Colorado Voter

Board says "do not certify any voting equipment".

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:32:00 -0700

The voting system certification board report says none of the voting equipment passed the tests. The reports for each vendor can be found at:

Certification Overview - Premier
Certification Overview - ES&S
Certification Overview - HART
Certification Overview - Sequoia

A court ordered re-certification of voting equipment in Colorado has concluded that none of the voting equipment supplied by Premier, Hart, ES&S, and Sequoia should be certified for use in elections.

The reasons for decertification vary, they focus on security and accuracy, and they include some of the problems identified by Ohio and California.

Despite Secretary of State Mike Coffman’s hand-picked certification board’s conclusions and recommendations, Mr. Coffman granted conditional certification to Premier’s voting and counting equipment. He also granted conditional certification to HART DREs and Sequoia optical scanners. His override of the board’s determination is an illustration that the process is not independent. Until the certification process is independent, it should not be trusted.

Colorado voting integrity advocates are very displeased with Mr. Coffman’s decisions, although they are relieved to be proven correct in their years long efforts to discredit the equipment. According to them, the certification process itself is fatally flawed. It is not independent, it is not comprehensive, and its factual determinations can be overridden by political expediency. And there is no test to verify that voting equipment components work when they are combined into a system.

There is a massive flurry of activity in Colorado as county clerks and vendors try to come up with a plan to get around the certification decisions. Mr. Coffman has announced his intent to request legislative changes that would enable him to get around the laws designed to protect the election system. He wants to shop around for a state that has certified this equipment, and use their positive certification results instead of Colorado’s negative results. He also wants legislative permission to bypass required testing of changes to the equipment and software.

Voter integrity groups and local systems experts who advocate for verifiable and transparent elections are fighting to break thru the wall of secrecy thrown up by officials. The public is being excluded from even observing meetings of election officials. This raises the question, are officials overtly violating Colorado’s open government laws?

This is a story that needs to be told. Colorado press on Monday and Tuesday was filled with the story.

Key points are:

• What are the implications for other states that are using this equipment?
• What does this decertification mean for the results of past elections that used this unreliable and insecure equipment?
• Is Colorado violating open government laws?
• What will Colorado do for 2008?

For more information see:

Colorado Voter Group

CAMBER

John Fund on Absentee Voting

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:45:00 -0700

Today's Online Wall Street Journal includes a piece by John Fund entitled, "Absent Without Leave"

It, along with a number of related articles, documents what is happening with absentee voting.

John Fund is the author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy"

Republicans file complaint against Boulder County Officials

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 16:17:00 -0600

Violation of election code - interference with Canvass Board

The Boulder County Republican Party has filed a complaint with the Colorado Secretary of State alleging apparent violation of the election code and interference with the legally appointed Canvass Board.

Click to read the complaint which alleges that Boulder County Officials:

1. Did not conduct the required Logic & Accuracy Test.
2. Did not record in the pollbook whether each voter used a paper or electronic ballot.
3. Denied the Canvass Board access to General Eleciton materials.
4. Denied the Canvass Board access to Primary Election materials.
5. Refuse to conduct public business in public.

The Boulder County Board of Canvassers is responsible for verifying the post election audit (random audit) and the election results, and for conducting any recounts.

The board has three members:

Deb Gardner, Democratic Party Representative
Al Kolwicz, Republican Party Representative
Nancy Jo Wurl, Clerk & Recorder Representative

The board must complete its work on the 2006 General Election on November 24th, unless there is a recount in which case the recount must be completed on December 1st.

To facilitate public oversight the board will conduct its business online, where the public, candidates, and the press can watch what is happening.

1. Whenever you like, you can link to the site to see what is happening. Simply go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CanvassBoard/

2. In addition, if you wish, you can choose to have the system automatically send a message to your inbox when the site has new material. You can choose between real time updates or a daily message summary. Simply press the "JOIN" button when you are on the site. (Joining the site does not authorize you to submit unmoderated messages to the group.)

By conducting the 2006 general election canvass in public the Canvass Board hopes to increase public awareness of the process and to increase voter confidence in election results.

Manipulating the facts

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Thu, 5 Oct 2006 11:18:00 -0600

The articles “More voters using absentee ballots” and “Cost to vote is increasing” are great illustrations of government propaganda.

Boulder County has done everything it can do to get people to vote by absentee ballot. Why?

1. Staff hopes to reduce the Election Day workload on the poorly designed HART ballot scanning equipment, and
2. Staff hopes to reduce long lines at Early and Election Day polling places.

