Blogged by Brad Friedman from on the road…
To be clear, despite the headline, we don’t mean to call Princeton’s computer science professor Ed Felten “stupid” by any means. We do, however, mean to make clear — in no uncertain terms — that the oft-floated idea that adding so-called “paper trails” to failed, paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines, such as those used in last November’s U.S. House race in Sarasota between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R), would not have avoided the situation we’re now in. In fact, such “Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails” (VVPAT) added to Direct Recording Electronic (DRE/touch-screen) systems would likely make our current crisis of democracy worse instead of better.
As we’ve said before, DREs with or without a VVPAT are a threat to democracy. VVPATs are little more than a band-aid at best, and more likely serve only as a panacea to offer a false sense of security.
Adding a “paper trail” to a DRE/touch-screen system is like requiring a seat belt in a Ford Pinto; what good will the seat belts do when the Pinto explodes?
Today then, Princeton’s Felten (he of the infamous Diebold Touch-Screen Virus Hack) has posted an article on his blog looking at what may have happened in the contested U.S. House race in Florida’s 13th Congressional District between Jennings and Buchanan, in which some 18,000 votes seem to have disappeared completely on the paperless ES&S touch-screen voting machines. Just 369 votes separate the two candidates in the flawed state-certified final results.
In his essay, the first of a promised series to come this week, Felten correctly points out that the situation can only be attributed to problems with the ES&S voting machines themselves, since the undervote rate for the very same race in the very same county was a reasonable 2.5% on the paper absentee ballots, but jumped nearly 15% as recorded on the ES&S touch-screen machines.
Even ES&S’s only expert witness so far to take the stand — Dartmouth College’s political (not computer) scientist, Michael Herron — in the election contest down in Florida admitted that were it not for problems voters encountered in using those voting machines, Jennings likely would have been named the winner. That point was reported by Sarasota Herald Tribune who reported on the testimony this way: “Had those ballots been cast without problems, Jennings would have won by as many as 3,000 votes, according to the ES&S expert’s statistical ‘best guess.'” Reporting from both Wired News and our own discussions just after the testimony with Lowell Finley, the attorney for VoterAction.org, one of several non-partisan groups who argued the case on behalf of the Florida voter plaintiffs who joined Christine Jennings in filing an election contest, confirmed that point as well.
So the question — for those legitimately trying to figure out what went wrong, as opposed to Buchanan and his supporters who simply want to claim the House seat as their own, even if it’s an aberration of democracy — is whether the problem was due to bad ballot design, machine malfunction, or, most likely, some combination of both. With just 369 votes between the two candidates in the state-certified final result (which is being challenged in both Florida courts and the U.S. House), virtually every analysis has determined that even a minor machine malfunction would likely have thrown the race to the Republican in the Democrat’s strongest areas in Sarasota. That’s where the largest undervote rates occured.
Felten’s thesis, however, as he begins to discuss today in his first article on the topic, would seem to suggest — incorrectly, in our view — that a “paper trail” on those paperless touch-screens would have avoided this problem. We’ll answer by suggesting it would only have made it worse.
In the meantime, an as-yet under-reported affidavit obtained by The BRAD BLOG from a poll worker, which accompanied a complaint filed by a Republican (yep, you read that right) in Sarasota who believes machine malfunction was clearly the culprit, seems to demonstrate clearly that a problem with the ES&S iVotronic system, not a problem finding the race on the ballot, was to blame for the massive undervote rate.
Couple that with two excellent reports from Daniel Hopsicker as filed last week (one here, the second here) analyzing, in crystal-clear detail, a number of contemporaneous news reports from Sarasota before, during, and after the election, it becomes very clear that machine failure was the problem in the FL-13 election and not “bad ballot design” — the favored theory of folks hoping to keep the “provisionally seated” Buchanan in power.
Hopsicker’s excellent review of those news reports, both as the problem was first emerging and just after the election, when voters’ and poll workers’ recollections were still fresh, reveals that voter and poll worker complaints at that time overwhelmingly focused on problems voters had casting their votes in particular races and not on problems finding particular races on the ballots!
