Victory: In New York - no DREs

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-Mohandas Gandhi

I'm pleased to announce that after five years of hard work on the part of voting integrity advocates, New York State has rejected DREs and approved only the Automark and the Sequoia ImageCast scanner/marker for use in 2008 polling places. This momentous decision by the State Board of Elections virtually guarantees that New York State will vote on paper ballots and ballot scanners when it finally replaces lever machines in 2009.

Those of you who were with us at the beginning five years ago know what an enormous victory this is. When I first started traveling, presenting and advocating in New York, election officials, political parties, and the media
assumed that New York State was going to be a DRE state. Precinct scanners were not under discussion, and only DREs were offered by vendors. Our experience over these five years reflects the truth of Gandhi's statement - indeed we were ignored, then laughed at, then fought bitterly by the voting machine vendors and their supporters in the election establishment. But finally, truth has prevailed, and what seemed like an impossible dream in 2003 has been made real by our hard work - New York State will be a paper ballot state.

Just yesterday, it seemed like high powered lobbyists had scuttled our hopes once again as they maneuvered to keep DREs in the mix even though they were in clear violation of New York's laws (see entire blog)

New York board makes voting machine decision
Jan 25, 2008 - The state Board of Elections on Thursday approved more accurate, modern voting machines accessible to the disabled that must be ready for the fall elections. - Valerie Bauman, The Associated Press Read More

More News

New York chooses new voting machines  |  State board makes voting machine decision  |  New York picks new voting machines for handicapped  |  State pick optical-scan machines

End the Veil of Secrecy

On January 4, 2007, the New York State Board of Elections voted to suspend Ciber from further testing of voting systems submitted to the New York State board for certification pending a thorough review of Ciber’s accreditation status. We also addressed requests to both the Election Assistance Commission and to Ciber for all of the relevant documents and reports concerning Ciber’s application to the EAC for accreditation as a testing laboratory.

Much to our surprise (well, maybe I’m not really surprised), EAC has still not provided any of the background documentation that we have requested. While giving lip service acknowledgement of our request, Tom Wilkey, now Executive Director of the US EAC and former Executive Director of the New York State Board of Elections, has completely stonewalled us. The New York State board felt compelled to make a formal Freedom of Information Act request. Mr. Wilkey’s only response so far is that the EAC is reviewing the issue and is deciding how to respond.

This failure to provide relevant information to a state agency, the first in the country to require testing to the 2005 standards, is truly outrageous and scandalous. Not only does it further delay New York’s efforts to come into compliance with the Help America Vote Act, it seriously prejudices the five voting system vendors who have made such a substantial investment in trying to obtain certification to the rigorous standards set by New York. In addition to requiring compliance with VVSG 2005, New York law requires a voter verifiable paper audit trail, prohibits devices or functionality potentially capable of internet, radio or wireless data communication, requires escrow of all software including source codes and authorizes disclosure in court proceedings; our regulations require full disclosure of all political contributions by vendors and their executives and set several other standards that are more rigorous than the VVSG.

While there is general agreement at the New York State Board that we should be looking to the EAC to assist and guide us in our investigation, we also made a formal request to Ciber for the same information. After all, they do hold a $3 million contract from our agency. There has been nothing but similar stonewalling from Ciber. Ciber’s last communication regarding our information request was that they were trying to co-ordinate a response with the EAC.

What’s going on here? Both the EAC and the unaccredited testing lab are refusing to open the curtain that hides their soiled laundry. Co-ordination of the response suggests that we are only going to receive a laundered version of the facts.

I have also become increasingly annoyed with Ciber’s use of the label “confidential competition-sensitive” on reports that they have prepared for our agency at our expense. You may recall that in November I circulated for comments Ciber’s first draft of their report to explain New York’s interpretation of the exceptions to the exemption from testing of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS)software that is used in the voting machine itself as opposed to election management software that does not generate code used in the actual voting process. (Yes, “exception to the exemption” is a double negative that means that the COTS source code must be tested in those cases.)

Ciber was apparently miffed that I dared to subject the advice that they furnished to New York to public scrutiny. They added the “confidential competition sensitive” label to the second draft. I objected and requested that they remove the label. Ciber said they’d think about it, but ignored my request. When I received the final document that had been approved by both Ciber and our independent security review consultants, New York State Technical Enterprise Corp. (NYSTEC), I insisted that I be allowed to make the document public. Ciber balked. When I renewed what had become demands, Ciber’s attorney—yes their attorney—revised the technical report that the “experts” at Ciber and NYSTEC had determined to be final and said that he would not object to release of that report. (I have distributed that report, known as COTS Testing Version 4 to many). I then asked for an explanation why Version 3, the “final” report was still labeled confidential. I also gave formal notice that I would ask the commissioners to release the report. Last night Ciber’s in-house attorney wrote me that he agreed that there was nothing in the “final” report that was properly labeled competition sensitive. The New York commissioners voted the make the Version 3 “final” COTS report public today. I will send copies of Version 3 to the technical blogs and anyone else who requests it. I am still distressed, however, at Ciber’s efforts to stiffle discussion of the issue by improperly claiming confidentiality.

