[EM] First U.S. Scientific Election Audit Reveals Voting System Flaws but Questions Remain Unanswered

Tue May 8 11:20:38 PDT 2007

First U.S. Scientific Election Audit Reveals Voting System Flaws but
Questions Remain Unanswered

Critique of the "Collaborative Public Audit" of Cuyahoga County Ohio's
November 2006 Election

May 7, 2007

by Kathy Dopp, kathy.dopp at gmail.com

Cuyahoga County, Ohio conducted the first U.S. independent sufficient
manual audit of election results. The 67 page audit report is a
milestone in the effort to reclaim U.S. election integrity.

The auditors used the method developed by National Election Data
Archive's Kathy Dopp (myself) and Frank Stenger to calculate the
minimum number of precincts that must be manually counted in order to
assure with 99% certainty that the election outcomes are accurate.
(appendix 2).

The audit was requested by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, and
conducted by Cleveland State University's "Center for Election
Integrity", the League of Women Voters (Cuyahoga County), the
Republican and Democratic Parties of Cuyahoga County, Citizen's
Alliance for Secure Elections - Ohio, The Greater Cleveland Voter
Coalition, and The Northern Ohio Data and Information Service.

The Audit provided ground-breaking, praiseworthy work.    However,
surprisingly, the audit report did not address the most fundamental
question that election audits should answer, "Were the audited
election outcomes correct?"

The audit report does not provide the necessary data or analysis to
independently verify the accuracy of the election outcomes. However,
let's first discuss some of the praiseworthy work.

The Cuyahoga County Audit reveals, for the first time, some new
obstacles to precise and accurate vote counting presented by the
design of Diebold's voting system:

1. Diebold's General Election Management System (GEMS) software does
not print a report of the vote counts for each digital recording
electronic (DRE) voting machine.  The auditors  had to manually count
all the voter verifiable paper ballot thermal paper rolls for entire
polling locations.  "This means that the accuracy of particular DRE
machines cannot be determined via an audit." (p. 35)

2. Diebold GEMS server uses a "JET" database that Microsoft's own
documentation states is susceptible to unavoidable corruption when "a
lot of concurrent activity is happening with the database".  (p. 66)

3. Diebold GEMS server uses two separate database tables to count
votes. These tables should contain identical vote counts and yet, in
Cuyahoga County, OH the vote counts were off by "over 100 votes for
each of the three races checked". The report concludes (p. 34) that,
even after working with Diebold, "we have no clarity on which table
contains the final accurate results."

In close elections this flaw means that it may not be possible to know
which candidate won.

4.  Some Diebold DRE voting machines have duplicate serial numbers,
making it difficult to determine the accuracy of particular DRE
machines or to track hardware and software inventory, updates and
warrantees.

5.  Diebold optical scanners "do not count ballots but only ballot
pages".  Ballots within a county often have varying number of pages
this makes it very difficult to determine if all the optical scan
ballots are counted once.  The Cuyahoga audit found that some batches
of absentee ballots were counted twice and some batches of ballots had
not been counted once.  (In contrast, the former punch-card system was
able to determine with complete accuracy whether or not all the
ballots had been counted.) p. 35

6.  37 out of 132 precincts (almost one out of every four audited
precincts) have discrepancies between GEMS server electronic memory
card counts and the paper tape counts that are printed at poll
closing.

The Cuyahoga County Collaborative audit is a milestone for American
democracy because it shows how effective independent audits are at
bringing critical problems and solutions to light to improve elections
procedures.

WHAT CRUCIAL QUESTIONS REMAIN UNANSWERED BY THE CUYAHOGA COUNTY
COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC AUDIT?

The most crucial question which any election audit must answer is:

"Were the election outcomes transparently verifiable by the public or
are the election outcomes still in question?"

The Cuyahoga County, OH Collaborative Audit report failed to provide
the basic data necessary for the public to independently verify the
accuracy of the election outcomes and the sufficiency of the amount of
audited precincts. Nor did the audit report provide its own analysis
of whether the election outcomes were judged to be accurate.

For the Cuyahoga auditors to meet the public desire for "independent
verification that the election results generated by the e-voting
technology are accurate", their next audit report could:

*	make the program public which they use to calculate audit amounts; and

*	provide all the data necessary to judge whether the election
outcomes are accurate or not (including the total number of ballots or
votes counted in each audited precinct, the overall margins between
the leading candidates which were used to determine audit amounts, the
winning candidates, and the maximum amount of discrepancy found in
each precinct, including any discrepancies caused by missing voter
verifiable paper ballot records and the direction of the discrepancy),
and

*	make election records and data public that are necessary for the
public to verify the audit.

The Cuyahoga Auditors misunderstood how to interpret discrepancy
information that their audit results provide.  On p. 15, the Cuyahoga
Collaborative Public Audit incorrectly states:  "auditing a random
selection of precincts can predict what the error rates would be if
all the precincts were audited.. and achieve a 99% confidence level in
the predictive capacity of the sample..."

This is incorrect. Their election audit sample size is designed to
detect "at least one" sufficiently corrupt precinct whenever the total
number of corrupt precincts is sufficient to alter the election.

If just one precinct is sufficiently corrupt, then the entire election
outcome is in question; and an expanded manual audit or a full hand
recount must be triggered.

Audits in the future must transparently verify whether or not election
outcomes are correct.

The full "Collaborative Public Audit" report released April 19, 2007
is available here:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/cuyahoga_audit_report.pdf

Cuyahoga County, Ohio is to be applauded for conducting the first
independent scientifically sufficient election audit of electronic
vote counts in America.

Election integrity requires more efficient, comprehensive scientific
audit procedures which fully answer the question of whether or not
election outcomes are accurate prior to official certification of
election results.

The National Election Data Archive needs your financial or volunteer
support now to develop innovative new methods and materials for
diagnosing the accuracy of election results in more timely fashion.
As you can see, there is much work to be done yet to explain to
auditors and election officials how to make election results publicly
verifiable; and we very much need your financial support so that this
work can be completed.  The National Election Data Archive is
attempting to raise funds to write a manual for how to conduct
completely publicly verifiable audits of election outcomes; and is
looking for diligent election officials who would like to be part of a
pilot project for conducting sufficient verifiable election audits.
Please help us.

--------------

The material expressed herein is the informed and educated product of
the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp
is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and
procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and in some aspects of
election data analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://kathydopp.com
http://electionmathematics.org

Your help is needed.  Please donate whatever amount you can afford to:
http://electionarchive.org

Election Audit Mathematics Bibliography
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/KathyDoppAuditMathBibliography.pdf

The first five items of this "Concept Proposal for Federal Election
Reform" could be implemented in time for the 2008 election if sponsors
were found for it soon in the US Congress. Please call your
Congressional representatives and ask them if they would sponsor this:
 http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FedLegProposal-v2.pdf

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body
and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote
Thomas Jefferson in 1816