Our Response:
The Colorado Attorney General's office made the right move to decertify the voting machines.
Further, the CO Secretary of State is recommending that Colorado move to all paper ballot voting systems.
"What we have found is that the federal certification process is inadequate," Coffman said, adding, "There are some issues here that need to be addressed."
The SOS decertified all vendors except Diebold/Premier Election Solutions. The SOS certified Diebold/Premier - conditionally. Media Matters reports that the firm "running" Coffman's 2008 campaign for Congress also represented Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems). Diebold renamed its elections division "Premier Election Solutions" to help distance the rest of Diebold from the ill repute of the voting machines.
The Colorado report , and the Ohio EVEREST report validate what experts like Dr. Justin Moore, Chuck Herrin (IT Certification Specialist), and David Allen, (member of the legislative committee on E-voting) told the North Carolina state legislature back in 2004-2005: that the voting machines were poorly constructed and done so on the cheap, the software was flawed, and the machines were insecure. (See Moore's testimony to the NC legislature on Dec 13, 2004. Chuck Herrin's presentation on January 7, 2005. Dr. Rebecca Mercuri's testimony on January 7, 2005).
This situation underscores the need for voter verified paper ballots, robust election audits and careful checks and balances.
But, in order to perform these important audits, we need a reliable paper ballot. We need the paper ballot to check to see if the computers are counting correctly or not. Properly done audits can detect faulty programming or possible fraud. Problems detected by audits should lead to increased manual counts of the remainder of the votes.
UNRELIABLE:
North Carolina's touch screen counties do not have a reliable voter verified paper ballot. No touch screen machines provide a reliable paper ballot.And - We urged lawmakers to ban this type of voting machine, in favor of optical scan systems, that DO have a reliable paper ballot. Without a voter verified paper ballot you can't do honest and accurate audits or recounts. As high as a 9 % failure rate of the touch screen printers has been cited. See The Problems With Touch Screen Voting Machines - for North Carolina specific information.
REMEDY FOR TOUCH SCREEN COUNTIES:
What do we do to protect the vote in North Carolina's touch screen counties at this time? Our best bet with this short time frame is to mitigate the risks:
Pam Smith, President of the Verified Voting Foundation advises that Franklin County Ohio has the same kind of touchscreens as North Carolina has, the ES&S iVotronics. Franklin County officials instructed their poll workers to check the touch screen printers periodically throughout the day. They also had their poll workers educate the voters to notify them if the printers had any problems. This kept Franklin County from permanently losing any voter verified paper records.
We should require election workers to check touch screen printers periodically throughout the day, and we should put signs ON the voting machines to instruct the voter to verify their paper printout, and to notify the poll workers if there is a problem. We asked the State Board of Elections to have small index card size signs placed on the touch screen machines or booths for the 2006 election, but it did not happen.
WHAT CAN WE DO TO PROTECT THE OPTICAL SCAN COUNTIES (AS WELL AS THE TOUCH SCREEN COUNTIES)?
PERFORM ROBUST AND RANDOM AUDITS AS PER THE LAW. The SBOE is not following the letter of the law.
~ Audits are one of the most important means for ensuring the accuracy of election outcomes, and for allowing observers to verify that accuracy.~ Pam Smith, President of VerifiedVoting.org
NOT TRANSPARENT:
The State Board of Elections has incorrectly had the election audit targets (precincts) selected before the election, in private, and then put these targets in "escrow".
This violates NC's law SL 2006-192 SECTION 7.(b) G.S. 163-182.2(b) signed into law on August 3, 2006
"The random selection of precincts for any county shall be done publicly after the initial count of election returns for that county is publicly released or 24 hours after the polls close on election day, whichever is earlier.
It is essential that the SBOE revise its policy to that their agency will be in full compliance with the election law.
