URGENT PETITION FOR BOULDER COUNTY

To: Boulder County Commissioners

We want Boulder County elections to be hand-counted until NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) comes forward with standards for electronic voting. We also each volunteer at least 4 hours of our time, for free, to help with the hand counting. (Signers, please DO let at least us organizers see your email address so we can contact you about volunteering!)

If you DO NOT vote in Colorado’s Boulder County, we urge you to start a separate but similar petition in YOUR county Your country’s future may depend on it!

Sign the petition at:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/hand/petition.html

(Please DO check 'show authors' option to let us see your email address!! )

Folks,

If we could present a few hundred volunteers to the County Commissioners, before Tuesday, maybe they'll do the right thing and let citizens make sure our votes count.

PLEASE circulate this to everyone on your local email lists!!

If you DON'T vote in Boulder County, please consider putting a
similar petition to YOUR Commissioners on the site. It's easy and
takes 5 minutes or so:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/

Below read Dennis Kucinich's call for suspension of electronic voting, followed by two local newspaper articles which give background on the above petition. This petition is sponsored by Citizens for Verifiable Voting, www.ColoradoVoter.net, a Boulder County activist group which has been working nonstop to ensure the changes brought about by the Help America Vote Act won't result in loss of vote integrity

These articles are followed by comments on the county situation by CVV members and a call for action regarding state legislation being introduced to committee on Monday.
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http://kucinich.us/statements/statement-042304.php
Kucinich calls for suspension of electronic voting
April 23, 2004

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who has been sounding warning alarms regarding electronic voting systems since he began his campaign last year, today called on federal, state and local election officials to suspend immediately the implementation of any voting systems that do not provide a 100 percent reliable paper-trail back-up to corroborate results.

A decision yesterday by the eight-member California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel that 15,000 electronic voting machines in four counties be banned in the November election because of glitches in the March primary election is more than enough evidence that these systems could undermine the integrity and affect the results of November's general election, Kucinich said.

Especially in terms of the Presidential election, Kucinich said, we cannot entrust the future of our country to technologies that are flawed, suspect, and proven to have failed, especially when those technologies have been developed by companies that have their own political agendas.

Diebold Election Systems, which came under the harshest criticism from the California elections panel, is headed by Chief Executive Officer Walden O'Dell, who last year became active in the re-election effort of President Bush, even attending a strategy meeting with wealthy Bush benefactors at the President's private ranch in Texas. Soon after, O'Dell wrote a fundraising letter where he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Although Diebold is the most embattled voting equipment company, Newsday reported that paperless systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and other competitors also expose elections to malicious attack, software glitches and mechanical errors that could delete or alter millions of ballots. The story went on to report a variety of other problems in Indiana, Maryland, and other states. According to Newsday, Because votes that only exist in electronic form can be altered or deleted, Oregon, New Hampshire and Illinois require paper ballots; and California, Missouri and Nevada will require paper backups on touchscreen terminals by 2006. The newspaper also reported that Secretaries of state in Washington and West Virginia are calling for paper trails, while Ohio is reconsidering the switch to new machines.

Kucinich said he will take his challenges to the newly created federal agency charged with overseeing electronic voting, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, established in January, which will conduct a public hearing in Washington, D.C. on May 5.

The technological problems are real, Kucinich said, and the potential for further problems, mischief, and outright fraud is equally real, and far more dangerous.

Extensive information on electronic voting systems is available at
http://www.kucinich.us/e-voting/intro.php
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The Daily Camera

To print this page, select File then Print from your browser

URL: http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/county_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2423_2834141,00.html

Voting concerns remain

Boulder voting officials say state dictates recounts

By Ryan Morgan, Camera Staff Writer
April 24, 2004

Two of Boulder County's top election officials told a curious and sometimes hostile crowd Friday afternoon that they're slowly making some of the changes activists want to see in policy on voting machines — but decision-making power resides over their heads.

Linda Salas, the county's clerk and recorder, and Tom Halicki, the county's election manager, told members attending a Plan-Boulder County luncheon at the Boulder Public Library that they've been lobbying Secretary of State Donetta Davidson to approve procedures designed to improve vote-count accuracy.

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"Boulder County is usually the one trying to do things differently," Salas said.

The controversy that has had activists dogging Salas and Halicki started when the county began shopping for new voting machines.

The federal Help America Vote Act requires counties across the country to do away with old punch-card machines. But many voting watchdogs distrust electronic systems proposed to replace the card-punch machines, because many of the newer systems tally votes electronically without producing a paper record.

Watchdogs say that leaves plenty of room for error or tampering, and they insist voting machines should produce a paper record of the votes cast. That way, a suspicious vote tally could always be checked by recounting the ballots by hand.

Their fears were partly eased when the county settled on local vendor Hart-Intercivic to provide machines. The Hart machines use a paper ballot that is counted electronically.

But the state law, as implemented by the Secretary of State's Office, requires that recounts be conducted by the same method as the original count — which makes the paper trail "meaningless," activist Evan Ravitz said.

