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Lynn Landis: Activist for Using Paper Ballots
Illustrated History of Voting Machines
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Myth Breakers - HAVA Misconceptions
Interview w/ Harris
Votergate, The 30 MINUTE MOVIE
ACE Project: How Ballots are Counted
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Bev Harris Interviews Diebold Computer Tech
Voting Machines, Problems with
Leip's Nov. Election Results
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IEEE Analysis of Electronic Voting
ElectionDataSvcs Inc
Stolen Election 2004, 38 pgs
Stolen Election 2004, brief
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If you don't watch over your own vote,
no one else will do it for you.
Systems to be used in 2004: http://www.heraldtribune.com
- Paper Ballots only
- 0.6% - 1 million registered
voters
- Lever machines
- 12.8% - 22.2 million registered
voters
- Electronic - 86.5% of all votes cast
- 32.2% - Optical scan, 55.6
million registered voters
- 28.9% - Electronic touchscreens,
50 million registered voters
- 18.6% - Punch cards, 32.2
million registered voters
- 6.8% - Mixed, 11.7 million
registered voters
Source: Election Data Services
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There are several different voting and vote-counting systems used in the United States (see map). I am just learning about this, as many of you are. It is possible for voting results to be manipulated in myriad ways (see links in left column). We must not lose sight of the altering of election outcomes by the process of blocking voters from voting, in precincts favorable to the opponent. Another way of altering outcomes is by throwing out great numbers of ballots for "technicalities."
But for the ballots that actually get marked and included in the ballot box, here's the skeleton overview of how they're counted:
Placing the Votes
For voting purposes, states are divided into counties, and counties are divided into voting "precincts" (or "wards"). In most areas of the US, there are thus three levels of voting and ballot-handling:
(A) precinct/ward (smallest area, neighborhood level),
(B) county (medium-size area, containing several precincts/wards), and
(C) state (largest area, containing all the counties).
People in a precinct/ward usually vote at a single polling place. Each polling place may have one or a few voting booths where paper or optical-scan or punch-card ballots are filled in or marked, or touch-screen machines are touched, or the older lever-machines are "cranked." (See the Voting Map for a description of the types of voting systems.)
Counting the Votes
There are two main vote-counting arrangements: (A) localized, and (B) centralized. In the localized method, the ballots are counted at each polling place in each precinct/ward, then those totals are communicated to the county election official (whose title is often "County Registrar"). In the centralized method, all ballots are collected from each polling place, and delivered to the centralized county location, quite often in the County Courthouse, where the ballots are all counted together.
Many states have an even higher level of centralization. Some are even beginning to eliminate neighborhood voting precincts altogether. Instead, these states have a small number of central tabulating machines throughout the state, each one handling the voting-machine and vote-counting-machine (aka "central tabulator") input for many counties over a large portion of the state.
It is these centralized tabulators which reportedly can be entered surreptitiously from the Internet. The claim is that the numbers they generate can be altered by switching one candidate's votes for the other. (See Menu to left, especially Black Box Voting, Exit Poll Discrepancy, and the Clint Curtis Interview.)
There are laws on the books in many states that say the publicly-witnessed vote totals are to be posted on the outside of each precinct door on Election Night. Since each precinct/ward serves only a few hundred people, or less, it is not a difficult matter to count the precinct's ballots in a relatively short time, and in plain view of the public, who are admitted in without restriction.
There is a prevalent misconception that big cities could not possibly use hand-counted paper ballots. But if we realize that every precinct within those cities is composed of a relatively small number of people (a range of about 50 to 500 people per precinct), it becomes clear that local citizens can easily count, and thoroughly witness, their own precinct's ballots, then post the totals, communicate the totals to the county HQ by phone, lock the precinct, deliver the ballots and counting paperwork to the County Seat, and be home fairly early on Election Night.
This is the method used by France, the country reknowned worldwide for having perhaps the greatest diplomacy and political savvy on the planet. This method, and only this method, creates vote totals that have been witnessed by the entire citizenry of a nation. Any method employing voting machines, of any kind, introduces the possibility of surreptitious manipulation. Whether employed or not, the very possibility of vote-count manipulation entirely impugns the office so elected.
