Election Updates

This from the Miami Herald....

A Leon County judge today shot down a request by Democratic congressional candidate Christine Jennings to access the secret software that runs electronic voting machines that were used in Sarasota County.

The decision deals a serious blow to Jennings' effort to contest the House District 13 election she barely lost last month to Republican Vern Buchanan.

House Democrats also said today that they will not take any action to block Buchanan from assuming the Southwest Florida seat when Congress reconvenes next week.

Jennings has alleged that the machines made by ES&S, which also manufactured the voting machines used in South Florida, had malfunctioned. Buchanan won by less than 400 votes, but more than 18,000 voters in Sarasota County did not make a choice in the race to succeed Rep. Katherine Harris.

Post-election tests and audits have shown no machine malfunction, but in her lawsuit contesting the results, Jennings asked for the right to have outside experts look at the ''source code'' or software used by ES&S, which is a trade secret.

A computer expert for Jennings said it was statistically unlikely that nearly 13 percent of Sarasota County voters would have skipped the heated congressional election.

Leon Circuit Judge William Gary told Jennings no, saying that the experts utilized by her lawyers had engaged in ''speculation'' and ''conjecture'' and were not ``supported by credible evidence.''

There is an interesting story in the Washington Post last Friday regarding cell phones and its use as a social networking tool. The idea is simple: the GPS in your phone lets your friends on your phone know when you are in physical proximity to their phone. The idea is that you, through your phone, have "presence" and your friends can see you out when you are in their area.

I first heard about this use of cell phone technology in 2003 at a conference Mike and I attended in Geneva Switzerland in conjunction with a United Nations event on the Internet Society. At the conference, 5 executives from the Asian divisions of various technology companies--from Microsoft to Samsung--talked about the use of technology in Asia such as social networks via cell phones. The use of Internet and other technologies in Asia--from text messaging to streaming video to cell phones--were much more advanced than what we were using in the United States and were more widely adopted.

What was interesting was the views of some Americans at the conference toward this use of technology generally compared to the views of others from Europe and Asia. Americans were much more concerned about issues of security, privacy, and the like compared to others. What many other international participants saw as advances in technology and technology use, Americans saw as threats. In what had to be the most amusing exchange of the conference, one American got into an exchange about the threats to privacy with the 5 executives. It then came out that this person not only did not have a television, she did not have a cell phone or use the Internet regularly. (Why was she at a conference on the digital society?!)

The debate about the role of technology in elections is similarly divided. Americans are concerned about electronic voting. Europeans are conducting experiments with voting on cell phones and Estonia will have their second election with Internet voting in March. The Dutch, French, and Swiss already do regular trials of Internet voting. It will be interesting to see, in a few years, how American elections compare to those internationally. Given the vast differences we have in our views of technology, there might be quite a difference.

The National Institute of standards and Technology (NIST) plans to host the next Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) Meeting on March 22-23, 2007 at the NIST Gaithersburg campus. As more information becomes available, we will post it.

The Denver Post has several articles regarding the aftermath of the November election problems. First, the Post has an op-ed regarding the use of all vote-by-mail for the mayoral election next year. Two key parts of note:

The Denver Election Commission decided last week to conduct an all-mail ballot for the May 1 city elections. The commission is temporarily leaderless and short-handed and in no realistic position to organize a routine election.....As of now, the May ballot will feature a mayoral election and several City Council spots. It would be the first use of mailed ballots for a general municipal election in the city's history. Mail balloting was approved in 1999, and Denver has used it twice for school board races in 2001 and 2003.

If there was a high-profile mayoral race on the ballot, the mail election might give us pause. But at this point, it appears Mayor John Hickenlooper will be unchallenged. None of the other ballot races have really taken shape. Every election has its problems, whether in the voting procedures or tabulation, and we don't expect mail balloting to be flawless. (Even last month there were flaws with the absentee-ballot mailing, since the instructions mistakenly told voters to affix postage of 63 cents, not the 87 cents required by the U.S. Postal Service.) But the process has been used successfully, and the commission would be hard put to pull together another format so quickly. It will take some time and smarts to strengthen the city's election process. The commission is being sensible to go with what's simplest in May and what works.

Second, the City is holding a special election in January to reform elections (I know, the irony is huge here!) And the irony isn't lost on the Denver mayor, as the Post notes:

When the Denver City Council voted to hold an election Jan. 30 to possibly revamp the Election Commission, they rejected Mayor John Hickenlooper's plan to deal with the botched fall vote. The council voted Tuesday to hold a mail ballot, allowing voters to decide whether to retain the three-member panel or replace it with an elected clerk and recorder. The push for a change comes after computer problems resulted in some Denver voters standing in line for hours and others being disenfranchised in the November midterm elections.

Mayor John Hickenlooper supported a plan to appoint an interim clerk and recorder until May, when the issue could be voted on during the regularly scheduled municipal election. The Hickenlooper administration had suggested hiring term- limited Adams County Clerk Carol Snyder - who has successfully managed vote-center elections - until May.

"By undertaking a January special election the City exposes itself to further election execution risks and at least $700,000 in costs in exchange for four months of an elected Clerk's time which would be spent rushing to plan the next election," wrote the city's head operating officer, Chris Henderson, in a Tuesday memo to the City Council.

The Post editorial page thinks the special election is a dumb idea too, as they note in an op-ed.

