Blogged by Brad from Nashville after Escaping Atlanta…
“It’s been a thriller,” said the eponymous host of the Peter B. Collins Show as Friday’s live radio debate wrapped up between myself and attorney Lawrence D. Norden, Chair of the NYU Brennan Center for Justice’s Task Force on Voting System Security.
Norden made, in our spirited debate, what I believe to be some stunning admissions.
Complete “must listen” audio of the debate is available at the end of this article…
Norden, and his Brennan Center, have been big supporters of Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) Election Reform Bill (HR 811) in the media, including through testimony and lobbying on Capitol Hill. Though I helped craft some of its provisions before the bill was introduced earlier this year, and though it contains some much needed elements of voting system reform, I cannot support bill at this time for a number of reasons. Most notably: the bill’s allowance for the use of un-verifiable, disenfranchising, easily hackable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems.
We’ve long covered the debate surrounding HR 811, and the notion being passed on — usually as unquestioned gospel — by the bulk of its many supporters, that while most of them would love to see DREs banned once and for all, such a ban could never be passed by the Democratically controlled House of Representatives. While the claim is consistently made, Holt’s most ardent supporters, none of them, to date, have put forth the name of a single member who supports the bill (it currently enjoys more than 200 co-sponsors) but who would vote against it if it included a ban on DREs.
In other words, I believe that point is simply a hoax that many of them have, unfortunately, bought into without bothering to do due diligence and find out if that claim is actually true.
(See our Special Coverage page with our many notable articles and action items consider the Holt Bill right here: https://BradBlog.com/Holt)
Though the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate in the state of Florida were able to pass precisely such a ban on DREs, under a Republican Governor, the unquestioned legend goes that such a ban could not pass in the Democratic U.S. House or U.S. Senate. That notion seems to come most directly — if without evidence — from both Holt’s office, and their biggest supporters, People for the American Way (PFAW), who are on record as actually preferring DRE touch-screens to paper ballot systems.
Unfortunately, Norden is one of those folks who has bought into the “DRE ban can’t pass” line. Even though he admitted, however, when he was pressed during our spirited debate, that he is unable to name a single such Congress member that would vote against such a ban…
NORDEN: …What I can tell you to do is look at a map of where DREs are, and all of the Congress Members that are supporting these bills, I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of them would not be willing to support this bill if it meant that their states would have to be get rid of their machines entirely.
BRAD: Well, let’s not wager on our democracy. Are you able to confirm a single name? Have you talked to single member who has said “I will support this bill, but not if it includes a ban on DREs”? Cause I can’t find one, Larry.
NORDEN: Well, I have to admit I haven’t posed that question to anybody because I haven’t thought that that was the most important thing to do to make our voting systems, and these machines, as secure as possible.
…
NORDEN: If Brad could come up with 220 Congress Members that would be willing to support a bill that bans DREs, I might reconsider my position.
BRAD: Well look, you guys have, I’m sorry to say, the big money and the big lobbying power on Capitol Hill…
NORDEN: …Not the Brennan Center…
BRAD: …and to tell us that we can’t ban systems because it won’t pass in Congress, but be unwilling to name a name, so that constituents can call their members and make sure they’re educated about this — cause I’ve talked to a lot of members, and they’re not educated. They think that if you ban DREs, blind and disabled folks won’t be able to vote. That’s just not true. There are ballot marking devices that they can use just fine.
Nonetheless, and in defiance of information about how to hack DRE systems, including those with paper trails, as detailed in his own landmark Brennan Center report on 120 E-Voting security risks, Norden continues to support the Holt bill under a number of dubious premises. We discussed those dubious premises in what I’d consider to be a “must listen audio debate.”
While Norden feels that the most important step towards making our elections safe is securing the machines themselves and improving certification procedures, in fact, the only thing that may lead us to safer elections, in which we can have confidence again, is full transparency in the system so that citizen oversight can help keep elections safe and secure. DRE voting systems offer zero transparency in voting, on a number of levels which simply cannot be overcome when using that particular technology.
I fear I failed to make the transparency point adequately in the heat of our debate in the short time between commercial breaks. Of course, your feedback after listening to the debate would be most welcome here in comments.
