Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Humboldt At The Tipping Point: Who Dares Defend Diebold?
Here in Humboldt County, CA a local story of national interest broke last Thursday on the websites of the Eureka Times-Standard (archive) and North Coast Journal. The next morning I wrote a letter to the editor that appeared in today's T-S (archive). I'll let this serve as a summary then provide links to much of what's been published already and add some further reasons for optimism at the bottom.Any defenders?
So here's a summary of links from the past several days, then I've got a few more observations.
Letters to the editor
Posted: 12/10/2008 01:15:38 AM PST
First I'd like to congratulate Kevin Collins, Tom Pinto, Mitch Trachtenberg, Parke Bostrom and all the volunteers of the Election Transparency Project.
Their work revealed a discrepancy caused by Humboldt's electronic voting equipment last month.
Over the last few years I've made many different arguments for getting rid of the Diebold (now Premier) equipment used to count votes in Humboldt County. Somehow it wasn't enough that they “count” in secret, can be easily manipulated without detection, and report results impossible in a legitimate election.
Somehow local decision makers weren't deterred from doing business with a company that admitted to illegally installing uncertified software here and elsewhere; that was sued in class action suits filed by company shareholders; and whose then -- CEO said he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes” to Bush in 2004.
Now we learn that Humboldt has finally experienced what is euphemistically called a “glitch.” In reality it was a bug in Diebold's central tabulation program, GEMS. This caused the results of November's election, already certified as accurate by Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich, to be proven inaccurate.
Worse still, Diebold knew about the bug at least four years ago and never fixed it. Other counties were made aware of the problem and told how to work around it. Crnich says she never knew, and I believe her.
This raises many questions, most important among them: Who dares defend the continued use of these machines and the county's relationship with Diebold/Premier?
Dave Berman
Eureka
T-S, 12/5/08: Software glitch yields inaccurate election results (archive)
T-S, 12/7/08 Local elections office commended (archive)
T-S Editorial, 12/7/08 - A glitch that should never have been (archive)
Wired - two Kim Zetter articles from 12/8/08:
Serious Error in Diebold Voting Software Caused Lost Ballots in California County
Unique Transparency Program Uncovers Problems with Voting Software
Election Transparency Project volunteers:
Parke Bostrom - http://hum.dreamhosters.com/etp/news/20081204.html (main site)
Mitch Trachtenberg - http://www.mitchtrachtenberg.com/ourvotes.html (main site)
Tom Pinto - http://humtp.com/
John Gideon & Brad Friedman at BradBlog.com, 12/8/08 - 'Humboldt Transparency Project' Reveals Diebold, U.S. Federal E-Voting Scam
The BradBlog piece includes this link to an .mp3 of Crnich with Brad on the Peter B. Collins show on the afternoon of 12/5/08.
* * *The fact that Diebold/Premier did not take the action to recall the systems, actually puts them into a situation where they may very well have violated federal law. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 Title III Section 301(a)(5) mandates an acceptable error rate for voting systems in use in federal elections. That error rate, not counting any error caused by an action of the voter, cannot exceed 0.00001%.
Parke Bostrom's post above describes how "deck zero" became the batch of ballots that were handled properly by the elections department, and yet vanished from the final certified total. He comments further that the audit log for the Diebold GEMS central tabulation software matched the wrongly decreased total:
However, in the case of the Humboldt County vote count, the error rate was 0.31%.
We have asked both the Secretary of State of California and the EAC if they plan to take action by asking the US Attorney Office to investigate this seemingly clear violation of federal law. Neither the CA SoS, nor the EAC has yet replied to our queries on that matter.This means the audit log is not truly a "log" in the classical computer program sense, but is rather a "re-imagining" of what GEMS would like the audit log to be, based on whatever information GEMS happens to remember at the end of the vote counting process.
This demonstrates the system will cover its tracks when reporting an inaccurate result, destroying assurances of built-in memory redundancies and making a mockery of logic and accuracy testing. Not just here, everywhere. Frankly this is just another example of something we've known a long time.
Crnich herself has been very interesting through all of this. In the "Serious Error..." article above, Zetter reports:Crnich told Threat Level the issue has made her question her confidence in the voting system because, even though the company provided officials with a workaround, the problem indicated a fundamental flaw in the company's programming. She said she'd heard a lot of stories from other election officials about problems with voting machines, but never thought they applied to California.
