shadow ballot

Voting Outside of the US should get eaiser...one day

NPR has a great story about the very real challenges that US citizens face to submit their absentee ballot.  Since it's up to the precincts to distribute absentee ballots, generally they arrive at their foreign destinations past the election date if at all.  Some remote voters depend on their relatives to trade FedEx items, some avoid the entire process out of frustration, and there will always be those who just aren't interested.

The Federal Voting Assistance Program is making an effort, though, to assist overseas voters.  They're trying to mail out the ballots faster and earlier, and they're even accepting ballots by email!  More details are listed here on their website, which list that emails must adhere to an acceptable character set and contain a signature attachment.  No recommendations for size of message though. 

Internet Voting isn't a new idea.  The SERVE project summary hints at the scope of potential security explosions, and a research group in Sweden also looked at the possibility.  The Internet Voting Technology Alliance wants to start the discussion, and I'd like to, too.  If you're going to be out of the country, I think I'd rely upon the net over snail mail.  What do you think?

Poll Workers! Part I

One of my favorite players in the election process.  *Rubs hands in glee and giggles.*

Trivia:  How old was the average poll worker in the US in the 2004 election?

And the answer is...

72.  No joke. 

While we could take a look into the potential conflicts in interest or the lack of experience with technology, I don't want to pick older citizens. 

What I do want to pick on is the responsibilities of the average poll worker.  Thanks to New York City's Board of Elections website, we have some insight to what they won't be doing this year:

Candidates and poll watchers may not:

• Electioneer within a 100 feet radius of the entrance to your site.
• Disrupt proceedings.
• Participate in any manner in the conduct of the election.

Pretty straightforward stuff.  Now let's see what they "may" do:

Candidates and poll watchers may:

• Arrive at the poll site at 5:45 am to witness the opening of the polls &/or examine the ballot box.
• Examine the machine when it is not in use.
• Challenge voters.
• Be given information about who has voted, if the inspectors are keeping a list.
• Attend the canvass and tally at the end of the day.

Let's review.  Access to the machines when no one else is around.  Being the first at the polling place.  Challenging voters, keeping information about them, and being there for the canvass and tally.  So on election day, in NYC, from start to finish, poll workers will be there.  From the opening to the counting of votes.  Did you think they were just there to check your ID?  They're actually not supposed to do that either, according to these listed Voters' Rights:

• A voter does not need any identification or ID card to vote.
• A voter, who returns the large red voting machine handle to its original position before (s)he has finished voting, must obtain a court order to use the machine a second time. Advise the voter where the Supreme Court Justice can be found in your borough.
• Voters must be given emergency ballots during a voting machine breakdown.
• Any voter in the polling site before or at 9 p.m., when the police officer closes the door, is entitled to vote.
• Handicapped or illiterate voters may be assisted by:
  
  • an Inspector from each political party
  • any person they wish except their union representative or employer.

I hope we've all learned something today!  Know your rights or spread on the knowledge.  And if you didn't learn anything, maybe you've already been a poll worker.   Or become a backup for November!  I know I'm signing up; wish I woulda sooner.

Philadelphia County will use Danaher Controls ELECTronic 1242

In prime battleground territory, Philadelphia county is Pennsylvania's largest with over 1.5 million residents.  About 80% of its counted votes from 2004 were cast from Kerry, and it has a strong history of voting Democrat.  This November, Philly will use Danaher Controls' ELECTronic 1242 Voting System.

Danaher's website says that the ELECTronic 1242  is "Proven accurate and secure in over 150,000 elections" and has "proven technology, durability, and low-maintenance, along with easy setup and operation"...

Philadelphia describes usage of the machine indepth on their board of elections website , but a few things are notable.

First, the instructions tell the reader that there isn't a lever on these machines.  Either this is the first year without the lever or someone at the Board of Elections was sick of telling voters that their machine wasn't missing an arm.  The ballot is one page with a design on these digital machines that "resembles our old voting machines" with a grid of political parties as the heading columns and what looks like the Office up for grabs in the rows, with candidates names in the intersecting cell.  To vote for a particular candidate, users follow this LED-laced UI:

A flashing red light appears inside each office or issue title box in the left column. This indicates that you may select a candidate for that office. When the office title light goes off you have selected the maximum number of candidates allowed for that office. You do not have to make selections for all offices or candidates if you don't want to.

From there, users manually push their candidate choice in a box no larger than one's fingertip, as shown in the second image.  Press the candidate's square again to "undo" your vote for them.  Writing in candidates requires a special black button at the bottom of the machine that allows for handwriting  free text to submit the candidate of their choice. 

Ballot questions are printed at the bottom right of the ballot.  Touching the YES or NO box in a question engages the binary LED, indicating a vote has been entered for the question.

Casting the ballot is straightforward with the large green VOTE button at the bottom of the main interface.  Voter pushes the button, lights in the booth go off, LEDs on the voting machine go off, and "a low bell tone" seals the deal and asks you to leave the booth.

Challenge: Blind Voters

Something that jumps out immediately about this machine is its challenges towards blind voters.  The ballots are clearly printed in paper without any attempts at braille from the images available.  The status of LEDs is obviously not going to aide a blind voter, nor will a giant "green" button at the bottom which is a physical button, outside all the other on-the-ballot pushing mechanisms used on the machine. 