Of additional note, the host of our debate, the good Peter B. Collins, notified us at the top of the debate that while Rep. Holt refuses to return his calls requesting a similar interview and/or debate, at least CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen is on record, in a recent interview, at refusing to support the Holt bill as it’s currently written, due to its many existing flaws. Unlike the majority of other election officials across the nation who oppose it for different reasons, Bowen believes it’s not strong enough.
“I have worked with the author to try and strengthen the bill, but have not taken a position in support,” she told Collins last Wednesday before explaining the dangers of institutionalizing the DRE paper trail, as the Holt bill will do.
“I’m concerned that if we put the whole concept of a voter-verified paper trail into statute, and it’s something we know is problematic, both from a practical standpoint and because that’s not actually what happens [voters don’t and can’t verify their votes], we may find ourselves once again trying to improve something that’s very expensive and that would be better to do right in the first place,” the Secretary explained.
The audio of Collins’s interview with Bowen about HR 811 is also posted below.
Among the other misconceptions, misleading points, and/or out-and-out incorrect assertions put forward by Norden on Friday — with which I heartily took issue during our debate — were his contentions that Holt’s mandated paper trails as added to the paperless touch-screen systems in the contested FL-13 Jennings/Buchanan U.S. House election debacle would have made any difference in that election; that while Holt is flawed, it’s the only opportunity for election reform in this session of Congress prior to the ’08 elections; and that blind and disabled voters need dangerous DRE technology (when, in reality, there are non-tabulating, electronic ballot marking devices available which offer a nearly identical interface, but which produce an actual paper ballot without the many dangers of DRE systems).
I respect Norden, along with many of Holt’s other supporters who have endorsed the bill despite their recognition that DREs should not, and cannot, be safely used in American democracy.
However, I simply stand, humbly and firmly, by the fact that they are just plain wrong — and in many cases hoodwinked by PFAW and Holt — in their support of this flawed bill for dubious, and frequently unsupportable, reasons.
Please give the very lively audio debate a listen and let me know what you think.
Brad Friedman debates Brennan Center’s Larry Norden on HR 811…
(appx 40 mins)
Peter B. Collins interviews CA SoS Debra Bowen, refusing to support HR 811…
(appx 3 mins)
Previous notable on-air debates between Brad and Holt supporters:
- Brad v. Susannah Goodman of Common Cause on the Peter B. Collins Show
- Brad v. Ralph Neas of People for the American Way on Air America’s Ring of Fire with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mike Papantonio
DEMAND A BAN ON DRE/TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING!
– Email Congress!
– Call you members! See www.BradBlog.com/Holt for more details, coverage, talking points & information on all of the above!
The Brennan Center book on their supposed “threat analysis” of computerized voting systems says it all: They never address or consider inside manipulation at all! Some “threat analysis.” That’s a whopper of an underlying assumption that they just plain got wrong, pretty much invalidating that research altogether.
Therefore, not only is their statement that a bill with a DRE ban can’t pass a fraudulent statement, but their position that “securing” the machines is a corrective step is a fraudulent position. You can’t secure a machine against the insiders who program and operate it. Your laptop isn’t “secure” from yourself.
And they know it. They made a choice.
While it’s diplomatic to say “I respect Norden, along with many of Holt’s other supporters …” at some point one has to ask: Why should we “respect” people who are using bogus “science” and knowingly unsound “research” in order to promote a political course of action?
Scientists are only given respect because it is assumed that they follow the scientific method and speak within their areas of expertise. Yet we have people like Norden making political assessments without doing his homework; we have groups claiming they are experts doing so-called “attack tree” studies of computerized voting while conspicuously omitting the entire issue of inside manipulation.
This isn’t something to respect. It’s something to expose, as you are doing here, Brad, and it’s something to ridicule.
Scientists who fail to follow the scientific method, who make huge errors in underlying assumptions when conducting their research and then publish it anyway (even after those errors are pointed out), and scientists who participate in marketing a hoax in order to lobby a bill tar the name of all other scientists.
What is the underlying subtext?
A lot of us sure are wondering.
In another thrilling episode, Libby is going to jail unless they go to the US Supreme Right Wing Court.