What harm is done by encouraging people to vote by absentee ballot? Absentee ballots are not secure and they result in disenfranchised voters

1. Not every absentee ballot gets counted.
2. Absentee ballots get lost and stolen and can be switched.
3. Eligible voter’s ballots get rejected by staff.
4. Ineligible people get to vote, hence eligible votes get cancelled.

On a practical side, absentee ballots cost more and take much longer to process than in-person paper ballots.

Staff knows that informed voters study the candidates and issues before they come to the polling place. Most come prepared with a checklist of their votes. Instead of educating voters to come to the polls prepared, staff promotes the myth of the unprepared voter. This encourages voters to come to the polls unprepared.

And don’t be comforted by staff claims that the Logic and Accuracy Tests and the Post Election Audit will catch any problems. This is an irresponsible and absolutely untrue claim.

Why has Boulder County hired a person to promote the insecure, inaccurate, and expensive absentee ballot? Because for staff, elections are all about staff convenience and making staff look good.

What is our advice to voters?

(1) Always use a paper ballot (not a paper receipt).
(2) Personally cast your anonymous ballot into the ballot box.
(3) Don’t vote absentee or provisional ballots unless there is absolutely no alternative. (These ballots must be placed into a sealed envelop, and risk being not counted.)
(4) Never use voting equipment that records your votes electronically, even if the equipment also prints your votes on a paper receipt. (The votes on the electronic record decide the election, not the ones on the paper receipt.)

Al Kolwicz

CAMBER challenges Colorado SOS candidates to start planning immediately

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:15:00 -0600

Following Friday's judicial order that Colorado clean up voting equipment standards and recertify all voting equipment for the 2008 elections, a challenge was issued to Colorado's Secretary of State candidates Mike Coffman [R] and Ken Gordon [D].

Coffman and Gordon were challenged to cooperatively or individually appoint a person or persons to begin work immediately on a plan to comply with Judge Manzanares' orders. The challenge was issued by Colorado's leading voter-advocate group, Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results, CAMBER.

Either Coffman or Gordon will be Colorado's next Secretary of State. "If they wait until election results are decided and they take office before they begin development of a compliance plan, it is highly unlikely that the 2008 elections will be improved. There just won't be enough time", said Al Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER.

CAMBER warned the Secretary of State, the Legislature, and the Governor of the impeding problem back in 2004, when Colorado adopted HB04-1227. The bill was enacted, and resulted in most of the problems heard by the court in last weeks trial.

To read CAMBER's challenge to the candidates, and a description of their suggested approach, go to http://alkolwicz.com/documents/start%20now.pdf

PRESS RELEASE: Will the Court decertify Colorado's electronic voting equipment?

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 16:43:00 -0600

PRESS RELEASE
September 19, 2006

Will the Court decertify Colorado's electronic voting equipment? If so, election officials will need to develop an alternative for November’s elections.

It is widely suspected that Colorado’s voting equipment certification process is flawed. Equipment vendors are not being held to the same standard, and none of the electronic voting equipment certified for use in Colorado meets the requirement for anonymous ballots, paper audit trail, and the Americans with Disabilities Act requirements of the Help America Vote Act.

Experience with the equipment during the recent Primary Election seems to support the notion that it is not feasible to verify that votes recorded and counted on this equipment are secure, and accurately interpreted and counted.

Judge Manzanares will preside and rule on the matter. The hearing begins at 8:30 AM on Wednesday, Sept. 20 and continues on Sept. 21 in Courtroom 1 which is on the second floor of the Denver City and County Bldg.

Two of the leading voting machine experts are scheduled to testify on Wednesday – Doug Jones from the University of Iowa and Dan Wallach from Rice. In addition, the person responsible for certifying voting equipment, John Gardner, is to testify.

If the Court decides that the equipment must be decertified, the Secretary of State may have the authority to authorize “temporary use” of the decertified equipment for the November election.

The judge could forbid the Secretary of State from using electronic ballots but authorize her to use the equipment to prepare paper ballots for disabled voters. The votes on these paper ballots would be hand counted.

This case has attracted national attention.

Clarification requested on HART equipment certification

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:43:00 -0600

From: Al Kolwicz
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 11:28 AM
To: Gigi Dennis (gigi.dennis@sos.state.co.us)
Cc: Canvass Board Group (CanvassBoard@yahoogroups.com); Mike Coffman (Mike@MikeCoffman.com); Ken Gordon (ken@kengordon.com); Dean Schooler
Subject: Clarification requested on HART equipment certification

Dear Ms. Dennis.

Your office has certified that the HART InterCivic paper ballot system works with or without ballot stubs, and with or without non-removable unique ballot identifiers (serial numbers in the form of bar codes and/or printed digits).

