What To Say About Paper When Optically Scanned

["Robert Mcgrath" <mcgrath_mcnally@xxxxxxx>]

I have been lobbied by a couple of knowledgeable people asking me to 
reconsider my statement advocating the use of absentee ballots even when the 
polling place offers hand marked paper ballots that are optically scanned.

I have been told that to advocate absentee ballots in this instance is 
wrong, because either it is an unnecessary risk, it subjects votes to 
additional scrutiny that is unwarranted, it makes no sense because all 
absentee ballots are optically scanned anyway, or it won't cause any change 
in the way votes are counted.

I point out the need to avoid optical scans in the first place because of 4 
items, explained below.   However, I am willing to revise this earlier 
recommendation on absentee ballots in counties where they already vote on 
paper ballots, since they are already read by optical scanners.  I do still 
wish to force manual recounts of all optically scanned votes, but am not 
sure how to cause this to happen other than through challenges to the 
results after the elections, since no one is willing to make any more 
changes this close to the election.

Here are the four items that continue to concern me, and that cause me to 
want people to come out of their complacency over optical scanners as a 
"necessary evil but probably ok":

The first is a posting by Joe Pezillo back in April, retelling about a 
county in San Diego that miscounted 3000 ballots via optical scanner:



Here's a yet another sad example of why just casting your ballots on  paper 
isn't enough, note that it was only during a post-election review  that the 
problems were found. All the more reason to be able to have  verification 
when the ballots are being counted, not just during  pre-election testing of 
equipment, and of course, yet another reason to  reject the machines and 
their manufacturer's continued false claims of  the quality of their systems 
altogether. I wonder if this is the same  system that we used in Boulder 
County in November, or worse, an  "improved" version of that system:


"An article in today's San Diego Union Tribune reveals nearly  3000  
absentee ballots in the San Diego primary one month ago were  miscounted. 
'The miscounts occurred because multiple scanners  simultaneously fed the 
absentee ballot data into the computer  tabulation system. The large number 
of ballots and candidates on them  overwhelmed the system. Diebold spokesman 
David Bear said the company  has provided a software fix to the county for 
the new problem.' The  irregularities were found in a routine post-election 
review."


http://slashdot.org/articles/04/04/08/1828200.shtml? 
tid=103&tid=126&tid=172&tid=99

The second point is a story covered also in April this year about several 
county races that certified the wrong winners, and a school mill levy 
referendum that was defeated, due to an error with the optical scan count in 
Garfield County.  It took a manual recount to discover that several scanned 
ballots were skipped, causing the elections to be incorrect, since some of 
them were marked in pen instead of pencil, which the scanners could not 
read.  Inconsistent instructions on the ballots vs. on the secrecy sleeve 
caused voters to use pen or pencil.

The third point is a story emerging over the past few weeks by Bev Harris, 
at www.blackboxvoting.org, in which she highlights secret codes that exist 
in Diebold central tabulators that allow hackers to enter back-doors (even 
remotely) to change elections.  Many of Colorado's counties run this central 
tabulation software, for their scanners, I believe.

Finally, as we started this whole endeavor over verifiable voting almost a 
year ago, we quoted Stalin who said (and I paraphrase): "It's not the votes 
that count, it's who counts the votes."  Whether a DRE steals an election or 
not, the counting software certainly can, especially if it's in a computer 
too.

But for the sake of argument, let's say we advocate absentee only in DRE 
counties.  That's still half the precincts in the state, but does help us 
target many fewer counties and could be more feasible.

Thoughts before I post the entire group on this?

Bob McGrath
Director, CFVI
www.cfvi.org