"It violates a basic principle of accounting, which is that you count things in two ways," he said.

Salas said her office is making headway on that issue. She said Davidson has made a tentative offer to let Boulder County conduct recounts by hand.

But Neal McBurnett, another activist, said the machines still have problems. The computer coding that's used to tally votes, he said, is owned by the company and not accessible to inspection by the public.

Forcing vendors to share their proprietary software could drive companies out of business, Halicki said. "If I was a private investor, and word came out that a company was going to give away their secrets, I would be disinclined to invest in them."

Contact Ryan Morgan at (303) 473-1333 or morganr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Copyright 2004

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County OKs ‘Ballot Now’ vote system

By Trevor Hughes
The Daily Times-Call

BOULDER — Deciding that having every vote counted by hand was simply too difficult, Boulder County leaders have agreed to buy a system that will electronically count paper ballots.

The Boulder County Commissioners on Thursday approved the $1.5 million purchase of the “Ballot Now” system manufactured by a local company.

The approval came after a two-hour public meeting and a discernable level of trepidation among the commissioners.

Elections officials say machines offer a greater level of reliability and reduce the chance of human-introduced counting errors. Skeptics say hand-counting would improve trust even if it takes longer and might occasionally be slightly inaccurate.

“I would much prefer to see the most primitive voting system possible,” said Martin Walter of Nebo Road.

Added Alyne Galm: “To err is human. To really foul things up takes a computer. I’d rather have human error than computer error.”

Commissioner Paul Danish agreed in principle, but said hand-counting would take too long. The county’s current punch-card system also uses a computer, albeit a much dumber one, to count votes. That system has been declared illegal by Congress.

“If I had my druthers, if I thought it was physically possible, I’d want a hand count,” Danish said. “The problem is I don’t think it’s practical to have a hand count in a general election.”

Under state law, the same system that counted the votes must be used to recount them, if there are questions about accuracy or fraud.

That means with a computer-counting system, vote totals will always be the same because the law prohibits a review of the actual paper votes. Skeptics said the best way to avoid that problem would be to hand-count everything the first time.

Danish and other officials said that with 162,000 registered voters deciding about 30 candidates or issues per ballot, the work would be too much for human counters. Under such a scenario, there would be 4.8 million individual selections to tally.

Responded resident Al Kolwicz: “The people will wait for a trustworthy result.”

Danish says he believes Kolwicz and other hand-count voters should petition the state legislature to change the law. Kolwicz and other voting-integrity advocates say they are considering a lawsuit to stop the use of electronic systems until national standards are created.

“We’ve got a situation that is terribly unjust but possibly legal,” Kolwicz said following the meeting. “The courts can help us fight illegalities. It might take an election or recall to obtain justice.”

While the commissioners have approved the purchase, they are accepting written public comments until April 27, when they will approve the actual contract with Hart InterCivic of Lafayette.

Click on www.co.boulder.co.us/bocc to view the proposed voting system contract and to submit written comments.

Trevor Hughes can be reached at 303-776-2244, Ext. 220, or by e-mail at thughes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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On Sat, 24 Apr 2004, Robert Mcgrath wrote:

> Regardless of the outcome to date, we have learned the following, and we
> need to leverage this knowledge:
>
> 1. The process of addressing citizen input is not how some decisions occur,
> contrary to "staged" appearances.   It would appear that the purchase of
> this system was a done deal, despite citizen reactions.
>
> 2. Hand counting of recounts may be permissible, according to the Boulder
> election officials reporting upon ongoing discussions with the Secretary of
> State's office.
>
> 3. Hand counting is perceived as "taking too long, impractical and
> unaffordable." This is a statement of perception and is not backed up by
> any independent analysis.
>
> 4. The lack of standards is not viewed as a meaningful deterrent.
>
> 5. Election officials and county commissioners may not be accustomed to a
> high level of citizen input on a purchase decision, and their willingness to
> keep the decisionmaking process open may be affected by their comfort level
> with citizen involvement (possibly perceiving it as "we know better" or
> "academics or activists" rather than the concerns of common citizens).
>
> 6. When in doubt, pass blame to the Secretary of State's Office.
>
> 7. Despite citizen participation in "the process", the courts may remain the
> only possible method that compels election officials to acknowledge and
> comply with citizen concerns.
>
> 8. It pays to stick around after "official business" ends, and to maintain
> strength in numbers.
>
> How do we leverage these findings?
>
> First, we need to maintain a higher level of communications and interest
> among our group to remain a viable voice in these issues.   We need to
> borrow several pages from Evan's, Joe's and Al's book and keep vigilant
> watch over these public servants, and to maintain a large enough group from
> which to demonstrate broad support for our cause. We need to consider
> whether reaching out to other established groups may serve this purpose and build credibility with these officials.
>
> Second, we need to do our homework like Ralph suggests below and come
> equipped to such arguments with our facts straight. If hand counts
> intimidate, we must reassure with solid numbers that illustrate their
> viability and cost effectiveness. We must meet this argument head-on.
>
> Third, we need to build upon the awareness of the identical count/recount
> methods, so that everyone involved in decisionmaking understand the absurd
> impact this law will have upon verifiability and confidence in trustworthy
> elections.   The intrinsic value of independent audits must be elevated
> further in any ongoing discussions about verifiability.   It may still be
> possible to engage in a publicity campaign and legal work to halt the
> implementation of this law for this year's election, but it will take
> coordination and money to accomplish this. And we still need legal
> representation.
>
> Fourth, while the Sec of State has issued a "moratorium" on all machine
> purchases in the state under HAVA until standards come out, under HB 1227
> she is setting herself up as the ultimate arbiter and certifier of all
> "temporary" systems, meaning she wants to have her cake and eat it too.
> This hypocritical stand needs to be exposed and called.
>
> Finally, we need to come together in legal strategies, since it appears that
> may be our only hope for relief this year.
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----- Original Message -----

