Citizen's overseeing Cuyahoga's Board of Elections

And speaking of search and siezure....

2008-07-29T20:30:00.017-05:00

Yesterday up to 200 federal authorities carried out a massive raid of some county officials' offices, including that of Jimmy Dimora, one of 3 Cuyahoga County Commissioners, and Chair of the Cuyahoga Democratic Party - all involving charges of corruption.
News of the lock down, the raids, the search warrants, what they are looking for is of course, being covered in Cleveland mainstream news, one link of which is the Plain Dealer coverage.
The charges to date seem mostly involved with alleged violations having to do with the building trades, possible kickbacks, favors and undue influence for massive county contracts.
Coming into particular question are such recent wheelings & dealings that still amaze me when I see who got what right under noses, and what deals they wrought while we pay the costs to lose more - include the long-strategized, but still relatively recent and bizarre plans for the new Juvenile Justice Center.
(This article, "Tainted," by James Renner of the now, since July 16, former FreeTimes is a MUST READ about the '06 and previous stuff about this really dirty dealing, for really dirty land, (highly toxic,) in the middle of a high crime area, away from public transportation - and onto which, city, county and probably state "officials" found no problem in placing troubled youths and their families who might accompany and visit .... with a deal long in the strategy, (while mold growth and crumbling continued in the current building) - bending again to seeming multi-billion Forest City Enterprises, who sat in the background and pulled the officials' strings, seemingly all out for the pullin'- to make millions in this dirty land deal.
I doubt that the FBI will get around to raiding Forest City....")

It also includes the AmeriTrust building. (When I sat in a few Commissioners' Thursday meetings last year, to witness new deals coming down the pike for the elections board, I was aghast at the blatancy and thier long speeches and seeming good humor around it. The less expensive company, fully qualified for high-rise asbestos removal, losing to the far more expensive company, without the proven expertise, and with business complaints against their work - but good buds of the Commissioners.) Then there is the Medical Mart. ( The "hearings" around it filled with downtown "suits;" the too few Summer weeks last year, that legions of us filled with trying to get the enormous number of signatures, to do what the Commissioners should have done - to put the (now already raised) tax onto the ballot.

But what all that have to do with elections or election justice?
One only has to think, about what has occurred recently in just the election arena, to know that these dramatic raids and seeming step toward justice in the corruption that is Cuyahoga County, while looking like a huge step, and probably lost of nasty stuff that will be found, may be true - the sudden investigation, in current form and curious timing however, is most probably also a highly politically motivated and specifically targeted show: a large smoke screen to cover and help something and someones else more powerful. As bad as it may end up, it will not begin to touch the real and worst source(s) of the county and state corruption - in both parties, and across parties. It never does.

Also, ALL THREE Commissioners are, and have been closely involved and in Cuyahoga elections, as they've each been at least in the know in all the building deals being focussed on in front of us now.
They are the ones who appropriated the eventual more than $20M to Diebold, despite public protestations supported by facts (I know, at end of 2005, I was at their meetings weekly) while publicly positioning how bad Blackwell, and eventually how bad Diebold was - but still never seeming to be able to ask the right questions, or hold their buddies on CCBOE accountable, and just letting it all slide - all while claiming they didn't know, and publicly posturing about other cutbacks just because of elections. It certainly appeared that Mr. Hagan, and Mr. Bennett, and even an editor of the PD, Brent Larkin are all friends (or else have something(s) really big on each other, so they keep each other close and happy.)

They are also the ones who seemingly entertained an apparently requested bid/proposal from ES&S last September, '07 when neither the public, nor apparently other vendors knew about it; and well before any (public) talk even began about Cuyahoga changing systems/buying millions of dollars of new equipment; and at a time, which was after one of their former county administrators, a close buddy, also eventually a former Director of the CCBOE, Tom Hayes, became a registered lobbyist for, and seemingly well-connected with high-ranking state Dems, sales rep for ES&S.
See Was the (CCBOE) ES&S Contract Selection Predetermined?

It was also the Commissioners who hired the same Hayes as Project Manager for about 4 months preceding the '06 November election, for about a total of $60K - $4K/week, so an election could happen - as he babysat and spoke for the approx. $120K/year Director Vu - an arrangement that seemed to accede to the wishes of Bennett who seemingly promised Vu he would not be fired/could resign with money to go ($40K) -as long as they all kept quiet about the events that preceded, and had proceeded from the '04 election.

And it was the Commissioners who ended up "negotiating" with ES&S what ended up to be an approximate new approx. $17M, 5-year contract with ES&S, a highly questionable contract - after the elections board decided to adopt the company, but could not come to contract terms ( though Hart Intercivic was the much more popular competitor even with staff, and the almost $5M less expensive bidder.)

And it was the Commissioners who ended up "negotiating" away promises that ES&S had made, and guaranteed on 6/12/08; and who - though made sure there were "fit for use" clauses and warranties not found in the previous Diebold contract, allowed those terms to be nothing more than more lawyers' and vendor's dreams - seemingly so general, and would take so much in court to prove that ES&S failures were not someone else's- (anyone else's fault and liability - the typical vendor cry) - that in the end, may have left ES&S (and Tom Hayes) still laughing all the way to the bank. ( I don't think the FBI will be raiding Tom Haye's LNE Group, nor ES&S's Omaha offices, either.)

As to one promise the Commissioners gave away from voters and tax coffers - just look at this film from 6/12/08 - with Also Tesi, President of ES&S, at the CCBOE where he promised the county a $1.4M refund if ES&S's new equipment is not ready for the May,'09 election (we're slated to rent 1500 of the 10-year old optical scan equipment, the M-100s, in November, (and buy 15 of the 15-year old central count scanners that stay) then ship back the 1500, to buy 1500 new scanners, DS200's, when they're ready!!)

Once you've watched Tesi's 6/12/08 guarantees, now check out below what the Commissioners "negotiatied" - did for their vendor and party buddies. (The SoS has also been on record as wanting ES&S equipment in Cuyahoga - seemingly to lead the way for the entire state's conversion to them. And if you read her $1.9M EVEREST Report, and her 80 page Executive Summary, you'll find among her "recommendations" that she was already recommending ES&S equipment statewide early last December, but that her wishes have nothing to do with any of the scientific findings which show no better quality, NOR any less potential for inside manipulation of ballot counts - even with paper ballots.)

From page 15 of the ES&S contract, as negotiated/or at least approved by the Commissioners (with PLJ dissenting - which he seemed to be doing more of as he began his re-election campaign); Exhibit A-1, Pricing Summary:

"3. If County leases MIOO's for November 4, 2008 General Election, with the
intention of purchasing new DS200's in 2009, and if the DS200's are not certified by the Election Assistance Commission (if required by Ohio law or the Ohio Secretary of State) and the Ohio Secretary of State by January 1, 2010, then Vendor shall refund the County the sum of $1,425,000 ( highlights, mine) and, in addition, Vendor shall lease to the County, free of charge, up to 1,500 MIOO's for each election occurring in 2009 prior to the date which Vendor is able to provide the County with DS200's that are certified by the Election Assistance Commission (if required by Ohio law or the Ohio Secretary of State) and the Ohio Secretary of State. The foregoing refund of $1,425,000 shall not be due the County, however, in the event the Ohio Secretary of State rules before January 1, 2010 that theDS200's must be certified in accordance with standards and requirements that deviate from the 2002 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and/or in accordance with any or all of the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines such that the deviation would require recertification by the Election Assistance Commission or the Secretary of State. Equipment must be certified by the Election Assistance Commission (if required by Ohio law or the Ohio Secretary of State) and the Ohio Secretary of State and delivered to the CCBOE Warehouse sixty (60) days prior to any Election.

Given the extra year from their original firm guarantee, it's almost certain that Tesi won't have to write that check back into Cuyahoga coffers... But will he write another check to some others for such a favor? We'll never know. (I'll cover more about the other concessions ES&S seems to expect from the SoS, and much else about this contract the Commissioners "negotiated" in a later post.)

Bottom line, it would be foolish to think that the even the big current FBI raids and drama are separate from the politics, and that the politics are separate from this great show of justice. Bottom line, it would be foolish to think that just one of the Commissioners is involved, or just a few appointees are the ring leaders, and that this whole movement will really get to the bottom of the deals and favors and nepotism that runs this county and this state, along with our elections - including possibly helping to determine who our next county, state and federal "leaders" will be - giving the statement of "as Ohio goes, so goes the nation" a whole new meaning.

Despite all the drama, and nasty and possibly only-portions-of-truth facts that may yet unfold in this huge, and curiously-timed Cuyahoga corruption drama - the largest county of the state of Ohio - it seems we here most probably will remain a ripe wedge of moving the nation toward greater corruption, unless we all stop following the each drama put before us, one after another, and hoping that getting rid of one "leader" will allow room for the hopeful ones to lead us better - while we go away and leave them alone again.

I won't be covering here more on these Cuyahoga raids, and partisan fighting, and bipartisan joining in how to grab more of our power. You can find it elsewhere in the mainstream news.
But please, don't believe that the FBI and lawyers are going to make things all better here or in Columbus; and that it's all one party's fault or the other's. This is a strong signal, and a wake up call, that it's time for all citizens to take just a little responsibility to watch and participate and look out for the best for all of us, and look systemically - not buy into the "get more for me" that plays out in us and before us.
Letting a few alone to make decisions that they then weave stories about for us believe are "for our good" - continuing to just blindly follow, believe and honor anyone in an already tainted system, never has, and never will work. The writers of our Constitution (remember that?) even knew it. It's our system. We must take some responsibility for getting it clean for the whole of us, and maintaining it.

Should Boards of Elections Have (what is in essence) Search and Siezure Powers? Who or what should control that power of the SoS and OH Boards?

2008-07-29T13:22:00.015-05:00

Speaking of justice (and lack thereof,) we also have the Secretary of State's recent, curiously timed, July 18, 2008 Advisory 2008-10, reminding and delineating to Ohio Boards of Elections their rights and duties to investigate seemingly whatever they decide are violations of Title IIIV of the Ohio Code, (Ohio Election Law,) including their rights and duties to subpoena people, and even enter their property, take for investigation possessions and even computers - presents yet another rude awakening to possibly how unjust, wound-up, and tied with a bow for handing on a silver platter to incumbents and friends, our supposed election system can be.
If I read this correctly, it seems that such investigations can be undertaken and implemented even without any normally-assumed, citizen-protective, judicial intervention or protocol (except for any legal counsel that a charged citizen, or one not-charged but only thought to have "pertinent information," needs to acquire on one's own.) And the investigations themselves can be kept and reported only between the boards and the SoS.

My first impression upon reading Advisory 08-10 includes:
• Why would anyone hand a board of elections (!) such extreme "quasi-judicial" "rights and duties" with no other normally assumed, protective judicial protocols required? A non-over-sighted, politically and partisanly-driven board of elections !? - sitting there often by political machinations/appointments, at times by SoS (this link just one example,)- with an acknowledged competence level that even had in the SoS June 4 Memorandum (about submitting meeting minutes to the SoS office,) the proviso that if they didn't know how to send an email attachment, they should call the SoS office to be walked through the process? (Does that give you confidence in these people in charge to usually stay all alone determining who wins and loses our electronically determined elections? (even with paper ballots.)
Apparently at some point the OH legislature already did already hand boards of elections those powers.
But then-
• Why would any Secretary of State, especially a former judge, seemingly out of the blue, feel the need to remind those boards of elections of those "rights and duties" without also reminding them of their extreme nature, thus to use them only with greatest judiciousness, and with proper protection of the presumed innocence of citizens/voters/candidates, and in only the most extremely, provable circumstances.
• What was this seeming "out of the blue" timing really about? - for it seems in the elections and political arenas, nothing that seems accidental ever is. Is it related to Cliff Arnebeck's, a Columbus attorney's recently lifting of the stay on his '04 election case; said to be an effort to protect the integrity of the 'o8 election, and now citing allegations, and evidence of massive fraud by a number of GOP operatives in '04?
Or is it related to something else?
• While there remain so many other important matters to help boards get properly and competently ready for a citizen-successsful, fair election in fast approaching November, and without knowing what incited Advisory 08-10 to appear without even necessary reminders about protections for average citizens against even possibly partisanly driven, and/or possibly trumped up charges to get rid of inquiring activists, or even to let voters know who's really the bosses of their elections, such reminder appears chillingly a move of joint insider control, rather than help toward election justice.
• And since the SoS is the only oversight of the boards of elections, which at times appears quite arbitrary according to who and what goes along with her wishes, and sends in no equitable monitoring/feedback mechanism - for instance just believing whatever boards write in their minutes about what they've done or have not. (Attend a CCBOE meeting, then check the minutes and see if you think they are an adequate representation for one who was not there.) And for another small example, see -http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2008/06/march-audit-part-1.html) about the "audit" of the March election. (There were no written waivers from the SoS about Cuyahoga not following Directive 08-39, (her Audit Directive, with "the force of law";) even confusion on the part of some Cuyahoga staff knowing whether or not the Directive was being followed; and the last film in that post shows that even when the SoS field rep was present, and asked about their not following the Directive, he "had no say" about what Cuyahoga did and did not do.)
The ultimate question has to remain, who does and can truly monitor the Secretary of State's actions for equal citizen and voter protection and equal justice?

ADVISORY NO. 2008-10
July 18,2008
To: All County Boards of Elections Members, Directors and Deputy Directors
Re: Reporting Facts of Investigations under R.C. 3501.11(J); Issuing and Serving Subpoenas

Report of Investigation Facts
Under R.C. 3501.11(J), each county board of elections is vested with the authority and the duty to investigate irregularities, nonperformance of duties, and other violations of Title XXXV of the Ohio Revised Code by election officers and other persons. Last year, Amended Substitute House Bill No. 119 amended this statute to provide a board of elections the option of reporting the facts adduced in an investigation conducted pursuant to R.C. 3501.11(J) to the secretary of state, instead of the county prosecutor.
A county board of elections that chooses to report the facts of its investigation to the secretary of state shall do so in writing. The report should provide a historical summary of the matter and a list of the board's factual findings. The board may attach relevant exhibits or other documents to its report. If a board opts to report facts of its investigation to the secretary of state rather than the county prosecutor, the report and any attachments must be submitted to the secretary of state's director of elections. However, as a general rule, a board is also encouraged to report the facts of an investigation to its county prosecutor
Issuing and Serving Subpoenas
R.C. 3501.11(J) provides that a board of elections shall "administer oaths, issue subpoenas,
summon witnesses, and compel the production of books, papers, records, and other evidence in connection with any such investigation." However, nothing in Ohio's election laws prescribes either the form of the subpoena or a procedure for serving subpoenas.
As ubpoena is more than a mere notice to appear before the board. A subpoena carries with it the weight of aw, commanding the appearance of a person and/or compelling the production of documents. Failure to obey a subpoena carries the potential of criminal sanctions. Therefore, it is important that a subpoena sufficiently identify the person and/or documents to be produced. It is also important that appropriate procedures are followed to ensure the timely delivery of a subpoena \vith adequate notice of the board proceeding.
Absent a statute that expressly provides otherwise, subpoenas issued in connection with noncriminal proceedings are governed generally by the Rule 45 of the Rules of Civil Procedure (cited as "Civ. R. 45"). It is, and has been, the position of the secretary of state's office that a subpoena issued by a board of elections acting in its capacity as a quasi-judicial body must satisfy the provisions of Civ. R. 45(A), as follows:
(A) Form; issuance; notice
(1) Every subpoena shall do all of the following:
(a) state the name of the [board of elections, when it is acting in a quasijudicial
capacity] from which it is issued, the title ofthe action, and the case
number;
(b) command each person to whom it is directed, at a time and place specified
in the subpoena, to:
(i) attend and give testimony at a trial, hearing, or deposition;
(ii) produce documents or tangible things at a trial, hearing, or deposition;
(iii) produce and permit inspection and copying of any designated
documents that are in the possession, custody, or control of the person;
(iv) produce and permit inspection and copying, testing, or sampling of any
tangible things that are in the possession, custody, or control of the person;
or
(v) permit entry upon designated land or other property that is in the
possession or control of the person for the purposes described in Civ. R.
34(A)(3)·
(c) set forth the text of divisions (C) and (D) ofthis rule.
Acommand to produce and permit inspection may be joined with a command to attend and give testimony, or may be issued separately.
Asubpoena may not be used to obtain the attendance of a party or the
production of documents by a party in discovery. Rather, a party's attendance at a deposition may be obtained only by notice under Civ. R. 30, and documents may be obtained from a party in discovery only pursuant to Civ. R. 34.
(2) The clerk [in the case of the board of elections, the director and deputy
director jointly] shall issue a subpoena, signed, but otherwise in blank, to a party requesting it, who shall complete it before service. An attorney who has filed an appearance on behalf of a party in an action may also sign and issue a subpoenaon behalf of the [the board of elections, when it is acting in a quasi-judicial capacity] in which the action is pending.
(3) A party on whose behalf a subpoena is issued under division (A)(l)(b)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) of this rule shall serve prompt written notice, including a copy of the subpoena, on all other parties as provided in Civ. R. 5. If the issuing attorney modifies a subpoena issued under division (A)(l)(b)(ii), (iii), (iv), or (v) of this rule in any way, the issuing attorney shall give prompt written notice of themodification, including a copy of the subpoena as modified, to all other parties.
Under Civ. R. 45, your board of elections will need to have a subpoena form available for its own use and for use by attorneys who request them for matters before the board in its quasi-judicial capacity. Your prosecutor may assist in the development of a subpoena form if you do not have one already. It will likely be based on or similar to what your county court of common pleas uses for subpoenas in its own matters. - snipped-

I personally have witnessed the former Cuyahoga board subpoena an activist; threaten to take action against another activist for filing "too many" public information requests with a self-"manufactured" list, when the board staff had answered no requests - for months, but kept requesting repeated requests, so they "could get to them." Also this board for example, talked about subpoenaing voters who were not informed by poll workers that they were in the wrong precinct and were allowed to sign in before getting the information, but not to vote, then after being sent to the correct precinct, signed in again as required, then later being suspected (and with possible subpoena) of trying to vote twice. For the board to glean their information in such investigations, they merely have staff phone the poll workers who seemingly inevitably claim they did everything right. But they, all intelligent lawyers in this case, still seem willing to, oppositely, consider subpoenaing voters and putting them under oath for public testimony in front of the board.
Even as an Observer last March, I was often told that asking what the workers whom I was often barely allowed to see were supposed to be doing/what was it I was supposedly watching (despite Directive 08-29, which said Observers were allowed to watch and closely inspect) - I was told that asking such a question was "impeding an election" - and infraction of Title IIIV.

And if one reads the breadth and sometimes the generality of Title IIIV of the Ohio Revised Code, and even the specifics, especially in just the last Chapter 3599, one realizes that while documentation that shows and alleges the breaking of law in just the proper retention of '04 election data has been ignored by the SoS and "scoffed at" by elections boards; and when one reads Scot Free! (including reading all the interwoven links) - showing that even elections workers who are convicted, of feloniously mishandling '04 ballots, or those may have never even been charged, can all just walk away as if nothing has happened (and possibly have taxpayers pay their massive legal fees!) - but voters, activists, citizens are subject to subpoena by some of this same group of insiders, then you know that the system really chillingly has been turned on its head.

It's time for citizens to go to the OH legislature and see if some just judicial controls can begin to represent us also when it comes to our elections, and thus whom it appears we're supposed to quietly accept, wins the next rights to using our power - mayoral, judicial, and even presidential.

Scot Free? Scot Free. - The 1/07 Felony Conviction, 3/07 Prison Sentence & 11/07 "Probation" Deal for Manipulating the 12/04 Presidential Recount

2008-07-23T09:37:00.032-05:00

In what seems a large but still rapidly-growing almost fungal dynamic in Cuyahoga and Ohio politics, with insider deal-making politicians at all levels being left alone to make their deals AND their tightly-woven cover stories to keep us "confident" and "believing" - once again and still, and in both normal and legal senses of the word, "Justice" seems have been been thoroughly pulverized. Sadder and more ironic still is that this time the deals, the stories, and the very blatancy of the abuse of power, reflect the pulverization of Election Justice - one of the few ways, if it were to truly exist, we'd have left to at least be able to "throw the deal-making bums out," or to get them to listen to us. Now it appears that even that is gone.
I write, however, not to make things look even more bleak. But I do hope that these new facts might also shock some readers, (as they continue to hit me with (now brief) shock) - enough to go and watch for yourselves, and say "no!" to such disconnection from the best our humanity has graced us with, and thus from justice, in all forms of the word.
What I also find shocking, and deeply sad, is that even the press either can't or won't follow these threads and tell us what's occurring. And that even when the good guy press knows, they've either sold out, don't have the revenue, or have become so thick skinned that they too just laugh it all off as "just politics," as they run to catch the next event they consider a better benchmark of tragedy, gore, or "government."

Remember the Cuyahoga Recount Trial where the jury convicted two CCBOE mid-level managers of feloniously handling ballots in the legally paid-for and legally-requested local recount of the still often nationally-questioned '04 presidential election between Bush and Kerry; and the judge sentenced them to 18 months in jail? (Also see film here.)
The trial that hit national and international news and struck relief in the hearts of many that maybe justice really did still live, somewhere in the system that's supposed to be serving us all equally? The trial that could possibly send some message to those who make the many big and small decisions about our election results - thus, about who "wins" and who "loses" & about who will be making the next round of decisions "for us" often behind closed doors where we can't see: that there can be negative consequences for deal-making and other illegal intrusions into our will.
The January '07 trial that evoked excited stirs among many election integrity activists that "things will be better now," a stir that still often remains resistant-to facts that the whole trial even in the courtroom was continually pulled into the realm of politics, not justice or truth, especially by the defense; and thus, often seemed far more an unspoken political battle and legal show (much like the recount in question) and about skirting the truth or justice, rather than getting to it.
Remember the trial that also evoked sadness and some curiosity among many familiar with the CCBOE in '04 and in '07 - that two mid-level, basically non-decision-making manager-women seemed to be quietly taking rap, and in March '07, were sentenced to prison for 18 months for decisions, that in the normal course of the CCBOE, seemed impossible and very unlikely to be able to be made or carried out by them alone; decisions far more likely and possible (and even with some evidence showing) to have been made, or were at least known about (but not stopped) by decision makers "above" them - member(s) of the board, and/or then Director Vu who often followed the orders of Board Chair Bennett, and/or Vu's Deputy, Gwen Dillingham (also the former sister-in-law of one of the convicted workers.)
No one could quite figure out what they had been promised, or were so afraid of, that would keep them so quiet so long, even while their stories wavered and didn't add up, and the lack of truth seemed so apparent.
Remember the trial that struck fear among many elections and other government workers nationally, that the same fate could befall them for following orders that do not coincide with the law and/or that they would get no good deals if they not follow orders?

Well, it seems that the entire matter, including their jury-drawn felony convictions and 18 month jail sentence in the Ohio Reformatory for Women is virtually over - with no jail time (they were out on appellate bond until their Nov.5, '07 "appellate hearing" - where their "probation deal" was announced.)

And it NOW seems it's BEEN OVER SINCE last Nov. 5, the day before the '07 election, when their "appeals hearing" was held (unbeknownst most, since it did not appear in their case dockets, nor on Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold's online docket) where their pre-set deal was announced.

And what was the November-announced (just in time to have the election distract us) deal between Kevin Baxter, Special Prosecutor appointed by Cuy. Prosecutor, Bill Mason; Roger Synenberg, former R-elections board member, in part along with Bennett; and Judge Saffold? (Here's a link to another blog, which contains some links to articles about Saffold. With this, I am neither indicating endorsement, nor non-endorsement of the opinions of that entire blog site, but certainly of the blogger's right to speak. The articles linked in this Saffold post, however, certainly represent facts accurately. And another Saffold link. It should be noted from this one, that one set of Baumgartner's charges in her 8-yr. ordeal you'll see in this article, included charges that Kevin Baxter, the Erie County Special Prosecutor assigned to this '04 recount case, and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason who assigned him to it, had a long history of trading cases where it appeared they wanted "to get rid of" the case or the complainant. Those Baumgartner charges which were found online via Google searches in '05 when Baxter was first assigned, seem no longer apparent.)

That these women would be put in a special probation program, called "the Diversion Program" - a 6 - 18 month program for first time offenders, who had admitted guilt and remorse, thus signs of rehabilitation; and a program, if completed while "being good" the entire time, would allow each felon's record would be expunged.

And what else was so special about their deal?

Special was:

they of course, got the minimum time in the Diversion (probation)Program - 6 months, which had it ending around April 27, '08, - but which hearing Saffold put off (because she said she'd be out of town,) until March 27, 2008.
Also Synenberg "asked", and of course was granted, per the deal, that no finding of guilt was to be found.

What's so special about that is that, per another deal apparently made between Bob Bennett and the womens' lawyers around the time the of the first grand jury indictments in September of '05, where either Bennett or the entire board agreed that when or "if" the indictees were found "innocent," the elections board/ the Commissioners/ and well... let's just say it, bottom line, the taxpayers would also pay all the womens' legal fees!
(For download here - See the letter from the third indictee's lawyer, presented to the CCBOE for payment of his legal fees after that woman was found innocent by the jury in January, presented per those prior arrangements. )
Now isn't THAT "special!"

You see, it seems that the 9/05 indictments were nothing more than an attempt at a "bone-throwing" - a "see-justice- (wink, wink) is-being-done - to the many activists who volunteered and and paid and were at the December '04 recount; and who knew for certain that the recount ballots had been illegally pre-selected and pre-counted, making the Recount of the also highly questionable '04 election results, also nothing but a fake show.
Possibly because undeniable incriminating video later showed up from election integrity activist Kathleen Wynne, who's now in Texas; or because there really was a (bi-partisan) political pissing-match-deal "war" going on between the defense and the board, and the prosecutor's office, (as it seemed all through the trial;) or because of other unseen deals, the jury trial ended up ensuing. The jury came up with the felony convictions, and the judge sentenced the women to the max.

Thus, with the Nov. 5, '07's "no finding of guilt" and looking toward expungement of records, immediately after that less than 1-hour deal announcement/"appellate hearing" - Synenberg was pronouncing the women's "innocence" (!-two very different things) to the press - an important concept for him, and to anyone else who may have been footing parts of his bill since before the Sept. '05 indictments - meaning it could all be paid....by the taxpayers.

His approach to Cuyahoga CCBOE and /or the Commissioners for that money, seemingly remains the main "other shoe to drop" in this deal - if it has not dropped already...

And as they say on late night infomercials...

But that's not all!....

So what ELSE was so very special about their 11/07 deal that has just recently shown up? On March 27, '08 after again seeing nothing on her docket about the "end-of-Diversion" hearing, I called Saffold's bailiff, (who could not be described as forthcoming, nor non-inquiring about my identity and my interest,) to find out if the hearing was proceeding that day or sometime in the future.
He told me to call the Prosecutor. I called Baxter's office, and after a few tries over the past months, someone in his office finally suggested I call the Probation Department. A call to the Cuy. Probation Department, again not met with forthcoming information nor lack of interest in my identity, did get me transferred to the Diversion Department - and got me to one of the most refreshing women with whom one would ever want to speak.

She told me what an odd case this one was... that though there was a journal entry that the women had been put in the Diversion Program - she had never seen them, they had never been clients of the Diversion Program, and they had never shown up.

Then with the recent help of another, I found out last week, what ELSE was so special about that Nov. 5, '07:
It seems that part of their Nov. deal, that kept them out of jail, and promised to get their records expunged, and possibly to have taxpayers pick up their massive legal tab for what they did and would not speak about, was also that they NEVER WERE REQUIRED TO SERVE ANY DIVERSION OR PROBATION duties or responsibilities or time either! They - and everyone involved - just walked off Scot Free!

