Informed Consent

Revised Sarasota Spreadsheet

In response to feedback about the spreadsheet I posted previously, I've changed a few things and have posted a revised sheet here.
.

Changes include getting rid of the dark red (which one person said was hard to read; that category is now green); moving the color key to the top of the spreadsheet so you don't have to scroll to the bottom to see what the colors mean; adding column headers to each page so you don't have to scroll back to the top to see what each column means; re-assigning colors to the categories (so please disregard what each color meant previously); and adding a new category for voters who failed to cast their ballot (there seemed to be an unusual number of these listed -- perhaps indicating a problem with the "cast ballot" button on the machines -- so I thought it was important to create a separate category for these).

See my previous post below for further explanation of the spreadsheet.

UPDATED: Spreadsheet of Sarasota Election Problems Now Available

NOTE: Since posting this spreadsheet I've revised the document per suggestions from readers. You can see the improved spreadsheet here:

I've been working on this for quite a while and am now happy to finally be posting it online. Several weeks ago I requested incident and tech reports from Sarasota County regarding problems reported during the November 2006 election. I wrote a story for Wired News summarizing the problems revealed in the reports. Now, after several weeks of work, I've created a spreadsheet of all the problems I found in the reports that were related in some way to the voting machines (the majority of the reports were about voter registration issues -- voter names not appearing on the polls due to voters having moved, etc.).

I'm asking you to be courteous and please DO NOT REMOVE the file from this site to post to your own web page but instead refer readers to its original source here. Thanks for understanding.

You'll find the spreadsheet here. A key explaining the colors on the spreadsheet is on p. 18 of the PDF.

Note: In the column marked "Machine Serial No", you'll find that wherever a serial number of a voting machine is indicated, it's followed by a number in parentheses. That number refers to the number of CD-13 undervotes that were on that specific machine. In some cases (usually highlighted in yellow) I've indicated what percentage those undervotes constitute in terms of the total number of votes cast on that machine.

I'm a bit bleary-eyed after putting this together so if you notice any errors or inconsistencies, or anything that's not self-explanatory, send me a note and I'll fix or clarify.

UPDATE: As you can see from the spreadsheet, it's often difficult to surmise from the incident and zone tech reports what exactly occurred with machines. The reports are filled out inconsistently and often cryptically, making it hard to determine what went wrong with machines and how, or if, the problems were resolved. To give you an example of what I'm referring to, I've uploaded scans of some of the incident and zone tech reports (which were made by Susan Pynchon at the Florida Coalition for Fair Elections). Again, please do not remove the files from this site.

Incident reports by precinct: 18, 19, 25, 25 again, 60, 98, 124

Zone tech reports by precinct: 1, 3, 5, 18, 19, 32, 46

New EAC Vice-Chair Elected

Per a press release from the EAC, Rosemary Rodriguez was announced as the new vice chair of the Election Assistance Commission. The text of the release, describing her background, follows:

Kansas City, MO - Former Denver City Council President Rosemary E. Rodriguez today was elected vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) during a public meeting.

As vice chair, she will work with EAC Chair Donetta Davidson as part of the bipartisan leadership team at the commission to set priorities and communicate EAC initiatives.

"My foremost conviction is that all eligible voters should be empowered with simple, unfettered and uncomplicated access to registration and to the voting booth" said Rodriguez. "I look forward to working with my colleagues as we seek practical means to improve elections in this country in ways that most benefit the voters."

Vice Chair Rodriguez joined the EAC in March. She was nominated to EAC by President Bush in 2006 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February. She will serve until December 12, 2007, filling the remaining term of Ray Martinez, who resigned in August 2006.

She served on the Denver, Colorado City Council for three years, and was its president from 2005 to 2006. She was director of Boards and Commissions for the mayor's office from 2002 to 2003 and a clerk and recorder for the City and County of Denver from 1997 to 2002. In 1997 she was acting director of the Denver Election Commission where she supervised city elections. She has been active in numerous grass roots civic and voter advocacy organizations, including the Colorado Voter Initiative where she co-chaired a statewide initiative to allow Election Day voter registration. She was also a co-founder and chair of Latinos Vote, a voter registration project to register Latino voters and provide non-partisan election information to the Latino community.

75,000 Voter Registration Cards w/ SS# Found in Trash

Thirty boxes containing 75,000 voter registration cards for residents of Fulton County, Georgia, were found in a dumpster at an Atlanta technical college. A sampling of the cards, filled with voter Social Security numbers and other personal information, indicate that many of them are for still-active voters, writes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The secretary of state's office is investigating.