"Voter-verified paper trail"
The idea of a "voter-verified paper trail" is no different from any other machine-counting of ballots. While it is true that it gives totals as quickly as touchscreens, it is also true that its totals are as doubtful as are those for touchscreens, optical scan, punch card and lever-machine systems. Why? Because these "paper trails" are no different from existing hard-copy systems prevalent throughout the U.S. Once the "paper ballot" (which the voter can never touch ~~ it comes out preprinted, and disappears again, entirely under glass) is dropped into the black box it came from, the public can never see it again, just as we cannot currently see any punch-card or optical scan ballots. As the infamous Ohio recount demonstrated, the very same systems that ran the election in the first place will be put in place for any recount of machine-counted ballots. If the powers that be tweaked the results the first time, they certainly will have already made plans for tweaking the results again in the event of a recount.
"Paper-trail" drawbacks are (1) expense, (2) monumental malfunction problems, (3) dependency on government-controlled recounts if anything is called into question, exactly as current voting machine systems are dependent on recounts, (4) equally open to fraudulent manipulation as are current systems --- they all run on the same copyrighted (i.e., secret, even from government inspection!) computer software. Lever machines can also be manipulated. Any machine can be manipulated! As my most competent friend often says, "If a man made it, a man can take it apart."
Electronic Voting Machines
Where there are touch-screen voting machines, they are linked up, via Internet modem, to a central tabulating machine somewhere in the county or state. As people vote, the totals are generated on this machine, which is just a regular computer running special software for counting votes. Optical scan and punch card ballots are also put through machines and counted using this same central tabulating machine, running the identical software that counts touch-screen machines' votes.
A question that has been claimed, but not clarified, is the extent to which these computerized tallying processes have been potentially Internet accessible. The use of modems (internal telephones that connect computers to the Internet) almost always opens up this possibility. And these voting machines don't even leave a "paper trail," dubious as such a thing is. Once they've finished counting, POOF! The original numbers vanish, never to be retrievable again.
It is said that fully 30% of all the votes in the United States this election (Nov. 2004) were cast on touch-screen machines, running proprietary, copywritedsoftware that not even government officials have been allowed to view. (See Black Box Voting, link to left.) It now is evident, from the Ohio recount and myriad other places in the U.S., that this was quite a tragedy, because almost none of these machines created any record at all. When something happened to the computer running these machines, and votes were changed or lost, there is now absolutely no record. If, as in Ohio, a recount is called for, there is virtually no way of verifying the totals created (one wants to say "fabricated") by these machines.
The Electors
The counties then report their totals to the state level (Secretary of State of each state). In almost every U.S. state, the winner of the election gets ALL the electoral votes of that state, no matter how close or disparate the citizens' vote totals were. Each state has an assigned number of Electors, based on the population of the state. The Electors are legally bound to cast their votes in the way the state laws says. Only a very few states divide up their electors according to the percentage of votes cast by citizens for each candidate.
This year (2004), the Electors formally "cast" their votes on December 13. News of the Electoral vote in Washington, DC, an event which takes us one step further to the legal inauguration of the next President on January 6, 2005, was almost wholly obliterated by the ubiquitous coverage of Scott Petersen's death penalty announcement, coincidentally released on the same day.
Synopsis: Vote-Counting Methods, Advantages and Disadvantages, and Opinions on Same
It seems, from the Voting Map, that by far the greatest number of ballots cast in the U.S. must be optical scan ballots, but I don't have a figure for that. If so, then the most common counting method is the centralized method, physically delivering these optical-scan ballots to a centralized county counting office, where they are run through an optical scanning machine connected to a computerized tabulating machine. Punch card ballots are likewise run through a counting machine which is linked to a computerized tabulating machine. It is said that 80% of all votes cast in the past General Election were counted on central tabulating machines made by just two companies, Diebold and ES&S. The president of one, and the vice president of the other, are brothers. The former president of ES&S, Senator Chuck Hagel, seems to be being groomed for the 2008 Presidential election.
