Washblog

Screen shot of electronically modifying a ballot.

For one thing that might be some sort of scanner. Or is that some gizmo in a virtual world which represents a piece of software which tabulates the images? Because as far as I know the tabulator is a piece of image processing software. So I'm guessing that's a scanner.

Now of course the other reports don't jive with each other either. So we don't know which ones are right or wrong about what.

Suffice it to say most of the alternatives suck.

I appear to be a passenger in a vehicle. It's dark outside. The vehicle is too big for the road, some sort of Humungo B. It has power brakes, rear window defroster, it's own refrigerator and voting station in the back seat. It also has GPS.

Anyway, the driver of the vehicle has been following the GPS intently for the last while, but I've noticed in my other idle visual ramblings these signs saying BRIDGE OUT - 30 MILES and then BRIDGE OUT - 15 MILES - DETOUR and then BRIDGE OUT and I thought maybe one which said BRIDGE OUT - NO EXIT and now BRIDGE OUT - DEAD END.

So I'm starting to ask the driver "uhh where are we going?". The bridge seems to be out. The driver says "yeah, I saw the signs too, but the GPS says we can get across right here". Hrmmm, I'm thinking, that would probably be right where the bridge is supposed to be. "Isn't that where the bridge is supposed to be?" I ask.

"But the GPS says we can get across."

"So: what you're saying is that you're going to drive this pig right over the bank and into the river?"

"Sure, why not? It's insured!"

Stay tuned for our next installment...

I spoke with John Gideon of Voters Unite about the certification of the new Diebold ballot counting system. He's great at tracking these issues.

Honestly, I'm not clear what's happening. I spoke with people responsible for certification last week. I couldn't make heads or tails of what's going on. Worse, I don't think anyone really has a grip.

The National Assoc of State Election Directors (NASED) used to certify voting systems. As I understand it, NASED is a professional society, not a government agency.

Now the Election Assistance Commission is doing the certification. There's some stuff in the pipeline. But the impression I have is that they're not up and running.

What's important about certification?

These are the people who have to approve the Diebold ballot counting system before our state can approve it.

Current state law says that new systems can only be certified between December 1st and May 31st. (I need a cite and to verify this.) So, pretending that our Sec of State follows the rules, the earliest we can certify the new Diebold system is Dec 1st 2007 for use in 2008. That's an incredibly optimistic timeline. (As we've seen over and over, the Sec of State is prone to issuing "emergency rule changes" to make things happen. Otherwise known as Calvin Ball.)

John explained that entire systems must be certified, not just bits and pieces. So if we get these new Diebold highspeed scanners and so forth, the Diebold touchscreens will also have to recertified. The standards in effect are the 2005 rules. Note that the feds have not certified the touchscreens under the 2005 guidelines.

Provisionals

King County Elections is trying to eliminate paper poll ballots, including provisionals. Unfortunately for them, our Diebold touchscreens are not certified for provisional voting.

The Sec of State tried to get around this problem being changing the law to allow absentee voters who lost their ballots to use a touchscreen. That's a really bad idea. Fortunately, their bills died in committee (SB 5738, I don't know the companion house bill off hand.)

During the briefing monday, Bill Huennekens claimed that the Diebold touchscreens have been federally certified for provisional ballots. I can't find any evidence of that. Further, John explained the feds certify equipment, not how it's used.

Issue #1: Manual Recounts

I can't figure out how this is supposed to work in the event of a manual recount. And my questions to our officials have gone unanswered to date.

Issue #2: Ballot Modification

Then I got thinking about it some more. I think this may be illegal.

Washington State is a voter intent state. That means our officials can correct mistakes to honor voter intent. Here's the new manual describing that: Statewide Standards on What is a Vote Manual.

A few years back, elections officials used to "enhance" ballots. Like using white-out. This system really pissed people off.

So now we manually duplicate the votes from a ballot that cannot be optically scanned to a new ballot. (King County is currently manually duplicating 14% of ballots. That's a super high percentage. I've got some reports; I'll dig up the exact numbers if anyone cares.)

My question is this:

Isn't modifying a database record more like ballot enhancement vs ballot duplication? If so, isn't that disallowed?

I've scanned the RCWs and WACs, and I'm just not spotting where this is covered.

Issue #3: Public Vote Count

Electronically modifying votes defeats the public vote count. The Diebold software has change logs and so forth, supposedly keeping track of how changed what.

But explain how all this stuff is supposed to work to my mother. If she can't observe the vote count and understand it, then there's a problem. (My mom has a master's degree and computer proficient.)

Both of these claims are completely unfounded.

Every single independent review of all Diebold gear has pointed out that Diebold did everything wrong, meaning the systems have huge security problems.

The new Diebold systems King County intends to buy have not been reviewed by anyone at any time. So how can anyone, including council members, who are politicians and not computer security experts, claim these systems are secure. No one can make that claim.

Grrrr....

Oregon has had problems with drop boxes. Andrew Gumbel in "Steal This Vote" lists a few. Stuff like fake drop boxes, stolen drop boxes, and drop box stuffing. (One day, I'll find access to Lexis/Nexus news search and find the original cites.)

In point #5 above, Kathy Lambert suggested that drop boxes be no more than 5 miles apart. Which is ironic. Because that's the criteria used for locating poll sites.

This whole topic just slays me. The operating cost of the drop boxes plus the regional voting centers is going to far exceed the costs of our current poll sites.

Ferguson asked how many voting centers counties in Oregon have. Just one per county. And because they're a vote by mail state, they're exempt from providing paper provisional ballots and issue replacement ballots instead.

Those two reasons go a long way towards explaining why Oregon claims their all mail balloting costs less.

So why don't Washington follow the Oregon example? Why are we even considering drop boxes a plenty and regional voting centers? Just get rid of them.

Why not? Washington voters "voted" for all mail balloting, right?

Just the fact that we're having regional voting centers means that someone's lying about what the voters want.