June 2, 2007 - Keeping an eye on the count

Paper: Monterey County Herald, The (CA)
Title: Keeping an eye on the count
Date: June 2, 2007

It's election time again and Monterey County voters want to know "Will my vote be accurately counted?" It's a very big question.

Since 2002, the Help America Vote Act has put into place $4 billion worth of software-dependent vote tabulating equipment. Sequoia touchscreen direct recording electronics and optical scanners that count paper ballots are components of the technological faith-based privatized secret- election process.

A 2005 Government Accountabilty Office report on vulnerablilities of electronic voting systems declared it is "unrealistic and impractical" to attempt to secure the machines from malicious manipulation.

Linda Tulett, Monterey County's new registrar of voters, has confirmed that to her knowledge, neither Sequoia nor any other vendor has guaranteed the vote tallies of the machines are accurate. In November 2006, the National Institute of Standards and Technology reported it could not devise a test to confirm the accuracy of software-dependent voting machine tallies.

In August 2006, a Zogby poll concluded that 92 percent of Americans prefer an observable form of vote counting and the right to obtain information about the count. A ballot marked in secret and counted in public is considered a right of citizens in democratic countries.

In October 2006, local members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom took action to create a solution for this constitutional crisis. A nonpartisan group scheduled a screening of a revealing and compelling documentary, "Stealing America Vote by Vote."

After an hour of viewing touch-screen vote flipping and many significant instances of vote fraud and disenfranchisement caused by using the machines, 20 viewers signed up to be poll watchers for the November 2006 election. SAVElections Monterey County was born.

Members of Secure, Accurate and Valid Elections first called upon acting Registrar of Voters Claudio Valenzuela for education and guidance. SAVElections then shared knowledge with the Board of Supervisors and the public.

A 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer's comparative analysis of voting systems found paper ballots hand-counted at precincts to be the most reliable and accurate vote tabulating system.

SAVElections Monterey County created a petition calling for the simple and cost-efficient transparent election process to replace our complex and costly system. At the March 2006 Voting Rights Committee Meeting, members of SAVElections offered documented concerns and called for a formal review of complaints.

In November 2006, the county's optical-scan tabulating machine rejected 16,000 damaged ballots that had to be recopied by hand and resubmitted for counting.

Optical Scan tabulating software is just as vulnerable to malicious manipulation as touchscreen machines. Vote flipping can be programmed by anyone having access to any form of machine software at any time. Local security measures can't overcome an already present line of malicious code.

In March, Princeton University professor Andrew Appel demonstrated this potential for vote fraud.

He bought six Sequoia touch-screen machines from a lot of 100, sold on eBay for $86. Within seconds, his students broke the lock and inserted a code to flip votes only on Tuesdays in November without leaving a trace of evidence.

The Election Assistance Commission has decertified Ciber, the federal independent testing authority, for failure to meet the federal testing standards. Ciber tested our equipment. But what did they test for?

SAVElections members will ask for a paper ballot at the polls Tuesday and will continue our quest for a precinct hand count. In the meantime, will Monterey County have an accurate vote count? You decide.

Valerie Lane, a longtime Peninsula resident, is one of the founders of SAVElections.

Author: VALERIE LANE

Section: Commentary

Page: A1