Will Your Vote Count

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Will Your Vote Count?
Optical Scan Advocates Training

• New Yorkers for Verified Votingwww.nyvv.org Bo
  Liparibolipari_at_nyvv.org

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Topics

• Types of voting systems
• Paper Ballots and Optical Scanners
• Concerns about DREs
• What You Need to Do!
• Common Questions

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Right Now in New York State

• Like pushy car dealers, industry reps for voting
  machines are hawking top-of-the-line cream puffs
  with lots of bells and whistles here while
  keeping their economy models under wraps.
• Unless lawmakers smarten up in a hurry, voters
  across the state could get stuck with expensive
  lemons.
• - The New York Daily News, March 9, 2005

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Types of Voting Systems

• Electronic Touchscreen/Pushbutton
• DRE (Direct Recording Electronic)
• Paper Ballots and Precinct Based Optical Scan
  Systems

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Touchscreen/Pushbutton (DRE)

• 2 types of DREs
• Paperless
• Vote record is stored only in computer memory and
  media.
• Results are calculated at end of the day.
• Totals printed, and/or sent via modem to central
  server.
• Voter Verifiable Paper Ballot (VVPB)
• Voters see a paper printout of their vote before
  leaving the voting booth.
• Printout is stored and treated like a traditional
  ballot.
• It cannot be thrown out or changed by the voting
  system.
• ATM-style printed ballots are hard to read,
  verify and recount!

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Paper Ballots and Optical Scanners

• Electronic Counting Machines
• Voters use pens to mark a paper ballot.
• Completed ballots counted by optical scanner.
• One optical scanner in each polling place to
  validate and count votes.
• Disabled access - Ballot Marking Devices
• Used in 46 of counties by 35 of voters.
• Ballot Verification
• Voters insert completed ballot into scanner for
  validation.
• Alerts voters to over-votes and under-votes.

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Optical Scan Ballot
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Precinct Based Optical Scanner
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Precinct Based Optical Scanner
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Ballot Marking Device
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Advantages of Optical Scanners

• Paper ballots are inherently voter verified.
• Easy and intuitive for voters and poll workers.
• Ballots are easily recounted by hand.
• Lowest rates of invalid ballots.
• Easy to add voting booths at low cost.
• Reliable, auditable, accessible, cost effective.

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Concerns About DREs

• Failures and problems in real elections!
• Actual costs exceed predicted costs.
• Election officials rely increasingly on private
  corporations to run our elections.

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DREs - Failures in Real Elections
November 2003 - Boone County, Indiana

• Software reported 144,000 votes.
• There are only 19,000 registered voters.
• When corrected, accounting showed just 5,352
  ballots were cast.
• An obvious error in a small county, but would it
  be noticed in a large district?

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DREs - Failures in Real Elections

• Miami Dade County, March 2005
• A coding error caused the DREs to lose hundreds
  of votes in six recent elections.
• New Supervisor of Elections appointed after
  former supervisor resigned.
• Recommended scrapping the 24.5 million DREs for
  paper ballots with optical scanners.

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DREs - Costs Exceed Predicted Costs

• Miami Dade County, November 2004
• DREs cost 6.6 million to operate during
  November's presidential election
• Twice what officials budgeted!
• Orange County spent less than 2 million to run
  optical scanners
• Less than a third of Miami-Dade's cost!

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DREs - Elections rely on vendors

• Miami Dade County
• Purchasing contract included more than 400 days'
  worth of project-manager support from vendor
• Those days were gone by the end of the first
  year.
• County negotiates the rate and number of days for
  vendor support in advance of elections
• Price has been as high as 1,100 a day, per
  person.

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DREs - The Software Gap
Software is a Black Box. Any accidental or
deliberate flaw in the software can compromise
the election undetectably!
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Criteria for Voting Systems

• Primary criteria for judging voting systems
• Reliability
• Accessibility
• Accuracy
• Transparency
• Security
• Verifiability
• Convenience is not a valid criteria!

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What You Need To Do

• Local Officials Must Hear From You NOW!
• Contact State Board of Elections
• Contact Vendors Optical scanners must be
  certified !!
• Meet with Local Boards of Elections
• Meet with County Legislatures and Committees
• Get the Media Talking About It!
• Letters to the Editor
• Op-ed pieces
• Talk radio, public access TV

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County Campaign

• www.nyvv.org/CountyCampaigning.htm
• www.nyvv.org/PetitionDrive.htm
• Reaching the Public
• Start a petition drive in your county
• Get press and media coverage
• Work with regional weeklies, dailies, and radio
  programs.
• Reaching County Officials
• County Election Commissioners Public demand
  for transparency in the machine selection
  process is essential!
• County Legislators Legislators are responsible
  for the countys fiscal health.

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Will Your Vote Count?

• New Yorkers for Verified Votingwww.nyvv.org Bo
  Liparibolipari_at_nyvv.org