North Carolina Elections - Protecting The Vote

North Carolina's Phony Voter Photo ID Law

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:53:00 +0000

North Carolina's GOP lawmakers hope to override veto of the voter photo ID bill. Former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory is even using Photo ID as a campaign issue. Greensboro News-Record Editor Doug Clark describes this as sheer "political gamemanship" in Political Trash Talk

"That's all this is about. The concern about voting fraud is phony, contrived, calculated to arouse the gullible."

Lawmakers KNOW that photo ID won't stop "voter fraud". The photo ID legislation has no mechanism to do so. And Rep David Lewis, a key proponent for voter photo ID, admits that in email correspondence with me.

The Greensboro News and Record has a story on that:

Is that ID on the up and up?
Doug Clark, Editor. Tuesday April 19, 2011

There was a lively discussion on our letters blog today about the proposed Voter ID bill. Supporters of the measure simply can't understand why anyone would see a problem with requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls.

Joyce McCloy of the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting didn't weigh in there, but she forwarded some email correspondence she's had with legislators. One question she asked was what mechanism the bill creates for election officials to verify whether the ID presented is legitimate. After all, the fake ID industry is thriving.

Today, at the behest of Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett, she received a reply from Kara A. McCraw, staff attorney and legislative analyst for the General Assembly's Research Division. It said:

"HB 351 requires the voter to present a photo ID to the local election official assigned to check registration when the voter enters the voting enclosure. Voters are currently required to state their name and address, and HB 351 would add the additional requirement that the voter present one of the forms of photo ID listed in the statute. The bill does not address the issue of "fake" IDs, specify a verification process by the election official, or require other agencies to share databases for verification of IDs. So Ms. McCloy is correct that the bill does not include a system or funding for verification of the IDs,
and as a result the remaining questions (computer system for ID verification, electronic pollbooks , cost of such a system, security, etc.) are not addressed in the bill.

"In reviewing the laws of the other 8 states which require photo ID, none appear to have established a process or system to verify whether an ID is fake or not at the polling site. The challenge procedure in current NC law established under G.S. 163-87 for challenges on election day could still be used to challenge a voter on any of the grounds included in that statute, such as the person is not who they represent themselves to be, even if that voter has presented identification."

What does this mean? For one thing, election workers will have a much tougher assignment without clear guidelines. Because many of us have driver's license photos of questionable quality, or that don't really resemble us, election officials might challenge more voters, which will trigger additional investigation and expense. Responsible election administration might demand that pollworkers undergo training in how to scrutinize IDs, much as bank tellers have to learn how to tell real currency from fake. Yet, they're also trying to keep voting lines moving.

The bottom line is that an ID in and of itself is not necessarily proof of a person's identity. People working at the polls, however, will have to make a judgment about the authenticity of each one presented to them. As this law assumes that voter fraud is a significant problem in North Carolina, election workers will be expected to assume many of the IDs they see are phony and they should challenge all those that raise suspicions.

That will include your picture if you had gray hair when your photo was made but you're a vibrant redhead now. Or if you've shaved your beard or added a few pounds. Or if anything else raises a question. Obviously the verification process is going to be highly subjective and predicated on the suspicion that you're not entitled to vote unless you can prove otherwise.

In Why Photo ID Laws Are Not the Answer, Thomas Bates with Rock the Vote describes the hurdles a would be "voter impersonator" would have to overcome to commit "voter fraud":

Travel to the proper polling place for a particular voter whose name and address is memorized
Accurately forge the voter's signature
Potentially have to provide other information about the voter (utility bill, last four digits of her Social Security number)
Make sure that voter has not already voted absentee or requested an absentee ballot
Know that the voter has not moved and re-registered at her new location or hasn't been removed from the rolls for another reason
Know that the voter has not already voted that day and does not plan to vote before the polls close
Wait in line to cast a ballot in that voter's name
Risk detection from a poll worker who may know the registered voter
Face fines and jail time

All this just to cast one misbegotten vote? Consider that mail ballot fraud is a much more efficient and less risky way to commit election fraud. One fraudster or his/her team can rig more than enough votes to impact the outcome of an election, with far less risk of exposure.

Just like Bob Hall said, “Voter photo ID bill is a sham, as phony as a three dollar bill."

The voter photo ID law is just what we don't like about Big Government. It is costly, complicated, and doesn't work. It has the added flaw of disenfranchising masses of legal voters, including the elderly, the rural, women, and disadvantaged whose vote may be their only voice in govt.

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NC Photo ID Bill won't stop voter fraud, may be unconstitutional, will make mail ballot fraud easier

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:11:00 +0000

North Carolina photo ID bill, H351/S352 is everything we hate about Big Government.

1. It is costly.
2. It is complicated.
3. It doesn't solve the problem it is set up to solve.
4. It creates new problems.
5. It is likely unconstitutional, says NC Ctr for Constitutional Law
6. It is not adequately funded and doesn't protect vulnerable voters enough so it will be face numerous court challenges

1. The fiscal note for this bill says it will cost $3.3 million in first year.
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/FiscalNotes/House/PDF/HFN0351v1.pdf
H351/S352 will also cost the DMV income in future years as anyone of voting age who wants a FREE photo ID will be able to ask for and get one, whether they are indigent or not. $3.3 M is lowballing it but this was done by non partisan leg staff. True costs will be higher after courts knock down the law until it is really funded.

2. The bill is very complicated. See for yourself.
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2011&BillID=h351&submitButton=Go

3. Photo ID doesnt solve problems it is purported to solve.
a) Requiring Photo ID does not prevent voter impersonation - officials have no way to verify the ID, there is no computer system or database in place that can be accessed to check that the ID is legit. Hence, you can go to E-bay, get a photo ID card kit for around $14.99 with hologram option available - and make several really good fake ID cards.
b) NC drivers licences do not indicate citizenship status, nor whether the person is a convicted felon who hasn't had their rights restored.
c) the bill won't stop "dead" people from voting. If a person is still on the voter rolls, then if someone has a good fake ID, then they can impersonate this dead voter. (Reported cases of "dead" voters in fact are people who cast a ballot early or by mail and passed on. Others are cases of reports of dead people on the voter rolls but who haven't voted. )

4. The photo ID bill makes absentee by mail fraud much easier. This bill, H351/S352 will make it possible for organizations to commit mass wholesale absentee ballot fraud, something that was rare in North Carolina. How? By allowing outside groups to create or fill out forms for absentee ballot voters.
There is always risk of absentee ballot fraud, and there have been instances of investigations and convictions, but it has been rare. Now it will be too temptingly easy for fraudsters to resist, and once the election is over, too late to undo the harm.

H351/352 Photo ID Requirements will be challenged in court because 1) it may not be constitutional and 2) it doesn't go far enough to educate voters and provide free accessible ID to voters nor to fund the bill:

5. H351/S352 is likely unconstitutional, says NC Ctr for Constitutional Law
MAR 15, 2011: Justice Orr on the Voter ID requirement of HB351: An Act to Restore Confidence in Government.
...The General Assembly does not have the authority to add "qualifications" for voting, absent a constitutional amendment. Does the requirement for presentation of a Photo ID constitute a "qualification" for voting? If it does then I would predict a court would strike the requirement down.
http://www.ncicl.org/article/524

6) H351/S352 Is not adequately funded and doesn't protect vulnerable voters enough so it will be face numerous court challenges. H351/S352 doesn't make IDs sufficiently accessible and affordable, and does not provide enough notice or education to current and new voters.

The Brennan Center for Justice cites three basic principles that must be satisfied to avoid a constitutional challenge of any photo ID law:

“First, photo IDs sufficient for voting must be available free of charge for all those who do not have them.” States cannot limit free IDs to those who swear they are indigent...

“Second, photo IDs must be readily accessible to all voters, without undue burden.”..

“Third, states must undertake substantial voter outreach and public education efforts to ensure that voters are apprised of the law’s requirements and the procedures for obtaining the IDs they will need to vote...”

http://brennan.3cdn.net/74978e15d83a92d20f_c3m6bhza7.pdf

Photo ID sounds like a good idea, until you think it through and find out that it won't stop voter fraud but will stop honest or vulnerable folks from voting. Maybe it will "only" be tens of thousands, but the result will be disenfranchising legitimate voters because of their vulnerable circumstances. Worse, this bill, if passed, will facilitate massive mail ballot fraud.

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On Veterans Day, thanking N Carolina State Board of Elections for helping troops vote

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:32:00 +0000

Veteran's Day is a good day to thank the North Carolina State Board of Elections for going the extra mile to help our troops vote. Our troops relocate often and some vote from overseas, so they need more help in updating their registration records and getting a ballot. The State Board of Elections recognized that and asked the Dept of Defense for help. See the request letter below, and DoD press release later.

On Oct 8, 2009 the NC State Board of Elections sent a letter to Robert Gates, Secretary of DOD enlisting their cooperation. They joined Senator Coryn and Senator Schumer in this request. 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. "

Our elections board also offered the DoD assistance and materials to do so

The Department of Defense agreed and in January 8, 2010 sent out this press release

"The DoD's Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) kicked off its training program geared to help voting assistance officers at military bases worldwide at a 2010 Election Year press conferenceJan. 7.
Thousands of voting assistance officers will help an estimated 6 million uniformed and overseas citizens vote absentee.DoD and DoS directives require a voting assistance officer at the unit level and at every embassy and consulate to facilitate this effort..."

This solution will help alleviate some of the problems military voters have in voting. Troops can more easily keep their voter registration updated and get help in obtaining a ballot and getting that ballot returned.

Our military deserve to excercise their right to vote. We thank our state's election officials for striving to help them.

North Carolina's election officials, both state and county - are dedicated professionals who deserve our appreciation for making our state one of the best to vote in, and for going the extra mile to help our military vote.

# # #

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 website www.ncvoter.net

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North Carolina statewide Instant Runoff election and legal challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:54:00 +0000

Updated Sept 20, 2010. Thanks to instant runoff voting, the November 2010 election for North Carolina Appeals has all the potential for a Florida style meltdown. See 13 candidates file for open NC appeals court job AP News August 31, 2010. Instant runoff voting, aka IRV will be used statewide to fill NC Appeals Judge Wynn's seat and our voting machines can't tally it. Other contests will use regular election methods. That makes it extra confusing. The possible confusion may impact other contests as voters and poll workers deal with a mixture of voting methods all in one election.

North Carolina will be the beta test for this first statewide instant runoff voting election conducted in the United States. “Instant runoff” elections represent a dramatically different system of how votes are cast, counted and valued. To avoid legal challenges and protect the confidence in elections, the election process must be as transparent as possible. The good news is that the candidates will be lawyers and judges. Wouldn't it be ironic if this election was tallied by a jury-rigged system? No matter how you cut it, a statewide IRV election will clash with many existing election laws.

Instant runoff voting will be used statewide to fill the NC Court of Appeals seat vacated after Judge Wynn retired. Additionally, North Carolina voters in at least three counties (Buncombe, Cumberland and Rowan) also will use Instant Runoff Voting to decide the winners in three Superior Court races this fall. Under state law (NCGS 163-329), vacancies on the Superior Court, Court of Appeals and Supreme Court which occur after the primary but more than 60 days before Election Day are filled through an election that allows voters to rank their choices. Here's the legal code.

The SBoE has a difficult task. It must conduct instant runoff elections for the statewide contest for NC Court of Appeals without compatible voting machines, without a thorough fiscal analysis, and without state funding for implementation and voter education. Voter education is essential, since with 13 candidates, voters 2nd or 3rd choices probably will decide the outcome of the election. Unfortunately, many voters will be unprepared to rank choices, as the state will be spending a paltry $500,000 on voter education for 6.1 million voters. Lack of tallying software means counting could take days or weeks. IRV is not additive so votes can not be tallied at the polling places on election night.