Also related to me was that part of the deal said that they were to be following Erie County (Baxter's home county) procedures - a nice "covering touch" for any inquiries, don't you think?

No one - but US - essentially had to pay consequences (over and over and over again) for what was illegally done to us - faking our '04 presidential recount, which prevented us from seeing what may have also been illegally done to our '04 presidential election results, when "Bush took OH"
(Though Kerry won Cuyahoga, it is the overall numbers as accumulated into state numbers that matter. A small shift here, as in some other counties, could have aided the larger strange shift statewide, to cause the small-margin Blackwell/Bush "victory")

And remember - by November, '07 Vu also had been long gone from his approx. $120K Director job here, off to San Diego, since approximately the previous March, hired by a previous Utah election-crony for his next election stint, as Assistant Registrar of Voters at about $130K/year; after being allowed to "resign" here (per Bennett's insistence) despite a number of especially Dem calls for his firing or demotion; and allowed to take with him another $40K from Cuyahoga coffers as separation/consultancy agreement.

And by that time Bennett and the rest of the previous board were also long gone, removed by the SoS in the first half of the year, Bennett with a struggle, for which he stated plans to have taxpayers also pay for his lawsuit against the SoS too.
His public post-trial rants and campaigns of disinformation about the trial, the '04 election, the Prosecutors (who wouldn't deal the trial away - though on second thought, maybe they should have just done that. It would have saved us all alot of money, time and hoping things could turn out differently in Cuyahoga) and on other items have seemed to have quieted. (I don't know what he's doing behind the scenes.)

And by that time, Gwen Dillingham was also long gone, with her "resignation" and her March $40K "separation/consultation" agreement, which was also negotiated by none other than the same former board member, trial "defense" attorney, her good friend, Roger Synenberg, who it appears originally brought her to the CCBOE around '92, under his board tenure, as his "administrative aide."
(You can see this '92 early mention of Dillingham in this 18/15/92 PD article, available for download here, as it was saved from library-card accessed, PD archives. For more context about that article, and a review of the many '92 happenings/"foul-ups" as it is termed, at the CCBOE under Synenberg's CCBOE board tenure, refer to this 12/31/92 PD article, available for download here, also from library news archive. And for those of you who have access to such newspaper archive searches, after reading below, you might find it interesting to search many of the '91- '93 articles written by then PD-reporter, Bill Sammon. THAT was what journalism is supposed about.)

Will there be an end of "Diversion-That-Never-Was" hearing? Will Cuyahoga taxpayers also get stuck (or have they already gotten stuck) with the massive legal tab, for not only the Prosecutor, but also these womens' deal-making "defense" lawyers - seemingly working against us/against justice/against election justice? I don't know.

What will you do to try to find out, and do something about this, and other such continuing, entangled, ugly messes?

Another "Odd 'series' of events" with the Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners - this time with ES&S

2008-07-10T22:16:00.046-05:00

"...does it seem odd to you too, that while the current 3 selectees for Brunner's Board of Voting Machine Examiners may be qualified for their current election official position, that people who are not independent from the SoS office or partisan alignments, and especially who don't hold firm qualifications and expertise in electronic election technology, are the people who are certifying our equipment for Ohio? "

Tomorrow will see another meeting of the Jennifer Brunner's Board of Voting Machine Examiners.
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/PressReleases/2008%20Press%20Releases/20080709a.aspx

Secretary Brunner Calls Meeting of the Board of Voting Machine Examiners
7/9/2008

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners will meet on Friday, July 11 at 2 p.m. in the 15th floor conference room of the Continental Plaza, 180 E. Broad St. in Columbus.
The board will be considering the following issue: whether certain modifications made to the hardware on E S & S’s AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal Model A200 are enhancements or significant adjustments to the certified voting equipment.
This meeting is open to the public.
The board is composed of the following members: Inajo Davis Chappell, a member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections; Dale Fellows, a member of the Lake County Board of Elections, and David R. Moots, a member of the Union County Board of Elections.
-30-
Media Contacts:
Jeff Ortega, Assistant Director of Communications, Media, 614-466-0473
Kevin Kidder, Media Relations Coordinator, 614-995-2168

So what is so "odd" about that? Well, let's see - and going from most recent "Oddities" first:

• "Odd" #1. - Today, when I called the Cuyahoga Commissioners to find out about ES&S contract - (which final negotiation was left to them, when the CCBOE could not come to financial and performance terms with ES&S after days and hours, but still voted on 6/20/08 to adopt ES&S's $4-5M higher bid over Hart's completed, more popular terms) I was told that they just approved it at this morning's Commissioners meeting.

Odd that the vote on the ES&S contract was not on the Commissioners published agenda for today, so interested parties - from the public too - could know to attend. Since the CCBOE decision to adopt ES&S happened on 6/20/08, and the lawyers had been working on contract terms for weeks before that, this was hardly an "emergency" issue that needed to be "walked on" with no public notice.

• "Odd" #2 -I won't yet know how "odd or "non-odd" the actual terms of contract are, until I see it, like:

how inflated costs may or may not be (For instance, are taxpayers still paying $1500/day/ea. for ES&S people, (upon whom I was told no background checks/resumes were provided for the March election,) to sit around, run our equipment, not convey knowledge independence to CCBOE managers, and maybe to even run OUR "acceptance testing" of their equipment....) ;
to what the $4-5M higher bid adopted by the CCBOE can be attributed;
how much is guaranteed in performance and warranties (or how little as with Diebold) and for what cost;
and ultimately, how much control of Cuyahoga citizens' election results is now being quietly handed over to ES&S (and friends at many levels) - from ballot design and "definition files" to running the tabulator and scanners, - all areas holding the potential for easily and undetectably changing Cuyahoga's vote results/creating them as some may desire.

• "Odd" #3 - Just as it was "odd" that SoS Brunner called a meeting of the Board of Voting Machine Examiners for July 3 about Hart InterCivic equipment being considered by the CCBOE- known about since early 2008, but with the "examiners" meeting, but for AFTER the CCBOE decision, this meeting of her "examiners" may be even "Odder."
The Commissioners sealed the almost $5M higher-than-Hart deal with ES&S, (today, in a seeming "emergency") - and THEN the "examiners" are to decide on whether or not some of the ES&S equipment in that contract should be considered "certified" in OH (tomorrow, again in some sort of meeting, without technology experts,) in Columbus??
Now THAT'S "Odd"!

• "Odd" #4 - And to make #3 even "odder" - what Brunner's Board of Voting Machine Examiners will be considering - seems to involve the same issue that caused CA SoS Bowen to file a $15M lawsuit against ES&S last August, when it was found that the company seemingly had been trying to pass off their AutoMark 200's ( - then not yet certified by federal ITA's (certifying labs) and thus, were also not certified by the state of California - ) as their already-inspected/certified Automark 100 model,

either by "not mentioning" (one of a few "oversights" they claimed) that the Automark 200's were not the certified "100 Model,"
or as some allege, by concertedly masking the truth, even by putting the wrong sticker on their machines.

The meeting today (without tech experts) in Columbus is to determine if the these ballot marking devices for ADA compliance, the AutoMarks (that started out in $8-9K range each, and of which Cuyahoga plans to purchase approximately 600,) and which seemingly are the AutoMark Model 200's - apparently to determine if these marking devices can be considered certified in Ohio, just as their predecessors were:
"whether certain modifications made to the hardware on E S & S’s AutoMARK Voter Assist Terminal Model A200 are enhancements or significant adjustments to the certified voting equipment."

Yes, oddly, it seems that today the Commissioners may have signed for uncertified equipment.
Did they already know, that if anyone would deem to make a fuss - seemingly not the SoS - they'd be "covered" tomorrow?
I will be getting a tape of the deliberation to find if that "little glitch" was even mentioned - though there is probably "an out" clause in the contract.

The PD's coverage of today's Commissioners passage of the contract with a 2-1 vote, mentioned nothing of that little fact being spoken about. But using, (thus one might assume purchasing for use) uncertified equipment goes against state laws.

• "Odd" #5 - It also seems "odd" that the Board of Voting Machine Examiners would be taking up a question (without tech experts) so widely discussed last year.
Here's what Wired Magazine said in their 8/21/07 article, "ES&S to be Rebuked, Fined and Possibly Banned in CA?" By Kim Zetter

(Where the article refers to looking at pictures, it's definitely worth going to the original post to see if you think the differences look like "enhancements" or "significant adjustments" that need checking.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/ess-to-be-rebuk.html)

"California announced today that it plans to hold an administrative hearing on September 20th to discuss the fate of Election Systems & Software for violating state election codes. ES&S, the top voting machine company in the country, is being accused of selling at least five CA counties a version of its AutoMark ballot marking system that hadn't yet been tested or certified for use in the state or the country.
ES&S apparently sold at least about 1,000 uncertified machines to San Francisco, Marin, Colusa, Solano and Merced counties. (The number of uncertified machines delivered to California was supplied by ES&S to the state; CA officials have yet to conduct their own inventory to determine if more machines are involved.)
Per CA law, ES&S could be fined $10,000 per uncertified voting system unit (or $9.72 million) and be required to give a complete refund to counties of all money spent on the machines -- the latter would amount to about $5 million.
Additionally, ES&S could be barred from doing any business in the state for between 1 and 3 years, which would impact more than just the five counties mentioned -- potentially affecting more than 14 counties that use ES&S machines, including Los Angeles County.
The issue raises questions about how many other uncertified AutoMarks the company may have sold to other states.
ES&S did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
The AutoMark A100 was certified for use in California in August 2005. However, in 2006, ES&S, by its own admission, sold about 1,000 units of its subsequent AutoMark model -- the A200 version -- to five CA counties months before the system passed federal qualification testing in August 2006. Voting machines generally undergo two stages of testing and certification, first by independent testing labs overseen by the federal government and then by the states themselves. But according to secretary of state spokeswoman Nicole Winger ES&S still has not submitted the A200 system to the state to examine and certify.
Winger also says that the A200 machines had stickers on them (see photo below) that identified them as having passed federal qualification testing, when they hadn't yet passed that testing. Winger says that the qualification stickers that were placed on the A200 machines were the stickers that are supposed to apply only to A100 machines. Winger says it's possible that the stickers were applied in error. But if ES&S deliberately placed the stickers on the machines it could suggest a deliberate attempt on the part of the company to deceive California election officials.
"We are in the early stages of learning about the facts," Winger told me. "We don't know who would have applied the A100 stickers to uncertified equipment."
Winger said the differences between the A100 and A200 systems are significant and easily identified just through visual inspection (see the photos above at right). The size of the motherboard and the types of wiring inside the machines are just two examples of the differences.
"Those are the first things on visual inspection that even a computer novice would notice," Winger says.
ES&S is not the first voting machine company to have sold uncertified equipment in CA. In 2003, the state discovered that Diebold Election Systems had installed uncertified software in machines in 17 counties. (UPDATE: Joseph Hall at UC Berkeley reminds me that Diebold wasn't the only company that had uncertified software running in CA counties in 2003. A subsequent review of all election software in the state at that time found that eight counties were using versions of ES&S software that had not been federally qualified or state certified. Other counties were also found to be using uncertified software made by vendors other than ES&S and Diebold.)
Stephen Weir, the clerk for Contra Costa County, which has 762 AutoMark units as part of a $14 million contract with ES&S, supports Bowen's decision to punish ES&S for violating state laws -- although his county isn't among those that received uncertified equipment.
"If a vendor is using equipment in California that is not certified, they need to get busted," he told me. "If in fact (Bowen has) found equipment that was not ceritifed, that's a violation of not just the trust that a vendor has with election officials and the state, that's a violation of law."
The AutoMark is a ballot marking device that is a hybrid between a touch-screen machine and an optical-scan unit. Voters insert a full-size paper ballot into the system and make their selections on a touch-screen. The machine marks their selections on the ballot before returning the ballot to voters. The ballot is then passed through an optical scanner and tabulated. The machine has been touted as an answer to both the accessibility issues involving disabled voters and the verification issues around paperless touch-screen machines since the machines include audio for blind voters and use a full-size paper ballot that voters can verify before submitting it to be scanned and tabulated.
ES&S has been the focus of much attention in recent months. Last week Dan Rather Reports disclosed that the company was assembling its touchscreen machines in a sweatshop factory in Manila, the Philippines. The company's touch-screen machines are also at the core of a disputed election in Sarasota, Florida."

"Odds"#6- 9 - And there remain the "oddities" about the Board of Voting Machine Examiners itself:

• "Odd #6 - In this 6/29 post on this site, you'll see the question asked if this Board's composition should be following the recently passed Sub. HB350 - including one more member, (4 total) with two of the members chosen by members of the OH legislature of the opposite party than the SoS (not all chosen by the SoS.) The question remains.

But maybe not yet? - Until the Legislature returns from their summer recess and can pick their choices? - though this is the second meeting called for this Board of Voting Machine Examiners this month - an unusually high frequency (& "oddly" timed.)

After the June 29th post on this site, referred to above, an election integrity activist wrote me (without permission to post her message, so I didn't) saying that it seemed "too soon" for Sub HB350 to have gone into effect, and further, that it didn't have the Governor's signature yet.
I point out again that I believe that passed legislation can go into effect without the Governor's signature, and the 10-day waiting time for that on this Bill ended on 6/17/08.

Also re: SubHB350's adoption, it seems from Secretary Brunner's own report on the March election, (http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/PressReleases/2008 Press Releases/2008-06-11.aspx) that she acknowledges that other provisions of that law are already in effect:

"Newly adopted legislation supported by the secretary of state would allow absentee ballots absentee ballots received within 10 days after the election that bear a postmark prior to Election Day to be counted by the board of elections. Further instruction on this new law's implementation will be provided on this new law’s implementation will be provided to boards of elections via advisory and/or directive prior to the general election. "

Why not this provision of the Bill, about the Board of Voting machine Examiners? It is making for a busy summer for them.

• "Odd" #7 - And re: the busy Board of Voting Machine Examiners summer, since taxpayers are paying each of the three current members $300 per meeting, (minimum $900 per gathering;) and the two issues they're dealing with have been known for months, and we're not yet sure which of them has the tech expertise to assess and certify equipment, might it not seem less odd to not only time these meetings BEFORE counties make critical purchase decisions, but also to combine issues, and deal with more than one at a time? (Hey besides the minimum $1800 we're spending for the two July gatherings, look at the just the gas they'd save.)

• "Odd"#8 - And is it not "odd", that on July 10 we still don't have any minutes of what happened at our $900, July 3, BoVMEx meeting online? That we, who are not paid for the day and travel expenses to Columbus, still don't easily know exactly what happened/what was decided about the Hart InterCivic card readers?

I understand from someone who IS able to get information from the SoS office, that those card readers were "approved" at that meeting and thus, the already certified Hart voting equipment is good to go in OH.

Also to clear up another item that the same election integrity activist sent, this was NOT a question about Hart's memory cards used to gather votes.
It was seemingly a question (or non-question) about their card readers, as the SoS press release states.
In a call to Hart on July 2, a spokesperson explained to me that their changed card reader had already been federally certified; that the Secretary of State had been notified, per the law, early in '08, if not late in '07; that Hamilton County (the only OH county using Hart) had also been much earlier notified, as required by law; that, (I would have to assume with the Secretary of State's knowledge,) Hart even supplied Hamilton with a few of these new card readers to use for their March 4 election; and that because of all the prior compliances/acceptances, Hart was only planning to attend the July 3 meeting by phone. Altogether, the previous series of events seems to possibly make the 7/3 BofVMEx meeting rather superfluous. How "odd"!

• "Odd"#9 - And finally here, as pointed out a few times above - does it seem odd to you too, that while the current 3 selectees for Brunner's Board of Voting Machine Examiners may be qualified for their current election official position, that people who are not independent from the SoS office or partisan alignments, and especially who don't hold firm qualifications and expertise in electronic election technology, are the people who are certifying our equipment for Ohio? The same equipment that independent scientists have found can be easily manipulated by those who do know, to create desired election results - whether touchscreens or paper ballots.

So what's next? I'll post here the ES&S contract when I receive it - and maybe portions of the Commissioners' meeting tape.

But just as my momma used to say, "When things look "odd", they usually aren't. You're just not asking the right questions, or focusing on the right issues."

What questions do you think need to be asked? Of whom?

A "Cluster Gl*!tch?" Or has this Blog site been blocked from County servers?

2008-07-10T14:52:00.014-05:00

As I prepare more video for posting (so you can see it for yourself;) and wait and wait, and remind and wait - for both the Secretary of State's office and the Cuyahoga BOE to comply with the law, and "promptly" fill a few simple public records requests in a month or less, another rather interesting issue has come up.

A few people who work at County agencies, including at the CCBOE, have (separately) recently told me that within the past few weeks they suddenly have not been able to access this blog site from their work computers.
The message that has appeared said "access denied" (- in a system I understand to have various levels of internet accessing freedoms - depending on job title and/or hierarchy.)

Is this just another temporary "glitch" in the County computer system?
Or could it be true that this site is being blocked from CCBOE and other county workers' office internet access?

If it's the latter - and Lord help us all, if things have gotten so low - I invite you readers send me your comments about why you think someone(s) would want to block their workers' access here.

To help get to the materiality of the matter, if you're a county worker, and are reading here from work, please send me a comment (under the name you choose) and let me know that all is well again with free access here ( a grandma's election integrity site - hardly retail, gaming or "entertainment." )

And if you're a tech genius, also please send me a comment about confirming or denying any blockage to this site from Cuyahoga County (and/or Ohio's state) servers.

Will let all know what we find out....

Will all of Ohio (“need to”) migrate to ES&S?

2008-06-30T04:29:00.011-05:00

We're wondering at how the electronic election system vendor fates are lining up in Ohio:

a Diebold /Premier lawsuit against Cuyahoga, making them a seeming political as well as seeming competence/ethical liability;
the 6/20/08 decision by the CCBOE, the largest of Ohio counties, to adopt the more expensive, less popular system, ES&S system over Hart InterCivic
the possible plans of Hart to also take legal action – in this case, non-pre-emptive, but to legally pursue the still lingering questions from the CCBOE decision to not choose their lower and seemingly best bid.
SoS Brunner’s planned gathering the Board of Voting Machine Examiners on 7/3/08 to possibly release evidence of some Hart deficiency, after the CCBOE bidding and procurement decision

Which also leaves a lingering question:
What about Hamilton County’s continued seemingly enjoyed use of Hart. Might they need to change too?

Former Hamilton Director, John M. Williams after Cincinnati’s exhaustive search, chose and seems to like that company. See video of him explaining voting, and showing the now possibly SoS-questioned Hart “card reader" here. Other news articles, including the one near the bottom of this post echo his Hart approval.

The Hamilton Cnty. BOE Shuffle
However, on June5, ’08 the Hamilton County BOE board underwent it’s own shuffle, like some others during Brunner’s reign, (see PD editorial about claimed Brunner partisanship “meddling”, anti-Rep. actions, Hands On to a Fault, here or here.)
That Hamilton action, which took place just weeks ago, on June 5, 2008, made R- John Williams the Deputy Director (assistant,) now answering to his former Elections Administrator, now Hamilton County Director, D- Sally Krisel.
It also made Alex Triantafilou, the Hamilton County GOP chair, also the Hamilton BOE chairman, having him slip into the post held by Tim Burke, the county Dem chair, who became No. 2. (Under OH law, the BOE must be comprised of 2 D’s and 2 R’s; the BOE Chair and Director need to be of opposite parties; as do the Director and the Deputy Director.)

Because of the shuffle's odd timing- after the March 4 Primary - and its quietness to the public, this also might lead to additional questions about "meddling" (as the PD editorial called it) and/or mandates.

Though I may yet need to learn of additional laws, or SoS Directives that might apply here, we do have Brunner’s Directive 2008-31 about BOE “reorganizations” dated February 28, 2008. It reminds all Ohio boards that they are required to "reorganize" between March 2, 2008 and March 6, 2008, in the manner provided in R.C. 3501.09, and includes some further instructions. It says in part:

DIRECTIVE 2008-31 February 28, 2008 To: All County Boards of Elections
Re: Reorganization meeting

Reorganization
Boards of Elections are required to "reorganize" between March 2, 2008 and March 6, 2008, in the manner provided in R.C. 3501.09. You should carefully follow the procedures stated in this section to assurc that your county board's reorganization is properly conducted. Prior to conducting the meeting at which board reorganization takes place board members should review Directive 2007-01 regarding the minimum qualit1eations of directors and deputy directors. These qualifications should be considered desired attributes of those persons being nominated for those positions, but individuals who are being renominated for their current positions or where the board is nominating a current director for the deputy direct position and/or vice versa, no newspaper advertising is necessary to prepare the board to fill the position.
-snip-

Natural questions must follow:

Was this the second or first 2008 “reorganization” for the Hamilton County BOE ?
Under what laws, or directions/why was the late-May announced/June-effected reorganization done?

Also, the excellent Plain Dealer journalist who covers the Cuyahoga board, Joe Guillen, quoted now former Hamilton Director Williams on June 16, 2008 - in the midst of the CCBOE’s seeming “Is it ES&S or Hart” procurement decision.

His 6/16 article about Cuyahoga (http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/06/elections_chief_wants_board_to.html) titled Elections chief wants new equipment bought this week, stated:

…(Cuyahoga Director) “Platten favors Election Systems & Software, which supplied the scanners for the successful March primary, but that company carries the higher price tag. The firm's proposal includes a rental price for November because its more modern, digital scanners won't be available until 2009.

Hart InterCivic, the other company considered, has digital scanners available for fall -- and the lower cost.

Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, has used Hart scanners since 2006. Elections Director John Williams said the county hasn't had problems. Williams pointed out that Hart was the first company to have its digital scanners certified in Ohio.

"Hart's doing what everyone else is trying to do," he said.”

In Guillen's June 27 PD article, “Voting machine company (I add - Hart) questions pick of Cuyahoga board (I add -ES&S)” Guillen quotes Platten as having talked to the Hamilton deputy director many times, but she apparently did not mention former Director, John Williams’ name.

So when considering Hamilton County's BOE and their use of Hart InterCivic, and the larger question of this post, - will all of Ohio migrate to ES&S? - maybe the next questions need to be whether or not the recent Hamilton BOE shuffle is at all related? - Asked of the Hamilton County board members, and of Sally Kisler , new Director of the Hamilton BOE.

Though the blogs tell us she’s an "Obama girl," it seems that before any more Ohio counties possibly pour more Ohio taxpayer millions into electronic election system vendors pockets, seemingly mostly heading ES&S’s way, maybe we should be asking now:

How far at “serving at the pleasure of the Secretary of State," does Kisler see her new role?
And what does she currently think of Hamilton’s Hart InterCivic experience? What does she think of ES&S?

In truly fair citizen's elections, is any official's "meddling," "too much meddling"?

2008-06-30T04:12:00.010-05:00

Can citizen's elections be truly free and fair where there is any meddling - partisan or not - from election officials?
Last Sunday, the Plain Dealer published the below editorial about SoS Brunner, written obviously from a Republican bias. If the facts stripped of bias are true, however, might this still be considered "too much" meddling from a state's chief election official, especially in a state where all election officials are legally to serve at the Secretary of State's pleasure?
Regarding OSU law Professor Foley's quote at the end : "Election management is an area where appearance is reality." - might it also be possible that a major difference in the public's perception of the fairness of one SoS administration to the next, lies not only in the party alignment of the perceivers, but also greatly in the administration's ability to create a convincing apparent-reality?

http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1214037102320080.xml&coll=2
Hands-on, to a fault
Secretary of State Brunner is much too willing to meddle in partisan affairs in places far from her Columbus office
Sunday, June 22, 2008

Ohio's highest court had to remind Jennifer Brunner this week that voters chose her to be their secretary of state - not the chairman of the Summit County Republican Party.
And with that reprimand, Brunner, every bit the Democrat, moved a bit closer to cementing her reputation as an overly partisan overseer of Ohio's elections.
After Brunner essentially fired longtime Akron-area GOP boss Alex Arshinkoff from the Summit County Board of Elections earlier this year, the party's executive committee named former Hudson City Council President Brian Daley as Arshinkoff's replacement. But Brunner wasn't satisfied. She rejected Daley's appointment and instead named Akron attorney Don Varian to fill the Republican seat on the four-member panel.
Not only was Varian's appointment applauded - and perhaps suggested - by prominent Akron-area Democrats, but Varian was also involved in what turned out to be a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to remove Arshinkoff as Summit County's powerful and polarizing Republican boss.
In a 4-3 ruling that itself may have had political overtones, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered Brunner to remove Varian from the vote board and to comply with the wishes of the Summit County GOP and appoint Daley to the job.
Brunner is a talented officeholder who resigned a safe judicial seat in Columbus to seek the job of secretary of state.
And from her Republican predecessor, Ken Blackwell, she inherited an often inefficient, poorly run election system.
So if the Summit County mess was the first time Brunner had played politics with the operation of a county election board, she'd probably earn a pass on any suggestion that she had overstepped her authority in this case. But Brunner's penchant for meddling with local election officials has become habitual.
Blackwell was a big-picture intruder who tried to use issues like gay marriage to influence the outcomes of elections. Brunner has become a micro-meddler with a disturbing tendency to mess with Republicans involved in local election matters. Republicans in Summit, Cuyahoga, Allen, Franklin, Lawrence and Hardin counties have experienced it. And voters throughout Ohio should be worried about it.
In February, Brunner fired Allen County's respected elections director, Keith Cunningham, from the state's Board of Voting Machine Examiners. The reason: Cunningham had the audacity to disagree with her on her proposal to decertify touch-screen voting systems. A few weeks later, Brunner thumbed her nose at the public's right to know by trying to avoid testifying in the Summit County case. Failing that, she tried to keep her testimony private.
Earlier this year, when concerns were first being noted about Brunner's partisanship, Ohio State University law school Professor Edward Foley warned, "Election management is an area where appearance is reality.
It's not good enough just to be fair. You've got to be perceived as fair."
Brunner is on her way toward failing the perception test.

© 2008 The Plain Dealer
© 2008 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

Should SoS Brunner's July Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners Meeting Follow the OH Legislature's Recently-Passed Sub.HB350?

2008-06-29T17:10:00.017-05:00

In addition to questions about the possibility of Secretary Brunner calling a meeting of her Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners to possibly release some deficiencies of Hart InterCivic's equipment - almost two weeks AFTER the CCBOE's bidding process which included Hart and ES&S - and which ended with ES&S's higher bid, and partly non-certified equipment getting adopted, another question comes to mind.

Should this Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners meeting now be following the new composition rules, as set out in this month's OH Legislature, pre-summer-recess passage of Sub. HB350 ? (And what exactly are the qualifications for this Ohio certifying board that would seem to necessitate proper scientific expertise, similar to the tradition of EVEREST, for proper OH certification?)

In addition to making many key changes to Ohio elections, this now enrolled, huge bill proposed to amend ORC 3506.05, re: the composition of the Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners -

to include 4 members, not 3;
only 2 of whom are selected by the Secretary of State, not all;
and with the 2 others (also presumably found qualified,) to be selected by leading members of the OH House and Senate, who are of the opposite political party from the SoS.

The SoS press release in the previous post, however, lists the names of only the 3 only-Brunner selectees, Davis-Chappell, Fellows, and Moots; and includes the one replacement for the Allen County BOE Director, R-Keith Cunningham, whose position on this Board some say she terminated because of his disagreement with her position on touchscreen voting, some say on more partisan or personal grounds, some say a combination.

