Buncombe County choice of voting machines in 2006 saved votes in 2008

Letter to Buncombe County Commissioners, Asheville City Council members, and the Buncombe County Board of Elections: Buncombe County's voting machine decision in 2006 has paid off. Buncombe County purchased new optical scan voting machines in 2006 in order to comply with state and federal laws. The county chose not to purchase the more expensive, less reliable touchscreens with a less than reliable "paper trail".

Buncombe chose well. A professor's study of North Carolina's 2008 Presidential election shows that optically scanned paper ballots were better at registering the intent of the voters than touch screen voting machines. Buncombe County's residual rate for President in 2008 was a low .8 %.

Touch Screens Show High Rate of Unrecorded Votes for President in 2008
Paper Ballots Found More Efficient at Recording Voters' Choices
June 26, 2009 - A professor's study of North Carolina's 2008 Presidential election shows that optically scanned paper ballots were better at registering the intent of the voters than touch screen voting machines.

Mark Lindeman, an assistant professor of political science at Bard College in New York, found that in the 67 North Carolina counties where the voting method is optically scanned paper ballots, 0.78% of ballots failed to register a vote for President last November. The 24 counties where touch screens were the principal method of voting saw 1.36% of ballots fail to register a vote for President, a difference of over 7000 votes in the 2008 election.

"The evidence available to me indicates that in fact, optically scanned paper ballots fared better than DREs [touch screens] in recording and tabulating voter intent," Prof. Lindeman wrote.1

Lindeman also analyzed demographic differences among the counties that might explain the higher number of unrecorded votes in the counties that used touch screens. He found, in fact, that paper ballot counties measured higher in factors such as less education and poverty that would be expected lead to a high rate of unrecorded votes, meaning that the "effect " of touch screens on the unrecorded vote rate was even greater than the raw numbers suggest.

Voting experts believe that a small number of voters, usually less than 1%, decide deliberately not to cast a vote for President, but that if the number of ballots that show no vote for President is higher with a given voting technology, it is a sign that the technology was less easy for voters to use, or may not have functioned properly. The percentage of ballots that fail to register a vote for a given office is called the "residual vote rate."

"DRE boosters say the residual vote rate should be lower on touch screens than on scanned paper ballots, but the performance doesn't match the promises" said Lindeman.

Prof. Lindeman's findings are consistent with previous studies showing that precinct-based paper ballot scanners have a lower residual vote than touch screen machines. A study of the Brennan Center for Justice showed that precinct-based optical scanners had the lowest residual vote rate of any type of technology in the 2004 Presidential election.2 In 2006, Iowa's election results for all contested statewide races showed a consistently higher residual vote rate for touch screens than for optically scanned paper ballots.3

"Optical scan has a strong track record, and these findings just make it stronger," said Pamela Smith of the Verified Voting Foundation. "This is why we fought so hard for optical scan back in 2005 and 2006," said Joyce McCloy, director of the North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting. "It turns out that the lower-tech way best serves the voters," McCloy added.

-30-

1Professor Lindeman's study is available at:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Lindeman_Analysis_NC08_Tech_Effect_on_Undervotes.pdf
2 The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Usability,” p. 5.
http://brennan.3cdn.net/bb59042f6839b7fee2_njm6bcl84.pdf

3“Residual Votes in Iowa November 2006,”
http://www.iowansforvotingintegrity.org/Residual Votes in Iowa November 2006.ppt

The Asheville Citizen Times ran an op/ed about the need to reform our election system to better enfranchise the voters, and technology was mentioned:

Reform would strengthen rights of voters
Robin Cape • November 29, 2009 Since N.C. rules state that a vote will be counted IF the intent of the voter can be determined, what happens if the person writes in or circles a name and does not fill in the bubble? Should determining the intent of the voter be solely dependent upon the machine's recognition of the vote?

How do we further increase the number of write in ballots counted? Practical and inexpensive measures include better ballot design, clearer ballot language, and additionally, through voter education:

Better Ballots
By Lawrence Norden, David Kimball, Whitney Quesenbery, and Margaret Chen – 07/20/08 ...when it comes to ensuring that votes are accurately recorded and tallied, there is a respectable argument that poor ballot design and confusing instructions have resulted in far more lost votes than software glitches, programming errors, or machine breakdowns. As this report demonstrates, poor ballot design and instructions have caused the loss of tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of votes in nearly every election year.

