Wrongly denied, again. Public seeks scanned ballot image files from HART InterCivic system.

Subject: RE: Response to your letter of March 29th re: CORA

Dear Mr. Kolwicz:

The bottom line to all of your records requests is that the documents you are seeking are not in existence and under CORA we have no obligation to create any documents. That is not to say that the information does not exist – it does, just not in document form. As I noted before, these files cannot be exported. I have conferred with Stephanie Cegielski at the Secretary of State’s Office and she agrees with this interpretation of CORA in light of your request. In fact, she suggested, as a custodian of records, that you contact her about your request should you have any further questions. She can be reached at 894-2200 ext 6327, and I am copying her on this e-mail.

As far as Rule 45.5.2.1.7 is concerned, that Rule applies to the testing for certification process which has already occurred. Furthermore, the records you request are not “election results” as contemplated by that Rule. Therefore, that Rule is not applicable to your request.

Finally, I am aware of which Title applies to our elections. I mentioned the Pitkin County Order by way of analogy only as there are similar provisions in the Election Code.

Sincerely,

Shelley Bailey
Assistant County Attorney
Boulder County

Public seeks scanned ballot image files from HART InterCivic system.

Shelley Bailey
Assistant County Attorney
Boulder County, Colorado

April 5, 2010

RE: Response to your March 29th letter regarding our CORA request.

Dear Ms. Bailey:

We have studied your letter of March 29, 2010. Perhaps you were rushed in preparing your letter since it contains several significant errors of law. I have copied the text of your letter into numbered sections below so that we may conveniently respond to each section.

1. First, our system does not allow us to export these files.

If this is true, then the voting system is defective. Colorado Election Rule 45.5.2.1.7 requires that all election data be exportable. If “your” system does not comply with this Rule, as an agent of the court you should report this fact to the Secretary of State and ask that its certification be withdrawn.

2. Second, under statutory law, C.R.S. 31-10-616(1),[…]the clerk is to keep the ballots secret and to preserve them for access only for contest proceedings.

Boulder County elections are conducted under Title 1, not Title 31. Title 31 has absolutely nothing to do with our elections. Surely you must know this.

For your information, you infer that Title 31 has something to do with the computer files that we have requested. A careful reading shows that this is not true. 31-10-616(1) describes when the actual ballots may be removed from the ballot box, and when they must be destroyed. As you must know, we are not seeking access to the actual ballots. 31-10-616(2) explicitly does not restrict access to or require destruction of any “other official election records and forms”.

3. and [under] Article VII, Section 8 of the State’s Constitution, the clerk is to keep the ballots secret and to preserve them for access only for contest proceedings.

There is no such language in Article VII, Section 8. It does not say anything about “keeping ballots secret” or “preserving ballots”. Surely you must know this.

What Article VII, Section 8 does say, explicitly, is, “no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it”. Boulder County routinely violates this Constitutional provision. It is the intent of the 1946 Constitutional Amendment that created this protection that every ballot must be anonymous – meaning that there is no way to identify which voter marked which ballot.

4. Your CORA request is not a proceeding to contest the election, and the time for such a contest has passed.

We made no claim to contest the election. Surely you must know this. Further, your comment suggests that you are confusing Title 31 and Title 1 election laws. (See discussion in #2 above.)

5. C.R.S. 31-10-1303 See also Marks v Koch, Case Number P09CV294, Pitkin County (e-mail to follow) Therefore, these records are not available pursuant to a CORA request.

To repeat, Title 31 is not relevant to Title 1 elections.

6. It has always been the County’s position, as well as the secretary of state’s position, that it would do substantial harm to the public interest to allow the release of mail ballot images.

If you have documentation supporting this assertion we would like to review it. I do not recall any published arguments from Boulder County detailing the harm that might occur by releasing to the public copies of computer files containing scanned images of anonymous ballots.

We have a December 18, 2009 document from Secretary of State Buescher saying in part, “…I am not opposed in principle to the public disclosure of images …”.

7. The County has never released ballot images.

This is a problem for the public. For a number of years we have submitted CORA requests for the data and have never been given the opportunity to inspect the data.

8. Finally, our system does not allow us to export these files. They are only viewable with Ballot Now, proprietary software, in our database.

To repeat, this is a violation of Election Rule 45.5.2.1.7.

If need be, we are willing to negotiate ways that the county can meet its obligations by providing us access to the proprietary software so that we may inspect the records in Boulder County’s database.

9. With regard to your request for the cast vote records, again, the County’s system does not allow the export of these files.

To repeat, this is a violation of Election Rule 45.5.2.1.7.

If need be, we are willing to negotiate ways that the county can meet its obligations by providing us access to the proprietary software so that we may inspect the records in Boulder County’s database.

10. Cast vote records are not the same as results, and they cannot be printed out. They are the record of how Ballot Now tabulates each ballot.

In the first place, you should know that we have not requested a printout of the cast vote records. Our request is to inspect the actual cast vote records. Once we see these records, we will decide whether or not to request copies of the computer files containing them.

Also, for your information, you have been misinformed. The cast vote records are NOT a record of how BallotNow “tabulates” each ballot. The cast vote records are the record of how BallotNow “interprets” each vote on each ballot. The votes on the cast vote records are subsequently tabulated by a program referred to as TALLY.

11. The statement of vote is available, however.

We are not, at this time, seeking access to the statement of vote.

12. I am still working on the administrative logs that you requested and will get an answer to you as soon as possible. Could you please explain with specificity what it is you are asking for?

To expedite this response, please provide us with a list of the official titles and summary description of all files created and/or maintained by the HART voting system. We have found that when we do not ask for an exact file name, we are not able to make a request that staff understands.

Now that we have presented and directed you to the correct legal framework, we expect you to promptly arrange for us to inspect the materials we have requested.

Please let me know when we may review the materials.