We’ll take a look at the complaint filed by the Republican mentioned above, along with the poll-worker affidavit, in a future report this week. But for now, we’ll look at Felten’s “Paper Trails Would Have Avoided the Problem” theory.
As Felten averred today…
Felten’s thesis here — not uncommon for “paper trail” (versus paper BALLOT) supporters who still contend that such touch-screen voting systems, if only they included an attached “reel-to-reel” printer on the side, would accurately reflect voter intention — is flawed.
Numerous studies of such “Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail” (VVPAT) equipped systems, such as one done after Cuyahoga County’s disastrous 2006 Primary Election using Diebold’s VVPAT touch-screen system, have demonstrated that such “paper trails” rarely reflect the internal machine count accurately. More to the point, however, we have seen time and again that voters simply do not check the so-called VVPAT before votes are cast by the touch-screen machines. In some cases, the machines do not make it obvious that the voter is supposed to do so. In other cases — such as with Diebold’s infamously bad opaque plastic door which covers the tiny VVPAT view window, requiring the voter to know to lift it and view the VVPAT with the provided magnifying glass — voters have been instructed by pollworkers specifically to not lift the door to look at their VVPAT before the “vote” is “cast” by the machine…not by the human. Here’s one such example in a PBS News Hour video taped during California’s primary election in San Joaquin County, including the transcript in which the poll worker tells both voters and the PBS reporter that votes are to be confirmed “on the computer screen” and that the “paper trail” is “for the people at the office.”
In other words, a great deal of evidence suggests that voters don’t actually bother to look, for a number of reasons, at the VVPAT before the “vote” is cast. And when they do, most such VVPATs are so small and difficult to read that even when they bother to do so before finalizing their vote, it would be extremely difficult to notice a single undervoted race on a long ballot such as the one which occurred with alarming frequency in Sarasota.
Ultimately, the only difference in the FL-13 race, had those ES&S iVotronic touch-screen been equipped with a VVPAT printer, would be that there would likely have been no challenge to the election results — since those interested in undermining democracy in favor of their candidate would simply have pointed to the “paper trails” as confirmation that voters purposely chose note to vote in the race. The “paper trails” would have simply underscored the machine-reported results, underscoring the unsupported notion that Sarasota voters using touch-screen machines, differently from all other voters in the race in other counties and using other voting systems, actually chose not to vote in that particular election.
With less than 400 votes separating the final reported margin and some 18,000 votes in question, there is little doubt that 369 voters would have failed to properly confirm their vote, for whatever reason, on a dangerous and difficult-to-use “paper trail” on the same touch-screen type of voting machine. End of challenge — but not an end to unaccountable democracy.
Allowing the use of such DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) devices in an election — with or without VVPAT printers — is a recipe for continuing voter disenfranchisement and democratic disaster. Too many legislators, election integrity advocates, and even computer scientists such as Felten, it seems, believe and/or hope that such a technical “solution” would avoid problems such as those revealed by FL-13. Rather, it would help only to avoid legitimate official challenges to the accuracy of such races. It would not however, avoid questions about the accuracy of the results themselves.
Institutionalizing DRE’s with VVPATs, as we head into yet another Presidential Election year, is an extraordinarily dangerous direction for American democracy — even as several soon-to-be-introduced Congressional bills may be set to do precisely that.
We hope Felten will take a close look at that perspective as he continues his series of articles this week, in preparation for the “joint talk on the topic next week” to which he refers in his piece (have a feeling that “joint talk” may be Congressional testimony, but we’ll see). A scientific review of these points, particularly in front of Congress and from someone with Felten’s credentials, would undoubtedly shed welcome light on both what happened in Sarasota’s election and what is required to help assure accuracy, transparency, and accountability in future American elections.
We believe democracy cannot even begin to achieve accuracy, transparency, and accountability without a paper BALLOT — not a “trail” or a “record” — for every vote cast. Coupled with appropriate audits of same, and several other needed security measures, we can begin to restore democracy to America. With DRE’s in play, however, with or without a so-called VVPAT, that cannot and will not happen.