Brushing aside voices of caution, the Denver City Council decided to plow forward and hold a special election on Jan. 30. In the next couple of weeks, Denver's 275,000 voters should receive in the mail a ballot question asking whether the city ought to change its charter and elect a clerk and recorder to replace the Denver Election Commission.

We surely hope the hurry-up election is not a disaster in the making, but the warning signs are there. The beleaguered Election Commission is still dissecting the multiple systemic failures that left voters standing in lines for hours in November. Key personnel have left or are suspended. And the commission also has a City Council election in May to prepare for.

"The commission is not ready," City Council President Michael Hancock said flatly. He was on the losing end of a 6-7 council vote Tuesday night that would have pushed back the timetable to May. Council members were persuaded that it's possible for the commission to conduct the election. Certainly, a mail ballot with one question is about as low-tech as it gets. If there are any problems with scanning the ballots, commission employees could manually count the votes.

But the push to the poll was unnecessary, risky and supplants other important tasks. We shudder to think about the damage that would be inflicted to the public trust if the commission flubs this election. And it will be costly as well, at an estimated $700,000. That's money that could have been used to deal with the agency's technological and software issues.

Some argue that putting the charter change question on the May ballot and electing a new clerk and recorder in November would then necessitate an equally costly runoff in December. Not necessarily. The winner could have been decided by a plurality on the November ballot.

It's an academic argument, now that the possibility is foreclosed. We will have an election in a month, like it or not.

The city has been negotiating with Adams County Clerk and Recorder Carol Snyder to run the commission on an interim basis. Snyder, who is term-limited, has significant experience and would be an asset. However, she said Wednesday that the council's decision made the job far less attractive. We hope the city offers the commission the technological and organizational help necessary to ensure this ill-timed vote is conducted efficiently and with integrity. Denver cannot afford to have another botched election besmirch its reputation.

Chris B. of EGovernment Consulting sends along this very helpful response.

First, he reminded me of Roy Saltman's book, The History and Politics of Voting Technology. My apologies to Roy for forgetting that source--the book is on my shelf back home, and I second Chris's recommendation.

Second, the Smithsonian does, in fact, have an online historical website, "Vote: The Machinery of Democracy," but Chris didn't know if the institution also has an actual exhibit. If you peruse the "Press" section of the site, you'll see references to specific machines that they collected. A great website, one that should be valuable for K-12 and college instructors, as well as other interested folk. It's going on my elections syllabus for next semester.

Finally, there is the new repository of all things: Ebay! An ebay search for "voting machines" turns up just what I wanted for my office: a 1940s vintage lever voting machines. It "only" weighs 650 pounds and can be picked up locally in Lebanon, PA. It just so happens that I am vacationing near there! I wonder whether this counts as an extra piece of luggage ...

You can also find a Votomatic III--just the gift for your favorite Berkeley professor--and some quite reasonably priced turnout posters and advertisements for voting machines from the early 20th Century. I owe Mike for some favors this year. Maybe one of these for his office?

As I sit here in a cabin in NE Pennsylvania, this story from the Scranton PA Times-Tribune caught my eye. It concerns Lackawana County's attempt to sell their old lever voting machines for scrap metal. The 800 pound "monstrosities" could net the county as much as $20,000 on the market.

The story made brought to mind the old lever machines I used to vote with in Cook County, IL. I describe these machines every year to a new crop of students--the dizzying array of hundreds of levers, the big black handle and the red curtain, and the physically and emotionally rewarding THUNK when you moved than handle and recorded your vote. I always felt so confident with these machines, since you could almost hear the wheels turning and the votes clicking away.

So who is saving a record of our election machinery? The Times-Tribune story notes that two or three of the machines are going to be preserved by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission. Does anyone know if the Smithsonian has purchased some lever machines? How about the Henry Ford Museum, that wondrous repository of our mechanical past? Has Mike Alvarez bought one for the lobby of his building? ;-)

In all seriousness, I assume that there are examples of the butterfly ballot, the mechanical lever machine, and the Votomatic somewhere, but I can't be sure. Perhaps some of our readers know, and if you do, why don't you email them to me at earlyvoting@gmail.com. I'll post a list later.

The Washington Post noted that the 13th Congressional District race is going to be taken up by the incoming House of Representatives.

A battle over who won the congressional election in Florida's 13th District is in the courts and could be debated in Congress itself. Christine Jennings, the Democrat, informed Congress last week that she was contesting the election, claiming that electronic voting machines malfunctioned and that state officials wrongly certified the election in favor of Republican Vern Buchanan. She also filed a lawsuit asking for access to the source code of the machines, manufactured by Election Systems & Software Inc.

Two weeks after the Nov. 7 election, the state certified Buchanan as the winner by 369 votes. Jennings wants a new vote. If she prevails, the Democratic gains in the midterm elections will increase to 31 House seats. On Election Day, 18,000 Sarasota County voters who went to the polls registered no choice in the congressional race. Jennings argued that that was evidence of a machine glitch, but the state indicated that it found no evidence of one. ES&S also rejected her argument, and Buchanan said she should concede. On Wednesday, Jennings officially contested the election with the House Administration Committee, which usually does not take any action until an election dispute moves through the courts. Buchanan has 30 days to respond. He is likely to be sworn in next week. Jennings's challenge, which has highlighted long-standing concerns this year about the reliability of electronic voting technology, faces long odds against success. According to a report by the Congressional Research Service, most of the 105 contested elections since 1933 have been decided against the challenger. ES&S has opposed sharing its programming code, saying that it is confidential and that its machines elsewhere worked just fine.