More specifically, I copy below only a small part of Sub. HB350 in this regard:

(B) No voting machine, marking device, automatic tabulating equipment, or software for the purpose of casting or tabulating votes or for communications among systems involved in the tabulation, storage, or casting of votes shall be purchased, leased, put in use, or continued to be used, except for experimental use as provided in division (B) of section 3506.04 of the Revised Code, unless it, a manual of procedures governing its use, and training materials, service, and other support arrangements have been certified by the secretary of state and unless the board of elections of each county where the equipment will be used has assured that a demonstration of the use of the equipment has been made available to all interested electors. The secretary of state shall appoint a board of voting machine examiners to examine and approve equipment and its related manuals and support arrangements. The board shall consist of one competent and experienced election officer and two persons who are knowledgeable about the operation of such equipment, who four members, who shall be appointed as follows:

(1) Two members appointed by the secretary of state.

2) One member appointed by either the speaker of the house of representatives or the minority leader of the house of representatives, whichever is a member of the opposite political party from the one to which the secretary of state belongs.

(3) One member appointed by either the president of the senate or the minority leader of the senate, whichever is a member of the opposite political party from the one to which the secretary of state belongs.

In all cases of a tie vote or a disagreement in the board, if no decision can be arrived at, the board shall submit the matter in controversy to the secretary of state, who shall summarily decide the question, and the secretary of state's decision shall be final. Each member of the board shall be a competent and experienced election officer or a person who is knowledgeable about the operation of voting equipment and shall serve during the secretary of state's term. Any vacancy on the board shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment. The secretary of state shall provide staffing assistance to the board, at the board's request.

For the member's service, each member of the board shall receive three hundred dollars per day for each combination of marking device, tabulating equipment, and voting machine examined and reported, but in no event shall a member receive more than six hundred dollars to examine and report on any one marking device, item of tabulating equipment, or voting machine. Each member of the board shall be reimbursed for expenses the member incurs during an examination or during the performance of any related duties that may be required by the secretary of state. Reimbursement of these expenses shall be made in accordance with, and shall not exceed, the rates provided for under section 126.31 of the Revised Code.

Neither the secretary of state nor the board, nor any public officer who participates in the authorization, examination, testing, or purchase of equipment, shall have any pecuniary interest in the equipment or any affiliation with the vendor.

-snip-

Too large a topic to thoroughly delve into here - and which some title an "election reform" bill - Sub.HB350 also also includes other changes very pertinent to this current discussion about which voting system vendors (and which election officials?) can get "approved" under the Brunner's administration. For instance, the bill makes changes to the certification requirements for all Ohio voting equipment purchased after December, 2008, (except that which is additional to what is already in hand) needing to meet the most current federal certification requirements.

Since Sub.HB350 is shown as "enrolled" by this 127th Ohio Congress; and though still without Strickland's signature, shows that governor's-signature 10-day waiting time ended on 6/17/08 maybe someone here can comment on when and how this bill actually goes into effect; and whether this SoS July meeting of her Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners about Hart qualifications should be following the bill's provisions and/or the spirit of them.

Is SoS Brunner Assembling the Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners to Release Evidence About Some Hart Deficiency?-AFTER the CCBOE Procurement Decision?

2008-06-28T15:17:00.010-05:00

Is SoS Brunner Assembling the Bd. of Voting Machine Examiners on 7/3 to possibly release evidence about some Hart deficiency - AFTER the CCBOE bidding process and the 6/20/08 procurement decision?

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/PressReleases/2008%20Press%20Releases/VotingMachineExaminersMeet.aspx

Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners to Meet 6/27/2008 For Immediate Release:

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Ohio Board of Voting Machine Examiners will meet on Thursday, July 3 at 9 a.m. in the 15th floor conference room of the Continental Plaza, 180 E. Broad St. in Columbus.

The board will be considering the following issue: Whether the Hart Card Reader Model No. HVS CR 3100 may be used with the Hart InterCivic voting system in replacement of commercial off-the-shelf PCMCIA memory card reader/writers initially deployed with the certified Hart voting equipment.

This meeting is open to the public.

The board is comprised of the following members: Inajo Davis Chappell, a member of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections; Dale Fellows, a member of the Lake County Board of Elections, and David R. Moots, a member of the Union County Board of Elections.

-30-

Media Contacts: Jeff Ortega, Assistant Director of Communications, Media, 614-466-0473 Kevin Kidder, Media Relations Coordinator, 614-995-2168

********************

Will Hart Legally Pursue Their Questions About the 6/20 CCBOE Purchase Decision?

2008-06-28T14:25:00.006-05:00

Will Hart Legally Pursue Their Questions About the 6/20 CCBOE Purchase Decision?

The PD, 6/27/08:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/06/voting_machine_company_questio.html

Voting machine company questions pick of Cuyahoga board
Posted by Joe Guillen June 27, 2008 19:22PM

The CEO of a Texas-based voting machine company says he still wants to know why the Cuyahoga County Board Elections bypassed his equipment in favor of a system that will cost taxpayers an extra $5 million.

Hart InterCivic President and CEO Gregg Burt on Friday criticized the board's selection process, a week after the board voted to spend $13.4 million for scanners from another company. County commissioners still must approve the deal.

"I have yet to hear a logical reason why we weren't selected," Burt said. "The taxpayers deserve an answer for this."

The board voted 3-1 to deal with Election Systems & Software. Members cited a recommendation from Elections Director Jane Platten, who preferred ES&S because its equipment worked well during the March primary.

Burt said he believed Platten's decision was made before Hart's proposal was even evaluated. "She didn't look at us at all," he said.

Burt said he has written letters expressing his dismay to the county commissioners and has hired a lawyer to examine the selection process.

None of the four board members, during public sessions, doubted Hart's equipment could do the job in November.

According to board projections, the county would save $5.3 million over five years by picking Hart. ES&S would lease equipment for the fall and sell more modern ballot scanners to the county in 2009.

Burt said he is amazed Cuyahoga picked a significantly more expensive voting system.

Board of Elections Chairman Jeff Hastings seemed equally befuddled the night of the board's vote. "Clearly, as a public official, I'm looking for the lowest bid," he said then.

The board was to pick the company with the "lowest and best" proposal, according to evaluation criteria set by members.

Platten defended her recommendation on Friday. "We chose the best and most proven company to execute our voting system," she said. "Hart is unproven in Cuyahoga County."

Hamilton County has used Hart machines without complaint since 2006.

County commissioners, who control the board's budget, are in negotiations with ES&S to finalize the deal. Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones said ES&S' higher price was a concern.

But Commissioner Tim Hagan echoed Platten's recommendation: "You can't afford a shot in the dark in a presidential election," he said. "We know what we've got" with ES&S.

Besides a cost savings, Burt said there are other reasons to select Hart. The company offered certified digital ballot scanners while ES&S' equipment for November is less modern. Some Cuyahoga staff members recommended Hart to the board.

If the commissioners complete the deal with ES&S, the county will receive digital scanners next year, once they are certified for use in Ohio. But if ES&S' newer equipment isn't certified by then, the county would buy the company's less modern equipment and get a $1.4-million refund.

Burt said the uncertainty surrounding the ES&S equipment should have worked in his company's favor.

"It seems the Board of Elections is open to betting taxpayer dollars on the hope that a new uncertified product will soon become certified," he said.

Burt said Platten never visited any of Hart's customers, notably Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati.

Platten said she talked with Hamilton's deputy elections director many times. Hart employees also spent two days with Cuyahoga's elections staff before the board's decision.

"We went through an exhaustive process," she said.

Was the ES&S Contract Selection Predetermined? (or is "class," openness & saving taxpayer millions just not a good fit in Cuyahoga politics?)

2008-06-21T10:01:00.121-05:00

In this the world of Ohio and Cuyahoga politics, so much for what appeared to be a really great start at a due diligence comparison between two electronic voting system vendors, ES&S and Hart InterCivic.

In the following clip, you can hear a portion of the positives the two Democratic board members said last night in their "apology speeches" to Hart, for once again appearing to execute their seeming baseline job - making sure, (by 2/2 tie-vote blocking, or by promoting,) that SoS Brunner gets what Brunner wants in Cuyahoga. In this case, it seems that preference may have been ES&S people and technology winning the (more expensive) multi-million dollar, years long contract, and in control for November's presidential election.

Below we'll begin to explore some general questions:

I. Did the Ohio SoS and Cuyahoga Commissioners maintain a preference for ES&S and its voting equipment prior to the formal procurement process in Cuyahoga?

R-Rob Frost, after 11pm, cast the first tie-breaking vote in over 6 months on such similar vendor matters - voting yes on Dem-McNair's second motion for ES&S-adoption, but a motion that leaves the Commissioners to come to money/performance/warranty terms with the ES&S.
Apparently the board could not accomplish arriving at agreeable contractual terms with ES&S yesterday, in their hours of executive session attempts - though they adopted the company - and though their completed negotiations with the other company, Hart, took only minutes (as at the 6/12 meeting.)
Frost, apparently OK with both systems- though having opened the late-night, public, decision-making portion of the 5pm meeting with a motion, to choose Hart InterCivic - he, in the end, voted yes on the second McNair motion, seemingly in part, to move on; and to demonstrate that the board could make such a decision without another Secretary of State's direct intervention (- breaking another tie as she did in January, which caused all central count and got ES&S firmly planted in Cuyahoga's pocketbooks and vote tabulation.) Chair, Jeff Hastings cast the one dissenting vote.
After the meeting, Frost answered the PD's Joe Guillen's question about the the public's sense of inevitability of another 2/2 tie, and Brunner breaking it, getting her ES&S "win." Frost affirmed that ES&S has been Brunner's "preference" for Cuyahoga for November:
It should be noted that this seeming SoS preference did not come after Cuyahoga's supposedly easy transition into ES&S for March's supposedly "successful" election - which was one "reason" put forth last night for again choosing ES&S for November. Another was how much the staff had already learned from them and about their equipment.
What is characterized as ES&S's excellent service for our transition, could also be perceived as a their tax-paid windfall, where the company made sure the wind kept blowing their way:
Pictured directly below:
The $1500/day, each, 18-20 ES&S people who were in Cuyahoga, running our scanners, one running the tabulator, from 3/2 through 3/5 for absentee and polling ballot scanning.
(Below, from an Observer's "view" through chain link fence, ES&S huddles after the first day of absentee scanning, 3/2. What is now being termed ES&S "good service" could seem more like an ES&S goldmine.

Below (from the roped Observer's "view" in the tabulator area) we have the ES&S ($1500/day) Project Manager still - on 5/1/08, at the end of the post-election's "audit" from March - the only one running and understanding the results-tabulator, while CCBOE personnel must only watch the non-thoroughly understood workings.

And below, an interim shot, on 3/29 near the end of the first day of the official count of absentee ballots. Though CCBOE personnel was running the scanners that time, (film to be posted) while an avalanche of ballot "remakes" was rather inexplicably being necessitated, with the "overvote button turned on" unlike when the ES&S people ran the scanners, (to be explained in another post) - here you will see the two ($1500/day each) ES&S workers (at right) - running the all important tabulator, (also there fixing mal-working scanners;) while Brian Cleary, the highly competent CCBOE Ballot Dept. Assist. Manager, stands to the left, required to ask ES&S for what he needs.

********************
It seems that Brunner possibly "preferred" ES&S even in Dec./Jan. when she (let's face it) "forced" a board vote, then "broke the 2/2 tie" for "all central count with high speed central scanners" uniquely here, (and in 2 very small counties who may have gotten state money for new machines) - which for March, got ES&S's "foot firmly in Cuyahoga's door" - with the no-alternative "choice" of ES&S "high-speed," (and very "legacy" optical technology) machines. (Hart's are called "high volume.")
Pictures: directly below you can see some of the equipment in question:
ES&S M650 optical scanner, top, a front view.
Directly below, M650 from back (with inside opened & with dot matrix printers below,) while a third $1500/day ES&S service person is again fixing "pick belts," "read heads" and more, inside one of the 15 scanners. CCBOE Ballot Adminstratro is center,watching. CCBOE staff did not fix any of frequent scanner failures.

This is the Hart/Kodak digital central scanner:

**********************************
Lets review just a few dates, keeping in mind that we've been told that it was the scientific findings of the 3-month, (Sept. '07 - December '07) $1.9M, tax-paid EVEREST study that caused Sec. Brunner to (lets face it) "force" Cuyahoga (uniquely among the OH 88 counties) into "a transition to paper ballots" last March, and into all central-count, with a no other alternative choice than ES&S M650 scanners, Unity tabulator, thus also their people.
1. December 7, 2007 EVEREST Report release (and prior?)
  Brunner seemed to "prefer" ES&S before the Everest report was done last December (actually, possibly even before it started,) exemplified in the report's 86 page " Executive Summary," the last 10 pages of which are the SoS "Recommendations" - for which one is hard pressed to find relationship to, let alone support from, the actual Everest findings themselves.
  (Though I may have missed it, I could no longer locate the link for that particular "Executive Summary" on the SoS's new website. You can download the "legacy" copy here.)
  In those "Recommendations" then, she had already recommended the ES&S AutoMark, for every OH county for ADA access (though not supported by Everest findings)- which would also necessitate most other ES&S equipment - and oddly, she even showed the AutoMark price in those "Recommendations."
2. January 14, 2008 - In her Directive 08-17, a statewide survey of voting equipment and costs, "oddly" she was particularly surveying what ES&S M650's and AutoMarks, were already in hand throughout the state - not also specifically listing other vendors' equipment. (see page 5.)
3. January 17, 2008 - the Secretary breaks the Cuyahoga board's 2/2 tie vote for central count with ES&S in March, against the board's other suggested choice - to take more time to think through the huge change and the only one-ES&S "option", and need to implement in less than 2 months: to investigate vendors and equipment within 75 days after the March election, then make a decision.
4. March 4, 2008 - May 2, 2008
  When ES&S principals were in Cuyahoga for March, they stated that they were going back to Columbus to meet with the SoS again before going home to Omaha. And Jerry, the Project Manager seen above, said with some certainty on his last day (5/2) from the Primary election in Cuyahoga, "I'll be back."
But let's go even earlier:
It appears that Secretary Brunner and the Cuyahoga County Commissioners probably had prior visits by ES&S representatives as exemplified by:
1. 9/25/07 - An ES&S proposal, dated 9/25/07 was presented to the Commissioners, before Everest even started, apparently in reply to a request for a "transition plan" to paper ballots - though at least no one with whom I've spoken knows of any publicly made RFP or other announcement at that time; it seems that no other bidders were had; and the public at CCBOE did not seem to know of any vendor bidding then. (In fact 5 days before, on 9/20, the board was holding "a public technology" forum, where we were speaking about the prospect of the Everest study beginning and about the then-current vendor, Diebold/Premier.)
  That there had been discussion with the Dem. Commissioners before 9/25/07 about ES&S moving into Cuyahoga seems apparent from the last page of the 8-page proposal, starting with "Confirm transition plan...."
  
  The date is on the first page of the proposal and interestingly, you'll also see handwritten there the approximate same $13+M amount they are charging Cuyahoga now; but you'll also find the same equipment proposal for then as now, the M100's, traded for DS200's, except the latter were being promised ready for the May '08 election, and now they're being promised to be ready for the May '09 election. (There is talk that ES&S ran out of optical precinct scanning equipment to deliver to Cuyahoga for the March '08 election. Is that true? an excuse for something else? Is that why Cuyahoga had to move to very election-risky, all central count ?? ....with the 15 "gulag-looking/sounding" "legacy" scanners that the board wants to buy now?)
2. 9/10/07 - Just to confirm that EVEREST could not have prompted that 9/25/07 proposal for the "transition to paper ballots" - that date was only 15 days after the date of the Everest testers contracts, 9/10/07. Here, you can download 2 of those contract attachments to the SoS application to the OH Controlling Board for the $1.9 M funding of the not-yet started study, both dated 9/10/07 - the December results of which is said to have led the way to her push the "transition."
  
  (Note: Paper ballots still are electronic elections run by proprietary, secret, manipulatable software. Though one may not actually cast a vote electronically, the software (and the people programming, running and controlling it) is doing the all important vote recording and counting, that determine the electronic reports that tell us our "winners.")
II. Is there a connection from the SoS to the Commissioners to ES&S? In Dem circles (I've been a lifelong, "pleb" registered Dem...) the SoS/Commissioner connection seems a given.
- Aside from any other possible dealings, also enter Tom Hayes, (pictured in the ES&S mono-shirted "huddle" near the top of this post, the tallest near the rear.) He's a former CCBOE Director; November '06 CCBOE "project manager" selected and pulled in by former chair of the board, R-Bob Bennett & D-Commissioners, for about $60K for 4 months work, so Michael Vu could stay on, salaried/could "resign"/not let any cats out of any bags/ and so an election could happen.
  Until recently Hayes' LNE Group was a lobbyist for the Cuy. Commissioners; and in an overlapping position, he is still a lobbyist for ES&S.
(These politics are not really about D's or R's, they are about power, money and control - apparently even of "elections" - one of the biggest "tipping points." It would be interesting, but probably impossible, to actually see how the Commissioners (and maybe the SoS) negotiate the "you give me this and I'll give you that" "coming to Cuyahoga contract terms" with ES&S now.)

III. And what about the Director's recommendations for ES&S? - to acquire the more expensive system "because the county had a successful March 4 primary using the company's equipment, which the county had rented;" and to "build upon what we have now"?
- First, it is to be noted that under Ohio law, just as election boards are mandated to be comprised of 2 D's and 2 R's, (allowing 2/2 tie votes and the Secretary breaking them for own wishes to manifest;) also regarding all Ohio election officials, the law states they are there to "serve at the pleasure of" the (non-overseen,) chief election official, the Secretary of State. That means their literal jobs, and support for, or negation of whatever they do comes from that one office. A peek into that culture shows that status-quo seems ongoingly engendered.
- Also, having been at the 40th street Warehouse space a majority of days as an election Observer, where the counting, recounting, and auditing were happening following the March election, and where the equipment is used and stored, I can state that both the Director and the Deputy Director were there only very rarely - (unlike former elections, with all tasks at Euclid & 30th) and almost as if they didn't want to know how their supposed "success" was being created. They didn't really see the equipment and the ES&S techs in real action, and the lack of learning for the staff/the amount of ES&S control that was fostered.
- Also, it is to be noted, as in a previous post, that in informal talks with many attending the 6/20 procurement meeting and those before, during the board's closed-door sessions - including some from the CCBOE Ballot staff who actually must use the equipment to make our ballots and get our election results - the vast majority preferred the Hart system and people, mostly because they seemed so much more honest; less expensive; having priorities and capabilities that match fair election priorities, and Cuyahaoga's ability to become independent from them; and because they made it easier to learn and use.
- And what's the Director's connection to the SoS, the Commissioners, and Hayes? She came to the CCBOE from an administrative position in the Commissioners' office, and is a friend with Hayes.
And the beat goes on... and on...and on...

And so last night's 6/20/08 meeting went. Almost the first 5 hours were spent in board executive session, and the lawyers coming to agreeable terms with each vendor - with Hart, briefly; with ES&S, still unfinished.

Here's what Joe Guillen of the PD wrote after the meeting. (He toughed the wait out, along with CCBOE managers, a few others, and the vendors - with the SoS reps leaving a couple of hours in - to await a report....)
http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2008/06/cuyahoga_elections_board_picks.html
Cuyahoga Elections Board picks Election Systems & Software's $13.4 million scanning system
Posted by Joe Guillen June 21, 2008 08:32AM
Categories: Elections

The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections picked a new voting system Friday, but it will be up to the county commissioners to approve the deal.

After meeting for six hours, most of that time behind closed doors, the four-member board selected Election Systems & Software's $13.4 million ballot-scanning system. That system was chosen over another scanning system offered by Hart InterCivic for $9.7 million.

The board voted 3-1, with Republican Chairman Jeff Hastings casting the dissenting vote because of the cost. He said he had confidence in the other system.

At one point, the board deadlocked 2-2. Then the board reconvened behind closed doors and Republican Rob Frost changed his vote and sided with Democrats Sandy McNair and Inajo Davis Chappell.

Elections Director Jane Platten recommended the more expensive system because the county had a successful March 4 primary using the company's equipment, which the county had rented.

"Building upon what we have now, in my opinion, has less risk than starting from scratch less than four months before the presidential election," Platten said afterward. "It's time this agency has stability."

The commissioners, who meet next week, have the final say on the deal because they control the county's budget.

The new system will allow the county to scan ballots at the polls, which is a state law requirement that went into effect this year.

If you want to assess for yourself what just happened, both people and dynamic, that will be running Cuyahoga's November election and election results...and seemingly for years to come, see http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2008/06/61208-drillin-it-down-es-or-hart.html
including the film from the 6/12 meeting when it seemed there really was a choice; see the earlier, "6/10 The Vendor Choice Continues" which contains links to the interim bid packages; see other film here about the Cuyahoga's March election, (some yet to be posted;) as public information, request copies of the final contracts and bids, and discern for yourself; and see the film below.

(Note: For clarity, I am not saying that adopting Hart InterCivic would have been a certain Cuyahoga election panacea. But I can say that the vast majority of the people at the meeting (- except those cementing the $4-5M greater ES&S decision -) including staff who must use and run the equipment, preferred the Hart equipment and people - because of their ease of learning, handling; and even for the attending public, because of the Hart honesty and election priorities they felt had been presented.) In fact, that is not really the larger point of this post. Nor am I in any way connected to Hart, or certainly, to any other electronic election system vendor.

Here's the film of the short public parts of last night's, 6/20 meeting:

Clip 1

Clip 2

Just a few of the natural questions that must follow are:
- Why would a Secretary of State, or any other partisan official possibly hold a strong purchase "preference" for a particular electronic voting and tabulating system - all with unseen "counting," and potential for both "inside" and "outside" non-discoverable election results manipulation; all which would enrich a chosen vendor by varying millions with county tax-payer funds (ES&S the most) - for Ohio, and particularly for the largest voting district in the state, and particularly for the Presidential election ?
- What was the role, if any, of Tom Hayes in this procurement process and was there a conflict of interest?
- Exactly how were the contract terms with ES&S finally finalized with the Commissioners?
- What specific attributes of the ES&S proposal led the CCBOE to award the contract to ES&S, having exceeded the closest bid by $5M?

Cuyahoga "Successful" "Audit" of the "Successful" March "Election" - Part 3

2008-06-21T09:58:00.012-05:00

Audit posts, Part 1 , and Part 2 , can be found directly below.

Here you'll see some film of the audit after precinct selection and when the counting begins.
To be posted here at a later date will be a few conclusions about the necessity for thorough audit planning with unchanging protocols; how training & monitoring of the process of hand counting can be done to assure better and more uniform success; some suggestions about reconciling the hand count to the scanner printers' counts, and how those can be noted to assure transparency; about integration of witnesses and observers into the process, the only independent people there, with no vestment in proving their own processes and work; and more.

Also later, here or in another post, some reports from the audit, both pre-plans, and post- audit ones, and both independent ones, and those from the CCBOE will be posted.

The Audit Counting Begins

And continues, on 4/29/08

Then skipping some film of the next days (they were almost complete early in the second day) moving on, to near the audit end on 5/1/08:

Election Audits-Part 2: Precinct Sampling

2008-06-19T21:31:00.010-05:00

You can find Part 1, about the Cuy. audit directly below.

In the past year, I've had the pleasure of working with a group that began as fellow members of a "tech" sub-group of the Ohio SoS's Voting Rights Institute, and which was able to finally move forward and expand under their own steam and excellent shared leadership, with the facilitation of Cleveland's Ron Olson, to focus on preparing protocols for and relating the importance of election audits.
Now known as The Ohio Joint Audit Working Group, the team now also includes experts from across the nation. (A list of member names are listed on the two papers below.) Combining both historic-imperative and statistical perspectives, some have honed to a fine science, methods of election audit precinct selection that can vastly increase an audit's statistical confidence in election results, while also increasing efficiency, lessening workload, and cost.
The Joint Audit Working Group's February ,'08, White Paper can be downloaded by clicking here. The more detailed extension, June, '08 "Recommended Audit Procedures" can be downloaded here.

So for those particularly interested in the important topic of audit sample selection, or how long this 4/29 non-random, and non-statistically sound process took, partially driven by state directive, I post here the next 3 films of Cuyahoga's audit precinct selection.

More about the Cuyahoga's actual counting, reconciling and ending the audit in, Part 3, the next post.

The March "Audit"- Part 1

2008-06-19T15:54:00.027-05:00

Starting from an end point, between 4/29 and 5/1, Cuyahoga was one of 11 Ohio counties that conducted a "pilot" election "audit," per Secretary of State Directive 2008-39 - to boost "voter confidence" in the trustworthiness of electronic election equipment, and the success and accuracy of the March election. That audit too has been deemed "a success."

Though possibly a baby-step toward thinking about checking their work, and an actual audit – which even the Everest study showed should be mandatory - the CCBOE’s was hardly the “audit” that most people would normally assume.

It was more “a type of” recount, but one that had been actually strategized (though that part of the plan was not shared with witnesses,) to best make sure that the hand counts of each of the 99 precincts selected, would most certainly match the scanner totals – thus avoiding the prospect of having to do a full countywide hand count – and to best assure “success”!

The Directive said if on the second go-round the difference between the handcounts and scan counts was greater than 2 (which after counties got started was announced to have meant 2 per precinct…) a full hand count would have to ensue. (The CCBOE announced after they got started they had changed that to 5 because of their size. I actually thought that change was reasonable among all 7% of Cuyahoga’s 1436 precincts. What was not reasonable was the changing of “audit” “protocols” as workers felt needed, to assure success! - sometimes on the fly, and often not telling anyone.)

So they had the ES&S tech scan one precinct at a time, hardly as in an election environment: and suddenly began calling the M650 scanners, “THE tabulator” when “the tabulator” that was used throughout the election and which prepared the official final results was different software – it was the ES&S Unity software, held on a computer, where after M650 totals had been transferred to ZIP disk, were uploaded and Unity then processed the totals for a report to be printed out.

Though when I could not find the audit supervisor, I appealed to the Deputy Director that regular election software should be checked and used in the audit, and he agreed and told the supervisor to use Unity as the tabulator - after the Deputy Dir. left the warehouse in the morning (it’s not a great place to hang around) and before he returned later in the afternoon, they had begun again using the M650 scanners as the tabulators, printing out the precinct results one at a time from the dot-matrix printers below each scanner. The Deputy Director said nothing about the change. (?)

At the end of this film you’ll hear that interchange, (did not want to stick the camera in people's faces.) At the beginning you’ll see that though audit witnesses were invited to join and take part at 8:30a, the volunteer witnesses sat around wasting time that Tuesday workday morning, as the tech cleaned the scanners (and then they ran the zero reports and a 30-ballot test deck) until well after 10:30a.
You'll also hear both the " we're taking it slow" statement, and "we've got time constraints" statement when it came to uploading results to Unity.
I still wonder why the Unity software was avoided.
(Though it appeared that on the last day they did upload the totals to Unity, you'll be able to see on the final audit film in the next post, and though I've requested that Unity report, as of this date, June 19, I have not received it.)

Another part of the unannounced strategy to assure “audit” “success” was that someone decided that each of the selected precincts must be run on the same scanner that it was run on in the official count. The quote from the audit survey the CCBOE/the audit supervisor (?) sent to the SoS, (received there on May 11) was this suggestion for future audits.

“When using a highspeed OS scanner, the ballots should be scanned on the same unit used during the official canvass. (Example:ES&S M650) This will help with any calibration issues that might occur on units using a legacy type of calibration mechanism.”

