Day 9 of Operation: Please Offer Proof (P.O.P)

On August 18, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

It’s been nine days since this proofer asked Secretary of State Tre Hargett and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins to present proof to the voters of Tennessee that even one vote cast during any election using the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent.

On day three, I heard back from Mr. Goins who suggested, as if he wasn’t the person responsible for our elections, that I go elsewhere for an answer.

My response to the day three brush off was to simplify my request and make another appeal for proof:

“And while I do believe your explanation of the bi-partisan pre-purchase testing procedure and the invitation to contact the election administrators to see demonstrations of each machine might address my request to see the process in which the votes are cast, it does not address my request to see the process in which the votes are cast and counted accurately.

In other words, I would like verification that the software used on these machines is both recording and counting accurately.

Do you have any suggestions on how this may be accomplished?”

Mr. Goins responded by once again by shirking his responsibility as the dude running our elections and, however inadvertently, proving my point – he can’t offer proof:

“Once again I want to thank you for your interest in the election process. I also want to apologize if my previous e-mail was unclear. The purpose of testing the voting machines prior to each election is to verify not only that ballots were cast, but also that they were properly tabulated and recorded. This testing process has been used in numerous elections prior to the start of my tenure with the Division of Elections and I’m unaware of any serious concerns expressed by the participating candidates or the parties they represented. However, if you have specific questions about the voting machine hardware or software, it might be advisable to contact officials with the companies that supply the equipment. I would be happy to supply some contact information for those companies, if you are interested.”

I’m not sure what part of my request for proof of voting accuracy “during any election” he doesn’t get. Well, yeah, I am sure. All of it.

And perhaps as the gentlemen in charge of building trust in our elections, Mr. Goins should already have satisfactory answers from the touch-screen electronic voting machines manufacturers to the questions many Tennesseans are asking about their insecure and unverifiable voting equipment.

So I will write to Mr. Goins once again for clarification.

I will ask him if he is suggesting that the testing done on the touch-screen machines prior to an election guarantees that every vote cast on election day on said machines will be counted and counted as cast?

And if so, I will ask, how can he be sure?

Do the companies that make the machines provide access to the counting software so that it can be verified and studied by the his office? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that the counting software is free of bugs, i.e. perfect and never makes mistakes? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that the vote count cannot be manipulated in the source code or by introducing a virus in one of the unsecure data ports? Can the companies that make the machines guarantee that if one of the machines crashed or malfunctions, as computers are prone to do, that the votes will not be irretrievably lost?

While Mr. Goins is waiting for his answers, he can brush up on these reports by a computer scientist, a research center, and a non-partisan public policy and law institute that have pretty much everyone else in the country rightfully convinced that the machines Tennesseans use in 93 out of 95 counties will not give us a secure and verifiable election in November of 2010.

  • The National Institute of Standards and Technology, condemned them because they they are not secure, don’t “allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a voting machine’s software,” and “a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”
  • Computer Science professor Hovav Shacham who studied a machine – not even the source code! – and said on Science Friday last week that he found it to be vulnerable to attack and manipulation
  • The Brennan Center for Justice released two comprehensive studies of electronic voting systems in the United States, The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World and The Machinery of Democracy: Voting System Security, Accessibility, Usability, and Cost.
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Computer Scientist Says Yes to Paper Ballots

On August 17, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

One of our astute readers let us know that Computer Science professor Hovav Shacham was talking about electronic voting machines on NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow. The professor studied and tested a machine – not the source code – and found it to be vulnerable to attack and manipulation. And when asked what kind of machine he would use to run a trustworthy election, the computer scientist said, “paper.”

Listen to the segment:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“What we found is that an attacker who has brief physical access to a machine the night before an election, for example, when it’s left unattended outside a polling place is able to manipulate the machine in such a way that he can induce it to misbehave the net day on election day and appear to run the election faithfully but then shift votes at the end of the day from one candidate to another. And in this way the finding dovetail with those that previous studies have found for other voting machines and in fact of other studies of the same voting machine but along the way we had a couple of different features to..what we found have larger implications for voting security…what it says is that writing software and designing systems is hard and software has bugs – and that’s not altogether surprising the software that we use everyday has bugs. And, perhaps, what it says more is that relying on either having software or systems that are perfect and never make mistakes, or on having the system make mistakes only in ways that hackers would not be smart enough to be able to find, for example by stealing and analyzing a machine, is not a good way to build trust in an election…so I think what we need, we need some system whereby the voters can see an independent record of their vote so that they can check that what is recorded is the way that they intended their vote to be cast. And right now, the best way we know how to do that is with paper.”

The professor also suggests that the paper ballot becomes the ballot of record and that audits be done to make sure the paper ballot count matches the machine count.

We could have the kind of secure election the professor suggests with paper, paper ballots as ballot of record, and random audits because that’s what the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act mandates. You know what’s standing in our way? This guy.

