BBV: Just how desperate IS Florida?

See also, recent column at http://www.blackboxvoting.org regarding Diebold's plan to eliminate the poll book, thus getting rid of the human-verified physical record that proves how many people voted, currently required by law to be compared with the number of votes counted by the machines. In Arkansas, May 18 primary, more votes showed up on machines than there were voters in one county. How nice to remove the paper record of the number of voters who sign in...and Diebold's new system was just certified in Florida.

From Miami Herald commentary:
Absentee ballot law is a joke that isn't funny

``Every vote should count.'' -- Jeb Bush, upon signing into law a measure doing away with witness signatures for absentee ballots

Our governor -- what a kidder! If we counted every vote in Florida, Jeb's brother would be spending all of his time -- and not just some of his time -- falling off his bicycle on his Texas ranch.

The only thing the bill Jeb signed Tuesday guarantees, is that Florida's elections will continue to be a joke. By taking away the witness requirement, the governor and the Legislature not only made it easier for corruption to take place -- which in itself is a fairly amazing feat -- but they have also made it more difficult to catch.

<snip>

CAUSE FOR SHAME

The election supervisors in this state should be ashamed of themselves. It is becoming increasingly clear they are not interested in operating fair elections as much as they are interested in running quick and easy elections.

...The problem with doing away with the witness signature should be obvious to anyone who has lived in Miami. Absentee ballot fraud has long been a problem in South Florida, with candidates often buying ballots, or worse, stealing them from unsuspecting people in nursing homes and condominiums. A city of Miami election in 1997 was overturned after such fraud.

''If you have the same witness sign 100 or 200 ballots, it at least makes you suspicious that there might have been coercion or fraud and it gives you a place to start investigating,'' says Rodriguez-Taseff. (...Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, an attorney with the Election Reform Coalition) ``Now without the witness signatures, there is no paper trail to follow.''

SUSPICIOUS INTENT

She believes that some of the politicians who voted to do away with the witness requirement, did so with the worst of intentions.

''The only logical reason to get rid of the one and only safeguard for absentee ballots is that there are politicians in this state who are interested in manipulating elections,'' she charges. ``Now some people are saying it is a Republican plot to try and steal the presidential election.

..."Rodriguez-Taseff's assessment may be scary, but I'm afraid she's right. There are politicians who every election live and die by absentee ballots. Some work the system honestly, others don't. In the past, when absentee ballot fraud has been caught, it was the witnesses who often went to jail, who in turn could point a finger at the politician. Now that link is gone.

Crooked politicians and lazy election supervisors can breathe a little easier today.

==================

And now, for the removal of more paper audit trails: Thanks to RedEagle for this catch

http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/florida_ltr.htm

U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division

Paul W. Craft
Division of Elections

Dear Mr. Craft:

This is in response to your recent inquiry to the Civil Rights Division concerning the ongoing design of Florida's Central Voter Registration System for compliance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, 42 U.S.C. §§ 15301-15545 ("HAVA"). Your two questions relate to whether a "paperless" voter registration system would be consistent with the requirements of federal law.

...It is our understanding the State envisions a statewide voter registration system completely integrated with the State's driver's license system, where data validation would occur during voter contact with an office of the State Motor Vehicles Department. Approximately 63% of the State's voter registration applications come through such offices. The State's current driver's license system is a paperless design, with photographs, information and signatures captured digitally so that an applicant does not have to complete a paper application form. To fully integrate the voter registration system with this system, paperless voter registration applications would be used with signature images captured on a digital signature pad. This paperless system would be used in both driver's license offices and other NVRA-covered voter registration offices. It is our further understanding that no paper of any kind would be generated during this process.

You have posed two questions. First, for applications taken in driver's license offices, or in other voter registration offices covered by the NVRA, is there any federal law prohibition on acceptance of paperless voter registration applications with the use of a digital signature pad? Second, for voter registration applications received by mail, does federal law prohibit scanning such documents upon receipt, making the digital image the official record and destroying the original paper form?

As to your first question, we are aware of no federal law requirement that voter registration applications must be on paper or that paper copies of electronic voter registration applications be generated or maintained. Thus, it would appear that implementing a paperless electronic voter registration system would be consistent with federal law. However, in deciding whether to deploy such a paperless system for voter registration, we have been advised by the Public Integrity Section of our Criminal Division that you may wish to take into consideration that current forensic methods for confirming the bona fides, or lack thereof, of handwriting in a form that is admissible as evidence may require that the control signature be manually subscribed. Deploying an entirely paperless system may jeopardize the ability to perform hand writing analyses on challenged signatures in a manner that can be used in court. You may want to review this issue with Florida law enforcement officials to confirm the particular requirements under Florida law.