A look at the Voting Map will show you that there are still a great many counties using paper ballots, hand counted. Since handwriting and pens differ, paper ballots constitute a unique and difficult-to-duplicate body of evidence. Since they are locally hand counted in front of numerous public witnesses, their totals are almost never called into question. Perhaps a coincidence, but in the state of Wisconsin (unique among the 11 Battleground States by having 29% of its counties using hand-counted paper ballots) there was zero discrepancy between exit poll data and tabulated vote counts. The other 10 battleground states had far fewer counties (usually 1 or none) using hand counted paper ballots. Of those 10 states, all the tabulated results were higher for Bush, by an average of 5 and 1/2 percent, over what the exit polls attested.
See Black Box Voting, chapters 4 and 5, available free online at http://www.blackboxvoting.org for a hair-raising and detailed discussion of all the ways that machine voting systems can be deliberately manipulated. The main place that the public should be worried about is the centralized vote-tabulating process, which is, or can be, Internet-accessible by totally unknown entities, in distant locations, the author, Bev Harris, has claimed.
Of all the variations currently used, there is only one combination of vote-marking and vote-counting that can assure that the final tallies are exactly what the voters selected when they voted, and that is, the tried-and-true paper ballot system.
In this system, known as PBHC (Paper Ballots, Hand Counted), ballots are printed with the words right on the ballot, and marked by the voter in the proper places. The votes are hand-counted at the precinct level, not the county level. In Australia, where the system was perfected in 1856, and is still in use, the counting is done by government employees who continue to draw their regular salary while being excused to do the counting. In this system, any recount will be done by exactly the same methods. There are many people who look into the issue of voting fraud, and come to the same conclusion: only paper ballot systems are accurately verifiable.
The U.S. citizenry can demand paper ballot systems, but only if people get upset enough with the machine-counted "garbage in, garbage out" morass we are currently in, and do so at their local level. It's not enough to call for a Federal investigation. The Federal government is admittedly toothless in this affair. It is to the county level that citizens must address their concerns!
If three citizens in every county in the U.S. get together, and persist, in respectfully and firmly requesting paper ballots, it will happen. County officials need to have their citizenry behind them in standing up to the powerful persuasions of dubious entities, as they are hounded into buying voting machines they often do not want and almost always have not requested. If a county official can say, "My voting public won't go for this," he or she can stand ground. But if the voters are just puffs of smoke, casting their votes any way they're told to do, then disappearing into the woodwork, the county officials will have no backbone, no way to face the onslaught of the voting-machine vendors with multi-billion-dollar budgets.
Any system of "voter-verifiable paper trail" must be able to be totally hand-recounted for the entire state. If the "paper trail" must be machine-scanned, such a system still leaves room for machine- and computerized manipulation --- it is no improvement over the present mess, as far as I've been informed, and is hugely more expensive than printed paper ballots.