(15 of these “legacy” type of calibration mechanisms is what the CCBOE is considering buying right now!)

He said it more clearly, when questioned, at the 5/8/08 board meeting, and which report sound somewhat glowing.

But before moving on to the next post about the audit, (found above,) lets look at the SoS Directive 08-39 re: precinct selection, and the corresponding film.
From the SoS Directive, as confusing and non-random this supposed "random" selection is:
3. The total number of votes cast, in the candidate races and question or issue elections being audited must be compared to the number of voters listed in the poll book, poll list, or signature poll book records by a team of at least two election officials, with each team having an equal numbers of members of the major political parties, including among the election officials conducting the comparison. These records must be available for visual inspection by observers. The observers shall not be permitted to handle the records. (I add, still to this date the poll books have not been reconciled, thus this step did not happen.)
4. Ballots must be checked for proper candidate position and to verify that each candidate's race or a question or issue has been properly identified. Observers may observe the inspection of the ballots.
5. Regular absentee ballot envelopes returned after the statutory deadline may be viewed by the observers. An observer may not see the actual ballot, only the envelopes, which must be sealed. ( I add that the audit supervisor misplaced and included only the last sentence in his incomplete audit plan, regarding Observers being able to see any ballots - again indicating as throughout the counting that he didn't want Observers looking at his ballots.)
6. Ballots must be handled only by the members of the board of elections, its director, deputy director or other designated employees of the board.
7. The Board must randomly select whole precincts whose total equals at least 7% of the total vote.
8. The ballots for these precincts will then be manually hand counted.
9. For the purposes of this directive, "randomly select" means the following:
a. Whole precincts shall be selected for the audit. NOTE: Each precinct's ballots shall include for the audit all relevant regular ballots (VVPAT and/or optical scan paper ballots), provisional ballots, and absentee ballots tallied and recorded as part of the official count. Sealed VVPAT canisters may be opened for the purposes of conducting the post election audit, even if there is not a recount in the precinct.
b. Enough precincts shall be selected for the audit whose total votes cast, when taken together, equal at least 7% of the total votes cast in the election at issue.
c. To select the first precinct for the recount, these steps should be followed:

Step 1: make an alphabetical list of all the named political subdivisions within the election district or race to be recounted (for example, if a county office race will be recounted, list of all the political subdivisions within the county in
alphabetical order);
Step 2: draw, by lot, one of the named political subdivisions from the alphabetical list created in Step 1 ("by lot" means to select one of the political subdivisions randomly, such as by placing all the names from the list in a hat and selecting one);
Step 3: create a numerical or alphabetical list of all precincts in the political subdivision selected under Step 2 that are within the election district to be recounted;
Step 4: draw, by lot, one of the precincts from the list created in Step 3. The precinct selected in Step 4 is the first precinct included in the hand recount.
d. If the precinct selected in Step 4 equals at least 7% of the total votes cast, you are not required to select another precinct for the first manual recount.
e. If additional precincts are required to reach the 7% threshold, these steps should be followed to select subsequent precincts:

Step 5: proceed to the next political subdivision after the political subdivision selected in Step 2 on the alphabetical list;
Step 6: determine the next higher precinct number, letter, or combination thereof, if any, after the precinct number selected in Step 4. If there is no next higher precinct number, letter, or combination thereof, choose the first precinct numerically, alphabetically or in combination. This precinct number for the
political subdivision selected in Step 5 will be the next precinct hand counted for the recount.
Step 7: If the two precincts selected from Steps 1 through 6 do not equal at least 7% of the total votes cast in the election at issue, repeat Steps 5 and 6 - using the most recently selected political subdivision and precinct number as the basis for moving sequentially to additional political subdivisions and precincts within those subdivisions - until enough precincts are selected. For example, the third precinct would be from the next political subdivision after the name of the second selected political subdivision on the alphabetical list. The precinct number would be the next higher number, letter, or combination thereof from the precinct number selected for the second political subdivision. Steps 2 through 7 should be repeated sequentially until at least 7% of the total votes cast in the election at issue has been selected. If the board reaches the end of the alphabetical list of political subdivisions or the end of the numerical, alphabetical or combination thereof list of precincts, it shall proceed to the beginning of the list and proceed forward in like manner continuing to use the procedures in Steps 2 through 6.
f. Important Points to Remember: If one precinct has been chosen from each political subdivision in the election district, and the sum of total votes cast remains less than 7% of the total votes cast in the election district, the board shall proceed by continuing to follow the alphabetical list in selecting a political -snip-

You will see that though this is what they said they did, it did not follow the directive, as stated - which because the directive was so skewed, made little difference to the audit by that time. What does make a difference is that the supervisor sat aside and didn't know then, and apparently still by 5/8, that they were not following the directive.
Here's film of the beginning of audit precinct selection:

More about"random" audit precinct selection and important counting and ending facts about the Cuyahoga audit in next 2 posts. (Part 2, precinct sampling)

What IS "An Election"?

2008-06-19T13:57:00.014-05:00

Some may wonder why in June, I'm still posting issues about March when most people are already on to the presidential election in November.

It's because the CCBOE March election has not really been properly completed yet, or thoroughly assessed for security and real improvement; and because the "officials", the security/process/and personnel management are the same as will be handling November's election.

It's important for more citizens to know, (and to protect against/attempt to get improved before November.)

I was a "certified" Observer for the March election, per ORC 3505.21; and helped recruit and train other volunteer Observers. (You can become one too.)

It's from an Observer's perspective - albeit often an unwelcome person just attempting to see anything, during the months of counting, verifying, reconciling and "auditing," (despite SoS Directive 2008-29 saying that Observers must be able to "closely watch and inspect") - that I will begin to offer just a few of the March-May topics and film - so you can see for yourself.

Warning: this perspective may not match what you may have read about in the papers, or heard about in speeches - about the "successful" March election.

And though my gut, reasonable "guesstimates," and general trust in just a few people (who though, still must follow orders from those way above them) tell me that that election wasn't "stolen"; the problem here is that no trust in our election results should need to depend on gut, guesstimates, and possible trust of one or two people. Every election deserves equal access of all valid voters attempting to participate, and transparent, provably accurate results. (For example, Cuyahoga's, and all counties' actual number's get totaled into state numbers, here, to make Ohio's "win." Just a bit of skew in a few BOE's, could make a huge difference nationwide.)

Though I, and the other stalwart Observer, were even there, for hours, sitting in the roped off "observer area" in the tabulation zone the night before the March certified results were made final (film of 4/3/08 yet to be posted,) I still can not attest to the certified numbers being an accurate tabulation of all and only valid voters' choices.
(In fact, since it had been determined that asking questions, like "What is the problem?" or "How did you resolve it? or "What are you doing?" was "impeding an election" - the oft-ascribed, always-hovering Observer "offense" that could get one thrown out - that night for those 3 hours, I wasn't even sure what the workers were doing at the scanners and our tabulator!

To me, that one fact makes almost all others, virtually moot.

And it makes me want to ask again - Just what do our boards think "an election" is?

What do you think "an election" is?

6/12/08 Drillin' It Down - ES&S or Hart?

2008-06-17T11:14:00.039-05:00

The CCBOE 6/12 reconvening of procurement meeting saw the CEO's of both ESS&S and Hart InterCivic there to answer more questions and continue negotiations.
Mr. Aldo Tesi, CEO of ES&S was there with his team; Mr. Gregg Burt, CEO of Hart, was there with his. The meeting proceeded mostly in the manner of the CCBOE asking a question, and then the two CEOs or a team member each took a turn answering.

This in many ways was an historic meeting for Cuyahoga.
The past board made their first "and firm" decision to buy Diebold touchscreens in Feb. '04, and continued "negotiations" in many executive sessions (where they kept the public in the hall for hours) and/or in some "public meetings" (which, in actuality, the public had no way of understanding the decisions were happening.)
The past board, rather than ask Diebold tough questions, or press Diebold into any compliance - even when they didn't fix their registration database that was deleting people and causing many errors; or didn't show up for a May train-the-trainer class; even when their $168/hour project manager did not come to board meetings, or when she came she had no answers (just more suggestions of more things to buy to remedy their past failures;) and even when their equipment was failing and falling in May '06 - the board refused to note failure rates; refused for two years to seriously listen to documentation about Diebold failures from across the U.S.; and even refused to let the public know when they were going to sign the unseen contract with Diebold, or how many pieces of equipment they were "firmly" planning to buy. (It was signed, unannounced, in private, on 11/11/05)
Instead, between May and November '06, in the face of (ignored and unadmitted) massive, poor direct experience, and massive numbers of very damning reports coming from scientists across the U.S. about Diebold, the board continued to listen to Diebold's "answers"; and at almost every board meeting, the board awarded Diebold another minimum $.5 million for senseless items, such as roll carts (with ignored very late delivery,) so the "fragile" machines would not break, privacy screens (like cardboard sunshields for car windows;) training (though Diebold failed at that in May, and Cuy. had already paid the Community College 3/4 of a million for training;) for 900 more machines - to (ahem....) back up the high number that were failing and breaking at the polls in May; etc.

The last evoting acquisition - for this past March - was a rather forced, and very (too) rapid one, with only one choice available, under the SoS's "firm" "preference," and old but current certification laws - the leasing of ES&S 's old, M650 central-count, non-digital scanners (the purchase of which, are part of the current ES&S proposal....)

This board did not have the time, space or alternatives to actually hold a vendor to more reasonable pricing, reasonable service ( the kind expected for a million dollars, not the kind we get because we pay them another almost another million for it, as happened in March '08,) reasonable warranties, etc.

This meeting is the first one that I've witnessed, certainly in Cuyahoga, where an elections board is actually doing due diligence for voters and taxpayers with elections equipment vendors - holding them to task, expecting "reasonable" (hard word to use in this context) pricing and service and warranties, putting forth penalties for non-performance, etc.
And if you watch the film below, you may agree with me that they are doing one heck of a good job! It was a pleasure to see that finally, someone is putting the small field of currently "certified" elections equipment vendors in their proper consumer company places - letting them know that a time of no choices, too little customer knowledge for "defense" etc. is fast closing, and they are not going to control a whole board, nor a whole county's elections and get paid exorbitant amounts for doing it.

Items on the table on 6/12 included such things as willingness to offer:

a "Most Favored Nation" clause (the best price offered anywhere,) the duration of that clause, and what items and/or services it would cover (equipment, licenses tech services, etc.);
locking in those prices and guarantees that they will be around to service the equipment for periods from 5 to 10 years; (Hart promised 10 years.)
the ability and cost to other equipment if the CCBOE decided to use different ADA devices than those proposed (both ADA solutions comprise a large part of each bid, neither provides a really good and workable, secure solution for the CCBOE;
(Hart proposes their 33 lb. touchscreen, eSlate, large for Cuy. polls, at $2+M, possibly offering similar difficulties to poll workers as Diebold's Tsx's in set-up & coding the proper ballot, and found one of the most insecure parts of the Hart equipment in both the EVEREST Report and the CA Review.
ES&S proposes the 80lb. AutoMark for each poll, at $3+M, a paper ballot marking device, which to me is far too slow, (especially for a multi-page ballot, one page at a time, especially when a person cannot see who's looking at one already filled-in page while another is processing,) and still necessitates the disabled person getting to another scanner to cast the vote, etc.)
Comparisons of the digital technologies and the capacity abilities of the proposed digital scanners.
(Hart proposes their precinct digital eScans and central count BallotNow digital scanners for absentee votes.
ES&S proposes Cuy. start with non-digital technology, but optical scanners/tabulators, (M-100's at the precincts and the same 15 M650's already leased and at the board, for this past March) since their digital tech has not been certified yet. They also propose trading out the precinct optical scanners for digital, DS200's after they are certified - they say/we'll see... by November ('08.) Though they've spoken about their central (for absentee) digital scanners, (the DS2000s,) these, from what I can see, are not part of the bid. The big, 1950's tech, and what the ballot Administrator has termed "legacy equipment", the M650 optical scanners would stay.)
Delivery dates for November's election -
(Hart says by Aug. 31; ES&S says, if I remember correctly, by Sept 31.)
They hammered out who pays for the vendor's Performance Bond, and added and tried to firm the duration and amounts of Performance Guarantees.
(ES&S had Cuyahoga paying for their performance bond!)
Nailed down warranty language and asked questions about corporate viability
They asked and compared Training services
Ascertained such things as what it means if a vendor charges the client for installation and the client's Acceptance Testing of the vendor's equipment.
(Hart said that was a "cost of doing business" for them; ES&S hedged, and said those charges were a way of "recovering their costs." (I add, also a (paid-for) way to make sure their equipment gets "accepted" - a pretty good "gig" if one can get away with it.)
They covered some functionality issues, both with their own questions and those submitted from the public during the midway-thru, executive session/break;
and much more.

The best way to glean the many points covered, your judgement of the answers (for this multi-million dollar taxpayer-paid purchase, years-to-come almost "dependency-marriage", and the people who make, sell and service equipment that would create and tell us our election results, including for president) - to get a sense of the character of each company, is to watch the films below for yourself. Each clip is approximately 20+ minutes.

The meeting ended with the plan that Cuyahoga would draft a contract for each company according to the oral representations made at the meeting (or answers yet to come,) submit each company's contract to them by June 18 for any further discussion to make it acceptable to both parties, and would make their decision at a public meeting at 5pm on Friday, June 20.

1. The meeting starts, introductions and opening statements are made, the framework is set:

2. Negotiating locking in the best prices, across the board, for years:

3. Discussion of delivery dates;ES&S promises to have their currently uncertified, digital precinct DS200's certified and in hand, as trade-in for the M100 optical scanners, for the May '09 election; guarantees for "glitch-free," "successful" performance/elections; and discussed corporate viability:

4. Discussion of printing costs; a break and "regrouping"; discussion of who pays for installation and does our acceptance testing, etc.:

5. More about warranties, guarantees, especially 3rd party warranties with Hart equipment, willingness to offer free back-up units for election day, who pays for the vendor's recertification if their products (so obviously) demand another look, etc. (Reposted clip with important audio throughout:)

6. Listen to this one about Training. Mr. Tesi explains that ES&S has separately owned training division. (And in the world of unfortunate names, election integrity activists have noted that the name of Premier's spokesman is Chris Riggall. The owner of the ES&S's training division is Colleen Haack.)
Eddie, the Hart training manager - a vendor! actually talks about "the sanctity of the vote!" (Hopefully that would translate to everyday usage.)

7. In this last clip they ask more functionality questions from public, and begin to summarize what was accomplished, and set out next steps.
(The reason the exportability of election results to a regular spreadsheet program is so important is for example, with ES&S 's 700+ page, 6pt. type, pdf report from Cuy.'s March '08 election, it prevented the staff and the public from easily "making sense of", and/or duly scrutinizing and analyzing what we're told were our results. It defies one of the main reasons people use computers, to do fast sorting and calculations.
Instead the unwieldy report mainly demands just passive acceptance of who their machines tell us are our winners/losers. Only those with a great deal of time on their hands could easily find what they were looking for, let alone sort by Congressional districts, add votes by portions of cities, etc.
Even, during the audit of 99 precincts, the staff had to spend hours finding and inserting the numbers one at a time, from the reported official results, into the audit analysis spreadsheet. (I needed to do that too as an audit witness. )
On 5/1, I again expressly asked our $1500/day ES&S project manager if there was any way to export the ES&S Unity tabulator report to MS Excel. He expressly said no, then changed it to, he thinks there may be a way, but he does not know how.
He also indicated with a smile, that many of their customers have asked for that for a very long time. I asked him if future versions of Unity would include that feature. He said he did not know, and indicated that there are other things on the ES&S R&D plate that could take precedence. I asked if he could call someone to find out how to do it. He indicated that he felt it wasn't worth it by then - the end of the post-election audit. Think about it. Why would a company NOT support thorough board and public scrutiny of their tabulator's results?)

(Note: Some stated benefits to digital over optical scanners for elections:
Digital takes pictures of all the ballots, (which, because they have no personally identifying marks, could be put on disk as public information;) have markings to prevent any ballot (or an illegal copy) from being scanned twice; allow for cheaper printing costs ( don't need such exacting grid marks /can use lighter paper;) and Hart's can accommodate larger paper, possibly avoiding a multi-page ballot. )

Opinion: During the break, of course many of the public informally talked, expressing opinions about who should win the bid for Cuyahoga's next equipment vendor.
The first impression that the vast majority shared was that they liked Hart much better, because they seemed so much more honest.
It was also shared that many of the staff who actually must operate the centrally based equipment to set the ballots and tabulate results, and after doing research, like Hart better too.
When the board staff called around to find other BOE's impressions of both vendors they'd been using, the lowest rating out of 10-high, for Hart, was one "9" - much different than ES&S. Also the Ballot Department enjoyed their time working with Hart, feeling like they were learning, not watching; and seeing if our current databases could be imported into their system. (They did, easily.)

There are also definitely functionality, not only cost differences between the two systems. (Hart's proposal, including the eSlate - and warranties,training, back-up units, installation, etc. is about $4M less)
Though overall, the Hart system has been found generally a bit less secure than the also insecure ES&S system, (see the EVEREST Report and the CA Top To Bottom Review,) this seems possibly mostly based in the eSlate touch screen they propose for ADA accessbility, which does not have to be included in the purchase. (The AutoMark ES&S solution has its own set of problems, such as 80 lb. weight, slowness, need to still navigate to another place for a scanner to cast a ballot, etc.) Also, on the other hand, the digital precinct scanners ES&S proposes to trade out by the end of '08 for their M100 precinct optical vote tabulators, proposed for November - the DS200's - have never been thoroughly tested by any independent scientists, as have the other machines. We don't really know exactly what good and bad we'd be getting when that happens. Even when they get their federal certification, supposedly in November, it will be no proof. Vendors pay the federal labs for their own certification; and it's been shown that the federal labs, according to federal Election Assistance Guidelines, do not even test the systems for breach-ability.

The decision may end up hinging on the compared practicalities and possibilities for ADA accessibility. In March, Cuyahoga had only about 267 ADA voters out of more than 400,000. In March, we used 600 of the 6300 Diebold/Premier touchscreens that we still own and are now in storage, for ADA accessibility/mostly for blind voters to be able to vote independently. These could be used again. The Tsx's security, operability, and capacity issues could certainly be better controlled in these numbers, than using them throughout the county. But still that would take great attention to proper training, (as it would for all the ADA choices) since in March, about 1/2 of the poll workers could still not get their one Tsx up and running.
This is an area that needs real thought and problem solving, (and possibly some partnership with other agencies (like the Sight Center) for real comfort and security of the voters, as well as the practicalities of being able to train enough poll workers in all the details of properly working with all the vulnerabilities of any of the curent ADA solutions.

I would not want to be the one making the decisions here.

What I do know, is that now and even once the decision is made, Cuyahoga must begin to attend to the more basic security, training, and paper and process management issues - upon which any machine security depends, and upon which the entire security and true success of any election depends.
Needed are such basics as a vastly expanded working phone system and trained help desk personnel for election day so poll workers can actually get through and get help; to building a culture of security through transparency - one of welcoming, engendering and taking seriously real civic engagement.

No matter what the board chooses to do about (still vulnerable) election electronics, for November, at least the presidential race must be hand counted (hopefully by volunteer citizens) at the polls, with results posted there for everyone to see (and compare with board totals.)

6/10/08 The Vendor Choice Continues

2008-06-17T02:35:00.006-05:00

On 6/10/08 the CCBOE again considered the tough question of next equipment procurement in public session - ES&S or Hart. The board put together and distributed the bids and responses from the 5/23 meeting questions for comparison. You'll find that 60+ page compilation here, in three parts. To get it all, download all three to see the bids, responses to previous questions, including those about pending litigation, and new memos etc.

Through the 6/10 questioning, for fairness to both vendors, and to get all the answers they still needed to the constantly arising questions about constantly arising and realized nuances of offers and pricing, they recessed that meeting until 6/12, when the principals of the two companies could be there, and when they expected them to attend - with their best offers and prices.
It was after that meeting that Guillen of the PD wrote:
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/06/cuyahoga_county_may_have_to_cu.html

Cuyahoga County may have to cut budget, staff to pay for elections
Posted by Joe Guillen June 10, 2008 18:00PM
Categories: Breaking News, Election, News Impact

Incessant spending for new voting equipment by the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections is about to have an impact on the rest of the county.If Board of Elections Director Jane Platten has her way, up to $13 million will be shelled out for new equipment for the November election. No matter what system is used, even if it is rented for less, Commissioner Tim Hagan said budget cuts and possible layoffs in other departments will be needed.

The election board has already spent at least $23.5 million since 2005 on voting machines. Of that, about $8 million was supplied by the county. The rest came from the federal government.

This November, as the county prepares to use its third voting system in last three major elections, all the money is likely to come from the county general fund. Cuyahoga already was projecting a $13 million general fund-operating deficit for this year. Voting machine purchases will dig the hole deeper.

On Tuesday, Platten discouraged election board members from going a cheaper route for November - renting machines for $7 million. Instead, she urged them to buy older technology machines to halt the now common practice of putting in a new system every election.

The board sat on the recommendation and will take it up again Thursday.

Platten met with commissioners later in the day. It was then that Hagan mentioned the effect the board's spending was having on the rest of the county. But not all of it has been this election board's fault.

Former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell directed one new equipment purchase; current Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ordered its replacement and the state legislature orchestrated this next one.

Hagan said "non-mandated" services, such as county-funded childcare, would be first on the chopping block.

The only film I've processed from that meeting is the very last portion - the public comments, including my own. I have decided to post that clip here, here - only because I think the message is so important for the electorate to ask for, and insist upon. The CD's that Ray gave to the CCBOE, of course were taken from Nancy Tobi's videos about hand counting elections - the spirit of the people's elections. (I gave copies of that CD to the Commissioners in '06....We'll see if these do more good.)

No matter what equipment is purchased/leased, in November, the CCBOE must include hand counting of at least the presidential race at the polls, and post the results at the precincts that night. The equipment is all too unknown and proven insecure/untrustworthy; and presidential election history is too shaky to do otherwise.
It does mean the next four years for us all.

Lots of $MIllion$ "Procure-ity"; Where's the Election Security?

2008-06-16T19:34:00.021-05:00

Election security - as in someone really knowing and showing how many blank ballots were originally in hands, and thus, need to be accounted for to the public as validly voted, soiled, or unused ballots; or that every vote that came in from the polls got counted accurately in the results, and the number of ballots that came in was the same as the number of voters' signatures for that precinct - no more, no less; or that every absentee or provisional vote that came in with voter identity attached, allows no way for any election worker to know how any of those identified voters voted.

It's tedious work, takes attention to detail and awareness, but is not rocket science.

And it canNOT, and must not be assumed by the public as occurring, because it is not.

Yet it is these unseen, assumed processes that create the "official election results" we just swallow, that tell us who our next president or attorney general or sheriff will be.

Some envelopes of soiled and defaced ballots, still laying open - with ballot stubs, VVPAT tapes for ADA access, black binders, etc... and trash on 3/26, after Euclid supply bag opening on 3/20.

As we look toward November '08, in the wake of Nov. '00 and Nov. '04, now with so many so vested in the election process and expected to cast a ballot, the oft-stated Stalin quote still stands true, which I paraphrase here: "It's not who votes that counts; what counts is who "counts" the votes and how they "count."

The urge and desire to steal, sway, or manipulate election results is as old as elections themselves. This November the bounty is huge - both for the "winners" and their gangs, and for all of our futures. The motivations to steal, sway, or manipulate these election results will thus grow proportionately, so election security must grow too.

The need to question and to watch the counting cannot be marginalized again into charges of "tin-foil-hat" conspiracy theories. Rather, the need to question and to watch the counting demonstrates incisive wisdom, and is our very civic duty.

For election security is not what we usually think of as security. Rather than security by obscurity with hidden vaults, drawn shades, and locked buildings where "regular people" are not allowed, and with some special others, who always do the right thing inside- it can only come from transparency - letting everyone see everything; knowing that with many who have a diversity of interests, watching our election count, it's very hard for any one to act dishonestly. And it's not about trusting any machine with unknown "counting instructions" that can be hacked, programmed, or otherwise made to output a desired outcome as "our winners", with no one being the wiser about a wholesale steal.

Last December's EVEREST Report even said it. As the commercial investigators and academics tested and found critical insecurities and vulnerabilities in ALL the election equipment they tested, ( inherent problems that made it possible to use the machine to steal the election) they also knew they had to assume that EVERYONE is a potential election attacker (one with designs manipulating our election results.)

Here is one snippet from the presentation made from the Sec. of State college tour about the EVEREST Report, held at Case Western Reserve University on 2/21/08. Speaking is Dr. Patrick McDaniel lead scientist for EVEREST, and you'll also see Chris Nance, OH Assist. Sec. of State.

So in the midst of some posts about another millions of dollar procurement of critically security flawed election equipment, I post here just a few film clips from the March Primary to give you an idea of the security awareness level of the people and processes that will be handling that equipment.

The equipment sales people, in fact, (all deflect responsibility, and) say the security of their equipment is dependent on the processes and procedures of the people at the boards. (EVEREST determined that all the equipment vulnerabilities are "unmitigatable" by processes and procedures. ie that even when the boards are very aware and diligent, there still could be "attacks" on our election results that would never be found and/or could not be prevented.)

And certainly there is more to election security than just the vulnerable machines, both touch screens AND scanners of paper ballots, the latter of which are better, but certainly no panacea to a fair election.
Election systems are made up of people, processes and now, machines - that all need to be made secure - with transparency and an involved electorate.

Before the film clips, (which don't include the worst examples - yet to come) here are a few suggestions about helping to better assure that our November elections results are really OUR election results, not a vendor's, a government officials, a hacker's, or even a poll worker's.

1. Become a poll worker, and help to make sure it's done correctly by everyone on your team.
2. Become an Election Observer, per the law, ORC3505.21 and watch at the polls, and after at the BOE while they count.
Unfortunately presently the arcane OH election laws which in many ways assume elections belong to two political parties, not the people, make it difficult for non-partisan citizenry watching. Also unfortunately despite the law and SoS Directive 08-29, allowing Observers the right to watch closely, this is often shunned by local boards. Rather than working as partners for everyone's good, some Observers are there to find lots wrong (help sway the election their way;) and often, respectful Observers end up treated by board staffs as potential criminals/obstructors at worst, or minor irritants to "their" board process, to be tolerated and basically ignored unless they can be used as free help to make them look better. (I'll post film of that too.)
Getting the thunderingly moving election train done and making sure it looks spiffy seem culturally paramount inside boards. (There is not even an effective place for observers to take documentation and have it seriously considered and acted upon - not selectively covered up.) Our real election security gets overlooked and buried time and time again.
3. Insist with the Secretary of State and legislators that non-partisan, election protection groups be allowed in the polls and in the boards as observers - groups not just relegated to lawyers and academics - but including lots of regular people who are interested and want to be involved in our fair elections.
4. Insist with the Secretary of State and local boards that no matter what kind of (vulnerable) equipment the precincts are using, that at least the Presidential race be hand counted at the polls this coming November - with groups of trained volunteer counters and watchers and with results posted for everyone to see.
5. Volunteer to be a trained election count watcher at your precinct.
6. And urge the Secretary of State, local boards and legislators to do real audits of the November election, not skewed exercises called audits, so we can find systemic problems, and start learning the essentials that need to be changed and improved in the future.
7. Get involved with elections beyond voting and walking away, and even beyond just working for your candidate or issue. It takes us all doing a little bit to protect all of our voices being fairly heard and heeded.

