Election Updates

The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are starting an effort to monitor implementation of HAVA. As a kickoff of their project, they are having an event on Febuary 8, from 9am through 12:30pm, in Washington. Below is the press announcement. I'll be at the event, one of the discussion panelists.

News Advisory:

WHEN: February 8, 2006, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Brookings Institution (Falk Auditorium), 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC

The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) are launching a joint effort to monitor the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and encourage constructive changes to the law. The Brookings-AEI Election Reform Project will synthesize election- related research and strengthen the link between the research and policy communities by improving the basic understanding of the law and informing additional policy-making. To emphasize the importance of this partnership and its impact on HAVA, Sen. Barack Obama will open the discussion with a keynote address.

Introduced in the wake of the contested 2000 presidential election, HAVA was passed by Congress in 2002. The law provides funds to the states to enable them to replace punch-card voting systems. It has also created an Election Assistance Commission to help administer federal election laws, and has set standards for the administration of federal elections by states and local governments.

The Election Reform Project will track action on amendments to the legislation considered by Congress, and make election-related research widely available to policy-makers at the local, state and federal level. The project's website, http://www.electionreformproject.org, will include information on voter registration, technology, access, early and absentee voting, provisional balloting, election administration and voting integrity issues.

The launch will include two panels: one on HAVA and its progress since implementation and the other on election reform and what barriers, and successes, lay ahead. Panelists will take questions from the audience at the close of each panel.

Keynote Address: The Honorable BARACK OBAMA, United States Senator, Illinois

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Panel One: HAVA -- How Is It Working?

Moderator: NORM ORNSTEIN, Resident Scholar, AEI

Panelists: PAUL DEGREGORIO, Chair, Election Assistance Committee; DOUG CHAPIN, Director, electiononline.org; The Honorable DEBORAH MARKOWITZ, Vermont Secretary of State

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Panel Two: Election Reform -- Looking Ahead

Moderator: THOMAS MANN, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Panelists: MICHAEL ALVAREZ, Professor and Director, Cal Tech-MIT Voting Technology Project; RICK HASEN, the William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles; ROBERT PASTOR, Executive Director, Carter-Baker Commission; PAUL VINOVICH, Staff Director, Committee on House Administration of the U.S. House of Representatives

RSVP: Please call the Brookings Office of Communications, 202- 797-6105, or visit http://www.brookings.edu/eventregistration.

According to the most recent reports about the number of initiatives in circulation that have qualified for the ballot and those that the state legislature is putting on the June primary ballot, currently it appears that California voters may see one of the shortest ballots in recent history. There are only two measures that are now slated for the June ballot: one sponsored by Rob Reiner that will advocate universal preschool and the other one from the legislature pushing a $600 million library bond.

There still could be at least two additional measures coming from the state legislature, one dealing with the Governor's proposed infrastructure measures and the other possibly focused on redistricting reform. Here is what the article linked above said about the deadlines that these additional measures would need to meet to make it on the June ballot:

"While the legal deadline for initiatives is Jan. 26, we've sent a letter to the governor and the Legislature that indicated we've determined that measures approved by Feb. 16 could make the principal ballot,'' said Jennifer Kerns, a spokesman for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. "Legislative measures approved by March 10 could be on a supplemental ballot."

I'll have more to say soon about the redistricting measure. Here is a recent article that details the negotiations that are now going on regarding the current proposals. I was on a long conference call this morning with a number of the folks who are working on this measure, and from the information I obtained in that call, it is clear that a compromise is highly possible, though the some of the details (especially the details regarding the composition and selection of the independent redistricting commission members) are still potential sticking points.

The victory of Hamas in yesterday's parliamentary elections in Palestine raises some interesting questions. Before I get to those, I want to point out that the election was monitored by the National Democratic Institute, with Jimmy Carter in the lead, and according to their analysis, the election was fair. If you want to learn more about the election procedures, NPR did an interesting story about this yesterday.