Crnich losing confidence of course should be music to our ears. She also said a great thing in the interview with Peter B., explaining why she's been willing to work with citizen volunteers. As Humboldt County Clerk/Recorder and Registrar of Voters, Crnich is an elected official and I'm glad she acknowledged a responsibility to listen to constituents.
"I've always sort of listened to those anecdotal incidents with a jaundiced ear because California has some very stringent requirements of election systems that are in use here as well as some very strict security procedures and I didn't think those things affected us here," she said. "But this has sort of put a cloud over any confidence that I had in the Premier equipment that's been in this department since 1995."
In all, the media coverage above practically lionizes Crnich, which I think goes too far. Consider this analogy. Someone builds a fire in the middle of their bedroom and burns down the house. Would this person be praised for the wisdom of having an insurance policy? Using secret corporate vote counting computers, whether by Diebold or any other vendor, is playing with fire.
I've been unable to reach Crnich by phone in the past two days, repeatedly getting voice mail that could not accept more messages.
Also today, The North Coast Journal came out with Hank Sims' "Town Dandy" column called Deck Zero. Sims writes in reference to the known failure of the GEMS central tabulation software:The fact that Diebold/Premier let it stand for over four years, potentially undermining the first principle of American democracy, is an absolute outrage. These people should be shunned. Maybe indicted.
Throw in a little validation from the T-S editorial board...:They were loud, and they were strident in proclaiming that they didn't trust election technologies as much as they trust the ability of actual human beings to count votes.
...and it is starting to sound like we may be at a tipping point here. You might expect me to be frothing about hand-counting paper ballots right about now. You'd be wrong. Thinking as an organizer, I would hope now to establish three things that would be widely agreeable throughout the community:
The recent discovery, thanks to the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project, of a discrepancy in election results due to flawed software reveals that these activists were right to make noise, and right to complain about a company that has been less than responsible in dealing with the problem.
That said, if this is the nature of the opportunity now, I will re-offer to the community the materials I've developed to evaluate hand counting, most notably the forecast tool (spreadsheet) for estimating time, cost and labor needs for hand-counting in the precinct on election night. Back in the summer of 2007, when I first made this public, Sims noted: "Initial twiddling with the numbers suggests that it wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly -- and wouldn't you rather wait a few days and spend a little more for a trustworthy count?"
I'd like to see more consistency in Sims' election integrity advocacy. And bottom line, I hope he'll push for a thorough examination of Diebold alternatives, as I'm sure Transparency Project volunteers will have other preferences and ideas to contribute to what could become the most envied process and dialog in the country.
This is all another way of saying "what would be better" is an inclusive and engaging community dialog aimed at literally defining "better" than Diebold.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/12/humboldt-at-tipping-point-who-dares.html
Labels: Brad Friedman, Carolyn Crnich, Diebold, Eureka T-S, Hank Sims, Humboldt Transparency Project, Kevin Collins, Mitch Trachtenberg, North Coast Journal, Parke Bostrom, spreadsheet tool, Tom Pinto
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Eureka Times-Standard OpEd: Hand-counting ballots can work
As promised last night, below is the My Word opinion column I wrote, published in today's Eureka Times-Standard, though oddly not yet on the paper's website (I picked up a hard copy and found the piece on page A4, including a picture of me from at least three years ago).
UPDATE: 1/3/08 12:20pm -- The T-S website now has my column. It occurred to me over the past few hours that the headline it was given, while certainly a positive statement, doesn't really reflect what this essay is about. I've been saying hand-counting can work for years now. This piece says the T-S is abdicating its responsibility to foster community dialog about whether hand-counting is superior to Diebold opscans, even as the Voter Confidence Committee creates the very means by which the community can make objective comparisons. A more apt headline would have been: "Election Watchdogs Dog Newspaper For More Detailed Dialog on Election Conditions."
(archive)
Hand-counting ballots can work
My Word, by Dave Berman
1/3/07
Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich said hand-counting paper ballots is "not a practical solution" ("As primary fast approaches, election offices are in turmoil," 12/24/07) and she's not convinced it would be more reliable than continuing to use secret vote counting machines repeatedly discredited in actual elections and academic studies, including CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Top To Bottom Review.
It is certainly reasonable for the Times-Standard to publish the Registrar's opinion. But did the T-S ever ask her for data comparing counting methods for accuracy, cost or any other measure? The Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) has requested such information, repeatedly, and the Registrar has not only confessed to having no such information, she has failed to deliver on her promise to obtain it and make it available.
Setting the Registrar's unsubstantiated opinion aside, the bigger issue is false balance, which the T-S created by pairing the Registrar's view with superficial mention of the VCC report recommending hand-counting, noting also that we're documenting community support for the idea.