~~~ Kimberly Salisbury
La Mirada, California
For more detail, see the links to the left
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News
Breaking News from Bev Harris; current
Recount Efforts in the U.S., Kim Zetter at Wired News, thru Nov, 2004
E-Voting News at VerifiedVoting.org, thru Nov, 2004
Latest on the Ohio Re-Count, by Keith Olbermann, MSNBC, Nov. 23, 2004
Berkeley CA statistical analysis of Florida data, Nov. 18, 2004
Recount in Ohio,
Nov. 15, 2004
California collects $2.6 million in Diebold suit for faulty voting machines, Nov 11, 2004
BBC says NBC exec calls exit polls "junk," Nov. 4, 2004
Kerry Won in Ohio, by Greg Palast, TomPaine.com, Nov. 4, 2004
Myriad errors in OH & PA Voting Process, Nov. 3, 2004
California investigates Diebold, Dec. 17, 2003
Will the Election be Stolen? Sept 29, 2003
Seattle Times discusses Bev Harris's findings, Sept 25, 2003
Definitions
assigned votes: the final numbers of votes, as declared by the authorities who count them; the counterpart to assigned votes is projected votes, which are the numbers of votes accumulated through exit polls
Australian ballots: another name for paper ballots in the U.S., system developed in Australia in mid-1800's
ballot: comes from the same word as "ball"; voting in ancient times was determined by secretly placing a tiny black or white ball into a container; today, ballots are of many types: optical scan, punch card, data punch, and paper; ballotless voting is done by electronic (touch-screen) machines and the older, lever machines that count like a car's odometer; by far the largest form of ballot in use in the US in 2004 is the optical scan ballot ("OS") ballot system
central tabulating software: ballot-counting software installed on a computer at the vote-counting headquarters, usually at county level;it is possible that this vote-tabulating function can be accessed by any computer in the world, and that to do so is not at all complicated, however, an investigation is necessary to learn the extent to which this is possible
central tabulating office: ballot-counting is done here, usually at the Registrar of Voters of any given county (US); a county will be divided into regions called "precincts," which have a voting place centrally located; votes made at the precinct polling place are counted either at the precinct, then sent to the central tabulating office, or sent directly to the central tabulating office where all votes/ballots are counted ("tabulated")
chad: the pieces of paper left in the holes that are supposed to get punched completely out in votomatic and other punch-card voting machines; recent discussion has delineated several specific types of chads, such as "hanging chad," "pregnant chad," and the like, giving much cause for election-time mirth
Ciber Labs: the Huntsville, Alabama branch of an ITA that was supposed to, but didn't, test Diebold GEMS central tabulator software for penetration, according to Bev Harris
computer voting system: a blurry, general category that, in the public eye, includes paperless touchscreen systems, as well as any system where voting results are tabulated by computer at a centralized location, which of course includes almost the entire U.S. voting process; much clarification needs to be done between computer knowledgeable people and their less-informed counterparts across the nation, to inform ourselves more clearly on what is being sent by what segments of the Internet; the primary necessity is to create a U.S. system where a recount can occur as accurately, precisely, and efficiently as it does in European and other democracies; only when a recount is feasible can the voting process be depended upon to be fair
data punch: "voters punch holes in the cards (with a supplied punch device) opposite their candidate or ballot issue choice. After voting, the voter may place the ballot in a ballot box, or the ballot may be fed into a computer vote-tabulating device at the precinct."
Diebold: second largest vendor of voting machines for the 2004 Election; owner, Mr. O'Dell, said publicly that he will help to get Ohio's votes to go for Bush; the company has given nearly $200,000 to the Republican party
DRE: a ballotless system known as "Direct Recording Electronic" voting system, also called "Touch Screen"
electronic voting system: Ballotless voting system, also known as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE); used statewide or nearly so in Georgia (Diebold), Kentucky, Tennessee, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey; used extensively in several other states (see map, above)
ES&S: Election Systems and Software, one of the biggest manufacturers of computerized voting systems; 56% of US votes in November 2, 2004's General Election were cast on ES&S machines; formerly named American Information Systems, Inc.
exit poll: a survey taken after voters have voted and exited the polling place, by asking voters who they voted for; this gives a very close approximation of how the real vote is going; historically, exit polls in the U.S. have been very accurate, differing from final tabulations, at the most, by 1/10th of 1 percent.
FEC: Federal Election Commission; in 1984 they produced Voting System Standards: A Report on the Feasibility of Developing Voluntary Standards for Voting Equipment
GEMS: Global Election Management System, the Windows-based software at the heart of the Diebold voting machines
IEEE: "The IEEE and its predecessors, the AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers) and the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers), date to 1884."