We know that good voter education works - we saw the results of voter education aimed at helping voters deal with North Carolina's odd straight ticket voting law. Thanks to voter education ordered by the NC State Board of Elections, media attention leveraged by advocacy groups (including the NY Times), and the political campaigns (even YouTube videos) - our state cut the undervote rate for President in half of what it has been for the 2004 and the 2000 Presidential elections. [Straight ticket does not count for President http://www.ncvoter.net/straightticket.html ]

In 2005, North Carolina passed a law banning paperless voting machines following the November 2004 election debacle. The AP described the 2004 election as "A Florida-style nightmare has unfolded in North Carolina in the days since Election Day, with thousands of votes missing and the outcome of two statewide races still up in the air." AP Newswire, Nov 13.

Paperless voting machines like those in Buncombe County had to decommissioned. Not long after North Carolina implemented our new machines, other states like Florida banned them.

States rush to dump touch-screen voting systems
States are increasingly abandoning touchscreen voting, scrapping multimillion-dollar systems purchased since 2000.
Arstechnica. August 20, 2008 It's a good time to pick up an electronic voting machine on the cheap—provided you're not a stickler for things like "accuracy" or "security." States are scrapping tens of thousands of pricey touchscreen systems in response to mounting concerns about the machines' reliability...

Touchscreen machines are becoming obsolete - voting vendors are no longer developing new systems since states around the country are banning touchscreens and scrapping the ones they have.

What happened to Buncombe's decommissioned touchscreen machines? Buncombe's former machines were purchased by computer scientists at Princeton U, were hacked and also reverse engineered.

Here are some reports on the first hack of Buncombe's old machines:

For more on the "hack" of Buncombe CO's former machines see
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/avc/
For more on the reverse engineering of Buncombe's former machines see
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/sequoia_evoting_machine_felled/

To learn about the reverse engineering of Buncombe's old Sequoia touchscreens, done for around $100,000:

Insecurities and Inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H DRE Voting Machine
Studies five machines bought from Buncombe County (North Carolina) Reverse engineering allows construction of fraudulent firmware even without access to trade-secret source code
http://citp.princeton.edu/voting/advantage/advantage-insecurities-redacted.pdf

Buncombe County voters can be proud of the voting system they have, of their County Commissioners who fought for that system, and of the County Board of Elections for implementing that system.

Best regards;

Joyce McCloy, Director
North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting

About us: The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting is a grassroots non-partisan organization fighting for clean and verified elections. We study and research the issue of voting to ensure the dignity and integrity of the intention of each voting citizen. The NC Voter Verified Coalition has consistently fought for increasing access, participation and ensuring the voter franchise. Contact Joyce McCloy, Director, N.C. Coalition for Verifiable Voting - phone 336-794-1240 and email joyce (at) ncvoter.net website www.ncvoter.net

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Internet Voting Trojan Horse in Law in MOVE Act, 3 states take the bait

There's an Internet Voting Trojan Horse in a law intended to help Military Voters.
Three states have already taken the bait: Alabama, Colorado, and Massachusetts. Additionally Franklin County, Washington officials wish to have full blown internet voting IF the state will lift the requirement for paper ballots. Experts say that internet voting is not safe and also would put our military vote at risk.

If internet voting takes root and spreads, the consequences are far worse than paperless electronic voting. Internet voting is about to get its nose in the tent. If that happens, it likely will be thanks to the Move Act, a law intended to help military voters.

The Move Act, or Military and Overseas Voters Empowerment Act (S. 1415) was added to the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1390) the Federal MOVE Act has sent a message - internet voting is ok, lets start by experimenting with the military vote.The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) will oversee the program. FVAP sent a letter to all 50 states election offices with a 2010 legislative agenda that recommends states adopt internet voting pilot programs for military.

Alabama: State may be on fast track to pass military voting bill (military internet voting) The Alabama military voting bill, House Bill 30, hasbeen pre-filed by Rep. Jimmy Martin, D-Clanton, for the legislative session that begins in January. He sponsored the bill last year as wellThis week, we see that Colorado has passed legislation to allow internet voting pilots for military, and the pilots will be partially funded by "private" parties. Will these private parties be identified? Could any of these private parties have a conflict of interest?...

Colorado: Colorado ranks high in its effort to count military ballots 11/06/2009... In June, Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law House Bill 1205, an overseas election reform measure introduced by Rep. Marsha Looper, R- Calhan, and endorsed by Colorado Secretary of State Bernie Buescher....The legislation also approves a pilot program to allow overseas military personnel to vote via the Internet. The program, which is being studied, will be funded by grants and private contributions.Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth hopes to have their troops voting over the internet this December, 2008.

