Looking
at Voting Machines
By
Ellen Komp
On
April 5, over objections from CLMP and others, the Humboldt county Board of
Supervisors voted to enter negotiations with Diebold Election Systems, Inc. to
purchase 110 touch-screen voting machines, one for each projected precinct, at
a cost of approximately $3100 each. The move came upon recommendation from
Humboldt clerk-recorder Carolyn Wilson-Crnich and elections manager Lindsay
McWilliams in order for the county to comply with federal HAVA (Help Americans
Vote Act) legislation, which requires a means by which disabled voters can vote
in unassisted fashion by 2006.
Williams
expressed hope that the HAVA deadline would be pushed back, but said unless
that happens the county needs to act to ensure compliance by next year. The
plan would bring “minimal compliance” with HAVA at the lowest cost,
Crnich told the board, by augmenting the county’s existing Diebold
optical-scanning equipment with machines that will use the same voter
tabulation software.
The move came despite the fact the Diebold AccuVote TSx machines have not yet been approved by the Secretary of State’s Voting Systems and Procedures Panel. McWilliams said
that approval was expected at the board’s next meeting on April 21, however, the machines were not approved at that meeting and an objection was filed by Protection and Advocacy,
Inc. (PAI), a non-profit advocacy organization that receives Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funding to conduct activities related to voting rights for people with disabilities and is a member
of the Secretary of State’s HAVA 301 Committee.
After attending a demonstration of the the TSx on April 6, PAI determined TSx approval would be contrary to California law (Elections Code section 19251 (c)) because its audio
confirmation system does not operate by the same mechanism as the paper one, and therefore does not provide a voter who is blind with the same security precautions as a sighted
voter. PAI also objected to the fact that the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel does not have any members who have disabilities. TSx certification was expected to come before the
panel in Sacramento on May 19, but that meeting was postphoned until June 16, reportedly at Diebold's request.
The
American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) lists Sequoia Voting
Systems (the only company with a verified paper-trail touch screen machine) as
a major donor on their website, and according to journalist Lynn Landes, they
and The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), both ardent supporters of
paperless touchscreen voting machines, have received over $1 million dollars
from the voting machine industry.
Diebold paid a $2.6 million
settlement last year after Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed suit against the
company for installing a last-minute, uncertified software patch to their
machines in Alameda county. Crnich said she sat through the hearings of the SoS
Voting Systems and Procedures Panel that covered, among many other issues
related to touch screen voting throughout the state, Diebold's actions in
Alameda. She said she heard conjecture on both sides and although the
"patch" was developed by Diebold at the request of Alameda county to
address a specific problem, it remains unclear to her whether or not Diebold
representatives told Alameda county officials that they didn't need to have
their software changes certified. "It is either a misunderstanding or it
is reprehensible," she said. "But I don't think any reputable
business would blatantly try to break the law in such a way as that."
Whether
or not Diebold is a reputable business is in question. As sourced by Landes at
her website www.ecotalk.org:
* Diebold employed 5
convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central
compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml
* Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior
Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was
convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
* Diebold Senior
Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software
and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a
period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf
Sequoia
also has a remarkably dark past, according to Landes and others. It began its
modern life as Automatic Voting Machine and the company’s founder, Lloyd
A. Dixon Jr. resigned as president and CEO on Jan. 10, 1973, and later went to
prison, after being indicted by a New York federal grand jury for bribing
Buffalo election officials. The company was also fined nearly $50,000 for
bribing Texas and Arkansas officials. The next owner of Sequoia Pacific,
financier and corporate raider Louis Wolfson, was convicted of bribing the only
Supreme Court Justice ever forced to resign in disgrace, Abe Fortas. In 1999,
executives Phil Foster and Pasquale Ricci were convicted of paying Louisiana
commissioner of elections Jerry Fowler an $8 million bribe to buy their voting
machines. These convictions took place in the context of a massive election
scandal in Louisiana involving connections with organized crime, in which
Sequoia executives gave immunized testimony against state officials. Currently,
the company is largely controlled by the British cash-printing firm De La Rue,
whose corporate parent, private equity firm Madison Dearborn, is a partner of
the Carlyle Group, the investment firm that employs the current
president’s father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.