Here is just a bit film from the March '08 primary to begin to see "security awareness:
1. The ballots coming in election night. (You'll see that this one observer area was slightly expanded from the pre-election, 3/2 plan in the film below, but that it still took a semi-decent zoom lens to see anything of import:

2. The "security logs" that are supposed to show the blue "security seal" numbers that "secure" the machines and ballot boxes, and "show chains of custody" of ballots - that are supposed to be filled out by poll workers and are said to be be carefully reviewed by board staff. Here they are being reviewed by myself and another observer , Ray Rosenberger who offered to help - This was on 4/23/08, almost 1.5 months after the election - hardly complete, hardly security, and never reviewed.

3. Here you'll see the physical "security" of the warehouse itself.

Way beyond "Dogs & Ponies" - whom I really like & respect. THIS show is getting sickening.

2008-06-09T22:59:00.029-05:00

Merry-go-rounds are great too, unless you've been knowingly stuck on one for 6+ years and see few signs of it stopping.

On 5/23/08 the Cuyahoga BOE entertained ANOTHER round of "vendor sales presentations." Read this as the same people came, hawking basically the same equipment, from the same untrustworthy companies, which the December '07 OH SoS, $1.9M EVEREST report declared ALL "too critically flawed to produce a trustworthy election, " (page 3 the Academic Report;) and
unmitigatable, and unfixable unless they start all over from the ground up.
ES&S, HartIntercivic, and believe it or not, Diebold/Premier were all there, telling the same old "less than half-truths" and expecting multi-millions (some of those high costs again hidden from already way too high costs) for their same old (no longer hidden) incompetence, sheer greed, and lack of integrity.

Before getting to the 13-part film of that 5/23 day, let's catch up to what's going on with Cuyahoga, and a November '08 voting system:

In December '07 SoS Brunner, supposedly post-EVEREST and post the Cuyahoga tabulator crashes of Nov. '07, described last year in this blog - decided that Cuyahoga should no longer use its Diebold DRE's (first used in debacle election May, '06) - though other OH counties were still permitted to use them.
She wanted Cuyahoga to switch to all-central-count for March Primary '08, (in less than two months!) using high speed optical scanners. The only high speed central count scanners certified in OH at that time, and still to date, are the ES&S (very old ) M650's.
This forced a board vote on the issue. They tied along party lines, though many Dems from the public and election integrity groups stood with the reasoning of the 2 Republican board members who voted against the switch - too-fast, no-alternatives, too expensive and just as dangerous to elections as DRE's.
By law, SoS Brunner broke the board's 2/2 tie, and within days, and before the contracts were thoroughly thought-through and drawn up, in January, Cuyahoga was becoming the "proud renter" of almost $2M of 15 M650 scanners, the Unity tabulator, assundry supplies, millions of ballots - and some cadre of $1500/day ES&S technicians, (ES&S protectors) to in essence, run the election for Cuyahoga - from ballot definitions to tabulating final results.
Also in early '08, OH legislators - a basically partisan deciding, beholdin' to the people who got them into those positions (and i don't mean "we the people") and an R-majority- actually went along with this plan and quickly and very quietly passed emergency legislation (SB286) to allow central-count-only, and a few other ugly things like midday pickup of and scanning of ballots - until May 31.
Three OH counties made the switch - 2 verry small ones (VanWert and Mercer, who may have gotten state funds to do so;) and Cuyahoga, the largest voting district with 1436 precincts, in OH.
The March 4 Primary was held. I could write book about that which I won't here. There is also about 60 hours of film to follow just on that subject.
For now, we shall say Cuyahoga pulled off an amazing feat of the less than 2 month machine switch, and more amazingly, along with SoS Brunner, allowed it to APPEAR to be a "successful election" - with "down home," somehow supposedly inherently "honest" paper ballots (falsely represented as a non-electronic election; and without pointing out that paper ballots can be just manipulated as DRE's.)
With the March 4th election certified, the central-count legislation sunsetting and the M650s lease also sunsetting at May's end, - and with the almost 600 Diebold DRE's used for ADA access in March, joining the rest of the 6,300 Tsx's Cuyahoga owns - in mothballs; and seemingly with some board members becoming just as astonished or angry at Diebold as most election integrity activists - Cuyahoga began to again weigh it's very unpretty vendor options.

So in that regard, mostly with some PD articles by Joe Guillen, - who I actually find to be a good writer and journalist; who seems to "get it," and works to briefly represent a fairly balanced large picture of what is occuring - will get us to today:
1.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/05/cuyahoga_vote_board_hires_lab.html

Cuyahoga vote board hires lab to examine scrapped vote machines
Posted by Joe Guillen
May 01, 2008 18:22PM

Cuyahoga County hired a nationally-renowned lab on Thursday to prepare for a possible lawsuit against the maker of the $21 million touch-screen voting system scrapped in December.

The county -- currently shopping for voting equipment for the November presidential election -- wants to recoup its $7 million investment in the old system, which is only two years old. The rest of the purchase price was supplied by the federal government.

To prove the machines made by Diebold, Inc. were defective, the county has brought in SysTest Labs, of Denver, to study the touch-screen machines and vote-counting computer software.

SysTest is one of four labs accredited by the federal government to test voting systems for certification. The company has worked for a variety of governments and machine makers, including Diebold.

"Because of the sophisticated technology we're dealing with, we're going to need an expert to show a breach of the warranty," said Board of Elections Chairman Jeff Hastings.

The county wants to negotiate a settlement with Diebold. If the two sides reach a settlement, the contract with SysTest, for up to $325,000, can be ended. The agreement can run through 2009.

Hastings said hiring SysTest is a clear sign Cuyahoga is ready to take its grievance to court.
Diebold renamed its elections division Premier Election Solutions. A spokesman for Premier, based in Allen, Texas, said the company fulfilled its contract with the county. "We believe we provided a high quality voting system," Chris Riggall said.

Cuyahoga County's recent election troubles began with the arrival of the Diebold touch-screen machines. Mismanagement at the Board of Elections contributed to long-delayed election results in May 2006, but the Diebold equipment has been consistently unreliable, the board officials said.

The latest meltdown was in November 2007, when vote-counting software crashed twice. After that election, two of the four board members and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner decided to get new equipment for the March 4 primary.

The board rented a "central-count" optical-scan voting system for $1.5 million. Further use of that system has been prohibited by the state because the equipment does not notify voters of balloting errors.

The board wants to buy or rent a "precinct-based" optical-scan system for November. On Friday, May 23, voting machine manufacturers will make their sales pitches to the board. A new system is expected to cost between $10 million and $15 million.

2. A 5/15 CCBOE special meeting was called by Dem member, Sandy McNair, apparently to write a letter of support for SoS Brunner, apparently at her request, for her to take to the legislature, to urge them to once again pass central counting for November, for the three OH counties that used it in March. Who knows all the reasons for this?
The most blatant and known one is that this changing is getting ridiculous - and costing Cuyahoga county taxpayers more and more wasted millions on more and more insecure junk.

I will post more on that meeting, the public pleas against another dangerous (for many reasons) central count election, and the support letter keeping open the option of another central count election, ultimately signed by 3 of the 4 board members and was sent.

3. http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/05/cuyahoga_vote_board_mulls_new.html
Cuyahoga vote board mulls new equipment
Posted by Joe Guillen May 23, 2008 18:15PM

Voting-machine companies displayed their latest technology on Friday for Ohio's largest voting jurisdiction. Now the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has less than three weeks to make a choice.

Three firms are competing to sell or lease what could be millions of dollars in equipment to the state's biggest county. Elections Director Jane Platten wants the board to pick a vendor by June 10 to avoid a rushed transition to the November presidential election.

The winner will supply the county its third voting system to be used in the last three major elections. More than $22 million in county and federal tax dollars have been spent on machines since 2005.

The board might lease equipment this time because many newer voting machines presented on Friday won't be certified for use in Ohio before the election.

The companies -- Premier Election Solutions, Election Systems & Software and Hart InterCivic -- provided a range of options to consider, including lease, purchase and lease-with-intent-to-buy plans. Costs ranged from $1.7 million to $15.7 million.

Board member Inajo Davis Chappell said she would be uncomfortable buying machines not yet certified. She said it was obvious to her that the board should lease for now.

Others did not tip their hands. After the presentations, member Sandy McNair made a motion for the board to go into executive session, which is not public, to discuss the proposals.

The board is allowed to discuss the purchase of personal property, such as voting equipment, in private.

The county needs new equipment because state lawmakers banned the "central-count" voting method used here in the March 4 primary.

Scanners leased for that balloting -- for $1.5 million from ES&S -- replaced $21 million touch-screen voting machines, made by Premier, that were scrapped in December.

For fall, the board is shopping for "precinct-based" scanners that notify voters at the polls if their ballots contain errors. The central-count method was banned because it doesn't give that alert.

There is a slight chance the county still can use the central-count method. Three of the four board members -- excluding Rob Frost -- sent a letter to Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, urging her to ask lawmakers to permit central-count voting in November. Permission would give the board more choices, and members could retain equipment used in March at a discount.

A spokesman for Brunner said the secretary of state received the request, but time is running out. State legislators are slated to break for the summer next week.

4.
Voting machine company sues county first
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Joe Guillen
Plain Dealer Reporter

Premier Election Solutions, the voting machine company Cuyahoga County might sue for selling equipment that has been discarded, has struck first, filing its own lawsuit.

Premier, part of Diebold Inc., is asking Franklin County Common Pleas Court to rule that the company fulfilled its contracts with Cuyahoga and the state.

A decision in Premier's favor would prevent the county from suing for breach of contract, according to the complaint.

The county quit using Diebold's voting machines, which cost $22 million, after they had problems during the November election. The touch-screen machines also had problems in previous elections.

Premier and county officials discussed a settlement recently, but no agreement was reached. Talks are continuing. County officials have said the equipment was defective.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner also is named as a defendant in Premier's suit.

"This is fairly common of someone who knows they're going to be sued," said Dan Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University and associate director at Election Law @ Moritz. "Rather than waiting, they go into court pre-emptively."

The company could be trying to pick its court of choice, Tokaji speculated. "I imagine Diebold suspected that a Cuyahoga court might not be the friendliest forum for its claims," he said.

5. On 5/27 the OH legislature seemed to send a message that they would have no more of Brunner's direction. The OH Senate took a 6-page bill from the House regarding allowing high school and college poll workers, and with no forewarning turned it into a 31 page bill, SustituteHB350, which among other things sends a clear message that they will have nothing to do with Brunner's pleas.
That bill has not been passed; the OH legislature left to go on break; and just today 6/9/08, when they regathered for a special session to consider such things as how to corporatize the waters of Lake Erie, the Republican members again decided to table yet another Dem attempt at breathing life back into OH central count.

6.
http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/isope/1212928208285620.xml&coll=2
Cuyahoga hopes for reprieve
Voting gear would cost county millions
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Joe Guillen
Plain Dealer Reporter

Cuyahoga County is facing at least a $7 million bill to rent new voting equipment for the November election, unless it gets a last-minute reprieve from the state legislature.

The county commissioners are leading a late push to lift a statewide ban on the old system used by the county. If the move works, it would save about $5.5 million. The reprieve would come in the form of an amendment to the state capital bill added during conference committee work on Monday.

But the effort, which enjoys the support of Gov. Ted Strickland, is a long shot at best.

"It's really too late in the process," said State Sen. John Carey, a Republican from southeastern Ohio who was a member of the conference committee. "At this point we're not willing to do it."

State Rep. Mike Skindell, a Lakewood Democrat, has pre pared an amendment to allow Cuyahoga and two other counties to use a central-ballot count if the state won't pony up the $10 million to $15 million needed by the counties to acquire machines that would scan ballots at the polls.

Skindell is one of a half-dozen lawmakers who sit on the conference committee, made up of members from both the House and Senate. He said the three counties will be hurting if the law is not changed.

But majority-party Republican lawmakers must agree to the addition.

Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim Hagan said resistance only serves to embarrass Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat whose plan to overhaul voting in the state has largely been shot down.

"Put aside the partisanship and the posturing," Hagan said. "It costs the taxpayers millions."

Brunner ordered Cuyahoga to scrap its touch-screen machines and adopt "central-count" voting for March. Soon after, lawmakers instituted a ban on central-count to take effect after the primary. If the ban is removed, the county could keep central-count voting for November and rent machines for $1.5 million.

Brunner last week wondered why the legislature wouldn't accommodate the three boards. She said concerns about central- count voting, in which ballots are counted at the board after voting ends, have been erased.

Central-count opponents contend, however, that ballots with errors go unchecked at the polls, where voters might have a chance to correct them.

At least one member of the Cuyahoga Board of Elections, Rob Frost, doesn't want to keep central-count. "It is no more secure than punch cards," said Frost, who is chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party.

If the county can't keep the equipment used in March, its options for November are limited and pricey.

Ohio boards must use federally certified voting equipment, according to state law. The latest technology won't be certified by November.

In fact, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which certifies the machines, hasn't approved any equipment since its program was launched in January 2007.

Voting-machine companies are encouraging Cuyahoga to buy uncertified new equipment now by slashing the rental price of older-model, approved equipment.

It would be a package deal, with the county having to bank on the new equipment getting certification.

If the state law is unchanged, though, Cuyahoga is likely to rent for November.

"It's very frustrating that we continue to buy equipment," said Board of Elections member Inajo Davis Chappell. "We are not able to come up with an effective long-term strategy to buy secure, faster equipment because of the delayed federal certification process."

The election board meets Tuesday as well. If it does not make a decision for November that day, it probably will by the end of the week, said Chairman Jeff Hastings.

The following 13 parts of film is from #3 above - the 5/23/08 Cuyahoga "mulling," vendor presentation meeting. The openness of the meeting was excellent. And as you'll see the board is apparently not thoughtlessly swallowing this stuff. (But how much will they ultimately thoughtfully swallow?)
An entire election culture/consciousness change is still necessary at the CCBOE and in the community - to begin to open to the most logical solution of all, when faced with such bad yet exorbitant choices.

The only current, and the best election solution - hand counted paper ballots at the precinct level.

Will keep you apprised of what the next steps are. But for the momentous, historic upcoming November election, no matter what happens with vendor choices, let's write and call and come and stand for at least hand counting the presidential race at the precincts.
Let's get back to where we are supposed to be headed - to the sacredness of the citizens' elections, instead of diddling around the millions of dollar merry-go-round of vendors and their preposterous "offerings."

5/23/08 film:
1. Local board business and informal ES&S questioning:

2. ES&S informal & and local board business:

3. ES&S Presentation - (with Todd Urosevich) Part 1

4. ES&S - Part 2

5. ES&S - Part 3

6. Hart - Part 1

7. Hart - Part 2

8. Hart - Part 3

9. Premier Part 1

10. Premier - Part 2

11. Premier- Part 3

12. Local Board Business & about Diebold Registration System
(DIMS & DIXI)

13. Comments & Next Steps

What's Really The Problem Here? (aka "The 'new' GEMS problem" or "The Butler County, OH 'lost votes' in March primary problem"

2008-04-10T20:54:00.017-05:00

A topic of high conversation among activists the past few days has been called "the (Diebold) GEMS database problem;" and " the missing (but found) votes in Butler County, OH problem."
The issue at hand was first widely reported by Gregory Korte in the Cincinnati Enquirer on April 8, 2008 and again on 4/9: http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080409/NEWS01/804090352;
and was noted by election integrity advocates via John Gideon's VotersUnite! site with the Daily Voting News: http://www.votersunite.org/news.asp

Both began:

A recently discovered computer glitch caused at least 105 votes in West Chester to go missing after the March 4 primary election, Butler County election officials said. Two computer cards containing votes from touch-screen voting machines were not uploaded on election night – even though the computer reported that all cards had been read. Those votes have since been counted and were included in final, official results approved last week.

The 4/9 Enquirer piece stated:

"Quite frankly, if it's off by five votes or 105 votes, I want to know what's causing it. Especially if it's a close election," McGary said, "If we cannot produce accurate and reliable numbers, then it throws the entire process in question, and that's not something we want to have happen."
Butler County has reported the error to the Ohio Secretary of State's office and to Premier. The Secretary of State's office is watching the investigation, said spokesman Jeff Ortega. It's unknown how widespread the problem could be.
The software error evidently happened when election computers tried to read two electronic voting cards simultaneously. That resulted in a database "sharing violation."
A Premier spokesman called the glitch "an anomaly we have not seen before."
"The log reflects sharing violation. We're puzzled by that and trying to determine how that could occur," said the spokesman, Chris Riggall.

A much bigger problem than even the Diebold tabulator (called GEMS) "glitch" itself, is that this problem is very far from new. But every time it occurs, possibly invalidating vote results, it still comes by surprise to local BOEs; and that it seems that everyone involved - from Diebold/Premier to the highest election officials, at least in Ohio, seem to claim in various ways they didn't know about it (at least to give fair warning) before.

"The problem" was noted, especially in oral review, of the May, 2006 Cuyahoga study, the ESI report, published in 8/06.

It was found first-hand in the Cuyahoga unofficial and official counts from the November 6, '07 election, when it was called "an information collision" problem, (now "a database sharing violation") which caused not only crashes, but the similar precinct data loss.
See 11/18/07 post: http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/11/say-it-isnt-so-its-so-diebold-crashes.html
from which I quote:

After the crash and reboot, MORE problems showed up.

Three operators then noticed that when they attempted to upload cards they had not uploaded ( they have a system to keep track of what's done,) they got a message saying those cards had already been uploaded.
- At times those precincts DID show up in the tabulator.
- BUT when they checked the paper trail running on each machine, those precincts were NOT represented there!!!

Big and various errors, with the paper trails not even matching up....!!!

They stopped the entire process at that point again, ran a whole report, and checked it against the unofficial results.

And as they were finishing all 5,793 cards, they found that some of the cards that were in process while the tabulator was crashing, were showing in the end, as "missing precincts." Again, there were no pre-warnings. They had to go back and re-upload those again.

Then in '07, came the Diebold analysis of "the problem," and the Cuy. board's questioning about it in their 12/17/07 meeting which portion you'll see in the film below.

As you'll see in the film,"the problem" had then been previously reported by San Diego, and potentially been reported by Montgomery (Dayton) and Lucas (Toledo) counties.

And there were further tests, including of course, the $1.8M Ohio EVEREST study reported in 12/07.

The Journal News also reported "the new problem" on 4/9/08, http://www.journal-news.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/04/08/hjn040908boe.html

This story clarified that it may not have been an activist who first brought this matter to the attention of the Butler BOE, as was first reported by another activist, ( and thus, was subtitled in the film below, before time to make the change. ) It was from this Journal News story that I quote the following:

Patrick Gallaway, spokesman for Brunner's office, said this underlines the office's concerns with voting machines.

"Ultimately what the secretary of state would opt to do would be have the entire state convert to optical scan paper ballots," he said, but there's not enough time or money to do that before the November election.

But that viewpoint also bypasses the fact that optical scan machines also expose counties to having to keep a manual count of what they have and have not completed. (The CCBOE needed to scan the March 4, '08 ballots cast at the polls twice in their official count - on the ES&S M650 central count optical scanners, and the ES&S Unity tabulating software - as they themselves lost track the first time through.)

And these optical scanners are ALSO OPAQUE ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS, WITH SECRET SOFTWARE, controlling something we call "counting"; and with the same quantity of operational and security problems, and with equal insider election results manipulatability as are any DRE's, with their vendor's tabulating software.

I'm just wondering, therefore... if by 11/07, I, a grandma, lone volunteer observer knew about "the Diebold problem," and Cuyahoga knew about "the problem," and the SoS was clearly told about "the problem," and obviously Diebold knew about "the problem," how is it that Butler County was left in the dark in March '08, reliant only on Diebold product advisories telling them only that they needed to limit their memory card uploads to no more than 20 at one time?

And how is it that by April '08 the people who are charged with being in charge, and who are needed to actually help the voters and the BOE's problems statewide/nationwide.... seem to have "forgotten"? ...Again?

It's been a long time, but video that hints the near future of Ohio's elections

2008-02-29T06:06:00.013-05:00

The following is the 1 1/2 hour video from Secretary of State Brunner's Town Hall meeting held in Akron on 2/27, about her December Recommendations that were attached to the EVEREST report. It's in two parts, each about 45 minutes.

The 4-stop "town hall" series seem very different from the "college tour series." The one I attended from the latter, held in Cuyahoga, the county needing to make the most dramatic and costly changes for the March Primary, featured Chris Nance, Assistant Sec. of State and Patrick McDaniel, PhD. one of lead scientists/academics who conducted the almost $1.9M EVEREST testing. He did a wonderful job of explaining the test findings. (I may upload video of that in the near future.) The former series, with SoS Brunner focused on her Recommendations, and near future plans for Ohio's elections.

Some of the many things you'll hear include:

mentions of "random" sampling in recounts (also see this and this.)
more on the old unstable software needing complete re-engineering found in all electronic systems, (DRE's, Op Scans, and both's tabulators) and relating that mostly to Diebold/Premier's former servers in Cuyahoga or just to DRE's
the 3 other counties going to central count systems, (theirs seemingly a choice, and with no midday pickup of ballots) in addition to the change she made for Cuyahoga
explanation of plans and pilot plans for multi-precinct locations, which the SoS is calling "MP3's" (a quite catchy name for their concept of their "moving OH into the 21rst century")
a discussion about her recommendation for every county to buy electronic poll books to serve the future "MP3's"
(Also see SoS Advisory 08-01 about electronic poll books, which both allows her selected 3-election officials, Board of Voting Machine Examiners to test and certify electronic poll books, and declares 3 of them - all Diebold - certified in Ohio - from the one of the same DRE and Optical Scan manufacturers whom McDaniel and the test findings show to all create grossly substandard equipment. McDaniel also said in his talk at least one of these Diebold models works very badly.)
a the plan for moving all "Vote By Mail" forward in Aug. '08- letting counties vote on it - a plan which sounds good to most people who normally vote, having a ballot just sent to everyone (no application necessary) but one that has been shown to promote buying and selling of votes and suppressing participation of low income voters, and in OR and WA, also not in the end, raising voter participation to any significant degree.
a plan to send more of these recommendations directly to the OH legislature 6 days after the primary to be made OH law (two rounds have already passed, with few even knowing it was happening, though the public is told that if we have concerns we should tell the legislature. They do not have a history of listening to the public.)
SoS conclusions on what various election-interested groups want, and what's most important to voters (I personally don't think a sticker rates that highly....)

in Part 2,

views and current activities on Hand Counted Paper Ballots, and staff consideration of a directive on how to hand count ballots
about views/plans for posting results at the precint ( though with plans for 15-day early voting, the process and validity of such remains unclear)
about open source electronic voting systems
the one interim audience applause when she talked "Transparency" (not an interest listed on previous charts)
about a process called audit, and her consideration of the VRI-AC Audit White Paper submitted to her office
more about views on voter education/educated input; the process of taking actions to legislature & the passing of recommendations; testing of poll books, etc.
and more.

For full understanding, it's best to watch the whole at some point, listen closely, think about how it all fits together, and have some knowledge of actual EVEREST findings.
86 page Executive Summary
and/or the film of the Cleveland meeting of "college tour" already uploaded by Jeff Kirkby
http://www.vocabvideo.com/tvstation_viewer.html (see and click on (SOS 2-21-08) You need the latest version of Adobe Flash Player Plug-in version 9.0.115.

Part 1

Part2

PD articles on Brunner's- (my concept-) "fishy ramming" - Incl. Prospective Cuyahoga Timeline!

2007-12-15T13:05:00.001-05:00

1. Brunner wants return to simpler voting times - 12/15/2007
Good coverage. Bad title.
That's what Brunner wants us to think - or to just accept and blindly "trust" as we don't even have time to think - just like HAVA 2002 which brought us to today, and this time in two weeks, during Christmas holidays.... - as she makes what only appears to be a good move - toward paper ballots, so long needed.
But while doing that, she's also imposing such ridiculous notions as recommendations:

which don't even follow her the testers'"reports" - where they said that ALL the systems, thus also their monied manufacturers who make them and weakly try to defend them while they sell, are untrustworthy. And they all said the entire election landscape needs overhauling, including the people systems. Yet she wants us to buy MORE from the same people!..while also leaving the same BOE people in place, many of whom have been evidenced to have broken the public trust in '04 and since. (NOT CURRENT CUYAHOGA officials - a refreshing example of transparency, intelligence, willingness to work - very hard, honesty and citizen respect.)
which lure decision makers with dollars - OUR tax dollars from any level - for apparently her political agenda, and apparently that of others - for our OUR presidential supposed choices - while all eyes are on her/Ohio. And most important-
which remove all possibilities for valid citizen oversight of our ballots and counting, and all possibilities for a truly valid audit of our election;
nonsensically (from an administrative and management perspective...) which obliterate even minimal administrative and management priniciples.
and which have us "just forgetting about" the hundreds of millions Ohioans have already fed the untrustworthy folks.

She knows it would take a minimum of a year, and the money would be far better used, to begin to develop a system that really could work according to BOE and citizen requirements for a decent, trustworthy election.
And truly simpler times would include such things as:

honoring precinct level citizen voting, watching and counting;
hand counting at the precinct level (at least the federal races) before anything disappears anywhere into anyone's hands or machinery, and posting those results at the precinct;
getting our millions back for defective, wrongly represented products we were duped into purchasing;
and further honoring the intelligence of voters - not trying to take elections from us, while trying to sell us on ease and ... .... .... ..... cost savings!

Also as predicted *, a quote:

"Brunner said she could compel Cuyahoga to change equipment if the board, which is under her administrative oversight, doesn't make the decision."
"Sometimes the best use of power is not to use it," she said. "I want the voters of Cuyahoga County to have confidence in what their board does."

Right. In the whole week, allowing for probably 3-minute presentations, she's allowing, for voters to watch and help them decide.

* see
http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/12/has-cuyahoga-been-set-up-for-failure.html
http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/12/pd-brunners-pushing-frying-pannot.html

2.Highlights of new voting system - 12/15/2007

And perhaps, most astonishing - even from the basic management principles we need from a state chief elections officer, is this one:
3. Prospective timeline for voting system changes - 12/15/2007

It seems to me, that Deep Throat - both the movie and and governmental interpretations - may be at play here...

More EVEREST Background from 9/20/07 CCBOE Public Technology Forum-Digital Guardian & more...

2007-12-13T19:36:00.000-05:00

On 9/20 the CCBOE was preparing this excellent public forum on technology, while SoS Brunner was meeting with a lobbyist, to select BOE officials under her service, to meet confidentially to make recommendations to the legislature for what she wants. For your comparison of just a bit of what was already publicly known on 9/20, and what comes out in Brunner's EVEREST findings:

Almost all (ran out of film) of the end of the afternoon's 9/20/07 Q&A session, after there had been a presentation about the September California report, to which we were responding :

SoS Brunner's consideration of citizens in her "election reform" process

2007-12-10T22:37:00.000-05:00

At the bottom of this post is the text of Assistant Secretary of State, Chris Nance's email, which arrived in my email inbox on December 7, 2007, the end date of testing, responding to months-long, numerous professional attempts to have independent citizens, with no partisan or other vested interests, be able to oversight and weigh in with SoS selected BOE officials, politicians, testers and vendors on redaction of the testing reports to the public, and recommendations to be made from them about our elections. These attempts began in general in April, and more specifically when the testing subject "re-arose" almost completely planned in June, then since.

That message is both misleading to those who don't know the facts, especially about the SoS's and the VRI, VoteTech sub-group's actions and intentions, and was Nance's "next week" answer promised on November 13, the day before the SoS-planned, 3-hour "field trip" to the testing facility, and their presentation there, which required the signing of the daunting Non-Disclosure Agreement, complete with a date of termination of rights and responsibilities, of October 16, 2017 - but for no meaningful reason, nor equal access to oversight.