Massachusetts: Expanded bonus for combat vets gets an OK (push for internet voting this year)No additional state funding is needed to provide the bonuses this year, according to David Falcone, spokesman for Senate President Therese Murray, D-Plymouth....Mr. Falcone said depending on how quickly the state can set up a secure Internet voting system, Massachusetts service members may be able to vote over the Internet as soon as the Dec. 8 primaries for the special U.S. Senate election.

Franklin County Washington: Online voting makes progress in Franklin County
Oct 9, 2009. Diana Garza Killian, Franklin County elections administrator, sits near a computer monitor showing a sample screen for an online voting pilot project they will use for the first time in November. Voters will mark ballots electronically, print them out and then submit them in the traditional manner. Officials say it’s a first step toward online voting."Lenhart hopes the project will show lawmakers that online voting is the wave of the future, and that they'll change the law that requires paper ballots."

Still want to try Internet Voting? Think *twice *about it:

Hackers cracked military systems and cut mains power
10th November 2009...Retired Admiral Mike McConnell, who oversaw organisations including the CIA and NSA, told the CBS News programme 60 Minutes that not only do attackers have the capability to bring down the US power grid but that the country is not prepared for such an attack....This time last year, an attacker was able to access US military computer systems that were directly involved in war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This access allowed the perpetrator to spy and potential control systems. They were, in the words of Lewis, "part of the American military command."

RELEASE OF RESEARCH REPORT ON "CHINESE CYBER WARFARE & ESPIONAGE"
Oct 22, 2009: The Commission has approved for public release a contracted report entitled: Capability of the People's Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation.The government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a decade into a sweeping military modernization program that has transformed its ability to fight high tech wars.

Security expert: no way to secure Internet voting WBBM Newsradio 780 CHICAGO (WBBM) -- An Internet security expert says there's no way Internet voting can reliably replace paper ballots to ease the expense of election day.John Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin spoke one day after Lake County, Ind., sat out a transit referendum because county commissioners didn't have a spare half million dollars to fund the election....The ultimate problem, he says, is one of authentication: there's just no guaranteed way to tell who is who at either end of the voting connection.Rubin says banking transactions are fine on the Internet because there's a back-office trail that can always be followed. But he says there's no secure way to ensure whether the person casting or counting a private ballot, is who they claim to be.6. VerifiedVoting.org : Computer Technologists' statement on internet voting

Finnish Internet voting election thrown out by court
In this election, which is referred to in the article as an "e-voting" election but was actually an Internet voting election, 2% of all ballots (232 ballots) were simply lost, unrecoverably, by the voting system. A lower court had accepted the loss of 2% of the ballots as an acceptable error, even though the lost ballots would almost certainly have affected who won and who lost municipal seats since they are frequently decided by 1 or 2 votes.

About us: The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting is a grassroots non-partisan organization fighting for clean and verified elections. We study and research the issue of voting to ensure the dignity and integrity of the intention of each voting citizen. The NC Voter Verified Coalition has consistently fought for increasing access, participation and ensuring the voter franchise. Contact Joyce McCloy, Director, N.C. Coalition for Verifiable Voting - ph 336-794-1240


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Internet Voting Too Dangerous -ESPECIALLY for Our Military

Our overseas troops need help voting, and while internet voting sounds like a good idea, even a pilot is too dangerous to consider in this new age of Cyber Warfare. We cannot ask our troops to put their personal safety at risk by the act of casting a ballot. We must carefully ask - what problem are we trying to solve, exactly and how do we solve it?

"An overwhelming majority of military and overseas voters did not return ballots to the United States in 2006, costing local election offices staff time and money" Greensboro N-R.

Seeking to remedy that, congress passed a law that contains "pilots" allowing for internet voting for our military. The pilot is in the Federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, (Move) in Section 589. The Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) will oversee the program. FVAP sent a letter to all 50 states election offices with a 2010 legislative agenda that recommends states adopt internet voting pilot programs for military. Unfortunately, legislatures in Alabama, Colorado, and Massachusetts are taking action to participate in the internet voting pilots for military. Additionally Franklin County Washington officials wish to participate and ultimately have full blown internet voting and eliminate the state's paper ballot requirement.