The answer to your second question is more complicated. The federal law on retention and preservation of election records in federal elections, 42 U.S.C. §1974, requires election officials to "retain and preserve, for a period of twenty-two months from the date of , all records and papers" related to voter registration in that election. Thus, to the extent that any paper is generated during the state voter registration process, that paper must be preserved for the prescribed period. This would appear to apply to any paper applications received by mail, as well as to any paper applications received by non-driver's license NVRA offices, if those offices are not operating under a paperless registration application system. While the State would be required to preserve these paper (as well as electronic) records, we are aware of no federal law which would prohibit the State at the same time from scanning these papers and making the digital images the State's official records.

We hope that the above responds to your inquiries and is of assistance in your efforts. Please feel free to contact us if you would like to discuss this matter further.

Sincerely,

Hans A. von Spakovsky
Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General

============

In a nutshell: Paperless voter registration. Soon-to-be paperless poll books. Paperless votes. Removal of the witness requirement on absentee ballots.

And Wexler's lawsuit was dismissed in federal court, though it is still alive in state court and has generated some good discovery documents which might be used in future lawsuits.

============

Bev Harris

And we don't have any federal honesty agency to help out. That State and this country is doomed. I hope Janet Reno and some of the good Democratic leaders are going to do something. Is there where they teach people to vote with an absentee ballot or what?

Down with Jeb. They are floating in a sea of corruption.

I know of no state that requires a witness for an absentee ballot other than FL before this law was changed.

And if someone is witnessing 100 absentee ballots, they must be forging the voters' signatures. Why can't they just forge the witness signatures too if they didn't want to be caught.

I really must be missing something, because to me it sounds absurd to require a witness signature for an absentee ballot and then to throw out otherwise legitimate absentee ballots just because one person witnessed six (which was the rule one supervisor was using).

...There were restrictions on who could deliver the ballot to the election office and also a requirement that a voter registration number appear on the ballot. Improperly executed and delivered ballots were void ab initio and presumptively fraudulent. The Leon County circuit judges ignored these provisions in Dec. 2000 and said that the Gore camp would have to prove fraud. These provisions were adopted so you wouldn't have to approve fraud, improperly executed and delivered absentee ballots were void (presumptively fraudulent).

This legislation originated to protect the electoral process from the massive absentee ballot fraud that occurred in Dade in 1997. It has now been thrown out the window. This along with the 50,000 disenfranchised "felons" puts Florida back exactly where it was in summer 2000, except worse.

probably makes it even more likely that legitimate votes won't be counted.

If they are getting rid of reasonable protections along with unreasonable ones, then there should be outrage.

However, I don't think it's helpful for Democrats to be arguingt that absentee ballots should all be witnessed.

and after a particularly nasty bout of if, where it threw an election to the wrong candidate, they strengthened controls.

Actually, the biggest biggest story is this:

from Miami Herald, May 26, 2004

"TALLAHASSEE - With less than six months to go before the presidential election, thousands of Florida voters who may have been improperly removed from the voter rolls in 2000 have yet to have their eligibility restored. Records obtained by The Herald show that just 33 of 67 counties have responded to a request by state election officials to check whether or not nearly 20,000 voters should be reinstated as required under a legal settlement reached between the state, the NAACP and other groups nearly two years ago.

"Some of the counties that have failed to respond to the state include many of Florida's largest, including Broward, Miami-Dade, Orange and Palm Beach. Those counties that have responded told the state that they have restored 679 voters to the rolls so far -- more than enough to have tipped the balance of the 2000 election had they voted for Al Gore. President Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.

"The fact that many counties have yet to add voters back to the rolls comes at the same time that election supervisors across Florida are being asked to look at purging more than 47,000 voters that the state has identified as possible felons who are ineligible to vote under state law.

NO DEADLINE

But state election officials say there is no deadline for when counties must reinstate voters who may have been wrongly removed four years ago.</b> That upsets some of the groups that sued the state over its 1999 and 2000 purge lists.

''It's scandalous that the state has not simply undone the error that was done in 2000,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. ``It calls into question this and so many other issues and makes you wonder, how much has really changed four years after the 2000 election?''

But state officials say the ultimate decisions whether to restore or remove a voter are left to each county elections supervisor.

''The supervisors of elections have duties under the law to do list maintenance -- which includes the removal of felons, duplicates and those who have died -- from voter rolls,'' said Marielba Torres, assistant general counsel for the state elections division. ``We provide a tool. They need to verify it from the sources they have. They have the legal duty to do it.''