ITA: Independent Testing Authority, the categorical name for companies hired by NASED to test the computer-driven voting systems now in use in the U.S.
lever machines: Ballotless voting system operated by pulling a lever to add one's vote to a tally; a series of levers and resulting tallies operate like odometers, moving up 1/10th of a rotation with each vote; now used in New York, Virginia and Louisiana primarily; these machines are no longer made
Mark-sense or Marksense: Voting system where dark marks are made on a paper ballot, then scanned by various types of machinery; also known as "Optical Scan" or OS, as opposed to the earlier (pre-1960's) electronic sensing systems that read the conductivity of pencil marks; optical systems read the shade (lightness/darkness) of the mark, not its electrical properties
NASED: National Association of State Election Directors, with the Secretariat of this group being in Texas; they are supposed to certify that your election voting system is "safe" and free from tamperability (Note: their new website has only one contact person, whose city and state are not given; see Bev Harris's website , p. 5, for a list of NASED officials; the Secretariat is/was R. Doug Lewis in Houston, TX electioncent@pdq.net)
optical scan:, a voting system where ballots are marked by the voter, then put through a scanning machine that reads the marks; the most widely-used type of US voting system; also known as "Marksense" (see above)
OS: Optical Scan (see above)
paper ballots: forms printed on paper or cardstock listing candidates names, and election choices, and including places to mark one's choice; known as Australian ballots, because the system was perfected there first; are filled out in privacy and put into a sealed ballot box; counted by hand; undoubtedly the best, some say the only, system for insuring accurate counting of ballots
paper trail: = ballots! If voters cast paper ballots, these can always be recounted, thus keeping the election honest. When voters use computerized voting machines, there's no proof that what the voter chose is what got counted (even if the voter gets a paper record, that will not help, since it would be impossible to collect all these papers from voters and recount them)
PBHC: Paper Ballot Hand Counted, the voting system in the U.S. where voters mark ballots that have the information printed right on the ballot itself, and then these ballots are counted by hand, that it, people tally them personally --- also called the Australian Ballot system, as it was first perfected in that country (in 1856!).
polling place: or "polls," the place where people go to vote; the voting place; in the US, these are often in schools and other official, easily-accessible locations;not to be confused with the other meaning, i.e., surveys taken, asking a series of people the same questions
polls: (1) surveys taken by asking people certain choices, for the purpose of finding out the generally-held views of a group of people; (2) the place where people go to vote; the voting place; in the US, these are often in schools and other official, easily-accessible locations
precinct: the local voting region; there are several precincts in each county; people living in one precinct will all vote at that precinct's polling place; votes can be counted in the precincts, with those totals being given to the county office; or the voted ballots can be delivered to the central county location where all votes are counted together; the county election officials then report to the Secretary of State of their state
projected totals: the numbers of votes accumulated through exit polls, which figures are used to create media projections of how the final count will turn out (see Exit Polls)
public commons: the rightful gathering places of the public; the entire vote-counting process is supposed to take place here, in full view of members of the public, and never be hidden from public view, as it is today with computerized counting machines of all kinds, which system is causing increasing secrecy of the vote-counting process away from public accessibility
RAS: Remote Access Server, a type of phone-number-accessed server, run on Windows, which is very easy for computer folks to enter; the centralized vote counting programs used in the November 2 Presidential Election were linked through RAS systems, meaning that anyone, anywhere in the world, could get in, change vote counts, and leave without much of a trace, according to Bev Harris
Secretary of State: An office at both the Federal and State levels; at State level, this is an elected position, but quizzically, this official's responsibility is to oversee all major elections
server: a computer that "serves" to link many computers together, forming the "Internet"; a server is any normal small computer, like yours or mine, that has "server software" operating on it; the huge net of servers forms the Internet; you can "see" the Internet connecting you to a distant website --- go to Start, Run, type in cmd, hit OK, then in the black window, type tracert, then a space, then the domain name of the website you want to see the path to (e.g., www.craigslist.org); hit "Enter"
tabulation: the county-level activity of counting all the votes in the county; this counting is done, in most cases in the US, by a normal-looking computer that has special tabulation software installed; each county has one, or sometimes two, such computers functioning on Election Day and for some time thereafter; each computer can process up to 2,000,000 votes at a time; often, today's voting machines are connected via the Internet, directly to the tabulation computer
TS: Touch Screen, a ballotless voting system where the voter touches the computer screen to select his/her choice; a type of DRE system
Voting Systems Panel (VSP): group at State level (California, 2003) to inquire into the nature of current voting systems
Votomatic: punch card voting system that has nothing except numbers printed on the ballot cards; one punches the card at the numbers that correspond to the choices on a separate display
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