Sincerely,



Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group



CC:

Hillary Hall, Boulder County Clerk & Recorder
Bernie Buescher, Colorado Secretary of State
Judd Choate, Director, Colorado Division of Elections
Harvie Branscomb, Trustee, Colorado Voter Group

COMPLAINT: Urgent - ongoing violation of Open Meetings Laws

From: Al Kolwicz [mailto:AlKolwicz@qwest.net]
Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 10:26 AM
To: 'attorney.general@state.co.us'
Cc: 'Newsroom Denver_Post'; 'coloradovoter@googlegroups.com'
Subject: COMPLAINT: Urgent - ongoing violation of Open Meetings Laws

Dear Attorney General Suthers,

There is a meeting of Colorado election officials underway today in Westminster. These same officials are interfering with the Public’s right to observe. Your immediate intervention is requested.

These officials are operating behind a shield of the Colorado County Clerks Association.

However, it is our understanding that they are discussing topics that lead to decisions regarding election law (see email thread below).

We believe that these officials are violating the spirit and letter of the Colorado open meetings laws.

Will you please intervene in behalf of the people of Colorado?

Thank you for your immediate attention.

Al

Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group
303-494-1540
mailto:AlKolwicz@qwest.net
http://www.coloradovotergroup.org/

Protect independent Logic and Accuracy Testing

RE:   Please amend HB 1116 to protect independent Logic and Accuracy Testing

Dear Senator Heath:

It is my understanding that the State, Veterans & Military Affairs committee will take up HB 1116 on Monday afternoon.
In your position as Chair of the committee, and as a fellow Boulder County resident, you are in a position to give serious consideration to and recommend adoption of the following proposal to amend HB 1116.

To earn voter confidence, it is vital that Logic and Accuracy Test members be chosen independently of election officials.

Please amend HB 1116 to something like the following:

1-7-509. Electronic and electromechanical vote counting - testing of equipment required.

(1)(c)(I) For all partisan elections, the County major Political Party Chairs shall appoint to a Testing Board an equal number of one or more registered electors. The number of members of the Testing Board shall be determined by the county clerk and recorder.

(II) For nonpartisan elections that are coordinated elections, the County major Political Party Chairs shall appoint to a Testing Board an equal number of one or more registered electors. The number of members of the Testing Board shall be determined by the county clerk and recorder. In addition, each participating Governing Board will recommend to the designated election official one or more Testing Board members, and the designated election official will choose from among these recommended testers no fewer than one and no more than half of the number allocated to the political parties.

(III) For nonpartisan elections that are not coordinated elections, a Testing Board will be appointed with the number of members determined by the designated election official. Each participating Governing Board will recommend to the designated election official one or more Testing Board members, and the designated election official will choose from among these recommended testers no fewer than two and will attempt to evenly distribute the Testing Board members across the districts.

The key objective of the amendment is to make sure that county-wide elections are supported by party appointed testers, and that other elections are supported by governing boards of the districts.

We hope the law will maximize independence and minimize official control over the verification that the election system is ready to conduct a fair and accurate election.

As you may recall, Boulder County has had embarrassing problems during the last few elections. Many of these problems could have been avoided by an independent (and system wide) LAT.

The current language proposed in HB 1116, Section 15 removes the party affiliation requirements for judges who perform logic and accuracy testing on electronic voting equipment if the election for which the equipment is being tested is a nonpartisan election.

SECTION 15. 1-7-509 (1) (c), Colorado Revised Statutes, is amended to read:

1-7-509. Electronic and electromechanical vote counting - testing of equipment required.

(1) (c) (I) FOR ALL PARTISAN ELECTIONS, the designated election official shall select a testing board comprising at least two persons, one from each major political party, from the list provided by the major political parties pursuant to section 1-6-102.

(II) FOR ALL NONPARTISAN ELECTIONS, THE DESIGNATED ELECTION OFFICIAL SHALL SELECT A TESTING BOARD COMPRISING AT LEAST TWO PERSONS WHO ARE REGISTERED ELECTORS.

In the first place, why should the clerk select the testing board members for PARTISAN elections? Each Major Political Party Chair should select the person(s) that they feel confident will best perform this highly technical duty. This paragraph should be revised by an amendment that assigns to the County Political Party Chair the appointment of the person or persons that will participate in the design and execution of the LAT.

Secondly, why should the clerk select the testing board members for NONPARTISAN elections? Again, the major political party chairs should each make at least one appointment. They have experience, and are a stable element of the community. In addition, each of the participating districts should submit a candidate for LAT tester, and the Clerk can choose among the appointees of the special districts.

Some Colorado County Clerks are guilty of restricting LAT test cases to things that the clerk has pre-tested before the test. For example, only a blue or black pen may be used to mark LAT ballots. In so doing, Clerks wind up serving as surrogates for the vendors. They use these unfair testing procedures to cover up defects in the equipment and procedures.

• Clerks won’t permit testers to use “realistic marks” on the test ballots.

• Clerks won’t permit the “expected results” to be hidden from the people running the equipment and performing the ballot resolution function.

• Clerks won’t permit testers to address many of the election procedures required by law, including compliance with “conditional certification requirements”.

Even more egregious, but probably not fixable in HB 1116, the LAT itself is flawed in that it does not test the entire path.

• Currently, there is no testing to verify that signature verifiers are able to detect forgery.

• Currently, there is no testing to verify that procedures are followed.

• Currently, there is no testing to verify that batch controls work, and that the election can be accurately canvassed..

• Currently, there is no testing to verify that election reports comply with the law.

Sadly, the LAT has devolved into an ineffective drama designed to generate false confidence. Most of the defects discovered in recent elections should have and would have been detected by a fair public testing process.

Eventually, the Legislature must ensure that pre-election testing will verify that (1) every eligible voter will be given an opportunity to vote once, (2) every eligible vote will be correctly counted once, and that (3) every aspect of the election (with the exception of where a voter’s SSN would be made public, or a connection between the voter and the voted ballot would be exposed) will be fully transparent and independently verifiable.

It is reckless for the clerks to select the LAT teams.

Please amend the bill as recommended in the opening language above.

Elections will be better, and more trustworthy.



Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group
2867 Tincup Circle
Boulder CO, 80305
303-494-1540
mailto:AlKolwicz@qwest.net
http://www.coloradovotergroup.org/

Cc: 'geoff.johnson@state.co.us'; 'linda.newell.senate@gmail.com'

Polling place voting is more secure and more accurate than mail ballots..