That November 13th email - following 2 conference calls, which followed many emails to their office, and direct in-person approach on September 20, (first film) requesting inclusion, many evoking assurances that SoS Brunner had always planned for that to happen said:

Good Morning,

In the interest of time let me get to the point of my email - I do not yet have an answer to the question (s) concerning the role of the VoteTech work group subsequent to the visit/orientation at the State of Ohio Computer Center (SOCC). Consequently, I understand that some of you may choose to participate in the SOCC tour/orientation tomorrow and some of you may not. Anyone who does participate -either in person or via conference call - will have to sign the NDA. As I mentioned on the phone Thursday, I appreciate your questions and I hope that you will share additional questions with the test teams. I hope to have a response to the questions that have been raised within the next week. Thanks.

Christopher B. Nance
Assistant Secretary of State
State of Ohio
180 E. Broad Street, 16th Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614-466-2655 (main)
614-644-0764 (direct)
614-485-7625 (fax)
cnance@sos.state.oh.us

That was sent in response to my email:

11/9/07

Dear Chris, Kellye and All,

Thanks for the phone conference this am, and for sticking with this process, as we attempt to bring it to one creating greater transparency, democratic dynamic, and one that can create a truly deserved greater public confidence in our voting systems - both the people and the machines - not in any way, less.

A critical factor that becomes clear as we speak, is that recent years of fast-building public outcry, dissent, and at times downright disgust and disconnection regarding election insecurities, wrongly placed priorities; long-impacted dynamics of political patronage, insider political/financial deals, etc. which eventually shut voters out of any say about our own election processes - can be generally placed into two categories:

1. the "personnel" - election officials, system vendors, and testers who may also have their own financial and other self-interests in mind, and incumbents and appointees making the people's election rules and guidelines, not always in public, nor in the public's best interest, but their own, etc.; and

2. the "machines" themselves.

The current machine systems, of course, to date, via many already scientifically done reports and thorugh in-field experience, have shown that they:

• inherently, as "black boxes" canNOT provide the transparency necessary for the most essential factor of elections - that the public, the owners of elections, needs and wants to be able to watch the counting for ourselves/be able to ascertain for ourselves, with no computer codes, that what we're told as the "winners" are really our collective choices, and that our votes are private, etc.

• as "black boxes" also held behind profit-making, private and "proprietary" interests, cuts the public further off, and very wrongly so, from our own election "results," while we are the ones who must live under "their" "results," and while we are the ones paying mounting enormous sums for them, and for the people who run them "inside" - only supposedly, for us/the people (since we can rarely see "inside.")

• as "black boxes" they are also frought with proven, multitudes of, and at the most foundational, thus, the largest, levels, computer security and operational holes and failures, - allowing to undetectably create or change our "results" to inside advantage, especially for those with the most inside access and often with our no longer useful D/R elections systems, the ones with the most self-serving vestments in election "results."

• even operationally, are unfit for the election use intended - especially the touchscreens. (Just for starters, refer to such concepts as
-failing, and hard to see printers, that keep the our ballots inside the machine, not separately for an outside check;
-tabulators that cannot handle quantities of information causing slower, rather than the faster returns of integrity, as was a promised reason for their being purchased;
-the fragility and overly detailed nature of their set up and operation at polling places, for most poll workers of reasonable intelligence in the given amount of time they have to learn and perform, which is seemingly caused by cheapest, incompetent design and construction, which also causes longer lines and huge payrolls just for people to tend to failing machines in the field;
-soaring costs for maintenance and sole-source supplies
- the VVPAT's and in the case of Diebold, also GEMS - unfitness for conducting reasonably efficient recounts
- the massive number of hours/days of payrolled time to do what boards call L&A testing, which in the end, when talking about true computer security, still prove nothing about the machines' accuracy, sameness to all other machines, fitness for all ballot styles, etc.
Such truer and necessary L&A testing, however would take far more person-hours and weeks than boards can afford.
- the now upgrowth of the new seeming necessity for a whole new, additionally completely opaque layer of possibly self-interested people, whom the public is to and must again blindly trust - the academic and computer "experts" - to tell us how to "audit" our results to know whether to be "confident" in the machines; to do such auditing; to test the machines; and to write books and make tv appearances....
- and on, and on... )

The age-old human bent for wanting to manipulate any election - even high school ones - toward own wishes has truly run amok in this nation - with the stakes as high as "wealth and domination" - the dynamic and process now can easily have little to do with the most apparent ballots or voters - but far more with computer savvy, inside access, and media spin: wholesale undetectable election fraud, not even minutely existent voter fraud.

Increasingly fewer people are still operating under the long-built false myth about who owns, thus must control the people's elections: are re-awakening to the fact that the people are the owners, and thus we must oversight "the personnel." Thus transparency even in this new machine testing process, needs to be the guiding force, and must take first precedence to all other competing interests for secrecy, even currently where transparency must still be measured carefully against specific proprietary claims.

Yet generally in the RFP for this testing process, and in the the answers the SoS gave to the Ohio Controlling Board to obtain the taxpayer-paid $1.8 million dollar funding for this project, it was stated on page 3, in #3:
"This office has generally taken a pragmatic approach to assisting Ohio's election officials in meeting their statutory responsibilities while working to ensure fair elections and assure voter confidence."

That concept, still is backwards.

Fair, open, honest elections, for, of and by the people, while following all election laws comes first/is the core. The SoS pragmatism of assisting Ohio's election officials to meeting their responsibilities is secondary, and must always be defined only by the first concept, first. The SoS must protect and honor voters first, not election officials, especially those who demonstrate that they do not understand that they are employed by the public, to conduct the people's fair, open, transparent, honest elections.

Recent history in Ohio and across the nation, however, shows definitively that the public can NOT and must not blindly trust election officials, or "testers," - or anyone else, to even follow current laws, let alone determine our results alone. It takes all of us watching to keep all of us honest.
(See traditions of political patronage, partisan or other self-interests, etc. above.)

Given that "personnel" fact, coupled with the insecure black boxes especially vulnerable to inside manipulation, so often hidden behind walls of secrecy, it's no wonder that there is such huge outcry to the public's lack of oversight and complete disconnection about our elections processes and results - though elections are the very cornerstone and seed of our democracy, of hope, of peace.

However still, in this testing process, election officials, some of publicly unproven integrity, have again been placed in core positions of determining the "trustworthiness" of the machines referred to above/again are being placed in the core of making decisions about the people's elections - with not even any checks or balances from the people.

By signing the NDA, at least 12 of these possibly questionable election officials, then a final four, (who may be swayed by such things as their own traditions, their ease, or even some party or job loyalties) will be exposed to oversighting the testing process, the non-redacted versions of the reports yielded, and presumably what conclusions are to be recommended. The citizen advocates of the VRI, on the other hand, to date, are only assured that by signing the same NDA we get to volunteer to see the facility, meet some testers, and see whatever others decide should or should not be presented to us. In the answers to my questions about the NDA, which is forwarded below, it is even noted that should we even sign the NDA and take the "interesting" field trip to the SOCC that we should:
"Please note that you may not be exposed to any Confidential Information while visiting the SOCC or during your participation."

As noted in both conference calls re: this process to date, we in the tech group of the VRI have agreed to volunteer, and have done so with intelligence and diligence - just to meaningfully attempt to help build bridges between the now all too "traditional" but falsely held "inside" and "outside" - to improve the election process - for the people.

The NDA thus, on an ideological level rubs against most in the group's original ideological prioritizations for election transparency. More specifically, it could also potentially completely muzzle us. Even further, it seemingly does so for no meaningful reasons - even not for very specific current proprietary needs for secrecy, (especially if we're not shown anything confidential such as unredacted reports nor included in confidential conversations, plus being not quite sure what we can and cannot say.)
Our own such signing does not (yet) allow us to engage in any meaningful, timely dialogue - even with the above-referenced election officials, and with testers, all of ultimately unknown motivations - so we can make sure the people's views are equally clearly heard and considered before the report becomes public.

I certainly hope such VRI-Tech proposed involvement is rethought and expanded, so our group's signing of such NDA, equal to election officials signing, brings us equally to access, to the unredacted reports, and to the discussion table with election officials and testers.

I also hope that for everyone's sake, that the public version of testing reports presents a 1.5 - 2 week period of questions and comments from the public, as was brilliantly suggested by Sibley, before the final version is taken to the legislature. Though this may seem "messy" or "inefficient" and not worthy of the "extra" few weeks, the benefits to authentic public "confidence" and the implementation of such a truly democratic process about the democratic process of elections, are necessary, would be huge, and would far outweigh any more short-sighted "efficiencies."

Because every election brings in its own set of "winners" who immediately act on their own building agendae, often gluttonously, at times to create more election-"winning" "guidelines" and strategies - such as redistricting, or HAVA, - in addition to their prioritizing use of the military, bombs, spying, torture, spreading fear and hate, etc. it is time for us to move forthrightly, no longer patiently trying to put thousands of band-aids on broken election personnel- and machine- systems that can NOT be "mitigated" - to get the election process righted, put back into the oversight of the people, in a way that can hold all the partisan conflicts and campaign strategies and dirty tricks, but that in the end, everyone can know that the announced winners came from the people's collective will. The people will not patiently swallow yet another highly questionable election as in 2000 and 2004, no matter how much media spin is placed.

Again, thanks for the conference call this am. I think we positively achieved alot, as especially Chris made sure that we were all listening to one another and making our views known clearly. I hope we can together take these views to the necessary next step of citizen participation.

And, just in case Kellye gets more busy than I, and because I had this response close at hand from last evening, I forward to the VRI Tech group the responses I received to my questions re: the NDA and the Tech group's proposed involvement in EVEREST testing and reporting.

Adele

Here's Chris's December 7, "next" message:

Dear Vote Tech Workgroup members. On behalf of Chris Nance, I am forwarding the below memo to you. Thank you, Kellye Pinkleton
December 7, 2007

TO: VRI Vote Tech Work Group

FR: Christopher B. Nance, Assistant Secretary of State

RE: EVEREST Project
I would like to thank you for your patience since we last spoke on conference call several weeks ago. Since that time there have been some questions and concerns raised which will be addressed in this memorandum.
As you know, all were offered and a few were actually able to participate in the Vote Tech workgroup tour of the testing facility at the State of Ohio Computer Center here in Columbus. During that visit we provided an opportunity to visit with members of the test teams, observe the testing environment and engage in a discussion with our respective project team leaders. There seemed to be two factors that limited the actually number of Vote Tech members that were actually able to attend; travel/schedule constraints as well as a decision by others not to sign the non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Just to be clear, every single individual that has entered into the testing area is required to sign the NDA - there are no exceptions to this protocol. At the same time we respect the individual choice of any Vote Tech workgroup member not to sign the NDA.

At that time some questions were raised about additional participation of work group members in the overall project. As you may know, there are a group of election officials that were asked by Secretary Brunner to be involved in the review of reports as an extension of their sworn duty as local election officials. Volunteer participation in the VRI Vote Tech workgroup is a valuable contribution to civic engagement yet it is different than the statutory responsibilities of election officials. Consequently, Vote Tech workgroup members will not be involved in the review of EVEREST findings before the release of the public report.

The January meeting (to be announced soon) of the Voting Rights Institute will include an opportunity for Vote Tech workgroup members as well as the overall Council to engage in a discussion on the major findings of the EVEREST project. We believe that the results of the study will position the opportunity for important enhancements in the integrity of Ohio’s elections.

Christopher B. Nance
Assistant Secretary of State
State of Ohio
180 E. Broad Street, 16th Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614-466-2655 (main)
614-644-0764 (direct)
614-485-7625 (fax)
cnance@sos.state.oh.us

"Volunteer participation in the VRI Vote Tech workgroup is a valuable contribution to civic engagement yet it is different than the statutory responsibilities of election officials. Consequently, Vote Tech workgroup members will not be involved in the review of EVEREST findings before the release of the public report." ??

On December 7? And at what "time" did Chris represent questions were asked about citizens having meaningful participation in the process, possibly worthy of signing the NDA, not just a supposedly satisfying "field trip?"

I read the above as, "we can control what BOE officials say, who statutorily "serve at the pleasure of the SoS," but we cannot control citizen speech (thank God) - which in addition to citizens having no inside deal-making power, puts us through the lens - of being "outside" the "election reform" process - to be tolerated, gracious to, and put off and shut out whenever it is so desired.
And as you may have already gleaned, I would not characterize my own reaction, at least, as "patience."

(To see the facts, for comparison and the actual story around the NDA, see Has Cuyahoga been set up for failure? - "Questions to possibly ask"- numbers 3 and 4.)

Please attend on December 17 at 9 am

2007-12-10T21:12:00.000-05:00

Though only a short weekend after Brunner's redacted EVEREST testing report will be released to the public, the CCBOE in their now vastly abbreviated consideration of next voting systems, as imposed by SoS Brunner, and as apparently confirmed in their executive session conference call with her office near the end of the board meeting last Friday afternoon, has decided to nevertheless consider public input on Monday, December 17, at 9am in board chambers. (See film below of the end of that meeting.)

(For comparison with the reasonableness of their normal and expected technology timelines, see 11/27 statement, (12/6 post) -"Good news! Sandy McNair anticipates a second CCBOE Public Forum on Technology, (mid January, and after holidays) to consider SoS testing reports and other items of public interest")

I understand that both SoS Brunner and Assist. SoS, Chris Nance, have been invited to also attend. Hopefully at least one will find the time to do so, so the also hopefully many citizens attending, can ask some tough questions of them - not so much right now about the details of their reports, which can be probably handled in their still non-scheduled "citizen comment" time, sometime in January; but about Brunner's motivations in delaying her testing; keeping non-partisan, non-vested citizens out of our machine testing process, but not other vested interests; and her now sudden December 7 "worry," forcing Cuyahoga into an invalid, either-or, untenable, no-win decision for our March 4, presidential primary - a decision that either way seemingly promotes keeping some form of insider hackable, improperly operable electronic machines, made by irresponsible, but power and money-wielding private corporations, but with a change could begin to re-institute them widely again, and for a long time, and at a huge taxpayer price tag - again!

For more information, please see Has Cuyahoga been set up for failure?

and see film of Nance's 9/20 presentation about the testing, and his answers to some tough questions about it here.

Here's the film of the end of last Friday's CCBOE December 7, board meeting, the day the PD article, came out, "Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner wants new voting system for Cuyahoga."
Also see a discussion of that article at "Brunner's heating up the frying pan..."

To be noted, that before the executive session actually started, a few of the board members expressed agreement with what I had stated as seen in the film, and seemingly did not think Brunner would force the decision she did. After we returned into the room, granted after a long day, and at about 6:30pm, the air there felt unusually drained and tense.

Has Cuyahoga been set up for failure?

2007-12-10T19:15:00.000-05:00

Giving the CCBOE anything less than a minimum of 6-9 months to analyze, select, contract with, install, test, setup, and train staff and few thousand poll workers on a new voting system is nothing more than a recipe for total failure, and the Secretary of State's office knows this. So, why is she telling Cuyahoga that they should migrate to a new system by the March 4 presidential primary, actually only 2-months from now?
Is the SoS playing politics?

Then let's add a few other facts she definitely knows, as she "administrative oversights" the CCBOE (instituted when she swore in the new board early this year, interestingly projected until after the '08 primary)
The CCBOE still today, 12/10, is finishing the last of daily work and certification of 11/6 recounts; and setting up ballots, polls and otherwise conducting a special election in Cleveland Ward 14 next Tuesday, Dec. 18; and beginning the Diebold on-site analysis of the their failures from the 11/6 election. Also requiring the current, interdependent Diebold system are - they're in the middle of receiving candidate filings for the primary, due Jan. 4, when they'll know who all is on each of the 1436 precincts' D and R, March partisan primary ballots, They also have to in early January, get those many, complicated, but all important ballot definition files ready and proofed - the same files that must later tell whatever scanners and tabulator is used, what the marks and codes mean/ what vote goes to whom. This is because ballot printer, who by the way, has taken months, to calibrate all of his ballot-printing equipment to the less than hair width tolerance needed by the current Diebold scanners - can have all the ballots tested and ready for the primary's absentee balloting, which begins on Feb. 8 - and it would be nice, statutorily, to have ballots. And I forgot the Diebold voter registration system that's finally almost integrated into the whole current system, with registrations for the presidential primary statutorily closing Feb. 4; ...and there's Christmas and New Year.
So what's really motivating the SoS's "sudden 12/7 worry" about Cuyahoga's years' long Diebold problems and push to change?

As Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones stated to the PD: "To me, all the options are remote - none of them desirable. It's a difference between the bad, the ugly and the ugliest."

For citizens concerned about true election reform in Cuyahoga, Ohio and the nation, it seems that instead of right now further pressuring Cuyahoga, or getting too immediately absorbed in analyzing and discussing all the details of Brunner's report due to come out Friday, but which can be dealt with a bit later, we need to first put priority focus on Brunner herself - asking her some tough questions and not just accepting normal sound bites, in too easily megaphoned "official statements."

Some possible questions to ask:
1. Why did she delay even going to the Ohio Controlling Board for the funds for her $1.8 million testing, (though it was SoS spoken about in March, June, and SoS-reported as pretty much selected, timelined, and solidified the third week in August) until after the California results came out in early September, and upon which California's SoS Bowen then immediately decertified all of California's DRE's?

2. Why did she proceed with her own tests, when the California report already had affirmed and expanded upon previous years of similar scientific studies; and while there are plenty of reports of operational problems from the field - from across the country - and in Cuyahoga? (VotersUnite! is but one of many good places to start.)

3. Why she did she only involve in her hush-hush developed, and murkily-goaled testing:

her selected testers, some with apparent conflicts of interest with the machine vendors themselves;
her selected BOE officials, selected with the help of Aaron Ockerman, a registered lobbyist for the non-public Ohio Association of Election Officials and former lobbyist for ES&S; and the majority of BOE selections whom,while they are statutorily "to serve at her pleasure" are also evidenced to have allegedly broken election laws in 2004, thus the public's trust - behavior about which Brunner has done nothing to correct?*
and politicians of the legislature, most of whom it would seem know little about computers, but alot about "how to bring in elections"?

* See the confirming document about Ockerman here, provided by the OEJC.

4. Why did she put off and string-along for months, then finally refuse on the end date of testing, multiple requests from knowlegeable, highly respected citizen election integrity advocates - with no partisan or vested interests, only the eye and voice of the taxpayers and citizen voters - to be equally represented in testing oversight and recommendations to the legislature, thus, for recommending the next best steps from our current corporate- and insider-controlled vote "counting"?

She even did such "running out the clock" with her own selected Voting Rights Institute, said in "official statements" to be an "Advisory Council," but which in the main, has been permitted to accomplish little toward the citizen advocates' agreed-upon priorties toward actual election reform. That's been done with such concepts as I've experienced, months-delayed necessary answers from her office, and circling, late restarts and redirections of months-long already done work, with still no goaled conclusions.

Her VRI technology focussed, "VoteTech" sub-group, was offered a late (November 14,) pre-planned, seeming "class field trip" to the testing facility, in the face of our months-long requests for citizen inclusion into proposed EVEREST testing, since April. However, even then we were given no worthwhile reason to sign the prerequisite Non-Disclosure Agreement *- presented to us in November - daunting in its technical lack of clarity about our clear ability to state even our own opinions about publicly-held knowledge about vendors, which they may still consider proprietary; and with a termination date of "rights and responsibilities" on October 16, 2017.

*This NDA as clearly explained to us, was the one prepared for Election Officials, thus their mention throughout. It was presented for example after asking for such, for consideration of our own signing. The VRI VoteTech group's we were told would have our group's name, where ever "election official" presently occurs. I did send an email asking questions about specifics of the NDA, and did get answers from the SoS attorney handling it. Those answers, though they addressed my questions, still left questions about legal liability, if signed.

Upon questioning, we were told that by signing, we could attend the interesting 3-hour facility visit, and we could "submit our concerns to the SoS office in writing" - not get the weekly update reports, nor the unredacted final versions, nor the oversight and recommending abilities of the "insiders" (my word, their concept.) Upon the question of, "would we get answers to our submitted questions and concerns," (unlike the too frequent experience of the year's VRI) we were given some version of "we may be too busy....with our tasks."

5. Why should we so blindly trust her office or anyone with our vote counts, when out of her office this year we've also heard and seen such things as:

pushes toward beginning (with issues-only races) all "mail-in voting"/sending ballots out to every registered voter, which while easily "sold" on ease and cost savings, also presents one of the easiest ways for election fraud and vote buying/selling to occur, and makes election auditing virtually impossible.
a recount directive that says it reinstates a valid "random" selection of the sample of ballots to be scrutinized, but then on page six of same, also demands a blatantly non-random procedure that assures anyone so inclined to manipulate an election before it begins, to know not to do that in precincts with lowest number/letter designations, only with the remaining approximate 80%.
a heard-about in August, upcoming SoS directive that was to declare as NON-public information, the names of those who had to vote provisionally, and whether their votes were rejected, and for what reason. A deserved VRI brouhaha ensued against any proposal that would remove this main check and balance to help BOE's and the state update their present, non-thoroughly corrected voter registration bases; and to assure that provisional voting is used to widen enfranchisement, not to suppress or diminish equal voting rights. We "submitted our concerns in writing," had a teleconference meeting in, if I remember, late August, heard very briefly Brunner's concerns that made no logical sense to me - that she did not want provisional voters "harassed," (though their choices still would be unknown, and they could not go back and change their ballots/only update their registrations.) No resolution of this matter has been published - rather like the testing report to date, upon which she supposedly presents her non-tenable, invalid, either-or decision for Cuyahoga for the '08 March presidential primary.

Mistakes? Too busy? Maybe. But maybe not.

With all that, and much more not listed here, once again, we must look at Cuyahoga's presented choice, with a priority question about Brunner.

After "sleeping on" what I observed from the short board comments after the CCBOE executive session on December 7, before which they announced that they were to engage in a conference call with the SoS office; and feeling their suddenly pressured, vastly-abbreviated timeline for decision-making in a sudden no-win choice after the call, here's one "gut-level take" I had.

No matter if Cuyahoga changes or does not, and without proper questioning of Brunner on the subject of just what her reasoning and motivations are for putting Cuyahoga in this lose-lose, impossible bind, Brunner can still come out appearing to be a "knightess" of election reform - when maybe she's not.

If her testing again affirms just how bad the Diebold DRE's are, especially with Cuyahoga's unique additional capacity challenges, she's made "the proper" move; and she has done that in a way, while the nation's eyes are all on Ohio, that she can not only still be made to look like a powerful election reformer, she can also do so without too badly shaking up the current vendors, or the politicians who love them.

In fact, this way actually promotes the nationwide re-institutionalization of our paying a second round of taxpayer billions, without thought and serious consideration of better alternatives, to the same untenable, too-closed circle of current irresponsible, power and money-wielding vendors of both DRE's and OptiScans; while allowing citizens' elections to remain to be easily and undetectably manipulated from the inside - where no citizens are to tread, let alone understand or see.

Any crash and burn resulting from either way Cuyahoga moves from this SoS imposed, impossible choice - one which may even need unknown technicians inside our machines for the presidential primary - could easily be made to come out in the press as no one's fault but "good old, bad Cuyahoga - again!" - "the Cuyahoga reputation" - absolutely no longer deserved.

Or one could always again easily blame the several thousand poll workers - an also misrepresented group, without a self-defending voice - most of whom are dedicated, but may probably be asked (by the SoS) to learn far too much in 4 low-paid hours, and to perform perfectly in a one-long-day, mission-critical stint on election day - in order to either "defend against" her "new found" security flaws in Diebold DRE's, or to switch their learning again to a new system.

Nor would any Cuyahoga failure look like a particular party's recommendation, nor the OH legislature's, which currently, (and I'm still guessing, as is the entire public, about Brunner's plan) is seemingly to come after the holidays. Nor does it even have to be made to look like the fault of the vendors themselves.

If Cuyahoga jumps to her change, though who will pay for it is still up for grabs, most would think the new ones must be good! "The decision" was made, after "the tests" and the millions were even spent again!
Or if Cuyahoga stays with the so-far "known evil" of the Diebold DRE's the public can be made to think that Cuyahoga had their chance, but they refused, so in essence, they get what they deserve. And that can also be made to mean that Diebold DRE machines are really not so bad after all; they just need some (of course, expensive and impossible to thoroughly execute) "mitigations."

I think that even while various bills are still rolling around in Congress, demanding everything from hand counted paper ballots to mandatory audits, it's important to find out why the SoS would get so suddenly "worried," on Dec. 7 to put Cuyahoga, the largest voting district in Ohio, and one of the largest in the U.S. so clearly between a rock and hard place, while in essence promoting no sufficient thought or citizen input, but the same insider-hackable machines from private, proprietary, power and money wielding vendors, for our March 4 presidential primary, and very possibly then, long into the future.

Until I see whatever possibly equally untenable "mitigations" Brunner might also suddenly in mid-December, demand for our Diebold DRE's, and for other DRE counties, it seems wisest for Cuyahoga to hold tight, take their same wise, citizen-included decision-making path, and to clearly state:
• their being in favor of a new system, while also stating that it will take almost a year to do that properly, so that should be done in a reasonable time-frame, and then launched in small election first; AND clearly re-state, their constantly-demonstrated position,
• that they welcome citizen input and help, and are agreeable to the maximum oversight possible, to create as much transparency to US as possible in whatever system they use.

At least we know that Brunner will probably be having a Merry Christmas....

9/20/07 CCBOE Excellent Public Forum: Chris Nance, Assist. SoS, answers questions and presents about SoS EVEREST testing

2007-12-10T18:50:00.000-05:00

Why, in our sit and wait and guess period imposed by Brunner's EVEREST testing, maybe while her selected BOE officials, politicians and vendors turn the unredacted testing reports into their redacted versions for public consumption (with no independent citizen oversight) on Friday, December 14 - might we question Brunner's highly-delayed, questionably secretive to "outsiders" (us) testing process?

Listen to this portion of the second Q&A Session from the CCBOE's excellent 9/20/07 public forum on voting machines, after Chris Nance, Assistant Secretary of State made his presentation about the then-just starting SoS EVEREST testing.

At some near point, I will explain more about my questions, including about the new, non-current Diebold equipment that she had planned to test; about the SysTest apparent conflict of interest; and about handing over her decision to Ohio legislators, not the people when I have the time it takes about this rather complicated subject. It is one made no less complicated by the SoS, especially as she last week, before the redacted reports are to be released on Friday, December 14, and certainly before any adequate thought can be given to those testing results, began pushing Cuyahoga into a lose-lose decision about changing from a "known evil" for the 2-month-hence presidential primary election, into an unknown, very possibly equal evil (still the same closed loop of irresponsible, private vendors and insider hackable machines.)

Where was the move toward actual viable solutions even 6 months ago, from the previously "revealed"problems over the past 4 years?
And regarding the "matrix" of those years of previous reports' conclusions, that concept was suggested by the Voting Rights Institute, technology sub-work-group last April, where it was offered to be done for free, from this group who collectively has and is intimately familiar with all of those reports. As usual, our attention then was diverted, and stopped.

And for more information about the citizen involvement and oversight ....that never ensued, see "Has Cuyahoga been set up for failure?" http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/12/has-cuyahoga-been-set-up-for-failure.html
and "SoS Brunner's consideration of citizens in the election reform process"
http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/12/sos-brunners-consideration-of-citizens.html

For now, just listen and maybe learn.

