Avi Rubin's experiences as an election judge

[Paul Walmsley <paul@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Avi Rubin was an election judge yesterday.  Here are some of his 
anecdotes.  from <http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html>. 


- Paul



My experience as an Election Judge in Baltimore County

by

Avi Rubin

It is now 10:30 pm, and I have been up since 5 a.m. this morning. Today, I 
served as an election judge in the primary election, and I am writing down 
my experience now, despite being extremely tired, as everything is fresh 
in my mind, and this was one of the most incredible days in my life.

I first became embroiled in the current national debate on evoting 
security when Dan Wallach of Rice University and I, along with Computer 
Scientist Yoshi Kohno and my Ph.D. student Adam Stubblefield released a 
report analyzing the software in Diebold's Accuvote voting machines.

Although there were four of us on the project, perhaps because I was the 
most senior of the group, the report became widely associate with me, and 
people began referring to it as the "Hopkins report" or even in some cases 
the "Rubin report". I became the target of much criticism from Maryland 
and Georgia election officials who were deeply committed to these 
machines, and of course, of the vendor. The biggest criticism that I 
received was that I am an academic scientist and that academics do not 
"know siccum" about elections, as Doug Lewis from the Election Center put 
very eloquently.

While I dispute many of the claims that computer scientists working on 
e-voting security analysis are deficient in their knowledge of elections, 
I realized that there was only one way to stifle this criticism, and at 
the same time to perform a civic duty. I volunteered to become an election 
judge in Baltimore County. The first step was to get signed up. I filled 
out a form at a local grocery store and waited for a call from the 
Baltimore County Board of Elections. The call never came. So, I called up 
the board and spoke with the head of elections and found out that there 
was a mandatory training session a couple of days later. I got on to the 
list for the training, and I attended. There, I learned that my entire 
county would be voting with Diebold Accuvote TS machines, the very one 
that we had analyzed in our report. It was an eery feeling as I trained 
for 2 hours on every aspect of using the machine and teaching others how 
to use them. Afterwards, I received a certificate signed by the board of 
elections and became a qualified judge. I was supposed to receive a phone 
call within a few days assigning me to a precinct, but I did not. So, I 
called up the board of elections and spoke with the same woman, who 
assigned me to a precinct at a church in Timonium, MD, about 15 minutes 
from my house.

I reported to my precinct at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Introductions began, 
and I immediately realized that it would not be a normal day. There are 
two head judges, one from each party. There were also seven other judges. 
The head judges were Marie (R) and Jim (D). Both of them mentioned that 
they read about me in the paper that morning, and were pretty cold towards 
me. It turns out that the Baltimore Sun ran a story today about my being 
an election judge. In there, I'm quoted as saying that the other judges in 
my training were in the "grandparent category" with respect to their age. 
My colleagues for the day, who were in that category as well, did not 
appreciate the barb and were ready to spar with me.

There are three types of judges besides the head judges. There are four 
book judges, one from each party with A-K and one from each party with 
L-Z. There is one judge assigned to provisional ballots, and a couple of 
unit judges charged with assigning voters to particular machines. I was 
the L-Z democrat book judge, along with Andy, a grandfather of many, a 
staunch Republican, and a fellow I grew very fond of as the day went on. 
To my left were Anne, the Republican judge married to Andy, and Sandy. 
Actually, there were two Sandys. One began as a unit judge, but early on 
switched with the other Sandy to be the democratic book judge on A-K. Bill 
was the provisional judge, and he is married to head judge Marie. And then 
there was Joy. One of the Sandys, Joy and I were the three younger judges 
who did not fit into the grandparent category.

Joy was by far the most knowledgeable about the election. She had trained 
dozens of groups on the Diebold machine, and she knew all of the 
procedures inside and out. The head judges deferred to Joy on just about 
every major issue that came up. She knew our manuals by heart, and we were 
very lucky to have her there. In reality, all of us helped with all of the 
jobs, but we had our default assignments.

The job of the book judge is to look up each voter in a card deck and find 
their registration card. If there wasn't one, then there were procedures 
for handling them. Once we found the card, we cross checked it with our 
roll booklet. For the most part this process went smoothly. I wore a 
string around my neck with a little electronic sleeve on the end. After a 
voter was verified as registered, I slid a smartcard into the sleave and 
pushed a few buttons to designate whether or not this voter should receive 
a Democrat or Republican ballot, based on their registration, and there 
was also an option for specifying magnification of the ballot on the 
screen, or even audio for blind people.