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Another Proofer: No Chaser Joins Operation P.O.P.

On August 14, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

Today, on the fifth day of Operation: P.O.P., the proofer movement gets another member. We welcome Mark Brown of the No Chaser blog as yet another Tennessee citizen who wants proof from Secretary of State Tre Hargett and/or State Election Coordinator Mark Brown Goins that a single vote has been accurately recorded by any of the 100% unverifiable touch screen electronic voting machines we use in 93 out of 95 counties.

Hello, Mark! *clap, clap, clap*

“Think about it,” he writes, “Where is the evidence that a single vote has been accurately recorded by any of these machines? Voters aren’t given a receipt that shows how their votes were recorded. The voting machines don’t even display that information onscreen. Not a single Tennessee voter has the slightest clue how his or her vote actually went down in the record.”

See, much like the Birthers who want to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate to prove he’s an American citizen. The Proofers, like me and No Chaser Mark, need to see evidence of how our votes are being counted.

You know, “vote in secret, count in public” instead of “vote in secret, count in secret.”

While we wait for Mr. Hargett and Mr. Goins, Mark also wants to know why other conservative officials in Tennessee continue to ignore their requests from “hard-working left-wing bloggers”:

Stacey Campfield, where’s the birth certificate we asked for last Sunday? Ron Ramsey, ready to give us those text messages you exchanged with Paul Stanley? Ron and Mark Norris, when are you going to tell us exactly how you handled the sex scandals involving “Family Values” conservatives Mike Faulk and Jeff Miller?

Tick, tock.

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Day 4: Operation P.O.P. (Please Offer Proof)

On August 13, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini
Are these the little dudes counting the votes inside the machines?

Are these the little dudes counting the votes inside the machines?

We represent the Lolliproof Guild. The Lolliproof Guild. The Lolliproof Guild. And in the name of the Lolliproof Guuuuiiiild…We wish to welcome you to Disenfranchise Land!

It’s been four days since I asked for Secretary of State Tre Hargett and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins for proof that even one vote cast during any election using the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent.

On Day 3, yesterday, I heard back from Mr. Goins via email. It’s clear, however, that he didn’t quite understand my request.

After making sure that I knew that he was not responsible for making the decision to purchase the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines (“Decisions were made by the election commissions in each of those counties about what type of equipment to purchase”) he explained the testing procedure (“…the machines are tested prior to purchase, upon delivery and again before each election in each county…”) and suggested that I contact individual election administrators from each of the counties that use the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines to witness testing procedures:

Rutherford, Bedford and Lincoln counties are all scheduled to hold elections Oct. 13. Typically, the testing of the machines is done a few days prior to each election, so I encourage you to contact the election administrators in those counties to make sure you’re aware of the time and location of the testing.

For Rutherford County, contact Hooper Penuel at (615) 898-7743. For Bedford County, contact Summer Leverette at (931) 684-0531. For Lincoln County, contact Shelia Allen at (931) 433-6220.

Rutherford and Bedford County both use Micro Vote Infinity equipment, while Lincoln County uses ESS iVotronic equipment.

If you’re interested in seeing a test of the Hart eSlate equipment, it is used in Dickson County, where an election is scheduled for Sept. 24. The contact there is Linda Medley at (615) 789-6021.

And if you’re interested in seeing a test of the Premier (formerly Diebold) equipment, it will be in use in Shelby County’s Oct. 15 election. The contact there is Rich Holden at (901) 545-2600.

I feel nicely put off. But I do not feel as if my request has been answered. Perhaps I made it too confusing. Let me break it down more directly:

“On election day, can Tre Hargett, Mark Goins, any poll worker, or poll monitor look into the internal bits of a touchscreen electronic voting machine and see how the votes are being counted? Can we, as voters, feel certain that what goes in the machine is going to be what comes out at the end of the day tally? Where’s the proof?”

Operation P.O.P. continues.

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Sullivan County Election Officials Misinterpret New Election Law

On August 12, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

Mac McLean, reporting for the Bristol Herald Courier and TriCities.com, writes today that Sullivan County election officials decided “they don’t need to file a lawsuit seeking to block the state’s paper ballots law from going into effect” and will instead leave “the job of solving a bureaucratic quagmire created by the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act up to the very state officials who set it in motion last year.”

The Voter Confidence Act requires counties to buy and start using optical scan voting machines with paper ballots in time for the November 2010 election.

And the “bureaucratic quagmire” consists of the Secretary of State and the State Election Coordinator, who refuse to implement the law.

In preparation for the new law, Sullivan County “bought a set of the machines in 2006 and used them for early voting during the 2008 election’s early voting period and again in the 2009 city elections,” according to Elections Administrator Jason Booher.