March 19, 2010

TO: Boulder County Commissioners: Ben Pearlman (Chair), Will Toor, Cindy Domenico
CC: Boulder County Clerk and Recorder: Hillary Hall

RE: Arguments for conducting the 2010 Primary Election as a Polling Place Election.

Dear Commissioners:

Before addressing the voting method, we beg you to take necessary action to remove the unique ballot bar-code/serial-number from our ballots. The unique identification of ballots denies voters the right to cast an anonymous ballot. Identified ballots can be linked back to the voter, despite official admonitions to “trust the government”. Please forbid this violation of voter’s rights.

At the time of the writing of this appeal, the public has seen no real numbers to support the official claims that eliminating in-person voting will cost less and increase turnout. How much less cost, and how many more voters? Where are the historical and forecast numbers to support these assertions? And, what is the threat assessment for each of the voting methods? Please ensure that the facts are available for verification before making a decision based on emotion and hearsay.

It is important to keep in mind that elections can be won by one vote. One single case of undetected fraud or error can change the outcome.

We submit the following to encourage Boulder County to conduct the 2010 Primary Election as a polling place election.

1. In a polling place election, voters can choose to vote in person or by mail ballot.
2. A polling place election will honor the wishes of electors who have signed up to vote as permanent mail-in elector.
3. A polling place election is more secure.
4. A polling place election is more accurate.
5. There will be less opportunity for mischief in a polling place election.

Despite intensive promotion by Colorado election officials, fewer than 50 percent of Boulder County’s 219,600 eligible electors are scheduled to receive a permanent mail ballot. The remaining 50 percent are free to choose whether to vote in person or by mail. Forcing these electors to vote by mail-in ballot would deprive them of this freedom of choice.

Electors who want the freedom to choose to vote at a polling place do so for a variety of reasons:

1. Objections to overreaching by government.

Some electors object to being forced to vote using a mail-ballot system that they believe is insecure and inaccurate.

2. Some voters want to know the facts before they vote.

Late breaking news, available on Election Day, can affect a voter’s choices. Mail-in ballots must be posted days in advance of Election Day.

3. Campaigns are less costly.

Shorter campaigns can be less expensive, and candidates have a less difficult time programming their campaign activities. Mail-in ballot voting might start a soon as 20 days before Election Day. A lot can happen in 20 days. Instead of scheduling election activities around one day, Election Day, broadcast advertising and literature mailings for mail ballot elections must be repeated in order to reach voters near the time that the voter is preparing to mark their ballot. These costs are incurred by each of the campaigns.

4. Polling place voting is more secure.

a. There is much tighter control over the physical ballots since the ballots never leave the control of the election judges.
b. It is more likely that the person who marks the ballot is the eligible elector. Electors must show their face at the polls.
c. There is much tighter control over electioneering.

5. Mail-in voting is less secure.

a. Ineligible ballots can be voted and the votes counted.
b. Mail ballots are sent to electors that are not eligible because they no longer live in the County.
c. Incorrect mail ballots are issued to people who are ineligible to vote the ballot style because they have changed jurisdictions within the county.
d. The Postal Service does not guarantee delivery of ballots to the intended elector.
e. Ballots are delivered to addresses where the elector is no longer eligible.
f. Ballots are delivered to an address, but the elector never receives the ballot.
g. People can vote by mail in Boulder County and vote again in another out of state location.

6. Non-professional signature verification is not proof that the eligible elector freely marked and cast a mail ballot.

a. Identity theft can be used to forge signatures on ballots that are harvested in dumpsters and Post Office trash barrels.
b. Family members, roommates, and office mates can successfully forge an elector’s signature.
c. With modern technology, it is relatively easy to scan a stolen signature and adjust its size and density for printing onto a ballot return envelope.
d. Temporary election workers are not certified to accurately detect false signatures.

7. Polling place voters have less possibility of suffering voter intimidation.

a. When a private voting booth is available to a voter, the voter cannot be pressured by others, including friends and family. The voter can say that they voted X when they actually voted Y.
b. Votes on mail ballots can easily be traded, and/or sold.
c. Electioneering can take place in the elector’s home, as the elector is encouraged to mark their ballot in front of somebody electioneering.

8. Claims of increased voter turnout in mail ballot elections are not substantiated.

a. High voter turnout results from competitive contests and the elector’s belief that their vote can affect the results. High turnout does not result from forcing everybody to vote using mail ballots.
b. Even year elections have higher turnout than odd, and general election have higher turnout than primary elections. Given two supposedly equal mail ballot elections, the turnout in one varies from another.
c. In past Boulder County Primary elections, where voting by mail ballot was available to all electors, turnout has varied:

· DEM 13,230 REP 10,267 1998 Governor’s Primary (both contested)
· DEM 7,742 REP 6,561 2002 Governor’s Primary (both uncontested)
· DEM 12,963 REP 6,537 2006 Governor’s Primary (both uncontested)

d. It is common for the same voter to have a different turnout on the same ballot in the same election. They vote for some contests but not others.
e. Even when a permanent mail in elector is sent a ballot, a large percentage of these ballots are not accepted for counting.
f. And among those mail ballots accepted for counting, there is no hard evidence that the ballots were voted by eligible electors voting without intimidation and/or vote trading.

9. Inappropriate electioneering of Permanent mail-in voter option.

a. Using public funds to engineer an overturn of the 2002 Amendment 28 vote of the people, election officials have misinformed electors. Electors, therefore, do not have the facts needed to make an informed choice when deciding whether or not to elect permanent mail ballot status.

· With no explanation of risk, driver license officials encourage new registrants to sign us as a permanent mail-in voter.
· Election offices persuade electors to sign up for permanent mail-in ballots.
· Government sponsored literature stresses (potential) benefits, and fails to disclose the uncertainties and problems associated with mail ballot elections.
· Rosy claims about fabulously low costs and deliriously high turnout are not supported with detailed cost and turnout data.

10. Attempt to overturn 2002 election results.

a. Special interests, despite the fact that Amendment 28 was defeated in 63 out of 64 Colorado counties, did not give up when they lost the 2002 statewide contest to eliminate polling place elections. (60 percent of Boulder County voters voted NO to this scheme.) Since then:

· Officials worked against the public to create the permanent mail-in option.
· They have expended public money to persuade electors to sign up for permanent mail-in status.
· They have worked to permit forced mail-in voting for partisan Primary elections.

b. And who are these special interests? Some are unknown, but one is the Colorado County Clerks Association. CCCA is a secret association that influences its members to eliminate polling place elections. The association refuses to permit representatives of the public to observe their meetings, and refuses to permit representatives of the public to present facts that contradict their dogma.