At today’s meeting of the New York State elections commissioners, while everyone deplored the stonewalling by EALC and Ciber, I requested authority to issue a subpoena to Ciber for all of the documents that we have requested. Republican Commissioner Helena Donohue blocked the subpoena by arguing that we should give Ciber additional time to respond to our request voluntarily. She said that she would reconsider issuing a subpoena at our next meeting scheduled for February 7.

In view of the collaboration between the EAC and Ciber, I am determined that we should not accept partial disclosure. New York should take a stand to end the veil of secrecy that shrouds the testing process.

Douglas A. Kellner
Co-Chair
New York State Board of Elections

Donate here > to Save our Vote!

NYVV has worked tirelessly ensuring that the right choices are made for voters, not vendors. With a new legislative session beginning this January, we’ll make our voices heard in Albany, pushing for new legislation to adopt a single statewide paper ballot based voting system, and taking the voting machine decision out of the hands of unaccountable election commissioners.

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The Word

The Stephen Colbert report has this important word - which ends in "Diebold".

view here

The List

The State Board of Elections has circulated this letter to election commissioners. It reports which systems have qualified for the first round of certification testing. Inclusion in Round 1 testing is crucial as it is unlikely that systems tested in Round 2 will be certified in time for the counties to select them by the January 5 deadline.

The list is a surprisingly short given how many systems were originally submitted. And the two DRE systems which have made the cut are the ones that are highly favored by many officials around the state. Nevertheless, it is good news that all 3 scanner systems have made the cut.

These five systems will be included in Round 1 certification testing:

• Sequoia Advantage L (DRE)
• Liberty Vote (DRE)
• Diebold Accuvote OS (OpScan)
• ES&S M100 and Automark (OpScan)
• Sequoia Optech Eagle (OpScan)

The following systems did not make the cut due to incomplete submissions:

• Avante Optical Vote Trakker
• Precise Voting Touch Tone (DRE)
• Populex Digital Paper Ballot (Ballot Marker)
• Open Voting Solutions Open Scan (Opscan)

15 States that are/will soon be exclusively OpScan - AL, CT, ID, MI, MN, MT, NE, NH, NM, ND, OK, OR, RI, SD, VT. (for accessibility they do not use DREs -- they chose either ballot-marking devices such as the Automark, or a system such as vote-by-phone such as the IVS Inspire)

4 States that are mostly OpScan - AZ (primary voting system is OpScan; DREs are used in most counties for accessibility only; two or three counties use Automark)
IL (OpScan in most counties, some DREs for accessibility, some counties with Automark)
WY (20 counties use OpScan with Automark; 3 counties use DREs with VVPAT for accessibility only but OpScan is their primary voting system)
NC (76 out of 100 counties use OpScan)

12 States with one or more "OpScan only" counties AR, CA, IN, IA, KS, MS, MO, PA, TX, VA, WA, WV

3 States that will probably remain OpScan only, or will have DREs with a paper trail for accessibility only (purchases not yet complete): MA, ME, WI

2 States still unknown (purchases not yet complete): NY, TN

Comment: Despite the misunderstanding of some states that HAVA required DREs, a number of states have increased their use of OpScan rather than decreased it. For example, Buncombe County in North Carolina recently decided to sell its ES&S iVotronic DREs despite having just purchased them -- they used them in one election and decided to switch to the Automark paper-ballot-marker. There are also some states or counties that use paper ballots that are hand-counted but the list has not been compiled yet.

Electronic Voting in New York Movie on Ebay

BOUGHT AND SOLD--Electronic Voting in New York. The director says: " I screened BOUGHT AND SOLD last weekend at the NYVV meeting near Ithaca-- and the reaction was visceral. ... After viewing it, League of Woman Voters New York, NYVV and ARISE members all decided to purchase multiple copies of the DVD to show throughout the state as way to bring the issue directly to County Legislatures by way of voting constituents-- The tactic is for constituents to tell their county legislators to look at the video and start asking financial questions to the election commissioners. I'll say more about that at the meeting on Wednesday."

Ebay entry

The Princeton Report

We finally have an "Independent Testing Authoristy" that knows how to test ... and guess what they discovered? Diebold TSX touchscreen voting is very, very insecure. This voting machine can be hacked in a minute or two with a screwdriver and a memory card carrying vote-switching code. Full report here

On Electronic Voting: We Were Always Right, They Were Always Wrong...

Brad Friedman
On November 20, 2004, in an article about those of us concerned about what happened in the Presidential Election, the New York Times wrote that such concerns were little more than "the conspiracy theories of leftwing bloggers." What a difference a year and a half makes.

In this recent NY Times we find this headline, "New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems". The "fears," of course, aren't "new" at all. The article covers the latest -- and most stunning -- security breach yet discovered in electronic voting machines. This time, it's a "feature" that Diebold has implemented on every touch-screen voting machine in the country. A "feature" to make it easier for them (and apparently every fraudster and/or partisan and/or terrorist in the world) to change the operating software in about one minute's time with nobody noticing and with no password necessary. continued ...