Last Cuyahoga Election Board Member Resigns

Despite assertions last week that he was ready for a protracted fight, Robert Bennett, Cuyahoga's election board chair and chair of Ohio's Republican party, announced Wednesday afternoon that he was giving in to the secretary of state's wish for him to resign. Bennett is the last of the four-member bi-partisan board to relent to calls for their resignation.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Bennett agreed to resign after Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner agreed to drop her complaint against him "without a finding of fault."

A new board, two Democrats and two Republicans, is expected to be seated after May 1st when Bennett's resignation takes effect.

There's still time for the new board to make effective changes to fix the litany of problems encountered in last year's elections.

EAC Accused of Altering Voter Fraud Report to Appease White House

The federal Election Assistance Commission is being accused of altering a report it commissioned on voter fraud to make the findings agree with the White House stand that such fraud is likely prevalent throughout the country and a risk to the integrity of elections.

But in an earlier draft of the EAC report, which was leaked to the media, the findings stated the opposite, that "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, noncitizen voting and felon voters."

The final report eliminates the conclusion that voter fraud occurs much less often than claimed and instead says there is no consensus on the pervasiveness of voter fraud.

People for the American Way and other groups contend that the independent researchers behind the report have been muzzled by the EAC, and that the report was altered to please the White House -- which is currently under scrutiny for firing eight U.S. attorney (some of them for failing to prosecute voter fraud as vigorously as the White House wanted them to).

An email exchange published in a New York Times story today would seem to back the idea that there was partisan pressure to tailor the report findings. The email is from one of the report authors, Job Serebrov, a Republican election lawyer, to an EAC staffer:

"Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report," Serebrov wrote. "I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted. . . . Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency."

Why would the EAC, or the White House, want to perpetuate the idea that voter fraud is rampant if it isn't?

Voter fraud has been touted by the White House and others as the reason to pass new laws requiring voters to produce an ID when registering and voting at the polls. Civil liberties groups and others argue that voter ID laws deter certain groups of voters from coming to the polls -- such as minority and low-income voters who are less likely to possess a driver's license or passport and who, more often than not, are registered Democrats.

In fact, a second EAC report about voter ID laws supports the conclusion that ID laws deter minority voters from going to the polls. The EAC was reluctant to release that report, however -- some say the commission suppressed it -- until pressured to do so.

On another note, one interesting section of the draft report on voter fraud appears on page 7:

Several people indicate -- including representatives from DoJ -- that for various reasons, the Department of Justice is bringing fewer voter intimidation and supression cases now and is focusing on matters such as noncitizen voting, double voting and felon voting.

Why is this significant? Democrats often accuse Republicans of voter intimidation and suppression to keep Democratic voters from turning out at the polls to vote. If the DoJ is ignoring voter intimidation and suppression cases does that mean the DoJ is cherry picking types of voter fraud cases -- ignoring certain categories of cases while focusing on others -- to further a partisan agenda?

Sources in a piece published last month by the McClatchy news service say yes:

Other former voting-rights section lawyers (at DoJ) said that during the tenure of Alex Acosta, who served as the division chief from the fall of 2003 until he was named interim U.S. attorney in Miami in the summer of 2005, the department didn't file a single suit alleging that local or state laws or election rules diluted the votes of African-Americans. In a similar time period, the Clinton administration filed six such cases.

Those kinds of cases, Rich said, are "the guts of the Voting Rights Act."

During this week's House judiciary subcommittee hearing, critics recounted lapses in the division's enforcement. A Citizens Commission on Civil Rights study found that "the enforcement record of the voting section during the Bush administration indicates this traditional priority has been downgraded significantly, if not effectively ignored."

By the way, the EAC sent out a press release this morning, presumably in response to the NY Times story about the controversy around its two reports:

Prior to the EAC's adopting a report submitted by a contractor, the EAC has the responsibility to ensure its accuracy and to verify that conclusions are supported by the underlying research.

The Commission takes input and constructive criticism from Congress and the public very seriously. We will take a hard look at the way we do business. Specifically, we will examine both the manner in which we have awarded contracts and our decision-making process regarding the release of research and reports.

Right-wing Blogger Targets Son of Ohio SoS

Did I mention that the battle in Cuyahoga is going to get ugly?

Ohio's new Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has drawn the ire of Republicans for, among other things, trying to oust the head of the Ohio Republican party from his position on Cuyahoga County's election board.