Boulder County says that they cannot use ballots without permanent unique identifiers because the HART system does not support them, and the Secretary of State does not require them. Boulder County maintains that the HART system does not work without permanent unique identifiers. (1) They say that the HART optical scanning system requires that multi-page paper ballots must be read sequentially (all pages of a single voter’s ballot read before the next voter’s ballot). (2) They say that without a non-removable identifier, it is not possible to arrange each ballot’s ballot pages into sets. Further, Boulder County says that a non-removable identifier is required to locate a ballot in a batch (for duplication purposes, for example).

If what Boulder County says is true, the HART system contains defects that should have been detected by your certification testing. Both of the defects identified by Boulder County (above) should have been repaired before the system was certified. Defect #1 should be repaired by eliminating the requirement that ballot pages be organized into sets. This is an undesirable requirement that serves no valid purpose. Would the HART system VOID an entire multi-page ballot if one of the pages is missing? If so, under what authority? Defect #2 should be eliminated by requiring that every anonymous ballot page be endorsed, after it has been cast by the voter and before the scanned image is recorded, with a unique identifier containing the following: Batch-ID, Item-number within the batch, Date-processed, Time-processed, Machine-ID.

On the other hand, if Boulder County is not true, then you have found a way to use the HART system that does not require non-removable unique ballot identifiers.

We would like you to confirm, did you certify that the HART optical scan system does in fact work when the ballot identifiers are recorded on stubs which are removed before the ballot is cast? If so, will you please explain to Boulder County how this is done? If not, will you please retract your certification of this feature?

Thank you.

FALSE IMPRESSIONS -- Suit: Ban computer voting

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:10:00 -0600

Subject: Re: FALSE IMPRESSIONS -- PRESS 09152006 Suit: Ban computer voting

In addition to what Al Kolwicz says, all of which I agree with, it is doubtful that the DRE machines anywhere have actually been successfully tested in an election scale event. The reason this is basically impossible is that there is no way to accurately test vote tens of thousands of votes into a collection of DREs... short of possibly using a bunch of robots to do it, and even that might have accuracy problems. Any county which has honestly attempted to conduct a LAT on the DREs must be aware of this.

The potential for error in the DRE election tabulations is not a trivial consideration. It is not impossible that there are bugs within the software which compile the votes from the various DREs into larger tabulations (such as the JBC in the case of the Hart system) which could by tabulation register rollover or similar accidental faults modify the results in a particular range of count, for example. Unless the election scale tests are performed, we would not necessarily know about such faults which could be unintended or otherwise.

It would be possible to have an election scale test in which the VVPATs are counted and compared to the election tabulation. This should most certainly be done, and I suspect it has never been done on any realistic scale with any DRE system. To avoid human error in the counting of paper ballots, it is unquestionably an advantage to sort before counting. For this purpose it would be necessary to cut the individual VVPATs from their sequential positions on the paper roll. Of course, we all are depending on the possibility of this full scale hand recount being done for the safety of all our elections, but I doubt if anyone has demonstrated how to do it successfully in an election scale with real VVPATs.

On the other hand with paper ballots it is possible to sort and count and recount test paper ballots until a group of human counters are certain about and agree in spite of partisan differences to the expected result. And this group of test ballots can be entered into the counting machines as many times as necessary to gain confidence that they always produce the same result (or fail to do so). Paper ballots provide an entirely different and more testable situation, although again, it is doubtful that proper testing has been done in the actual ITA or state certification tests, including ballots incorporating questionable voter intent.

Ocasionally there may have been a hand recount of a given race in a real election, but the results of this recount are rarely if ever compared against the machine count with the intention of reconciling the differences to improve the machine accuracy. In almost every case, such a comparison is made with the expectation of improving the human count accuracy. Election failures are not collected into a single repository for the purposes of learning how to improve our voting process or even which devices are more prone to failure. Each county learns these things on their own, or fails to do so.

The effect of whatever causes questionable voter intent on a paper ballot has the very different and troubling result of a false impression of certainty on the DRE. This is not a technical advantage of the DRE, this is an irreparable fault of the DRE. The DRE unavoidably hides the condition that the voter either has difficulty voting, or is uncertain about the choice for some reason perhaps intentional. Apparently we are no longer concerned about the mechanization of society, so there seem to be few people arguing the need for humanistic interfaces nowadays, unfortunately. Many nations still vote entirely on paper and use human counting and still do this without difficulty.

It is time for us to be realistic about the need for and the lack of testing of our voting machines. The salient issue is not only securing our machines against fraud. The additional security may have the unfortunate side effect of a preventing public oversight of our election processes and this could actually lead to additional potential for fraud or accidental error.