The interesting question is, in a democratic society, what happens when the people want to be represented by a party that do not have international approval. The U.S. spent almost $1.9 million attempting to influence this election. As the New York Times reported on January 23rd, "The United States spent about $1.9 million of its yearly $400 million in aid to the Palestinians on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction's image with voters and strengthen its hand in competing with the militant faction Hamas."

In an editorial in the Jerusalem Post, the paper notes that the election in Palestine is truly historic for its democratic meaning.

There are many measures of democracy: whether free elections are reliably held, whether the rule of law protects the people from their government, and whether there is, in practice, full freedom of assembly and expression. Palestinian democracy has a way to go according to all these measures, but on Wednesday it leapt over what is perhaps the greatest democratic hurdle of all: whether the people have the power to remove their government from office.

The key question is how well this new democracy represents the Palestinians and whether the new government can effectively work in the international arena.

I ran across an interesting spreadsheet this morning on the California Secretary of State's website, that might be of use to folks who are trying to follow the evolving status of voting system certification in California.

This spreadsheet lists the vendor, their voting system, whether the federal testing is complete, and whether the state has received an application for state certification. Based on this speadsheet (last updated on January 19, 2006), the ESS "Automark" system has cleared state certification, but the following systems have not:

• Diebold, apparently awaiting federal testing because of a referral "back to ITA for AccuBasic code review."
  
• ESS "Unisysn EMS/InkaVote PBC", under state review.
  
• Hart, "System 6", undergoing state testing.
  
• Sequoia, under state review.
  
• Populex, "Digital Paper Ballot Voting System", whose application for state certification was apparently incomplete.
  

One of the oddities in this list is the ESS "Unity/M100/M650/iVotronic w/VVPAT"; this spreadsheet lists this system as "currently in federal testing", but that ESS has yet to submit an application for California certification.

The clock is ticking ... the June 6 primary is not far off!

Mike and I received an email today announcing an event for a new voter registration system for UOCAVA voters.

Media Advisory Notice

25 January 2006

Press Launch of First Internet-based Overseas and Uniformed Services Voter Registration System

Date: Friday, February 3, 2006

Time: 9:30 - 10:30 a.m.

Location: National Press Club

529 14th Street N.W., 13th Floor

Washington, D.C. 20045

202-662-7500

Room: Murrow Room

Contact: Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat

press@overseasvotefoundation.org

Tel: 202 470 2480; or +49 172 951 0865

Starting Friday, February 3, 2006, up to seven million US citizens and military personnel will be able to generate their federal voter registration applications online, thanks to Overseas Vote Foundation, www.overseasvotefoundation.org.

The technologically advanced project, the first of its kind, provides a complete voter registration solution for overseas voters whose voting program falls under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).

Journalists are invited to attend this launch event, view a demonstration of the system and receive a full briefing. The agenda from 9.30 a.m. is as follows:

Introduction and Welcome: James Brenner, OVF Chair

Situation: overseas voters and UOCAVA implementation challenges; Online Demonstration: OVF Registration and Absentee Voter Application:

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, OVF Executive Director

Military and UOCAVA: Samuel F. Wright, Military Voting Rights Project, National Defense Committee, and OVF Advisor

Benefits to Election Officials: Cameron Quinn, OVF Vice Chair, U.S. Elections Advisor for the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), and former chief election official for Virginia

To confirm attendance or receive further information please contact press@overseasvotefoundation.org, or call +1 202 470 2480; or +49 172 951 0865

Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) was founded in 2005 to assist eligible Americans living across the world to vote in federal elections. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public charity organization dedicated solely to serving the voter registration needs of UOCAVA voters.

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, I wanted to put a link from Election Updates to an opinion piece I wrote that appeared in this morning's Pasadena Star News, "Governor should hold to promise of reform." My basic argument is that Governor Schwarzenegger needs to return to his talk about real political reform in California, including redistricting reform, reforming the initiative process, and real campaign finance reform.

