Yesterday Sarasota County, FL, began their state-run test audits of the paperless ES&S touch-screen systems used in Florida’s 13th District House race where 18,000 votes disappeared, resulting in a 369 vote margin between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R) to fill the seat vacated by former Secretary of State of Katherine Harris.
The first day of testing revealed miscounting errors on all four of the machines used during the test, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and at least two citizen observers who blogged their account of the day’s testing.
State officials who convened the panel blamed the miscounting on…wait for it…human error!
Of course they did. The panel itself has already been plagued with controversy after Election Integrity organizations criticized the selection of several members assigned to the commission, including the very partisan Alec Yasinsac, who appeared on the steps of Florida Supreme Court in 2000 wearing a “Bush Won” button, and David Drury, the state official who certified these particular systems in the first place for the state of Florida, declaring them safe and accurate for use in an election.
The first day of testing employed machines that were not actually used in the November 7th election (Friday’s testing will include machines actually used that day) and were not performed under normal voting conditions (e.g., the machines were hung from the wall, instead of placed on stands to approximate the height they would be for most voters — important, since these machines tend to register votes differently for tall voters than they do for other voters.)
Nonetheless, errors in the counting were registered by all of the machines used in testing. The results differed from the votes in “scripted” ballots that state testers had punched into them. Ironically, the errors ended up giving Jennings a higher vote total than she should have had according to the prepared voting scripts.
The Herald-Trib — who, by the way, has reinstated its FL-13 Special Coverage page since we pointed out its removal a few days ago — is reporting today that, “All four voting machines that officials used to simulate the Nov. 7 election had miscounts, and three of them had miscounts in the District 13 race.”
A diarist over at DailyKos who has been on-site, covering the day-by-day details of the goings-on — and who has a user name we well approve of — “BeTheMedia” describes yesterday’s results this way:
…
While today’s procedure may have tested for a narrow range of possibilities, it failed to test broadly for a wider range of possibilities that could have been revealed by more rigorous and thorough testing. It is valid and reasonable for testing to try to make a system fail. That’s what thorough testing is supposed to do.
The tests today did indeed revealed discrepancies. At least three votes recorded as undervotes in the election changed to Jennings votes in today’s “audit.” That’s comes out to an approximate 7% shift in a race decided by less than two-tenths of one percent. It will be quite interesting to see how the State Division of Elections explains this shift.
And, of course, it is interesting to see how the State explained the shift, though their explanation is no longer much of a suprise…
Secretary of State Sue Cobb’s reliable spokesliar and Buchanan’s attorney both downplayed the problems as expected, pulling out the old “human error” explanation employed frequently in the wake of any such revelations of failures in electronic voting systems:
“Most likely it’s human error,” said Jenny Nash, spokesperson for the State Division of Elections.
Representatives for both Jennings and Buchanan said Tuesday’s results support their original contentions.
“They said beforehand in all likelihood there would be human error,” said Buchanan lawyer Hayden Dempsey.
Jennings spokeswoman Kathy Vermazen said she found the results “intriguing.”
Jeannie Dean, a District 13 citizen who has been on hand as well to witness much of the brouhaha since the election, took glee in yesterday’s flawed results in light of Buchanan’s attorney’s initial attempts at “information control” earlier in the day:
Jennings, who we previously described as a role-model for all candidates in her fight to assure the voter’s voices are actually heard and heard accurately, continues to win our respect. She tells the Herald-Trib today that she’s in for the long haul: “This could go on for months, and I’m prepared for that,” she said. “I will never give up.”
Hear, hear. Neither will we, Christine. And thank you again.
In the meantime, in direct contradiction of the wishes of SoS Cobb and Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections, Kathy Dent (neither of whom have yet resigned), the County’s Board of Commissioners are readying plans to scrap their entire $4.5 million touch-screen system in the wake of the controversy and, more importantly, at the mandate of the voters who decided in favor of a paper ballot system (ironically enough) by approving an initiative for it on the November 7th ballot. The county’s 1600 machines, purchased just five years ago, would be trashed (or sold to unsuspecting suckers elsewhere) in the bargain.
