From: "Gary VanDeStouwe" <GVanDeSt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pklammer@xxxxxxx>, "Faye Griffin" <FGriffin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CC: "Susan Miller" <SMILLER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <mcgrath_mcnally@xxxxxxx>
Subject: RE: Paperless electronic voting (FW: Maryland Refuses to
CountPaper Ballots)
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 13:05:50 -0600
Mr Klammer,
Perhaps I can address your concern. First of all equating the mars
rover and NASA with voting equipment and election vendors is a rather
long stretch. The complexity of the two systems isn't even
realistically comparable. I do however understand your point, there are
no perfect systems. Not NASA, not life support, not voting. Testing
can not prove the absence of errors, just the absence of discovered
errors.
The triple redundancy that Faye referred to is the independent
storage of the audit and accumulator information on three physically
separate non volatile ram chips on the circuit board of each machine
itself. The protection that this provides is if one or even more of
these chips fails or malfunctions, a slight but possible occurrence, all
election information can be retrieved from the remaining chips or chip.
Since our machines don't have hard drives, this storage is equivalent to
storing all of the data on three separate hard drives. Sure a hard
drive can fail causing you to loose some or all of your data, so to
protect against this situation, a smart person would backup or mirror
that same information to another drive that gives you 2 copies of the
same data. We are taking that same concept one step further, we are
literally creating 3 independent copies. Why three copies, because we
hold vote information every bit as dear as you, and want to be able to
retrieve that data.
I think you will find our office very proactive in addressing the
concerns of citizens of Jefferson County. For instance, a concern that
was voiced by Mr. Mcgrath was that the Clerks office just didn't have
the expertise to understand technology. I'm afraid that is again a
misconception. Prior to the 2000 primary, Faye relied on the very large
amount of advice and research provided by the County IT staff of which I
was a part. But she recognized the need for even more focused,
specialized knowledge. That's where I came in.
I happen to be one of those "Computer Scientists" that keeps being
referred to as being adamantly against electronic voting. Nothing could
be further from the truth. I have the Computer Science degree, I've
have the knowledge, and I have the experience to throughly understand
the technology. But beyond that, I know elections. I have personally
been involved in counting every election that has been held in Jefferson
County in the last 10 years. In August 2000 I was hired by Faye to
exclusively research, evaluate, and implement technology in the Clerk
and Recorders Office, a job I had been doing as part of the county IT
staff for the previous 6 years. Prior to that I was working as the lead
in-house Programmer/Analyst for a DTC based firm. I'm also an army
veteran, so I not only believe in this country, I volunteered to defend
and die for the freedoms that this country provides. So yes, I believe
in making sure every vote that can be counted, not only is counted, but
is counted correctly. To the reference that our staff is somehow ill
equipped to understand, all I can say is that you have never met me or
the others like me. Additionally the SOS office has several people every
bit as qualified as myself, everyone of them capable, well informed, and
dedicated to protecting the voting rights of every citizen of Colorado.
To imply otherwise is ill-informed.
I'm not even sure what it is that you would like Faye to do. Here
are the things that she has publicly said that she supports:
1) Open source software.
2) Paper audit trail. (Once federal standards have been
established)
3) Increased participation by the general public.
4) Provide paper ballots to those who request one.
Here is what she will not do:
1) Waste taxpayer money by refusing to use an existing, proven,
accurate, popular, and legal voting method.
2) Waste taxpayer money and break State and Federal laws by
implementing unproven, untested, and non standardized voting equipment.
Your cause is not new or unexpected, the existing hardware was
purchased with full knowledge and the expectation that additional paper
trail information may need to be added in the future. Our equipment
manufacturer, ES&S, went so far as to provide a means to communicate
with a printer in their design. At this time they do not have a
production external audit solution available, but have indicated that
they are willing and able to add this functionality when and if
standards are established. And why wouldn't they? They stand to make
more money by selling additional equipment. So far, national standards
have not been established, nor have processes been developed that would
enable Jefferson County to expand the auditing capabilities of any
direct recording voting equipment. When such standards, processes, and
equipment exists, you will find that Jefferson County will once again
embrace, and be a national leader in the implementation of that
technology.