"There are no provisions on ES&S equipment to tabulate
IRV." ~ Keith Long , Voting System Project Manager for the North
Carolina State Board of Elections Jan 7, 2008
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/Keith_Long_Machines_Not_IRV_Compatible.pdf
"IRV is not an approved function at the federal or state level of current ES&S software, firmware or hardware. Subsequently, we will work at the direction of the SBE and counties to assist but cannot be held responsible for issues as a result of IRV...
....IRV Tabulation*Printelect and ES&S will only take responsibility for and support tabulating the IRV contests individually.Methods for deciding a runoff winner by others will not be supported by Printelect or ES&S. This risk will be the sole responsibility of NCSBOE and the counties.
*IRV voting tabulation methods are not an EAC or state certified portion of our voting system and have not undergone the testing that would normally be required to receive these certifications. ~ Letter From voting vendor PrintElect to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, dated August 31, 2010 http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/PrintElectLetterAugust31_2010_not_legal

Statewide IRV is dangerous. North Carolina’s only experience in counting IRV votes is in Cary, NC in the October 2007 pilot, and officials were unable to tally just 3,000 IRV votes correctly. Cary has since rejected IRV. Hendersonville has "piloted" IRV in 2007 and 2009, but never has tallied the IRV votes. The NC SBoE admitted that IRV is too risky when mixed with statewide elections:

"Current state law says we must comply with federal regulations…
We can use November 2007 as a pilot and not use IRV in May 2008 because it poses too much of a risk.”
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/NCSBOE_3_6_07_IRV_Limitations_No_2008.doc

Violating existing election law and standards for voting systems to try to “automate” instant runoff voting with un-certified work-arounds will result in headlines such as we saw in 2004:

"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."

Legal challenges: No matter how this election is administered, election laws will be broken. It is unavoidable, because IRV clashes with many election laws and standards.
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/NC_Comments_on_IRV_and_2010_Judicial_Elections.pdf

NC Verified's full comments to the North Carolina State Board of Elections on procedures and risks for upcoming instant runoff voting elections

Outline of comments:

1. There is no software to tabulate IRV that meets the standards of our state law. In guidelines for IRV pilots set by the State Board of Elections in January 15, 2009, the State Board of Elections proposed to use an uncertified method of vote tabulation with DRE machines that allows for an “electronic sort” using uncertified software that requires five pages of over 100 single spaced instructions. Experts warn that this spreadsheet tallying method is error prone, lacks an audit trail, and is not good enough for elections. See Standards for IRV Pilots -Approved by the North Carolina State Board of Elections on January 15, 2009
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/NCSBoE_IRV_Approved_1-15-2009 The voting vendor warns that IRV is not an approved function of our voting systems and has not been federally tested or certified as required by state law. http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/PrintElectLetterAugust31_2010_not_legal

To comply with existing state law, IRV must be counted manually until IRV software and its accompanying algorithm is federally approved. This is workable with optical scan ballots, but in order to count the touch-screen paper trails, the vendor should be made to modify the software to print a ballot summary. Touch-screens currently print all selections made by voters, but not a final summary. While a simple contest can be recounted on the touch-screen paper trail, an IRV contest would be more laborious. For a simpler process, touch-screen counties could borrow or purchase optical scan machines for IRV elections.

2. IRV ballots cast on election day must be counted where they are cast just as “regular” ballots are counted as per § 163-182.2. Initial counting of official ballots. In Cary, NC - the 2nd and 3rd choice votes cast for the "instant runoff" were not counted on election night. Instead, they were carried away from where they were cast and then counted at a later date. This differs from the treatment of absentee ballots and early voted ballots might be tabulated at the central office, these are “retrievable ballots”, not cast on election day. All votes cast at the polls on election day, including IRV ballots, are to be counted at the polls on election night once the polls close. The solution is to count all votes, 1st, 2nd and 3rd on site using the “Australian” method.

3. State law requires election night reporting for voters' second and third choices. Law requires reporting of votes on election night. IRV ballots are not retrievable and cannot be reported at another date.

4. All votes must be counted. In free, fair and open elections, all votes are recorded and counted. This means counting all votes, whether 1st, 2nd or 3rd choices. To do otherwise violates a core principle of democracy and tells voters that their choices and votes do not matter. Candidates, voters and officials want to know the breakdown of the votes. Votes must be counted for transparency sake. In the 2007 Pilot program, only partial data was reported for the District B contest where voters’ second and third choices were ultimately counted. In Cary’s other IRV contests for City Council, only some, not all of 2nd or 3rd place data was recorded or reported. In Hendersonville, the IRV votes were never counted or reported.

5. Provisional ballots must be counted before advancing to the 2nd round. In the 2007 IRV pilot, Provisional ballots were not counted until after the 2nd and 3rd choices were counted, and supposedly "added" back in. Since IRV is not "additive", it is not clear how these votes could possibly be added back in without doing a complete recount.

6. Absentee ballots must be counted before advancing to the 2nd or 3rd round. It is not clear when the absentee ballots were counted, so the question is - were they counted with the first, second and third rounds? They must be counted with the first round of voting before going to the next.

7. Canvassing of all first round votes, absentee and provisional ballots must be done before counting a second round of ballots. This has to be done to get an accurate vote count.

8. Audit protocols will have to be developed in coordination with the state appointed statistician and according to current state laws. Each round of voting must be proven correct if the subsequent round is to trusted. Audits and recounts must be publicly announced and observed, and notice must be given in time for the public to attend.

9. Voter education is expensive, must be repeated, and is not necessarily effective. The results of Cary NC’s 2008 bi-annual citizen survey indicate that 22.0% did not understand IRV at all.

10. Overvote protection lacking. North Carolina state law and the Federal Law, Help America Vote Act requires that voters be notified of over votes. NC’s voting machines are unable to notify the voters if they have “overvoted” in the IRV contests - if voters rank the same candidate more than once. The Help America Vote act defines overvotes: “In every election, some voters make more choices than are permitted in a contest, which creates what are called overvotes.”
http://www.eac.gov/program-areas/research-resources-and-reports/copy_of_docs/eds-2006/overvotes-and-undervotes.pdf/attachment_download/file

With IRV, voters are not permitted to vote for the same candidate more than once in a given contest. To do so, renders their 2nd and 3rd choices invalid.

11 “Instant runoff voting” should be renamed “Ranked Choice Voting”. Instant runoff incorrectly infers that the method provides the same results as a runoff election and does so instantly. It can take days or weeks to get the results of an IRV election.

12. IRV does not guarantee a majority winner. The “instant runoff” contest in Cary, District B City Council in October 2007 was decided with less than a majority of votes.

13. IRV is a difficult way to provide the same results as plurality elections. The fact is that most often, “Instant runoff voting” historically provides the same result as a plurality election, only with more effort.

14. Instant runoff voting is non-monotonic. In other words, you can hurt your preferred candidate by voting for him or her.

15. Exit polls, should be conducted by election officials or impartial groups -not advocates, in order to preserve the appearance of objectivity in the results. Exit polls should be carefully crafted to avoid being push polls. Pierce Co Washington mailed surveys to 91,000 voters, to be completed in the privacy of their homes.
This letter, along with my comments and recommendations set forth in the documents referenced above, and expanded upon in following pages, is my testimony.

The full report at this link:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/NC_Comments_on_IRV_and_2010_Judicial_Elections.pdf

IRV is not as "easy as 1-2-3" as other jurisdictions have learned.

Forget majority outcomes: if a candidate does not win a majority in the first round, with IRV it is a near impossibility that a candidate can obtain a majority with 2nd and 3rd round votes. This happened in Burlington Vermont in their 2009 mayoral contest. With chance to rank only 3, and since ranking isn't mandatory, and since there are 13 candidates, the math is against getting a majority win.

Regards;

Joyce McCloy, Director
NC Coalition for Verified Voting
212 Evergreen Drive, Winston Salem, NC 27106

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 website http://www.ncvoter.net/

Related:

Order in the court election!
September 5, 2010. BY ROBERT ORR. Raleigh News & Observer
RALEIGH -- Thirteen is associated with bad luck, and for North Carolina voters, 13 candidates' filing for the state Court of Appeals vacancy recently created by Judge Jim Wynn's move to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is not merely bad luck - it's downright ridiculous.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/09/05/662859/order-in-the-court-election.html

Editorial: Judicial election will allow state to test instant runoff
September 4, 2010. Star News Online

...One election, instant results.
www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100904/ARTICLES/100909801

Editorial: On the wrong track
September 3, 2010. Greensboro News-Record
http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/09/03/article/editorial_on_the_wrong_track

Test vote
September 3, 2010. Raleigh News & Observer
Democracy, said the ever-quotable, often-cynical H.L. Mencken, "is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." North Carolina voters are about to embark on a journey to democracy's farther reaches. Here's hoping the excursion - the first use of statewide instant runoff voting - turns out well.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/09/03/661319/test-vote.html

13 Candidates for Wynn Seat

September 1, 2010. North Carolina Appellate Blog. Bob Numbers.

...If no candidate receives the necessary number of first place votes, the two candidates with the greatest number of first place votes advance to the "instant runoff." In the instant runoff round, each ballot counts as a vote for whichever of the two final candidates is ranked highest by the voter. The candidate with the most votes in the second round wins the election...
http://womblencappellate.blogspot.com/2010/09/13-candidates-for-wynn-seat.html

Lucky 13
August 31, 2010. Greensboro News and Record. Doug Clark, Editor
http://www.news-record.com/blog/54431/entry/97944

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N&O: Handle N.C.'s ballots with care

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:15:00 +0000

I wrote this op/ed out of concern that our paper ballot law would be the victim of the political foodfight in Raleigh.

Handle N.C.'s ballots with care
Raleigh News & Observer
BY JOYCE MCCLOY
editorial | point of view

WINSTON-SALEM -- News stories about a lack of competition for ballot printing in North Carolina feed a storyline of political corruption - but before we form conclusions we need to understand why there's a lack of competition for ballot printing, and work for a solution that does not undermine the integrity of our election process.

Calls for more competition ignore the history of elections in 2004 and earlier, when we had a multitude of voting vendors with few legislated standards. That led to the loss of thousands of votes and an election dispute that lasted months. To prevent further election nightmares, the General Assembly in 2005 passed a one of the strongest election integrity laws in the country, one that has become a model for the nation.

It mandated paper ballots, post-election audits, higher standards for voting-supply vendors and systems, and set penalties for vendors caught lying. The law helped us weed out weak, incompetent or irresponsible voting-equipment vendors. In the process, three vendors were certified by the bipartisan State Board of Elections. Only one was willing to meet the standards of the law. Diebold dropped out of the bidding after a failed attempt to gut our paper-ballot requirement.

Subsequently, our state's elections have improved. An audit showed that our 2008 presidential election was accurately counted. In the last presidential election we cut the "undervote" rate by more than half, from around 3 percent to only 1 percent. Many states still do not even have election audits. The State Board of Elections deserves praise for its effective implementation of this important law.

Competitive bidding for printers has to be very carefully conducted, with a certification process that requires long lead times to be effective. Printer tolerances are generally measured in fractions of an inch. Mistakes are easy to make and hard to detect. Switching printers in an election year means officials might discover printer problems too late in the game to fix them in time for an election. After one or two other printers have blown it, dependable printers tend to get the inside track.

And while there may not be a lot of competition in ballot printing here, there is some. Wake and a few other counties are paying from 13 and 15 cents apiece for ballots from a local printer who has been certified. So there is no monopoly on ballot printing.

Many counties have been buying ballots from a North Carolina business, Printelect at prices of 30 and 33 cents per ballot for many years. This price may be higher, but it is within industry standards and lower than what many other jurisdictions pay for ballot printing. Counties are free to seek out a certified printer that has a lower price, but it is crucial that printers are certified to meet standards.

Lowering our standards in the name of competition will bring back the bad vendors who caused so much havoc in 2004. That won't do anything to reduce the costs of ballot printing, but it will bring back news stories such as we saw in 2004: "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."

Competition is a good thing if there are strong competitors who are willing to stand behind their products. It is not the Board of Elections' fault there is a lack of competitors. For example Diebold, which provided equipment used in a miserable election in Gaston County in 2004 - when 12,000 votes were not reported or tallied on election night - has since been sold to our current vendor, ES&S. Carteret County has said goodbye to the Unilect voting machines that lost 4,400 votes

If we are serious about reducing costs, and if we want to retain election integrity, we need to look toward open source voting systems, still with paper ballots. This will reduce maintenance costs while making upgrades easier. Open source systems are years off.

