Iowa Voters

When the county election officers prepare their equipment they run test ballots through to see if the machines still can read and count. Since few counties actually do their own ballot and scanner configuration, this testing is the only way to know if its been done correctly by the subcontractor. If the testing is inadequate, you can get Pottawattamie’s problem. If you don’t have a voter-verified paper trail, you are screwed.

Thankfully the Secretary of State has now proposed rules for these test ballots. The rules require the testing of every touch screen being used, rather than just one per precinct. They also allow “Members of the public, working with a person designated by the commissioner, [to] provide a written test plan and test the operation of the DRE voting machines.”

You should support this aspect of the new rules during the public comment period which runs only until Tuesday. Contact Sandy Steinbach at sos@sos.state.ia.us to endorse thorough test ballot rules.

Updated Below–

Two years ago Pocahontas county auditor Margene Bunda vowed to buy a new voting system that had a paper trail when she spent her HAVA money. And she did, sort of.

We wound up with paper ballots AND vapor ballots (with no voter-verified paper trail) in every precinct. Hmmm.

Then we had our first election on the new gadgetry in June. The pollworkers were pretty obviously steering the voters to the paperless vote manipulating device called a touchscreen. When it was over, Pocahontas county had a high rate of paperless voting.

Today in our uncontested school board race the only paper ballot in sight hung on the front door. It was the sample ballot. Inside the poll only the touchscreen was available. A $4,000 computer to tally one uncontested race.

Meanwhile in Maryland, where they also use only paperless touchsreens, no polls were able to open in the whole of Montgomery county. Someone forgot to send all the pieces out to the polls, so the gadgets were unuseable until mid-morning. Here’s an eyewitness account.

Maryland could be our future, too.

Update: Here is another eyewitness report from a different Maryland county with different problems. It is by a computer scientist who is a poll worker.

Last week Secretary Culver trumpetted his plan to accept email ballots from military voters but neglected to mention that email ballots are not secret ballots. Now his press spokesman adds that Iowa does not even recommend email balloting. They merely allow it.

Here’s spokesman Casey Sinnwell at the Iowa Secretary of State’s office:

It is important to understand that the email voting option for active duty military personnel involves, at the choice of the voter, the express waiver by that voter of ballot secrecy.

It remains the policy of this office that active duty military personnel should make use of the standard mail-in absentee ballot voting process wherever possible.

If it was “important to understand” this fact, how was it omitted from the original press release?

While most of Iowa’s press repeated the AP story linked above, the U of Iowa’s student paper (where I once worked!) actually contacted a medic in Iraq:

Spc. Jason Weirather, an Iowa National Guard medic stationed in Iraq, said, as a soldier, he finds this new method more convenient, but, as a civilian, he is leery about the possible risks involved. . . .

“I’m wondering what’s stopping some nefarious person from reading my ballot or worse, changing my vote.”

The 25-year-old said if he votes overseas, he will continue to use the Postal Service because he doesn’t fully trust that e-mail will be secure.

The secret ballot has been a key part of our elections for a hundred years. With the Secretary of Defense calling his critics “appeasers”, soldiers might want to hold on that secrecy

The Iowa Secretary of State yesterday published proposed new rules for counties to follow when they prepare voting machines for the next election. The rules detail what test ballots must be used and also split the pre-election testing of the machine into two parts. Ballot scanners and touchscreen terminals are treated separately. These rules look like an effort to prevent Pottawattamie’s error from recurring.

The rules also deal with “inactive” voters, paper trails, recounts, and election day equipment failures.

But here’s the most important part:

Any interested person may make written suggestions or comments on these proposed amendments through September 19, 2006. Written suggestions or comments should be directed to Sandy Steinbach, Director of Elections, First Floor, Lucas State Office Building, Des Moines, Iowa 50319.
Persons who want to convey their views orally should contact the Secretary of State’s office at (515)281–5823 or visit the Secretary of State’s offices on the first floor of the Lucas State Office Building. Requests for a public hearing must be received by 4:30 p.m. on September 18, 2006.