If your cause is to simply remove all technology from voting on the
assumption that humans are more accurate than computers at counting, I
believe you are fighting a lost cause.
What is it that you continue to want Faye to change her mind about?
As far as I can tell she supports any technology that enhances
security, verifiability, and access to voting. As an election official,
she must work within the laws of this Country, this State, and this
County. I know for a fact, that she would not personally violate those
laws, nor would she ask any of her staff to do so. So if you want
changes made in voting, you need to convince the law makers, not the law
followers. It is like trying to convince the police officer that he
should not give you a ticket because you disagree with the speed limit.
The police officer doesn't have the power to change the speed limit,
whether he aggress with you or not.
As Faye said, you are welcome to become more involved in the
election process, we wish more people would. If you would like to learn
more about our current systems, the checks and balances that are
involved, both legally mandated and beyond, I offer my time. Please
understand, if your goal is simply to stop Jefferson County from
conducting elections on our existing equipment, you will be wasting your
time and ours.
Your cause seems nobel, your associates seem well educated, dare I
suggest that your enthusiasm and knowledge be harnessed to provide us
with workable solutions and alternatives, rather than criticisms of
things that we can not control. Personally I would love to see a low
cost, open source, secure and verifiable voting method that is
infallible and incorruptible. But until that system exists we must use
the best systems that are available today.
Sincerely,
Gary Van De Stouwe
Technical Director
Jefferson County
Clerk & Recorders Office
gvandest@xxxxxxxxx
(303) 271-8169
>>> pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx Wednesday, April 28, 2004 9:51:24 PM >>>
Dear Faye -
your performance on Channel 12 this evening was a severe
disappointment.
Instead of answering the questions, you dodged them.
Q: "What if the memory system fails; how will you recover votes with
no
paper backup?" (Paraphrased quote).
A: There isn't one memory, there's three. I don't think it's flash
memory
in the touchscreen, anyway. The machines are drop-tested to see if
they can
get the votes out after that.
You, nor Donetta, didn't answer the question: what if the memory
system
FAILS??? Even NASA experience failure! You don't think NASA did drop
tests
(try 30 G's crashing onto Mars with airbags!). You don't think NASA
has
triplicate redundancies? You don't think NASA tested and tested and
tested?
You don't think NASA programmers didn't put in safety features that
DRE
vendors can't even afford?
You asserted, "but they won't fail."
I'm demanding an answer to the question: What If They Do?"
The answer is obvious: you have no answer.
So you and Donetta have no choice, but to assert and deny and dissemble
and
obfuscate: "they won't fail, they're tested, they're redundant, they
can't
fail."
But what if they do fail?
--
Pete Klammer, P.E. / ACM(1970), IEEE, ICCP(CCP), NSPE(PE), NACSE(NSNE)
3200 Routt Street / Wheat Ridge, Colorado 80033-5452
(303)233-9485 / Fax:(303)274-6182 / Mailto:PKlammer@xxxxxxx
"Either Be Good, or Else Be Careful, but Do Have Fun! "
_____
From: Pete Klammer [mailto:pklammer@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 10:53 AM
To: 'Faye Griffin'
Cc: 'Gary VanDeStouwe'; 'Susan Miller'; 'Robert Mcgrath'
Subject: re: Paperless electronic voting (FW: Maryland Refuses to
Count
Paper Ballots)
Dear Jefferson County Election Directors -
can Jefferson County do what the story below reports from Maryland?
Can you
affirm that you will not?
--
Pete Klammer, P.E. / ACM(1970), IEEE, ICCP(CCP), NSPE(PE), NACSE(NSNE)
3200 Routt Street / Wheat Ridge, Colorado 80033-5452
(303)233-9485 / Fax:(303)274-6182 / Mailto:PKlammer@xxxxxxx
"Either Be Good, or Else Be Careful, but Do Have Fun! "
_____
From: Joseph Holder [mailto:conquip@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 1:42 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Maryland Refuses to Count Paper Ballots
I found this act by elections officials in Maryland to be beyond
comprehension. I would suggest that their actions were not only
morally
reprehensible, ethically dispicable, but also a possibly astate and
federal
crime. I hope they explore their legal options. They were willfully
disenfranchised by the very state and local officials whose duty it is
to
ensure their vote.
