More Elections Fraud, Still No Paper Trail

by: BillOrr

Sun Mar 07, 2010 at 07:55:56 AM EST

What does surprise me is how little concern there is from politicians and the pubic for the integrity of our voting system. Stephen Taylor, Director of the Division of Criminal Justice, said, "We will continue to investigate any allegations of election tampering." That's good, but how about also using more  preventive measures? And where are our legislators on the matter?

A February 2010 Superior Court ruling improved aspects of our electronic voting machines and ordered further review, but Judge Feinberg refused to require paper copy as backup. Transparency apparently is unnecessary for one of our most fundamental rights - the right to vote. How can citizens be expected to trust the results when there is no paper support for the individual ballots cast? Even without fraud unintended bugs can be in machines.

Senator Nia Gill and Assemblyman Reed Gusciora introduced a bill (S900/A1087) which "requires each voting machine shall produce an individual permanent paper record for each vote cast, which shall be made available for inspection and verification by the voter at the time the vote is cast, and preserved for later use in any manual audit."  Now there's an idea worth supporting - even worth haranguing legislators to support.

Alice needed her yellow brick road. E.T. followed the Reese's Pieces. Voters need a paper trail.  

NYT Praises Rush Holt's Bill That Keeps Machines Honest

by: Nick Lento

Mon Jun 22, 2009 at 01:51:50 PM EDT

From today's NYTimes (emphases added):

"Electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper record of every vote cast cannot be trusted. In 2008, more than one-third of the states, including New Jersey and Texas, still did not require all votes to be recorded on paper. Representative Rush Holt has introduced a good bill that would ban paperless electronic voting in all federal elections. Congress should pass it while there is still time to get ready for 2010.

In paperless electronic voting, voters mark their choices, and when the votes have all been cast, the machine spits out the results. There is no way to be sure that a glitch or intentional vote theft - by malicious software or computer hacking - did not change the outcome. If there is a close election, there is also no way of conducting a meaningful recount.

Mr. Holt's bill would require paper ballots to be used for every vote cast in November 2010. It would help prod election officials toward the best of the currently available technologies: optical-scan voting. With optical scans, voters fill out a paper ballot that is then read by computer much like a standardized test. The votes are counted quickly and efficiently by computer, but the paper ballot remains the official vote, which can then be recounted by hand."

This is a complete no brainer folks.  I urge the NJ congressional delegation,  legislature, and governor Corzine to get their butts in gear and to support Holt's initiative.   Support in deeds not just words.   Everyone in our CD needs to co-sponsor this and anyone who doesn't deserves to pay a price when next they ask for our votes.

By the way, optical scan tech could NOW replace all our DRE's and comply with this legislation for LESS money than we are now giving away to Sequoia to replace, upgrade and maintain ancient/obsolete and insecure electronic touchscreen machines.  There are no credible good reasons for NJ to be one of the last states to cling to insecure unverifiable and overpriced/expensive voting machines.  

Lets all contact our legislators at every level and DEMAND that this problem be fixed ASAP!!!

Update....

Here's a list of the 7 NJ co-sponsors (there are 75 in toto) as of today:
Robert Andrews (NJ-1),    Leonard Lance (NJ-7),  Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2),   Frank Pallone (NJ-6), Donald Payne (NJ-10),  Steven Rothman (NJ-9), Albio Sires (NJ-13)

If your congressman isn't on this list please call them now.   On something like this even few dozen calls from people who care can make a real difference.

NJ Violates NJ Law: NYT Is Shocked!!!

by: Nick Lento

Sat Jan 03, 2009 at 02:23:10 AM EST

Once again, it takes the New York Times to blow the whistle on Trenton.

Shortchanging Voters

More than three years have gone by since the New Jersey Legislature required the state to install modern voting machines that provide printouts of each vote - the paper trail that experts regard as essential to fair and accurate elections. The machines are still nowhere in sight.

Deadlines have been imposed and proved meaningless. The latest deadline was New Year's Day, which of course has passed. Technically, the state is in violation of its own law, but nobody seems to care. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will do something without specifying what.

Verified Voting to be Delayed Again?

by: JustCountEmRight

Wed Dec 10, 2008 at 09:04:44 AM EST

The New Jersey Legislature passed a law to require voter-verifiable paper records in 2005. The state needs that law badly: the voting machines used in most of the state are unreliable, hackable, and have miscounted ballots in a Presidential primary. The Clerk of Union County actually encouraged voters not to use the machines and vote absentee in the November election.

