Key government document altered
Denver, CO -- Somebody altered an official government document,
and the Secretary of State is being very quiet about it.
The altered document is the Certificate of Approval for Voting System Use for
the Hart InterCivic voting system. A copy resides on the Secretary of State
website, and it authorizes Colorado
counties to use the Hart voting system.
The certificate was issued on February 28, 2006 after what the state describes
as extensive testing of the Hart voting system.
Because of concerns regarding secret ballots, the certificate was issued with a
restriction. The use of serial numbers on paper ballots is forbidden.
“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are
hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado,
with the condition that the optional feature for putting a readable serial
number on the physical paper ballot will not be used by counties in Colorado.”
The alteration deletes the restriction that safeguards secret
ballots; it now says,
“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are
hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado.”
As soon as the alteration was discovered, CAMBER notified
the Secretary of State and asked for an
explanation.
“We can find no evidence that the Hart system was re-certified or
re-tested,” says Al Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER.
For the Secretary of State to change the system, Hart would have had apply for
certification, and the certification tests would have had to be re-run to
verify that the revised system meets all functional requirements, including the
secret ballot requirement .
“Serial numbered ballots are definitely not anonymous.” says
Kolwicz. “A voter can identify their own ballot; an absentee ballot
control system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which ballot; a
ballot-on-demand system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which
ballot; and provisional ballots are easily associated with their voter.”
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Al Kolwicz
CAMBER – Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election
Results
2867 Tincup
Circle
Boulder, CO 80305
303-494-1540
AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx
www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz
www.coloradovoter.blogspot.com
CAMBER is a dedicated group of
volunteers who are working to ensure that every voter gets to vote once, every
vote is counted once, and that every ballot is secure and anonymous.