So speak now. Or stick around for observations that I will post, and then speak your piece. Public comment periods are the guts of democracy in a bureaucracy. I’ll bet you can comment by email if you put “public comment to Sandy Steinbach” in the subject line. This address appears on the state department’s website :
sos@sos.state.ia.us

You can find the proposals in the Administrative Bulletin here, but you must look way down the page for the Secretary of State (721) portion. It begins at their page 307 and continues to 313.

It must make a difference who the auditor is when a county faces optional paperless voting. The rate at which voters used the paperless machines when perfectly good paper ballots were at hand varied ENORMOUSLY from one county to another in the June primary.

In the average county with both paper ballots and paperless touchscreen terminals about 27% of the voters were suckered into using the less desirable paperless method, according to a survey by Iowans for Voting Integrity.

In Scott County, where Karen Fitzsimmons is auditor, only 1.7% of the votes were cast on touchscreens. Fitzsimmons wins the prize for keeping this technology in its place.

On the other hand, in Emmet county,where Beverly Juhl is auditor, 75% of the voters used the touchscreen. That’s the highest rate in the state.

How can this be? Maybe you think the big urban eastern Iowa county (Scott) just has a different culture from the small rural northwest Iowa county (Emmet). Forget that explanation: right next door to Emmet county the voters of Dickinson county used the touchscreen only 5% of the time. I’m pretty sure the cultures of these neighboring counties are similar.

In general the less populated counties saw a higher percentage of the vote go paperless. In bigger counties a voter may have to wait in line to use the only touchscreen. In deserted precincts like Laurens, the touchscreens had the appeal of a new toy. Still, some rural counties–like Mills and Decatur–kept the touchscreen totals to 5% or 6%. I’m guessing that has something to do with their auditors, Carol Robertson and William Greenwood.

Actually I tried to find out what auditor Juhl and her neighboring auditor Nancy Reiman of Dickinson county had to say about the big difference between their two counties. Neither responded to email inquiries.

This is a long story. It has mostly played out elsewhere on the web. Since I played a small part and since it involves Iowa’s election director Sandy Steinbach (see here ironically), I think it is worth posting for Iowa readers. It is about the programming of voting machines that we use in Iowa; about a lawsuit in California, and about correspondence with the Iowa office of the Secretary of State. Here goes:

It all started on the web when John Washburn posted some emails at his website. The emails came to light because of legal action in California regarding how that state had decided to approve the use of Diebold voting machines. But these emails refer to the other major voting machine company–Omaha’s ES & S–whose wares are used in Pottawattamie, Polk, Johnson, and other counties.

The emails are written by voting machine examiners for the National Association of State Election Directors(NASED). They worked under the direction of Sandy Steinbach, then chair of the NASED Voting Systems Board and long time election director for Iowa. Steinbach has praised their work:

“Brit Williams, Paul Craft and Steve Freeman are my heroes. These three men are the heart and soul of the voting system testing program and they do this work for free. None of them has a salaried position. They work as consultants and their time is valuable.

One of the emails indicates that there is virtually no way for a user of ES & S voting equipment to know whether the proper software is running on the equipment.

Every time pests like me cast doubt on computerized voting devices, the defenders say, “Don’t worry, the software has been certified by an independent laboratory,” thus making it sound like it has earned the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, or something. The point of the email published by Washburn is that the certified software is altered every time it is used. Thus it cannot claim to be certified any longer and it is virtually impossible for the user to know what has been changed.

This alteration occurs during the creation of every ballot that is prepared for use on ES & S devices. It wouldn’t have to work like this, but the oracles of Omaha designed it this way, so it does.

When Washburn posted these once private emails back in May, he concluded that the ES & S system always operates on uncertified software, and thus always in violation of the standards that supposedly protect us from vote manipulation by the machinery. His conclusion was sent to the NASED president and to Steinbach and others, but they did not acknowledge receipt.