Meanwhile, weakening the Public Confidence in Elections Act to satisfy partisan outrage will not increase competition, will not reduce the costs of ballot printing and will threaten the integrity of our elections. How much will that cost?

Joyce McCloy is with the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting.

Read more:
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/12/624627/handle-ncs-ballots-with-care.html

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Beware Absentee By Mail Ballots - mail ballot problems in the news

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 14:04:00 +0000

There are voters who need to be able to vote by mail. The option should not be denied but should be utilized carefully. If you can vote in person, you do have a better chance of having your vote cast and counted.

What could possibly go wrong with absentee by mail voting? Voters disenfranchised by clerical or technical issues, wrong postage, delivery issues such, fraud, vote buying & vote selling. Recently 1 in 10 Minnesota absentee ballots were rejected recently because of technical issues. 4,000 Lee County Florida voters may be disenfranchised because a mail sorting system failure. 12,500 mail ballots in Riverside CA were received past the deadline because of communication failure btwn election officials and post office. Fraud is easier to commit with absentee ballots as seen in Bell, CA.

Here are some news and commentary articles from this past year about problems that can arise with absentee by mail voting.

National Commentary

Chapter 5 — Lies, Damn Lies, And Mail In Elections
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-77.htm
Dr. Charles Corry You can have an honest election, or you can have a mail in/absentee ballot election, but you can't have both at the same time.

Why 'Vote-by-Mail' Elections are a Terrible Idea for Democracy
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6003
Many are unaware that their mailed-in ballots will be scanned by the same error-prone, easily manipulated optical-scan machines which handle paper ballots for precinct-based voting. But even worse, ballots mailed in, if they arrive safely, and are counted at all, are usually counted "in the dark," versus ballots scanned either at the polls on Election Day, or at county headquarters after the close of polls when citizens are often there to watch.

Vote-by-Mail Doesn't Deliver
Michael Slater and Teresa James, Project Vote
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/06/29/votebymail_doesnt_deliver.php
VBM reinforces the stratification of the electorate; it’s more amenable to both fraud and manipulation than voting at polling places; and it depends too much on the reliability of the U.S. Postal Service.

Americans deserve an equal opportunity to participate in democracy; vote by mail doesn’t deliver that.

BY STATE, in 2010

AL: Hale County officials worry voter fraud is back
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20100528/NEWS/
100529584/1007/news?p=1&tc=pg http://is.gd/ctHNb
Faye Cochran, head of the Hale County Board of Registrars, said many of those casting absentee ballots got help from a man convicted of voter fraud in 1998 and a woman now awaiting trial on voter fraud charges.

AR: Only ‘minor problems’ in election, officials say* (central count/M650)
http://thecabin.net/news/local/2010-05-19/only-%E2%80%98minor-problems%E2%80%99-election-officials-say ...Faulkner County ...
Twenty-one of the absentee ballots were set aside due to discrepancies, which included missing or mismatched signatures. These will be reviewed by the commission Wednesday.

AZ: Voters need assurance of fair elections * (March election in Yuma County)
http://www.yumasun.com/opinion/election-60930-ballots-news.html
The 10 percent rejection rate for early ballots due to signature problems is much higher than other parts of the state,

CA: Bungled ballots imperil election *
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Bungled-ballots-imperil-election-94227469.html
A blunder has left thousands of San Francisco voters holding the wrong mail-in ballot for the June 8 election, in which pivotal primaries for statewide offices are at stake, along with the outcomes of local and state propositions.
...
Last week, K&H Integrated Print Solutions, based in Everett, Wash., mailed out ballots with the wrong names to at least 1,000 voters
...
In addition, the company sent out duplicate ballots to 1,317 absentee voters
...
Arntz said they are working to contact voters...

CA: Vote-by-mail misprint in San Fernando Valley * (Los Angeles County)
http://www.glendalenewspress.com/articles/2010/05/18/politics/gnp-ballots051910.txt
...election officials on Tuesday acknowledged sending vote-by-mail guides to as many as 1,100 Democrats that erroneously listed candidates for the 43rd Assembly District in the same space as votes for or against a controversial parcel tax

CA: Thousands of mailed ballots too late to be counted in California *
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/15/2822821/thousands-of-vote-by-mail-ballots.html
(Late by county breakdown)

CA: Verifying vote-by-mail ballots is vital but time-consuming
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100615/OPINION02/6140335/Verifying-vote-by-mail-ballots-is-vital-but-time-consuming As of Friday, more than 50 of the state's 58 county elections offices had more than 1 million ballots combined still to verify

CA: More mail-in votes counted, election results largely unchanged
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15296026?nclick_check=1
Santa Cruz. At least 11,000 ballots still need to be counted, County Clerk Gail Pellerin reported Monday. The county has until July 6 to report official results, and elections officials don't expect to update the tally until closer to that deadline.

CA: Miscommunication with post office cited for 12,500 late ballots *
http://www.pe.com/politics/gang/stories/PE_News_Local_D
_ballots15.246469b.html http://is.gd/cQNzh
A miscommunication between Riverside County and the U.S. Postal Service may have led to as many as 12,500 ballots arriving too late to be legally counted, officials said Monday.

CA: Registrar's resignation sought over vote-counting delay (Riverside)
http://www.inlandnewstoday.com/story.php?s=14704
Forty-three percent of the votes cast in the election remained to be counted the day after the election. Most were vote-by-mail ballots that voters put in the mail the prior weekend. 20,000 were ‘quarantined’ and not counted because they failed to reach the county election headquarters by the time the polls closed Tuesday evening.

CA: Bill seeks to redefine vote-by-mail deadline
http://www.inlandnewstoday.com/story.php?s=14919
RIVERSIDE – Assemblyman Bruce Nestande wants to correct the ‘wrong’ over the 12,500 vote-by-mail ballots that were not counted in the June 8th election.

Nestande has submitted a bill that would require future ballots postmarked on Election Day to be tabulated before the final election results are certified.

CA: County to purchase better election devices (Riverside County)
County supervisors authorize equipment to avoid future election gaffes
http://www.myvalleynews.com/story/49444/ "Sixty-two percent of ballots cast in this election were by mail. That has a whole lot of implications," Supervisor John Benoit said during a 90-minute hearing on an Executive Office report detailing what went wrong during and after that election.

"It takes seven steps (to process) every single vote-by-mail ballot," said Benoit, who represents desert communities on the five-member board..

CA: Residents in troubled SoCal city allege vote fraud * (absentee ballot)
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15689668
Some residents of Bell say city officials asked them to fill out absentee ballots which city council members said they would submit on the voters' behalf, according to a Los Angeles Times report published Thursday

CA: L.A. County D.A. expands probe into Bell government* (absentee ballot)
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/28/local/la-me-bell-elections-20100728
Investigators are looking into allegations of voter fraud and conflicts of interest, as well as the $100,000 salaries paid to four council members. The D.A. says several elections are targeted.
...
Sources with knowledge of the investigation said that among the subjects that prosecutors are looking at is the use of absentee ballots during the March 2009 City Council election...

CA: Former Bell police officer alleges serious voting irregularities in 2009 election*
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/07/former-bell-cop-alleges-serious-voting-irregularities-in-2009-election.html A retired Bell police sergeant claimed in a lawsuit filed this week that off-duty Bell police officers in the 2009 election distributed absentee ballots to voters and told them which candidates to select.

The allegations are contained in a lawsuit filed by James Corcoran, who says he was forced out of his job for informing authorities about the officers' actions as well as for a variety of other actions that he says top city leaders did not like

CA: DA investigates allegations of voter fraud in Montebello
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_14438007#ixzz0gJIxeN7n
"I actually went to someone's door regarding an absentee voter and I learned the person hadn't lived there for two years," Veneziano said. "It seems like there is a lot of voter fraud concerning absentee ballots."

CO: Guest opinion: Keep Colorado's voting integrity http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_14680272#axzz0iMCdFUqO
As County Clerks and Recorders around the state work to garner support for all-mail ballot elections, it is worth reviewing the vulnerabilities of this method of voting and how voting by mail weakens the integrity of our elections.

CO: Ballot TRACE glitch sends Denver voters wrong message*
http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15582318
On Wednesday night, a glitch caused the wrong message to go out to 177 of the 233 people signed up. Somehow, data were transposed in the system, which caused the wrong messages
to go out, said Denver Election Commission spokesman Alton Dillard.

CO: Vote early and...not at all? Ballot TRACE glitch has some worried *
http://www.examiner.com/x-41664-Denver-Top-News-Examiner~y2010m7d22-Voter-early-andnot-at-all-Ballot-TRACE-glitch-has-some-worried

CO: Uh-oh, technical glitch baffles Denver voters *
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=144870&catid=188 That "hiccup" sent emails to approximately 170 voters telling them that their completed ballots had already been received by the Post Office despite the fact that those voters had yet to receive the actual ballots personally.

CO: Be mindful when voting
http://bit.ly/8YiJNY
If a citizen receives a mail ballot, he or she must use that ballot to vote

CT. Absentee Ballots Can Be Decisive – yet Unaudited
September 24, 2009 Story in ConnPost, Primary loser declines to challenge absentees...As we and others have pointed out, there are many issues and risks with any type of mail-in voting, including absentee voting.
http://www.ctvoterscount.org/?p=2419

FL: Ballot blunder could keep votes from counting; envelope design to blame*
http://www.winknews.com/Local-Florida/2010-08-11/Ballot-blunder-could-keep-votes-from-counting It could be happening across Lee County. Over 40,000 absentee ballots were requested, and all sent out with the same faulty return envelope design. Lee County Elections officials are working with USPS on the problem. Still, the ballot blunder is a sorespot for many, who are trying to make their vote count in the upcoming election.

FL: Absentee ballots returned to sender * (Lee Co)
Votes boomerang thanks to automatic sorters
http://www.news-press.com/article/20100811/NEWS0107/8110373/1075/Absentee-ballots-returned-to-sender Turns out a design flaw in the envelopes causes post office machines to scan a voter's return address instead of the destination address

FL. Editorial: The votes are in the mail
http://www.pnj.com/article/20090924/OPINION/909240309/1006/NEWS01
September 24 Given the choice between a mail election and a special election that asks voters to go to the polls to decide on the proposed new Pensacola city charter, voting by mail is more likely to draw a higher turnout, which is needed on such a crucial decision...The City Council's committee of the whole approval of a mail ballot makes sense...But there are drawbacks.
Voting by mail is vulnerable to fraud. No one can know for sure who is filling out a mail ballot.

FL. Early voting reshapes campaigning in St. Petersburg elections
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/early-voting-reshapes-campaigning-in-st-petersburg-elections/1040813 October 4. The growing numbers of people voting by mail has changed the strategies and timing of campaigns for mayor and City Council in St. Petersburg. More than half of the 37,360 ballots cast in the Sept. 1 primary were done by mail ballot.

GA: Voter Fraud Alleged in Brooks County (opposition to absentee ballots)
http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/99140784.html
Brooks County residents are concerned there may be irregularities with the outcome of several local races. And now the GBI has launched a probe into these allegations.

MN: Voting absentee? Better have a witness address* (1 in 10 ballots rejected)
http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/99671194.html
Statewide, at least 10 percent of absentee ballots cast in advance of the Aug. 10 primary were rejected on first pass. Some counties neared a 20 percent initial rejection rate.
...
If any of the envelopes don't include the proper information, such as the voters' address, their signature, the name of their witness or their witnesses' address, the ballots will be rejected, and the voters will be sent a replacement. Closer to the election, officials will call or e-mail the voters to let them know to try again

NJ: Investigators probe overturned election (mail-in ballots)
http://www.northjersey.com/news/politics/passaic_politics/97135704
_Investigators_probe_overturned_election.html http://is.gd/d49GE
State investigators questioned Passaic County Democratic Chairman John Currie this week about the 49 uncounted votes that, discovered 21 days after the city's municipal election, reversed the election's results.

