County’s electronic voting system is in jeopardy

There is an article today noting that

California’s secretary of state is considering decertifying an “essential” new part of Los Angeles County’s voting system because a vendor missed a deadline to provide key information about it Decertification would be a blow to the Golden State’s largest county, leaving it struggling to comply with federal regulations for the state’s first February presidential primary. Bowen spokeswoman Nicole Winger said decertification “is in the range of options,” but she also said Bowen is committed to ensuring Los Angeles can conduct a proper election next year. “We will work with Los Angeles to make sure they have a system that can be used in elections,” Winger said.

But county Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack said the InkaVote Plus system, made by Omaha-based Election Systems & Software Inc., is essential to the county’s ability to conduct an election that meets federal requirements. The system was purchased for $25 million and installed last year, when it underwent a certification review by then-Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

“I just can’t imagine that there would be a Draconian penalty for not being reviewed this year, when it was thoroughly assessed and reviewed and certified last year,” McCormack said. InkaVote Plus, McCormack said, is needed to satisfy new federal requirements to reduce “overvotes” and “undervotes,” and to assist the disabled.

I received a call for papers from the Georgetown Public Policy Review recently; they are looking for submissions for a volume on “Democracy in Practice: Campaigns, Elections, and Voters. Here is the call for papers.

Paul beat me to posting a link to Tony Quinn’s op-ed in yesterday’s LA Times. The thing that really struck me about Quinn’s argument was not only (as Paul pointed out) how early voting results (as estimated by campaign polls) could be used strategically by candidates to affect their standing in other states (presumably those having primaries before California), but also how the use of early absentee voting in places like California could strengthen the hand of front-runners in the presidential sweepstakes:

It would not be a big step for the pollster of a presidential campaign to poll a random sample of permanent absentee voters, whose names can be obtained from mail-list vendors, on how they voted and, if the results are favorable, make them public. Campaigns make a big deal about leading in preelection polls, mainly to raise money. What’s more, if a candidate could show he or she was leading in votes already cast, the effect on other voters could be significant.

Both parties’ front-runners, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Republican Rudolph Giuliani, New York’s former mayor, could lose in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina before what’s shaping up as a national primary Feb. 5, with as many as 20 states voting that day. But Clinton and Giuliani will have the money and staff to campaign aggressively in California for its 440 Democratic and 173 Republican convention delegates, respectively, and to contact early absentee voters and urge them to return their ballots. They also could be quick to find out how those absentees voted. And you can be sure that if absentee voters are going for Clinton or Giuliani, their campaigns won’t hide this from the public.

That could set up an unexpected dynamic: California absentee results influencing how voters act in other states. For instance, if 370,000 Californians cast early votes for Clinton and Giuliani, and caucus-goers in Iowa and primary voters in New Hampshire learn this, they could be influenced by the results when they vote.

Early absentee voting is likely to strengthen the front-runners, making success by an insurgent or second-tier candidate that much harder. Only well-financed candidates can effectively compete in such large states as California. They will be able to appeal to absentee voters, just as Schwarzenegger did, and thus to bank early votes and publicize them.

There is a nice op-ed in today’s LA Times by Tony Quinn concerning permanent absentee voters and the 2008 California presidential primary. As we’ve mentioned in this space before, it’s not just that millions of California voters will receive their ballots in early January–the campaigns, and the pollsters–will know this. Quinn provides a blueprint for conducting an “early voting” poll in CA and potentially influencing the balloting in other states.

The OSCE/ODIHR released their report on the recent Estonian parliamentary elections, including their evaluation of the Estonian Internet voting system, and how it was integrated into the rest of the Estonian election administration process. The report is available from this link. I’ve not had a chance to read their report thoroughly yet, but hopefully will get a chance soon to write my reflections on their mission and evaluation methodology. The evaluation methodology here will be of particular interest, as the Internet voting mode posed some interest new dilemmas for the international election monitoring team: observing an Internet election is not the same as observing traditional balloting, and it will be interesting to see what methods the OSCE/ODIHR team used to evaluate the Estonian evoting process and technology