Eventually a response was wrung from Iowa Secretary of State press agent Casey Sinnwell. It is posted here, and it addresses the question, “Does ES&S routinely use uncertified software to run elections?” Sinnwell’s answer is No, but to be sure you must be able to stand on your head and swallow swords while reading heiroglyphics. Or, as he put it–

To verify the software requires using a master copy and a copy of the election definition, then creating a reference copy of the specific election program to compare against the version used in the election. The technique is slightly more difficult because some EEPROM burner/readers create or fill blank areas with different characters and the sections need to be checked to verify that they are true fills. However, the technique has been used in Florida and other locations and the version of the software verified. . .

The problem is that the ES&S system can not be verified with a simple comparison, . . .

I was not reassured by this, so I wrote back to Sinnwell asking about the description of his method as “difficult” and “has been used in Florida” and “cannot be verified with a simple comparison”. I asked if it was fair to assume that county election officials would not be able to routinely make this comparison for their various ballots and thus would not know what the hell was actually going on in their vote counting gadgets. Sinnwell has not responded.

Washburn then went on to create a glorious picture of what this means. His comparison of ballot preparation with paint mixing leads even a technophobe to understand why it would be so difficult to tell whether the vote counting program has been corrupted in the process of creating the ballot. He says that a program (green paint) that is prepared by mixing the ballot information (blue paint) and the certified program (yellow paint) will yield a different shade of green for each ballot. But the bystanding auditor cannot unmix the paint to see if the proper portions of blue and yellow were used. This gem about 47 shades of green is hidden in the lower part of this post.

Slogging thru all this analysis is work. Probably no one but the auditors themselves has the motivation to puzzle it all out. But as Cerro Gordo’s auditor Ken Kline (a user of ES &S, by the way) once told me, “I didn’t get elected to do an ‘easy’ job.” Amen.

The Register reports that Polk County recorder Brien has put his money where his mouth is. He’s posted $10,000 to get a recount of his apparently decisive defeat. He’s hoping lightning struck twice on June 6, since he knows the Pottawattamie county recorder and other candidates also were “defeated” in initial returns that were actually erroneous.

The Pottawattamie returns were so egregious that they were noticed right away. So far Brien seems to be the only one who suspects error in Polk’s results, and he admits he has no evidence for his suspicion. But his recount will provide us with the sort of audit that should routinely happen when machines do the counting. Too bad he has to pay for it himself.

Pottawattamie County has received an open records (Iowa Code Chapter 22) request regarding its erroneous early election returns for the June 6 primary. You may recall that county auditor Marilyn Jo Drake didn’t believe the numbers reported by her voting machines, so she counted all the ballots by hand the next day. She thus proved the machine counts were incorrect.

This week John Washburn, a Wisconsin software tester and author of a paper on how to create test ballots, made his request for 188 items. He believes the machines were not adequately tested prior to the election. He has requested the election definition software file for each precinct’s scanner, the deck of test ballots used for each scanner, the sample ballots that hung on the wall in each precinct, and the results tape printed out in each of the various polling places as the staff tried to wrap up their work after 9 pm June 6.

He failed to ask for documents that would show those poll workers saying, “@h,M?G@D”, “~onofab!t(h”, or even “WTF?” when they saw the tape alleging that Sal Mohammed had won so many votes in their very own precincts. Open records requests are such dry business.

Drake’s office told Washburn they would gather the requested materials as quickly as they can.

Just a year ago, with Culver, Blouin, and Fallon already in the race,Democratic state senator Michael Gronstal was contemplating a run for Governor. But it didn’t work out.

Instead Gronstal organized three quarters of the Democrats in the state legislature to join him in a simultaneous endorsement of Mike Blouin. But that didn’t work out either. Blouin came in second.

On June 17 Gronstal arrived at the Democratic party state convention, expecting to hear Chet Culver celebrate his victory, only to be greeted with picketers on the sidewalk carrying signs aimed right at him. (The signs concerned possible override of a vetoed bill on eminent domain.)