The problem is that Internet voting cannot yet be made secure and opens our elections and troops to cyber warfare. And internet voting opens up the troops' ballots and the personal information on them, as well as possibly exposing troop location. It also does not solve the real problem identified by the Pew Foundation in the report No Time to Vote and creates many new problems.

The national Verified Voting Foundation lists several serious technical and non technical issues that have to be addressed BEFORE any internet voting pilots are implemented. See excerpt of Verified Voting's statement signed computer technologists:

Computer Technologists’ Statement on Internet Voting

...Several serious, potentially insurmountable, technical challenges must be met if elections conducted by transmitting votes over the internet are to be verifiable.

A partial list of technical challenges includes:
• The voting system as a whole must be verifiably accurate in spite of the fact that client systems can never be guaranteed...
• There must be a satisfactory way to prevent large-scale or selective disruption of vote transmission over the internet....
• There must be strong mechanisms to prevent undetected changes to votes, not only by outsiders but also by insiders...
• There must be reliable, unforgeable, unchangeable voter-verified records of votes that are at least as effective for auditing as paper ballots, without compromising ballot secrecy....
• The entire system must be reliable and verifiable even though internet-based attacks can be mounted by anyone, anywhere in the world...

...Before these conditions are met, “pilot studies” of internet voting in government elections should be avoided, because the apparent “success” of such a study absolutely cannot show the absence of problems that, by their nature, may go undetected. Furthermore, potential attackers may choose only to attack full-scale elections, not pilot projects.

Still want to try Internet Voting? Think twice about it:

1. Hackers cracked military systems and cut mains power
10th November 2009 ...Jim Lewis, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who prepared a report on cyber security for President Obama. Lewis claims that in 2007 an unknown foreign power penetrated "all of the high tech agencies" including the Department of Defense and "probably the NSA". The attackers downloaded terabytes of data.

This time last year, an attacker was able to access US military computer systems that were directly involved in war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This access allowed the perpetrator to spy and potential control systems. They were, in the words of Lewis, "part of the American military command."

2. Cyber attacks traced to N. Korea
The Associated Press Friday Oct 30, 2009 SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean government was the source of high-profile cyber attacks in July that caused Web outages in South Korea and the United States, news reports said Friday.

3. RELEASE OF RESEARCH REPORT ON “CHINESE CYBER WARFARE & ESPIONAGE” Oct 22, 2009: *The Commission has approved for public release a contracted report entitled: Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation.The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a decade into a sweeping military modernization program that has transformed its ability to fight high tech wars. [Read THE PDF REPORT http://tinyurl.com/ygcmh9b

4. Preparing for cyber warfare The scramble for position on a new, global battlefield has begun, but it's not clear yet if state secrets, financial data and privacy can be defended...But, in truth, cyber spying is equal opportunity and has an amazing wealth of targets to go after.

5. Security expert: no way to secure Internet voting WBBM Newsradio 780 CHICAGO (WBBM) -- An Internet security expert says there's no way Internet voting can reliably replace paper ballots to ease the expense of election day.John Hopkins University computer science professor Avi Rubin spoke one day after Lake County, Ind., sat out a transit referendum because county commissioners didn't have a spare half million dollars to fund the election....The ultimate problem, he says, is one of authentication: there's just no guaranteed way to tell who is who at either end of the voting connection.Rubin says banking transactions are fine on the Internet because there's a back-office trail that can always be followed. But he says there's no secure way to ensure whether the person casting or counting a private ballot, is who they claim to be

6. VerifiedVoting.org : Computer Technologists' statement on internet voting

7. A comment on the May 2007 DoD report on Voting Technologies for UOCAVA Citizens (pdf)
David Jefferson, Avi Rubin, Barbara Simons
In 2003 the Department of Defense engaged our services to review its SERVE Internet voting project. The project was subsequently killed because of the numerous and fundamental security problems with it that we documented in a report we issued in 2004 (http://www.servesecurityreport.org/ ).
We are concerned that this new report appears to be trying to persuade readers that SERVE was a successful project and that Internet voting can be made safe and secure. Unfortunately, it does not accurately reflect the degree of concern that we and
many others have expressed about Internet voting....

8. Finnish Internet voting election thrown out by court
In this election, which is referred to in the article as an "e-voting" election but was actually an Internet voting election, 2% of all ballots (232 ballots) were simply lost, unrecoverably, by the voting system. A lower court had accepted the loss of 2% of the ballots as an acceptable error, even though the lost ballots would almost certainly have affected who won and who lost municipal seats since they are frequently decided by 1 or 2 votes.