Not mentioned is the VCC hand-count forecast tool (a spreadsheet), used to create projections and plan for the requirements of hand-counting in precincts on election night. This allows the public to objectively judge whether hand-counting is indeed preferable.
In fact, this was our contribution to the federal lawsuit mentioned in the "turmoil" article, and it was previously described in the T-S on August 16.
When this becomes part of the story, an unsubstantiated opinion no longer stands in true balance, instead reflecting false balance. "He-said/she-said" can not truly balance all news articles. The community can and should discuss the relative merits of hand-counting in tangible terms, made possible by the VCC but shunned by the T-S.
Yes, shunned.
Readers should know the T-S editorial board met with VCC members on August 14. Not only was the forecast tool presented at that time, the VCC also reiterated concerns stated in our report about the Registrar's so-called "Transparency Project."
Our critique has appeared elsewhere in local media, but its absence from the "turmoil" article falsely suggested universal support for the project.
Worse still, the article cited Bev Harris as a Project supporter. In response, Harris posted a statement online saying she was misquoted and does not support the Project: "The concept of providing ballot images to the public after running them through an intermediary program developed by David Dill (or anyone else!) is absurd and misses the point entirely. What is it about these guys that they just cannot RESIST inserting "An Expert" in between "The People" and "Our Ballots"?"
To be clear, VCC objections to the Transparency Project are as follows:
Going from ridiculous to sublime, another expert was cited as a Project supporter, Harri Hursti, "who famously hacked into Diebold voting machines." Not just Diebold machines, but the exact equipment used here in Humboldt (as well as other models).
Additionally, certification is the Registrar's oath to the accuracy of the results, which should come after, not before, all checks for accuracy are completed.
The T-S might have mentioned that while bending over backwards to once again congratulate the Registrar for a decision made nearly four years ago. Forgoing touch screen machines in favor of optical scanners was a false alternative. Both types of machines have been repeatedly discredited, and both types count in secret, requiring the public's blind trust without providing any rational basis for confidence in reported results. The Registrar's devotion to casting paper ballots is hollow if counting accuracy is not verifiable.
Please visit www.VoterConfidenceCommittee.org for links to recent media coverage of election integrity issues as well as our report on local election conditions, the forecast tool, and the sign-up form that will allow us to demonstrate there are enough local voters willing to hand-count to get the job done on election night.
Opinions expressed in My Word pieces do not necessarily reflect the editorial viewpoint of the Times-Standard
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2008/01/eureka-times-standard-oped-hand.html
Labels: Bev Harris, Carolyn Crnich, Debra Bowen, Eureka Times-Standard, False Balance, hand-counting paper ballots, Harri Hursti, My Word, spreadsheet tool, Top To Bottom Review, Voter Confidence Committee
Saturday, December 22, 2007
A Missed Opportunity
Almost a month ago I wrote a post called Time To Check Your Least, in which I said I wasn't going to beat myself up for not writing enough. Since then I've posted more often than in quite some time. This reinforced the notion explained in that post that commitment to the least you can do philosophy will inherently increase what the least can amount to. I have to take this same outlook in considering yesterday's appearance on the Peter B. Collins show as a missed opportunity.
Click here for the full .mp3 archive of the show. Drag the slider of your media player to the start of the third hour and listen to Peter B. and Brad Friedman question Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich about the so-called Humboldt Transparency Project. I was not given an opportunity to respond or comment on this, but I would have only repeated the concerns I have raised previously, including in this Eureka Reporter OpEd from July 6, 2007.
In summary, the Transparency Project would allow the public to view pictures (scanned images) of all ballots cast to perform a recount in whatever way one chooses. However, a secondary computer count is promoted as the way to go, although this completely defeats the purpose of checking the official, original count done by secret computer programming; and it relies on post-certification auditing which recent history shows will have no chance at overturning an inaccurate outcome. In addition, to do this ballot image recount without a secondary computer count would be entirely unwieldy and impractical, without even the prospect of proper observation or witnessing typically associated with post election hand-counting or manual auditing.
Not getting to respond to that wasn't really the crux of my missed opportunity. After returning from a commercial break, Peter B. prompted an exchange between the Registrar and me. This is where I blew it yesterday. The Registrar questioned the assumption of six seconds to count each contest per ballot. I noted that this is a variable that can be changed by the user of the hand-count forecast tool, but I then veered off into discussing the New Hampshire origins of that data point. What I should have said is that we have been trying for months to get assumptions from the Registrar herself plugged in to the forecast tool so that the community would have the opportunity to judge the Voter Confidence Committee's (VCC) hand-counting proposal based on the Registrar's official assumptions. Immediately after the segment had ended I realized my missed opportunity and e-mailed Peter B. with one last thought...