Senator Gronstal probably wasn’t feeling much appreciation as he sat with three other members of the Pottawattamie delegation in the mostly empty chairs before the convention began. It was then that I approached the group looking for assistance.

Wisconsin software tester John Washburn is planning a public documents request in his study of what went wrong in the Pottawattamie ballot counting on June 6. Washburn needs a helper in Council Bluffs to collect the documents and mail them to Wisconsin.

When I stated my request for such a courier, Gronstal promptly offered to do it. Great! A top legislative leader will soon have his hands on the documents that show what went wrong in his own county’s election. Maybe this will help us get verified voting in all Iowa counties.

If Gronstal can get that done, he’ll at least have my appreciation.

Western Iowa’s Congressman Steve King has helped stall the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. King wants to remove a provision that requires ballots be prepared in other languages if more than 5% of the voters in the jurisdiction routinely speak the other language.

This probably doesn’t happen in his district. He says it is an unfunded mandate and a divisive practice that runs counter to the melting pot theory of American history. Eighty Representatives joined in King’s effort.

One must be a citizen to vote. And to become a citizen one must show proficiency in English. So why do any voters need non-English ballots? Judiciary chairman Sensenbrenner points out that anyone BORN in the USA is a citizen, even if born to non-citizen parents or Indian or Alaskan native parents who don’t speak English. He says most of the voters who don’t speak English were born here. So this is not a case of pandering to foreigners unwilling to learn the dominant language. It is a case of accommodating our citizens who have the freedom to speak whatever language they want.

Thus opponents of current hispanic immigration have joined old racists of the South to derail one of the proudest pieces of federal legislation—the bill that ended literacy tests and other roadblocks to voting. House Republicans never bring up a bill unless it is supported by more than 50% of the Republican members. That appears to be the bump in the once smoothly paved road to renewal of the VRA.

How bizarre! Two county recorders ousted by newcomers in two elections run on the same type of voting equipment on June 6?

Well, no. We know the Pottawattamie recorder actually won his election. The Pottawattamie people saw their mistake on election night. It affected every race on the ballot. It was easy to spot, perhaps because long shot Sal Mohammed was also getting lots of votes when he got so few in every other county.

The ballot scanners had been set up incorrectly.

But now Polk County’s recorder is claiming his defeat may be explained the same way. Why this claim took over two weeks to surface is only one of the mysteries here. Another is whether bad blood between the defeated (?) recorder and the county auditor may be affecting the call for a recount.

Luckily both counties had paper ballots to re-examine. Polk County auditor Mauro has always said it is foolish to run an election without paper ballots that would enable him to “re-create” the election.

Given a choice between the familiar paper ballots and the exotic vote-manipulating devices known as touchscreens, what did Iowa voters do on June 6? How many voted on paper and how many tapped their choices to the man (?) behind the Diebold screen and then left the polling place without knowing whether their vote had been recorded anywhere?

Soon we will know, thanks to the efforts of Iowan’s for Voting Integrity. They are asking 56 county auditors for the numbers of votes cast on paper as well as on the touchscreens. Those counties offered both voting systems in each precinct. Early responses indicate wide variation between counties, from a low of 13% voting the paperless way to a high of nearly 75%.

In the other counties voters have no choice. Some have all paper ballots while others have no paper ballots at the polls.

The Secretary of State does not collect this information. Unfortunately some auditors have balked at answering the survey.

by Sean Flaherty

If you live in Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District (or for that matter, anywhere else) and you are concerned about election integrity, thank Congressman Leonard Boswell (contact information). Boswell became H.R. 550’s 191st co-sponsor last week (list of co-sponsors). H.R. 550, as is often said on this blog, is hands down the strongest election integrity bill yet proposed in the U.S. Congress.