Also it is critical that our post election audits actually perform an audit at a sufficient level of accuracy, and that they consist of an actual audit, not a recount retest. This will require some careful planning and may require the hand counting of more than the prescribed number of ballots as it is crucial to count to a number which is a real subtotal in the real election results. The accuracies resulting from the 2005 habit of recounting 100 ballots are embarrassingly low. In 2006 in most counties more than 100 ballots were counted in the audit, but this number should consist of at least several percent of the ballots in the election. Then the county should be prepared to hand count all the VVPAT and paper ballots in case a reported race result comes too close for the accuracy of the statutory tests (LAT or post-election audit). We should always have a paper ballot hand count in each close election.

Following these guidelines, in addition to making sure that all voters are aware of the significance of what is printed on the VVPAT, would give us a reason to trust our voting machines' results. Then there is also the process of determining whom is allowed to cast a vote to consider (elsewhere).

Harvie Branscomb
Chair, Eagle County Democrats
Member, Eagle County Canvass Board

FALSE IMPRESSIONS

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 09:05:00 -0600

A Rocky Mountain News story, Suit: Ban computer voting, reports that Colorado Deputy Attorney General Maurice Knaizer says that Colorado is protected against tampering because state law now requires a printout of each computer ballot. And that, the printout can be reviewed by the voter and is kept at the machine for post-election audits and recounts.

This is a false assurance.

1. Electronic voting machines were justified and forced upon the public primarily on their supposed ability to offer disabled voters the opportunity to vote in private. The technology chosen by the Secretary of State cannot be used by blind voters to verify that their votes are correctly recorded. Other technology, such as the AutoMark can. The Secretary of State has forbidden use of the AutoMark.

2. The post-election audit procedure defined by the Secretary of State does not work. It is statistically meaningless. It cannot detect inaccurate or fraudulent votes within a predetermined level of accuracy. (It cannot be used to predict, for example, “For the Governor of Colorado Contest, it is 99.95 percent certain that there are less than 2 incorrect votes per 10,000 votes recorded.)

3. The printout created at the time a voter casts their ballot does not protect voters. The printout could potentially be used to conduct a full manual recount to catch inaccurate or fraudulent vote counting, but this will almost never happen. Because the printout is on a continuous roll, like a cash register tape, it is extremely difficult and very expensive to accurately hand count the votes. Consequently, the Secretary of State rarely authorizes a recount, clerks try to block recounts, and candidates almost always find it too expensive to pay for them.

The continued assurance by government officials that the paper printout protects Colorado voters from inaccurate and fraudulent vote counting is nothing more than a reckless attempt to deceive voters into believing that their votes are secure when in fact they are not.

Officials making this statement must be held accountable for their reckless claim.

End of secret ballot?

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:04:00 -0600

As predicted, Colorado's Secretary of State, Gigi Dennis, has used her extraordinary power to silence her critics. Is this the end of the secret ballot?

Voting equipment certified by Colorado does not comply with the law. It does not permit blind voters to verify their votes, and it requires voters to use ballots that are marked in a way that makes them not anonymous.

Dennis refuses to enforce the law and does not want to hear any more about it. In her response to critics, Dennis says that she, and she alone is the final arbiter on this matter and refuses to discuss the matter further.

Click to read:

HAVA Complaint and Public Hearing Notice
HAVA Complaint Determination - Amended 7/24/06
Kolwicz Rejects Complaint Determination
8-point Alternative Plan

For a copy of the Secretary of State's July 24th letter send a message to AlKolwicz@qwest.net with the subject line SILENCE THE PUBLIC.

Key government document altered

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Sat, 1 Jul 2006 14:53:00 -0600

Denver, CO -- Somebody altered an official government document, and the Secretary of State is being very quiet about it.

The altered document is the Certificate of Approval for Voting System Use for the Hart InterCivic voting system. A copy resides on the Secretary of State website, and it authorizes Colorado counties to use the Hart voting system.

The certificate was issued on February 28, 2006 after what the state describes as extensive testing of the Hart voting system.

Because of concerns regarding secret ballots, the certificate was issued with a restriction. The use of serial numbers on paper ballots is forbidden.

“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado, with the condition that the optional feature for putting a readable serial number on the physical paper ballot will not be used by counties in Colorado.”

The alteration deletes the restriction that safeguards secret ballots; it now says,

“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado.”

As soon as the alteration was discovered, CAMBER notified the Secretary of State and asked for an explanation.

“We can find no evidence that the Hart system was re-certified or re-tested,” says Al Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER.