11. Election cost detail is not available.

a. The public is unable to analyze the differences between mandatory mail-in ballot and polling place elections, because the detail needed for such an analysis is not available to the public. A questioning public might discover opportunities to cut costs.
b. Mail ballot packets cost more to print, package, and mail than polling place ballots -- a great deal more.
c. Many permanent mail ballots are returned as Undeliverable. This demonstrates that the voter list is not accurate, it releases live ballots into the wild, and it costs the County a great deal to print, package, and mail these ballots. Postage costs extra for returning the undeliverable ballot packets to the county.
d. Boulder County residents benefit when money spent on elections is kept in Boulder County. It appears that a polling place election will keep more money at home than would a mail ballot election.
e. If we understand correctly, there is no publicly verified estimate of the cost for running the Primary as a polling place election or a mail ballot only election.

· Whatever the difference, it is not sufficient to deprive voters of the right to vote in person if they choose to do so.
· It is not sufficient to accept the additional threats to integrity which come with a mail ballot election.

f. Is Boulder County prepared to sacrifice the integrity of its election for money?
g. We hope that the commissioners will require cost data with sufficient detail to determine if all of the related costs are included. For example, fees to HART, postage in and out and undeliverable ballot packet returns, how many early voting locations for each voting method, etc.

12. Election integrity is threatened with mail-in ballots.

a. Mail ballots are issued, accepted/rejected, opened and processed up to 22 days before Election Day, and votes may be counted up to 15 days before Election Day. This makes possible the leakage of voting information to “friendly” campaigns, opening the possibility of unfair elections. For example, a visual assessment by an “insider” of the number of votes cast for each contestant in a key contest is valuable information. This data could be used by campaigns to tune their last minute spending and activities, and thereby unfairly influence the outcome of the election.

13. Polling place elections build and nurture community.

a. Some electors believe that elections have a secondary benefit – they build and nurture community. People directly participate in the election processes as workers, poll watchers, and election judges.

b. More community involvement has the secondary benefit of increasing public confidence that the election results are fair and accurate.
c. Whereas, mail ballot elections are sterile, and most of the activity occurs in the back room.

14. Polling place elections have independent oversight.

a. Most of the election workers in a mail-in only election are staff and temporary employees of the Clerk. In polling place elections, most election workers are election judges who are not employees of the Clerk. We need the transparency of independent oversight.

Boulder County is fortunate to have a well-intentioned County Clerk. Pressure on her to minimize cost is high, as it should be. However, as outlined above, it is vital that election cost is not awarded a higher priority than election integrity and voter confidence. The first job for government is to protect the integrity of the ballot box. The second job is to do so as efficiently as practical.

We encourage Boulder County to conduct the 2010 Primary Election as a standard polling place election. Let those who wish to vote by mail ballot do so. Let those who wish to vote in person, and cast a ballot that is not enclosed in an envelope that is coded with the voter’s name and address, do so.

And please keep in mind that each and every single vote counts.

Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group
2867 Tincup Circle
Boulder CO, 80305
303-494-1540
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
http://www.coloradovotergroup.org/

Public radio reports on Aspen election satire

Local Public Radio Station KAJX reports on the Better Bad News Video satire on the Aspen Elections.

Click on the link to see the 5 minute video made by artists in Berkeley who found humor in some of the bizarre events in Aspen's May election, and hear KAJX interview with George Coates, the creator of the video, and election integrity advocate Harvie Branscomb. Mayor Ireland, who found no humor in the piece, is also interviewed.

Please Help Protect Election Transparency and Integrity

A very important lawsuit will soon decide whether or not elected officials and bureaucrats can block the Public from accessing the Public Records needed to independently verify that votes in Public elections are correctly interpreted and counted. A hearing is set for late January 2010.

This is a Public Records lawsuit regarding election records that already exist. The government has denied Public Access to the computer files containing scanned ballot images from Aspen's May 2009 election. Scanned ballot image files have been released to the Public in other states, e.g. Minnesota and California.

This is a court battle between the government (which has a vested interest in hiding election data) and the Public (who has a vested interest in verifying that votes are correctly interpreted and counted). Read Bev Harris’s message, for details about this lawsuit.

If the Court mistakenly decides in favor of the government, there is little hope that future elections will allow the Public controls necessary to oversee Public elections.

An important message from Bev Harris, of Black Box Voting, includes an urgent fundraising request for this Aspen Open Records Litigation. Click to read this message.

Aspen officials are using the apparently bottomless pit of Public funds to block release of these Public Records. Their unnecessarily long and complex motions have forced the Aspen Project to spend $35,000.00 so far.

Please do two things: (1) donate what you can by check or online, and (2) invest some of your valuable time by soliciting funds from people and groups that are working on Voting Rights, including Transparency and Election Integrity. This case must be won.

Black Box Voting has established a tax-deductable (to the extent allowable by law) restricted fund for the Aspen Project. Checks should be made out to “Black Box Voting”, and indicate that the money is “for the Aspen Project” in the memo or comment.

Send your donation online at Donation to Black Box Voting. Make a note in the COMMENT section of the online form, “for the Aspen Project”.

Send your donation by mail. The Payee should be "Black Box Voting", and make a note in the MEMO section of the check, “for the Aspen Project”

Black Box Voting, Inc.
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton, WA
98057

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
bev@blackboxvoting.org

Black Box Voting (.ORG) is a 501c(3) charitable organization. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. The Black Box Voting 501c(3) IRS authorization letter is online at: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/IRSletter.pdf

Public Elections belong to the Public, not to the government. We must not tolerate any government that refuses to release Public Information to the Public.

Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group
2867 Tincup Circle
Boulder CO, 80305
303-494-1540
mailto:AlKolwicz@qwest.net
http://www.coloradovotergroup.org/

Publish corruption testimony on EAC site.