NY: 9 targeted in vote conspiracy (DNA evidence sought)
http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/9-targeted-in-vote-conspiracy-594751.php
Court records filed in connection with the investigation include allegations that the officials, and several political operatives for the Rensselaer County Democratic Party, may have conspired to file dozens of fraudulent absentee ballots last year in an attempt to seize the Working Families Party line for the general election.

The officials identified as targets of the investigation are: Rensselaer County Board of Elections Commissioner Edward G. McDonough; city Councilmen Michael LoPorto, Gary Galuski, Kevin McGrath, and John Brown; City Council President Clem Campana; City Clerk William A. McInerney; and political operatives Dan Brown, who is John Brown's brother, and Anthony DeFiglio, a former Troy Housing Authority clerk.

NY. Update: Absentee ballots running late for 23rd Congressional District *
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/update_absentee_ballots_runnin.html
October 02, 2009 FORT DRUM, N.Y. (AP) — Military and election officials insist that hundreds of deployed Fort Drum soldiers will have enough time to return their absentee ballots in next month’s special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District, even though they won’t be mailed out for another two weeks...For this election, county boards will accept ballots until Nov. 16, although they still must be postmarked by Nov. 2, elections officials said.

NJ: Informant aided vote-fraud case against Atlantic City Councilman Marty Small, report says http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/communities/atlantic-city_pleasantville_brigantine/article_5fcff138-78f7-11df-9dc5-001cc4c03286.html
Edward Colon Jr., assigned by the campaign to collect messenger absentee ballots from the city’s Hispanic community, recorded telephone conversations and secretly videotaped discussions with the councilman and other campaign workers, the report says.

NJ: UPDATE: Passaic County elections secretary charged in $384K ballot mail theft*
http://www.northjersey.com/news/060110_Passaic_County_elections_office
_manager_accuse d_ of_stealing_384000_from_county.html http://is.gd/cAksr
A Passaic County elections secretary was charged Tuesday with stealing $384,000 through a fraud scheme in which she allegedly collected postage on ballots mailed to voters.
...
Di Lella said the alleged fraud was simply a moneymaking scheme and did not harm the integrity of the election process.

OH. Missing ballots cast doubt on Toledo City Council tally *malfeasance*
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090922/NEWS09/909220398/-1/OPINION02
9/22. The Lucas County Board of Elections has 1,092 ballots that could be added to last week's Toledo primary election count, putting the final results for Toledo City Council in doubt.
The additional ballots include 166 absentee ballots accidentally left uncounted last Tuesday, Director Linda Howe said Monday.
...In addition to the 166 uncounted absentee votes, 545 provisional ballots were determined to be valid.

PA: Another Threat to Public Scrutiny of the Election Process
http://coalitionforvotingintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/08 ... The Elimination of Polling Places through Adoption of No-Excuse Absentee Ballots—the First Step to All Mail-In Voting

SC: South Carolina Proves Statewide Unverifiable Voting Cannot Be Trusted
http://www.opednews.com/articles/South-Carolina-Proves-Stat-by-Garland-Favorito-100724-239.html Alvin Greene was declared the winner based on a near landslide 60-40% margin in Election Day electronic voting results. However Vic Rawl actually won the mail-in paper ballot absentee voting by a solid 55-45% margin. The near 30% total point differential among the two candidates is unheard of in South Carolina election history and perhaps, nationally as well.

TX: Dallas County Judge: Texas Attorney General is investigating local voter fraud allegations (mail in ballots)
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/04/dallas-county-judge-texas-atto.html

TX: Judge to decide Cameron County voter fraud case
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=467689
The Precinct 2 Commissioner candidate alleged that mail-in ballot numbers were “blatantly discrepant” with regular in-person voting

TX: Texas Rangers investigate possible voter fraud in Starr County (absentee ballots)
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=430386

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NC Ballot Printing mess-politics or excuse to gut Public Confidence in Elections Act?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 23:35:00 +0000

Using theory of Occam's razor, I would say that some media are generating alot of heat but little light. The less simple explanation is that our State Board of Elections Administrative Board is being batted around for political purposes. A second, even worse motive is that special interests want to gut the Public Confidence in Elections Act and lower the nationally acclaimed standards for voting vendors and systems. What questions did the media forget to ask? And what are the answers? Here's a couple of articles and our comments follow:

Ballot printer charges more, has big advantage
August 5, 2010 Raleigh News & Observer
By Benjamin Niolet and Michael Biesecker - Staff writers
A New Bern company has a near monopoly on ballot printing in North Carolina, and the work is costly.

Printelect charges rates that are much higher than those paid by the handful of counties that have found an alternative printer...
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/05/616405/ballot-printer-charges-more-has.html

And

Vendor's ballots costly to counties
August 6, 2010 Raleigh News and Observer
BY BENJAMIN NIOLET AND MICHAEL BIESECKER - staff writers
...
It's difficult to calculate what Printelect has made from the state. Wake, Durham and a few other counties have found ways to use a different printer, and their costs are half what other counties pay. In 2008, Printelect charged Franklin County as much as 33 cents per ballot. Mecklenburg paid 30 cents. Durham and Wake, two of the few counties that have found an alternative to Printelect, paid 15 cents and 13 cents, respectively...
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/08/06/616783/vendors-ballots-costly-to-counties.html

The above articles infer that Gary Bartlett "picked" ES&S to be the sole voting vendor. That just isn't true. The article also infers that PrintElect has a monopoly on ballot printing. The above prices, from .13 and .15 cents are extraordinarily low, the prices of .30 and .33 are still good compared to what some other states pay.

New Mexico and other states have a similiar situation where there are few ballot printing companies so prices are more difficult to negotiate. Robert Adams, Deputy Clerk of Bernalillo County New Mexico advises in an email August 6, 2010 that:

"If it is 100 percent pre printed ballots (absentee, early and eday) the per ballot cost for everything provided by AES is $1.26 per ballot."

The cost of ballots in New Hampshire is about $0.23 for a one-page optical scanned ballot using 80 or 90 pound paper and paper sizes ranging from 11" to 17."

The fact is, the State Board of Elections certified 3 different voting vendors in December 2005. I filed a lawsuit against the NC SBoE to challenge the certification of Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia (conditionally). The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Donald Beskins represented me.

[ http://www.ncvoter.net/legalactions.html ] The court ruled with North Carolina State Board of Elections and the vendors were certified anyway.

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting opposed Diebold because Diebold went to court to gut the standards of verified voting law.
[ http://www.ncvoter.net/dieboldnews.html ]

Our activists around the state, republican, democrat and otherwise urged their counties not to buy Diebold.
[ http://www.ncvoter.net/countybattles.html and
[ December 17, 2005. Warren County NC GOP chair urged the local BOE against buying Diebold. Cited improper certification, questioned ties of SBOE members to Diebold. "Dont Buy Diebold" http://www.hendersondispatch.com/articles/2005/12/17/news/letters/let02.txt ]

Diebold fled our state at end of Dec 2005. http://www.ncvoter.net/dieboldnews.html
Sequoia couldn't meet federal standards and bowed out. ES&S stayed, and their local rep PrintElect DID meet the standards

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting takes allegations of undue influence on our SBoE very seriously. There's no gain from a 10 minute ride on a yacht. Its just not enough to constitute "influence", and if the State BoE wanted to favor one particular vendor, they wouldn't have certified 3 to do business in North Carolina. Additionally, the choice of vendors was by the vote of the 5 member bi partisan State Board of Elections, after a vote, and following the state's open RFP process. Vendors had to meet state and federal standards to even be considered. Our new state law in 2005 set standards as well as criminal and civil penalties for voting vendors and their CEOs. Diebold didn't like those standards.

The current vendor has acted responsibly and that has been for the better of our voters and our elections. Other states have not faired so well.
[See database of election problems around the country at http://www.votersunite.org/electionproblems.asp ]

We would like to see price of ballots come down, but first we need ballots that are printed properly. Other entrepreneurs can open up printing services if they wish to meet the demand, but that can't be mandated by law. There is no law requiring counties to purchase their ballots from ES&S or any other voting vendor.

Do we want to out source ballot printing to China next? Changing voting machine companies won't change the ballot printing situation nor will it improve the quality of our elections.

Competitive bidding for printers has to be very carefully conducted with long lead times (say in the off year) to be effective. Printer tolerances are generally measured in small fractions of an inch. Mistakes are easy to make and hard to recognize with the naked eye. Switching printers in an election year means you might discover printer problems too late in the game to fix them in time for an election. After one or two other printers have blown it, dependable printers tend to get the inside

Ballot printing issues ultimately led to disaster in the Florida 2000 election. From the August 2007 Dan Rather report:

"Sequoia produced the punch card ballots used in the 2000 election in Florida and also markets high-margin electronic vote machines. The company, according to the report, is alleged to have altered its ballot production process for one or more Florida counties and began printing ballots on cheaper and what seven former employees claim to be defective paper along with conspicuously inadequate production specifications. Employees are quoted extensively as having alerted the plant manager to potential problems to the point of refusing to sign off on production runs, but were repeatedly rebuffed."
http://www.electionreformnetwork.us/node/34

Thanks to the high standards mandated in 2005, we have weeded out weak and sloppy vendors and mandated accountability. Our statewide undervote rate for president was just under 1% in 2008, down to nearly 1/3 of what it has been in previous elections. In other words, a higher percent of voted ballots for President are being counted than before.
[See Study By Professor at Bard College NY http://www.ncvoter.net/undervote.html ]

Without the high standards passed in August 2005, North Carolina could have become the next Bush V Gore in 2008, as the election was very close. After 2005 we no longer have: Diebold (14,000 votes not counted on election night in Gaston Co 2004), Unilect (4400 votes lost in 2004), Microvote (salesman bribed former Meck Co Election Director), Hart Intercivic (caused huge undervotes in Catawba County).

Since 2005, we've had good elections. In 2008 Obama and McCain were 14,000 votes apart. Our election audit shows the count to be accurate.
[See An Assessment of the Recount and the Certification of the Election Result for the November 2008 Election http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/GetDocument.aspx?id=1321 ]

The problems that would have caused such a disaster had been weeded out in 2005 by the standards in our Public Confidence in Elections Act.

I believe that the State Board of Elections Administrative Board has operated at interest of voters. In 2008 the State BoE ensured that all counties provided extra voter education regarding NC's quirky straight ticket voting law.

Gary Bartlett (was one of only a handful of State Election Officials) who urged the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, to have the Department of Defense act as a Voter Registration Agency. The SBoE offered their resources and materials to help the DOD do so. Finally, the DoD for the first time ever agreed to act as a Voter Registration Agency this January 2010.

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. "
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/DOD%20NC%20NVRA%20Designation%20Request-1.pdf

I could name other instances of where the NC State Elections Administrative Board has acted in the best interest of our voters, or has acted in an impartial manner, but time does not permit.

Related articles: Printelect Of New Bern: Is It A Monopoly? http://www.witn.com/news/headlines/100162719.html?ref=719

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Alice in Internet Voting Wonderland - no hanging chads? Also no audits, no recounts

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 03:44:00 +0000

No chads? And no audits no recounts. Finland learned the hard way in 2008 when internet votes were lost and a court overturned that election. Must we learn everything the hard way? A press release for internet voting vendor Scytl is being presented as an op-ed piece by Sheila Shayon. Her piece ran in HuffPo (no comments allowed) and in several other blogs on the "net". Shayon says with internet voting, there won't be any of those nasty old hanging chads. No paper, no proof, no truth.

See Sheila Shayon's utopian vision of internet voting, which closely resembles a Scytl press release:

Sheila Shayon: Digital Democracy: Scytl, MySociety Secure Funding We may never again have to suffer “pregnant chads,” “swinging chads” and other questionable voting protocols in an election thanks to the likes of Scytl, which calls itself a “worldwide leader in the enhancement of secure solutions for electoral modernization.”

Note to Sheila - most jurisidictions have long banned punch card voting machines, the only voting machine that creates "chads" on ballots.

To readers: Its a darn shame that many people may be willing to turn their votes over to the owners of a private corporation, while also making the election hackable by any computer criminal in the world.

There’ll be no hanging chads. In fact, with internet voting, there’ll be nothing to truly validate the election. There’s nothing tangible to audit to detect fraud or error.

