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This letter, attached and inserted below, was hand
delivered to each of the seven members of the Senate committee that will SOON hear
HB 1227. I hope that you will take a few minutes to contact the
Senators on the committee. Let each know that you agree with our
recommendations which are: “We recommend that the committee
indefinitely postpone the bill and allow the enacted legislation time to
work. Alternately, we recommend that the bill be subjected to open public
hearings and that the revised bill be considered after the problems have been
repaired. As our third alternate, we offer to work with the bill’s
sponsor and work out necessary changes.” If we can STOP this bill in this committee or get it
substantially improved, we have done a good job. If it escapes from this
committee intact, It won’t cost you anything and will take only a few
minutes. Your action will make a big difference. Thanks as always for your help. Al The current version of the bill
can be read at: Contact information for the
Senators is at: http://www.leg.state.co.us/
From: alkolwicz
[mailto:alkolwicz@xxxxxxxxx] April 20, 2004 RE: HB04-1227 Concerning Voting Systems As a member of the Senate’s State Veterans &
Military Affairs Committee, we implore you to carefully consider our concerns
regarding HB04-1227 and correct the serious deficiencies before this bad bill
is thrust on the People. In the first place, there is no need to pass the bill in
this session. In her March 25th letter to Representative
Sinclair, on another bill, Secretary of State Davidson, referring to Federal
and Colorado HAVA laws already in place, argued, “We would advocate
allowing the new legislation already enacted time to work.”
New Federal standards, testing & certification procedures are
under development. Second, Secretary Davidson correctly says in the same
March 25th memo that, “Merely adding a printer to a voting
system in order to print a ballot for purposes of recount does not make the
system secure.” HB04-1227 disallows the use of
full-ballot–text paper ballot technologies that make possible verifiable
and secure elections Third, despite Secretary Davidson’s admonition that,
“This office emphatically agrees that both voting security and voter
confidence are key to holding honest, fair, and transparent elections.
The Colorado Department of State takes its statutory responsibility seriously:
it must run fair, transparent, and honest elections. We want all voting systems
used by the voters of There are five general problems with HB04-1227.
We have identified 16 specific problem areas and describe
each in the attachment to this cover letter. We recommend that the committee
indefinitely postpone the bill and allow the enacted legislation time to
work. Alternately, we recommend that the bill be subjected to open public
hearings and that the revised bill be considered after the problems have been
repaired. As our third alternate, we offer to work with the bill’s
sponsor and work out necessary changes. HB 04-1227 as drafted will do great harm to Signed by, Al Kolwicz, Executive Director Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results (303) 494-1540 www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
http://coloradovoter.blogspot.com
Bob McGrath, Chairman Coloradoans for Voting Integrity (303) 460-1825 Bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A. Telephone: (719) 520-1089 PO Box J (303) 938-8850 Peter F. Klammer,
P.E. ACM, IEEE, ICCP(CCP),
NSPE(PE), NACSE(NSNE) Member, IEEE P1583 Committee for Voting Machine Standards (303) 233-9485 http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/scc38/1583/
A. The definitions in HB 1227
do not provide for verified voting and verified counting. As a consequence
sections of the statutes that rely on these definitions are ambiguous,
misleading and imprecise. Verifiable voting equipment
provides a voter interface for both able and disabled voters to privately mark
and verify their votes on a preprinted paper ballot. The votes on the
ballot may be counted by hand or in conjunction with equipment. There is
no provision for this type of equipment in the definitions. See proposed
1-1-104 (13.5) and (50). Verifiable vote counting has six discrete processes: (1) endorse
each ballot with a unique batch and item identifier, (2) scan
and record each ballot image, (3) interpret
the votes on each ballot image and create a “votes” record
containing the ballot identification and votes interpreted from each ballot
image, (4) manually
override the interpretation of votes by recording an
“override-votes” record, (5) accumulate
the votes on the votes records by precinct-contest-batch, (6) report
results from all batches, including precinct, provisional, early and absentee,
by precinct-contest. This new methodology enables each step to be verified by officials and
by the public. There is no provision for this type of counting in
this bill. See 1-1-104 (14). B. This bill legalizes
voting systems that do not permit the voter to verify that their vote that will
be counted is recorded correctly. There should be no provision for voting
where the voter is unable to verify that their votes are recorded on the ballot
as the voter intends. Since electronically recorded votes are not
verifiable, electronically recorded votes should be prohibited. See
1-1-104 (13.5) and (14.5). C. The parts of the bill
dealing with testing and certification fail to include a public hearing
process. This serious defect will lead to public distrust of the voting
process, shut out competent professional input, and assign technical
decision-making powers to government employees who are not qualified as testing
professionals. The bill must be revised to incorporate provisions for a
formal public process at all stages of the state and local testing and
certification process including planning and execution. D. The parts of the bill
dealing with the establishment of rules for the purchase of voting equipment do
not include a public hearing process. The bill must be revised to
incorporate provisions for a formal public process. E. The certification
standards proposed in 1-5-615 are inadequate and must be repaired before voting
equipment is certified and purchased against this standard.