...the onese that don't.

I think dropping the witness requirement is a red herring -- which is probably the reason the media chose to focus on it.

This reminds me of how FL always takes a problem they create and turn it into an opportunity to create a bigger problem.

Punch cards suck? Let's get electronic voting!

Absentee ballot fraud? Let's throw out ballots when the same person witnesses more than six of them! (which probably hurts GOTV efforts by democrats the most).

We're about to be criticized for or electronic voting systmes? Let's get rid of the witness requirement and hope that's enough smoke to hid the fact that we're all crooks!

audit controls one after the next.

paper voter registration records - dropped
poll book sign in -- not dropped, but have approved a system designed to do that
voter verified paper ballots - dropped
absentee witness - dropped
verification that felon purges are accurate - slowed and delayed
reinstatement of wrongfully purged voters - slowed and delayed
evidence that machines were diddling with their audit data - hid it from the public

Florida is a state that has a very strong history of election fraud. I think it actually has now managed to top Louisiana in that department. The ultimate disenfranchisement of all voters is having inadequate auditing measures combined with a demonstrated habit of stealing elections.

I'd go for removing that audit verification method if they beefed up others -- like improving the signature verification procedures, and using Business Reply Mail for the return ballots, and comparing number of ballots received by the post office with the number counted.

But what we are seeing in Florida is subtraction of protections with no corresponding improvements in auditing.

Bev

Attention should be drawn to all the other examples, and not to the witness requirement, which no other state I know about uses.

(And I think the witness requirement hurts Dems much more than Republicans, since Dems GOTV efforts are in scenarios where it's way more likely that you'd get a lot of people in one place where one person would witness all their votes.)

really is helping 100 people in a nursing home vote.

However, it absolutely needs to be checked out - ALWAYS!

Anyone who is working hard to do things honestly has absolutely no problem with someone overseeing or checking things out afterwords. First of all, they have nothing to hid. Second, if there is anything that is not squeaky clean, they would want to know about it and correct it so that it doesn't happen again.

But, I know from experience in business, that there are people who spend a great deal of time manipulating systems and procedures for personal gain and when management doesn't followup on whistle-blowing, there's a lot of theft that happens.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x588077

(and I think Jeb anounced the otherwise sensible witness rule change to cover up this story)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/8779323.htm">

Secretary of state tries to calm voters

"Hood, addressing the League of Women Voters of Miami-Dade County, said she has ''great confidence'' that the state's 67 elections supervisors are ready for the November election -- and the scrutiny that will accompany it.

'''I want the attention to be on Florida, but I always want it to be in a positive way,'' she said.

"But Hood acknowledged her office is investigating a voting machine glitch in Miami-Dade County, which she said was not properly reported to the state. A spokesman for Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan noted it was the county that detected the problem and said that Kaplan had sought to balance the need to report potential problems against unnecessarily alarming the public.

"The glitch involves the auditing system of the iVotronic touch-screen machines Miami-Dade and Broward installed after the mishaps that plagued the 2000 presidential election. County officials have said the glitch does not affect voting -- only the audits performed days after the election itself. The problem, according to Kaplan, is in the flashcard that downloads the voting information.

"When the votes are downloaded, some machines scramble the serial number of the machine, making it difficult to identify where the votes came from."

=================

Okay, I've seen the information about that "glitch." It's worse than what they portray. A memo written a year ago and not disclosed, but discovered by the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition via a public records request, shows a technician who sounded alarm bells when the ES&S machines appear to be fudging their own data. The employee tested the machines and discovered that they were dealing with an audit procedure where the number of votes was compared with the number of voters, and when there was a discrepancy, the program seemed to be inventing a "ghost machine" and randomly assigning a number to it, and this ghost machine created the votes to balance out the audit.

Now watch this tap dance: In the same article, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, the state's chief elections officer, says she is not responsible for the state's elections:

"Hood, grilled by league members with serious reservations about the county's voting equipment, repeatedly sought to distance her office from election operations.

'''I have absolutely no authority over the running of elections in this state,'' said Hood, a former Orlando mayor who was appointed to the job by Gov. Jeb Bush. She said the department's responsibilities include certifying voting equipment, ensuring that supervisors follow state law and verifying election results."

"neccessarily" (in the Yahoo/law.com version) to "unneccesarily" in their version?

That's minor compared to some of what I'm seeing. What I would like to see is more emphasis on context -- in Florida, you have an elected secretary of state -- admittedly, an abysmal one, Katherine Harris -- being replaced by one who is just as irresponsible, but now the governor made that position appointed, not elected.

