[EM] election-methods Digest, Vol 35, Issue 4

Sat May 19 06:18:55 PDT 2007

Please send me the information at the email: diego.cornio at gmail.com

Diego Tello


> Send election-methods mailing list submissions to
> 	election-methods at electorama.com
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com
>
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	election-methods-request at electorama.com
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	election-methods-owner at electorama.com
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of election-methods digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Does this method already have a name? (Forest W Simmons)
>    2. First U.S. Scientific Election Audit Reveals Voting System
>       Flaws but Questions Remain Unanswered (Kathy Dopp)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 15:57:24 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Forest W Simmons <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
> Subject: [EM] Does this method already have a name?
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Message-ID: <953869.1178578644182.JavaMail.fsimmons at pcc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Ballots are ordinal with approval cutoffs.
>
> The candidate with "Maximum Minimal Reactionary Approval" wins.
>
> A candidate's "reactionary approval" relative to another candidate is
> the approval she would get if the approval cutoff were moved adjacent
> to (but not past) the other candidate's position in the ballot order on
> every ballot.
>
> So each candidate's score is her minimum reactionary approval relative
> to the other candidates.  The candidate with the highest score wins.
>
> It turns out that when rankings are complete this method is equivalent
> to the common versions of MinMax.
>
> It doesn't get tripped up on Kevin's standard example against pure MMPO:
>
> 49 A
> 1 A=B
> 1 B=C
> 49 C
>
> Does it satisfy the FBC?
>
> Forest
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 12:20:38 -0600
> From: "Kathy Dopp" <kathy.dopp at gmail.com>
> Subject: [EM] First U.S. Scientific Election Audit Reveals Voting
> 	System	Flaws but Questions Remain Unanswered
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Message-ID:
> 	<391f105b0705081120s360eae5ave5d2e00a21521ec at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> 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
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> election-methods mailing list
> election-methods at electorama.com
> http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com
>
>
> End of election-methods Digest, Vol 35, Issue 4
> ***********************************************
>
> --
> Este mensaje ha sido analizado por MailScanner
> en busca de virus y otros contenidos peligrosos,
> y se considera que est? limpio.
> MailScanner agradece a transtec Computers por su apoyo.
>


-- 
Este mensaje ha sido analizado por MailScanner
en busca de virus y otros contenidos peligrosos,
y se considera que está limpio.
MailScanner agradece a transtec Computers por su apoyo.