Alameda
county registrar of voters Bradley Clark, who oversaw the Diebold software
patch that lead to the lawsuit and argued against paper-trail voting, has newly
been appointed as California’s deputy Secretary of State. Bruce
McPherson, a Republican from Santa Cruz, was appointed by Governor
Schwarzenegger as Secretary of State after Democrat Kevin Shelley resigned amid
scandals over fundraising and spending of HAVA funds earlier this year. Shelley
championed having a paper-trail for touch-screen voting, as now enshrined in
California law. Members of McPherson’s transition team include Clark;
Cynthia Bryant, Chief Legislative Affairs Secretary to Schwarzenegger and
former lead policy director for Senate Republican caucus; Ernest Hawkins, Director
of "Election Center," a dubious organization funded by e-voting
vendors; Robert Lapsley, Bush appointee to the State Department, responsible
for strategic modernization initiatives in elections; Steven Merksamer, a powerful Sacramento attorney whose firm
represents Citizens to Save California, which is raising money to place
Schwarzenegger initiatives on the ballot (which have redistricting as their
centerpiece); Beth Miller-Malek, whose partner, Marty Wilson, has been active in raising
funds for Schwarzenegger; Adan Ortega Jr., former
chief deputy secretary of state and an employee of GCG Rose & Kindel, a
lawfirm whose clients include Diebold; and William Wood, California
Corporations Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer of the Department of
Corporations
Crnich
said if she were asked to install a last-minute software patch, she would
certainly contact the secretary of state about it. When asked whether or not
Humboldt county had ever been asked to install such a patch, elections manager
Lindsay McWilliams said until 2002, last-minute software patches were routinely
applied. McWilliams said Diebold representative Steve Knecht of Nevada flew to
Humboldt in his private plane to demonstrate the new machines last month, and
Supervisor Jill Geist said she had sampled them. He said during the last Arcata
election he was getting inconsistent feed rates between feeders and readers, so
he had Knecht come up to re-calibrate and test them.
Humboldt
county elections have undergone several administrative changes in the last
decade. In 1990, Crnich was elected as county recorder and McWilliams was
elected city clerk, and they took office in January 1991. In 1993-4, the county purchased and
installed the present optical scan system from Global Election Systems, which
was later purchased by Diebold. In
1996 McWilliams resigned his elected position to accept the appointed position
of Director of Administrative Services.
At that time, the office of County Clerk was trifurcated into the Courts
(which became a function of the State of California under an appointed
Court Administrator); Non-judicial County Clerk functions (which were
combined with the duties of County Recorder); and Elections (which were
moved into Administrative Services and stayed under the appointed department
head, Lindsey McWilliams).
In
2003, the Administrative Services department was again reorganized. Most of the functions of that
department were then put under the newly created “General Services
Department” under Risk Manager, Kim Kerr. As a part of that reorganization, the Elections department
was again moved under the elected County Clerk (Crnich), and changed
McWilliams’s position from one of appointed department head to
“Election Manager”, an employee under the elected County Clerk.
Mendocino
county has held its last three elections on the same Diebold optical scan
equipment used in Humboldt county, replacing punch cards when they were
decertified by the state. According to Marsha Wharff, Mendocino Assessor-County
Clerk Recorder, Mendo’s $865,000 contract with Diebold includes a single
touch-screen voting machine with audio capabilities for each precinct, to be
delivered and paid for when and if that equipment is certified. Mendocino has
approximately 50,000 voters.
In
the recent November 2004 2nd district Supervisor's race, incumbent Richard
Shoemaker asked for a recount, which confirmed that Jim Whattenberger had
unseated him. Shoemaker, who held a 20-vote lead on election night, saw his
victory disappear after county election officials tallied 377 absentee ballots
that were turned in on election day. The final count showed 3,113 votes for
Wattenburger and 3,108 for Shoemaker.
Wharff
said in the recount that, "It was kind of clear why the computer did not
count certain votes - because people hadn't filled in the dots fully." The
race had been split by 7 votes, Wharff said, and after the recount the
difference was 8 votes. The recount cost Shoemaker $3800.
Recenty,
Wharff announced Mendocino will be one of seven California counties to participate
in a pilot program going to all-absentee voting, provided AB867 (Liu) passes
through the state Assembly and Senate. That would mean scrapping the
county’s Diebold equipment except for a few machines voters could use at
her office. Wharff said she would continue to pursue the Diebold contract in
the meantime.
The
Voter Confidence Committee, a Eureka-based group, has spoken against Humboldt
county’s deal with Diebold and now advances open-source voting as an
alternative. The Open Voting Consortium has developed prototypes of publicly
owned and programmed voting software than can be run on any PC and is seeking
to meet with McPherson about certifying the system. A citizens’ letter to
McPherson can be found at www.OpenVoting.org,
where the system can be sampled.
Alan
Dechert, a software engineer who organized the Open Voting Consortium (OVC),
has worked with the University of California to design a prototype of an
open-source system he is hoping to get funded by HAVA. He has demonstrated the
software, which runs on ordinary PCs (although they need to be secured for
voting) in San Jose, Yolo and San Mateo Counties, at a Berkeley CFP show (to
rave reviews, he says) and in Pennsylvania. He says he needs county officials
to lobby McPherson for the change. Dechert calls current systems,
"faith-based voting," because of the faith one must have in vendors.
Dechert
planned to present a proposal at the scheduled May 19 Secretary of
State’s Technical Oversight Committee meeting asking for HAVA funding for
tabulation software that will replace Diebold’s GEMS software. However,
that meeting was cancelled for unknown reasons after OVC put out an
announcement asking for the public to attend; the next meeting is scheduled for
June 16. Even with what's been committed to counties, Dechert thinks there
could be $10-50 million left over in HAVA monies.
The
Civil Liberties Monitoring Project sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors on
April 11 endorsing a Protect the Vote citizen task force. Supervisor Jimmy
Smith is reportedly working on an ordinance with Crnich. Interested citizens
can lobby their supervisor to vote in favor of a task force.
Also
see: http://www.civilliberties.org/vote2.html