But, Booher is misinformed when he tells McLean that they can no longer use the machines because the new law says they have to meet “a set of standards the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) adopted in 2005.”

Two things. First, nowhere in the law is the phrase “2005 Election Assistance Commission standards,” and two, the EAC standards state very clearly state that they are voluntary.

In other words, as a state, we can use any paper ballot counting machines we want to use. It’s our choice…kind of a states’ rights thing. Booher can use the machines he purchased in 2006 and Tre Hargett can allow the other county Election Administrators to purchase machines like the ones that have been working without incident in Hamilton, Pickett and, apparently, Sullivan counties.

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Day 2: Operation P.O.P (Please Offer Proof)

On August 11, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

I’m a proofer. He’s a proofer. Wouldn’t you like to be a proofer, too?

Yesterday was the first day I asked Secretary of State Tre Hargett and State Election Coordinator Mark Goins for proof that even one vote cast during any election using the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent.

I’m calling it Operation P.O.P (Please Offer Proof).

Today is Day 2. Coodinator Goins has said previously that he doesn’t see anything wrong with the machines we use now and Secretary Hargett is willing to forgo implementation of the 2008 Voter Confidence Act that would give Tennesseans paper ballots as well as the ability to do a meaningful recount because he thinks it’s would be a waste of money.

We may not see eye to eye on these positions but both men owe it to the people of Tennessee to show that the machines we will be relying on to give us a fair election in 2010 will count every vote cast and count it accurately.

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WPLN: Voting Machine Dispute Wears On as 2010 Election Nears

On August 10, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

WPLN aired a 5 minute feature this morning by Blake Farmer on the battle over secure and verifiable elections in Tennessee.

The next big election in Tennessee is for governor, and the primary is just a year away. A new state law says voters are supposed to have paper-based voting machines to use by then. But a dispute over replacing touch screen voting machines has taken a partisan turn. The stalemate hinges on how to interpret one line of the Voter Confidence Act. WPLN’s Blake Farmer reports.

In the piece, Farmer covers the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use in 93 out of 95 counties in the state, the inability to hold a recount when using these machines, the two counties in Tennessee that use paper ballots and optical scan machines, and the Voter Confidence Act that would give us paper ballots in Tennessee. He also interviews Sean Flaherty of VerifiedVoting.org, Rep. Gary Odom (D-Nashville), State Election Coordinator Mark Goins, and Scott Allen of the Hamilton County Election Commission.

Go to WPLN.org to listen or read the transcript.

But the most interesting interview is with the Election Assistance Commission’s Matt Masterson, who Farmer checks in with after Goins tells him that he can’t comply with the Voter Confidence Act because the law says he has to buy optical scan machines (used for counting the paper ballots) certified to the latest Election Assistance Commission standards (2005) but there just aren’t any that have been through the certification process.

With Masterson’s help, Farmer uncovers the flaw in the loophole Goins is trying to exploit:

The election coordinator’s office says it’s true, he doesn’t want the state buying machines not certified to the latest standard. But don’t expect the federal agency in charge of writing those guidelines to jump in the middle of the dispute. The Election Assistance Commission makes suggestions, not mandates, says the EAC’s Matt Masterson.

MASTERSON: “The EAC’s testing and certification program and the standards that they use are voluntary and the states can choose to use the program in any way that they find necessary.”

So the state’s predicament is self-imposed, and the clock is ticking.

So, according to the Election Assistance Commission, the standards they set forth pertaining to voting machines are voluntary – each individual state is within its right to decide for itself which machines to buy. In other words, as a state we would be following the standards by deciding for ourselves whether or not to follow the standards. Which means that the Secretary of State’s office is choosing not to follow the law by implementing the Voter Confidence Act.

Should he be allowed to do that?

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Day 1 of Operation: Please Offer Proof

On August 10, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

Last week I was compared to a “birther” (see: Lou Dobbs) because I don’t think any votes ever cast during any election using the 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines we use now in 93 out of 95 counties in Tennessee has ever been recorded accurately, as per the voters’ intent. Ever.

Ironically, the “birthers” questions about the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate has been anwered, but my question has not.

And, because it has not, today begins “OPERATION: Please Offer Proof,” also known, thanks to Freddie’s mom and and Steve Scarborough of Roaneviews, as “Operation: POP” and the “Proofer” movement.

Today I am calling on Secretary of State Tre Hargett and/or State Election Coordinator Mark Goins to present proof to the voters of Tennessee that one vote cast electronic voting machines has ever been recorded accurately. Shouldn’t be too hard, should it? We’re only asking for proof of one vote.

Coordinator Goins doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the voting machines we use now.

Great. Let him prove it.

Coordinator Goins also wants to wait until next legislative session to decide on whether or not to give us secure and verifiable elections.

OK. We can wait. But only if the system we use now can be verified as full proof. If it can’t be verified then we must act now of the results of every election held in 2010 will be suspect.

