Missourians for Honest Elections
THE CASE AGAINST DREs AND A PROPOSED BILL TO PROHIBIT THEIR USE
MISSOURIANS FOR HONEST ELECTIONS
October 11, 2009
Missourians for Honest Elections is a non-partisan group that has been working since 2005 to educate the public, elected officials and election authorities about the problems associated with the use of direct-record, touch screen, vote-counting machines (DREs). We are all volunteers who are involved in this work because of a shared interest in the integrity of our democratic process. During the last legislative session in Missouri, our bill, HB 1000, was given a hearing by the House Elections Committee. The bill--which had twenty-four bi-partisan co-sponsors--would have eliminated the use of DREs in favor of hand-marked paper ballots that can be scanned by the sufficient number of optical scanners already in place throughout the state.
WHY PROHIBIT THE USE OF DREs?
1. NO REAL AUDIT CAPABILITY
Using DREs, election officials have no means of knowing whether the software has counted the votes accurately. The so-called "voter verifiable" paper trail is not a reliable audit tape because it runs on the same software as the machine itself; it is also subject to tearing and fading, and voters often forget to verify it or find it difficult to read. (Less than half of one hundred voters exiting the polls at the St. Louis County Board of Elections during absentee voting in October 2008 said that they had checked the paper trail according to our informal survey.) Moreover, computer scientists have testified before Congress that the trail can easily be programmed to alter election results. (See "Testimony on Voter Verification: Presentation to Senate Committee on Rules and Administration," CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project, June 2005, pg. 2.) With hand-marked paper ballots, election officials have a "software free" record of the voter's selections.
2. PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE WITH NO REVIEW
Election tampering instructions can be hidden in the voting machine software at the manufacturing stage. This can easily remain undetected in the tens of thousands of lines necessary for writing vote-counting code. Even if granted access to the code--which is proprietary--it would take a team of computer security experts months to review the code line by line. We know for certain that no such review has ever been conducted on any of the software currently in use in Missouri--indeed it would not be possible, given the frequency of software upgrades--roughly annually. And the pre-election testing of voting machines routinely performed by election officials is hardly sufficient to discover software tampering that might have occurred. Only a hand-marked paper ballot allows election officials a means to determine if voting machine software has counted the votes propery.l
3. VULNERABLE TO HACKING
Several recent studies have demonstrated that the DREs currently operating in Missouri can be hacked, even by voters at the polls. For example:
A 2007 study conducted by the California Secretary of State found that the protective seals on the Sequoia Edge--used in Greene, Cole, Butler, Calloway and several other counties in Missouri--were "easily bypassed" and that "other security-critical parts of the system were accessed by simply unscrewing a few screws." (Source: "Security Evaluation of the Sequoia Voting System: Public report, Computer Security Group, Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, pg. 9.)
Computer scientists hired by the California Secretary of State were also "able to violate the physical security of every aspect" of the Diebold (now "Premier") Accuvote TSx "under polling place conditions using tools found in a typical office.(Source: "Withdrawal of Approval of Diebold Elections Systems, State of California, Oct. 2007, revision, pg. 3.) This is the same DRE used in Kansas City and the City of St. Louis.
A 2007 study conducted by the Ohio Secretary of State found that a voter equipped with a Palm Pilot can quickly and surreptitiously "take complete control" of the ES&S iVotronic--the same DRE that is used in St. Louis County.
(Source: "Everest: Evaluation and Validation of Election Related equipment Standards and Testing," Final Report, Dec. 2007, pg. 70.)
4. MECHANICALLY UNRELIABLE
DREs are nationally notorious for being mechanically unreliable: breaking down, failing to start up, skipping pages on the ballot, losing ballots, recording "overvotes" (more votes than voters who signed the precinct register), etc. Here in Missouri we have had our share of technical difficulties, including several cases in which a vote for one candidate appeared as a vote for another of the DRE screen. These incidents are recorded in the Secretary of State's telephone hotline log from the November, 2006 election.
Our review of the St. Louis County Tech Maintenance Records from November 4, 2008 found that at least 26% of the DREs had a problem that required the assistance of a technician, the majority of which involved printers malfunctioning. This is roughly double the percentage of technical problems seen in the February 2008 primary.
5. MORE COSTLY THAN PAPER BALLOTS
It costs much more to conduct an election with DREs than with a system involving paper ballots and optical scan machines.
This is because of many hidden costs, among them the following:
. expensive storage that must be temperature controlled
. expensive technical support staff
. costly transport to polling places (only one optical scan machine required per polling place)
. new election software creation at every election
We compared the pre-DRE cost of conducting the 2004 Presidential Election with the amount budgeted in St. Louis County for the 2008 President Election in which several DREs were used at each polling place. There was a cost increase of 28.6%.
6. MUCH SLOWER THAN PAPER BALLOTS
Many more voters can vote at the same time using paper ballots than can on the limited number of DREs available at a polling place. All they need is a pen and a hard surface to lean on, such as a clip board or table. St. Louis County's policy of allowing voters who had signed the precinct register to vote on a paper ballot without waiting for a privacy booth was instrumental in keeping the waiting times down during the 2008 Presidential Election in precincts where it was implemented.
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OUR BILL PROPOSAL
It is time for Missouri to join the growing list of states--including California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, Tennessee and Virginia--that have recognized the problems and dangers posed by DREs and have taken action to outlaw them.
We are proposing the following additions to RSMO Chapter 155, Section 115.225 regarding standards for automated equipment (proposed language in bold):
2. No electronic voting system shall be approved unless it
(1) Produces the election results from paper ballots that voters have marked by hand, or, in the case of disabled voters who need assistance, from paper ballots that have been marked by paper ballot marking devices designed to assist disabled voters; . . .
5. If any election authority accommodates disabled voters with direct-record, electronic touch-screen vote-counting machines (DREs), the election authority may continue to use such machines solely for disabled voters who desire to use them until the eventual removal of such machines from the election authority's inventory due to mechanical malfunction, wear and tear, or any other reason. The election authority shall then replace such machines with paper ballot marking devices for the disabled.
We are also proposing the following addition to RSMO Chapter 115, Section 115.237 specifically addressing the form of the ballot:
1. The official ballot shall be a paper ballot that is hand-marked by the voter, or in the case of disabled voters who need assistance, by a paper ballot marking device designed to assist the disabled, except as is specified in 115.225.5 (above).
Questions?
Please contact Cynthia Richards, President, Missourians for Honest Elections at (314) 727-6586 or Phillip Michaels, Vice President, at (314) 862-3217.
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