Peter B. took a call at that point from Jim Lamport, another regular attendee of the Registrar's monthly Election Advisory Committee meetings here in Humboldt. I have no problem with Lamport's defense of the Registrar, especially since I was not attacking her. I do respectfully disagree with Lamport's assessment that computers are ideally suited for vote counting. Since my phone line into the broadcast was already cut off, I was very glad to hear Brad Friedman challenge this position. Upon concluding that call, Peter B. did me a real solid and read the e-mail I submitted, quickly summarizing that the VCC is in search of official numbers from the Registrar precisely so the public can objectively judge our proposal. This was a save, in my view, salvaging to some extent the opportunity I see as missed.
There was another aspect of the discussion I wish I had handled differently. I noted that New Hampshire counts votes by hand in 45% of its polling places and the Registrar replied that this leaves a 55% majority of polling places being counted by optical scanners. Of course this is true, and I explained it as a function of jurisdiction level choice as opposed to being a state mandate. The opportunity I missed was not asking the Registrar whether Humboldt voters have had an opportunity to make the same choice, which of course we have not.
Earlier in the day, several hours prior to the radio show, the Registrar left me a voice message in response to the two messages I had left her in the two days prior. She mentioned that she and Kelly Sanders in the Humboldt Elections Department were busy gathering up all the data the VCC requested last week in an open letter. When these numbers are provided, yesterday's missed window of opportunity will open once again.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/missed-opportunity.html
Labels: Brad Friedman, Carolyn Crnich, hand-counting paper ballots, Humboldt Transparency Project, Jim Lamport, Least you can do, Peter B. Collins, spreadsheet tool, VCC
Thursday, December 13, 2007
NY Attorney Stands Up For Hand-Counting Paper Ballots
Coming right up on tomorrow's filing deadline, NY attorney Andi Novick will be submitting a brief regarding the state's response to Department of Justice pressure to comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). New York is the last state not in compliance and the DOJ appears intent on forcing the state to purchase and implement some ridiculous electronic vote counting system or other in time for the November 2008 presidential election. The state, political parties and watchdog groups are all weighing in. Novick's brief, a proposal really, would keep NY's lever machines in place through next November, and it would allow hand-counting paper ballots for the two federal races on that ballot.
I suppose I have been peripherally aware of this situation, and began to learn a little about it before speaking in Commack, NY at the end of August. Here are several articles about the situation:
As I noted at the end of my "teamwork" post last weekend, I was recruited onto Novick's team to apply the hand-count forecast tool (.xls) I built for the Voter Confidence Committee to forecast cost, time and labor needs for hand-counting in 15 NY Counties. Over the past week the forecast tool has done some more evolving. Once Novick files I will make available the workbook showing the NY forecasts. In the meantime, the version that has been publicly available (.xls) for months has been updated to reflect these innovations:All innovations developed in cooperation with Andy Novick, Rady Ananda, Nancy Tobi, Sally Castleman and Pokey Anderson.
As part of Novick's brief, I had to draft a declaration stating my qualifications and specific contributions. I look forward to sharing that soon too. Papers due tomorrow are for the case scheduled to be heard on December 20.
The biggest fundamental difference in this new version is the distillation to the exact number of hours *required* for a four-person team to be able to hand-count an average poll site in the county. The benefit of this is showing very small numbers, in some cases, and also instances where a second team might be considered.
This still computes the number of people needed countywide, but now makes a more accurate computation of their collective pay. Before it was based on an arbitrary user input suggesting how late counting would be allowed to occur. Now the pay is completely prorated to the actual amount of counting time required.
Two new guide calculations have also been added for the sake of creating checks and balances, really a reality check for other numbers in the equation. The first new one is registered voters per poll site, computed by dividing the total number of registered voters by the number of poll sites. The other new guide is the poll site-level voter turnout, derived by dividing the average number of ballots cast per site by the average number of registered voters per site.
Removed from this version: time *allowed* for counting (both hours and seconds), teams required per poll site, and people required per poll site. Instead of quantifying people on a per poll site basis, it is now framed around the exact amount of time counting will require.
