RE: Discussion of ERC Report FINAL, hopefully not Insults

["Paul Tiger - LPBC - Outreach" <outreach@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lots of snippety here - hope it still readable ... pt

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul E Condon [mailto:pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:55 PM
To: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Discussion of ERC Report FINAL, hopefully not Insults
<snip>
> This is one of the reasons that vote centers are so tasty. Instead of
needed
> 227 tech savvy and in-depth trained folks, we need 40 - 50. One tech/judge
> having a problem would be able to reach the other tech/judges more easily
> and resolve their issues more quickly than in the past.
>

Of course, each vote center would have several ballot scanners in
order to handle the peak load. And it could have a few spares for
quick swap of malfunctioning hardware. But there are a lot of other
issues in setting up vote centers. Does Boulder County Elections
Office have the credability with anybody to be allowed to do this?
[|PT>]
[|PT>] Not sure what 'allowed' refers to. Several counties have already used
vote centers. Larimer is the best example. All the parties supported vote
centers there, and that made for great voter outreach and education about
them. It seems that the majority of voters liked them, and the clerk sure as
heck did.

Even if a vote center didn't have something it needed, logistically getting
things to one in say 40 centers would be far easier than one in 227. There
are runners now, but spread very thin.


> ------------------------------[|PT>]
<snip>
> Several memos from county staffers and citizen judges about the software
> issues were given to Hart. Hart now says that these suggestions are
> proprietary and BoCo (or the ERC) could not now review them; or know what
> Hart's response is.

This is absolutely crazy. Voluntary submissions by concerned citizens become
proprietary information of Hart? As I said in my first email. Why should we
believe anything from them?
[|PT>]
[|PT>] I wish I had the contract with Hart in PDF format so that everyone
here (or anywhere) could get a read of it. It is insane. It quite
specifically says that any documents created by the clerks' office or staff
regarding the performance of the Hart equipment becomes the property of
Hart.
To add insult to the injury of the voters, the county attorneys advised Paul
Danish to sign it - which he did.


<snip>
> [|PT>]
> [|PT>] Aha - clarification is needed here.
> Ballot box scanners have been around for almost 20 years. The most well
> known is from Diebold. The Diebold one that I played with in 03 was a
> opto-scanner on top of what looks like a big Rubbermaid garbage can.
Several
> other makers have these as well. ES&S; Sequoia; etc. So there's no new
> engineering needed. They've been around a long time; they're certified and
> in current use around this state.

Are these older scanners capable of running Hart image recognition
software? Would it really be trivial to integrate them into Hart
system? I doubt it. Do they really do a whole page raster scan?
[|PT>]
[|PT>] Leave Hart out of your picture Puleez!
Hart's the only one using the method that they use. It is an expensive
method, heavily dependent on very expensive hardware and proprietary
software.

These other scanners are LED opto-array or better well known as opto-sense
scanners. All of them are single board computers with enough brains to be
programmed to recognize ballot patterns, count the marks, and store the
votes. It stores counts, not images. No raster images, no disk media needed.
When the polls close the scanner reports the totals, which get immediately
posted at the precinct (a state law the clerk failed to follow twice in 04),
and then reported to the clerk by phone (voice).

One audit of the precinct or vote center could be to run the cast ballots
through a central hi-speed scanner after the election has been initially
reported. And of course we have ballots for hand audits.

The one issue that we all must have is that these SBCs run proprietary
embedded OS and applications. A socio-political lobster trap of
technological design. We can legally audit the paper, fine. But what about
service issues?
A well-documented bug was in TX in 02 when all winners of races had an
18,181 vote lead. There was a number trigger in a bug and some candidates in
races in that county were re-adjusted by the computer. One county noticed
the problem and had the vendor fix it. In another county where the same
equipment was used, a bunch of people got into office based on a bug; for
once the black box was ordered to tally the possibility of fixing the
dubious input from the transaction log was toast.

audit, Audit, AUdit, AUDit, AUDIt, AUDIT!