For the Secretary of State to change the system, Hart would have had apply for certification, and the certification tests would have had to be re-run to verify that the revised system meets all functional requirements, including the secret ballot requirement .

“Serial numbered ballots are definitely not anonymous.” says Kolwicz. “A voter can identify their own ballot; an absentee ballot control system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which ballot; a ballot-on-demand system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which ballot; and provisional ballots are easily associated with their voter.”

# # #

Elections coordinator reveals defect in Hart vote counting system.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:05:00 -0600

Election coordinator, Josh Liss, today revealed that the Hart vote counting equipment does not perform according to its specifications - see Colorado Daily, June 23. This is the reason that the Clerk wants to use non-secret ballots. Liss asked CAMBER to help the county to go forward with non-secret ballots.

CAMBER rejects the county's solution, and offers to help solve Hart's problem in a way that protects the secret ballot.

One must ask, why has this this clerk been working so hard to protect the equipment supplier rather than working to protect the people?

Colorado Daily reports that Salas intends to choose non-secret ballot option.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:32:00 -0600

Boulder County Clerk, Linda Salas, and Hart InterCivic are working to crush people's right to vote by secret ballot.

The Boulder County Republicans and Dean Schooler are among those leading the fight to protect this basic right.

Boulder County election officials are out of control.

• They are abusing the power of their office to sacrifice basic voter rights.

• They are fixated on doing what is most convenient for themselves rather than what is necessary for a trustworthy election.

• They are working to cover up design and implementation deficiencies with the county's election procedures and the Hart vote counting equipment.

Clerk Salas is a candidate in the upcoming primary election. If ballots include a unique identifier, Salas can see how YOU voted. This potential for intimidation must be stopped.

CAMBER believes that there is still time to act, today. Get the Democratic Party to join the effort, and plead with the Secretary of State to protect secret ballots.

Boulder County clerk is deciding between secret and non-secret voting.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 13:22:00 -0600

Hart InterCivic has submitted a proposal to print ballots for the 2006 primary and general elections. Serial numbers and bar codes that uniquely identify the ballot would be printed on a perforated, removable stub, as required by Article 5 of the election code.

To keep votes secret, the stub will be removed just before the voter casts their ballot.

Clerk Linda Salas is thinking about not allowing the perforated ballots. Instead, she prefers the non-anonymous ballots that were dragged into court last year. She says that this would reduce the cost of the ballots by $3,500.00.

We say keep the secret ballot. Why take chances with voter privacy, voter intimidation, and fraud?

Let the clerk and the secretary of state know that people want secret ballots.

Keep secret ballots.

Linda Salas
Boulder County Clerk & Recorder
1750 33rd St.
Boulder, CO 80301
(303) 413-7700
lsalas@co.boulder.co.us

Gigi Dennis
Colorado Secretary of State
1700 Broadway, Suite 250
Denver, Colorado 80290
(303) 860-6900
gigi.dennis@sos.state.co.us

Records refused. Meeting oversight refused. 8-point alternative to eSlate offered.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 10:48:00 -0600

The Secretary of State wrote a June 16th denial of our June 13th request for records and has refused to permit us to observe the meetings that will determine the outcome of our HAVA complaint. We believe that these are violations of the Colorado Open Records Act and the Sunshine laws.

To not decertify the eSlate would be a mockery of the law.

Anticipating a whitewash, after observing the foot-dragging in the Secretary of State’s office, this morning we submitted our 8-point alternative to the widespread use of non-compliant DRE voting equipment for the 2006 primary election.

Given the no-win position that government officials have placed us in, we believe that the 8-point alternative best meets the needs of the people and the spirit of federal and state election laws.

Please ask Secretary of State Dennis to adopt our workable 8-point alternative.

Gigi Dennis
E-mail gigi.dennis@sos.state.co.us
Voice (303) 860-6900
Fax (303) 869-4860

CAMBER uses Colorado Open Records Act to pierce secret and unaccountable election practices

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 17:29:00 -0600

The Colorado Secretary of State and County Clerks appear to be collaborating to block public access to legitimate public information. The information might be embarrassing to election officials. Months of delays appear to be coordinated efforts to block the public from challenging official decisions.

1. CAMBER is trying to find out if Boulder County will use anonymous voting for the 2006 Primary Election. In recent elections, they did not permit anonymous voting. Click to read our Colorao Open Records Act request for ballot plans.

2. CAMBER is trying to preempt the Colorado Secretary of State from making a secret back room decision that could cover up dereliction of election duties at the expense of the public. Click to read our Colorao Open Records Act request for status of the HAVA complaint against HART eSlate voting equipment.

