSpeak with Matthew and Peter Slutsky via Flickr

Last week, a Pennsylvania court ruled in favor of a county that got burned purchasing electronic voting machines from a "certified" company that has since disappeared.

Coalition for Voting Integrity News & Opinion: Northampton wins $1.7 million voting machine judgment: "Northampton wins $1.7 million voting machine judgment
County doubts it'll collect from Advanced Voting Solutions
By Tom Coombe, Morning Call, January 31, 2009

Northampton County won a nearly $2 million judgment Friday against a company that sold it faulty voting machines in 2006. Just don't look for the county to collect the money any time soon. Following a brief hearing in county court, Judge Stephen Baratta said Advanced Voting Solutions of Frisco, Texas, must pay $1.9 million, plus court costs and interest, to the county. Now the county needs to figure out how to get money from a company that seems to have vanished."

Certified voting mess - an editorial on NY's voting issues

The decertification of SysTest is getting a lot of press these days. This excerpt from an editorial in The Daily News -- the one serving Genesee, Wyoming, and Orleans Counties -- has some interesting budget numbers.

The Daily News Online > Archives > Opinion > Editorials > Editorial: Certified voting mess: "The county has been told it should be prepared to use both its old equipment (and hope none of it breaks down) and new machines (and hope SysTest regains its accreditation in time to certify them). The county must pay Sequoia more than $80,000 for computer software, licenses, fees and training of election workers. Add to that the $3,500 the company charged for having a technician on hand for 2008's elections, and the dedicated phone line required to troubleshoot any problems that came up on election days. Mr. Siebert says all the technician did was have a cup of coffee with staff, didn't show up for November's election and the hot line was never used."

Isn't this a budget cut we can all get behind?

Madison County voters to use lever machines 1 more time (or maybe2)

Here's a bit more information on the impact of Systest's decertification. Although the article from the Oneida Daily Dispatch quotes the election officials as saying they'll move forward with their purchasing. If I lived in Madison County I'd get busy organizing to get county officials to back off. It's just not the time to spend taxpayor money on technology that doesn't meet our needs.

Madison County voters to use lever machines 1 more time (or maybe2) - The Oneida Daily Dispatch News: Serving Oneida, NY and Madison County (OneidaDispatch.com: "Systest, the Denver-based company responsible for testing, quality assurance and compliance lost the required certification last fall, prior to the November elections and has yet to pass muster by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

After losing the required certification, the election commission suspended Systests accreditation.

Until the company gets the requirement back, the 40 new $5,000 machines will be kept, technician at the ready, in a secure climate controlled storage room, tested monthly and plugged in intermittently to keep it activated.

And the old reliable lever machines will be taken back out of closets all over the county. Dusted off and set-up at polling sites for most of this year. Definitely in March for village elections and maybe in November for the towns and city."

Do you live in Madison County? What are you doing to stop this? Isn't this a budget cut we could all get behind?