But, of course, Cobb and Dent are again fighting to thwart the will of the very voters they are supposed to be serving. As reported by the Herald-Tribune in another piece today…
Amongst many failures, San Mateo County ( Hart InterCivic) was allowing the readers to tell the tally keeper what final number to write in to the candidate final tall box. Local activist Brent Turner corrected their procedure for the moment, but it’s not a good sign. Counts are off, transparency nihl. Provisional votes have ended up in the electronic count when none were cast. Poll workers are being blamed. – Mort
Regarding paper ballots, what kind of design might be the best? Ballots to be hand-counted only, ballots to be scanned through a scanner, or other kinds of paper ballots?
Any kind of paper ballot that is designed to be run through any kind of computerized device, like a scanner, can be subverted by the scanner, yes? Virtually ANY computerized device can be subverted to mis-count, unless the computer would have gone through rigorous source-code examinations, testing prior to each election and factual certification of transparency before every single election–multiply this by thousands of scanners scattered across the country and there’d be enormous room for “error” in the vital act of counting the votes. I’m really not sure if ANY sort of computerized device has any role of any kind in any election.
Paper and pencils/pens–ONLY. Stone-age tech, yes, but, surely, this method is far more transparent, isn’t it?
So, if one were to create a workable paper ballot, the scanning kind of paper ballot may not work very well, as it may be difficult to count the multiple votes in multiple races/intitiatives in some sort of transparent way from a single sheet of paper, so the whole-piece-scanning kind of paper ballot may not work best.
What about a paper ballot that has a duplicate piece of paper beneath each page with both the duplicate and the original having the exact same ballot serial number? This design can have each race/initiative printed on separate sheets of paper, each with a duplicate. The paper ballots could be small, like a 1/4 sheet of an 8×11 paper, or a half-sheet of the same paper. All the ballots could be bound together, like a paperpad or post-it notes. Every original page and duplicate page could have a serial number that clearly marks it as unique to one particular ballot-bunch, with each serial number having an additional number–or lettering–that makes it unique to each page (each “page” would be an original and a duplicate).
So when a voter votes, the mark is on the original, which would be duplicated on the duplicate; the voter keeps the duplicate copy and turns in the original by tearing it off the bound ballot-pad. When the voter is done voting, the voter could pile up all the torn-out originals and put them in a locked ballot box and go home with all the duplicates that would still be bound together, like a used duplicate receipt book.
So when it comes time to vote, the ballot box would be opened with election officials/citizens present and the original ballots can then be tossed into piles/boxes in accord to the vote done with each race/intitiative. The segregated ballots can then be checked and recounted, then bunched into some sort of easy number, like bunches of 100 or so, then those numbers can be counted from the bunches to arrive at a total for that race/intitiative.
With this kind of duplicate, serialized paper ballot system, transparency can be achieved, as well as accurate counting, as well as re-counting, if needed, not to mention verification of votes and vote counts.
This kind of system would not have instantaneous results, but why in the f–k do we “need” instantaneous results? Transparency is far more important than instantaneous results, yes? Elections ought to happen over two and a half days on weekends (starting noon Friday, ending on Sunday at night) with the counting of votes commencing right away after the election and continuing until all votes are counted.
This would work, don’t you think?
As I have said before, I prefer patience over instant gradification any day. Human error is going to become like glitches, DEAD IN THE WATER WORDS!
OT
And hey yeah, all religions are talking about the same energy of EXISTENCE!
Just can’t forego that explaination can ya, yet?
We should be cautious and wait for the final results of the Sarasota parallel tests without drawing conclusions from the preliminary results, or prematurely dismissing the Florida Department of State’s explanation that human error is a likely cause of the discrepancies.
The fact is that there are almost always some discrepancies at the end of a day of parallel testing, and almost all of them are due to human errors. Errors may be discovered in the scripts themselves. Or the vote counts implied by the scripts may have been precalculated incorrectly. Or, most commonly, the testers do not follow the scripts perfectly, in spite of their best efforts.