This position has only a couple roles -- oversee corporate filings and oversee elections. And now she is saying she isn't responsible for ensuring that elections are fair and accurate.

You've got this down the rabbit hole sensation on that felons story, but they don't give it enough context, given its seriousness. They need to start digging out statistics, showing how that affects real elections -- Reno, McBride, Bush for governor, for example; they need to start painting a more vivid picture of consequences.

You've got a disastrous memo which was hidden for a year. And let me tell you one more thing about that ES&S software: Unlike Diebold and Sequoia, ES&S and Hart Intercivic program the local election stuff for the counties. That means that if the software was diddled, most likely it was done by someone at ES&S headquarters.

Bev

HAVA created a mandate for new voter registration system requirements. The new term for this is Election Management Systems. (EMS)

EMS has more bells and whistles and can make the job of officials easier. But as with DRE's without paper, it can also take away audit functions.

I don't have a big problem with electronic poll record availability at the polls- but never do away with the voter's signature on paper in a poll book when they vote. There has to be some tangible record of who did or didn't vote. As HG, once again, has pointed out, there is nothing but that for a check and balance. If you don't have the book, just do a search of registred voters who didn't vote and "vote" for them. They're not going to know and the system isn't going to know, either. Much easier if there is any tie-in of the EMS to the voting system.

Voter registration issues are going to become the next big, "do it online" sell job. And we have the same old same old argument of saving paper and saving the cost of storing paper, never mind no one calculates the cost of the new systems and their maintenance. For example, one new EMS system that will be installed in a county will cost that county $4,000 A MONTH in maintenance. (upkeep, whatever) But county officials cited a figure of $5,000 a YEAR as too expensive for the storage of paper records.

Oh, yeah, and scanning signatures and throwing away the paper is supposed to be just as good as that paper record. I'm sure there are arguments pro and con in the digital world on that one. But this is an election system and the potential data manipulation possibilities are there.

Also, forget about choosing a running mate from that state. It will make no difference as long as the Jeb machine rules.

solid evidence of tampering and, along with the felon purge and other issues, a shot at overturning that state's results.

There is a whole lot more to come on Florida tampering. I know of several investigations that have not been widely reported (one is not publicly known at all).

Bev, will there be extensive exit voting data available from FL?

No significant exit polling, but that is not a legal document or anything you can use in court anyway.

Better, though: Florida has some of the toughest sunshine laws in the nation. My daughter was at one time a reporter for the Tampa Trib, and she loved it -- you could find anything you wanted, pretty much, using the sunshine laws.

That means we can get our hands on just about everything -- but also, and more important, Black Box Voting has a Clean Voting Crew project that gets citizens involved in instant election auditing, with a hotline to report discrepancies and funnel them to the media.

That's going to be significant. If you live in Florida and haven't volunteered yet, please email me: Bevharrismail@aol.com with the word "Florida volunteer" in the subject.

Bev

Hid the memo for a year, huh? Wonder if Wexler is on it, kinda proves the need for voter verified paper ballots- cannot trust the internal audits.

If all the evidence of a rigged election in 2000 didn't result in a new election being held in Florida, how could evidence of rigged election in 2004 cause them to hold a new election?

Kick!

appreciate:

http://rob2004.com

also:

http://voterob.com

.

The real issue is not paper but how to guarantee that there is accountability within the voting system. The courts will have to ascertain whether accountability for votes is lost with computer systems as they are currently made. The solution may be better computer systems, or even means that have not yet been identified. If the courts rule against "paper" BBV loses. If they, instead, rule that accountability is lacking, then all possible solutions can be considered. Paper seems outdated in this highly technical age. By not insisting on paper, the solution(s) become the collective problem of the voter, the courts and the vendor. Just my $.02 :shrug:

There are a million ways to rig an electronic voting machine.

Unless the OUPTPUT of paper ballots checked by the voters is the official record, and those paper ballots are audited, there should be no trust in elecrtonic voting.

Paper ballot = Fraud Made Harder & Detectable

Randomly audited paper ballot = Fraud Made Difficult & Very Detectable

You make the call.

Take an Accounting 101 class.

ballots are NOT a particularly good idea if you want your vote to count.

There's a reason Jeb Bush pushed absentee voting HARD in 2000. I don't happen to know exactly what -- tho there are probably a dozen reasons (i.e., different ways fraud can be committed) -- but that's what he did and we have to know there was a nefarious purpose to the plan.