Details of the Sarasota audit to be held Tuesday and Friday

[eomer]

M E M O R A N D U M

DATE: November 21, 2006

TO: Interested Media

FROM: Jenny Nash

RE: AUDIT PLAN FOR SARASOTA COUNTY

As announced yesterday, the Florida Department of State will begin parallel
testing in Sarasota on Tuesday, November 28, 2006. This is the first testing
phase of an ongoing, comprehensive audit the Department is conducting of the
voting systems and election administrative procedures used in the U.S.
Congressional District 13 race in Sarasota County. The first parallel test will be
conducted on touchscreen voting machines which were prepared for Election
Day but not deployed.

The Department will continue to review all documents and data relevant to the
audit. On Friday, December 1st the second parallel test will take place. This
round of testing will be conducted on touchscreen machines utilized in Sarasota
County for precinct voting in the November General Election. Both parallel tests
will be videotaped. The Department has conferred with outside experts and
experts retained by both candidates in advance of the testing.

The public and representatives of the candidates are invited to observe. The
testing will take place from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at:

The Interim Government Operations Center
1001 Sarasota Center Boulevard
Sarasota, FL 34240


Jenny Nash
Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications
Florida Department of State
Sue M. Cobb, Secretary of State
850.245.6518
Make a Difference - Mentor!

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/auditPlanSarasota.pdf

Parallel Test
DOE Audit for
Sarasota County FL
2006 General Election

Purpose:

Sarasota County, Florida experienced an unexpected number of undervotes for the 13th
Congressional District race during the 2006 General Election. Although a number of factors may
have contributed to this undervote total, interested parties are concerned that the undervote for this
race suggests that the voting equipment may not have correctly captured the voters’ selection.

The Florida Division of Elections (DOE) has developed an extensive audit plan to ascertain if a
process, definition, machine, or tabulation anomaly contributed to this contest’s undervote total. As
part of DOE’s extensive audit, the Bureau of Voting Systems Certification (BVSC) will utilize a
test activity that has become known as a “parallel test”. Typically, a parallel test involves a random
selection of voting devices from the population of voting devices destined for deployment on
election day. This test sample would be segregated from the actual deployed devices, but otherwise
would undergo the same election day activities in “parallel” with the deployed voting devices,
except the voters would consist of a test team and the ballots cast would be defined by a
predetermined test script. The intent of this parallel activity is to ascertain the accuracy and
reliability of the deployed voting devices with consideration given to ballot style, layout, coding,
demographics, and operation.

Scope:

The application of the parallel test technique for this audit will deviate from the classical parallel
test in that the test script will be based on the audit data extracted from a sample of iVotronic
touchscreen devices. In addition, the test script will also take into consideration the voting
experience of several voters that were described in various news articles. The audit data for each
iVotronic touchscreen consists of two records: the event log and the ballot images. The event log
contains the timing element for when each ballot was cast. The ballot image file contains the voter
selections as they appeared on the review screen at the time the voter pressed the “VOTE” button.
However, the arrangement of the ballot images is random. Therefore, these ballot images cannot be
associated with the time that the ballot was cast.

BVCS requested each candidate to provide a list of two to four precincts that they believed warrant
close examination. From this list of precincts, BVSC staff identified four iVotronic touchscreens
(two from Jennings’ list and two from Buchanan’s list) that experienced the highest undervote
within their respective precinct. This selection should enhance the probability of revealing the
undervote anomaly should it exist. BVSC personnel then developed a test script from the audit data
extracted from each of these machines. The four iVotronic touchscreens and their precinct are:

iVotronic SN #       Precinct         Precinct selected by:
V0105192             105              Jennings’ organization
V0106437             118              Jennings’ organization
V0117973              76*             Buchanan’s organization
V0106866             113*             Buchanan’s organization

* Note: The Buchanan organization recommended a random selection. BVSC performed this
random selection utilizing MS Excel. The Jennings’ organization also identified precincts
118 and 31 in their initial selection and later added precincts 44 and 74.

-snip-

More...

[EFerrari]

1. Thank you, eomer. K&R

:kick:

[RagingInMiami]

2. If it's run by the Florida Department of State

It might as well be run the Republican National Committee

[nicknameless]

3. .

K&R

[philb]

4. Its something but not much. Here are some things that should have been done.

There were 2 common types of problems described by voters and poll watchers.

1. disappearing votes

2. apparent biased ballot design on some machines (not all)

1. To deal with the first problem, enough machines need to be looked at regarding setup and programming to determine why the votes were disappearing. Likely causes based on other races that have had similar problem described by voters include:
programmed with "default to blank" that can be hard to override
programmed to switch to blank for specific candidate on time delay, while voter is going on to another race
deliberately miscalibrated for one candidate, so hard for voters to correctly choose that candidate
(since the votes were only disappearing for Jennings in this race and for certain specific candidates in other races in 2004 and 2006, its clear that the problem was not caused by random miscalibration)

Experts should be able to determine which of these types of problems caused the problems observed, if the machines have been maintained in the same state as when the election ended; but based on the vote history, some may have been "repaired or "recalibrated" during the election. (was there a record maintained of which machines were worked on during election process?)

2. Voters described at least 3 clearly biased ballot designs:
(a) "Butterfly type design" with the Congress race header and Buchanan on page 1 and Jennings alone at top of page 2 with no race context.
(b) 2 races on one page with the top race (Governor or U.S. Senate) highlighted but Jennings race below not highlighted so the Cong. candidates look like candidates at the bottom of the other race, with a well known candidate that be chosen at the top
(c) Jennings/Buchanan race not on any page, but shows up on review screen as blank votes
(d) design with 2 races on one page, Jennings race below another, but both races highlighted.
(e) someone has suggested there were 9 separate ballot designs used in Sarasota

To determine the extent to which any of the biased designs described by voters(a-c) (or (d) as per Dartmouth study author)
might have caused the undervotes, all of the TS machines would need to be looked at to determine and compile
how many of the screens had ballot design (a,b,c,d,e,f,...) Only by looking at all machines layout could this be determined, and it would be a simple and relatively quick process, nothing complicated).
Looking at a few machines does nothing to address the ballot design bias issue, only by looking at all can it be resolved.
To do anything is leaves the issue unresolved, perhaps intentionally.