This last is not unlikely to have occurred in Sarasota because the directions to the test voters regarding the Congressional race are often slightly complex, e.g. “Cast a preliminary vote for Jennings; then later, after viewing the summary screen, go back and change the vote to Buchanan. After navigating to the summary screen again, cast the ballot”. In a mind-numbingly boring 14-hour test situation, even the most conscientious test voters can easily make mistakes with directions like that.
After the test votes have all been cast, the hard part of parallel testing actually begins: the slow, laborious process of reconciling the discrepancies using the dozens of hours of videotape taken of the process. Only if there remain unreconcilable discrepancies after this do we have proof of machine or software malfunction.
Thus we should await the reconciiled test results before we get conclude that there was machine malfunction.
Our elections and posts are very esoteric, are they not? 🙂
Dear Mr. Jefferson–are you kidding me, AGAIN? Await the reconciliation BEFORE we question the results? Is that the only way you can accept them? If they’re certified by the very people who implemented a system they wouldn’t admit there was a problem with in the first place? Look, with all due respect, your “wait and see before we judge” comments floor me. Especially considering the problems in Sarasota preceded this election and this undervote.
Maybe it’s because you weren’t here for early voting (early voting undercount for Northport, FL. was 1,115!) when hundreds of voters filed complaints with Kathy Dent’s office, only to be dismissed, ignored, blamed, and worse–hung out to dry in the press for reporting the trouble at all. Maybe it’s because you haven’t listened to the compelling testimony of hundreds of voters, here, including WW2 VETS, heartbroken that their vote went missing.
But that still doesn’t explain how you can continue to have faith in this process or the people investigating/ addressing it–as determined by your own experience! YOU made fine recommendations that were never implemented! And yet again you urge caution, patience, and the benefit of the doubt? Is it because you love computers?…
… David Jefferson…
“In a mind-numbingly boring 14-hour test situation, even the most conscientious test voters can easily make mistakes with directions like that.”
Hmmm…
So the test is so badly designed that it can encourage a vote counting discrepancy of the magnitude equal to the one it was intended to investigate?
“The twelve “voters” rotated in and out in 20 minute shifts.”
Hmmm…
The tests are being conducted by state officials, NOT county officials, so SoE Kathy Dent is only peripherally involved in the parallel tests. The people who “implemented” the system (ES&S) are likewise only peripherally involved in the tests.
There are levels of state officials and they play various roles. It is wrong to distrust them all. It is frequently the case that career officials have opinions quite at odds with the political officials they serve, but they just cannot speak publicly about that. People should pay attention to that, and support officials when they are trying to do the right thing, even if imperfectly.
My point in my last posting was to explain a little about how the parallel tests actually work to people who do not understand it (which is almost everyone). Drawing inflammatory conclusions based on the number of first day anomalies in a parallel test is just nonsense. By making this clear, I am hoping to prevent people from shooting from the hip when they do not actually know what they are talking about. That kind of behavior does nothing but give others cause to ignore legitimate protests when and if real evidence of a problem is documented. It undermines our ability be taken seriously when we are on firm ground.
What you cannot know from reading my various BradBlog contributions is the amount of time I spend telling officials around the country that, basically, the scientists and citizens who complain about badly-designed, malfunctioning, and dangerously unverifiable voting systems are entirely correct, and that the officials should be listening to them instead of listening to the vendors, or listening to many county officials who have no real knowledge of software reliability and security.
Basically, I am on the side of the readers of BradBlog. That’s why I bother to post here. I just want people to complain about the right things and not make matters worse by screaming prematurely, or about things that are a distraction from the central issues.
I’m very curious why the Repugs haven’t raised a stink about voting irregularities given their significant defeat. Could it be that they don’t want their tampering to be exposed by demanding an investigation?
Given the Dems’ victory, they should begin an investigation into the whole voting process, but especially into e-voting. No one could claim the Dems are babies, poor losers, or whatever epithets the Repugs would respond with if it had been a Pug victory. So investigate. Perhaps my aluminum foil hat (Al is much better than Sn) is on too tight, but I still would like to see the e-voting looked into.
And the Dems should push thru legisation on paper trails. I can’t think of ANY legitimate reason for opposing this. Especially since the other methods of voting provide them.