Speaking of transparency (a child of honesty):
I am reading thru the house report on HR 811. It comments on the amended version, not the original.
In the amended version the requirement for open source code to be afforded to any citizen was weakened to now say it can be reviewed only by “qualified” people.
I noticed that the minority (republican) view is:
(Report 110-154, emphasis added). One thing the republicans did not like was, in their words, that HR 811 would “weaken intellectual property rights”:
(id. at page 77 of the pdf, emphasis added). The voting machine companies like Diebold, whom the republicans own and support, do not want the source code to be publicly scrutinized.
So they argue that property rights of the Diebolds of the world are more important than open election machine source code is to the american people.
Black box voting is ok by them, because they don’t even want the watered down and weakened HR 811 provisions to become law. They go on to say:
(id at page 80, emphasis added). So as long as only the republican owned and controled Diebolds of the world have “the blueprint for manipulation” it is ok by the republicans on the committee.
The “ability to irrationally criticize” is the only avenue they can see? But what about rational criticism by the best universities in america? How could that negatively affect voter confidence?
The republicans on the committee want a faith based system where the fearless leader is trusted blindly.
The republican position is so Stalinist, because as Stalin pointed out “who counts the votes decides everything”.
Especially when done in Diebold/ES&S neoCon secret.
Dear Brad,
Great job on the debate with Larry Norden but it brought back a confusion I’d thought between reading you and emailing Ellen Theisen I’d finally straightened out. My understanding was, after reading everything I could find, that the
“paper trail” of a DRE does not necessarily reflect what the machine is recording internally whether it is read by the voter or not. Is that true? It seemed to me you were referring to this reality in some of your comments and then in others it seemed like maybe this was not the case. If it’s not I need to study more to understand more accurately what the possibities for function/dysfunction are. But if it is the case isn’t that the end of the argument? I really want to understand this.
stickling for details,
David Lasagna
Yeah, Dredd, what you said. But I beg to differ. I cynically think that transparency has to be the parent, not the child. Try kicking that around…
But what about the Democratic members who voted for a permanent e-voting bureaucracy, concealed source code and elections treated as trade secrets?
David
If one third of voters verify that trail and find no errors it is highly probable that the rest were printed correctly as well. So we would have a very good idea if the print out was correct. But that is not the point! What we need to verify is that the vote is correct. The vote of record is not on that paper trail. It is in the machine. The vote is what gets counted. Not something that is never likely to be counted. Here are two ways to write a program to flip votes. 1. The foolish method. Vote then flip then verify. People are going to notice the fraud. I firmly believe that this method has been used a lot in recent elections. 2. Just as easy! The wise election thief would program the machine to vote then verify then flip. The paper trail is thus 100% accurate but the programmer can still flip up to 100% of the vote without any Voter “verification” problems showing up on the printout. Thus, if the paper ballot or trail is not made the vote of record the “verification process” that HR 811 will establish very clearly verifies absolutely nothing whatsoever!
* just commuted Libby’s sentence.
We use optic scan in Michigan. My disagreement with Brad is the opposite of the Holt supporters. Optic scan is also vulnerable to hackers. This is particularly true if the hackers work from the inside. Chuck Herrin at chuckherrin.com is a Republican “white hat professional hacker”, who has no use whatsoever for any electronic machine. I agree with him. What we need is not one type of hackable machine as opposed to the other, but to get rid of ALL of the machines. We need HAND COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS. They use them in Canada, in Germany, in fact most places outside of our own DEMOCKERY. What do we want: the quickest way to achieve a fraudulent result or wait a few hours and, with hand counted paper ballots, restore democracy to this country and get an accurate result?!
David Lasgna asked:
That’s right. The paper trail can say one thing, the internal numbers can say another. But in an atmosphere where there may be audits of those paper trails (as proscribed by Holt), the hack to use, and not get caught, is the one where the vote is flipped inside the machine AND on the paper trail. At least until the voter notices such a flip (if they do), in which case, you just flip it back to the correct vote on both paper and internally, when they ask you to. But enough wll likely get through unnoticed to flip the election and no audit would ever catch that flip.
Hope that helps clarify.
