The case of the missing California Election Reports [View All]

[BevHarris]

This is important. This is not merely a procedural technicality.

One of the most important safeguards for a certain kind of election tampering is hitting the "print" button to get the results from each machine, before they are consolidated elsewhere. In California, this printout must be posted on the door when the polls close. At least, that's what I was told by California election officials, like Julie Rodewald of SLO County, in response to my concerns about tampering with GEMS.

So far, I can't find anyone who found this required printout on the door. Let's look at the implications:

1) The electronic ballot boxes, for both touch screens and optical scan machines, are memory cards. A memory card is the size of a credit card. You can palm it into your sleeve or carry around a stack of replacement "ballot boxes" in your pocket. If you do not run the report before taking the original memory card out of the optical scan or touch screen, you can substitute a different one.

2) Each of the major vendors has a central tabulator. With Diebold, it is called GEMS. They all have it. If you tamper with the tally at the central count, it will show up when you compare it with the printout at the polling place (as long as someone does the comparison). If you don't do that printout, it's much more feasible to tamper with GEMS or the central count without getting caught.

3) Now a word about the timing of running the report: If it is run later, it might be run on substitute or unauthorized memory cards (electronic ballot boxes).

4) And a word about waiting until the next day to post that printout: This blows away the whole reason you do it. If you can get the printout after central tabulation is done, what you are doing is taking the printout AFTER all the shenanigans have a chance to take place.

5) What if they ran the printout on time, but just didn't post it until later? In that case, you have to have a chain of custody over the printout. What's to prevent them from running it, and someone else substituting it? A chain of custody, perhaps, but who is monitoring this?

In short, failure to print the report immediately opens up all kinds of windows for election-tampering, by removing one of the key pieces of auditing evidence.

UPDATE:

I've been on the phone with the legal dept. of the California Elections Division.

So I went looking for the law. Doesn't exist, it appears. If that's the case, the safeguard does not exist either, and the security of the cards and GEMS becomes critical.

I couldn't find any such thing in the California statutes, so I called the Elections Division, and here is their response:

1) This is not in the statutes, but it is in the required procedures set out by the Secretary of State office. But it isn't exactly what I was told. The optical scans may not print a report (though they are certainly capable of it.) He said they don't tabulate until the ballots are run through, but here's the problem with that: I vote on an optical scan. Part of the voting process is: You put your ballot directly through the machine. So yes, it can tabulate and print a report. It's just that they apparently don't use this important safeguard feature.

2) Next, touch screens. He said the Sequoia touch screens do not have a printer in them. (A printer can be attached to the serial port, but okay, they can't print.) The Diebold machines have an internal printer, and they do print a "summary report" but they do not post it; instead they submit it with the memory card.

I asked him about the chain of custody of the memory cards and their accompanying report. A memory card and a piece of paper are much easier to replace than a ballot box and all its ballots. He said he has no idea about the chain of custody procedures.

3) We then discussed the memos. He said that the state of California has looked into them (they were concerned about the memo that says not to have Wyle look at the Windows CE system. He said that is not as it seems. I asked him why, and he explained that Wyle only tests the hardware. I said, the issue is, was this tested by either Wyle or Ciber (it wasn't) but actually, the CE is on the touch screen, and is considered firmware, and it is indeed Wyle that is supposed to test it. Then I asked him what he thought about the memos that refer to intercepting and transmitting votes by cell phone, in Marin and Tulare counties.

That stopped him in his tracks. "That's not certified," he said. Nope. "They haven't done that," he said. Yup, they have. I told him where to find it in the memos. He got very quiet.

I then asked him who compares the summary report from the touch screens with the GEMS report. He said he has no idea.

Do you get the impression that all these audit controls aren't worth a cup of warm spit?

Bev Harris