If votes are lost, there’s nothing to recount. They learned that in Finland when Scytl helped them administer an Internet Voting Pilot for several municipalities in 2008. The results of that election were later overturned and a do over was run using paper ballots.

Finnish E-Voting Results Annulled By The Supreme Administrative Court
22 April, 2009 http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.8/evoting-annuled-finland
2% of results gone. Scytl was part of the pilots.

Finnish EVoting CoE Evaluation
http://www.effi.org/system/files?file=FinnishEVotingCoEComparison_Effi_20080801.pdf

Scytl website
http://www.scytl.com/categoria_ing_10.htm

When Honolulu Hawaii had an internet voting experiment, transpire dropped by 83%!

See “Low Turnout In Hawaii’s Internet Election”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2009/05/low_turnout_in_hawaiis_interne.html

What is driving the push for internet voting? Filthy lucre perhaps? Maybe the press releases claiming that Internet Voting is a $1.5 Billion industry? All that money couldn't corrupt anyone, could it? Oh, thats right, voting vendors have bribed and corrupted top election officials before. Computer technologists say internet voting is inherently insecure. See Verified Voting's informative blog posts on issues with internet voting.

If you want to be more informed on voting issues, visit Dr. Charles Correy's online book, Vote Fraud and Election Issues. Its hard hitting and you'll catch on quickly to the vulnerabilities and threats to our election systems.

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Democracy 4 Sale -HuffPo runs internet voting vendor press release as op-ed

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:28:00 +0000

Huffington Post runs a internet voting vendor press release as an OpEd - again. This time it is Scytl's press release. The other time was EveryoneCounts press release as an OpEd.

Huffington Post: Digital Democracy: Scytl, MySociety Secure Funding
Sheila ShayonPresident/Founder, Third Eye Media
Posted: July 14, 2010

If internet voting really is a 1.5 billion $ industry, will all of our votes be for sale? [ See Online Voting Company Scytl Raises $9.2 Million "Analysts believe that the public sector market for electronic voting systems is worth approximately $1.5 billion."

Internet voting is the most dangerous way to run elections and removes the secret ballot. With internet voting, there's no way to validate the election and results are open to hackers on a global scale. If votes are lost, then there's nothing tangible to recount:

Finnish E-Voting Results Annulled By The Supreme Administrative Court
22 April, 2009 http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.8/evoting-annuled-finland
[2% of results missing. Scytl was involved.
Finnish EVoting CoE Comparison
Scytl website

Internet voting isn't accessible to people who do not have easy computer or internet access, so less privileged people are left out.

When Honolulu Hawaii had an internet voting experiment, turnout dropped by 83%!

Low Turnout In Hawaii's Internet Election

See testimony from leading computer scientist at Verified Voting's blog on internet voting

Voter Action has some testimony from leading computer scientists about electronic ballot transmission, articles from mainstream media and a sample letter to your legislators.

Computer scientist Internet voting statement.
Statement on Internet, Email and Fax voting in Washington State by leading computer scientist, Dr. Barbara Simons.
Internet Voting, Still in Beta, The New York Times.
Broad Concerns About Internet Voting, The New York Times.
Pentagon Cancels Internet Voting Test, MSNBC.
Electricity Grid in US Penetrated by Spies, The Wall Street Journal.
A New Approach to China, The Google Blog.
Voter Action Internet voting statement.
Sample cover letter to legislators.
Talking Points on HB 2483 and SB 6238.
Hackers Attacked Colombian Vote Count

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Professor Doug Jones on National Popular Vote - two possible outcomes

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 04:03:00 +0000

There's a push by some groups to promote adoption of the National Popular Vote. Some say a way to do this is by a "compact". The idea is very appealing, but getting there could have some serious and unanticipated consequences. National e-voting expert Doug Jones has granted permission to share his comments on the National Popular Vote.

on July 12, 2010, Douglas Jones wrote:

I believe that the National Popular Vote opens a can of worms.

Specifically, despite the fact that the NPV is being adopted on a state-by-state basis for the election of state electors, I believe it will face a challenge under Federal law because the different states have differing standards for who can vote and differing standards for what votes are counted. In effect, NPV under current state election laws is not consistent with one-man-one-vote.

I believe this will lead, invariably, to a court challenge as soon as a presidential election is held with NPV rules selecting enough electors to determine the outcome. I can only see two possible outcomes:

1) A court ruling against the states' right to use NPV.

2) A court ruling requiring uniform election standards nationwide.

Option 2 would effectively federalize the conduct of elections for President, requiring the federal government to put into place a system of strong regulation, preempting the states right to set standards for voter registration, ballot interpretation and election conduct.

Option 2 would traumatic. The Federal government does not have the machinery in place to do what would be required, and the states have deeply entrenched election administrations and a deep tradition of states rights in this domain.

Doug Jones

Disclaimer: These opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any institutions with which I may be affiliated, including but not limited to the University of Iowa and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee.

# # #

Doug Jones Bio from Wikipedia: Douglas W. Jones is a computer scientist at the University of Iowa. His research focuses primarily on computer security, particularly electronic voting. He has also contributed to the field of computer architecture, including an implementation of a one instruction set computer.

Jones' involvement with electronic voting research began in 1994, when he was appointed to the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems. He chaired the board from 1999 to 2003, and has testified before the United States Commission on Civil Rights[1], the United States House Committee on Science[2] and the Federal Election Commission[3] on voting issues. In 2005 he participated as an election observer for the presidential election in Kazakhstan. He is currently a member of the ACCURATE electronic voting project.

Jones received a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1973, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976 and 1980 respectively.

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Calif voting vendor integrity bill like tough North Carolina law

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:43:00 +0000

If California's SB 1404 passes, voting vendors will risk heavy fines if they hide or lie about flaws, failures or defects in their voting systems. Various voting vendors have been caught hiding serious flaws in many different states, with voters being the victim. North Carolina set similar but perhaps tougher standards in 2005 in our Public Confidence in Elections Law, SL 323. We need lemon laws for voting machines.

Calif. bill increases scrutiny of voting systems (SB1404)
(05-17) 16:30 PDT Sacramento, Calif. (AP) --

Companies that make the voting systems used throughout California would face fines if they fail to report problems quickly under a bill that has passed the state Senate.

The measure, SB1404, would require vendors to notify the secretary of state and local election officials of any product defects within 30 business days of discovering the flaws.

A vendor that fails to report known problems could face fines of up to $50,000 per violation. Opponents say the penalty is too stiff and will hurt the industry.

The bill's supporters say it will help ensure the integrity of California's election system.

The Senate voted 21-12 on Monday in favor of the measure, which now moves to the Assembly.

Here's the section of North Carolina's Public Confidence in Elections Act, passed in August 2005 setting strict standards and penalties for voting vendors.

This is the section that made Diebold run:

SECTION 2.(a) Part 2 of Article 14A of Chapter 163 of the General Statutes is amended by adding a new section to read:
"§ 163‑165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties.
(a) Duties of Vendor. – Every vendor that has a contract to provide a voting system in North Carolina shall do all of the following:
(1) The vendor shall place in escrow with an independent escrow agent approved by the State Board of Elections all software that is relevant to functionality, setup, configuration, and operation of the voting system, including, but not limited to, a complete copy of the source and executable code, build scripts, object libraries, application program interfaces, and complete documentation of all aspects of the system including, but not limited to, compiling instructions, design documentation, technical documentation, user documentation, hardware and software specifications, drawings, records, and data. The State Board of Elections may require in its request for proposal that additional items be escrowed, and if any vendor that agrees in a contract to escrow additional items, those items shall be subject to the provisions of this section. The documentation shall include a list of programmers responsible for creating the software and a sworn affidavit that the source code includes all relevant program statements in low‑level and high‑level languages.
(2) The vendor shall notify the State Board of Elections of any change in any item required to be escrowed by subdivision (1) of this subsection.
(3) The chief executive officer of the vendor shall sign a sworn affidavit that the source code and other material in escrow is the same being used in its voting systems in this State. The chief executive officer shall ensure that the statement is true on a continuing basis.
(4) The vendor shall promptly notify the State Board of Elections and the county board of elections of any county using its voting system of any decertification of the same system in any state, of any defect in the same system known to have occurred anywhere, and of any relevant defect known to have occurred in similar systems.
(5) The vendor shall maintain an office in North Carolina with staff to service the contract.
(b) Penalties. – Willful violation of any of the duties in subsection (a) of this section is a Class G felony. Substitution of source code into an operating voting system without notification as provided by subdivision (a)(2) of this section is a Class I felony. In addition to any other applicable penalties, violations of this section are subject to a civil penalty to be assessed by the State Board of Elections in its discretion in an amount of up to one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation. A civil penalty assessed under this section shall be subject to the provisions of G.S. 163‑278.34(e)."

The only reason voting vendors could hate the bill is they don't want to admit how flawed and defective their software is. Its easier on them if the voters find out the hard way....

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Federal Election Legislation to Consider for 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 23:09:00 +0000

Federal Election Legislation to consider supporting in 2010

This is just a list of bills that may be worth supporting this year. Still we do need to think outside of the box if possible.

Curtailing Citizens United - The Shareholder Protection Act H.R. 4790 and the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826), and Public Citizen has a petition in favor of a constitutional amendment entitled "Free Speech for People Amendment"Outlaw
Voter Caging - Caging Prohibition Act of 2009 H.R. 103 and S. 528.
Re-enfranchising ex-felons -The Democracy Restoration Act H.R 3335 and S. 1516 of 2009 If you are living in the community you have right to vote.
Veteran Voting - Veteran Voting Support Act H.R. 6625 S. 3308 of 2008 The VA acts as voter registration agency, helps vets vote, and allows reg drives.

Curtailing Citizens United The Shareholder Protection Act H.R. 4790 and the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826), and Public Citizen Petition

Letters to Congress in Support of the Shareholder Protection ActBy Brennan Center for Justice – 04/12/10The Brennan Center urges adoption of the Shareholder Protection Act (H.R. 4790). The Act would provide shareholders with notice of corporate political spending, as well as providing shareholders with the ability to vote on future political spending by corporations.

Today we sent two open letters to Congress urging support of the bill.
Citizens United: What Would Justice Brennan Do? (WWJBD)By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy – 03/30/10...So it is in the spirit of Justice Brennan that the Brennan Center has urged Congress to take strong policy responses to Citizens United including adopting public financing for congressional elections through the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826). ...But we have also urged another approach which is consistent with Justice Brennan’s clearly stated belief in shareholder protection: providing shareholders a vote on future corporate political spending as embodied in the Shareholder Protection Act (H.R. 4790). This is a constitutional way to honor the rights of the investors who may be otherwise pulled into political battles after Citizens United against their will. This is precisely what Justice Brennan would do

More about the Fair Elections Now Act from HuffPo.
"Justice Thomas' Reasoning -- Dangerous for Democracy" ~ Frances Moore Lappe"
...One immediate step we can take right now step is to ensure passage of the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act--S.752, H.R.1826. It establishes a workable system of small donations combined with voluntary public financing for congressional races. It builds on an approach that's already proven itself in three states. (Watch this inspiring example of its impact.) The Fair Elections approach has not been blocked by the Supreme Court. While it can't avert all the threats embodied in the Count's decision, it enables a candidate to run for office without becoming beholden to corporate money."

Public Citizen proposes an amendment to the US Constitution:...we must pass a constitutional amendment to ensure corporate money does not overwhelm our democracy and clarify that the First Amendment is for people -- not corporations. Add your name to the petition to Congress today! http://action.citizen.org/t/10315/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2190 http://action.citizen.org/t/10315/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=2190#Petition

Outlaw caging and purging

Voter Caging Legislation in the 111th Congress HR 103 and S528
H.R. 103 Caging Prohibition Act of 2009 [view bill text]Rep. Conyers and 10 co-sponsors [view all]January 6, 2009 [view status] S. 528 This bill would prohibit election officials from preventing individuals from registering to vote or voting in any federal election or from permitting formal voter challenges to voters' registration status or eligibility if the basis of information gathered from voter caging documents or lists or unverified match lists. It would also establish requirements of individuals who wish to challenge the voter eligibility of another individual and prohibit challenges based on voter caging documents or lists or unverified match lists.

