Solutions for North Carolina Elections Systems
Initial Costs, Operational Costs, Efficiency and Accuracy
ACQUISITION COSTS:
How would North Carolina counties fund the costs of meeting standards for S 223 and H 238?
HAVA Funds:- the state has about $53 Million in federal funding to upgrade voting systems to meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act, which goes into effect in 2006:
This will affect all NC counties in varying degrees.
The 40 touchscreen (DRE) counties will have to upgrade their voting systems to meet the disabled accessibility standards set by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
The 48 optical scan counties will need at least one ballot marking device per precinct to be disabled accessible,
and the punch card and lever counties will have to completely replace their systems.
Paper Counties may have to purchase disabled accessible equiptment for each precinct.
Our position is that while making changes in voting systems, counties should be proactive and
purchase only equiptment that can produce or use a voter verified paper ballot (VVPB).
Recently, disabled voting rights advocates and supporters of a voter-verified paper ballot have come together to urge the Election Assistance Commission and state election administrators to require voting systems that are both verifiable and accessible to all voters.
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6254
Studies by the NC Coalition for Verified Voting show that our state could meet HAVA standards and
also provide the VVPB for around $35 million, well under the amount of federal money already available.
PURCHASE COST PER PRECINCT each
If a county already has optical scanners, then they may only need to purchase 1 ballot marking device per precinct @ 4,500 ea
*Ballot Marking Device - Currently there is one called the Automark which has been federally certified..
Without implying an endorsement of any specific vendor's equipment, the following example is offered for illustration purposes only:
Ballot marking device - Automark
** Service contracts additional, but will be less for optical scan than with DRE
All New DRE Precinct (touchscreen or dial machine) with Voter Verified Paper Ballot
Estimated cost of 5-voting booth polling place of DREs (with VVPAT) @$3,000 to $4,500 ea = $15,000 to $22,500
Estimated cost of 10-voting booth polling place at $3,000 go $4,500 each total per precinct: $30,000 to 45,000
*Or figure 1 DRE to serve 150 to 200 voters each
COST FOR ENTIRE STATE PER PRECINCT TYPE to standardize to optical scan and 1 ballot marking device or DRE
There are 2,752 regular precincts and 128 one-stop precincts in North Carolina
DRE precincts - 1,219 X $9,200 = $11,214,800
Optical Scan - 1,265 X $4,500 = $ 5,692,500
Punch Card - 222 X $9,200 = $ 2,042,400
Lever - 29 X $9,200 = $ 266,800
Paper - 17 X $9,200 =$ 156,400
Early voting - 128 X $9,200 =$ 1,177,600
Total Cost: $20,550,500
*See this file to find out approximate cost is by county: Cost By County to Upgrade to VVPB  (if you have trouble opening this file, try right clicking on it and opening in new window) Does not include service contracts, which all voting systems will require. Note, service contracts will be higher for DRE support than for Optical scan support.
Pictoral comparison of DREs verses Optical scan systems:
http://www.votersunite.org/info/DREvScanCost.pdf
Compared to touch-screen systems, optical scan equipment is far less expensive.
Each precinct will require one scanner to read optical scan ballots.Using available federal dollars, the State would not be able to
purchase enough touch-screen machines to accommodate voters.
A reliable, auditable, cost effective alternative which is fully accessible to voters with disabilities is a system comprised of
paper ballots and precinct-based optical scan system, augmented by ballot marking devices to provide accessibility to the
disabled. In fact, the ballot marking devices provide better accessibility to more voters than do DREs.
Such systems meet all HAVA requirements and could save North Carolina and it's cash strapped counties tens of millions of dollars
in acquisition and ongoing maintenance costs
http://www.votersunite.org/info/CostHandout.pdf
Are Direct Record Electronic (touchscreen or pushbutton) really disabled accessible?
Comparing the accessibility features of voting systems: Accessible and Verifiable Voting Technology -
A Feature Comparison /Verified Voting Foundation June 21st, 2005
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6028
ACCURACY AND EFFICACY STUDIES OF OPTICAL SCANNERS VERSES DIRECT RECORD ELECTRONICS
Election official's report on merit of optical scanners
North Carolina Study indicating that optical scan machines have the most consistent and
lowest undervote rates of the various technologies used this past election . 2004 report
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OTHER ISSUES/PROBLEMS ADDRESSED BY S 223 AND H 238
Demand independent review of source code, by qualified computer security firms not tied financially to voting machine vendors.
