Re: RFPET Recommendation

[Neal McBurnett <neal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 04:07:42PM -0800, kellen carey wrote:
>    Help me out here:

Yeah - confusing stuff.  I wanted to get the RFPET report itself out
quickly, and made some brief remarks in the process which can be
interpreted multiple ways.  Here is some more clarification.

>    1) Is the Hart system auditable or not?   (Bo says it is, Neal says it
>    isn't.)

I think the system, when used _as designed_, is not auditable because
it does not produce an auditable report, as clarified at

 http://www.coloradovoter.net/moin.cgi/ManualCountAudit

I also think, and told the team, as Bo points out, that if the clerk
goes to a lot of extra effort, and produces a tally report for EACH of
the hundreds of individual memory cards from individual DREs AND from
each of the hundreds of batches of BallotNow ballots, and then exports
all that data to spreadsheets, that the clerk can probably produce an
auditable report.  If the totals from that report match the totals
from the offical election results, you can probably get some extra
confidence from an audit of the unofficial report.

Whether that would be an audit that meets the requirements of the law
is something that would depend on the details of the procedures and
some extra thinking.

The RFP Evaluation Team wrote, in their report, page 5, item 5 (c):

 The team asserts that a post-election audit (which the team
 recognizes is different from a recount) of the E-Slate system, while
 cumbersome, is possible. In addition to existing statutory audit
 requirements, the team recommends that the Clerk seek approval from
 the Secretary of State to perform such an audit. The intent of this
 audit is to provide the public with reasonable assurance that the
 votes cast on the system were counted accurately.

I'm glad to see Bo's assertion below that "The recommendations say
that a real audit must be and *can* be performed" since that is a
rather stronger requirement than what I just quoted.  And I note again
that as I understand it, So to audit the eSlate system, as this
requires, the clerk also would have to include the BallotNow ballots
in the auditable report.  That is one of the things I told the team
they would have to require, but it didn't make it verey clearly into
the report.

But I was really asking the team to require that the clerk make sure
all that can happen before considering the system.  The obvious way to
do that is to ask Hart to make it so, but they apparently didn't do
that.

>    2) Closely related, is the Hart system verifiable? 

No.  It is proprietary, it relies on other proprietary software
(including Windows?), the testing labs that review parts of the code
have a terrible track record, etc.

>    3) Is the vote tabulating process transparent to average citizens?

No, as noted above.

>    4) If I'm interpreting Bo right, Hart charges the same amount to lease its
>    equipment and software for one year that it sells it for.  Uhhhh, no
>    further questions, Your Honor.

Another problem is that our choices were reduced from three to one
because of the way the RFP has been handled so far.  But there is
still time to redo it and try again, if the County Commissioners do
the right thing.

Bo says

 > buy it for the same price and then at least have something you
 > could sell

Was this actually discussed?  Or is that just an off-the-cuff thought?
Would Hart support and service 2nd hand equipment?  Would any one buy
it?

Bo left out the suggestion I made.  Why not at least try it?
To wit:

 We haven't seen the price yet, but the county should offer the same
 possibility to other bidders and start the RFP process over, with
 specific invites to ballot marking vendors and demands that the
 Secretary of State should certify ballot marking equipment like
 other states do.

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60