Challenge: Voter-Verified Paper Trail

Philly's instructions don't mention any type of receipt or takeaway from a cast vote.  It appears that the ballots are used over and over again without marking them.  There may be a back-end printer piping out cast votes not mentioned in Philly's process, but at this point we don't know.

Challenge: Hardware and Materials

I wonder how well continuous pushing on the same ballot layout holds up on their hardware.  I'd imagine that after a few hundred pushes with the average index finger would great a dimple in one candidate over the other, possibly causing problems in recognizing votes cast.  The push area for index fingers also looked frighteningly small, and looks like it would require constant recalibration to maintain on election day.  The ballot also looks removable, so that it may be able to swap out one for another. 

Memorable News Clippings, courtesy of www.verifiedvoting.org:

November 2003: Tennessee.  A poll worker in Rutherford County inadvertently cast a vote during a demonstration that may have resulted in a tie for a Town Council position.

October 2001: Tennessee.  In Knox County, a voting machine showed an error code that corresponded to a discrepancy between internally stored vote tables.  Local officials could not retrieve the data or have the machine print out the results.  A Danaher technician was able to crosscheck the internal memory tables and provide results.

November 2000: Tennessee.  About 7% of memory cartridges in Knox County were temporarily unreadable and three cartridges remained unreadable.  There were also problems with transmitting precinct-by-precinct vote totals.

November 2000: Tennessee.  In Fayette County (Oakland, TN), problems, including double counting of some ballots, were resolved after borrowing a tabulation machine from a neighboring county.

So it looks like many of these have to do with the mechanism of tabulation, a chronic challenge at the system-wide view of election machines.

What do you think?  Have you voted with an ELECTronic 1242?

Vendor Profile: Hart InterCivic

Based in Austin, Texas, Hart InterCivic engineers products under three distinct umbrellas: voting solutions, geospatial system integrations, and print service.  Their print service offers election-related items, including "Highly Secure Official Ballot Paper", "supply kits for the central count and polling places", but their geospatial projects are a little bit more interesting.  One of their products, called Vantage, was developed to align the dimensions of individuals' personal information, such as "a property deed, tax bill, building permit and so on" and tie it to the geography of each person.  Interesting. 

Needless to say, Hart InterCivic is alive and kickin' in the e-voting arena, with many states on board with their hardware and software this fall.  Their Election Catalog provides readers with a teasing glimpse of eScan, which is an optical scanner for paper ballots that looks similar to a shredder (and would cause hilarity and catastrophe in the same instance).  Present also are the major voting machines Hart InterCivic produces, which is the eSlate and its relatives. 

An in-depth look at eScan and its expansion packs(?) is coming soon.

Vote Caging and Thousands of Unsuspecting Ohioans

Everybody gets junk mail, even after you move.  Sometimes the new inhabitant of your old space might send that Crate and Barrel catalog back to its sender, since your design-loving self no longer resides at this address.  This new tenant may have even had good intentions:  Save the trees, please don't send your catalog here, since it's not for me!  Crate and Barrel will then mark that they should get your new address the next time you swipe your credit card or pick up something in the store.  Keeping a record of current and outdated user addresses determined by its mail return status is known as a caging list.

Now that Election 2008 approaches, it is sad to discover that good Samaritans like those may actually be enabling certain groups who look to block registered voters from casting a ballot when their address on file does not match their current address.  With voter supression in mind, this form of a caging list is appropriately named vote caging.

Last Friday, David Rosenfield from Miller-McCune wrote a great article about past and potential future Vote Caging by the GOP .  He's noted that Ohio election officials are stamping "Do Not Forward" to registered voters who have signed up for an absentee ballot.  That means if the resident no longer resides at the address in the voter registration database, the absentee ballot will come straight back to the election officials, never reaching its intended voter.  Sounds awful, but it could be worse, since the GOP has used vote caging to challenge over 77,000 votes from 2004 to 2006 , which turns a trusted ballot into a provisional one. 

The only way for citizens to avoid this tactic is to keep their voter registration information up to date, or advocate for legislation against caging lists altogether.  Yeah.  Good luck with that.

Wait, that's it? Do I get a receipt or something?

Last election, did you vote? Did you rock the vote?  Did you vote or die?  Did you fulfill your citizen duty?  Did you pull the lever, insert the smart card, hang the chads, feed the optical scanner, fill in the bubble completely with your number two pencil? 

Great!  I'm glad you did.

How do you know your vote was counted?  What happened to your vote after you left the polling place, or placed it in the mail?  Who marked the tally on the wall, and which wall was it?

ShadowVote is not intended to flame the fire of election conspiracy networks, or to criticize one party over another.  It will, however, shed some light on the voting machines and processes in place today (September 2008) in an effort to start the discussion for reform through transparency and thickened security measures. 

We'll be featuring specific voting machines, state and district election procedures, major Board of Elections players, HAVA (Help America Vote Act) precedents and open cases, and any other good stuff we can find before the November 2008 election.  Let's be aware of the internet and the threats posed by technology, process, and people, shall we?