So a member of the conservative political site Rightangleblog decided to go after her son for dirt. After getting access to the Facebook page of Brunner's son John (Facebook accounts are semi-restricted), the blogger grabbed some embarrassing photos of Brunner's son (shown above with his mom and Georgia Congressman John Lewis). The photos show the son kissing a woman's clothed breast and smoking something that looks like it could be a joint. A screenshot of what the poster claims is Brunner's profile page lists under Favorite Quote the following: "I got my lighter. Got a blunt. I'm getting higher!"

Not all of Rightangle's readers agree with its tactics, however. As one commenter writes:

I strongly recommend deleting this entry from RAB. This is a political site, after all, not some paparazzi site where we rate Facebook entries of celebs' children. We have plenty of ammo for taking aim at Jennifer Brunner without weakening our message by taking the target off of her and putting it on her son, who, by the way is NOT a political figure. Do the right thing. Scrub this entry from the blog. We have plenty of bones to pick with Jennifer Brunner as it is.

Cuyahoga Battle Getting Ugly: Ohio Election Chief Not Giving Up Without Fight

The battle in Cuyahoga is heating up.

The last remaining member of Cuyahoga County's election board says he's prepared for a dragdown fight with Ohio's secretary of state to keep his job. Robert Bennett, head of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, told reporters, "I think you're going to be seeing that this is going to be ratcheted up from here on out."

Bennett, you'll recall, is one of four board members that Brunner called on to resign after two election board employees were sentenced recently for rigging a 2004 recount and after numerous other problems with the administration of Cuyahoga's elections were revealed. Three of the board members resigned, but Bennett has been holding out and has promised to fight Brunner to the end.

Bennett called Brunner a "hypocrite" and noted that she hired Jean Burklo as her office's field director for nine Ohio counties after Burklo had been fired in April 2005 by former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell for allegedly ordering records to be altered.

"If Brunner really cares about upholding the integrity of elections, she needs to match her actions with her rhetoric and remove this employee from her position immediately," Bennett said.

Brunner argued that Burklo was never criminally charged with any wrongdoing, unlike the two election board employees under Bennett's watch.

Yesterday, Attorney General Marc Dann got in on the fight, representing Brunner in a court hearing to discuss a restraining order Bennett filed to temporarily halt Brunner's attempt to oust him. The court denied the restraining order, and a hearing to discuss Brunner's complaint against Bennett will proceed on Monday.

While the focus should be on getting the best election administration for Ohio, partisan politics is bound to cloud this effort -- which some might say is a good argument for why states should not allow officials from political parties to serve on election boards in the first place.

ES&S Memo: Who Knew What When?

In talking with a number of people over the last week about the ES&S "smoothing filter" memo, some allegations have been raised by both sides which I'd like to address here. It might help clear up some unanswered questions such as -- who knew what and when did they know it?

If you've been following this story you'll know that the memo about the "smoothing filter" problem with ES&S machines languished unnoticed in cyberspace since last September. When the blogosphere picked up on it a few weeks ago, the Jennings camp seized it as "a smoking gun" and accused ES&S and Sarasota Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent of withholding the memo from them. Jennings' lawyers, as part of their lawsuit, had asked Dent's office for all correspondence pertaining to problems with the machines but had never received this memo. So why did Dent's office fail to hand over the memo and why did ES&S say in court that its machines had worked perfectly when it knew about an existing problem with the machines that had never been fixed?

Dent said that the memo was misfiled in her office and that she hadn't intended to withhold it from Jennings. She also said that it didn't matter that she hadn't given the memo to the Jennings camp because she says she had given them e-mail correspondence from ES&S discussing the smoothing filter problem with the machines, as well as e-mails between Dent and her employees discussing it. If Jennings' camp had read these e-mails, she said, they could have seen the same information that was in the missing memo. Here are two of those e-mails:

-----Original Message-----
From: Cihacek, Angela [from ES&S]
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 9:59 AM
To: [Numerous Florida election officials deleted here]
Cc: Bennett, Linda; Buchanan, Janet
Subject: ES&S iVotronic 12 inch screen users

After a number of inquiries from several of our iVotronic 12 inch screen users that some of your screens are exhibiting slow response times. ES&S sent out a letter on 8-15-06 concerning the issue. Attached is a voting booth instruction sign for your use. If you have any questions, please call your customer service representative, Lora Peterson, at XXX-XXX-XXXX

<>
Angela Cihacek
Marketing Coordinator
Election Systems & Software
11208 John Galt Blvd.
Omaha, NE 68137
amcihacek@XXX.com
XXX-XXX-XXXX
XXX-XXX-XXXX Ext. XXXX

NOTICE: All mail sent to and from the office of the Supervisor of Elections is subject to the public record laws of Florida.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dent, Kathy
Sent: Thursday, August 24, 2006 10:21 AM
To: IT Department; Crete, Karen; Goodell, Tom; Bain, Barbara; Fowler, Cathy; Dingess, Traci; Powell, Terrina; Walker, Bobby
Subject: FW: ES&S iVotronic 12 inch screen users

As you know, 12" screens may have slower response times. I think that has happened in at least one of our machines. I need input from you all about whether we place this poster in each booth at this stage of the game. Since poll worker training is almost over, we will not be able to go back and talk about this with them.