Demand Security Review by Independent Computer Security firms that have no financial ties or affiliations to voting machine companies. California, Maryland and Ohio have done this, and found serious security flaws in equipment that is also used in North Carolina.
Ballot Programming - remove the vendors from the process - should be done by election department or state IT employees, not voting machine companies.
WAYNE COUNTY - In the 2002 general election, a computer miscount overturned the House District 11 result in Wayne County, North Carolina. Incorrect programming caused machines to skip over several thousand party-line votes, both Republican and Democratic. Fixing the error turned up 5,500 more votes and reversed the election for state representative.
article
Improved and standardized audit procedures, training and procedures manuals for election workers. See the website of The National Committee for Voting Integrity for recommendations here
Manual audits of statistically significant percentage of votes using the Voter Verified Paper Ballot as official ballot.
This is made more complex because some or all of the electronic voting systems contain two and three sets of records of the votes, and there is no way to be certain as to which set is reporting the vote totals.
Review testimony of Computer Scientists presented to the Electronic Voting Committee:
December 13, 2004. Justin Moore, Computer Science Dept, Duke University:
Dispels myths about hacking and security of electronic voting systems., Specific Points of Failure of voting systems in NC, and the truth about the failings of the certification process. Presentation here
December 20, 2004. Justin Moore, Department of Computer Science, Duke University, rebuttal to error filled George Gilbert testimony: Article
January 7, 2005. Chuck Herrin shows how easy it is to change the votes without leaving any evidence.
Chuck Herrin's presentation: "recent PowerPoint The first part talks about what we do in business vs. what we do in e-voting, and the second part rips apart Diebold's vote tabulation software. Also see Chuck's website, www.chuckherrin.com .
(News update: Jan 12 news report that GASTONIA - Water from a malfunctioning toilet may have destroyed 100 of Gaston County's 339 voting machines, causing about $500,000 damage over the weekend. This county uses the Diebold system that Chuck demonstrated on the 7th. Approx 14,000 votes were not reported by Gaston County until about a week after the election when the SBOE noticed the low voter turnout Link )
Vote Counting Tabulator phones home office!
Chuck Herrin got to show us how easily someone could get into the central tabulator,
and that Diebold GEMS systems actually phone the home office on their own
(Chuck did I get that right?).
Chuck demonstrated that you can make all kinds of changes to the voting data without leaving any record. There is a log that shows someone has done something at such and such time, but not what the action was. Even the event log can be erased or changed.
So, at least with the Diebold Tabulator, knowing the password is not essential, and by all means, don't worry about leaving a trail behind while you change the vote totals.
Chuck succeeded in getting across the point that central tabulators are a wide open barn door.
Chuck unequivocally stated that the only voting system that he trusted was hand counted paper ballots.
January 7, 2005. Dr. Rebecca Mercuri made an excellent presentation to the committee also, but I do not have it on line yet.
She advised that HAVA had put the cart before the horse, doling out money, requiring states to buy equipment, and failing to set up standards.
Dr. Mercuri states at her website:
"I am adamantly opposed to the use of fully electronic or Internet-based systems for use in anonymous balloting and vote tabulation applications. The reasons for my opposition are manyfold, and are expressed in my writings as well as those of other well-respected computer security experts. At the present time, it is my strong recommendation that all election officials REFRAIN from procuring ANY system that does not provide an indisputable paper ballot. A detailed explanation, along with my recommendation for appropriately configured voting equipment, is provided in the full text of this statement, available *here*.
Communities are discovering that optically scanned balloting systems, augmented with electronic equipment (that also produce scanable paper ballots) for use by the disabled, can be procured for less than a tenth of the price for a fully-electronic system. Such configurations promise to increase voter confidence by offering the best in terms of reliability, usability and recountability as well as being highly cost-effective."
See her website, http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
NC should introduce legislation to eliminate straight ticket voting:
North Carolina - 2000. 100,000 voters did not cast vote for president.
In the 2000 presidential election, more than 3 million North Carolinians showed up at the polls. More than 100,000 did not vote for president and not all of them by choice. Article
Burke County - 2004. over 4,000 voters did not cast a vote for president. Article |