Anyway, the law was supposed to be implemented by 2008. It wasn't, and if lawmakers pass bills now moving in both Houses, the law may never be implemented. Click here to send a message to legislators opposing irresponsible delay.

Verified Voting - may include optical scan

by: agr

Tue Dec 09, 2008 at 02:22:02 PM EST

Well, they are now posted and I for one am happy with the changes.

The original pilot project was setup to retrofit voting machines in one small (less than 10 voting districts) municipality per county to create a voter verified paper audit trail.
The changes to the pilot project as ammended, add an option for each county to choose an additional small municipality where optical scan systems will be tested.

I'm thrilled that both options are being looked at, even if optional. Now I just wish I lived in a town with less voting districts!

Paper Trail Delayed Again

by: agr

Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 07:33:04 PM EST

Legislation that the Assembly State Government Committee advanced on Thursday would scrap a Jan. 1 deadline to have all the machines fitted with printers.

Well, when you actually look at the bill, it is 1 (small) municipality in each county.:

The pilot program shall be conducted at the primary election to be held on June 2, 2009.  It shall consist of retrofitted voting machines in one municipality in each county that: 1) has no more than ten election districts; and 2) will be using voting machines in the election that the Secretary of State has certified can be adapted to include a voter-verified paper record system.

And how will they be determining whether the results are satisfactory? You'd think that with each county having no more than 10 voting districts (within a single municipality), for a PRIMARY where turnout is likely to be <30% (OK, that's a guess, and will be different in different towns) a basic thing to do would be to count all of those votes manually, and compare the results to the each of the machine counts. But what does the bill actually propose?

The report shall include information from surveys.

If the Secretary of State likes the results, we'll have these printers by the Nov 2010 election. If not, I guess it's back to the drawing board.

If the entire state would cost $26 million, how could it cost $1 million for only one municipality?

Now there are others that want to switch to an optical scan system. I wonder what that would cost? Would it be more or less than the proposed $26 million? The group New Yorkers for Verified Voting estimated in 2005 $10660 per district, and $114,423,640 for the entire state. Connecticut estimated in December 2006 that replacing all of their machines with optical scan machines would cost a total of $15.7 million.

Does anyone know how many voting districts there are in NJ vs. NY or CT? It seems like this might not only be the more verifiable way to go, but it also might be cheaper.

Help Hudson County Vote

by: Thurman Hart

Thu Jun 05, 2008 at 01:55:46 AM EDT

So again, I added up all the votes and came out with Romano winning at 625, Ines next with 162 and Raia last with 117. (Let me know if I did the math wrong; I'm only a blogger.) In case anyone else didn't know this, the ward districts don't go in numerical order. And, since this is Hudson County - the vote count from Ward D, District 21 is missing. The cartridge got stuck in the machine, the clerk's office told us, and those votes won't be in until next week. Do you think that district holds 500 votes for Ines or Pupie?

The emphasis is all Carly.  Now, I'm pretty sure that this won't change the outcome of the election - but that wasn't known when the cartridge "got stuck".  Or was it?  I mean - Hudson County, you know?

The best machine in the world - and our voting machines are far from that - cannot compensate for the ineptitude of humans.  Whether it is intentional or not.

Voting Machines: VVPR waiver in the works?

by: LLiibbyy

Thu Sep 13, 2007 at 11:35:08 PM EDT

email (form) http://nj.gov/oag/em...
phone 609-292-4925
fax 609-292-3508

AG wants flaws fixed before certifying Voting Machines

by: Jason Springer

Fri Aug 10, 2007 at 06:50:23 PM EDT

"We are fully committed to protecting the integrity of our elections in New Jersey," said Milgram. "We want to ensure a paper trail that is accurate, reliable and can be audited."

Milgram's refusal to certify the machines used in 20 of the state's 21 counties comes less than a month after computer scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology found flaws with printers in all three voting machine types it tested.

Problems ranged from printers that ran out of paper too quickly to printer cables that were deemed prone to tampering. There were also flaws with the machines' ability to alert poll workers to malfunctions, according to a report on the testing.

The state commissioned NJIT's Center for Information Technology in Newark to test the machines after voters' rights groups challenged the integrity of the machines in court.