From: alkolwicz

Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 9:39 AM

To: CAMBER; Citizens for Verifiable Voting; Bob Mcgrath; Carol Mehesy; Donna Plutschuck; Monty Lambie; Pete Klammer; Peter Raich; Tracy Abell

Subject: Please take action right now -- HB 1227 comes to committee Monday, April 26 at 1:30 p.m.,

Today, right now is the time to act.

Monday, April 26 at 1:30 p.m., HB 1227 will come before the Senator’s State Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

Please re-double your efforts to persuade the Senators on the committee to kill this bad bill.

We have presented our concerns in our April 20 letter (pasted below) and summarize as follows:

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 Colorado’s election system.

Call, email, or fax.

Senator Lamborn doug.lamborn.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Senator May R ronmay@xxxxxxxxxx

Senator Andrews john.andrews.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Senator Cairns bruce.cairns.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Senator Hanna deanna.hanna.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Senator Keller moe.keller.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Senator Nichol alice.nichol.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx

Phone numbers

If you don’t reach the Senator in person, leave a brief voice message that includes your name and phone number, and a clear statement that you oppose HB 1227.

Senator Lamborn      303-866-4835          719-481-3387

Senator May R         303-866-2737          719-591-2330

Senator Andrews      303-866-3342           303-770-8215

Senator Cairns         303-866-3432          303-693-6089

Senator Hanna         303-866-4857          303-987-1449

Senator Keller          303-866-4856          303-425-0130

Senator Nichol          303-866-4863          303-287-7742

Please pick up your phone or send an email right now.

Thanks for all that you do.

Al

CAMBER

Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results

2867 Tincup Circle

Boulder, CO 80305

303-494-1540

AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx

www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz

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 25^th 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 25^th 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 Colorado to be tamper-free and fraud-free.”   The standards proposed by HB04-1227 include none of these criteria.

There are five general problems with HB04-1227.

The bill makes it illegal to use modern voting equipment that uses paper ballots.
The bill legalizes vote recording and vote counting methods that are not verifiable and that provide no tangible record of the voter’s intent for purposes of counting and conducting a recount.
The bill establishes certification and testing standards that are inadequate.
The bill assigns vast certification, testing and purchasing powers to the Secretary of State without any provision for public participation and oversight.
The bill makes it legal to prevent poll watchers from performing their oversight responsibility.

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 Colorado’s election system.

Signed by,

Al Kolwicz, Executive Director

Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results

2867 Tincup Circle

Boulder, CO 80305

(303) 494-1540

AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx

www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz

http://coloradovoter.blogspot.com

Bob McGrath, Chairman

Coloradoans for Voting Integrity

7114 W. Jefferson Ave. Suite 100

Lakewood, CO 80235

(303) 460-1825

Bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

www.cfvi.org

Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.

455 Bear Creek Road

Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906-5820

Telephone: (719) 520-1089

ccorry@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Joe Pezzillo, Spokesperson

Citizens for Verifiable Voting

PO Box J

Boulder, CO 80306

(303) 938-8850

jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx

www.ColoradoVoter.net

Peter F. Klammer, P.E.

ACM, IEEE, ICCP(CCP), NSPE(PE), NACSE(NSNE)

Member, IEEE P1583 Committee for Voting Machine Standards

3200 Routt Street

Wheat Ridge, CO 80033-5452

(303) 233-9485

PKlammer@xxxxxxx

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.

They are not quantitative.
They do not separate the components of a voting system in a way that can be tested.
They do not ensure that poll watchers have access to the data needed to do their job.
There are no requirements for privacy, audit, transparency, verifiability, accuracy, security, or reliability.
They are not precise – for example 1-5-615 (c) implies that the voter can verify their votes before they cast their ballot, but the actual bill does not require this With electronic votes there is no way for voters to verify their votes.
Letter (l) prohibits modern vote marking equipment, since this equipment does not count votes.
Letter (p) is deceptive since the “record” is not a ballot, but rather a summary of what the machine recorded and not necessarily what the voter intended. A recount under this system recounts the incorrect votes. This serves no useful purpose in a recount.

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 ADA compliant vote marking and vote verification using paper ballots. It must do so.

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.

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