2. And here's Chris Nance's presentation about SoS Brunner's machine testing on 9/20. Listen to the "baby and bathwater" statement. What does it mean to you? I'm afraid that from Brunner's last week's sudden,"worry and concern " about DRE's in the 2-month hence March 4, presidential primary, despite years of previous evidence pointing to long-ago decertification, that the "baby" she wants us and the nation to hold are the insider-hackable, NON-"mitigatable," (despite many possible unwieldy and detailed dictums to come,) and inoperable machines - both DRE's and OptiScans - made by the same private, proprietary, irresponsible, though power- and money-wielding corporations, who along with politician friends, brought us to the current mess citizens' elections are in. And the "draining bathwater" is our memory of same, along with any sense of empowerment that these are and always have been OUR elections, and that even she is working for us.

PD-Brunner's heating up the frying pan...:NOT ANOTHER unthought-through, bad decision!

2007-12-07T07:15:00.000-05:00

See
Frying Pan into the Fire

From her yet to be revealed testing that has defied inclusion of any citizen oversight, from testers selections on down - only BOE officials, politicians, testers (some with seeming conflicts of interest,) the vendors themselves, and even a former lobbyist for ES&S - now she wants Cuyahoga to jump into using another, from the non-luminary list of current vendors, before anyone has a chance to think or stop the slippery slope again - as with HAVA 2002. This is NOT a decent solution for citizens and democracy. It's not even a good management one! (But alas, one she can virtually ultimatum, especially as Cuyahoga, since her seating of new board in early '07, remains under her "administrative oversight," projected through, "coincidentally," the end of the March primary.)

After all of her testing delays, until after the vendor-unfriendly California report came out, and despite years of research both in labs and in the field indicating that they should have been eliminated years ago, she now wants to suddenly eliminate Diebold DRE's and force a huge decision and change, all implemented before the March primary? Just what all is going on here?

See the November post: Opinions: High level strategies about OUR elections?

And Tim Hagan, Cuyahoga County Commissioner's statement does not make the situation any better. In fact it just diverts attention from the priority real issue: even before we consider who's going to pay for such a new system, first, no one should be buying anything else until citizens decide what system is worthy of our fair elections, of our democracy, of our vote, and of our being able to SEE and properly MANAGE that our vote is handled fairly for US?
We've been down that road before, which brought us to today. It's not pretty. Neither is the list of current vendors to choose from. They all are private companies with secret software, which can easily aid undetectable, inside manipulation, and with terrible operational track records, charging exorbitant amounts. None of them allow citizens to actually get proof with our own eyes, that who we're told are our "winners" really are. And may I remind Mr. Hagan and all - whether it's state, county or federal dollars - they're still OUR dollars; and despite continuous myths and diversions saying they're not - elections are still ours too.

The PD today,
http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1197019941287340.xml&coll=2

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner wants new voting system for Cuyahoga

Friday, December 07, 2007
Joe Guillen
Plain Dealer Reporter
Ohio's elections chief has no confidence in Cuyahoga County's current voting system and has suggested dumping the more than $20 million touch-screen voting system before the March 4 presidential primary.
Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is pushing the Board of Elections for a quick decision because of the time needed to roll out a new system.

"We all understand there is not a lot of time to delay," said Sandy McNair, one of the four members on the elections board.

Brunner asked the members this week to consider an optical-scan system, which reads paper ballots filled out by voters, McNair said.

The board, however, is reluctant to dump its touch-screen voting system because it is gathering information about its reliability.

Brunner and the board became concerned about the touch-screen machines during the Nov. 6 election, when vote-counting software crashed twice, delaying results. The machines were made by Diebold Inc.

The board expects answers about the software crash next week. And, Brunner is expected to share a report about the reliability of voting equipment throughout the state.

County board member Rob Frost said, "I'd be hard-pressed to say that we can be expected to reach a consensus when we know we're going to have a whole lot more information next week."

Although the board is under Brunner's administrative oversight, the secretary of state said its members should ultimately decide the future of touch-screen voting in the county.

But she said, if the board decides to keep the current equipment for the primary, "I would have great concerns."

Even if the board decides to switch to an optical-scan system, no one is sure who would pay for it or the cost. Estimates range from $10 million to $20 million.

Cuyahoga County commissioners, who have urged a switch to optical-scan equipment since November 2006, wrote to Brunner last week, suggesting she get money from the state to pay for new machines.

"What I fear is that the people of Cuyahoga County will have to pay more money for the new system," said Commissioner Tim Hagan.

Brunner and the board will discuss the issue today during a conference call.

Adding to the county's time crunch is poll worker training and voter education for a new system.

The Summit County Board of Elections had four months to prepare for its first election using optical-scan equipment, which was in May 2006, director Bryan Williams said.

"It was difficult, I won't kid you," Williams said. "But it was doable."

Summit County paid $4.6 million for its optical-scan equipment, made by Election Systems & Software, of Omaha, Neb.

Summit County, with less than 500 voting precincts, uses one optical-scan machine per precinct during elections. Cuyahoga County has more than 1,400 precincts.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jguillen@plaind.com, 216-999-4675

© 2007 The Plain Dealer © 2007 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

Some "random" found...unfortunately

2007-12-07T06:26:00.000-05:00

Checked in with Cuyahoga's ongoing recounts yesterday, and found that Strongville's board of education recount was still ongoing.
That's because it seems that while some absentee/op scan voters did not fill in the ovals on the ballots, but used checks and X's instead, it was found in the 3% sample (albeit with precinct 1A, of course) some of the scanners allowed those marks through, but counted them as blanks votes (!) the first time through, while others (or same scanners) sent them back out as unreadable, as was expected.
A full hand count was then ordered by the SoS office.
Of course, the CCBOE has now updated their paper ballot counting procedures to include, after opening ballots from their envelopes, inspecting and separating out all those with non-oval-filled marks. All those will have to be "remakes" to get an accurate count.
Can't trust those Diebold-Premier op scanners to help out with that separating job of what they can read accurately or not.
THEY are too unpredictably RANDOM in their methods of reading ballots.
A BIG problem throwing another Diebold wrench into fair and accurate counting? Of course.
And if my internal tally of the time-savings Diebold also offers into a fair accurate counting process is anywhere near correct, let's see, we should be by comparison with pre-Diebold, somewhere around -350.

Up to our ^&%^s in Alligators

2007-12-06T00:36:00.001-05:00

Here's a piece of film from the CCBOE board's Technology Work Group's wonderful 9/20/07 Public Forum on Technology. The work group is composed of board members Sandy McNair (D) and Rob Frost (R) and of course, much of the CCBOE staff.

I give my thanks right back to Sandy as he thanked me for the idea. They acted on it! And it was wonderfully planned, allowing for real exchange - learning by all, straight speaking and serious listening to ideas. They even invited Diebold to attend and field some of our questions, but alas, the company decided they were too busy. (I got there a bit late, so no film of those announcements.)
However, the CCBOE even followed up on all questions posed by the public in the two unimpeded Q&A sessions of the afternoon, and still have responses of their followed up items posted on the home page of the CCBOE website.

I'll be posting more film of that 9/20 day in the next few days. It'll be worth watching!

Even more, they're planning another, similar forum for mid-January, probably on a Saturday, (as suggested on 9/20) hopefully in part, to discuss with the public SoS Brunner's testing reports/results! Even if you have to pack your bags and come on up or down - definitely plan to attend!

It'll be a great time to have a minimum of canned presentations, and a maximum of having the public's concerns and questions brought to light, and addressed! If you're thinking of attending, call the CCBOE and let them know you want to be kept informed. 216-443-3200. If you're an election reform advocate from other parts of the state or nation, and want to contact me ahead of time, just email, adeleeisner@gmail.com.

This particular piece of film is from the second Q&A period of the afternoon, after Chris Nance, Assistant Secretary of State, gave his presentation about the then-almost starting testing process. (The SoS office was still involved in getting the $1.8 million of Ohio HAVA federally tax-paid funds appropriated from the Ohio Controlling Board.)

It is a short, and "precious" ( said in a very complimentary way) from Ray Rosenberg, a local computer expert and business consultant, a systems thinker who remains vitally, articulately, yet unassumingly active in all manners for re-awakening remnants of our democracy.

Good news! Sandy McNair states there'll be public forum to discuss SoS testing

2007-12-06T00:36:00.000-05:00

I'll be posting more film of the first really excellent Technology Public Forum on 9/20 in the next few days. It'll be worth watching! It'll be worth attending the next one...

They're planning another! a similar forum for mid-January, probably on a Saturday, (as suggested on 9/20) hopefully in part, to actually discuss with the public SoS Brunner's testing reports/results! Even if you have to pack your bags and come on up or down - definitely plan to attend!

It'll be a great time to have a minimum of canned presentations, and a maximum of having the public's concerns and questions brought to light, and addressed! If you're thinking of attending, call the CCBOE and let them know you want to be kept informed. 216-443-3200. If you're an election reform advocate from other parts of the state or nation, and want to contact me ahead of time, just email, adeleeisner@gmail.com.

Hopefully there won't be any SoS Cuyahoga oversighting "ultimatums" - before that time....

Will Cuyahoga Voters be the First to Be Led from the Frying Pan into the Fire?

2007-12-05T19:47:00.000-05:00

Film Below.
I saw it coming on November 21 at the CCBOE election certification meeting. It was apparent that talks were already going on between the SoS office and the CCBOE, about what to do about a system that has tabulators crashing on election night; a vendor who has to be pushed every step towards baby-steps of year's-lacking normal consumer responsibility... and this was still before the 20+% of the printer tapes were unreadable from the Diebold touchscreen machines, as found on the first day of CCBOE recounts.

But, what now seems Cuyahoga's bind to get a system that actually works before the March 2008 primary, while it definitely seems imperative for the reasons you'll hear Director Jane Platten express in the film below, must not be a reason to rush into yet another millions of dollars purchase of another round of hackable electronic machines made by irresponsible, private vendors, with their secret software!

Notice when Platten states that Diebld-Premier wanted to take our machines onto their premises to "analyze." Can you believe it? Whatever they "find" about the tabulator, and now the printers, which Mr. Riggall, the Diebold spokesman said they'll do in the aftermath of both failures, I'm sure that their report will reflect that it's all the CCBOE's and poll workers' fault.

When board member Rob Frost stated his agreement at the meeting, it seemed set that the conversations were already well on their way - including backing them with the SoS testing - which to date has included NO citizen oversight or input from selection of testers on down.

That means we, the voters, and taxpayers who will be forced to pay for and suffer under any NEW round of secretly, supposedly "certified" electronic voting systems - as we have since HAVA 2002, which got us to today's mess - from any of the same current, privately-held, money-hungry vendors - all of whom have electronic machines that can be hacked, and none of whom have sterling reputations - have again been left completely out of the equation. That is despite many professional efforts of election integrity advocates from even her selected and touted Voting Rights Institute, "Advisory Panel" - from that Technology subgroup - to be able to see in and weigh in. The SoS office just put us off, until the clock ran out.

Before the public's (redacted) SoS testing reports will appear next week, however, involvement has included: her selected BOE officials; some apparent conflicts of interests among the testers; some politicians; a lobbyist; the vendors and more. Therefore no matter what the testing reports say, even if they align to my own beliefs, bottom line, Brunner's testing process has been voter-untrustworthy, let alone not worthy of voter "confidence." Many hard questions still need to be asked and actually answered by Brunner's office. Much more about that to come in another post.

We cannot let Brunner's obvious delay in decertification of touchscreens, or her beginning Ohio's testing until after the California report came out - which happened in September after THEIR top to bottom review, and upon which CA SoS Bowen decertified and stringently conditionally recertified many electronic system from all current major vendors; and has already based one $15 millon lawsuit against ES&S, - now cause any rush for anyone - to jump from one citizen-void frying pan, into another citizen void-fire.

Before any decisions are made - even for the Cuyahoga's BOE and moreso, for Cuyahoga's taxpayers and voters - there needs to be public input, lots of it, from local citizens. and nationwide election integrity advocates, who are truly experts on the four years of reports which seem presently to make Brunner's testing expensively redundant, at the least; or at most, as some suggest, a possible attempt to whitewash the damning facts brought out in California's report.

What I've come to only suspect is currently talked about for Cuyahoga between the SoS and the board, is hundreds of precinct-based Hart InterCivic Optical Scanners, with a high speed version at the board, and some touchscreens at the polls for handicapped accessibility. But just check out what California had to say about the Hart InterCivic systems they tested. (Any further information would be greatly appreciated from advocates - or boards - already using Hart. (adeleeisner@gmail.com, or post a comment at the end of this post.)
Some of the things I've read, have included their alignment with Accenture, the Bermuda-based company that arose from Anderson Consulting, which hit the dust with Enron in 2001. Their CEO is a former Accenture partner. I've also read from Hart op scan counties, that this former graphics company, has almost forced their op scan users to have Hart print their ballots in order for them to be properly read by their equipment; and that they've charged exorbitant amounts for that printing - like 33 cents a page in quantities of over 100,000! While that's great for their ongoing revenue, it's also an ongoing taxpayer fleecing.
Then there's also the no small matter of still a private, proprietary company controlling OUR elections; of still hackability, especially insider; of such things as getting actual warranties and a contract that demands responsibility or else (which were conveniently left out of Mr. Blackwell's statewide contract. One wonders, for what in return.
- And without "permitted" citizen oversight and approval into a whole process, one always has to suspect for what in return...)

Today's Columbus Dispatch article on the Cuyahoga topic, follows the film.

The CCBOE official statement about the 11/6 election, mentioned in the film above can be downloaded here.

Here was my reply, which as things move quickly, in retrospect could have been much stronger about no current vendors/no electronic voting machines:

Here's today's Columbus Dispatch article that deals with the same essential question. Will Cuyahoga voters be the first in Ohio to be pushed from a frying pan into an almost assured fire?

Cuyahoga County leery of touch screens
Wednesday, December 5, 2007 3:11 AM
By Mark Niquette
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is pushing officials in the state's largest county to decide soon whether they will use their touch-screen voting machines in the March 4 primary, enhance them or replace them with paper ballots.
"The last thing they should do is to have the decision made by default because they don't act," Brunner said yesterday.
What happens in Cuyahoga County matters statewide because determining a winner of the presidential race in Ohio next year could hinge on Cuyahoga's results.
Moreover, 46 other counties, including Fairfield and Licking, use the same touch-screen system from the former Diebold Election Systems, although officials in many other large counties said they're satisfied with the voting machines.
Recent elections in Cuyahoga County have been marred by myriad problems, including an unexplained server crash that delayed results in last month's general election. A reported 20 percent of paper receipts from the machines were unreadable in two recounts this month.
That was from an election with relatively light voter turnout, and the fear is the system won't be able to handle the expected crush of voters for next year's presidential election.
Although Cuyahoga County commissioners say they've lost confidence in the touch screens, questions remain about who would pay for any new system and whether it could be installed in time for smooth elections next year.
Elections officials also are awaiting the results of a top-to-bottom review of all the voting systems used in the state that Brunner requested to address any concerns about their security and reliability.
A final report from that study with recommendations is expected Dec. 14.
Speaking at an election conference Monday in Chicago, Brunner said she thinks it's possible there may be a decision in Cuyahoga County before then. But board Chairman Jeff
Hastings said yesterday the board still must discuss the matter.
Brunner also said if Cuyahoga switches to an optical-scan system, she thinks the only way it would work next year is if the ballots are counted by high-speed scanners at a central location such as the board offices.
But that's already drawing opposition from advocates who say ballots should be scanned in the precincts, reducing errors by notifying voters when they have voted for too many or too few candidates and giving them a second chance.
Dan Tokaji, an Ohio State University associate law professor who was part of a lawsuit challenging punch-card voting because of its error rate, said he thinks legal action is likely if Cuyahoga County switches to a central-count system.
"I think it would be a bad choice," he said.
Brunner thinks the switch would be legal if there is enough voter education, and that problems with the machines in Cuyahoga County largely are attributable to the size of the county.
A spokesman for Diebold Election Systems, now Premier Election Solutions, couldn't be reached yesterday. But company officials previously have said the machines work well in large areas in other states.
Election officials reached yesterday at several other Ohio counties that use the same touch screens said they have not had major problems.
"I'm extremely happy," said Jay Morrow, director of the Licking County Board of Elections.
mniquette@dispatch.com
As the 2008 election nears, the secretary of state is pressing the county to resolve voting-machine issues.

Copyright © 2007, The Columbus Dispatch

Why truly random recounts are imperative: A trip down (horror) memory lane...

2007-12-05T18:38:00.000-05:00

Why getting recounts right - with mandated first3% samples for (exposure & ) hand counts that are truly random (not pre-determinable)- is so important. Some examples.

First it should be understood thatwhatever that 3% sample of ballots and precincts is, is what the public cansee and recount - human eye and hand (even when there's alot of secret machinecode on either end which makes the process almost useless as a true "recount"of checking the voters' will. Without seeing the machine code telling thosemachines HOW to "count", we never can be sure what we're seeing is what thevoters' intended. However...)

Second, the rule is that if the 3% sample'shand count does not match up completely with the machine count (almost impossibleif one is just checking software-driven, coded memory card print-outs againstwhat all those same memory cards added up to in the tabulator) then a fullhand count of all precincts involved in the recount must ensue. The latteris a very time-consuming, labor intensive process....and can be a very revelatoryone, as one can see all the ballots and election data involved from the election.Also important.

At the very least, it's usually not something mostBOE's want to spend their Christmas or Thanksgiving doing...from say a November'08 presidential election.

In the requested and additionally paid-forOhio statewide county recounts from November, 2004, (the still highly questionedelection, for many well-documented but little reported reasons, of the 118,000margined Ohio Bush "win") many counties went out of their ways to make sure the 3% hand count matched.

Theirbiggest fear was a full countywide hand count - apparently both for time/laborreasons; and as documented evidence gathered over the past three years clearlyshows, in some cases for cover-up reasons too.

It was reported by the majority of 2004 recount observers throughout Ohio, and in the FreePressas one example of reports, that many counties preselected the recount precinctsin order to avoid having the 3% be random and to not match. That particular12/31 story, "Ohio's official non-recount ends amidst new evidence of fraud, theft..." went on to explain that the experts for an election challenge suit "have noted many of the precincts selected were mostly free of the irregularities they are seeking to investigate, while many contested precincts were left unrecounted." The story also reports that "InShelby County, election officials admitted that they discarded crucial tabulatorrecords, rendering a meaningful recount impossible."

Also,instead of pre-selection, some other reported methods occurred to avoid afull hand count. In Hocking County, Sherole Eaton, the now fired BOE deputydirector and Congressional whistleblower, sworean affidavit against a Triad company technician for allegedly offering acheat sheet and replacing the county’s central voting tabulator hard driveduring last year’s presidential recount, to make sure the sample hand count and tabulator matched. The same Triad actions were reported in at least one other county.

According to Truthout's 12.12/04 story, "Conyers Alarmed at Efforts to Obstruct Ohio Recount Effort, Calls Witness to Monday Hearing to Detail Such Efforts"

Yesterday,it came to the attention of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staffthat efforts to audit poll records in Greene County, Ohio are being obstructedby County Election officials and/or Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.According to Joan Quinn and Eve Robertson, two election observers researchingvoting records, Greene County officials initially gave Quinn and Robertsonaccess to poll records, and then abruptly withdrew such access. Greene CountyDirector of Elections Carole Garman claimed that she had withdrawn accessto the voting records at the direction of Secretary Blackwell. Regardlessof who ordered the denial of this access, such an action appears to violateOhio law. Later, at the same office, election observers found the officeunlocked, and what appeared to be locked ballot boxes, unattended. Priorto the withdrawal of access to the books, observers had found discrepanciesin election records, and possible evidence of minority vote suppression.

Richard Hayes Phillips, PhD. one of the Ohio 2004 election researchers, who's "seen it all," and was referred to in the above FreePress article, responded to this Directive 07-30 by saying:

Brilliant! So all that the election riggers have to do to avoid getting caught is toleave alone the first precinct in every political subdivision (e.g. wardor village) and rig everything else!
This reminds me of Clermont County2004, where the markings on the "absentee" and "provisional" ballots showedthat the Board of Elections had decided before November 2, 2004which precincts would be hand counted if a recount should prove necessary. And it just so happens that Kerry performed significantly better in theseprecincts than he did in the rest of the county.
To be fair, Secretary Brunner's Directive 2007-30 was issued on November 16, 2007, ten days after the election. Assuming that no one got wind of her proposal in advance, then elections would not have been rigged in accordance with it. One hopes that a different directive will be issued after the next election, with different instructions for "random" selection of precincts to be recounted, and that the terms of the directive will be a closely guarded secret until the moment it is issued.

See his provided excerpts on Clermont Recount, from RHP's upcoming book: "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election."

In Cuyahoga the criminal charges upon which the two CCBOE workers were charged and convicted, (and who since on another inside deal have been put into a "Diversion Program" to get their records expunged,) involved pre-counting the pre-selected 3%, hand to make sure they would match.

To paraphrase Jason Parry, an astute, articulate Ohio election reform activist:

"Wedon't need to talk about what-ifs and rigging. We already know that somecounties will do anything they can to "help" that 3% hand count match up.This "random" recount Directive allows counties to know which precincts mightbe part of the 3%. This allows counties to have less-than-honest recounts,like we saw in 2004. It also allows good intentioned counties to skirt theintention of a recount."

And thanks also to Jason for his heads up about the new report just released from a year and a half long study by professors at OSU's Moritz College of Law, where they said Ohio had "the most significant problems" of five Midwestern states studied.

There on page 38 in Chapter 3 about Ohio's Election Ecosystem: A Poster Child for Reform,( the chapter's download page 18) it states regarding the above-stated electiondata, including the majority of NON-randomly selected recount ballots:

"Anotherfederal court suit, King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v.Blackwell,76 argues that problems in the 2004 election in Ohio had a disproportionateimpact on some voters, and specifically alleges that election resources wereallocated in a racially discriminatory matter. This suit, which also seeksto put supervision of Ohio elections in the hands of a federal judge, isbeing held in abeyance pending settlement efforts.
Inan alarming development in this case, in the summer of 2007 the Ohio Secretaryof State's office disclosed that almost two-thirds of Ohio's counties hadfailed to comply with the federal court's order to retain their ballots andother records from the 2004 presidential election while this litigation proceeded. Althoughthe plaintiffs in the suit have suggested that at least some of these recordsmay have been intentionally destroyed to conceal irregularities, even theinadvertent loss or destruction of these ballots and other materials, contraryto court order, is extremely serious. It also appears to be emblematicof the difficulties that some local jurisdictions have had in following establishedrules and procedures."

Itis the activist research into the above facts that brought this serious non-compliancewith retention laws, by then in the realm of possible concealment of trialevidence, to light; it was the lack of SoS acknowlegement, or any consequencesto such local BOE non-compliance and law breaking, which prompted the formationof the Ohio Election Justice Campaign (OEJC), now a nationwide group.
Theybegan with asking for a meeting with Brunner, which she denied for months;held a funeral procession in downtown Columbus mourning the death of democracyon the anniversary of 2004's November 2 election, and asked Brunner to comeout and speak with them, which no one did; held a "Throw the Turkeys Out"day around Thanksgiving; a later press conference; a community teach-in;and they've delivered lawsuits from other states about the recall of electronicvoting machines - all without substantive response from SoS Brunner.

The PD also covered the Moritz study today.

Bottomline, any activist called into huge concern over the multitude of "irregularities"in the 2004 election, one which still has honest people from all partiesconcerned about loss of a fair, open election process, more than partisanship- and suspecting that Ohio was not won by Bush, (and most probably Forida 2000 was not either) - absolutely knows that if a recount is to be done by 3% sample first, that sample must be a valid representation of the ballots cast - which means a truly RANDOM selection.

SoS Recount Directive 07-30 - It's NOT a RANDOM sample - again!

2007-12-04T15:56:00.000-05:00

For understanding, you'll need to access the Recount Directive and read it at http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/ElectionsVoter/directives/2007/Dir2007-30.pdf
or at http://www.box.net/shared/ip0gdc03y0

I actually was not going to post this immediately; thought it might be resolved in a professional, easy way. But then I got a response today, which I include near the bottom, before my thirdly included, finally frustrated from trying to work with the SoS office on other matters too - my response back.

I. Sent:
December 2, 2007

To:
The Office of the Secretary of State
• Kellye Pinkleton, Director, The Voting Rights Institute
• cc. David Farrell, Election Director
From:
Adele Eisner, Member of the VRI and a Designated Cuyahoga Election Observer
Re: Recount Directive 07-30

Dear Kellye,

First I'm very pleased to see that the web site is working today. The public's having the mandated access to the Directives, Advisories and Memos is necessary to full participation and oversight of the citizens' election process.

As I just tried your website again today, this was the first time I read the recent Secretary of State's Directives, including 07-30, on recounts.

As I am a designated Observer for the 11/6/07 election, per ORC 3505.221, approved by the county Democratic party, thus observing Cuyahoga's recounts, I would appreciate your facilitating helping me get some quick and clarifying answers to questions I have about this directive. Cuyahoga still has at least four more recounts upcoming this week.
As an Observer, I need to understand the rules under which I am observing.

1. I am particularly flummoxed by # VI. - A. - 10 - a. through f. - regarding how to randomly select of recount samples.

I begin by saying that I appreciate that SoS Brunner is memorializing the fact that while a BOE may recount a 3% sample first, to determine if an entire handcount is necessary, (where the recount includes more than one precinct) that sample of course, by all valid sampling standards, must be randomly selected.

Her re-introducing the concept of random sampling in 07-30, in concept, re-institutes a years long procedure in Ohio recounts, which Mr. Blackwell in his tenure, allowed to be overlooked if BOE's should so choose, thus, also allowing those recounts where boards selectively chose or selectively patterned the precincts' ballots, poll books, etc. to be checked in recount, to become an essentially invalid and thus, an almost useless procedure.

In such a non-random sampling process, any previous manipulation of ballots/results in particular precincts, or recurring anomalies, could most assuredly be kept hidden from observers or unable to be citizen/candidate found or proved, until far too late to assure election justice.
This was a great cause for the still widely consisdered, unanswered questions, non-confidence, and even legal proceedings about the '04 presidential election, as you know.

But I also find that directive section #VI,A,#10 - about how to randomly select - both very difficult to understand, and seemingly bulky and confusing to perform - as opposed to a simple truly random number generating procedure, such as: counties always using "the universe" of all precincts held within it, then after shaking and mixing those precinct numbers in a hat, just picking numbers out until the 3% is reached - or using some similar, random number generating process of all precincts involved in the recount.

Worse, the directive's process, if I read it correctly, seems to in some cases, re-introduce a definite pattern of precincts to be recounted/ inherent NON-randomness.

Most directly as example, consider a one-suburb race in Cuyahoga, lets say a race for a council seat, with 30 precincts. By this directive, by having to choose the lowest numbered and lettered precincts first, then subsequently on up the line, it seems to me, that in every recount in that political subdivision, it would be known before the election begins which precincts would be most likely to be recounted and not, should such a recount occur.

Further, it seems that in a county-wide recount, for example in Cuyahoga, where there are 20+ political subdivisions, (cities, townships, etc.) but where the one city of Cleveland holds by far the largest number of precincts, (and in which the largest number of voting problems have occurred in the past,) by starting with a forcing of the categorization of cities, townships, etc., it makes makes the city of Cleveland (including many wards and precincts,) equally available to be chosen, to say a Bedford Heights with only 5 precincts. And if I'm reading it right, for example, at the start should Cleveland be "randomly" chosen, and Bedford Heights is too, it would always be those cities' same precincts ( the lowest numbered and lettered) that would be recounted.

