Miami Herald: Losing Sarasota Democrat denied voting machine access

[eomer]

TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING

Losing Sarasota Democrat denied voting machine access

Democrat Christine Jennings won't be allowed to conduct independent tests of voting machines as part of her contesting of results in the 13th Congressional District race.

BY MARC CAPUTO
[e-mail]

A judge ruled Tuesday that Democrat Christine Jennings' legal team won't have access yet to the secret computer ''source codes'' to test the accuracy of the voting machines at the center of Florida's latest elections controversy.

In what could be a national test case for the accuracy of touch-screen voting machines, Leon County Circuit Judge William J. Gary said he wanted to hear from the machines' manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, in the coming days before deciding whether to grant access to the computer codes, which are shielded from public view.

ES&S and the secretary of state's office say the codes are trade secrets.

-snip-

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16071502.htm

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Voting should be TRANSPARENT!!

[philb]

3. Same ballot design flaws/bias found in Broward & Dade that affected Sarasota Dist 13 race

(Same ballot design flaws/bias found in Broward & Dade that plagued Sarasota (6 counties found with high UVs in A. Gen. race- 5 were ES&S touchscreen counties, like Sarasota) (butterfly ballot design used again in 2006 in close races in Florida like in 2000 when it swung the Bush/Gore race)

Miami Herald ELECTIONS 2006
Ballot design an issue in Broward and Dade, tooA close look at election numbers in Broward and Miami-Dade counties shows that confusing ballot design might have caused voters to overlook two Cabinet races.

BY TRENTON DANIEL AND BREANNE GILPATRICK
[e-mail]
Document | Sample ballot

The same electronic ballot design flaw implicated in more than 18,300 Sarasota nonvotes might have caused problems for South Florida voters in two well-publicized Cabinet races.

Both Broward and Miami-Dade counties recorded more than 34,000 nonvotes in their elections for attorney general and chief financial officer, according to election results from each county's Supervisor of Elections office.

The problem was worse in precincts with many older voters.

In both counties, the two Cabinet races appeared at the bottom of a voting screen with the higher-profile race for governor and lieutenant governor -- a contest in which seven sets of candidates nearly filled the screen. All races on the page were listed under a general heading.

One explanation is that many voters assumed the governor's race was the only one on the page, touched the ''next'' button and moved on through the ballot without noticing the two races.

In Sarasota, where the 13th Congressional District race also occupied the same page as the governor's race, experts have blamed the design problem for 18,382 nonvotes in one of the nation's most contested congressional races.

Voting machine malfunctions could have contributed to some of the nonvotes, said Stephen Ansolabehere, a member of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project. Voters also may have decided to skip the race intentionally.

But the high number of nonvotes potentially related to the design -- throughout Florida -- signals a need to re-evaluate some of the state's electronic voting technology, Ansolabehere said.

''In general it's a good rule of thumb to have one office per screen,'' said Ansolabehere, who is also a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ``It really minimizes confusion as to what you're doing.''

The canvassing board certified election results Friday in Broward and Miami-Dade, and acknowledged the significant number of nonvotes in the two races.

''I think looking at that page you may not see those two races,'' Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said.

Sarasota, Broward and Miami-Dade counties all use the same touch-screen iVotronic machines, which are produced by Election Systems & Software.

Each county designs its own ballots.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/16042973.htm

[texpatriot2004]

6. If it's not transparent and it's not auditable then it's NOT a

Democratic election.

[Aviation Pro]

2. Second order of business for the House....

...a bill that orders the transferring of voting code to the public domain if developed by the private sector. If the vendor refuses to compy, an immediate arrest and prosecution of the officers of the corporation and an immediate cessation of the use of the voting machines in any election.

[elehhhhna]

8. npe. software records the votes in secret and 92% of Americans

have a strong aversion to this.

Google Zogby's recent poll.

Too much room for huiman error and outside hacking even if they DO prefect the machines (after how many election cycles...?)

Evoting is this century's "New Coke".

A very bad, poorly executed and expensive mistake.

[w4rma]

11. Just skip that part all together and pass a law forcing all ballots to be voter verified paper.

NOT a paper *trail*. NOT paper *records*. Paper *ballots*. *BALLOTS* verified by the voters before casting them. If a locality wants to use money on something that prints out ballots (for the handicapped, for instance) that is fine. As long as that paper ballot is verified by the voter before putting it into the box (separately from the machine that printed it) where it will be stored and counted separately from the machine that printed it.

Then voting machine companies will not be able to pull this proprietary BS since we won't need to see the code. It won't matter what the code is if the actual ballots are paper, personally verified by each voter before casting them, stored separately and aren't counted inside the voting machines.

Don't even try to muck around with the code itself. The law needs to be written in a way that stupid judges and politicians don't ever ever ever need an expert to explain to them how to program.

Don't muck around with technical terms like "open source" or "Java" or anything else that you need to have a degree in computer engineering to understand. And don't muck around with a law that you know will need additional laws down the road to make it work.

[acmejack]

4. You lose!

Cause we say so. Trust us...

[spillthebeans]

5. I wonder how complex this trade secrets are

It's a simple addition like i=i+1; or i++;

But if you want to manipulate votes, you need a more interesting program.
(mhm I can't explain why scientific polls are way off)

[robinlynne]

13. great point. A 5.00 calculator could do it.

[progressoid]

7. Well, when he hears from ES&S, all of this will get cleared up

:sarcasm:

[babylonsister]

9. Why is this judge thwarting fair elections? nt

[buddysmellgood]

10. Why does a trade secret trump democracy and open government?

I thought the law was based on "reasonableness"

[robinlynne]

12. I am so glad Conyers is going to chair the judiciary committee. It's about time.