Deceptive Practices S 453 and HR 1281

Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act 2007 (S. 453 & H.R. 1281) The Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act (H.R. 1281 and S. 453) would criminalize the knowing and intentional communication of false and misleading information about the time, place, or manner of elections, and the rules governing voter eligibility and voter registration. It would also ensure that voters affected by deceptive or intimidating practices are provided with correct information from a reliable source in a timely manner.

Re-enfranchisement HR 3335 and S1516

The Democracy Restoration Act, is now pending before Congress. That bill would restore the right to vote in federal elections to every American citizen who is out of prison, living in the community.

The Democracy Restoration Act (DRA) is federal legislation that seeks to restore voting rights in federal elections to the nearly 4 million disenfranchised Americans who have been released from prison and are living in the community. The bill was introduced by Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) as H.R 3335 and S. 1516 on July 24th, 2009.

Correcting a Centuries-Old InjusticeBy Brennan Center for Justice – 04/11/10 by Deborah J. Vagins and Erika WoodOriginally published at ACS Blog.In our recent Issue Brief for the American Constitution Society, The Democracy Restoration Act: Addressing a Centuries-Old Injustice, we examine an ongoing and deeply problematic barrier to the fundamental right to vote for millions of Americans. Currently, 5.3 million American citizens are denied this right because of a criminal conviction in their past. Nearly 4 million of those who are disfranchised are out of prison, working, paying taxes, and raising families, yet they are without a political voice.

Supporting info: Kentucky’s Disturbing Disenfranchisement NumbersBy Benjamin Rattner – 03/12/10A new report by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights finds that nearly one-in-four African Americans has lost the right to vote in Kentucky.Kentucky is one of the last two states [see pdf map] in the country (Virginia is the other) that denies the right to vote for life to anyone with a felony conviction, unless the current Governor restores the right through his clemency powers

Helping Veterans Vote HR 6625 and S 3308

Veteran Voting The legislation would would open the VA to registration drives and require the VA to make voter registration services available at VA facilities in states that request it. It would require the VA to help veterans request and cast absentee ballots. And it would open VA facilities to non-partisan groups and election officials, so that they could provide veterans with information on registration and voting. All these services will go a long way to ensuring that veterans are able to exercise their most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote....

Veteran Voting Support Act H.R. 6625 S. 3308
Brennan Center Letters in Support of Veteran Voting Support Act
Letter to Senate Rules Committee in Support of S. 3308 (7/24/08)
Letter to House Administration Committee in Support of H.R. 6625 (7/29/08)
Letter to Sen. Feinstein in Support of S. 3308 (9/12/08)
Letter to Rep. Brady in Support of H.R. 6625 (9/15/08)
Letter to U.S. Senate in Support of S. 3308 (9/25/08)
Blog Entries
Adam Skaggs, "Help Vets Vote; They Deserve No Less" (8/1/08)
Adam Skaggs, "Congress Considers Reversing VA Ban" (9/19/08)
Adam Skaggs, "No Time to Vote" (1/7/09)

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Disenfranchising Our Wounded Warriors

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:54:00 +0000

We now help our active duty troops register to vote, why don't we help our wounded warriors? Yesterday I received an email from Attorney Scott Rafferty about a client of his who wants to help veterans institutionalized on VA campuses have the opportunity to register to vote.

Wounded veterans shouldn't have to rely upon outside help to register to vote. The VA would be the best choice to help its own clients register to vote. Not only does the Veterans Administration fail to assist our wounded and also homeless veterans in registering to vote, but "During the 2004 and 2008 campaigns, the VA banned both individuals, party organizations, 501(c)(3)s and even the SoS of Connecticut herself from entering VA campuses for the purpose of individually registering voters."

As a federal agency, the Veterans Administration falls under the "Motor Voter Act" and should offer voter registration assistance to its clients. The executive order implementing motor voter requires federal agencies to accept designation by state's top election official to perform motor voter registration duties. But loopholes exist that can allow the VA to refuse to help register voters.

Why doesn't the VA help veterans register to vote? It is purely a policy decision - there is no law to prohibit assisting our veterans in voting. Who can right this wrong? Eric K. Shinseki, The Secretary of Veterans Affairs could immediately order the Veterans Administration to act as a voter registration agency.

The United States government policy has been to disenfranchise our active duty military and veterans. Only this past December 2009 did the Department of Defense agree to act as a voter registration agency and assist our military personnel in registering to vote, updating their registration and casting a ballot.
[ NY Times: "All Military Installations to Aid in Voter Registration" Dec 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/us/politics/18vote.html?_r=1 ]

Who can right this wrong? Eric K. Shinseki, The Secretary of Veterans Affairs could order the Veterans Administration to act as a voter registration agency.

Please see below Attorney Rafferty's email which brought the issue to my attention:

From: Scott Rafferty
Date: 12 April 2010
Subject: Helping Wounded Warriors Register to Vote

We had an opportunity to work together during the Kerry for President campaign. On behalf of my client, Santa Clara County Democratic Chair, Steve Preminger, I am asking for advice on how we can resolve a piece of unfinished business - getting homeless and institutionalized veterans the opportunity to register. The matter raises important issues for veterans rights, voter registration, and administrative law. But italso raises a policy issue - why do the Civil Division and the United States Attorney continue to defend a former administration policy that Senator Obama called "shameful" and introduced (with Senators Kerry and Feinstein) legislation to overturn? My client would be grateful for any assistance in obtaining policy review by the new Administration. And I would be grateful for legal guidance that any of you may be able to volunteer.

In 2007, after three years of litigation over a 2004 incident in Menlo Park, Steve filed a rulemaking petition seeking some solution that would comprehensively register veterans who live on VA campuses. In the middle of the 2008 campaign, the VA circumvented an adverse Federal Circuit decision (and notice-and-comment procedures) by issuing a "directive" that allowed 1400 facility heads to restrict voter registration according to their own local policies, none of which has been published. According to the VA, this directive resulted in the registration of 350 veterans nationwide in 2008, since only 176 volunteers had been "authorized" nationwide. Former VA Secretary Peake waited until 5 days before the election before denying it, stating that the unpublished directive was adequate.

During the 2004 and 2008 campaigns, the VA banned both individuals, party organizations, 501(c)(3)s and even the SoS of Connecticut herself from entering VA campuses for the purpose of individually registering voters. Additionally, the VA provides no affirmative voter registration services, and most of these wounded warriors do not get motor-voter aid from DMVs or state health and welfare agencies. The Kerry Obama bill to extend motor-voter passed the House by voice vote, but did not come to a vote in the Senate.

This basis for these restrictions was originally a Nixon-era rule that provides six months in jail for conducting an "authorized demonstration." The VA interprets this to include any private political conversation, even voter registration. After four years of litigation, Judge Fogel dismissed the "as applied" case because the Federal Circuit held the rule was "facially" constitutional. The Federal Circuit decision later recognized a Circuit conflict on unfettered discretion in non-public forums and granted rehearing.
On rehearing, the Federal Circuit held, as a matter of regulatory interpretation, that this particular rule cannot be used as a prior restraint to censor any subject matter or to discriminate based on party affiliation. In the Ninth Circuit, Preminger prevailed on standing. However, without briefing or reference to the intervening Federal Circuit decision, the Court "affirmed on the merits" the district court judgment, which had not addressed the injunctive claim. On rehearing, the Ninth Circuit amended this decision to acknowledge that it was limited to the single incident, which had given rise to a damage claim. Judge Fogel acknowledges that the issue of injunctive relief is unadjudicated and has indicated that he would entertain a Rule 60(b) motion.

The Federal Circuit heard argument last Thursday for more than an hour. The Civil Division took the position that the Federal Circuit could neither review the directive, nor require a rulemaking, but could only send Preminger's petition back for more reasons to be stated for its denial. "There is no end to this," Chief Judge Michel observed. The Rule 60(b) motion was filed Friday before Judge Fogel, with
hearing sought before the May 2010 registration deadline.

Again, my client and I would be grateful for your help reversing this "shameful" policy and guaranteeing our wounded warriors an opportunity to register.

Scott Rafferty
4730 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20016
mobile 202-380-5525

Respectfully yours;

Joyce McCloy, Editor
Voting News Blog
http://votingnews.blogspot.com/
336-794-1240

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Press Release: Prestigious Pinocchio Award Goes to Maryland Elections Chief Linda Lamone

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:31:00 +0000

PRESS ADVISORY

#

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Prestigious Pinocchio Award Goes to Maryland Elections Chief Linda Lamone

North Carolina, Wednesday April 14, 2010/NCVVNewswire/ The NC Coalition for Verified Voting is pleased to present the first ever Spring 2010 Election Pinocchio Award to Maryland State Election Director Linda Lamone, for her "creative" elections budget forecast.

"Maryland's top elections chief deserves to be recognized for her ability to spin her state's expensive, buggy, paperless voting machines as accurate, reliable, and affordable in spite of the facts." said Joyce McCloy, Director of the North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting. McCloy went on to say that: "These misleading claims have been used in other states, but nowhere as successfully as in Maryland. Ms. Lamone has truly outdone herself and all other defenders of paperless voting systems." says McCloy.

Linda Lamone is famous in her own right for her tireless advocacy of expensive unverifiable elections run on paperless machines. Lamone has overcome opposition of voters, nationally recognized computer experts, voting rights advocates, two Governors and even the Maryland State legislature. Lamone's battle is a matter of life or death, with Lamone on record saying the state would have paper ballots "over my dead body."

Now Lamone's achilles heel may be the bad economy. Lamone delayed the implementation of paper ballot systems by arguing that it would be far less expensive to keep the current paperless system. This tact has worked before, but in this bad economy Lamone has to account for her numbers.

The Maryland group SAVE our Votes found discrepancies in Lamone's cost claims:

The SBE provided cost projections ... to Board of Public Works members last October showing that the cost of switching to a new optical scan voting system would be roughly $19 million for Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011 while the cost of using the existing equipment would be about $6 million. However, after procurement of the new system was postponed, the SBE requested nearly $11 million to operate the existing equipment in this year’s elections.

The Maryland General Assembly has ordered an independent study of voting system costs:

"The study will examine the current and projected operating and maintenance costs and the projected lifespan for the state’s existing touch-screen voting equipment as well as the costs of procuring and implementing an optical scan system in the most cost-effective manner. It will also review the voting system costs and contracts of other jurisdictions that currently use paper ballot/optical scan voting systems. The report is due December 1, 2010...." ~ SaveOurVotes.org press release.

More background:

Read
Why Maryland STILL Does Not Have Paper Ballots
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Maryland-STILL-Does-No-by-Joyce-McCloy-100320-69.html

# # #

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 website http://www.ncvoter.net/

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NC SBoE says Alamance Co. in violation of Voter Registration Act

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:59:00 +0000

Alamance County is in the doghouse with the NC State Board of Elections. According to the State Board of Elections, the Alamance Dept of Social Services has "substantially failed to comply with the requirements of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act.” Burke and Johnston Counties have also been a problem until recently. Is Alamance County, North Carolina's Department of Social Services helping clients register to vote (as required by law) or not? The problem is that we don't know, since the Department of Social Services (DSS) has not been sending in the required paperwork to the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The DSS has made excuses but that dog won't hunt since 97 other counties complied without whining. If the DSS truly is assisting clients in registering to vote, then why not send the paperwork in?

DSS, state elections board still at odds
April 03, 2010 3:20 PM
Robert Boyer / Times-News

The squabble over voter registration record-keeping continues between the Alamance County Department of Social Services and the state Board of Elections.

This week, the county DSS sent 560 voter preference forms to the county Board of Elections. Among other things, the forms list whether clients register to vote or decline to register.

Osborne said until this week, the DSS has been storing the preference forms, but hasn’t been sending them to the county Board of Elections.

A 1993 federal law requires agencies that provide public assistance to ask clients if they have registered and help them register if clients wish.

Don Wright, the state elections board’s top attorney, said such practices violate state and federal election law.

According to a Feb. 25 letter from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, the DSS offices in Alamance, Burke and Johnston counties “have consistently and substantially failed to comply with the requirements of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act.”

