[EM] Important Facts About "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act"

[Kathy Dopp]

Important Facts About "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act"

Everyone,

"The horse is already out of the barn". Paperless computerized voting
has been here since the 1980s. There is an urgent need in states like
GA, ID, MD, PA, SC, TN, and VA for NJ U.S. Representative Rush Holt's
"Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility" bill (HR811) to become
law NOW.

HR 811, as currently written, would eliminate current digital
recording electronic (DRE) voting machines in the paperless states by
the 2008 presidential election.

HR811 is a bill that protects the very essence of our democracy: the
ability to verify that our votes are counted accurately. Please
contact your Senators and Representative at http://www.house.gov and
http://senate.gov to ask them to pass HR811 in the House and its
Senate version, S559, by Florida Senator Bill Nelson.

Our democratic rights have already been reduced: Here in Utah, ten
entire families recently disappeared after the landlord of a 60 unit
Salt Lake City apartment complex arranged for the police, animal
control and health department officials to do illegal searches of all
the units. The landlord, with the officials in tow, knocked on doors
and gave notices telling tenants that they must allow the officials
into their apartments.  To find out what happened to the ten families
and why they vanished, a law suit would have to be brought by the
remaining families who are understandably afraid.

We MUST PASS HR811. While not perfect, it brings checks and balances
across the board, paper, hand recounts and audits, where they
previously did not exist.  This will be the first taste of
accountability to our government for most states. Before election
results are certified, more paper ballots will be counted than at any
time since the widespread implementation of electronic and mechanical
vote casting and counting devices.

It is now time to take action and support this bill. Further
vociferous public debate at this late hour will only derail this bill

Here are eleven inaccurate statements about HR811 that have been
widely circulated that we would like to address:

1.
CLAIM: HR811 requires text conversion technology

FACT: HR811 does not require text conversion technology.  (The
original HR811 required "independently verify the content of the
permanent paper ballot through the conversion of the printed content
into accessible media".  The amended version requires "independently
verify through the conversion of the human-readable printed or marked
vote selections into accessible form". Notice the "or" which means
existing ballot marking devices now meet this requirement.

2.
CLAIM: HR811 is not fully funded

FACT: HR811 is fully funded to replace all existing DRE machines with
sufficient funds for an optical scan PCOS and a ballot marking device
for every precinct (and we only need one for every poll loc). $990
Million is needed. HR811 funds $1 Billion.

3.
CLAIM: HR811 permits DRES with VVPTs to be used

FACT: HR811 requires the replacement of all paperless DREs by 2008 and
the replacement of all DRES w/ voter verifiable paper rolls which do
not use a durable paper ballot and which store ballots sequentially in
a way that violates voter anonymity by 2010.  The development,
certification, and testing cycle for new voting equipment is 4.5 years
(See http://josephhall.org/tmp/ITAA-ETC-hava_amendments.pdf), so by
2010 it is unlikely that new DRE machines that print durable, separate
paper ballots will be available.

4.
CLAIM: HR811's audits have little chance of detecting outcome-altering
vote miscounts

FACT: Here are the numbers I ran (average success probabilities for
audits for each range of margins between candidates of detecting
outcome-altering vote miscount)

These probabilities of audit success are taken from actual election
data for all US House races in 2004.  The first number in each row is
the average success probability for detecting one or more corrupt vote
counts in the case that sufficient precinct counts are corrupt to
alter the outcome for races with the given range of margins (how close
the races are between the two leading candidates).

SUCCESS FOR MARGINS in 2004 US HOUSE RACES

57.54% average confidence for margins of less than 1%

96.90% average confidence for margins of 1% to less than 2%

99.15% average confidence for margins of 2% to less than 3%

99.37% average confidence for margins of 3% +

 While close races do not have near the audit success rate that I
would like. The success rate is a much better than ZERO, which is what
 the small group of election activists are proposing - i.e. no manual
audits of machine counts. HR811's audit would be the first independent
manual we have ever had.

2.3% of races in 2004 had less than 3% margins.

It is true that there are better audit protocols than HR811 requires,
and that the minimum confidence level for close races in districts
with fewer number of total precincts is only 10%.  However, HR811
allows NIST to set alternative audit protocols and I fully expect that
NIST will set a 99% confidence standard for election audits that is
less administratively burdensome and gives higher confidence levels.

5.
CLAIM: HR811's audits are done AFTER elections are over.

FACT:  HR811 requires the audits of unofficial election results to
begin within 24 hours of Election Day and to be completed and the
results publicly posted before the results are made official.

6.
CLAIM: Congress could have required full public voting system software
disclosure for 2008, but HR811 is not requiring full public software
disclosure, so we should oppose it.

FACT: Full software disclosure of today's voting systems is not a
possibility without years to plan and implement new software
verification systems and without changing International laws since
much voting system software is created in other countries. Disclosing
the about 1% of software that is voting specific (owned by the voting
vendor and could be disclosed) would do virtually nothing since the
undisclosed software could rig an election and there is no effective
way today to verify that the disclosed software is actually used
during elections anyway, and even if there were existing ways to
verify the software, today's voting systems are designed to enable
undetectable vote manipulation without altering the software; and it
would take about 5 years to develop and implement publicly disclosed
systems. We don't need to kill a good chance to achieve accurate 2008
election outcomes to fight for software disclosure now that cannot
possibly occur for 5 years.  We can worry about software disclosure
later.

7.
CLAIM: Kathy Dopp is supporting HR 811 as a result of a "deal" with
Holt's office which is "colluding" with Microsoft.  This was posted on
Thursday May 17, 2007 on Blackboxvoting.org.