An Open Letter to Congress, stressing that point, was endorsed, signed, and delivered by more than 40 non-partisan election integrity organizations just before the holidays last December. The BRAD BLOG urges you to sign on to that letter and send it to your congress members. One of the initial signatories, VelvetRevolution.us, has made it easy for you to do so right here.
THE LESSONS OF SAN DIEGO (CA50); For the June 6, 2006 special election for Congress (Busby/Bilbray) we are STILL trying to get at the paper BALLOTS — oral argument in the court of appeals was in Early January. Of course, paper TRAILS are even more useless.
IN a nutshell, San Diego in November HAD what the Holt bill promises as “reform”: paper trails and mandatory audits. And, these solutions don’t work, they are instead a nightmare of false confidence and stonewalling by officials complete with selection of “random” precincts for the audit BEFORE the first counts are even over, thus relieving the officials of any risk at all that the other 99% of the precincts would be subject to audit. Isn’t it great when you can audit yourself, and the law even CALLS FOR that, all in the name of election checks and balances? Sheesh. Don’t forget, 1% statistically will almost never be considered proof of anything by the other side in any actual litigated issue…
We only need these post-election remedies (badly) in a DISPUTED election. IN a Disputed Election, we must expect things to go wrong and expect resistance to full disclosure. In disputed situations, there the election officials of ALL parties, or even of NO party, have all the incentive in the world to delay, obfuscate and hide for the totally nonpartisan motives of avoiding further work and avoiding being hung out to dry for mistakes or for not catching fraud.
Indeed, the recent convictions of Ohio elections officials of felony recount-rigging in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election occurred in a highly democratic county (Cleveland / Cuyahoga County) and the beneficiary of the recount would have been the Democrat Kerry.
LESSON OF OHIO: Believe it or not, you can’t trust DEMOCRATIC officials to RE-count DEMOCRATIC votes!! I’m willing to grant, for now, that they might be able to do a proper count the first time the majority of the time, but of course no election official should be “trusted” at any time, they should be checked, balanced, and supervised by the public.
The lessons of Ohio mean that “bipartisan” election workers or even “nonpartisan” elections workers will not protect the public because they ALL have the rather human conflict of interest, it’s called CYA and it’s called avoiding work.
Putting the lessons of Ohio and the lessons of San Diego together — it’s very tough to make anything that happens after those election results are released in the 24 hours after an election turn out right. It’s highly likely to be short shrifted, lazy, rigged, botched, or otherwise executed improperly or not at all.
For Pete’s sake, Felten! Even Republican governor Charlie Crist is talking about throwing out the touch screens!
Go back to the back of the class, Ed.
SO TRUE!!!! This needs to make the Quote of the week”
Adding a “paper trail” to a DRE/touch-screen system is like requiring a seat belt in a Ford Pinto; what good will the seat belts do when the Pinto explodes?
Their no one better than Brad on calling it the way it is!!!!
I am going to re-state what we all know. We never see e-voting glitches like this one that favor democratic candidates. If we did democrats would not be racing to swear their candidate in without proof of a legitimate verifiable victory.
If this ever happened in reverse and the Dems did try to swear their candidate in with discrepancies this gaping, the courts would not allow it, Fox and the MSM would not let it rest. It would be the biggest scandal in the corporate media.
This does not happen to republicans against Democrats. The malfunctions only operate one way party wise. They actually do sometimes operate for one republican against another republican. Whos more in favour with those in power? Maybe. Im not allowed to say for sure because I can’t prove it. I am not allowed to look at the computer code owned by republican companies, so have no opportunity to prove what appears to be obvious. They say these machines are junk but are they. Republicans have no problems with them unless its against another republican. The glitches always favor Republicans so I guess they are happy.
I’ll try plain english today.
With a Computer + Printer setup:
The Computer says 1000
The Printer says 1001
The whole VVPAT thing failed. YOU CAN NOT VALIDATE ANYTHING HERE! DECIDE IT IN THE COURTS AGAIN, AND REMOVE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.
Sadly most folks (who get their news from CMSM) do not know what a VVPAT is, maybe not even what CMSM is. They sure didn’t hear what Ed Felten said. Perhaps that’s a good thing at this point.