The letter went on to ask the agencies to comply. “The Department of Justice is committed to ensuring compliance with the NVRA and will, where appropriate, bring enforcement actions in federal district court to ensure such compliance ...” wrote T. Christian Herren Jr., the acting chief of the division's Voting Section.

Osborne countered Wednesday that her agency has “always” complied with Section 7 requirements. “We have lots of work to do, work that we are mandated to do. We’ve been meeting the mandate of the law. We just haven’t been doing some of the extra steps” the state Board of Elections is requiring. The state requirements are policy and are not law. Wright said they are part of state law.

But Gary O. Bartlett, the state board’s executive director, continues to side with his attorney.

In a March 17 letter to Herren, Bartlett wrote that his “office continues to have difficulty in working with” the Alamance County DSS. “We will be happy to provide you with any data you request about voter registration statistics coming from Alamance County and specifically generated at the Alamance County Department of Social Services.”

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NC House Election Law Committee Contact Information

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:31:00 +0000

Election Law and Campaign Finance Reform
House Standing Committee

Chairman, Vice Chairman:

Melanie.Goodwin@ncleg.net , Bill.Current@ncleg.net , Paul.Luebke@ncleg.net , Mickey.Michaux@ncleg.net , Deborah.Ross@ncleg.net

Members:

Angela.Bryant@ncleg.net , Pearl.Burris-Floyd@ncleg.net , Tricia.Cotham@ncleg.net , Susan.Fisher@ncleg.net , Rosa.Gill@ncleg.net , Pricey.Harrison@ncleg.net , Carolyn.Justice@ncleg.net , David.Lewis@ncleg.net , Grier.Martin@ncleg.net , Efton.Sager@ncleg.net , Paul.Stam@ncleg.net , Edgar.Starnes@ncleg.net, Alice.Underhill@ncleg.net

Members

Chairman Rep. Goodwin ............. Melanie.Goodwin@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman Rep. Current........ Bill.Current@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman Rep. Luebke........ Paul.Luebke@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman Rep. Michaux....... Mickey.Michaux@ncleg.net
Vice Chairman Rep. Ross............ Deborah.Ross@ncleg.net

Members
Rep. Bryant ................ Angela.Bryant@ncleg.net
Rep. Burris-Floyd....... Pearl.Burris-Floyd@ncleg.net
Rep. Cotham.............. Tricia.Cotham@ncleg.net
Rep. Fisher................. Susan.Fisher@ncleg.net
Rep. Gill...................... Rosa.Gill@ncleg.net
Rep. Harrison............. Pricey.Harrison@ncleg.net
Rep. Justice............... Carolyn.Justice@ncleg.net
Rep. Lewis................. David.Lewis@ncleg.net
Rep. Martin................. Grier.Martin@ncleg.net
Rep. Sager................. Efton.Sager@ncleg.net
Rep. Stam................... Paul.Stam@ncleg.net
Rep. Starnes............... Edgar.Starnes@ncleg.net
Rep. Underhill............. Alice.Underhill@ncleg.net

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Internet voting utopianism

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:57:00 +0000

Internet voting sounds like a great idea but should we use it for our elections? Internet voting is the latest fad to hit elections, and poses an exponentially greater threat to our democracy than paperless e-voting ever was. I-voting is spreading in Canada, and in the US, it is our overseas military who are the initial target. Internet voting, online voting, email balloting, some even mask it as "electronic transmission of votes" to make it sound better. It isn't! Please share this article with your friends, colleagues, public officials and lawmakers.

"urban renewal, greenwashing, technoyouth, and Internet voting utopianism"
Sunday, March 07, 2010 Richard Akerman

This is in reaction to the Elections Canada Internet voting event, some of the followup to it, and the ongoing trend for Canadian municipalities to adopt Internet voting (as well as the announcement that the province of Alberta will investigate it as well).

Our society loves the new. This is sometimes good, and sometimes appallingly, disastrously bad.

We had decades of "urban renewal", starting in the 50s and gaining momentum in the 60s, that with traffic planning as an essential element, very nearly destroyed the downtown cores of many cities in Canada, and actually succeeded in destroying the cores of many US cities. New is not always better. We are now, with enormous effort and expense, slowly attempting to undo some of the worse excesses of urban renewal, rebuilding and reinhabiting city cores, restricting the previously unlimited role of the fast-moving car in urban planning.

The people at the time had legitimate concerns. They found their cities old and tired, the trolleys familiar and worn. They literally could not imagine that their dense urban neighbourhoods would, rather than being improved by sweeping expressways and demolishing "urban blight", instead be turned into a dead landscape of poverty and neglect. Good intentions can have terrible consequences. We almost always cannot predict the future.

But Internet voting is an area where we actually have a tremendous asset, a community of computer security experts. UPDATE: As well, we can look the the experiences of other countries and jurisdictions. And we can look at other types of online activities. We can make some good guesses about the future. The experts tell us that computer networks are very hard to secure. Other countries show us that the complexity of a good technology implementation can lead to high expenditures with private companies, unsatisfactory results, and law suits. The ongoing, continuous security compromises of existing systems, with credit card numbers and other high-value information repeatedly stolen, tells us we are far from a world of high security on the public Internet. ENDUPDATE

We also have a recent trend of greenwashing - corporations that want to make money, but cloak it in some new language of social responsibility or environmentalism. Less paper is not always good. What consumes more resources, a single piece of paper you use once, or a computer in a data centre that is on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, requiring round-the-clock high physical and network security? In any case, since when is the foundation of democracy about how "green" your election is? Elections hinge on trustworthy results. You want a green election? How about we just all hold up our hands and someone writes the result down on a chalkboard? No paper wasted! No electricity burned! Making some vague green claims about reduced paper consumption is a diversion from critical, core process and security issues associated with Internet voting.

This is not to mention the fact that a good chunk of the supposed "savings" from Internet voting comes from eliminating polling places, from eliminating polling place workers. Do you seriously want a voting system that is less human, that involves fewer people, that has fewer eyes to identify and report problems?

In the most egregious example of Internet voting mythmaking, the myth of the technoyouth. The argument, almost always made by someone who is not young, almost always made without any supporting evidence whatsoever, goes as follows: young people "naturally" use technology, enjoy technology, interact with technology. If you can just "technologize" something, young people will use it.

This is utter nonsense. Young people like doing young people things. They do them with whatever tools are at hand. They don't think about the technology, it's background noise. They think about the activity. Making an activity that people aren't interested in available on a platform that they use, will not make them interested. The examples for this are trivial. It's a signature of the myth of the new that we are able to actually believe that somehow "the old rules" don't apply once you put a blinking light on something. You want an easy example: I watch TV. I watch shows I like on TV. I am not interested in sports. There are acres of sports on TV. You know what, this does not make me interested in sports. No one cares about technology channel for technology's sake except actual technologists. If you put boring middle-aged leaders talking about boring policies for senior citizens in a little video windows on a 20-year-old's iPhone, this is not going to make them interested in politics. It's nonsensical.

The overwhelming majority of the evidence from the few large scale examples we had at the Elections Canada Internet Voting discussion is that putting voting on the Internet doesn't magically translate into everyone who uses the Internet suddenly voting. It's just makes it easier for the people who already vote.

If you want turnout, then have a TURNOUT STRATEGY. A button on a web page is not a turnout strategy. Real turnout strategies might include:

* online and offline engagement with voters on issues they actually care about
- This is not easy. Real citizens have inconvenient interests. If you want to see how inconvenient true engagement can be, watch supposed super-Internet-connector Obama immediately dismiss even the possibility of a rational discussion about drug (specifically marijuana) policy, every single time it inevitably rises to the top of an Internet engagement attempt.

* Make election day a holiday
* Hold elections on Saturdays
* Put polling places everywhere - in workplaces, in grocery stores, wherever people actually go in their actual modern lives, not some theoretical church and community centre life that hasn't existed for decades
* Making voting mandatory, as it is in Australia

Notice how little of this involves technology.

Lastly, I want to address Internet voting utopianism. I would have thought the dotcom boom would have killed this, but it didn't. Life is not an endless progress towards a better and better world. Just because something is new, doesn't mean it is either inevitable or beneficial. The French Revolution loved their clean, modern new technology: the guillotine. There are lots of things that make no sense to do over the Internet. Just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to use it, IF IT ISN'T THE BEST SOLUTION.

Internet voting solves no problems, and introduces huge new ones, including:
* massive security issues at every step of the very long chain
* massive chain of custody issues
* massive privacy issues
* massive coercion issues
* handing over the core infrastructure of democracy to private companies and/or invisible government technologists
* creating a voting system that no one without a degree in computer science can actually understand

It will not save money except in some narrow sense. You can work numbers so that it looks like you're saving - oh look how much we save if we don't provide some education or some healthcare, as long as we ignore the huge future costs of impoverished people who are in and out of prison and huge numbers of expensive emergency room visits.

Oh look how much we save if we don't provide paper ballots - as long as we ignore the ongoing costs of data centres, legal challenges, and fundamentally undermining trust in our democracy.

Here's a simple thought experiment: would you hand a stranger $10 and ask them to deliver it to City Hall? A $100 bill? A million dollar bill? How much is your vote worth, how much is a national election worth? This is not banking, where you know the bank, they know you, and every single step along the way is auditable and reversable. This is a one-time handover of a treasure, your vote, to layer after layer of systems programmed by strangers, that you cannot inspect the internal workings of, where even the administrators of the systems can never truly know what is going on internally (a computer can always pretend to be executing one program, while actually executing another), in a system where you CANNOT VERIFY THE RESULT (because any system that lets you check how you voted, must inevitably provide the capacity for someone malicious to determine how you voted).

Internet voting is a lose-lose situation. The easier you make it to vote online, the more convenient, the less complicated, the less encumbered by multiple steps and complexity, the easier you make it for a hacker to steal the election. Worse than that, it is quite likely it is actually impossible to secure the election to the multi-billion-dollar risk level that would be appropriate, you simply cannot provide that level of assurance using the public Internet. The best you can do is involve every possible computer security expert at every step of the process, and then have a very highly informed acceptance of an extremely high level of risk. I don't see anything even close to this happening, other than in the Estonian system, which requires a unique national ID certificate for every single citizen and even then doesn't address issues like coercion.

In brief, this is really hard, maybe impossible to do well, and just as with the half-assed Windows-based electronic voting machines visited upon the American people by Diebold (now part of ES&S, an elections vendor that provides technology to Canadian elections), I don't see anyone taking even close to the level of necessary care in the current Canadian Internet voting situations.

Which brings me to my concluding point: to do this well requires an extraordinary level of computer expertise, testing, auditing, risk assessment, and 24/7/365 datacentre security, and a huge set-aside for potential legal challenges in case of fraud accusations. This inconvenient truth exposes the lie of Internet voting as being an easy, cost-saving citizen convenience, and so in most cases what I see is Internet voting advocates who are either ignorant of these issues, ignoring these issues, or deliberately trying to spin them.

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Internet or online voting- cases of lost votes, low turnout, denial of service

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:10:00 +0000

In reality, online voting, internet elections and email balloting, all are a high risk way to cast a vote. Internet voting is inherently insecure. In real life cases where internet elections have been held, votes have been lost, elections attacked with denial of services, and in one case the voter turnout was 85% lower than before. Add to that the fact that any time you transmit a ballot by email or online, you give up your secret ballot. In fact, states that offer email balloting to overseas military also ask the troops to sign a waiver over their right to a secret ballot. Eliminating the secret ballot opens up voters to coercion and increases the opportunity for ballot selling.

Readers, legislators, public officials, please read the "Computer Technologists’ Statement on Internet Voting" and also examine the list of computer technologists and their credentials at the link. If internet voting could be made secure, and if it could be done yet still have a secret ballot, then most people would support it as a suppliment to other voting methods.

There have already been internet or online voting experiments in the US, namely in Honolulu Hawaii. That election had the lowest reported voter turnout perhaps ever:

Honolulu Completes Internet/Telephone-Only Election
"Despite part of the reason for internet voting being that it would get more people involved a tiny 6.3% of the electorate participated raising numerous questions about why... and if the technology miscounted."