Susan McAvoy, Rep. Boswell’s legislative director, said in a telephone call today that Boswell has watched with growing concern the voting problems across the country, and sees an urgent need for Congress to act to ensure that our election results are accurate. Another important fact: “It’s a bipartisan bill,” she said, and added that there is a realistic chance of it reaching the floor.

It is indeed bipartisan, with a cosponsor list that includes Republicans as diverse as Appropriations Committee power Frank Wolf of Virginia, Iowa’s moderate Jim Leach, and the very conservative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania. The bill would govern federal elections only. It would require a voter-verified paper record of every vote and establish that the paper record would also serve as that official ballot in a recount. It would also require a hand audit of at least 2% of the precincts in the nation, including one precinct per county. Under 550, voting system software would have to be publicly disclosed and available for any citizen to review, and no conflicts of interest between voting machine companies and voting machine testing laboratories would be allowed.

The bill continues to build momentum, gaining 23 new co-sponsors in the last three months. It still needs more support, so if you live in Mr. King’s, Mr. Latham’s, or Mr. Nussle’s district, put the pressure on.

The Democratic candidate for Secretary of State has run a good many elections as Polk County auditor. He has developed one good habit that election protection activists want everyone to adopt: he audits his own ballot counting machines.

He has already begun work on his audit of the June 6 primary, he said Saturday at the Democrat’s state convention.

His practice is to wait until the official work is all done and the time for demanding recounts is past. During that time no one touches a thing. Only when it is clear that he can do no harm by running an in-house investigation. . . .only then does he say, “Let’s see how accurate our scanners were.” He selects a precinct at random and looks at the ballots the old fashioned way–with his eyes. He did not say if he makes any public announcement of his findings.

All counties do pre-election testing of their machines for accuracy. But Pottawattamie showed that such tests are often inadequate.

This sort of auditing is what auditors ought to do in every county. It is one of the goals of voting machine critics. It would be required by federal legislation that now has 191 co–sponsors.

Mauro already does it. Good for him. Is it done in any other county?

Pottawattamie county auditor Marilyn Jo Drake has been praised on a Wisconsin blog by software tester John Washburn.  Here’s some of what he had to say:

Congratulations to Marilyn Jo Drake

You may not have heard of Marilyn Jo Drake, yet. Marilyn Jo Drake is the County Auditor for Pottawatomie County, Iowa. In Wisconsin County Clerk would be the analogous title.

This last Tuesday (June 6, 2006), Marilyn Jo Drake decided an accurate election was more important than a convenient election. Marilyn Jo Drake had computer-generated numbers conveniently availble to her. Instead Ms. Drake report actual vote totals to the public in lieu of these computer-generated numbers which were masquerading as vote totals.

Making this right, but inconvenient descision has cost her much embarassment, time, and money.

She had to tell candidates and the press at 11:00 pm election night there would be no results that night. Candidates had to go to bed without knowing if they won or lost in the primary. Poor babies. . . . .

On her own authority she performed an audit of a precinct (the absentee ballots were effectively Precinct Zero) to determine if the voting machines were counting correctly.

She determined from this audit, the machine counts for Precinct Zero (the absentee ballots) were manifestly incorrect.

She then went public, immediately. . . .

She then executed an audit of the machine programing for the other 48 precincts of Pottawatomie County, Iowa.

As a result of the other 47 audits Marilyn Jo Drake now has vote totals for Potawatomie County, Iowa instead of convenient, computer-generated numbers masquerading as votes totals for Potawatomie County, Iowa.

Marilyn Jo Drake has a heroic character.

She accepted the uncomfortable truth over the pleasant, convenientand plausible lie. Her life would have been so much simplier today had she acceped the lie and stated Pottawatomie County, Iowa election were “problem free”. Instead, she chose accuracy over expediency.

I fear Marilyn Jo Drake may find she is one of only a hand full of election officials in the nation willing to choose this difficult option. But, I do know this, it may be a small club (3 so far), but being a member is worth it.

The original post is at washburnsworld.blogspot.com.