I feel like all I write about here is the voting crisis in Pennsylvania but there is so much happening so fast that the story requires the space. Since time is short around here, I'll stick with a quick wrap-up of the most recent news.
1. Andy Warren, former County Commissioner, wrote a Letter to the Editor, which was published last week in the Intel. It looks at the contract Bucks County signed with Danaher:
The problem, quite simply, is that the $5 million contract that brought the new voting machines to Bucks County reads more like the menu at the Hatter's mad tea party than a legal document.
How many machines will Bucks County receive for $5 million? Attachment B of the contract references 650 machines. Attachment E of the very same contract references 800 machines. When those who signed the contract are asked which number is correct, one is told "Neither. The county will receive 700-some machines." No specific number is forthcoming.
At no fewer than three locations does the contract specify new voting machines. Only upon direct questioning is one told that at some time by some unnamed individual on some unknown written document were some roughly 375 new machines replaced by reconditioned machines. Wouldn't any individual consumer be righteously outraged if after contracting to purchase a new computer or a new automobile upon delivery was told that reconditioned equipment had been substituted?
Should consumers be any less outraged when what is at stake is a public purchase as opposed to a private purchase? When asked, "What is the difference in cost between the agreed-upon new machines and the delivered reconditioned machines?" the answer from those responsible for the purchase was, "We don't know."
Andy calls for a public forum or forums where these questions can be answered. Good idea. I'll be there. Let's dance.
2. On Tuesday the companion legislation to SB1299 was introduced in Harrisburg. The Intel's Freda Savana had the story:
Hoping to ensure that voters have the choice to use paper ballots, Pennsylvania state Sen. Joe Conti introduced legislation Tuesday that would require that the ballots be available and that counties educate voters about their right to use them. “Electronic voting systems are prone to error,” Conti said in a prepared statement. “For those voters who are not comfortable with voting on an electronic system, my legislation would require polling places to have a paper ballot available as an alternative.”
3. Since I practice what I relentlessly preach, I called my state representative, Dave Steil, and he told me that he won't do anything about the bill because it's just too late. He rattled on about the legislative calendar in Harrisburg. There are only seven legislative days left before election day and it takes three days to blah blah blah and the Governor has to sign it and oh dear, oh dear. Thanks for nothing.
Let me take a minute here to remind Mr. Steil and his constituents that the issue of voter-verified paper ballots for Pennsylvania has been before the Commonwealth for over a year, while the legislature did nothing. And, more importantly, it is never too late to verify our vote. It is never too late for an elected official to stand up and do the right thing. It is, as usual, a job for the citizens and not the politicians. The real question is, are we up to that challenge? Have you called your state reps today?
4. Bad news for PA voters: A Princeton study released last week confirms that election results stored on an electronic touchscreen machine can be changed without leaving a trace. Video here. From the Bradblog:
Working directly with a Diebold AccuVote TS touch-screen voting system, the computer scientists have been able to implant a nearly-undetectable virus onto a touch-screen voting system, managing to successfully alter a voter's ballot — after it's already been confirmed and cast — in order to flip the vote so that it is recorded for a candidate other than the one the voter had intended.
According to the study's team leader, Edward W. Felten, a professor at Princeton's Department of Computer Science, the report confirms – and records in a video-taped demonstration – that such a malicious virus could be easily inserted onto a Diebold touch-screen voting system by a single individual "with just one or two minutes of unsupervised access to either the voting machine or the memory card" used with the system to store ballot definitions and vote tabulations.
The virus, as programmed by the Princeton team, could then spread from one voting system to the next depending on the way the machine in use is configured, or the way in which votes are tabulated in any particular jurisdication.
Sixteen Pennsylvania counties use that Diebold machine. But too bad for them - I have it on good authority that it's "too late" to do anything about it. It's too late to allow those voters, as well as overwhelming majority of all other voters in PA who don't trust machines to vote for them, to be able to vote on paper in November.
5. Thomas Nephew, one of the very few bloggers who pay attention to the issue of electronic voting, has an account of a pollwatcher's day at the polls during Maryland's recent primary elections. He describes crashed poll books - Maryland has made the huge mistake of using electronic poll books as well as voting machines - and long waits to vote. Nobody knows what's going to happen in PA on election day. It could be a huge trainwreck, a bunch of isolated trainwrecks, or it could go smoothly. The only thing we do know for sure is that if we don't vote with voter-verified paper ballots, we have no idea if our vote was recorded and counted accurately.
6. Finally (I told you that it's been a busy stretch in the world of eVoting) via PBS we see that Mother Jones magazine has compiled a list of the eleven worst places to vote in America. Congratulations, Philadelphia for making it to Number Two on that hit parade under the heading: Machine Meltdowns! Further congratulations are due the Bucks County Commissioners, who purchased the same machines for Bucks Countians to vote on in November. It's the next best thing to actually making the list.
UPDATE: Just a note to people who say that we can't have reliable hand-counts of voter-verified paper ballots in the United States: Sweden held an election yesterday. They vote on paper. They count the votes by hand. In time for the early editions this morning, they had counted over 5.5 million votes. 5,718 of 5,783 districts were counted and a winner was announced. If Sweden can do it, the United States of America, even with its vastly larger voting population, can do it.
UPDATE 2: YouTube has video from the Princeton group that hacked the Diebold machine. I added the link above as well. It's a good walkthrough of how eVoting works in general. Please pay close attention to the "paper audit trail" that gets printed out showing the "official" (hacked) results. A true paper record, comprised of voter-verified paper ballots, would prove that the machine did not record and count votes accurately. The internal "paper audit trail" does not. It only tells you what the machine says it says. That's what we'll be dealing with in November. And, according to at least one state rep, 50 days isn't a long enough time to fix that crucial problem. Why are we putting up with that?
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