RE: Rock and a hard place

["Paul Tiger" <tigerp@xxxxxxxxx>]

Paul [et al],

My vote and that of commissioner Danish will always stick to voter
verifiable paper ballots. Paul Danish is the dissenting vote of our three
commissioners. Unless we get on board with trying to convince Ron Stewart
and Tom Mayer, Boulder County will most likely get jammed with some
off-the-shelf solution that they think that they can afford.

The idea that the fed will sue Boulder County for non-compliance is
ludicrous. The fed doesn't do that. Sure they have the legal standing to do
so, but they hardly ever do. What they do is shut off funding taps. Like how
they set the taps to a slow trickle when Colorado upped the speed limit to
70MPH on federally funded freeways in our state. We countered by sucking
money out of the lottery to pay our own way.

When HAVA kicked off in Colorado, counties were told that there was going to
be $35M available to counties to use for compliance with the Act. Counties
that didn't or haven't appeared to attempt to comply were told that they
weren't going to get some or any of that money. As it stands right now,
there is far less available to local jurisdictions than promised, but no one
that I know of has been able to get a solid figure from the SoS as to what
is available. However, we have all been led to understand that if we don't
get our DREs in place by the next election (August primaries) that we can
expect to have to pay for this boondoggle on our own.

If the fed bothered to try to sue Boulder County, it would have to sue the
state first. Low chance of that. Next, what federal judge is going to find
for the fed over a state when the fed made demands, promised funding, and
then reneged? Such a case would be in the courts for years and be extremely
costly. Further, it would rip this country apart. The authors of HAVA and
most of our congress are a bunch of fools, but not complete fools.

Paul Tiger

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Walmsley [mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 1:25 AM
To: kellen carey
Cc: Boulder Computer Voting
Subject: RE: Rock and a hard place

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, kellen carey wrote:

>  That is, Boulder County could buy an optical scanning device (or other
> appropriate ballot tabulating machine) capable of tabulating both
> hand-marked absentee ballots and hand-marked (or machine-marked)
> ballots.
>
>  Then, if and when the computer security industry agrees on specs and
> technical standards, sometime down the road, BC takes it from there.
> NIST, at HAVA request, has barely begun to address this complex issue.
>
>  I've read too many articles, including the Guardian article earlier
> this week, to feel remotely comfortable approving any system not based
> on a voter verifiable paper ballot.  No independent recount, it's not a
> fair election, period.
>
>  The core issue with these electronic voting systems is security, but
> the Committee isn't competent to judge that issue.

Hi Kellen,

I agree with your concerns about the DRE machines under consideration. But
it looks like the county will have to buy at least one DRE machine for
each precinct for the 2004 election, or risk getting sued by the federal
government.[1] This is because HAVA mandates that people with disabilities
must be able to vote with a method that "provides the same opportunity for
access and participation (including privacy and independence) as for other
voters."

[ HAVA leaves the door open for non-DRE methods for supporting individuals
with disabilities -- does anyone know if appropriate non-DRE methods
exist?  (that is, non-DRE methods of voting that comply with the access
provisions of HAVA.) ]

Boulder County is going to have to buy some kind of optical scan system
anyway for absentee and mail ballots.  It seems that the best situation,
given the present circumstances, would be to buy the fewest number of DREs
possible -- one per precinct -- and then to use optical scan ballots for
most voters.

...

What would be really nice is if the DRE machines just printed out an
voter-verifiable optical-scan paper ballot, which could then be counted in
the same manner as non-DRE ballots.  The main problem with this, it seems,
is that visually-impaired voters could not check the paper ballot the same
way that sighted voters could.  But this seems like a problem that could
be solved with a device which reads the optical-scan ballot at the
precinct, and then reads the votes back to the voter via headphones.  I
wonder why none of the vendors seem to offer such a device?  For that
matter, I wonder why the whole concept of voter-verifiable optical-scan
ballots seems to be such an unusual idea that many vendors react with
surprise and irritation to it?

>  Finally, what are all various voting system options open to Boulder
> County?  Is there a study that lists the various options and their
> advantages and disadvantages?  If there isn't shouldn't there be one, if
> not by Boulder County then by the State, or some other competent
> authority?

You might find these links from the Federal Election Commission useful:

* <http://www.fec.gov/elections.html> -- scroll down until you see "The
Administrative Structure of U.S. Elections"

* The 2002 FEC Voting System Standards --
<http://www.fec.gov/pages/vssfinal/vss.html>


- Paul

[1] Section 301.a.3 of HAVA.