According to Al Kolwicz, CAMBER Executive Director, "It is no longer acceptable for election officials to operate in secret and be unaccountable to the public. We have trusted them in the past and look where it has gotten us. Trusting officials was a serious mistake."

Holly Lowder - new Colorado Elections Director.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Thu, 1 Jun 2006 13:56:00 -0600

June 1 -- Holly Lowder is Colorado's new Elections Director. She just resigned from her job as Alamosa County Clerk and Recorder where she was appointed in 1981.

Alamosa County has fewer than 7,000 active voters. As of January 13, 2006, Colorado had 2,327,239 active voters.

We are very concerned that Ms Lowder's background does not appear to include technical experience.

Click to read our welcome letter.

UPDATE: Public hearing on HART eSlate decertification

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:24:00 -0600

The May 24th public hearing on the HAVA complaint for wrongful certification of the HART eSlate was well run, well attended (50 citizens), and well worth the effort.

The hearing record will remain open until June 1st. I hope that you will submit letters and materials before then.

A decision will be announced by the Secretary of State on or before July 10th.

Click the CAMBER website to:

1. Read our brief.
2. Hear the audio-recording of the hearing.
3. Read a critique of the hearing and suggestions for future improvement.

Thanks to everyone who is helping to protect anonymous and verifiable voting.

Al

SOS response is deemed insufficient

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Wed, 17 May 2006 18:16:00 -0600

A HAVA complaint has been filed against the Colorado Secretary of State which alleges that the Secretary of State wrongfully certified HART InterCivic DRE voting equipment.

A public hearing has been scheduled for May 24th.

The Secretary of State has insufficiently responded to a Colorado Open Records Act request.

Today the Secretary of State was sent an expanded CORA request, and asked to quickly provide the requested data.

“If the SOS stalls long enough, we won’t get the data we need, and we won’t be able to submit complete testimony at the May 24th public hearing,” said Al Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER, a voter rights group.

Click to read May 17 -- Discussion regarding insufficiency of records response

The public hearing on the HAVA complaint is set for 1:30 p.m. May 24th at the Blue Spruce Conference Room of the Secretary of State’s Office, 1700 Broadway, 2nd Floor, Denver, Colorado.

Colorado accepts HAVA complaint against HART eSlate.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Mon, 8 May 2006 20:05:00 -0600

The Colorado Secretary of State has accepted a formal HAVA complaint filed against the certification of the HART eSlate voting equipment.

The complaint charges that the eSlate fails to provide anonymous voting as required by the Colorado Constitution and fails to provide private unassisted voting for blind voters as required by Federal HAVA requirements.

A public hearing has been scheduled for May 24, 2006, at the Colorado Secretary of State's office in Denver.

Today, a request was submitted to the Secretary of State asking for relevant documents including the test cases and results that were used for Federal and State certification.

This is a critical public hearing. It has been reported that 40 Colorado counties plan to use HART equipment. Some are in the midst of contract negotiations.

It appears that the Secretary of State is attempting to get HART contracts signed before the hearing.

If this is true, then this would be a major disservice to the public.

HR 550 - More harm than good.

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Sun, 9 Apr 2006 12:25:00 -0600

HR 550 does not solve the digital ballot problem. It creates the false illusion that it does, and moves us in the wrong direction.

A second and third ballot -- the paper audit trail and bar code -- will result in increased legal disputes, uncertainty, and loss of voter confidence.

Digital ballots must be outlawed -- until it can be proven that they can be made transparent, anonymous, and verifiably secure and accurate. At present they are not.

For an election to be trustworthy, the recording, interpretation, and counting of each eligible elector's intent must be verified and performed in a fully transparent and anonymous manner. The public must believe that results reflect the intent of the voters.

The problem with direct record electronic (DRE) voting equipment is that it records votes electronically. Digital ballots have been permitted to evolve because of two major flaws:

1. Wrong requirements -- Voting equipment vendors and election officials are recklessly attempting to reduce cost and increase convenience. They are ignoring the non-negotiable requirements. Reduce cost and increase convenience only when an election system is: (a) transparent, (b) anonymous, and (c) verifiably secure and accurate. To sacrifice any of these higher requirements will result in an untrustworthy election.

2. Wrong architecture -- Some people incorrectly assume that private voting for disabled voters requires digital ballots. A user interface for disabled-voters does not require that votes be stored on digital ballots. Votes must be stored on a medium that can be (a) transparent, (b) anonymous, and (c) verifiably secure and accurate. Paper meets these requirements.