The plan is for me to write opinion pieces like this every two weeks in the Star News.

Riverside County (California) is a gigantic county, stretching from what is essentially suburban areas of Los Angeles and San Diego through the desert to Nevada. Not only does Riverside County cover an enormous geographic area, it also contains a lot of territory that is thinly populated. In past essays, especially right before the November 2005 Special Election in California, we talked about some innovative efforts being used in Riverside to facilitate early voting using their "ROVER" mobile voting program.

Now comes news that Riverside County is rethinking how they transmit early and unofficial vote tallies from remote locations. According to recent media reports, they are seeking to transmit unofficial election-night tallies across a dedicated and secure cable, from a remote location in Riverside County to election headquarters. The linked story above stated:

"Riverside County officials today are asking county supervisors to approve spending $15,000 on the CORNET protected network and on enhanced security at the transmission site in Indio."
...
The new computer system uses a secure cable that's only activated on election nights, Dunmore said.

The Los Angeles Times this morning had a much briefer description of this story, stating that the county supervisors approved this plan last night unanimously:
The new technology, which uses a dedicated cable that connects to the registrar's computer, is designed to speed ballot-counting and make results available faster.

CORNET appears to be a Riverside County computer network. The general description of CORNET states that it:

The County of Riverside Internetwork (CORNET) was designed to provide inter-agency communications and to foster the exchange of information between local government agencies. CORNET utilizes high performance, multi-protocal internetwork routing technologies to electronically send and receive electronic mail, and government information between state agencies, county agencies, cities, colleges, school districts, and libraries located throughout the county. Agencies connected to CORNET may also receive unrestricted access to the information resources available on the national INTERNET through the County's user friendly "Gopher Server". Internet access subscribers must first sign the CORNET Standard Internet Access Subscription Agreement.

Additional details about CORNET are available from this webpage.

I'll scout around for additional details of this initiative, and at some point hope to see it in action.

Last month, we blogged about the upcoming Bahrain conference on electronic voting. Well, they are having it. One interesting aspect of the conference is that it is designed to promote public-private partnerships. As the Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs and Central Informatics Organisation (CIO) president Shaikh Ahmed bin Ateyatala Al Khalifa told the conference, [The fact that Bahrain is holding the conference] "reflects the overall political, social and economic direction of our country, namely one of openness, transparency, and private-public sectors partnership. This is evidence that the democratic transformation, in essence, is a process of co-operation, co-ordination and support between different section of the society, formal or informal."

One of the things that is of interest in that quote is that it states explicitly something that is too often ignored or not discussed in the United States: elections are a partnership among an array of actors that all play specific roles. From the mobilization that is done by candidates, parties, and interest groups to the role that private companies play in printing ballots and supplying voting technologies to counties, elections are a highly collaborative process. The nice thing about this conference is that it seems to be intended to get everyone on the same page about how elections will be run in an e-environment in Bahrain in the future.

Recently, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq released a statement regarding the complaints of irregularities associated with the December 15, 2005 elections for Council of Representatives. A pdf version of the statement is available from our website. This statement provides a great amount of detail about the types of irregularities and their incidence rates.

First, a few details --- as I understand them --- about this particular election.

The recent Iraqi election conducted balloting in approximately 6000 polling centers. Each polling center had one or more polling stations; they used roughly one polling station for every 500 voters. Polling centers and stations were obviously in place throughout Iraq, but they were also in many locations throughout the world so that expatriate Iraqis could participate in these historic elections.

At this time, it appears that there were over 12 million votes cast (12,396,631 total votes cast, according to the recent unofficial tally). Of these, 63,930 were tallied as blank and 141,568 were invalidated. Thus, there were 12,191,133 valid votes tabulated in this election, meaning that 98.3% of votes cast were valid and non-blank (or that 1.66% of votes cast were not tallied).