The SoS process seems to force an inequitable chance for a truly equitable, random selection of the couny's precincts. If I'm reading this right, it forces a not-truly random pattern: this is far from a plain equitable, random selection as I suggested with the hat method above.

Please help me get clarity on this procedure, and a possible rethinking in your office, if what is suggested is still not truly random selection.

2. Then in VI, - C. -2. -b. under "The Recount" (with DRE's )- pg. 8

• First, it directs the BOE's to check the public counters on the voting units, and the poll books and the summary reports at the bottom of the VVPATs to make sure they all match. But it does not say what to do if they do match or don't.

• Further, that also seems to imply that BOE's must bring all machines used for the chosen precincts to the site of the recount, and set them up, so that observers can observe that process too, if it is to have bearing on the process of the recount.
Is that true?

• What are candidates' rights if the poll book signature numbers do NOT match the total of VVPAT summaries for the selected precincts.
They VERY often do NOT match, for any number of reasons from poll worker confusion, to encoders not working so signing in voters, vote on paper ballots.

d. And last , the directive's number VI, - C. -2. -b. -3 in that same section, it says:

What exactly are "all the ballots for the recount" - that are to be counted by hand?
Is it not presumed in this procedure, that once a precinct is selected, all the ballots for that precinct are to be hand counted?

Is that not how the workers found out in the first place, whether any VVPAT summary did not match the hand count for that tape?

I will appreciate answers to the above questions as soon as possible.

Also, to make you aware, as there has already been discussion about this directive among voting rights advocates in Ohio, within and outside of the VRI, I will be posting these questions and hopefully salient answers from your office to a wider group.

Thank you,

Adele Eisner

PS. I would have copied the sections in question in a more readable format had these documents been presented in digitized text form, or in a text accessble PDF format on your site. That would make such discussion easier. For now, if you double click "the pictures" I copied from your larger "picture page", in most applications, my small pictures will enlarge to original size for reading.
____________________________________________
II. The SoS Response today:
(I omit the repetition of my email at the bottom of this response.)

Hi Adele. Thank you for the email.

I am reviewing your email and will be following up with the appropriate staff as soon as possible to provide you a response. In the meantime, it is more efficient to get answers when we have specific questions to pass on for response. To that end, I have extracted, I believe, the questions posed in your email and I have listed them below. Let me know if these are not accurate.

Thank you,

Kellye

-What do you do if the counters, poll books and VVPAT summary reports do not match?

-Are BOE's supposed to bring all machines used for the chosen precincts to the site of the recount, and set them up?

-What are candidates' rights if the poll book signature numbers do NOT match the total of VVPAT summaries for the selected precincts.

-(VI, - C. -2. -b. -3) What exactly are "all the ballots for the recount" - that are to be counted by hand?
Is it not presumed in this procedure, that once a precinct is selected, all the ballots for that precinct are to be hand counted?

Kellye Pinkleton
Director, Voting Rights Institute
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner
180 East Broad Street, 15th Floor
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614.995.1619 Executive Assistant
614.752.4360 Fax
kpinklet@sos.state.oh.us

III. My response back today:

(To clarify what may seem to be my non-based assumptions of avoidance and not answering that which is wanted to be avoided, I note that this reflects an ongoing pattern, as only very partially indicated in the content of my email. Also, I spoke at some length with Brian Green, an attorney in the SoS office, yesterday, as he called and indicated he would be sending me the documents I had requested in September (noted in a previous post here.) We had a very pleasant conversation, and I re-iterated to him the public's concerns about the invalidity of the "random" process presented in the directive, and told him I had already written those down and sent them to Kellye. He indicated his understanding of my message, and he would get a copy for consideration.)
_________________________________

In a message dated 12/4/07 12:46:31 kpinklet@sos.state.oh.us, writes:

(I here omit her message seen above)

Kellye -
Those though are some (sic), they, as I think is obvious, are actually the minor points to my previous email.

The main point was in #1 of my email. About the fact that the way the directive demands HOW a "random" sample is derived - makes it NOT RANDOM at all, thus able to predict BEFORE an election which precincts are most likely to be exposed to the public, should a recount occur. It thus makes it easy to "game" /manipulate over 80% of the ballots in an election, knowing no one from the public will ever have a legal chance to see what happened until well after candidates are seated and going full force...

This is as invalid a sample, or actually worse, as Mr. Blackwell's saying your 3% sample does not have to be random. Some honest, diligent BOE's would have gone to a regular picking precincts out of a hat system.
This 07-30 directive demands that they do something you're calling random, but allows anyone so inclined to do election manipulation, to do it in the majority of precincts with the highest number/letter designations and know they can get away with it.

Or as one person explained :

"...there is a difference between statistical confidence levels and telling people ahead of elections that you can make certain that 80% of the precinct can never be included in a recount, oh and here's a list of which precincts those are.
This isn't an exaggerated problem, and even if we assume there are no dishonest people, it allows counties to do a good job with all "A" precincts and guarantee there will never be a full hand count.
Also, don't worry about errors or bad poll workers in the "B"-"G" precinct because our tabulation data is the final word on those.
I agree a 3% of precincts recount is not meaningful from a
statistics point of view because you are not random sampling
3% of a bucket of ballots. But this gives a green light for
fraud that has a very low likelyhood of ever being caught."

Further it is very confusing to understand thus to perform, and bulky to boot.

AND in my PS. is the concern that when your office puts directives and advisories on the web site, instead of putting up a digitized form, they scan them, and in non-text accessible manners/but in whole page "pictures" - so that it's impossible to cut and paste the words the public might want to discuss and reference. Why not use an image file for the letterhead, and signature, in directives, advisories, and memos then make the text digitized-accessible, as other websites do - to make it easier on the public, than having to re-type everything?

So to put it in six simple questions:
1. Who came up with this method you're calling random selection?

2. Exactly why this, and not just picking precinct (on the whole, the most equal voting district breakdowns) numbers from a bowl or hat ?

3. Exactly why are you avoiding addressing the most obvious part of my email, when at least 6 people contacted me directly, and others indirectly, and thanked me for it's clarity of presenting the problems with your "random" : trying to avoid another post-election democracy debacle - of being able to pattern or manipulate elections and results ahead of time, without voters finding out?

4. When will a new recount directive be issued that reinstates a simple, clear, validly random method of random selection of the 3% random sample for a recount - those things that are exposed to the public before election certification - such as a hat or similar method?

5. What exactly is going on there - as your reply, for now, gives me great NON-confidence, especially now also in the testing process, into which the public, - including even the VRI-tech group, (despite our trying to work with your office, and to repeatedly be professional in getting the peer oversight inclusion, ( to even election officials) as was repeatedly inferred in your office's emails, conference calls, talks, as "planned and/or coming"- but your office never delivered - thus into which the public ( who will have to pay for any changes the legislature recommends from your recommendations, and worse who may have to suffer through a whole new round of undemocratic electronic machines and the "results" they yield,) has had no oversight or input? (My inclusion on blog - I know how garbled this one is, but you can get the drift. I was rushed/ have many more things to do - like work! - than go around in these circles with the SoS office.)

6. (And indirectly) Why not use an image file for the letterhead, and signature, in directives, advisories, and memos then make the text digitized-accessible, as other websites do - to make it easier on the public, than having to re-type everything?
_________________________________________

Here is my #1 again:
1. I am particularly flummoxed by # VI. - A. - 10 - a. through f. - regarding how to randomly select of recount samples.
....(and it repeats from the first section, above.)

Maybe someone else wants to try contacting the SoS, to actually get through?

One should NOT have to be an election official working "at the pleasure of the SoS," or on some other "inner circle" to be able to actually present a problem of great importance to fair elections, nor create a huge "hissy fit" or spend months of frustrating time-sinks, to get it considered and resolved for the good of the public.

Film: Some things (not everything,) you may want to know about ballot definition styles, ballot-on-demand, central count scanner hookups...and more...

2007-12-03T18:10:00.000-05:00

Ballot definition styles, their data bases, and the correctness of accessing their data bases can make or break election results, all often with little knowledge of the voter. With DRE's for example, it is these files and their coding that determine what one's voter access card brings up on the screen as that person's ballot.

Does it contain all the races that person may vote upon or does it leave some candidates off? Or add too many? Could it be coded to make a vote for one person go to another? (It could, but with a printing paper trail, that too would also need to be manipulated, making one thing print and another thing recorded.) And more.

With Diebold-Premier at least, these files are created in the GEMS "mother-server," (in Cuyahoga, by Cuyahoga people, not Diebold-Premier. I understand though that in other counties, they may have their vendors, or with ES&S, vendor sub-contractors (!) create the ballot definition styles.)
And these files are used also for the counting in GEMS. (ie. This code, means this vote is cast for this person.) Therefore any mistakes in these files, intentional or otherwise, can wreak havoc to election results.

So I was curious about the subject in general, and about a few other things that I knew Matt Jaffe, head of the CCBOE Ballot Department might know about, so I asked him if he would let me interview him on camera, so I could share what I found out. He said yes!

I want to emphasize here, that I did NOT ask Matt to subject himself to this, because I suspected anything wrong! My intention was asking someone who might actually know, and would give me some straight answers. It's not an easy thing to do for BOE staffers.

My hat off to Matt, and my appreciation! (He did it, though he knows how suspect I am of the Diebold-Premier systems, and without knowing what I was going to ask him.)

(In fact, in this past election, there were about two or three cases where the ballot definition files had not been set to reflect a small township section, within a small outlying city's limits, which had their own school or council race - a rather unusual, detailed set up. But, when the problems were found, they were corrected on election day, via paper ballots, and/or after by accepting those paper provisional ballots. Also, the (I see as completely understandable, non-intentional) mistakes were forthrightly acknowledged, and they have been corrected in the ballot definition data base.)

So, on November 16, as the CCBOE was finishing preparing for the official count of the 11/6 election, exhausted Matt stayed late to allow me to interview him on camera to learn more about:
• some nuts and bolts of ballot definition files;
• about how central count scanners know what city and what race they're reading;
• about how our scanners are networked;
• about how much hands-on our Diebold Premier tech has into our system;
• about Ballot-on-Demand (something I DON'T like, as expressed in the interview)
• and more.

Also, you'll get to see Pat McDonald, our Deputy Director, who joined in "the fun" as he was leaving.

It was late. I could have been more prepared, and the film's a bit jumpy because of low computer RAM while processing it, but I think it's worth watching to learn a bit more about how it all works.

Another PD "editorial"/ My reply-"Racing toward the sunset of democracy"

2007-12-01T00:47:00.000-05:00

Well, after some recounts, guess the PD is finally getting convinced that they must actually talk about and even admit that their politically loved DRE's aren't the greatest thing since corner newsboxes. But they're still quiet and honoring of Brunner, despite her recent days of apparently racing toward the sunset of democracy, though she won her seat on promises for new dawn of election reform.

Here's my reply:

Correction re: your 11/29 editorial "Election Night mustn't be election nightmare." It's not about election night, as you'd have us believe. It's about getting a transparently accurate count of the voters' will, however long that takes – to avert another 4 years of nightmare of shredding every American value for freedom, decency, and life.

Dimora was wrong.
We'd be in excellent hands with Cuyahoga's current BOE weighing in on presidential outcomes - IF they weren't hampered by the likes of Diebold-Premier.

More true a statement is "God help us if our next president is decided by any secret software, able to be undetectably manipulated from inside, produced by irresponsible, power-wielding, private voting machine vendors" - which describes them all, according to four years of media-non-covered, expert reports that preceded Brunner’s questionable testing.

It’s Brunner’s coddling to vendor and political interests, even in her delayed, hush-hush “testing,” that’s put us in this ’08 bind. Instead of decertifying much earlier, now she may use the bind, to ram through another round of grossly expensive, taxpayer-paid, undemocratic, inoperable “solutions.”

Citizen over-sighted, hand counted paper ballots is the only solution, until any machine counting our votes is first proved to citizens both workable, and transparent.

Post-post note about recounts, to date

2007-11-30T23:40:00.000-05:00

Don't think I mentioned earlier, about the first day's recount - Though the Bedford Heights Charter Commission was mandated for an automatic recount, that whole process made no difference to the outcome. The race was to select 9 of 14 candidates. The margin between #9 and #10 was large. The automatic recount came between something like # 3 and #4 - making all that time and effort for no reason. All 9 stayed elected.

The North Olmsted recount, the question of two earlier board meetings, was held today. Don't know yet how that one went.

And God help us all- here is the list of recounts scheduled for NEXT week!

The first two on the list are mandated. The last four are requested, and requesters will have to pay max $50 (up from $10 last year, per HB3) per precinct for those counts. Though this could make recounts non-affordable to many, especially in a county-wide race, on a per hour basis, it could be quite a deal! (On a true usefulness basis to actually prove what voters wanted - via these Diebold machines, it could be $50 per precinct too much, though it does give access to poll books, etc.)

Film from first day's recounts 11/26 - Get out the caffiene and sugar, and learn...

2007-11-30T12:21:00.000-05:00

Here are the films promised in http://citizensboe.blogspot.com/2007/11/recounts-other-thttpwwwbloggercomimggll.html
where it was stated:

"And I'm processing film from the day - only from the approximate 3 hours of reprinting procedures, not the counting itself. If you love watching paper being unrolled, you'll love the film. It will also serve as a good sleep aid.
But seriously, there are some interesting facts about the process mixed in."

Some of the scenes in the first film may have been slightly re-arranged, to no effect on the meaning. (Not wanting to subject viewers to the whole thing, I myself got lost in the paper unwinding, while editing. Hope I didn't leave out any good parts.) They still show the long tedium of the entire process of just the reprinting damaged Diebold ballots, showing and explaining everything they were doing to recount witnesses: the board's decision making, according to SoS Memo 7-21, etc. (And I missed when they showed witnesses that they had selected the matching memory cards to the yet-to -be printed tapes.)

The second film below, explains more of what they still had to do - just for the reprint process - again, not the hand count nor the final comparing to official results.

Further, as explained below, this whole closed-circle process of essentially machine to machine, with a lot of human care and counting in between, proves essentially NOTHING about the Diebold machines' actually tabulating the will of the voters!

What a mess that's been set up for us by HAVA, and now continued by Brunner!
What a waste! What false securities in elections meaning the majority will are being set up!

A few of the salient facts you'll find dotted amidst the unwinding VVPAT's, in the films include:

1.When there is a paper change in a Tsx machine, the machine does not record the machine ID on the second and possibly the third paper tape, making it nearly impossible to match up that partial tape with the right memory card/machine ( in case the poll workers forget. Remember, in the field when they get paper jams, and have lines of people, after only 4-5 hours of training weeks before, 1-day poll workers too get overwhelmed.)

2. The GEMS tabulating system cannot generate reports by certain precincts, as is done in recounts, making that necessary isolation process another hour-long manual step for BOE workers.

3. Damaged ballots go from mangled, to one vote not being able to be read- still necessitating the process of reprint.

4. HB3 demanded that the public is not allowed to see the machine serial numbers printed at the top of tape (the first only when there are multiples.) Now what's THAT about?
The only "privacy" such maintains is to keep private "evidence" of all kinds of potential unscrupulous behavior and "fixed" or unfixed (non-repaired) machines.
Even in a small county with only a few machines and few voters, if Sally X, were the only person to cast a vote on a machine, by the time it would get to recount, who would know that the one vote on a paper trail with machine serial number 123456, for instance, was Sally's. There needs to be a way to cross reference the cards and VVPATs, obviously. In Cuyahoga, they matched by card number and polling location printed at the top. It's ORC 3516.18 now.
5. And more...http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=916809716015280485&postID=1918774616179986626#

So get out the caffiene or stress ball ...and learn for yourself - some facts, and how bad it is, for essentially no good reason but false securities.

The board members you see in the videos are (R) Chairman Jeff Hastings, and (D) Sandy McNair, who are trying to follow SoS Memo 07-21. You also see Matt Jaffe, head of the CCBOE Ballot Dept. and Brian Cleary of same. In background are Ed Monroe regional rep for Sec. Brunner; Jane Platten, Director; Pat McDonald Assist. Director, recount observers and others.

For a slicker, quicker view from media, here's WKYC, Channel 3's coverage from the second day.

Post note to recounts - Hard to explain

2007-11-29T20:01:00.000-05:00

After the CCBOE board meeting yesterday, I went down to see how the Solon Board of Ed recount was proceeding. They have about 26 precincts in all. The board staff started by randomly selecting a 3% sample - with their resident lottery-like, ping-pong ball "air-blower," that vacuums into stasis, a few balls from all of them, each with a precinct number on it.

By the time I got down there at about 10:30 am, they had hand counted the entire 3% sample. Not one damaged ballot was found.

Now go explain. It seems IMPOSSIBLE for demographics or partisanship to play any role. They are truly pretty equal from the the areas considered during the two recount days. Hmm...

But the break outs ended up to be :
a total of 15 tapes that were unreadable. The breakdown is as follows:
8 Bedford Hts Recount (out of 57 canisters)
7 North Royalton Council Recount (out of 18 canisters)
0 Solon Recount (out of 125 canisters)

Here's the PD briefing about the latter: http://www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1196329329129170.xml&coll=2

Recounts & Other Touchscreen Messes-the literal unwinding them to solve

2007-11-29T19:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I wrote about the (yet unsourced) encoder problems in North Olmsted, and the mess that caused. The board began the day with yet another meeting - or resumption of - from the day before. ( They figuratively "stay in session" during the recounts.

All 3 candidates for Council, previously prepared for a recount yesterday, were there.
It was found and fully documented with copies of original 11/6 documents, that 19 regular voters had voted on paper, to access the school board race, and had ballots put into provisional envelopes that were then rejected for lack of information.
One of those voted said she voted half Tsx, and asked for a paper ballot for school board. Hers was the only one of the 19 not accepted, for it could not be known if she had voted a whole ballot on the Tsx, which would have made her paper ballot a second one. The school board race had a solid outcome.
All the other 18 were accepted and were to be included in the certified count. (That was after sorting out the fact that the poll worker had noted the wrong "Gary" as having voted provisionally. The two "Gary J.'s" (last names were given) were called, affirming the info of the Gary J on the envelope, and that the other, noted Gary had indeed voted on a touchscreen.) What a mess.
I actually worked today (!) so did not go to the board meeting at noon, (nor call, nor to any recounts, thank goodness - they are truly tedious with the VVPATS and very long - see below) to find out the new result of that council race to be certified, and to find out if a recount would still be mandated. All candidates by the way, even the winner, affirmed what the board was doing was the right thing - expressed that they wanted every voter's vote counted.

2. After the Candidate and Voter Services Dept. found the problem in North Olmsed, they went back to see if there had been any similar numerous provisional rejects, for missing information, from one polling location that demanded further study, in case something similar had happened - regular votes on paper at the polls, being misconstrued as and rejected as provisionals.

They found two other instances.
The board accepted 11 mistakenly rejected paper ballots in Lyndhurst 4D that were given to voters when early on 11/6 the Tsx machines were "having technical difficulty." These 11 would not affect the outcome of the race, but could make it close enough to trigger an automatic recount. At the time of this writing, I assume that question was answered when the board certified those new totals today.

They also moved yesterday to accept 14 ballots, previously rejected in Cleveland 16E for the same reason. Those paper at poll ballots were due to a "faulty encoder."

In all of the above cases, the board checked all notations, the poll book etc. to make sure that the ballots they accepted were from registered voters who had signed in at their voting location.

The Literal Unwinding of Paper Trail Mess of the First Recount Day - complete with 15 damaged (from DRE printer) of 70 paper trails total

Is this what a recount should look like?

Board members determine damaged ballots to reprinted per Memo 07-21

This is a copy of a message I sent to a few election integrity groups yesterday morning. (Too tired right now to create a new one about the lonnng, tedious one at the recount the day before.)
In a message dated 11/27/07 4:17:21 PM, a member of Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections wrote:

Why not print out a copy of the VVPAT, two observers canvisually spot check ballots to make sure they match, or else inspect all ballots side by side, (would be easy to do on a large long table).

They actually kind of did that yesterday in the CCBOE recount, after reprinting the board-approved damaged tapes - as well as showing and explaining every step.
There were 2 recounts - one 5 precincts - but a race of picking 9 of 14 candidates!
The other - I think 8 precincts. Don't remember. Will get.
Since when I left at 7:30 pm - with one recount still going on - and other observer and all election workers still there - and I estimate still at least 3 hours to go... ( the problem is the VVPATs!) I was exhausted... and "looking forward to" another observer day today! The CCBOE was excellent in transparency.

BUT the absolute RIDICULOUSNESS of this whole messy, tedious, lonnnnggg, detailed day - and any future similar AUDITS, too - with the VVPATS - even if well done, and people can see every step, and they've demonstrated that cards and papers had originally been used together - as it was very well pointed out by Jason Parry, as below. All the process does is shows that the machines can add "SOMETHING" and that people can also add-up THE SOMETHING that the machine already added.

This closed-loop, circular summation however, completely leaves out the question of: do these duplicating messy, tedious, lonnnnggg, detailed "feats of addition" have anything to do with what VOTERS intended to cast?

The way they did it and the randomness of the appearance of the HIGH RATE of damaged tapes, along with poll worker signatures on the originals, would preclude any insider having secretely "recreated" cards and papers from them, along with new " numbered seals" on canisters - to "clean things up ahead of time for recount witnesses" - as was purported in past 2004 previously convicted Cuyahoga recount.

But with these machines - ALL of this - does still NOT affirm that they are recording votes as intended.
By the time it gets to recount/audit - the slippery slope attention is put to, not voter intention, but by then - the voter-disconnected question of only the addition ability of machine vs."man."

And from that, when they INEVITABLY match ( if the people are good detailed counters,) we're then told (not by the CCBOE on either of the below, but by most - even some of the candidate observers at the recount) it "proves the machines work." !!!!! ( I ask, for what???)

And from the messy, tedious, lonnnnggg, detailed day, we're also told, it also proves that machines are much "faster" than "man" at such addition - thus, to those people no reasonableness of hand marked, paper ballots!

Because of the invalid closed circularity - we get completely invalid conclusions - dangerously affirmed by some direct experience with "SOMETHING" !

Further, it's been shown that even the experience of today in Cuyahoga, would hardly be what some politically-patronaged (thus, falsely trusted) BOE's in Ohio would actually do.

It's much, much easier - and actually just as ultimately (in-)effective in checking voters unified intent - to spill coffee.....and if some BOE's really want to extend themselves to keep up a show..."just re-print the recount results from the tabulator computer and call it a day."

At least the CCBOE is following the laws...and going out of their way to do what they can do to show people they really care about them and their concerns too - while struggling long and hard with the machine limitations and the ridiculousness that they impose.

( Recounting punchcards would have been MUCH faster. AND the human counting of the paper ballots from today was also - MUCH faster, as well as being originally much easier to reconcile, including allowing the people there to UNDERSTAND what they were doing and why...only partly because that process has inherent meaning.)

BTW, though I don't yet know how many tapes were counted in total today - I estimate between 50 and 75 total between the two recounts. I do know that 14 (actually it ended up to be 15) of those tapes needed to be reprinted. Percentage facts will obviously have to wait.
But it seems today that an estimate of 15-30% would be correct.

Throw the junk back..after getting our money back!

I have pictures, but right now, have to "pack my tent" for today... Promised a candidate I would observe for her. A whole different story...

Per Jason Parry:

"I mean really let's just cancel any recount where tapes are
printed from memory cards. You have to be a complete
moron to think this is a valid idea. Why not just re-print
the recount results from the tabulator computer and call
it a day.

A recount is intended to count paper results by hand and
compare that to the computer tabulation results from the
memory cards. If you print the paper tape, to be counted
by hand, from memory cards then barring human error,
OF COURSE they match. And anyone who has read any
of the detailed reports on VVPAT and election tally results
realizes that they are not the same and in many cases the
tabulation results do not match the VVPAT."

This is the PD report from the first recount day. The reporter, Joe Guillen also was an all day survivor. In it, the man of famous name Chris Riggall, Diebold-Premier spokesman said again, Diebold-Premier needed to do "further investigation." In another film yet to be published here, you'll see that Jane Platten, Director reporting on election night and official count tabulator crashes, on 11/21, that Diebold-Premier, even had that "chutzpah" to suggest that their "investigations" be done in their own offices! Thankfully, she declined the offer. A sure bet that Premier's conclusions will point blame at the CCBOE, the poll workers and anyone but themselves, for their woeful (to us) failures.

And I'm processing film from the day - only from the approximate 3 hours of reprinting procedures, not the counting itself. If you love watching paper being unrolled, you'll love the film. It will also serve as a good sleep aid.
But seriously, there are some interesting facts mixed in. And you'll get to see some of how careful everyone was to make sure the witnesses could see everything they wanted to (though limited by the rolls of tiny print.)
Stay tuned.

BTW, in the end, after a few human errors, and much human addition on the very human-unfriendly VVPATS, as predicted, the North Royalton count did not change.

I also understand that the CCBOE decided after exhaustion set in at about 9pm. to get legal permission to pause "the continuous count," of the Bedford race which continued to have errors, especially on counting ballots with 9 candidates to be chosen, hone their process, and go home to rest for the next day's marathon. In the end, the outcome of the Bedford race will not make any difference! The margin between #9 and #10 candidate was large. The automatic recount was triggered between something like #3 and #4 candidates, which will not affect who gets on the Commission.

Olmsted Falls- 18 authentically new ballots. Recount today?

2007-11-28T07:43:00.000-05:00

At yesterday's CCBOE meeting it was announced that because of an encoder problem in Olmsted Falls, 18 people who could not not access their school board race on their ballot had to be given paper ballots. AND those ballots also contained the race of for Olmsted Falls council - which is up for recount today. AND those paper ballots from REGULAR voters had been put into provisional envelopes at the polls, with no marking, but because the voters were in the poll book, also had no provisional ID info on the envelope. AND when those envelopes came into the manila-envelope "sea" of provisionals to be verified, they were rejected for lack of the envelope information.

AND one of the people from the council race, called about 18 rejected ballots from same location, and then with BOE also then questioning, checking the poll's incident sheet, where the happenings had been marked, and by calling the poll workers, the entire story was found out.

SO the CCBOE, in meeting recess, will reconvene this am to explain to already-called candidates They probably will accept the 18 ballots. The ballots after acceptance will allow the envelopes to be opened. They will then have be counted/scanned. The board will have to then re-certify the Olmsted Falls election. THEN, if still an automatic recount-qualifier, (for Council) the recount will begin, as scheduled for today.

It is not yet understood what all the sources of the problems were here - bad encoders? mistaken prep of them? poll workers missing a step? lack of policy and tools to keep regular paper ballots from polls visibly separate and different from true provisionals? more attention to "triggers" for checking oddities in the provisional verifying department ( it really is a SEA of manila envelopes....)?

The CCBOE is checking to isolate all sources and to correct. There are various, and pretty easy ways, now that they're aware of the series of problems. They are aware that this should mean checking for other such provisional anomalies in this race too. They are currently in the sea of VVPATs and recounts.

Bottom line, it is very important to keep provisional info public, so the public can work with such willing BOE's to help improve.

And bottom line, these 18 "suddenly appearing" ballots at the CCBOE should truly not be the subject of any rumors inferring insider "ballot-stuffing." This is actually because the CCBOE is truly trying to correct mistakes and to fix them.

Also BTW, as of Monday when Geauga County and Lorain County certified their races, those results determined that Cuyahoga ( the larger county in these sometimes split county contests) will have to hold an automatic recount for Hunting Valley, and for the Strongsville school board, respectively. That makes a total of 6 automatic recounts, and a yet to be determined number of requested recounts for Cuyahoga.