March 26, 2009

Ms. Gineen Beach, Chairwoman
Election Assistance Commission
1225 New York Avenue NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20005

Dear Chairwoman Beach:

The attached email was submitted as testimony for the March 17th public hearing on Voter Registration Databases. Will you please publish the email on the Meeting page on the Commission’s website? See: http://www.eac.gov/News/meetings/03-17-09-public-meeting-washington-d-c

There is some background here. I have requested, multiple times, to be included in the Commission’s announcements list, but have not received notices. When I discovered the March 17th meeting I immediately submitted the attached. It was sent at 4:58 PM MST, but failed to arrive by 5:00 PM EST. Consequently your staff has refused to include the letter in the record.

As you can see, the letter is brief, to the point, and contains disturbing facts that need to be addressed by the Commission.

I hope that the Commission will take this matter seriously, investigate the facts, and intercede in behalf of the people.

Sincerely,

Al Kolwicz
Trustee
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
303-494-1540

----------------------------------------------

From: Al Kolwicz [mailto:alkolwicz@qwest.net]
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 4:58 PM
To: 'testimony@eac.gov'
Cc: Barbara Simons; Colorado Voter Group; Bernie Buescher - Colorado SOS
Subject: TESTIMONY for March 17th EAC meeting - Reviewing HAVA Mandated Guidance

Dear EAC Chair and Members:

Colorado’s voter registration database system and procedures are corrupt. Colorado uses SCORE II.

We have reported specific defects, with exact records illustrating the defects.

We have filed a HAVA Complaint, using the official procedures, with the Colorado Secretary of State and the Department of Justice. A portion of the complaint is posted on the Secretary of State’s website at: http://www.elections.colorado.gov/WWW/default/HAVA/Complaints/Kolwicz%20Final%20Determination%2001-12-09.pdf

Our request for a public hearing, provided for in the law, has been denied. DOJ/Voting Rights did not accept our plea for help.

Our evidence has been brushed off, and not given serious attention.

Without any question whatsoever, the SCORE system used in Colorado does not comply with HAVA. And, there is no way to hold those accountable to take responsibility and fix the problems.

What does the EAC think is supposed to happen?

Does EAC consider that it has a role in ensuring compliance with HAVA?

Will EAC help us?

Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group
AlKolwicz@qwest.net
http://www.coloradovotergroup.org/
http://www.coloradovotergroup.blogspot.com/

Online voter registration is not ready.

It would be interesting to learn the factual basis for the Denver Post's support of online voter registration, see Online voter registration is a move to 21st century.

1. Has the Post investigated the HAVA complaint charging five violations of HAVA by the SCORE voter registration system? It would be interesting to learn the findings.
   
2. Has the Post learned of some new technology that enables election officials to know who is actually logged onto the computer that is using an identity to create or change a voter registration record? If not, what assurance is there that voter registration records are not being fabricated?
   
3. Has the Post studied the effectiveness of the Arizona and Washington online voter registration systems? If so, how many ineligible, fabricated, inaccurate, and out of date voter registration records exist in these databases?
   
4. Has the Post discussed the topic with Colorado's private sector technical experts? If so, it would be interesting to learn the technical arguments for and against online voter registration.

The HB 1160 scheme for online voter registration is predicated on hope rather than fact. There are no studies. There has been no public technical debate. Tough questions are simply ignored.

The purpose of voter registration is to create a secure and accurate record that can be used to (1) verify that a person is who they claim to be, and (2) verify that the person is eligible to vote in a particular election.

I have personal experience with the Secretary of State's self-supervision and I assure you that it is not working. The SOS is not motivated to disclose or even discover its problems. To explicitly exclude independent testing (and independent oversight) would be a disaster.

The enthusiasm for the so-called "digital signature" is misplaced. Just because somebody has possession of a set of credentials does not mean that the person using the credentials is the person to whom the credentials belong.

The enthusiasm for an "airtight system", ensured by state election officials, is also misplaced. the CIA, credit card companies, even the IRS have not successfully discovered such a system, What makes anybody think that Colorado can do so?

Let's stabilize Colorado's voter registration system and fix its known problems before adding disruptive and unscientifically proven online voter registration.

Statisticians and election systems

One of Colorado Voter Group's objectives is to achieve transparent verification of each election.

To my knowledge, there has been no peer reviewed specification of the election system components. Nor is there, to my knowledge, any study of the means by which each component/process can be verified.

None of the Colorado election systems I am familiar with are transparent. None of the Colorado election system components/processes that I am familiar with are verifiable.

All of the statistical work that I have reviewed to date has insufficient scope to be conclusive. For example, there has been no attempt to determine whether or not eligible electors have been disallowed from voting or ineligible electors allowed to vote. Counting the wrong votes correctly does not mean that an election is fair or accurate.

Without an agreed to specification of the entire election system it is far too early for a professional statistician to seriously undertake to test and make conclusions regarding the fairness and accuracy of an election.

Furthermore, the statistical work that I have reviewed to date seems to give insufficient consideration to the variation in populations being sampled, and treats unlike populations as though they were statistically identical. This would be like testing for the color of fruit by sampling only bananas in a carton of apples and bananas.

I ask that we not relinquish our quest for transparent verification. We must not accept simplistic statistical methodology that does not accomplish the goal.

To be clear, there is a place for statistical methods in election system verification, but the statistical methods used must be comprehensive and correct or they serve to further mask real problems. We must not delegate our voice on this vital matter.


Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group

What's different - more ...

Yes -- the Longmont City special election in January used folded ballots. They could have been folded so as not to interfere with the boxes, but they were folded so that they did. I didn't hear of any issues concerning where the fold was, but I wasn't near the machines. Neal may know better.

Interestingly, the security sleeve for both the November 07 and January 08 elections would not fit back into the mailer once the ballot was completed and inserted. Voters could either tear the glued seam on the sleeve to make it fit (which is what was done in my household) or toss the security sleeve, which is what most voters did.Longmont elections officials (our clerk) and many voters that I've talked to complained about this in November. However the exact same problem was repeated in January of 08.Since I voted on the first day of early voting (my mail ballot never arrived), I have no idea what the security sleeve was sized for this time.

Perhaps the security sleeve was the source of the paper dust?

