What if Herenton v. Cohen is a Close Election?

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

Comments on this post from Jersey Joe of Shelby County offer more evidence why unverifiable electronic voting machines suck and what problems we could face if we use them in 2010:

You are correct. The 2005 voluntary standards of the EAC are not established as the gold standard guidelines for anything. In fact, in November of 2008, the EAC published an evaluation of a system and they used the 2002 standards for that evaluation. There is no reason that Tennessee cannot use the 2002 guidelines.

It is also true that there are the next generation set of guidelines being worked on now. In the comments on the new guidelines, some people question the value of the EAC guidelines, saying the testing does not correlate to real world experience. There is also skepticism expressed by one state implying fraud in the utilization of Diebold machines, the kind we use here in Shelby County. (http://www.eac.gov/program-areas/voting-systems/docs/certification-system-comments-by-section.xls/attachment_download/file)

There is little doubt that Secretary of State Hargett is willfully obstructing the will of the General Assembly. Is there anyone in the Republican majority who cares more for their constitutional oath than their Party and who will demand that Hargett follow the law as passed by the legislature?

The question is why does Hargett want to so brazenly disobey the law? Why has the question of having elections with verifiable ballots that can be recounted become a partisan issue? Accurate recounts should be in everyone’s interest. But not here in Tennessee in 2009. Why? Are the rumors about these systems true? Did the Republicans really win all those surprise House districts last year honestly? All the Voter Confidence Act does in the end is give us the ability to habd count ballots independent of technology. Much of the current technology is totally opaque and so there is no way to determine if the machine accurately captured the voter’s intent. Since all machines have a known error rate, in a very close election, the machine may be incapable of differentiating the true vote counts. This will be a problem with the optical scan machines as well.

When these machines give us a number, they are really giving us a range of numbers based on the known errors of the system. Based on the known error rate, we can construct “confidence intervals” around the result which can be for any degree of precision we choose. In science, the standard is usually 95%. What that means, is if the machine has a CI of plus or minus 5%, then 95% of the time the “real” number will be within that range around the number given in the count. Let’s say 200 balots are counted and the 95% confidence interval is 3. If the machine count comes out 100, then we would add and subtract 3 from 100. We can then say that if we put the ballots through the machine again, we would get an answer between 97 and 103 at least 95% of the time. But lets say that two candidates are running and candidate A gets 99 votes and candidate B gets 101 votes. Candidate B has won—maybe. If we run the count again, candidate A will get a number between 96 and 102; candidate B will get a number between 98 and 104. There is roughly a 43% chance that candidate B will lose or be tied in that second count. Who wins? The machine count, in this case, is not capable of answering that question. It is beyond the physical capability of the equipment.

In that situation, we must have an independent method to ascertain the intent of the voter to do a valid recount. Merely running ballots through the same machine(s) is meaningless. Let us imagine that Congressman Cohen beats Mayor Herenton by 50 votes in next August’s Democratic primary election. Is Secretary of State Hargett eager to stand before this community in the calm, quiet of election night and explain to us all why the Election Commission can’t really recount the votes and therefore, Congressman Cohen has won.

Secrertary Hargett is leading us down just that road. What is the gain that makes it worth taking that kind of risk? That is the question we should be asking of Mr Hargett and Senator Norris and Senator Todd and Senator Stanley and anyone else who advocates no recount voting systems.

If you’re a candidate in the next statewide election and we’re still using the unverifiable machines, you better make sure your margin of victory is a large one.

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Odom Knows and Professor Agrees: Our Voting Machines are Scary

On July 15, 2009, in Liberate Your Radio from The Right, by Mary Mancini

A recent study by Mark Lindeman, an assistant professor of political science at Bard College in New York, shows that optically scanned paper ballots were better at registering the intent of the voters than touch screen voting machines.

In the study, Prof. Lindeman found that in the 67 North Carolina counties where the voting method is optically scanned paper ballots (what Tennesseans are not using now), 0.78% of ballots failed to register a vote for President last November. The 24 counties where touch screens (what Tennesseans are using now) 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. His findings are consistent with a previous study of the Brennan Center for Justice that showed precinct-based optical scanners had the lowest residual vote rate of any type of technology in the 2004 Presidential election.

This latest study makes the argument on the last day of session by Tennessee House Minority Leader Gary Odom to keep the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act – and paper ballots counted by optical scan machines – intact and on track for implementation for the November 2010 election even more relevant.

Although Leader Odom’s plea fell on deaf ears and the House voted in a ridiculously large number (73-20) to delay our paper ballots, he demonstrated a firm grasp of the issue and made many salient points.

One that is of particular importance since the delay bill failed in the Senate and the State Election Coordinator is now legally obligated to implement paper ballots by the 2010 election, is that there is virtually no difference between the 2002 standards and the 2005 standards applied to the optical scan machines the state is required to purchase.

Leader Odom: “…I guarantee you, in 2011, we’re going to come back here, and this is going to be delayed again – or repealed – because there’s not going to be a machine that meets the 2005 standards. And in my discussions – and I’ve talked frequently with the Election Assistance Commission personnel, they’re telling me the standards differ very little in the technology between the 2002 scanner and the 2005…”

So while the State Election Coordinator is saying that he can’t comply with the law because the law says that he must purchase machines that are certified to 2005 standards, I say that according to the EAC, the 2005 standards ARE the 2002 standards and that no machines certified to the 2002 standards have been “de-certified.”

I also say, take a look at the studies like Prof. Bards’s which illustrate that the machines we use now to vote on are crappy machines.

And finally, while most people discussing this issue put the emphasis on the machines that count the paper ballots, I say, put the emphasis on the paper ballots themselves because the paper ballots are what will give Tennesseans secure and verifiable elections.

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