Other internet elections where something went terribly wrong:

On Second Thought, Finnish Gov't Rejects Defective E-Voting Results
April 14 2009. "Back in February, we found it disturbing that Finland was allowing the results of an election to stand, despite the fact that at least 2% of the votes had gone missing due to e-voting glitches. However, it looks like some sense of sanity has been restored as a higher court has now rejected the election results and ordered a new election."

And elections have also been attacked: a Canadian election in 2003 was subject to a denial of service attack. See article:

Hackers disrupt online election
CBC News reports that hackers apparently used a "distributed denial of service" attack to disrupt the (Canadian) National Democratic Party's election of its party leader.

The voting servers were down for several hours on election day, presumably disenfranchising many voters.

With internet voting, we cannot be certain as to who really had their vote counted, votes can be irretrievably lost, and we can not be certain as to whether the reported results are the true results.

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Military bases to help troops register and vote, thanks to Sen Coryn & Schumer, DEMOS, OVF and NC State Board of Elections

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:19:00 +0000

Finally, the Dept of Defense will act as a Voter Registration Agency. Thanks go to US Senators Schumer and Coryn . Thanks also to Gary Bartlett and the North Carolina State Board of Elections for writing a letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. 3 other states also sent similar letters to the DOD: Ohio, Kansas, and Missouri.

Schumer, Cornyn secure voter registration at military bases
Dec 18, 2009. The designation means that military bases will offer the same kind of voter registration services provided at motor vehicle departments and state agencies all around the country under the so-called “motor voter” law of 1993.

On Oct 8, 2009 the NC State Board of Elections sent a letter to Robert Gates, Secretary of DOD enlisting their cooperation. See Letter to DOD, help us help troops vote says North Carolina State Board of Elections Gary Bartlett also explained that costs would be minimal and the NCSBE would assist in training and materials.

An excerpt of the letter sent by Gary Bartlett, Director of the NC State Board of Elections:

"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. "

Designating the Department of Defense as a Voter Registration Agency will alleviate many of the problems military voters have in voting. Troops have to be registered to vote before they can vote. Problems of troops not getting the right ballot or the ballot being sent to the wrong place will be reduced as personnel will have help keeping their voter registration updated and get help in obtaining a ballot and getting that ballot returned. Thanks to the MOVE act, troops will be able to download blank ballots and then return the ballots via free expedited mail service.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:34:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:38:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:57:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:11:00 +0000

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.

Did you vote on election day, during early voting or absentee by mail?
Did you know that you would be asked to rank choices on the ballot?
Did you understand how to vote?
Were the instructions clear?
Did you like this new ranked choice voting method?
What was source of your voter education about Instant Runoff Voting?
Describe any problems you had in voting.
Did you rank choices?
If you ranked choices, how many did you rank?
Do you understand how instant runoff votes are counted?
Did you know that if your choices are not for the top two candidates, you will not be voting in the "runoff"?
Did you know that your additional choices may go uncounted if there is a winner in the first round of voting?
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?
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

The Problems with Vote Centers

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:25:00 +0000

This article is to address the push for Vote Centers. Any jurisdictions considering Vote Centers must be warned that they run an increased risk for voting machine malfunction and error and an increased risk for fraud. Officials also must consider the impact on vulnerable populations when their neighborhood polling places are eliminated.

Some readers may not be aware of or even believe in the problems with electronic voting. Please visit this link for this sortable database of voting systems problems, failures, malfunctions etc in the United States. You only need to glance at it to get the picture.

The bar has been set very low for voting machines and their vendors. These voting machines are not “ATM” quality! And we voters do not hold “accounts” with which to check our “vote” account, either, due to the secrecy of the ballot. While computers count quickly, they also suffer from “garbage in, garbage out” syndrome, and exponentially increase the risk of error, malfunction and fraud.

Its shocking but true that the machines sold in just 2006 have technology that is over a decade out of date. It is truly shocking to know that the machines in use in the United States are considered to meet federal standards as long as they do not exceed a 9.2% failure rate in a 15-hour election day.

So one reason not to push for vote centers is that they would require these same machines to run day after day, increasing the likelihood of problems.

But lets say that YOU don’t believe the computer scientists or activists like me when I say we need to minimize our exposure on these machines.

Lets say – that you DO care about the voters, especially the vulnerable segments of the population. Say you think voting should be fair to the elderly sick or poor….Then if so, please read on:

Vote Centers do not “add” to choices for voters, but instead reduce choices for voters.

To pay for Vote Centers, sacrifices are made: Which precincts will be eliminated? Who decides? The number of voting locations and voting machines are cut by as much as 66% or more. Neighborhood election day precincts are often eliminated.

Certain segments of the population have a bigger burden in trying to exercise their right to vote. Vote Centers or Super Precincts don’t serve the voter’s needs or the precise requirements for democratic elections — transparency being one of them. Vote Centers remove places from the neighborhood locations where voters without the means can have easier access.

With Vote Centers, you will see as many as 10,000 votes concentrated at one location, making it easier to commit fraud on a large scale in one fell swoop. The smaller neighborhood polling places offer a buffer against election fraud by keeping the number of votes in one location down to an average of 3,000 ballots or fewer. Voting machine malfunction or a rogue election worker can affect far fewer votes in a neighborhood precinct than in a consolidated vote center.

Larimer County, Colorado is an example of how vote centers can disenfranchise large numbers of people when just one thing goes wrong:

Rocky Mountain News: Elections Nov. 7, 2006. Voters at many of the city’s new 55 voting centers have been encountering long lines, computer problems and an inadequate number of computers to check proof

If the goal is to improve access to voting, then the best solution is to offer a 2 week period of early voting which ceases the week-end before election day, and to continue with neighborhood polling places on election day. This provides the best of both worlds, without creating a barrier to voting for the elderly and poor, and without exposing extremely large numbers of votes to software malfunctions and fraud.
See http://www.ncvoter.net/votecenters.html

1. Will Vote Centers be on private property, and if so, a) how will voting machines be secured, and b) will electioneering be allowed?

2. How will the poor, elderly, or sick or those with transportation issues get to the vote centers? Do you know what a bus ride across town is like, since vote centers end up being across town. It can take a person hours to get across town and back, and then there’s the wait in line.

3. What is the backup plan in the event of a Larimer County style meltdown?

I wouldn’t expect these Vote Centers to be very busy during small elections, but in General Elections and especially Presidential (the one more voters pay attention to) alot can go wrong and the lines will be a mess.

Will your county provide some sort of transportation for voters that won’t take hours out of their day? Often it is the poor who can’t miss any work time, they won’t get reimbursed.

And when all of your neighborhood polling places are eliminated, who decides where the vote centers will be?

If the goal is to enfranchise the most voters in the fairest way possible, Vote Centers do not meet the goal.

Hendersonville Instant runoff voting in Nov - Will your vote be counted? Surprising answer

noreply@blogger.com (Joyce McCloy) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Will Hendersonville voters' instant runoff votes in the November election count or even be counted? Does Hendersonville's IRV counting method rob some voters of their say in the runoff? How will Hendersonville North Carolina tally the upcoming instant runoff voting election for Mayor and City Council? Will voters understand how votes are sorted, allocated and reallocated? Will voters help or hurt their favorite candidate by ranking choices? The answers are discouraging if you care about every vote counting, about election integrity, transparency and about fairness to voters.

I sent an email to Henderson County's Board of Elections to find out: what votes will be counted and reported, which IRV votes will be counted, and how will the IRV votes be counted and reported? Henderson BoE Director Beverly Cunningham promptly provided these answers below in 2 emails on October 16, see lower down the page.

The answer -not all Instant runoff votes get counted. It is a fact that some or all 2nd and 3rd choice votes cast will be kept secret and hidden from the public and never counted. Just because second and third round votes are not needed or utilized in determining an outcome does not mean that they were not cast by a voter. It is a bad practice for government to keep any expression by voters secret.

If there is a winner in the first round of voting, then officials will not count or even report the voters 2nd and 3rd choice votes. If there is not a winner in the first round, then only votes for the top two candidates will be considered from the 2nd round. 2nd choice votes for any other candidates will not be counted or reported.

Not only will candidates and voters be in the dark as to how much support each candidate got, but voters will not be able to look at the results and see if they hurt or helped their preferred candidates by ranking. It is a fact that Hendersonville voters can hurt their preferred candidates just by ranking them, according to Dr. Steven Brams of New York University. But if Henderson's Board of Elections does not count and report all 2nd and 3rd choice votes, we have no way to know if this happens.

Nothing about how Hendersonville's election is typical of IRV - IRV is for single seat election contests, Hendersonville is using it for multi-seat elections and thwarting the use of bullet voting also called "single shot" voting.

Downsides with Hendersonville's Instant runoff voting procedures:

1. Voters are handicapped by IRV because they do not know who the top 2 candidates are that they should vote for, so there vote might not count in the "instant runoff". In a traditional runoff, voters would all have an equal opportunity to vote for the runoff candidates.

2. Candidates, supporters and IRV advocates will not know how IRV benefited or hindered their 2nd and 3rd choice votes since Henderson's BoE doesn't plan to count or report these votes. Democracy and transparency are weakened when all votes are not counted.

Most IRV jurisdictions count and report all of the voters choices. Only Hendersonville, NC will not do so. Below is an example of how San Francisco reports all of the vote data:

Henderson BoE Director Beverly Cunningham 2 emails on October 16:

1) In Hendersonville's 2007 IRV election, did the Henderson County BoE count or record or report any of the 2nd or 3rd choice votes? No, we stop counting when a threshold of victory is met.

2) What plans does the Henderson County Board of Elections have in order to count, record and report the 2nd and 3rd choice votes for the 2009 IRV election? I understand we will follow the same procedures as explained in No. 1).

3) In the 2009 IRV election, which if any of the 2nd and 3rd choice votes will be publicly reported and or counted? Only votes needed to determine the threshold of victory will be reported.

4) Provide the method, algorithm and spreadsheet that will be used to report and tally the IRV results. Still waiting on state to provide info.

5) Provide the "rules" to sorting and re-allocating the IRV 2nd and 3rd choice votes. (this is a second request) Still waiting on state to provide info.

Beverly W. Cunningham, Director
Henderson County Board of Elections
828 697 4970

Email 2, info requests continued:

4) Provide the method, algorithm and spreadsheet that will be used to report and tally the IRV results. The method of tabulation is a manual process utilizing Microsoft Excel to augment the sorting and totaling.

5) Provide the "rules" to sorting and re-allocating the IRV 2nd and 3rd choice votes.
1. Tabulation

o Determine the two (2) candidates with the most votes that are in the instant runoff.
o The candidates retain all the votes from the 1st round of tabulation. All ballots for the contest that have votes for candidates in the runoff are removed from the tabulation (they have
already been tabulated).
o Review (2nd Choice) to determine ifthere is a vote for either runoff candidate. If yes, add the vote to therunoff candidate and no further examination of the ballot is necessary.
o If there is no vote for either runoff candidate in (2ndChoice) then
review (3rd Choice) to determine if there is a vote for a runoff candidate.
If yes, add the vote to the runoff candidate and no further examination of the ballot is necessary.
o End of ballot examination. The runoff candidate with the most votes is declared the winner.

Beverly W. Cunningham,Director
Henderson County Board of Elections
828 697 4970

Hendersonville Contests and Candidates for November IRV election:

CITY OF HENDERSONVILLE MAYOR
Timm Kurtz
Mary Jo Padgett
Barbara G. Volk

CITY OF HENDERSONVILLE COUNCIL
Diane Caldwell
Jeff Collis
Ralph Freeman
Jerry Smith
Ron Stephens

Want to see what Hendersonville's ballot will look like?

If you vote in person, you will cast your ballot on a touchscreen machine. Here are screen shots of that ballot. Its easy to see how confusing the ballot would be when presented on a touchscreen machine.

If you cast an absentee by mail ballot, here is a copy of the paper ballot and some information: CITY OF HENDERSONVILLE w/ Instant Runoff 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 website http://www.ncvoter.net/ and also http://www.instantrunoffvoting.us/