The best way to overcome the Ballot Now systems' issues with tiny particles is NOT TO USE IT. Every November this system has some kind of issue that causes terrible problems. Every year we here the same four words, "How could we know?"We can know because it does the same thing every time. Neal's tiny dot test proved that Ballot Now cannot discern a vote from an accidental pen swipe."How could we know?" makes me want a prescription for the same drugs the clerk's office is taking. Maybe I can forget the last 8 years.

Paul Tiger -- Longmont

Looking forward

I generally concur with Al Kolwicz on his deeper analysis below. It is true that there is no adequate mechanism for information flow about voting systems, and to the extent that such a mechanism is in place it is too often scuttled by those in positions of power and influence. Their actions represented in the points below are taken at a real and tangible risk of loss of the accuracy of our elections. The problem of spurious marks is not unexpected by those of us watching closely, and has been encountered before. It is soluble by simple but time consuming human interception of any machine’s limited capability at vote interpretation.

In the future we must redesign our system (laws, rules, common practice, and equipment) with improved checks and remedies and perhaps more direct human involvement. But for now we must allow our existing checks in place to go forward, even if it takes days to interpret and count the marks on the paper ballots. We have always recognized that the benefit of having a countable record of voter intent depends on the ability and willingness to actually count it. While there are those who see benefits in simplicity and efficiency in losing the human countable record of voter intent, and there are also those who demand rapid results reporting, I see only loss of accuracy in those places.

Al says the spurious marks issue is not forgivable, but I see it only as foreseeable and some aspencts of it actually foreseen. This very real issue remains difficult to address under the currently popular presumption of the fallibility of the human counting of votes by many election officials. Naturally we should look for remedies involving an increase of human involvement in the vote interpretation process.

Harvie Branscomb

Answers to Audit questions

On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 10:36:46AM -0700, Al Kolwicz wrote:
>
> Neal,
>
> Does the group's audit procedure provide the facts needed to answer"

A good audit according to the Principles from the auditing experts would give good answers to those questions.

> 1. How accurate is "mis-interpreted vote detection" by the machine audit procedure that "the group" has developed?

First, the procedure is not a "machine audit", but rather an audit of voter-verfied paper records and how various parts of the whole system interpreted them.

The benefits of audits include: http://electionaudits.org/whyaudit

* Revealing when recounts are necessary to verify election outcomes
* Finding error whether accidental or intentional
* Deterring fraud
* Providing for continuous improvement in the conduct of elections
* Promoting public confidence in elections

The details of even defining a mis-interpreted vote depend on state laws, so as always in the US, local conditions will be important.

> 2. Does the percentage of mis-interpreted votes, in one or more audited contests, extend to the non-audited contests?

If you don't audit a particular contest, your information will of course be limited and it would be hard to say. But of course you'd have a lot more information than if you don't do a good audit of at least some contests, and very few jurisdictions do good audits now.

> 3. How about the non-audited machines?

In a proper audit, all ballots would be eligible for selection, and thus all machines and other elements of the election tallying process would in some sense be "audited".

A proper audit will give good statistics about ballots that weren't chosen for hand-counting and the performance of associated machines for the contest in question. The level of confidence chosen is of course important here. And note that it is often best to focus most on detecting mistakes in tight races, which would mean that smaller levels of misinterpretation in races with a wide margin wouldn't be picked up.

> 4. Does "the group's" machine audit procedure have the ability to project the total number of misinterpreted votes?

Note we have "principles", not yet detailed, specific recommended procedures.

The procedures designed by Philip Stark do a great job of determining when problems found indicate need for an escallation by doing that sort of projection.

He has a nice page of good auditing references:

http://statistics.berkeley.edu/~stark/Vote/index.htm

> 5. How about the number of mis-interpreted votes that occurred in undervoted contests?

Sure - all categories of vote interpretation must be audited.

> Thanks for work that you are doing.

My pleasure! A good canvass with tracking of ballots is also of course critical to a good audit, so your work there is also important.

Neal McBurnett

Speed is not the issue

Hi Harvie,
what is the stated capacity of the Hart scanner in ballots per min? Even the ES&S will do >200 ballots / min (with stops for ballots that go to resolution committee. So 12,000 per hour. now that is high speed. With the Hart system they might as well do hand counting...... that's your point!! ??
Joel

-------------------------------------

Joel
The Hart system is simply software which attaches to a variety of COTS (off the shelf) scanners (which is a good idea by the way).
The speed of scanning at full speed depends on the scanner. The Kodak scanners used by Eagle and I am sure the ones used by Boulder are plenty fast. This isn’t the issue. If anything they are too fast and don’t reliably handle forms which have been on people’s living room tables…
scan problems are of the following nature:

1. Part of ballot is folded under in the stack
2. Ballot upside down (supposedly can be handled, and hart prints ballots with a curved corner to avoid this, but more memory is required)
3. Ballot folds help drag the adjacent ballot into the scanner
4. Ripped ballot gets caught on the next ballot or on the scanner
5. Bar code on ballot is slightly damaged by a mark (this rejection seems to happen unnecessarily, considering that bar codes are very resilient)
6. Foreign material build up on various components in the scanner

The scanner we are using Kodak i610 I think is about 1/sec- plenty fast if the software didn’t screw up in between scanning the batches. (I mean the frequent need to reboot systems, struggle with user interface, etc.)

Also the Hart system allows all scanning to be done before resolving… the ballot images are all stored (inaccessibly as far as I can tell in a big database) so scanning can be done independently of either resolving or of uploading votes to memory cards. This allows a lot of flexibility in use of the equipment.

I think the point is that voting system software can actually aid in hand counting ballots accurately! If you have a scanned image of a ballot you can show a particular contest magnified from one ballot to the next (Hart does this well) and flip through the ballots at 10/second If you want looking for an anomaly. This is an excellent service to those who would check ballots for voter intent. For example, the voting system could assemble all the ballots in which it interpreted the vote to be for McCain and the human operator could actually sequentially visit all those portions of the ballots very quickly to look for anomalies. Such a voting system does not exist today. The system could (Hart doesn’t really do this very well) keep a record of the human interpretation and in principle could then machine mark the vote interpretations in a harmless location on the ballot image or conceivably even on the paper ballot itself (in a different design of system) for later auditing.