F. The bill authorizes
the Secretary of State to allow the use of uncertified and/or modified
equipment. This should be removed. At a minimum, there should be a
public process for making this decision. Software testing professionals
advise that no change, even a seemingly trivial change, can safely be made to a
tested hardware-software system without invalidating the credibility of prior
tests.. G. 1-5-618 (7) seems to
intentionally exclude “patches” from the formal requirements of
certification and review. This is a gross error. Patches often
cause new defects that would go undetected unless retested. H. 1-5-619 authorizes the
Secretary of State to allow the use of uncertified systems for live
elections. This should be removed. So too should the provision
relieving the vendor of the obligation to provide materials, such as source
code, to the Secretary of State (see 1-5-620). I. 1-5-621
permits verbal notification of system defects. In a world of email,
verbal reporting is not acceptable. Further, all malfunction notifications
should be made public on the Internet within hours of their receipt by the
SOS. A log of problem discovery and repair including re-testing and
certification must be made public on the Internet. The defect resolution process must provide for oversight by poll
watchers and other interested members of the public. The definition of “malfunction” as a “deviation from
correct value” is totally inadequate. This definition disregards
security breaches, and other major defects that are equally or even more
important. Malfunction should include any deviation from specifications. The bill appears to authorize the defective system to be used to
complete an election. This must not be permitted. J. 1-5-704 page 31
line 10 does not provide a way for a voter to verify that their vote is
RECORDED correctly. It must do so. Page 32 does not provide for modern K. 1-5-705 requires
unverifiable paperless electronic ballots and must not. New vote marking
and vote verification systems use paper ballots. L. 1-7-506.5 requires
the designated election official to conduct testing following maintenance or
programming. Election officials are not trained to do this highly complex
professional task. Following maintenance and reprogramming, the system
must be retested and recertified. M. 1-7-602 disallows
centralized counting of votes on paper ballots. Centralized counting
systems can be highly verifiable and accurate and must be permitted. N. 1-8-301 does not provide
for political party participation in the selection of party judges. It
must; otherwise an election official can pick friendly judges. Also, there are no provisions for poll watchers during the absentee
ballot and early voting processes. Recent experience has shown there to
be major problems obtaining access by poll watchers. O. 1-10.5-110 the term
“permanent paper records” is too obscure and can mean anything,
including a one line summary per contest. The term should be replaced
with the term “full-ballot-text paper ballots”. Paper ballots
can be verifiably secure and verifiably counted. The person/entity paying for the recount should be the one to decide
which method is used for a recount. Or at least, the most accurate method
should be used. Otherwise, the decision is left to the judgment of
officials who generally prefer to do the least amount of work, and who wish to
avoid discovery of any miscounts. P. 1-13-708 establishes
a misdemeanor penalty for tampering. This is not a sufficient deterrent. |
Attachment:
HB 04-1227 Senate.doc
Description: MS-Word document