Second, the Iraqi procedure for dealing with election complaints seems thorough, if it was followed as they lay out in their report (and I've heard nothing yet to indicate that they did not follow these procedures). The 1985 complaints were divided into two types: red complaints, or those that could effect the election results; and green complaints, that are problematic but unlikely to effect the election results. After this categorization, 58 of the complaints were labeled red, and thus merited detailed examination.

I've done my best to summarize the complaints and their incidence rates (as I understand them from the report) in this pdf table. This table presents the complaint description, the number of such complaints, the number that were demonstrated to be valid, and the number of polling centers or stations with valid problems.

As the table shows, by far the complaint with the highest reporting and validation rate is associated with invalid ballot papers in ballot boxes --- this ended up in the invalidation of ballots from 24 polling centers and 5 polling stations. Second in order comes interference in ballot counting and sorting, with 7 complaints (of which 2 were deemed valid), in 2 polling stations. The remaining complaints were rare: taking ballot boxes illegally (2 complaints, none validated); illegal campaigning (1 complaint, which was validated); name not on ballot (one complaint, not deemed valid); armed forces or police interference (2 complaints, one validated); and electioneering (one complaint that was validated). Given over 6000 polling centers, while any substantiated fraud is a problem, it appears from this report to have had a relatively low incidence rate, involving only a tiny fraction of polling centers.

Also, the report discusses another problem that arose in tabulation and auditing. Here they found that there were 53 polling stations in Iraq in which the number of paper ballots in the ballot boxes exceeded the maximum number of known voters. This same problem appeared in 4 polling stations and 2 polling centers in Istanbul. Votes from these locations were invalidated after there apparently were no substantiated reasons for excess ballots to have been voted. While also a problem, again the basic incidence rate here of potential fraud appears relatively low.

It is worth concluding by noting that the procedures in place for this election allow for quick centralization of complaints, and for rapid investigation of each complaint. This report provides some useful information, both for students of Iraqi politics and election administration more generally. First, it gives us some data that we can use to study the elusive question of election fraud. Second, it demonstrates that it is possible to quickly and (hopefully) effectively investigate election complaints.

This second conclusion begs the question: if they can do it in Iraq, why can't we do the same here in the United States? Indeed, we have elections in the U.S. involving many more votes cast, but we ought to be able to investigate all valid complaints and to produce post-election reports, quickly and thoroughly, about these investigations. Would we have fewer concerns about the integrity of the American electoral process if we had procedures similar to the Iraqis? Hard to know, but it certainly might be worth the effort to find out.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has placed the final 2005 "Voluntary Voting System Guidelines" on their website. Here is the description of the new 2005 VVSG from the EAC site:

On December 13, 2005, the U.S Election Assistance Commission (EAC) unanimously adopted the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, which significantly increase security requirements for voting systems and expand access, including opportunities to vote privately and independently, for individuals with disabilities.

The guidelines will take effect in December 2007 (24 months), at which time voting systems will no longer be tested against the 2002 Voting System Standards (VSS) developed by the Federal Election Commission. All previous versions of national standards will become obsolete at that time.

The voluntary guidelines provide a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if the systems provide all of the basic functionality, accessibility and security capabilities required of these systems. In addition, the guidelines establish evaluation criteria for the national certification of voting systems.

The guidelines update and augment the 2002 VSS, as required by HAVA, to address advancements in election practices and computer technologies. These guidelines are voluntary. States may decide to adopt them entirely or in part prior to the effective date. Currently, at least 39 states use the national guidelines in their voting system certification process.

During the 90-day public comment period, EAC received more than 6,000 comments on the proposed guidelines. Each comment was reviewed and considered by EAC in consultation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the development of the final version. To view these comments and the proposed guidelines, go here.

I've not had a chance yet to go through the new 2005 VVSG, nor through the extensive comments associated with the new 2005 VVSG. It'll be very interesting to work through the new 2005 VVSG, and to compare it with the draft VVSG to see what was changed as a result of public comment and testimony during the EAC VVSG hearings.