Elections are intended to be deterministic (you get the same results no matter how many times you re-calculate). Surveys are understood to be stochastic (they are subject to probabilistic behavior). Checking samples of audit trails is not adequate verification.

What do we recommend?

1. Prohibit digital ballots and bar codes.
2. Require that user interfaces support paper ballots.
3. Require the same ballot for absentee, polling place and provisional voting.

HAVA complaint filed against HART eSlate

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Fri, 7 Apr 2006 19:11:00 -0600

Two stories that you will want to know about have just been posted to the CAMBER website.

A HAVA complaint has been filed with the Colorado Secretary of State against the HART eSlate. HART estimates that more than 40 Colorado counties will be using this equipment for the 2006 elections.

Here’s what happened at Boulder County’s "public hearing" on voting equipment. It’s a case of government vs. the people.

Each is one page and very informative.

CAMBER appalled by Boulder County’s Evaluation

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:43:00 -0700

TO: Boulder County Proposal Evaluation Committee

Dear committee member:

We have reviewed your RFP Evaluation report and we are appalled.

1. The committee has failed in its duty to report these facts about the HART InterCivic proposal:

o It does not comply with the RFP requirements
o It violates Colorado law
2. The committee wrongly recommends changing the RFP terms after the bids have been submitted. This stinks to high heaven. The county will be accused of rigging the bid.

The RFP is for a lease not a sale, and there is no mention that lease costs would be credited against a future purchase.

Disclosure of these two deal sweeteners would likely have attracted additional bid responders and cost the county less. Adopting them would substantially rig any future purchase in HART's favor.

3. Details in the report are wrong (hopefully innocently). It is absolutely not true, for example, that the HART system is “the most universally accessible certified system available at this time”. AutoMark is more accessible, is certified nationally and by most states (not Colorado), and is available at this time.

AutoMark was suspiciously denied Colorado certification. HART’s equipment suffers from the identical problem used by the Secretary of State to deny AutoMark certification.

Something fishy is going on in the Secretary of State's office.

We worked long and hard to share with you the benefit of our work on this decision. We do not find that you have responded to our written concerns. March 13, March 20, and March 22, 2006. These letters are available at CAMBER/lease_RFP

We ask that you revise the conclusions in your report.

1. Expose the difficult and unanswered problems that we have brought to your attention.

2. Keep the terms and conditions of the RFP as it was presented to vendors, or issue a new RFP so that all vendors can compete.

3. Correct erroneous and misleading statements in the report.

4. Ask the Secretary of State to expedite reconsideration of the AutoMark and Vote-PAD.

The people of Boulder County do not want to have their elections contaminated by invisible digital ballots. Each incorrect digital ballot disenfranchises two voters – the voter whose votes are wrongly counted and the voter whose votes are zeroed out by the incorrect digital ballot.

Al Kolwicz
CAMBER – Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results

Don't ignore HART InterCivic problems

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 13:43:00 -0700

Apparently, a RFP evaluation committee member today made a verbal assertion that the recent elections problems in Texas have been found "not" to be the vendor's fault.

I have researched this, and been unable to find any written documentation or news references to support this assertion.

Instead, I have found:

NO statement or news on the Hart Intercivic website "News" section regarding any recent elections in Texas as of today (there is a gap of no news between 2/7/2006 and 3/22/2006) ...

nor on the company homepage, nor on the company press release page, though, interestingly, this statement, referenced in a newspaper article, can be found in the Google cache, but no longer appears on the Hart website:

Has the company retracted this statement (dated 3/14/2006)? Is there a new statement from the company to replace this? According to this Google cache document, Hart president Britt Kauffman said that the problems were "procedural" and not related to "programming, software or computer errors", does the company still stand by this statement, and if so, why does this statement no longer appear on the company's website?

There are seven (7) recent stories on the Dallas Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper website, NONE of which suggest that the vendor has been absolved of any responsibility.

The most recent story (from today, Wednesday 3/22/2006) in the list indicates that NEW problems may have been found with Hart Intercivic equipment in a different county, from the local newspaper by way of the Dallas For Worth Start Telegram:

"The problem in the recount appears to be with new, federally mandated electronic voting machines, provided by vendor Hart InterCivic. During a hand recount, the machines are designed to print out paper ballots for each voter's choices, but McKerley said the machines that were used to register early votes printed out only 75 percent to 80 percent of the votes believed to have been cast."
(Incidentally, I would very much like to see the "paper ballot" printout capability, I was under the impression that the Hart equipment only printed out an "audit receipt". If the device printed a full paper ballot instead of storing votes in memory, it may be redeemable still).

The original story from yesterday, 3/21/06, is still posted.

