County mulls 'touchy' subject
By:Colleen O'Brien    Pearland Journal   08/25/2005
 

  
Just how safe is your touch-screen digital vote?
Does it get recorded correctly? Can the code be manipulated? What if the voting machine breaks down, or worse, switches the vote before your very eyes? How do you conduct an accurate audit? There's a lot of controversy, and a lot of taxpayer's money, whirling around the subject. Fortunately, both sides of the political aisle are behind securing the voting process, including having a paper trail.
"It's a real complicated issue," Charles Crook, Brazoria County Purchasing Agent, said last week as county election officials met to discuss and view voting machine proposals. "We've been looking at a host of manufacturers for over a year, including ES&S and Hart." Hart InterCivic, based in Austin, Texas, had their contract with Hawaii cancelled last year, after another competitor challenged the bid. Sheryl Lee Nagata of Hawaii's State Department of Commerce & Consumer Affairs, said, as reported online in the HonoluluAdvertiser.com (Oct. 22, 2004), that Hart "didn't have the required three years of experience with electronic voting systems at the time the contract was issued." Tom Hick's investment firm, Stratford Capital Partners, is a major investor in Hart InterCivic. Hicks was among the group of investors who had purchased Bush's Texas Rangers.
"We're trying to get ready for federal mandates as of January 1, 2006." Crook indicated that his office posted a proposal online over a year ago, at the Texas Marketplace. "We have a purchasing site as well," Crook said. "Sequoia chose not to bid, and Diebold withdrew. AccuPoll, who sent representatives to Angleton to show us their machinery, actually is a Johnny-Come-Lately bidder. We can purchase off a State of Texas contract."
At issue, Chet Noblett, an executive vice president of AccuPoll, told Brazoria County election officials, is that voting machines in Texas are 1990 standard, and need to be 2002 standard, by January 1, 2006. "You need to be ahead-of-the curve. Believe me, paper trails are coming. And in addition, use of a voting system on and after January 1, 2006 that has not been qualified under the 2002 FEC Voting System Standards could be a violation of federal law," Noblett explained, quoting from HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) guidelines.
History of HAVA
When HAVA was created in 2002, it encouraged states to replace punch card and lever voting machines and required:
- voters to show ID before voting
- states to provide provisional ballots for voters whose registration status is unclear when they arrive to vote
- states to provide a way for those with impaired vision or hearing to cast a secret ballot
- states to make polling locations and voting machines accessible to voters with physical disabilities
- voting machines to allow voters to verify ballots before they are cast
- that voters be able to correct a mistake or leave a blank, i.e., not cast a vote in a particular contest
- that voters be notified if they "misvote," i.e., cast votes for two different candidates running for the same office. Voters must also be told if a misvote will void their ballot.
- voting systems to leave a record that can be audited
voting systems to leave a permanent paper record that can be used as an official record should a recount become necessary
- states, in some cases, to provide ballots for voters who don't speak English
- states to create and maintain electronic voter registration databases and to improve efforts to remove ineligible voters from the registration rolls
- states to offer sample ballots for voters to review before the date of the election
- absentee voters to provide copies of IDs or an ID number for voter verification, but states must maintain the secrecy of the vote
Voting System Standards
One of the working parts of the HAVA engine is the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The FEC adopted, in 2002, Voting System Standards. These standards define requirements for the reliability, accuracy, security, usability, and performance of voting systems. Specifically, Section 301(6)(b) of HAVA defines the term "voting system" as the following:
1. the total combination of mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic equipment (including the software, firmware, and documentation required to program, control, and support the equipment). This is used:
a. to define ballots;
b. to cast and count votes;
c. to report or display election results; and
d. to maintain and produce any audit trail information; and
2. the practices and associated documentation used:
a. to identify system components and versions of such components;
b. to test the system during its development and maintenance;
c. to maintain records of system errors and defects;
d. to determine specific system changes to be made to a system after the initial qualification of the system; and
e. to make available any materials to the voter (such as notices, instructions,
forms or paper ballots).
Section 301(6) (d) of HAVA goes on to say, "Each State and jurisdiction shall be required to comply with the requirements of this section (section 301) on and after January 1, 2006."
This most recent set of standards replaces the 1990 Voting System Standards.
Brazoria County Gears Up for Punchcards, then HART
Joyce Hudman, the Brazoria County Election Committee County Clerk, said that her committee has already made a recommendation to the Brazoria County Commissions Court to go with the HART voting machine vendor. The court approved the recommendation, and now Hudman's committee can start the negotiating process to purchase 600 voting machines for Brazoria County from HART. "We would like delivery of the HART machines after the Nov. 8th elections," Hudman said. "In the meantime, we'll use punch cards. When the machines arrive, we election officials will need to get trained, then the judges. We start mailing out ballots by January 18. Basically we start gearing up in January, for the oncoming local and gubernatorial races." When asked if the HART machinery has a paper trail, Hudman replied, "HART has a prototype of a paper trail. Texas doesn't require a paper trail yet."
Dollars Pour Into Election Areas and Research
According to Election Data Services, the percentage of registered voters in this country who use electronic voting equipment jumped from 13 percent in 2000, to 29 percent in 2004. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) authorizes $3.9 billion dollars in federal funding to assist states in stepping up to HAVA requirements. "Yes, part of the money that we will use to purchase HART voting machines, will come from HAVA," Hudman said.
Just last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it will provide $7.5 million dollars over 5 years to ACCURATE (Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections). Avi Rubin from Johns Hopkins University, the person who called attention to the availability of Diebold's proprietary code on the internet, will be principal investigator of the new center. Computer scientists from Rice University here in the Houston area, Stanford University, the University of Iowa, among others, are participants. "We'll look into ways of making the innards of the machine more trustworthy," Dave Wagner, a co-principal investigator of the center, said." "This could range from building software that would make it hard for somebody to malicious logic without detection, to building machines that include components from multiple vendors, so that the system can cross-check itself." The researchers said they will put the voting systems they study through an aggressive battery of attacks, to flush out flaws. "Our purpose will be to design countermeasures before the systems are tested in the field." These experts believe that many of today's e-voting systems are unproven. "The systems were rushed into production before researchers could lay the groundwork to ensure we weren't replacing old problems with new ones."
AccuPoll staff also responded to a question about Diebold and ES&S, two electronic voting manufacturers with political leanings. The Diebold touchscreen voting machine's software cannot easily be examined and has no paper trail. Recently its touchscreen voting machine was decertified in California.
"Let me tell you, there's no better way to cheat an election than the daisy-chain method," Tim Nelson, an AccuPoll representative said. "AccuPoll believes in a voter verified paper audit trail," Noblett added. "We think it's good policy. We think it's the only way to run an election. In many, many states, it's already in their state law of elections. Texas has not passed that law yet, but the Texas Senate did vote for it unanimously. At the federal level, I can assure you that it's going to happen. The lawyer who really set down and wrote HAVA (Help Americans Vote Act), who's now on our retainer, thinks it's going to be late in this year that the President will sign this bill. The Texas Senate voted unanimously for the 2002 certified rule." Basically, said Noblett, what the voting clerks have told the AccuPoll staff over and over again is 'I don't want to see my name in the paper because of a bum election.'
To sum up, concern is running as high as its ever run about the integrity of the American vote. And if the dialogue this past week in Brazoria County is any indication, unproven voting machines are going to be put through some pretty tough paces to meet higher standards.