I do know that ES&S is trying to getting a recertification to change this before November.

Give it some thought and let me know.

Thanks.
KD

When I spoke with Alec Yasinsac last week about the ES&S memo (Yasinsac was head of the team of computer scientists from Florida State University and elsewhere that examined the ES&S source code and produced a report saying the smoothing filter issue was not the cause of the undervotes) he asked me the same question -- why was the Jennings camp making such a big deal about the memo now when they knew about the information in the memo back in December? In fact, Yasinsac said that Dan Wallach, the Rice University computer scientist who is the Jennings technical expert, did have a copy of the memo in December and yet didn't bring up the issue of the smoothing filter problem during court hearings. Why accuse ES&S of not discussing the "smoothing filter" issue if Wallach didn't bring it up either? "Why don't you ask Dan Wallach that?" Yasinsac said.

So I did. Wallach says he didn't have a copy of the memo. He says he might have seen it pass by on a voting list back in August when the Florida activist first made it public. But a lot of things crossed that voting list that he glanced at quickly. And back in August the Jennings/Buchanan election hadn't occurred yet. The first time the memo came to his notice, he says, was when everyone else in the blogosphere became aware of it a couple of weeks ago.

As for the e-mails that discussed the memo, Jennings spokesman David Kochman tells me that Jennings' lawyers didn't receive the e-mails from Dent until January, long after the December hearing and only after several attempts to get them.

"There is no way we could have talked about the (smoothing filter) issue in court since we did not receive the Kathy Dent emails until January 25 -- more than a month after the court hearing and just a few weeks before the memo story broke in the press," Kochman wrote me in an e-mail. "It's also important to note that we had made several earlier public records requests and interrogatories that should have produced both the memo and the email. . . . Bottom line is, the state, the county, and ES&S all withheld the memo despite several efforts to obtain such information."

So who did have the ES&S memo besides ES&S, Kathy Dent and other election supervisors in the state who used the ES&S iVotronic machines? Computer scientist Alec Yasinsac says he and his FSU team had it when they examined the ES&S source code for the state and wrote their report.

"My experts, my folks that came here, had the letter and knew about the (smoothing filter) problem," Yasinsac told me. "We looked in the source code to try and find the way it worked. We found the way it worked, we addressed (the issue) extensively at two different places with technical findings in the report. We produced a conclusion that specifically said we believed (the smoothing filter) didn’t cause the problem (of undervotes), and that’s our answer."

The report, by the way, doesn't say that the researchers possessed the ES&S memo or that they learned about the smoothing filter problem from ES&S. It only mentions that the researchers were aware of rumors on the internet that the smoothing filter might have been the cause of the high undervote rate in the Jennings/Buchanan race.

The allegation has been floated on Internet newsgroups that the iVotronic touch screen filter could have caused the undervote. No explanation has been offered how the effect would confine itself to a single race on a single screen. The touch screen filter does not act differently on different screens. (p. 48 of the report)

How Not to Lose Your Marbles in an Election Audit

Princeton University computer scientist Andrew Appel offers a clearcut look at why a 1 percent audit of voting machines after an election isn't sufficient to catch fraudulent machines in all elections. His explanation involves marbles and beads.

In this pic, Appel explains, the 6,300 beads in the two tubes represent all of the precincts in an election for the New Jersey governor's race. Of those beads, 10 percent are blue, representing fraudulent voting machines. If you take out a 1 percent sample of the machines to audit (represented by the 63 beads on the side), Appel says the sampling is "extremely likely" to catch at least one fraudulent machine in the mix (the sample here caught 7 fraudulent machines).

But that won't hold true for the audit of a smaller election. Here, 100 marbles represent all the precincts voting in an election for city mayor. Here again the blue marbles (10 percent of the total) represent fraudulent voting machines used in the election. But take a 1 percent sample of these machines (represented by one marble) and Appel shows that it's unlikely the sample will include any fraudulent machines. In sum, he says, while a 1 percent audit "works well for statewide races, it does not suffice for local or legislative-district elections." (Photos: Alex Halderman)

Read Appel's report about what constitutes an effective audit here.