RE: [Colorado Voter].2184 RE: Boulder County's counting crawls

["Harvie Branscomb" <harvie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I generally concur with Al Kolwicz on his deeper analysis below.  It is true
that there is no adequate mechanism for information flow about voting
systems, and to the extent that such a mechanism is in place it is too often
scuttled by those in positions of power and influence. Their actions
represented in the points below are taken at a real and tangible risk of
loss of the accuracy of our elections.  The problem of spurious marks is not
unexpected by those of us watching closely, and has been encountered before.
It is soluble by simple but time consuming human interception of any
machine's limited capability at vote interpretation.  

 

In the future we must redesign our system (laws, rules, common practice, and
equipment) with improved checks and remedies and perhaps more direct human
involvement.  But for now we must allow our existing checks in place to go
forward, even if it takes days to interpret and count the marks on the paper
ballots.  We have always recognized that the benefit of having a countable
record of voter intent depends on the ability and willingness to actually
count it.  While there are those who see benefits in simplicity and
efficiency in losing the human countable record of voter intent, and there
are also those who demand rapid results reporting,  I see only loss of
accuracy in those places.

 

Al says the spurious marks issue is not forgivable, but I see it  only as
foreseeable and some aspencts of it actually foreseen.  This very real issue
remains difficult to address under the currently popular presumption of the
fallibility of the human counting of votes by many election officials.
Naturally we should look for remedies involving an increase of human
involvement in the vote interpretation process.

 

Harvie Branscomb

970-9631369

harvie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

Harvie,

 

I have a different take on your question, "Why hasn't Boulder County Clerk
Hillary Hall heard about dust problems on her Hart Scanners?  I would
suggest that the reason is that there is no mechanism for this kind of
problem sharing to take place."

 

1.       The problem of spurious marks was detected by the State's Voting
System Certification Team.  A CONDITION OF USE was set up that would require
special manual pre-scanning treatment of all HART paper ballots.  At a
hearing, we attempted to protect this condition.  However, the powerful,
secret, Colorado County Clerks Association lobbied, using incomplete and
erroneous arguments, to protect the vendor and themselves from this
condition of use.   They persuaded the SOS to remove the condition of use.

 

2.      The architecture of all paper ballot vote counting systems certified
in Colorado is fatally flawed.  None of these systems provide exports of the
ballot images and the interpretation of each vote on each individual ballot.
Consequently, independent verification of vote interpretation is not
possible - not even by the Canvass Boards.

 

3.      The LAT is contrived and inadequate.  The procedures and materials
are idealized, and not at all representative of the real world.  And, in the
case of Boulder County, the Clerk contrived to exclude the people most
knowledgeable of the HART system from serving on the LAT team.  (Not to
sound like sour grapes, I was not permitted to serve.)

 

4.      Despite repeated requests that officials follow Colorado Statutes
and Rules, the County and the State have neglected to perform "acceptance
Tests" of the voting system.  The system test would include ballot
printers/vendors as well as every other component/subsystem.