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Goins Bites Ballots

On June 16, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

So there I was minding my own business in the LP cafeteria last March when State Election Coordinator Mark Goins plopped down in the chair besides me.

After an exchange of pleasantries, we got into a spirited discussion about HB0614, the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (aka the paper ballot bill).

We didn’t agree on much: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with buying new optical scan voting machines certified to 2002 Election Assistance Commission standards. He thinks that would be a waste of money. I think there is no way to do a meaningful recount with the machines we use now. He thinks that pressing a button and getting the same total that you got before is a meaningful recount. I know that conducting an election with paper ballots is cheaper than conducting an election with paperless electronic voting machines. He disagrees.

But we do agree, according to him, on the importance of paper ballots. “I’m on the side of paper ballots,” he said.

That’s why, he continued, he’s conducting an all paper ballot election in Roane County on June 2 and inviting 12 new Election Administrators in the area to monitor and “learn from it.”

“I’m a friend of paper ballots,” he said again, “But when you push your friends too far, sometimes they bite back.”

And, he added, “I’m this close to biting back.”

This afternoon (or maybe tomorrow…or the next day…) on the floor of the House we will see the size of the chomp Coordinator Goins will take out of paper ballots – and Tennessee’s secure and verifiable elections.

It’s been nice to know, all this time, that his decision on whether to allow implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act to go ahead for the 2010 election was based solely on what’s best for the voters of Tennessee and not on how much push-back he received from people who disagree with him.

UPDATED 6/25/09: In response to Jeff Wood’s fantastic post (“What Kind of Buffoons are Running the Secretary of State’s Office Now“) on the misuse of power in the Secretary of State’s office, I must clarify one thing…during my discussion with Mr. Goins I never felt personally threatened. If I had, I would have pulled a Hargett and gotten the TBI involved.

That said, Mr. Goins did indeed threaten the implementation of the law (Tennessee Voter Confidence Act) that would bring paper ballots – and secure and viable elections – to Tennessee.

As I wrote originally, it was nice to finally find out definitively that his decision on whether to allow implementation of the paper ballot bill for the 2010 election was based solely on how much push-back he received from people who disagreed with him rather than what was best for the voters of Tennessee.

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Everybody Knows How Bad Tennessee’s Voting Machines are Except the Dude Running Our Elections

On May 29, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

“Tennessee Elections are in Trouble” Friday continues with Mark Goins, Tennessee’s Election Coordinator, who says he is comfortable with the paperless electronic voting machines Tennesseans use to vote in 93 out of 95 counties.

He’s so comfortable with these machines, in fact, that he is spearheading the push to delay the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act – also known as the paper ballot bill that was passed almost unanimously in the Tennessee General Assembly in 2008 – until 2012.

Coordinator Goins: I don’t think the DREs [paperless electronic voting machines]…I’m comfortable with the machines we have. Obviously, you aren’t.

Which means…

  • Tennessee State Election Coordinator Mark Goins doesn’t care that a 2006 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, one of the government’s premier research centers, condemned paperless electronic voting machines because they they are not secure and don’t “allow election officials to recount ballots independently from a voting machine’s software.”
  • He doesn’t care that the same report stated that “a single programmer could ‘rig’ a major election.”
  • He doesn’t see anything wrong that in a close election his office would not be able to perform a meaningful recount.
  • He doesn’t see anything wrong with machines programmed with secret proprietary vote counting software that he is unable to study, which therefore violates the “vote in private, count in public” axiom.
  • He doesn’t care that paperless electronic voting machines totals can be manipulated in the source code or by introducing a virus in one of the unsecure data ports.
  • He doesn’t care that when a paperless electronic voting machines crashes or malfunctions, as computers are prone to do, votes can be irretrievably lost.
  • He doesn’t have a problem with paperless electronic voting machines malfuntioning by flipping votes from one candidate to another (the machines used in the West Virginia counties where flipping occurred are the same ones used in Davidson County).
  • He doesn’t care that its actually cheaper for Tennessee counties to run an paper ballot election than it is to run a paperless electronic voting machines elections.
  • He doesn’t care that when a Tennessean votes on a paperless electronic voting machines there is no guarantee that their vote will be counted, let alone counted as cast.

Mark Goins, the man in charge of Tennessee’s elections does not care about the integrity of Tennessee’s elections.

Also, just as an FYI after you watch the video, Coordinator Goins’ assertion that buying optical scan machines to count paper ballots would be a waste of money because they would be obsolete is false. 49 States currently use optical scan machines certified to 2002 standards, including Tennessee (in Pickett and Hamilton counties).

(The man in the video who slaps his head in disbelief is Gathering to Save Our Democracy’s Bernis Ellis, who is an expert on voting technology and has been working tirelessly for 5 years to pass the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act and bring secure and verifiable elections to Tennessee.)

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