Snohomish County (WA) update

[bailey77]

link: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/1954.html?1109033474

Black Box Voting will pick up the last of 12 boxes of public records from Snohomish County, Washington this week. The records consist of internal audit logs and "trouble reports" from Snohomish County touch-screen voters.

An e-mail obtained in the request, written from Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger to San Bernardino (CA) County Registrar Scott Konopasek indicated that Snohomish County had experienced quite a few "calibration problems" where the touch-screen put votes onscreen that differed from the voter's choice.

Black Box Voting has obtained about eight voter's reports of touch-screens marking votes for the wrong candidate.

- In one report, the voter said that votes were on the screen for Bush before he even had a chance to touch the screen.

- Other reports indicated that voters had to "correct" the votes repeatedly.

- In one case, the voter was instructed to press a spot on the screen above the box for the candidate she wanted.

- Another voter was told that the problem might be corrected if she pressed "very lightly only."

Yet, these voter reports are clearly only the tip of the iceberg. Bev Harris examined the internal touch-screen logs from approximately 950 Snohomish County touch-screens. Voting machine internal logs report that "calibrations" were performed on the machines 100 times while the election was in progress.

Presumably only technicians can recalibrate the screen, and one would expect that the screen would not be recalibrated unless it was performing incorrectly. In Snohomish County, the actual number of calibrations was apparently more than ten times the number of voter reports.

Internal logs from the touch-screens show a large number of other anomalies, clustering especially on the Tulalip Indian Reservation and the Cascade Elementary School polling places, as well as some other locations. Black Box Voting is completing an audit of these "mystery anomalies" and will then seek permission to conduct tests to see if they can be replicated, in order to evaluate what was going on with the voter and votes while the internal workings of the machine appeared to be malfunctioning.

Though Snohomish County has been exceptionally cooperative with the Nov. 2 records request, it appears that a small number of records are also missing from the documents produced. In one case, there is a notation that a poll tape is being "held." (No further information was offered as to why the tape was not forthcoming.)

Black Box Voting is taking the Snohomish County documents to Jeremiah Akin in Riverside County, California for his examination, because Riverside has been obstructive with its own records, and the Snohomish records provide a fairly complete set. Akin has developed expertise in examining Sequoia systems, and has expressed interest in seeing a set of records from a cooperative Sequoia touch-screen county.

Additional work has been done on Snohomish County by VotersUnite.org (http://www.votersunite.org).

An attorney, Paul Lehto, is currently taking on the role of a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Snohomish County touch-screens, on the grounds that the touch-screens force votes to be counted in secret, a violation of the law.

The records from Snohomish County will be used in Riverside, California to help teach local citizens techniques for auditing elections on Sequoia touch-screens, and the techniques learned from Snohomish County will also be applied to Palm Beach County, Florida.

[uppityperson]

1. Thanks for the post, very interesting. nt

[Amaryllis]

2. Same old same old. How many times do we hear this story? Added

security measures for faultly voting systems is NOT going to fix the problems. Paper ballots. No electronic tabulators counting them. NO more outsourcing of our elections!

[bailey77]

6. What is not the same old same old is this

The identification of hard evidence in the internal audit logs of the touch-screens that shows 100 calibrations performed on election day, and allows a comparison of the number of voter reports vs. the number of actual problems.

One can deduce from this data that there were hundreds of voters who touched the screen but got the wrong candidate or ballot question.

Privatization of elections is a flawed concept.
Machines with no voter verified ballot are a flawed concept.

However, legislation won't fix the system either.

Research by Black Box Voting investigators Bev Harris and Kathleen Wynne shows clearly that election officials don't even follow the laws that are already on the books.

There are strategies that will work to correct systemic problems, but before rushing off to feel-good legislation, it is a good idea to identify the root causes of our current broken election system.

There are underlying issues that need to be addressed before any legislation will bring about meaningful election reform. None of the underlying issues have been addressed in any current election reform bill.