<snip>
> Linda Salas wants to buy from Hart because she thinks that systems
> integration is only possible if we have all the equipment from the same
> vendor. Hogwash.
>

I also think this is a serious misunderstanding of technology and people
by Linda. These people are crooks. If not crooks, at least seriously
honesty challenged. Linda may not be able to find anybody else who is
willing to commit to all that Hart might promise. But Hart won't actually
commit in writing to anything, and others might have a much better
understanding of the real technical issues that Hart salesmen. They
might feel that it is too risky a business to be involved with a bunch
of flakes in Boulder County. We don't have a good reputation.
[|PT>]
[|PT>] That would be my hope. Hope that they think that we could be the
black hole that sucks in their reputation and crushes it. They can give us
what we want and get it certified - or walk away. They could make our
support costs astronomical, so that we drop using their solution.
Getting a new cert just for Boulder would be lunacy for them. The cost would
go way past any profit that they made here. However, what we want is what
anyone should want, and in the next few years they will learn this lesson.

We were a beta test site. Normally, people learn lessons from test runs.
Hart does not display having been educated. We are in their technology
toilet. They've pulled the chain and soon we will be on our way out with the
coriolis flow ... ah but to dream


> ------------------------------
<snip>
> BoCo has rented or leased elections equip in the past. It's nothing new.
In
> 03 we leased a Diebold scanner for the mail-ballot envelopes. Despite the
> hue and cry at the time, this device was not scanning ballots.

But then, the Diebold equipment probably wasn't required to run
software written by somebody else.
[|PT>]
[|PT>] No and these other scanners don't need to either as I explained
above - but just to be sure we are clear - the Hart Ballot Now system is
well suited to absentee and early ballots. This means mail-in ballots.
Ballot Now is not a portable system. Leave it where it is and use it for
mail-in ballots.

The scanners in precincts (remote) have less than zero to do with the Ballot
Now system. They have no connection whatsoever. Nada, nyet, zilch.


This does give me some hope that the County can rent, but not with
their current relationship of utterly servile dependency on Hart. They
need to develop some in-house understanding of the technology, or
maybe find a technical consultant who can take their side in hassles
with Hart, and maybe even write some code that solves some of the
known problems.
[|PT>]
[|PT>] and the report says that - get a consultant because their not even
asking the right questions.
You know what you know; you know what you don't know; and you don't know
what you don't know.


>
> What the ERC did say was RENT not lease. There is a huge difference, which
> appears to have been lost on the elections division.

Lots of people, myself included, understand very well the distinction
between rent and lease. That is why I specifically directed my
question toward rental. If County Elections Office people don't
understand, somebody from somewhere else in County gov't should
assigned to mentoring and monitoring them.
[|PT>]
[|PT>] Tom Davidson was the guy that was all over this. The county has a
procurement process that wasn't completely employed. Further, the practice
of using the vendor's boilerplate contracts must be revised. The county has
a slew of lawyers who write contractual agreements all day. They must have
all been busy defending the county against another land abuse lawsuit that
month. (I know they were)


> Buyers who cannot afford to drop a bundle at one time are invited to
lease.
> At the end of the lease they can pay off the remainder and own the
> equipment.
> Renters are checking things out. They are not buyers, yet. Or maybe
they'll
> never be buyers, just renters.
> Renting is way cheaper than leasing, and rental contracts more flexible
than
> leases.

This last statement is a bit of an exaggeration. Renting is way
cheaper IF you know your need is definitely short-term. By short-term,
I mean a short time in compared to the useful economic life of the
equipment.
[|PT>]
[|PT>] Yes - very short term - one election. A few months or even less. A
few to train with for a longer term and a bunch of scanners to actually use
when the time is nearer.
------------------------------------
It is very likely that anything in the way of computer
related equipment that one might choose to rent/lease/buy today, will
be obsolete in just a few years.  So, one should really consider
renting first. But, again can one find a rental supplier? You say
yes. I wonder. Whatever Diebold has to offer today will be obsolete
soon, maybe even decertified for new use. Why would they want to keep
in on their books when they know they will have to recognize a loss on
it soon?
[|PT>]
[|PT>] they do rent, they will have to rent. They will lease, they will do
whatever it takes to get market share. Between now and 06 things are going
to be fast and hard. Some will not survive.
-------------------------------

So I remain conflicted about near-term precinct level ballot scanning.
I hope it can be made to work, but it doesn't have a chance of working
if it is not a small part of a serious re-org of the elections office.


[|PT>] Understandable, given present circumstances.

Paul Tiger