Overview of the Political
Process
2/27/07
1. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires one accessible voting device per pollsite so voters with disabilities can vote independently without anyone directly assisting them and seeing their votes.
2. NY law bans lever machines as of 9/1/07, requires each county & NYC to choose new equipment:
· PBOS -- paper ballots to be marked by hand (or by ballot-marking devices for voters with disabilities or minority languages), and optical scanner machines in each polling place to check each ballot for correctness before it is cast and to print a tally at the end of the election day.
· DREs -- “Direct Recording Electronic” computer voting machines with a touchscreen, and a printer to print a receipt-like list of each voter’s choices for voters to verify before pressing “Cast My Ballot.” The printout then stays in a locked box inside the machine. NY law requires a voter-verifiable paper trail, but does not require paper tallies to match electronic tallies; only 3% of the paper will be spot-checked.
3. First: the State Board of Elections must certify new systems. Their current schedule says the list of certified systems will be ready in May. Then counties & NYC must select new equipment immediately.
4. In each county and in NYC, the County Election Commissioners will vote on what new equipment to select.
5. Contenders for NY state business as of 2/27/07: 2 OpScans and 3 DREs
6. Problems:
a. US Dept of Justice lawsuit against NYS in March, 2006: NY state settled it by promising to have new equipment in place by 2007.
b. Summit Meeting, Dec. 18, 2006, State Board of Elections and vendors: State Board said (1) all systems submitted for NYS certification have failed some tests, (2) all vendors are still submitting new software, forcing testing to begin all over again each time, and (3) no system fully complies with NYS requirements.
c. Ciber Testing Lab Scandal: Revealed by the NY Times, 1/4/07: Ciber, the federal lab hired by NY State to test equipment, is not itself certified by the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC). After Ciber and the EAC refused to give NY any info, NY threatened legal action. New documents show that Ciber may not have done much testing prior to certifying more than 70% of evoting machines in the USA.
d. Ciber’s NY State contract: not canceled yet as of 2/6/07, but all testing has stopped.
e. New equipment for elections in 2007: unlikely because there is not enough time left.
f. New target is 2009. The state association of county election commissioners voted in Jan. 2007 to work for implementation of new systems in 2009 to avoid chaos in 2008’s big-turnout presidential election.
7. The national trend
is from DREs to OpScan due to DRE
malfunctions (lost votes, vote switching on the screen, computer crashes,
failure to boot up), huge cost overruns, voter distrust, and many lawsuits.
Computers are honest and dishonest, competent and error-prone, just like the people who make and use them. International election standards are based on observation of voting, vote handling and counting -- not trust in computers.
Material prepared by www.wheresthepaper.org, contact Teresa
Hommel, admin at wheresthepaper.org
More Info:
www.wheresthepaper.org
www.nyvv.org
www.lwvny.org
www.votersunite.org
www.votetrustus.org