I would say that it makes sense that the ballots are being examined one by one, as I think they are in Boulder, on the screen. It is true that very light marks, almost invisible to the naked eye are presented in full black on the image, and so certain stray marks and dust are emphasized on the electronic version of the visible image of the ballot. Certainly with a Hart like system you could do very good machine assisted hand counting (machine suggested human confirmed interpretation and machine tabulation) in the same amount of time that Boulder is spending with the ballots and get probably even better accuracy. With an improved design machine, you could do it much faster, and also do it in precincts.

If the press would stop bad mouthing the speed of producing results from Boulder, we would have a better chance to make a more sensible system in the future.

What happened in Florida with the Republicans and the press bad mouthing the punch cards is an example of what we do NOT want to do again.

All of the above discussion relates for the long term only to mail-in ballots or what happens if we go to all an all mail-in election.

At precinct polls we could hand count (or machine assist hand count) our ballots much sooner because of the larger number of people involved.

Harvie Branscomb

Hold these officials accountable

Harvie,

I have a different take on your question, “Why hasn’t Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall heard about dust problems on her Hart Scanners? I would suggest that the reason is that there is no mechanism for this kind of problem sharing to take place.“

1. The problem of spurious marks was detected by the State’s Voting System Certification Team. A CONDITION OF USE was set up that would require special manual pre-scanning treatment of all HART paper ballots. At a hearing, we attempted to protect this condition. However, the powerful, secret, Colorado County Clerks Association lobbied, using incomplete and erroneous arguments, to protect the vendor and themselves from this condition of use. They persuaded the SOS to remove the condition of use.
   
2. The architecture of all paper ballot vote counting systems certified in Colorado is fatally flawed. None of these systems provide exports of the ballot images and the interpretation of each vote on each individual ballot. Consequently, independent verification of vote interpretation is not possible – not even by the Canvass Boards.
   
3. The LAT is contrived and inadequate. The procedures and materials are idealized, and not at all representative of the real world. And, in the case of Boulder County, the Clerk contrived to exclude the people most knowledgeable of the HART system from serving on the LAT team. (Not to sound like sour grapes, I was not permitted to serve.)
   
4. Despite repeated requests that officials follow Colorado Statutes and Rules, the County and the State have neglected to perform “acceptance Tests” of the voting system. The system test would include ballot printers/vendors as well as every other component/subsystem.

From my perspective, the problem of spurious marks on HART optical scanners is not a surprise and is not forgivable.

Election officials should be held individually accountable for this problem.


Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group

Objection to Daily Camera Editorial Staff

TO: Erika (Stulzman) of the Daily Camera Editorial Staff
(copy of a letter to Erika written through the Daily Camera web site)

I would hope you get a chance to educate yourself on the election reform topic more before writing again about how bad it might be that Boulder is slow reporting vote counts. Speed of reporting is just about the lowest criterion for quality in the election, and there is much which should be prioritized over speed. I hope you come to realize how destructive the pressure for quick reporting can be. This is an enormously complex topic and some of us are basically devoting all of our free time to trying to understand it, and testify about it on behalf of the voting public at the Legislature. I have written about what is wrong with Colorado election law, as well has testified on numerous occasions. I do hope that you will contact members of the Boulder community of election quality activists such as Neal McBurnett 494-6493 (Green) or Al Kolwicz 494-1540 (Republican) or Mary Eberle 442-2164 (Unaffiliated) or Margit Johansson 442-1668 (Democratic). All of us have been working together to improve elections.

One of the greatest challenges is to spread a better understanding of the reality of voting through the media. I just don't understand why you wrote the following:

"But the county needs to get it together. If Jefferson and Denver counties can have their votes counted in a timely manner (and they did), why can't we? A serious dialogue about scrapping our system is step No. 1. Had this been a contested election with major problems, Boulder County's mysterious "dust" would be this year's hanging chads. That is unacceptable.
And a note to anyone wanting to challenge Hall for her clerk's position because of the slow election results: That's what she said."

I don’t disagree that a discussion about scrapping the system is in order. In fact a discussion about scrapping all the systems in Colorado is in order. The technical test board of the Secretary of State actually recommended not certifying any of the voting systems currently in use in Colorado (except hand counting). Only through the catch-22 of Colorado law and with the help of our 2008 Legislature could our Secretary of State (now Congressman to be) Mike Coffman personally decide that all voting systems were ok to use. There are better voting systems which could be certified and there are certainly better systems which could be designed if state laws would only accommodate these better ideas.

It could be that Jefferson and Denver counties are not as careful as Boulder County about election quality. Have you checked? Why not investigate the truth about "hanging chads"? These were foolishly presented as the worst thing that ever happened to an American election when in reality they were an indication of a reasonably well designed voting system valiantly recording evidence of voter intent when rank mismanagement of the voting system made it very difficult for voters to vote. Rank mismanagemnet on a totally electronic voting system leads to no record of voter intent whatsoever. Think about it. That is a very good reason to use paper ballots. Paper ballots allow voters in difficult situations (and eligible voters represent a spectacularly wide variety of human characteristics not the least of which includes old age) to express themselves. Machines do have difficulty interpreting some of these marks on paper ballots, although they are quite good at adding them up, once the marks have been understood.

I would be glad to send you more information about the defects of Colorado elections and election law, and would invite you to attend the Election Reform Committee hearings on Nov 12, although these should be taken with a grain of salt considering that the Commission consists of mostly election officials who are not the ones who most need a commission to improve the election... they have considerable power in their own hands. Perhaps you could widen the scope of your writing on this topic.

FYI Eagle County votes with a similar system to that of Boulder County. I am the Canvass Board member for the Democratic Party. I have first hand experience, through testing, of the various defects and benefits of that system, although I am now sure I have not seen all the defects yet.

Please send me your email address and I will reply with more information.


Harvie Branscomb
Eagle County Canvass Board
Colorado Voter Group

Eagle County has encountered a number of similar problems with HART

Excerpt from article reproduced in full at bottom of email (referring to Boulder County vote counting delays)

To ensure accuracy, election workers are visually checking a picture of
each ballot on computers, searching for the troublesome dust line. Though
officials hope a couple of technological fixes will speed up the counting, the
rate of votes counted Wednesday hung around 1,200 ballots an hour.
“Accuracy
is more important than speed,” said Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary
Hall. “People expect accuracy — this is the job I was elected to do.”