[Wilms]

7. Please detail underlying issues have are not addressed in the new bills

[Amaryllis]

8. Yes, please detail what you would see as fixing the problems. So far I

don't trust ANY of the legislation to correct the problems. As long as we have touch screen machines and electronic tabulators they will be subject to tampering no matter how much legislation we have. But I am not sure what would fix the problems except paper ballots hand counted, but people keep saying we can't have hand counting with the complex ballots we have with fifty items per ballot.

[bailey77]

9. Underlying problems not fixed in new bills

1. Quality control
2. Privatization of critical election functions
3. Corruption of local county commissioners, supervisors

- The first can be addressed without reinventing the wheel.
- The second should be addressed but won't be.
- The third can only be addressed by effective local citizen watchdogs

Without quality control, which includes monitoring, measurement and consequences, election officials will not follow guidelines consistently.

Without public ownership of critical election functions, a small, difficult to supervise group of profiteers can exert undue control over elections.

Without more effective citizen watchdogs, and by that I mean people willing to accept the fact that the word "bribe" is in the dictionary because people do it, we cannot negotiate our way into consistently fair elections.

In Riverside County over $1 billion flows through the coffers, and it is the County Supervisor/Commissioners who control that flow and are in position to receive the favors that surround assignment of such monies. If your county commissioners are in the pocket of developers, no law, regulation, or persuasion will cause meaningful reform, as there will always be loopholes found by the crooked.

Watch one of the Black Box Voting "Activating the Eagles" presentations coming up in Riverside, San Diego, and Los Angeles this weekend. (dates, times and places at http://www.blackboxvoting.org web site)

The system is broken and the rush to legislation will feel good, but failsif we fail to solve the core problems of quality, privatization and corruption proposed legislation will turn to sausage, and any bill that actually is passed will be met with dodges and workarounds.

[berniew1]

3. Each of Broward, Dade, & Palm Beach (Fl) had lots more TS fraud than this

documented by the EIRS reports
http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

So why hasn't BBV or someone done something similar to investigate the much more widespread fraud in Florida?????

[bailey77]

4. You are right about that

Snohomish County was the best Sequoia touch-screen county, and promptly provided its records even though they were very busy with a hand recount.

Palm Beach County had to be sued for its records.

Thursday, February 17, 2005...A leading national critic of electronic voting plunked down a $4,500 advance payment at the Palm Beach County elections office Wednesday for internal logs from voting and tabulating machines used last fall. The check was handed to new Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson by Bev Harris of Renton, Wash., the founder of the group Black Box Voting. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x331230

Black Box Voting reports that its two investigators, Harris and Wynne, met privately with Anderson to discuss next steps. They expect to get the records and will post them on the Internet so that everyone can join in the audit.

Broward County did not assign the BBV records request to anyone to fulfill, despite many follow up calls, until two weeks ago. On Thursday Feb. 17, Black Box Voting paid Broward County a $1,200 deposit for the records, which are now in progress.

Miami-Dade County has also evaded the records request. BBV met with members of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition on Thursday Feb. 17 to discuss strategies and get advice on dealing with local officials. In Dade, they kept passing the buck on the records request. A point person was identified and the records will be obtained.

Florida counties targeted for unusually detailed audits by BBV are:
- Duval
- Volusia
- Palm Beach
- Broward
- Dade
- Orange
- Pinellas
- Hillsborough

The above counties represent the largest population bases in Florida, and among them are some of the most corrupt systems in the nation.

As the records come in, they will be put online in the BBV Documents Archive for public review.

It should be noted that Florida Supervisors of Elections had a meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 15 to go over public records requirements. This was apparently an informative meeting, since several election officials became more cooperative shortly afterward.

[Land Shark]

5. correct link for Snohomish County evidence report is

www.votersunite.org/info/SnohomishElectionFraudInvestigation.pdf

and while votersunite.org was helpful in putting out the report (and does much other valuable work nationwide), the study on Snohomish County is authored solely by Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman, and Paul R. Lehto, JD. and does not reflect the opinions necessarily of votersunite.