Problems with Sequoia Advantage Printer System VVPR

by: Ann R

Mon Aug 06, 2007 at 11:47:38 AM EDT

As interested citizens and members of BluWaveNJ, a grassroots political organization, we have been concerned that any voting system be secure, accurate and reliable.  In short, we want every vote accurately counted in such a manner that the electorate will have total confidence in the result of all elections.  To this end, we have attended meetings of our County Freeholder Board, we have reviewed the purchase contract between Essex County and Sequoia and we have repeatedly requested an opportunity to view and test the proposed printer which is the subject of this hearing.

Despite these requests, no access to the printer was given until today July 24 2007 when the hearing is taking place.  Additionally the report of NJIT which "tested" the printer was not available until the end of last week.  We wish to express our great concern and dismay with this proceedure.  Instead of transparency and openness, we feel that there is only the illusion of fair process. that being said and with the understanding we object to the frame work of this hearing we would like to note the egregious shortcomings in this system which are obvious even with the limited opportunity afforded to observe the machine and prepare for this hearing.

1.  No real world testing has been done . Instead of having a large number of machines tested by average voters operated by regular poll workers, under conditions approximating an actual election, three probably brand new machines, were tested under laboratory conditions.  We have no way of calculating probable failure rates based on these tests.

Voting Machine Hearings in Lawrenceville This Week

by: noodletalk

Mon Jul 23, 2007 at 05:12:24 PM EDT

NJ AG releeases NJIT test reports on VVPB printers

by: FogerRox

Fri Jul 20, 2007 at 11:18:01 PM EDT

Sequoia Advantage VVPB printer

Advantage-Addendum

Avante Vote Trakker VVPB printer

Sequoia Edge VVPB printer

NJ VVPR Criteria available for comment by 4/16

by: Ann R

Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 01:53:01 PM EDT

A question I have  on the first paragraph of the criteria:
How could the AG determine that there was no commercially available  technology  for  printing a VVPR or Ballot ? We can always switch to a paper ballot. We could hand count all votes or buy  op scan machines.  There are no great voting machines out there yet.  New York State's imminent large purchase of voting machines should get the manufactures hustling to  design a machine that is reasonably accurate and trustworthy. As of now there is no such machine on the market.
I hope Sequoia can come up with a good printer that doesn't jam or break down... but if not we can't go back to DRE voting  without a paper trail. It's wrong and HR811 will probably be in effect by 2008.

Discuss :: (0 Comments)

Printers for the VVPT/Ballot on the Sequoia voting machines

by: Ann R

Sun Mar 25, 2007 at 12:46:17 PM EDT

http://www.nytimes.c...

From this article it looks like NJ is on the verge of doing some really good things in time for May 07 primaries:

1-Having a paper record or ballot for the Sequoia voting machines used in most counties.

2-Random Audits, not yet required by federal law but the NJ State AG's office wants them.
 

In addition to providing a reliable paper trail, the new certification process would require random auditing of the machines and testing to make sure they can hold up under intense use. Until now only the federal government has required such certification, and adherence is voluntary

And Ms. Milgram, first assistant to NJ State Attorney General, promised Judge Fienberg that the protocols for audits and certification requirements would be established the first week in April and that public hearings will be held in regards to the new auditing procedures and the new printer add on to the Sequoia voting machines.

But

Ms. Milgram said that the company currently providing voting machines had gone through four approaches to retrofitting its equipment (for paper trail/ballot), but that the state "was not pleased with them." The latest and fifth version held more promise, she said.

Sequoia is on the 5th try?  Are these printers ever going to work right?
These machines need to work and work hard- I for one look forward to larger and larger voter turn-out.  If they can get the Sequoia to work with the VVPT and a system of audits we will be in good shape but if not we should consider another system all together.  And when our Officials start talking about price they should compare the expense of storing the voting equipment, moving it to the polls and what the costs of keeping these machines safe will be. This is part of the price. There  are other voting systems that are less bulky less costly and even less prone to tampering mischief.

Also reported in the Star Ledger last weekend,

http://www.nj.com/st...

  and  mentioned in the Times article, there is an investigation involving Essex, Bergen and Union counties in regards to the initial purchase of  the Sequoia machines.  This inquiry by the State Commission of Investigation may turn up other reasons to scrap the Sequoia machines ASAP before we invest in the printers and the new training to operate them.