Kenfolk said:
For the record, I have never argued in favor of op-scan. I have argued in favor of paper ballots. While hand counted paper ballots may be the best way to go, you can’t hand count ’em, until you actually have ’em.
For the moment, I’m fighting to ensure we actually have a paper ballot, which is quickly disappearing. Once we’ve ensure a paper ballot — one that is actually counted — for every vote cast, we can enjoy the luxury of fighting about how to count ’em!
These so-called voting integrity front groups all site the need for a paper trail to verify the election results, especially on those machines that have none. However, it seems to me since several studies have shown that the voter usually does not verify the VVPAT then it would be very easy to nullify the VVPAT in any audit or recount since they are not the vote of record and it can not be proven that they were verified by the voter. I poll watched in our June election and, as I watched, I did not see one person go over their VVPAT on the Sequoia Edge II!
It is also my understanding that none of the current DRE voting machine with or without a VVPAT can be retrofitted with a printer that conforms to the durability requirement of the Holt bill so any thought of retrofitting these DRE machine by 08′, which I believe is the only requirement of the Holt to be enacted by 08′, would be impossible. So much for faux voting integrity front groups argument for the addition of a VVPAT printer.
I am with Brad, we need to get the DRE banned and move to opti-scan at the precinct level, but only with Universal Ballot Sampling to audit the opti-scan machines. When we find that the precinct UBS shows the opti-scan failures, we then can move to push for precinct HCPB!
My 2 cents
I saw Holt at a PFAW event in NYC a couple of months ago watch a short video on the DRE meltdown in the Jennings-Buchanan race. That he appears so totally unfazed now by the clear evidence of the technology’s failure and potential for failure is a little shocking. PFAW also, just by general dumbness and not by design (I think), managed to delay the start of the very well-attended event long enough so that Holt only had a few minutes to speak and address a few questions. He would’ve had his feet held to the fire there about DREs.
Czaragorn #5
Either way is fine with me.
Agent 99 #8
Yes, as I said in post #2, they appealed to the Supreme Right Wing Court and were granted “compassionate conservatism” (a.k.a. lawlessness).
The following statement was made upthread that I think is very inaccurate:
“If one third of voters verify that trail and find no errors it is highly probable that the rest were printed correctly as well. So we would have a very good idea if the print out was correct.”
LOOK: One can NOT complete the voting process WITHOUT “Verifying” the paper trail. The several studies completed so far find that voters catch, AT MOST, one third of the errors.
Voters MISS somewhere between 2/3 and 100% of the paper trail errors, but those errors or frauds then become VOTER-VERIFIED, bulletproof fraud.
This method, where the paper trail matches the electronic records, would easily be the method of choice because it is audit-proof, recount-proof, and would have the appearance of being totally correct even after usual investigation and audit.
The key here is that humans are very bad at reviewing secondary paper printouts relative to hand-marking a primary (ballot) document.
But even if humans were someone similarly mistake prone in marking their own ballot directly, at least when they mark it themselves it is their own fault, and not the fault of the machine, a hacker, or insider official. And the errors in hand marking ballots will be far more random and cancelling-out each other, but the errors or frauds in VVPAT paper trails will lean strongly in one direction.
And the key is, it will be bulletproof, audit-proof fraud. Voter-verified fraud, because we know in advance human brains just skip over errors and assume the correct information is there….
This is really important, because even a whistleblower coming forward with the smoking gun code to throw the election will NOT likely be successful because in EVERY case of paper trails on DREs, the voter will have “Verified” the fraud, so any complaint about it is personally waived by each voter.
Think of a paper trail as the fine print that gets slipped in to a contract (ballot) that changes the meaning of the contract at the last second after the voter believes there’s already a done deal. Indeed, for those few voters who catch the errors, they will just pat themselves on the back, everyone will feel good about it, the pollworkers will be trained to expect to catch some such errors so it won’t raise alarm, and there will be “no evidence” of voters not catching the errors, because, of course, they missed them.
But we know in advance that for every error caught, voters will miss at least two of the same kind. There just won’t be any evidence of it, nor will any evidence ever be allowed to impeach a voter’s “verified” ballot. This is the method to the madness of HR 811 Holt bill calling the paper trail a paper “ballot.” That legal language facilitates and enables the bullet-proofness of this fraud method.