FACT: This is incorrect. Kathy Dopp has tried without success to
engage in discussion of the bill with Holts' office.  Dopp of course
would like to have discussion about the bill.

8.
CLAIM: if we just have access to see the computer log files and the
source code for the voting specific programs that after the election
they can tell what happened exactly on that voting machine.

FACT:  The log files are all alterable, and there is no reliable way
to be certain what software ran on Election Day on today's machines so
that no post-election examination of the code of voting machines could
reveal what happened, especially not if there were deliberate
tampering. It would take roughly 4.5 years to develop and implement
more secure voting systems to enable more reliable post-election
machine forensics investigation.

9.
CLAIM: DREs with voter verifiable paper ballot records can not be audited.

FACT: Audits of DRE voter verifiable paper ballot records give less
statistical confidence than audits of voter marked optical scan
ballots because some voters do not check their DRE paper ballot
records and others may not notice errors on it.  However, HR811
requires voters to be instructed to check that their paper ballot
records are accurate and informed that the paper ballot record will be
the official record of their votes.  Here is a mathematical proof of
the effectiveness of auditing DRE ballot records, even if only a
portion of voters verify them.
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~justin/voting/paper_effectiveness.html  There
are efficient, accurate methods, using teams of four auditors, to
manually count votes on DRE paper roll records.

10.
CLAIM:  Independent manual audits won't work

FACT: Independent nationwide audits have never been tried before so
where is the evidence that they won't work?  (New Mexico is the only
state which recently began conducting independent audits and NM does
not audit sufficient numbers of precincts.)

11.
CLAIM: The only proper way to count ballots is by hand in the polls
before the ballots leave the polls.

FACT: I do not want my ballots counted by hand by an army of tired
people staying up all night after polls close who could conceivably
tamper with the ballots. (It has been known to happen many times.)
While it may be possible to find sufficient persons to hand-count all
ballots at the polls in some states, many jurisdictions have poll
worker shortages already.  Even in the 1980's only 10.5% of US ballots
were counted by hand. See
http://www.votingmachinesprocon.org/votingsystems.htm

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

It is crucial to contact Congress in support of passing HR811 now.
The current version of HR811 is available here:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.811:

Lives are at stake in the battle to control US elections. People will
suffer, including all Americans, unless we regain citizen oversight
and control over US elections. Passing HR811 will help make US
elections verifiably fair and accurate. To gain control over our
election system and use that control to get future improvements and
more control.

HR811 is a bill that protects the very essence of our democracy: the
ability to verify that our votes are counted accurately. Please
contact your Senators and Representative at http://www.house.gov and
http://senate.gov to ask them to pass HR811 in the House and its
Florida Senator Bill Nelson's Senate version, S559.

Adjustments in language may still be made in the Senate version, S559,
and when the final bill is in conference committee.

Thank you for your help in this important matter.

--
Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org
http://electionmathematics.org
P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

The resources below were contributed by Lisa Pease of California.
Please see Lisa's ACTION ALERT on HR811 for more information:

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2007/05/your-vote-at-risk-why-you-must-care.html

Additional Resources:

•	The full CURRENT text of HR 811:

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h811rh.txt.pdf

•	Summary information about HR 811:

http://holt.house.gov/HR_811.shtml

•	The status of the bill and cosponsors can be found here (make sure
the last character in this link is a colon or it will not work – some
readers will strip that out and you'll have to type the colon into the
browser manually):

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.811:

•	This document, while out of date in terms of the current
legislation, summarizes the dangers posed by unverified electronic
voting: Electronic Voting: America's Vote At Risk

http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/voterisk.pdf

Quotes from HR 811

Regarding voting on paper, even when using DREs (touch screen machines):

 "The voting system shall require the use of or produce an individual,
durable, voter-verified paper ballot of the voter's vote that shall be
created by or made available for inspection and verification by the
voter before the voter's vote is cast and counted.

 "For purposes of this subclause, examples of such a ballot include a
paper ballot marked by the voter for the purpose of being counted by
hand or read by an optical scanner or other similar device, a paper
ballot prepared by the voter to be mailed to an election official
(whether from a domestic or overseas location), a paper ballot created
through the use of a ballot marking device or system, or a paper
ballot produced by a touch screen or other electronic voting machine,
so long as in each case the voter is permitted to verify the ballot in
a paper form in accordance with this subparagraph."

Regarding the primacy of the paper record over the electronic one:

"In the event of any inconsistencies or irregularities between any
electronic vote tallies and the vote tallies determined by counting by
hand the individual, durable, voter-verified paper ballots produced
pursuant to [the section quoted above], the individual, durable,
voter-verified paper ballots shall be the true and correct record of
the votes cast."

Regarding mandatory, hand counted audits in 3-10% of the voting
districts, chosen on a surprise basis:

 "...each State shall administer, without advance notice to the
precincts selected, audits of the results of elections for Federal
office held in the State (and, at the option of the State or
jurisdiction involved, of elections for State and local office held at
the same time as such election) consisting of random hand counts of
the voter-verified paper ballots...."

 "In the event that the unofficial count as described in section
323(a)(1) reveals that the margin of victory between the two
candidates receiving the largest number of votes in the election is
less than 1 percent of the total votes cast in that election, the hand
counts of the voter-verified paper ballots shall occur in at least 10
percent of all precincts or equivalent locations (or alternative audit
units used in accordance with the method provided for under sub
section (b)) in the Congressional district involved (in the case of an
election for the House of Representatives) or the State (in the case
of any other election for Federal office)."

 The language repeats twice more with different numbers. If the
difference between candidates or ballot issues is between 1-2%, then
5% of the precincts will be audited.

 If the difference between the two candidates or ballot issues is more
than 2%, then the audit will be conducted in 3% of the precincts.