With all the electronics and secrecy, voting has become compartmentalised. this is causing us to fight amongst ourselves now.
I don’t care if the ink failed, the whole system failed. Who’s to say there wasn’t a burp in the power supply or a specially crafted logic circuit. (Created at the doping level in CHINA or wherever the part was manufactured)
This is insane.
Did Ed Felten have a bush-ism day? Without attacking him, I guess so.
By the way, wasn’t it a Ford Pinto (With the gas tank in the rear), colliding with a VW bug (with the gas tank in the front?) er, When the VW hits the parked Pinto, you get sparks and gas.
By the bush-ism I mean, he meant to say PAPER BALLOT.
then again. I’m dreamin ain’t I?
I have a challenge for ALL Secretary of States.
setup your computers, and your machines, and pop the covers off, and expose the wires and chips, I will make the machine no longer function in ONE SECOND. Any machine, any chip. (watch how they try to make boards with surface mount chips, loaded next to solid phenalic because I said this.) Give me more than one second, Plus a TOOL of MY choice and I can probably make weird logic errors. Again ANY machine. If I can’t do it, I’ll shut up. PERMANENTLY. If I CAN do it, then you step down from office, after banning all electronic machines, and you pay any medical bill for my bare hand/hands. (After all I Might be dealing with sheet metal or other sharp objects in a hurry.) I Probably won’t need it. I’m a man, I can take it. But remember, I know how to destroy chips, I Might not have an engineers degree, but I am an inventor, and have ratwired up some pretty serious kit. I know what to look for quick. REAL QUICK. If nothin looks exploitable, A wire will get yanked. Boom test over. Machine Failed. If I Have to go bare handed there will be blood. Any aircraft electrician can handle that though.
That very machine in the picture above does not even provide for a way to count the paper trail when the election is over. To appease the voting activists in Utah, they had to make some makeshift spool holders out of pine wood. It was straight out of the Flintstones!
I have no reason to believe that those audits weren’t done on machines they absolutely knew weren’t tampered with, because they wouldn’t release any comprehensive information on how the audits were done. Also, the people who counted the votes were state employees who may have lost their jobs if they didn’t make Diebold look good, or they just wanted to make it look good so they could go home and not spend anymore time straining their eyes.
This is crazy!
Would you put your money in a bank that did their audits like this?
And it’s true. I poll watched in the midterms and watched in horror all day as people voted, and didn’t know they had the right to open that stupid door and look at the only real record that was made, (or not made), of their vote. The judges were instructed to make sure the door was kept closed and refused to tell people to look, even after I almost got into a fight over it.
Well, I fixed all manner of circuitry from aircraft wing X-ray machines, to police radio transmitters, to video monitors, etc. for many years. Computer voting is congenitally insane. Paper trail? Is there a law that says that if a poll attendant refuses to fix what is wrong with my paper trail, I can shoot him or her? Didn’t think so. I think you could rig a camera flash unit to operate as a short-range EMP device that would fry circuits.
The machines will always side with the people who control them. And poor people will stand in line even to use them, because they cost a lot of money. I say, use a sheet of paper and a pen, and have it counted by RANDOMLY CHOSEN ELECTION DRAFTEES, (like court juries). AND make those draftees announce their hand-done count on the night of the election before submitting the count (NOT THE BALLOTS!) to any larger pools. AND make all elections be controlled on a small LOCAL basis of communities of 5000 or so. (And think about the fact that if you don’t want to have to be an election draftee, you will probably wind up being an Iraq Occupation draftee for ten years.)
Sally #4
Yep, the neoCons are very comfortable with error …
Brad while you make good points here about the fallability of paper trails your conclusions about felton’s statements contain a logic error. If there had been a paper trail then while it could not be used to determine the correct outcome–as you rightly point out– it could be used to check for a discrepancy–which is felton’s point. It would work like this. Suppose that only a tiny fraction of the people actually checked the paper tapes or at least checked them carefully enough to notice a problem. Then felton would argue that although both records would be corrupt then at the very least they would be different, and he could decide between his hypotheses.