Jody
Discarded paper ballot draws ire of voter
04/22/04
By Pete Pichaske
original
<http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?pnpID=573&NewsID=542565&CategoryI
D=742&show=localnews&om=1> story
Helen Kolbe of Columbia said she has been a faithful voter for more
than
five decades. So the news that Howard County elections officials had
tossed
out her vote in last month's primary election angered her.
"I don't like the idea of being disenfranchised," Kolbe, 76, said.
"Voting
is our last bastion of democracy, and if we can't know with confidence
that
our votes will count, where is our democracy?"
Kolbe was one of 22 people in Howard County who filled out a paper
ballot in
the March 2 primary election rather than use the new touch-screen
voting
machines, and whose votes were thrown out.
Under the touch-screen system, those 22 paper votes didn't count,
county
elections officials said.
Kolbe, who voted at Bryant Woods Elementary School in Columbia, said
she
requested a paper ballot on election day because she did not trust the
electronic system.
Although an elections official handed her a paper ballot, told her how
to
fill it out, and even placed her finished ballot in an
official-looking
"lockbox," nobody told her that the ballot didn't count, Kolbe said.
"I did not vote with the intention of not voting," she added.
Kolbe has appealed the decision to discount her vote to the state board
of
elections.
Elections officials said they allowed people to use the paper ballots
because they wanted to ensure that everyone who wanted to cast a ballot
did
so. However, state regulations barred them from counting those votes,
the
officials said.
"We wanted to make sure that nobody leaves a voting precinct without
voting," Howard County Board of Elections chairman Guy Harriman said.
"But
we could not count them. We really had no choice."
In some cases, officials counted paper or "provisional" ballots,
Harriman
said. Those cases included, for example, the vote of a person who
showed up
at the wrong precinct and therefore had no access to the voting
machine. But
if a person had access to a touch-screen machine, he or she had to use
it.
Election officials counted 97 legal paper ballots, not including
absentee
ballots, which also were paper.
However the board sent 22 voters who had access to touch-screen
machines but
decided to use paper ballots, letters explaining that their votes did
not
count, Harriman said, adding that the letters went out a week or two
after
the election.
He and other election officials said the voters requesting paper
ballots
should have been told when they voted that their vote didn't count.
"That may not have been made clear to people by the election judges,"
said
Evelyn Purcell, acting supervisor of elections board. "And maybe the
people
didn't understand what they were told."
No paper trail
The touch-screen voting machines were used throughout most of Maryland
for
the first time in the March 2 primary and will be used again in the
November
general election.
Although the machines proved popular with most voters, who found them
easy
to use, critics have pointed out that the machines provide no back-up
"paper
trail" of the vote, leaving them vulnerable to tampering. The Maryland
General Assembly this year rejected legislation requiring that the
machines
provide a paper tally.
Critics of the system urged voters to protest the new system by
demanding
paper ballots during the primary election, a suggestion hundreds of
voters
throughout the state followed.
While it is unclear whether other counties followed Howard's policy of
accepting paper ballots at polling places, election officials
throughout
Maryland refused to count the protest ballots.
"There are reasons people were allowed to vote with a provisional
ballot,
but fear of touch-screen voting machines is not one of them," said
Mary
Wagner of the state board of elections.
The officials' refusal to accept paper ballots has outraged critics of
electronic voting.
"This happened to people throughout the state," said Linda Schade of
True
Vote Maryland, an organization founded last year to lobby for changes
to the
touch-screen system used in Maryland. "They didn't have to do that.
They
didn't have to disenfranchise people."
Ann Balcerzak, an alternate to the county elections board, said she
sympathized with some of the paper-ballot users and lobbied the board
unsuccessfully to have at least some of the ballots counted.
"In Helen's case, in particular, I thought there was an expectation
that the
ballot would've been counted," Balcerzak said of Kolbe's experience.
The board would have to resolve such snafus before the general
election, she
added.
"This was a real shakedown cruise for us," Balcerzak said of the
primary
election. "This is the type of thing the board will be looking at very
closely. When you realize how close elections can be, you can't have
this
happening."
E-mail Pete Pichaske at ppichaske@xxxxxxxxxxxxx