Internet voting doesn't address the real problem anyway. According to the Overseas Vote Foundation:

"The number one reason that many overseas and military citizens are unable to vote is missed registration and ballot request deadlines."

SO HERE ARE SOME PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS

In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections has come up with a simple way to address this issue of registering military, updating their registrations when they move and getting them the right ballots. On Oct 8, 2009 the NC State Board of Elections sent a letter to Robert Gates, Secretary of DOD enlisting their cooperation. An excerpt:

"I request that the Department of Defense, in its operation of military pay/personnel offices in North Carolina, agree to be designated as a voter registration agency. This designation would allow military citizens helped by your agency to be offered the same voter registration services given by state and county public services agencies to the persons they serve. "

This idea makes sense and should work. Govt agencies are very good at voter registration when they try. We saw this when North Carolina enforced Section 7 of the Voting Rights Act more vigorously in 2008, resulting in government agencies assisting increased numbers of their clients in registering to vote.

We can also enact some of FVAP's 2010 Legislative Initiatives:

• expand the use of the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot,
• removel of notarization and witnessing requirements, and
• enfranchise the overseas voting age children of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote under UOCAVA.
• allow faxing or emailing blank ballots to troops - but never fax/email voted ballots

With those four FVAP initiatives, plus having the DOD assist troops with voter registration issues and voting, we can greatly improve the military franchise while protecting the secrecy and security of their votes.

Our troops deserve a secure, accurate, auditable ballot that they may cast in secret. They should not be asked to put their own personal security at risk in order to vote. Internet voting cannot be done safely at this time. Internet voting should be the last resort after solving all the other problems which hinder prompt return of ballots, not the first.

Lawmakers and policy makers can learn more about improving the military voter franchise as well as risks of internet voting from the national organizations Verified Voting and the Overseas Vote Foundation

About us: The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting is a grassroots non-partisan organization fighting for clean and verified elections. We study and research the issue of voting to ensure the dignity and integrity of the intention of each voting citizen. The NC Voter Verified Coalition has consistently fought for increasing access, participation and ensuring the voter franchise. Contact Joyce McCloy, Director, N.C. Coalition for Verifiable Voting (ph)336-794-1240

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Instant Runoff Voting Survey in Hendersonville: did you understand it?

There's an Instant runoff voting in Hendersonville North Carolina, last day to vote is Tuesday November 3rd. The NC Coalition for Verified Voting is doing an informal voter survey on Instant Runoff Voting in Hendersonville. We hope to raise awareness about Instant Runoff Voting in Hendersonville North Carolina. We believe that the informal survey below is a good step in that direction. Could you please share this survey with voters as you see fit? It is also posted on the home page of our website, http://www.ncvoter.net/. Thanks, Joyce McCloy, Director, NC Coalition for Verified Voting.

IF YOU VOTED IN HENDERSONVILLE NORTH CAROLINA'S NOVEMBER 2009 IRV MUNICIPAL ELECTION WE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR YOUR EXPERIENCE.

1. Did you vote on election day, during early voting or absentee by mail?
   
2. Did you know that you would be asked to rank choices on the ballot?
   
3. Did you understand how to vote?
   
4. Were the instructions clear?
   
5. Did you like this new ranked choice voting method?
   
6. What was source of your voter education about Instant Runoff Voting?
   
7. Describe any problems you had in voting.
   
8. Did you rank choices?
   
9. If you ranked choices, how many did you rank?
   
10. Do you understand how instant runoff votes are counted?
    
11. Did you know that if your choices are not for the top two candidates, you will not be voting in the "runoff"?
    
12. Did you know that your additional choices may go uncounted if there is a winner in the first round of voting?
    
13. Do you want all votes, including the additional ranked choices - to be counted and publicly reported, so you can see how much support each candidate received?
    
14. Do you prefer traditional one-to-one runoff elections or IRV?May we use your name? (Your name will be kept anonymous if you prefer)

Please email your response to joyce@ncvoter.net and thank you for helping us.

About us: The North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting is a grassroots non-partisan organization fighting for clean and verified elections. We study and research the issue of voting to ensure the dignity and integrity of the intention of each voting citizen. The NC Voter Verified Coalition has consistently fought for increasing access, participation and ensuring the voter franchise. Contact Joyce McCloy, Director, N.C. Coalition for Verifiable Voting - phone 336-794-1240