There is one story indicating that in Tarrant County, TX, the challengers did not file recount requests, however, that story also says very clearly:

"Hart InterCivic, the company that made the equipment and wrote the software, took responsibility for the error the day after the election, and company officials said they would work with local elections officials to minimize future problems. Company officials have said that a procedural error led to inflated counts when merging totals from early voting, absentee mail voting and election-day voting into one report on election night."

The story also quotes a local candidate who chose not to file a recount as saying she chose not to spend the money in part because:

"we don't have any way of knowing whether the current numbers are accurate."

Given our previous experiences with verbal assertions made by the County Clerk, her supporters, and the vendor that turned out to be incorrect (need I remind anyone of the discrepancy between the "8 hours" we were quoted before the system was purchased, and the "24 hours" we were quoted afterwards?), I urge the committee to only accept those statements that can be documented in writing. Please feel free to include any of the references I have provided in your final report. Although the original confidentiality agreement you were asked to sign did not make it clear, is should be self-evidently obvious that you are free to discuss anything that has been made publicly available in a news report with anyone you choose.

If there is a new statement from the vendor, or other documented (not verbal) information available, I'm sure many of us would like to see it.

Has this committee actually tested this functionality itself or simply relied on assertions by the vendor or other parties?

If the committee is unable to resolve these legitimate questions as to the reliability and accuracy of this equipment, I cannot understand how it could possibly recommend that it be used in elections here. These public reports and our county's first-hand experience do not inspire confidence in voters, regardless of political affiliation.

According to Brad Friedman of the BradBlog website, the Dallas Fort Worth Star Telegram has contacted him to begin investigating the whistleblower's claims.

I hope that this committee will not simply rubber-stamp the County Clerk's continued failure to do thorough due diligence on our elections systems and instead represent the repeatedly stated consensus of Boulder County voters: support trustworthy elections based on paper ballots and reject any proposed use of DRE computer vote-storing equipment here. For a thorough read of Boulder County voter's positions on this issue, ask the Clerk and Commissioners to share with you the 200+ comments she received in response to the DRE Purchase RFP.

Make sure you get it in writing on paper!

Joe Pezzillo
Boulder, Colorado

Additional data for the Proposal Evaluation Committee

AlKolwicz@qwest.net (AlKolwicz) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 22:43:00 -0700

Members of the Proposal Evaluation committee:

We have added some important new content to our site and hope that you will review it before making a decision. This is one of the most important decisions that Boulder County will make this year. We believe that it is worth the effort to get it right.

Some states choose "paper only"

Digital ballot equipment is not working

Boulder County Clerk pushes for unpopular digital ballots

AutoMark Federally certified, preferred by disabled voters.

We know that you are under pressure to select the only proposal offered. We ask you report that the proposal does not meet the requirements, and to recommend that the Clerk not accept the proposal.

As a committee, you have several options.

You can report that the proposal fulfills all of the requirements, which we have shown it does not.

You can report that the proposal does not fulfill all of the requirements.

You can report that you have had inadequate time and expertise to determine with confidence that the proposal does or does not fulfill the requirements.

If you do say that the proposal does fulfill the requirements (1 above), you would telling the citizens that the committee has carefully evaluated all of the systems, functional, legal and other requirements specified in the RFP document. It does not seem that there was time or talent to accomplish this.

If you do not say the proposal fulfills the requirements (2 or 3 above), the Boulder County Clerk can proceed without your endorsement, and might do so. Please do not lend your good names to this risky venture. The public and your friends will hold you personally accountable for what happens. To the extent that you permit the report to infer that you represent an entire organization, you will be risking the good name of your organization.

You have been notified that there are many HART equipment problems underway today. Our website includes several, but not all. If you recall, the HART person who presented the demonstration told you that every HART voting terminal is identical. This means that the problems being experienced throughout the country would be present in any equipment that Boulder County would rent.

We recommend that you do not bend to intimidating pressure from the Secretary of State’s office. The SOS has made grievous certification errors and would like the counties to go along with bad SOS decisions to avoid embarrassment.

Our elections are too important for this. Please reject the pressure.

We have done what we can to warn each committee member of the needless risk they would be taking if they were to assert that they evaluated the proposal against each requirement and found that it fulfills every requirement.

We would hope that you list the few areas where you know that the proposal does not meet the requirements and recommend that the proposal be rejected.

Short of outright rejection, we recommend that you take a “no position” because you have had inadequate time and talent to perform a comprehensive evaluation of the proposal.

We know that this is a difficult situation for you. We hope that you will do the right thing. Please do not deceive voters into believing that the proposal is something it is not.

Thank you for your public service.