The molasses speed of the counting process is frustrating Hall, but
perhaps more confounding is that there doesn’t appear to be any obvious
explanation for why the paper-dust problem showed up now.

“I just don’t know,” she said. “If this is a common problem, I’ve
frankly never heard about it.”
The Laura Snider article is quite reasonable
in its coverage of the Boulder vote counting process.

Why hasn’t Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall heard about dust problems on her Hart Scanners? I would suggest that the reason is that there is no mechanism for this kind of problem sharing to take place. The manufacturer has little motivation to encourage the sharing of election problems with their equipment… the CCCI (clerks association) doesn’t either, apparently, other than what happens through serendipity. The state has no mechanism for this and the election quality advocates among the public are largely shut out of the process so have difficulty learning about these problems, and also have problems having their criticisms heard once they do have information.

Eagle County has encountered a number of similar problems with Hart and Kodak systems, and has been very frustrated by the operation of this system during the past few days. Will the reports of this frustration reach other counties and other states? Probably not.

“The county needs to talk to their printer,” said Peter Lichtenheld, director of
marketing for Hart InterCivic. “Hart did not print the ballots ... and the
printer did not use Hart secure ballot stock.”

Unlike Boulder, Eagle County has its ballots manufactured by Hart. These ballots are also problematic but in a different way. They do not seem to be emitting dust particles, but they are showing evidence shadow imprinting of portions of the ballot onto other portions. In our case, fortunately, this is occurring only on the removable stub… but in past elections we have experienced transfer of ballot toner onto the active part of the ballot (on Diebold printed ballots in the past).

In addition, Hart created (I do not think these are actually, technically, “printed”) ballots are folded at the factory. These multiple folds are very difficult to straighten out and have caused immense difficulty in feeding the ballots into the scanners. On many batches there are one or more ballots which fail to scan and therefore have to be deleted from the digital records and rescanned in an adjacent batch. (Alternatively the batch must be sequentially rescanned until successful, but this proves to be too slow). In another area, the score at the top of each page which allows the stub to be removed is too weak and hence the stub is extremely difficult to remove, also delaying the scanning process and often leaving a rough edge at the top of the ballot.

Eagle County is stopping to dismantle parts from the scanners and vacuum the interior on a very frequent basis. During the tests it was found that the scanner needed extra white metal shields to be added to successfully scan 17” ballots. This information had not been provided in advance by Hart.

It was also discovered that inserting ballots bottom first caused an extra load on the ballot processing software, actually slowing the process and causing it to run out of memory, frequently. When it ran out of memory the program would not recover gracefully. This actually caused certain batches of ballots to consistently fail to scan. When all ballots were loaded head first, this problem was relieved (apparently for technical reasons related to the design of the software, but probably never encountered during State testing and in any case unknown to Hart system users). However it was then discovered that since the first fold was about ¾ of an inch from the top, the ballots were bent in a direction which, if inserted top up, would not allow the scanner roller to pick up the pages consistently. It was deemed necessary to load the ballots bottom up. None of this was advised by Hart, the voting system supplier, in advance and was all discovered in the initial scanning process of this particular ballot in this election.

Will reports of these problems reach Hart and other Hart county users? Will someone make a huge manual of gotchas which will benefit local election officials?

Doubtful.

The remaining references to attention to detail in this article are admirable.. I note that John Gideon’s 2005 report of the white line is probably not entirely what Boulder County is experiencing although it may be part of it. I suspect that there are a variety of single pixel or larger black marks on the ballots as well. It would be better if the press were able to get sufficient access to be able to report accurately on this topic.

Harvie Branscomb
Eagle County Canvass Board
(Eagle is a user of a similar system to that used in Boulder County)

How precise are audits?

Does the Audit Elections group's audit procedure provide the facts needed to answer"

1. How accurate is "mis-interpreted vote detection" by the machine audit procedure that "the group" has developed?
2. Does the percentage of mis-interpreted votes, in one or more audited contests, extend to the non-audited contests?
3. How about the non-audited machines?
4. Does "the group's" machine audit procedure have the ability to project the total number of misinterpreted votes?
5. How about the number of mis-interpreted votes that occurred in undervoted contests?

Thanks for work that you are doing at https://launchpad.net/electionaudits


Al Kolwicz
Colorado Voter Group

How closely are other counties looking at their ballots?

The best story I've seen so far on this is from Laura Snider at the Boulder Daily Camera. Or maybe I'm biased since she called me and put in a quote or two 8-)

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/nov/05/boulder-countys-counting-crawls/

From the limited information I have, it seems to me that the magnitude of the problem is relatively small and might not be noticed by counties that don't look closely at their ballots via a good audit or the sort of screen images that the BallotNow system provides (despite its many flaws, that is an interesting aspect of the Hart system).

So how closely are other counties looking at their ballots, from systems known to have problems?

Snider writes:

Last winter, Secretary of State Mike Coffman de-certified all Hart scanning equipment because the scanners "failed to count votes accurately when there are extraneous marks on the ballot."
...
Coffman's testing board recommended that he institute regulations requiring county officials to review every ballot, looking for the stray marks. Instead, Coffman chose to re-certify the machines, which are used in 47 Colorado counties, without the extra regulations.

That creates the possibility that some counties using the Hart scanners may be having dust problems and not know it.

Improved audits were required by the conditions of use imposed by the Secretary of State. But who besides Boulder in Colorado is really doing good audits of mail-in ballots?

What is your county doing?
Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/

More on print through

As concerns print through or transfer of one part of the ballot to another, either at the original manufacturing process or while being crushed in folded form in postal sorting machines, or stacked after receipt at the county... it is important to know that many ballot manufacturing processes are similar to laser printing... ie toner is used, and toner is subject to transfer from one place to another when heat is involved if not in other circumstances. Hart manufactured ballots seem to sometimes have toner transfer onto the removable stub on the back side, in this election.

It is not the case that ballots are necessarily printed with ink. However, it is useful to know if this is the case. I understand Boulder County Colorado ballots may have been manufactured or printed by some company other than Hart.

Harvie Branscomb