This is why we must HALT HOLT!
http://www.geocities.com/electi...l/HaltHolt.xls
Brad,
I’ve listened to the debate and thank you, as always, for your diligence. However, I would like to offer some suggestions for positioning the arguments in a way that I think might engender broader support.
First, I do not think it benefits election integrity to construe these arguments along party lines. Both parties have been guilty of exploits at various points in time. True, one party has had a less savory history than the other, but stressing that point is not particularly constructive, and is likely to cause some folks to tune out.
On the other hand, consider the following approach I used when bringing this issue up with one of my co-workers. As I began to explain the issue, she interrupted and asked me, “You’re not with that moveon.org thing are you?” I asked, “Don’t care for them much?” She shook her head. I promptly replied, “That’s fine. I’m just fighting to make sure that when you vote against the next Democratic candidate, your vote is counted.”
My point is that everyone wants their vote to count. We can harness that as a unifying, non-partisan theme.
Moreover, the Republican Party, which has traditionally placed greater emphasis on States’ rights, could be seen as an ally in the struggle against the EAC model furthered by Holt, which attempts to put a tremendous amount of control in the hands of a single, centralized federal agency.
Lastly, remember that S.1487 bears the full Democratic pedigree, complete with the endorsement of three Presidential candidates, along with some of the party’s most prominent lawmakers. If that is the bill that the Democratic Party’s top leadership has offered, I’m not sure we can afford to extend any particular faith in that party.
Indeed, I suspect that many elected officials would enjoy being just a little less accountable to their constituents, right? The average American would agree with that, I think. This is not Republicans v. Democrats. This is Citizens v. Politicians.
Second, I believe it is time for us to go beyond criticizing current proposals (which we should continue to do), and offer proposals of our own. Norden asked you what you proposed, and an unfortunately timed commercial break interrupted your response. But this is important.
VotersUnite.org set a good example by providing a list of suggested amendments to the Holt bill. But we can go further than that. This debate has two fundamental components. One is the debate over artifacts: can an electronic record suffice as an artifact of the voter’s choice? But the second debate, equally important, is about how to set and enforce standards, which parts should be performed at the Federal level, and which at the State level. I have yet to see anyone within the movement (and I certainly count myself guilty here) of putting forth a comprehensive paradigm for describing and addressing the issues in this second debate.
Third, I think we must be careful in how we describe the perils of electronic voting. While I agreed with everything you said, I do worry that it is easy to come across as paranoid or a conspiracy theorist to the layperson. Again, the issue is not whether I agree with your points (I do), but rather how we can convey this information in a way that brings additional support to the movement.
Right now the Holt crowd, if there is such a thing, can present a rather common-sense argument in a very simple way, and it is appealing to most people. The argument is: paper trails are good, audits are good, our bill will make the voting machine like your ATM, you’ll get a receipt, and that will be an improvement. While you and I might have very cogent arguments against DRE’s, the layperson would hear the pro-Holt argument I just described and be receptive to it.
Lastly, I suggest that we put more thought into how we address State election officials. I took a few gentle pokes at them myself. But we cannot afford to alienate ourselves entirely from this important stakeholder. Again, there is a sort of common-sense appeal to the argument that we just spent a ton of money, and we don’t want to throw it all away. While you and I might disagree with that position, it needs to be addressed in a constructive manner.
For example, we might respond by saying that we agree, and for that reason it is important not to pass another poorly-thought bill of half-measures, but instead get it right this time.
Anyway, these are some of my thoughts and reactions to the debate. I hope it is helpful.
Brad,
For future reference, it appears that Danaher — one of the manufacturers whose pushbutton DREs lost so many votes in New Mexico in 2004, and which Larry said didn’t have a printer that would comply with HR 811 requirements — does have a printer that will comply with HR 811 requirements. A very nice printer from what I hear, with separate and durable vvpats.
So, while HR 811 may help to rid us of some DREs, it may not help us get rid of the ones that scored the excessive undervote rates in Native American and Hispanic communities, while scoring reasonable undervote rates in Anglo communities.