Re: Hart system has no auditable report

[<stith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Neal --

Thanks for the on-the-ground reporting and analysis.

Two things:

[1] An historical pattern seems to be arising. Although his is not the
     first story of this sort -- and the point is not the last -- Ion 
Sancho's
     circumstance comes to mind. For various reasons, the handful of
     vendors who will or can do business with an election authority gets
     winnowed down to a few, maybe only one, and possibly ZERO!
     Not only does this scare the bejesus out of the powers that be,
     evoking surliness and secrecy and the opposite of sanity, it
     exposes a main flaw in relying on corrupt capitalism to supply
     democracy technology: the chances of actually having a vendor
     to supply election equipment can well become "slim" and "none".

     This I'll call the *Ion Principle*.

     The activist community can gain clout by recognizing the Ion
     Principle in the wild and working out its implications for action.
     Like in smart martial arts moves: you use existing motion.
     Maybe even a swift kick in the pants, down already greased rails.

[2] The short process description you provide is hugely problematic.
     Not actually very precise at all. I figure you know that. I know
     and sympathize with the problem. Every time you try to do a good
     thing and simplify things for general discussion, someone takes the
     simplification kinda too literally or as a complete description. In
     the ensuing conversation communication gets difficult, and everyone
    seems to get dumbed-down a notch.

    Of course the main idea here is that audits are distinct from recounts.

    I think your short sweet five-point list is a great start on making 
that
    distinction. We could all use a pithy, simple description of vote 
auditing.

    Also, because we have a law, the politics of its interpretation will
    inevitably involve conceptualizations (good and bad) of an audit.

    I call on our wider community of smart, verbal folks to work on this
    process description and come up with a collective version that fixes it 
up.
    Like Wiki.

    Just as one example, the logic of audits of the sort we're discussing
    cannot "confirm that the actual count worked properly", but rather
    estimate a probability that the actual vote count worked *improperly*.
    Those who think this is a hair-splitting distinction just don't 
understand.
    If we can bring accurate, yet short and sweet, descriptions of these 
concepts
    out into the general citizen community, we'll advance our cause.

    Most vote activists speak of an "auditable paper trail". As with the 
info in
    online wikipedia entries (links shown below), there is a halo 
assumption that
    "if ya got that, ya got the audit issue handled". But when one 
considers
    what knowledge an audit could and should create, or how audits might
    actually get accomplished, this is far from acceptable as a criterion 
for
    good democracy technology.

    For example: Is an audit of marks on paper (or some other medium for
    that matter) an audit of the actual count?  Or only an audit of the 
marks?
    How might "actual count" itself  properly be audited?



Kudos for your continuing great contributions.

Best regards,
Stith


FYI:

Here's a main wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting

Here's as close as wikipedia has it so far -- a stub:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Verified_Audit_Trail



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Neal McBurnett" <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "attendees" <attendees@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:54 AM
Subject: Hart system has no auditable report


> Summary:
>
> Hart said they expect over 40 counties in Colorado to use their
> system.  But they don't support the audits required under Colorado
> law.
>
> I think the major outcome of the demo for the Boulder RFP Evaluation
> Team (RFPET) yesterday was that the Hart system doesn't produce a
> report that can be audited.  We've reported this many times over the
> last year for the BallotNow system, and they couldn't provide one for
> the eSlate system either yesterday.  They say the county must do a
> recount instead.  But state law specifically requires an audit.
>
> To be a bit more precise, an audit requires something to be audited.
> The process must work something like this:
>
> 1: Count votes with the system.
>
> 2: Produce an auditable report, listing results for each race, for each
> eSlate device.
>
> 3: Randomly select devices and races to audit.
>
> 4: Hand-count the paper records of the races on the given devices
> (without telling the counters what the results should be).
>
> 5: Compare the numbers.
>
> But Hart can't produce the report noted in step 2.  Instead they did a
> recount, by taking the memory card from the device and running it thru
> their Tally software a second time.  That is a recount.
>
> But we need audits not recounts.  Audits confirm that the actual count
> worked properly.  They check the published election outcome.  Recounts
> are basically additional tests.  Recounts can be produce different
> results either because of bugs or manipulation.  We wrote the law in
> order to focus on audits, not recounts.
>
> Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
> Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60
>
>
>
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