There was a wonderful confluence of events today as the VCC released this media advisory making public a letter we delivered yesterday to Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich. We have waited a long time for her to provide her own forecast assumptions to be plugged into the forecast spreadsheet tool. By renewing our request publicly, we are hoping the media will become determined to know these numbers as well. This is how the community will be able to judge the viability of our proposal for hand-counting all ballots in Humboldt elections. The Registrar has already agreed to return to the Peter B. Collins show a week from tomorrow, December 21, presumably between 5-6pm when Brad Friedman is a regular guest.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/ny-attorney-stands-up-for-hand-counting.html
Labels: Andi Novick, Brad Friedman, Carolyn Crnich, DOJ, hand-counting paper ballots, HAVA, Nancy Tobi, Peter B. Collins, Pokey Anderson, Rady Ananda, Sally Castleman, spreadsheet tool
Saturday, December 01, 2007
An Excellent Day in the Humboldt Nation
Friday may have been the most fun day I've had since the last time Peter B. Collins broadcast live from Humboldt. This time the location was the Eureka Theater. The Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) had a table in the lobby featuring the items in our hand-count campaign tool kit, all of which is linked on our home page.
Kalaki, Ruth Hoke, Dave Berman
hand-count spreadsheet tool
on Peter's computer
During the third hour we talked about why the VCC is organizing on behalf of hand-counted paper ballots and how we are going about it. The VCC website now has a sign-up form which relieves some of the pressure for us to be doing outdoor tabling in adverse weather, so we were happy to get that message out, as well as soliciting the help of a webmaster.
We also talked about the hand-count cost estimator (.xls) and the diagram comparing the sequences for electronic vote counting and hand counting, both resources developed not only for our own local purpose but with sharing nationally in mind.
In the last few minutes of the show, Humboldt Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich called in, prompting Peter to forgo some comments from the live audience. In particular, it was really too bad that he didn't have time for Verbena who wanted to talk about Redwood Curtain CopWatch and the epidemic of citizens dying near police officers. Peter invited Carolyn to return to the show for a longer discussion and she said she would in the near future. I encouraged Peter to also make time in the near future to come back to Verbena.
There was a great energy all afternoon, and you can hear the crowd cheering at the start and end of the segments of the show. I mentioned on the air, for the first time, that we have already collected roughly 200 names of willing hand counters. In the next few days I'll get an actual count.
I also tried out a new talking point. We have roughly 80,000 registered voters in Humboldt County. We will need roughly 800 hand-counters to get the job done on election night. That means only 1% of registered voters are needed to participate. All of a sudden it sounds like a much lower bar to clear.
After the show I went to the Redwood Peace and Justice Center (RPJC) annual dinner at the Arcata Community Center. I attended last year at the Bayside Grange and I eagerly looked forward to the warm and wonderful vibes I encountered tonight. Peter even made the scene. We were seated together and discussed, among other things, the Project-Based Format, the radio talk show idea I've written about periodically for the past five years, most recently this past week. I told him I didn't expect to be able to pursue this fully until at least the spring. He said, when I'm ready, let him know and "I will conspire with you." Very encouraging.
Big thanks to Tom Pinto of our local 911 Truth group for treating me as his guest tonight. I also got to talk to several of my friends from Vets For Peace Chapter 56.
I didn't get any really great pix at the dinner, but here is a decent one of two men I admire. Peter is on the right, talking with Dave Meserve, board member of the RPJC and former Arcata City Councilmember. I'll always be grateful to Dave for casting one of the three votes in favor of the Council adopting the Voter Confidence Resolution.
'Twas an excellent day in the Humboldt Nation.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/12/excellent-day-in-humboldt-nation.html
Labels: Aryay Kalaki, Brad Friedman, Carolyn Crnich, Dave Meserve, Peter B. Collins, Redwood Curtain Cop Watch, Redwood Peace and Justice Center, spreadsheet tool, Verbena, Voter Confidence Committee
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Time to Check Your Least
This past week I was approached by several people wanting my involvement in different election integrity projects. I agreed to do a conference call discussing a campaign calling for the recall of electronic voting machines. I endured a seemingly endless e-mail thread about pooling resources specific to each machine vendor. More locally, a writer who once did a story on me wrote to ask how she should proceed with a community member who wants to tell of election irregularities.
With Paul Lehto's eternal encouragement, I submit it is a necessary challenge for each of us to recur to principles. I have cultivated many phrases and unique arguments throughout hundreds of essays in the past five years or so. These would be my principles to which I shall now recur.
I have often written of "the least you can do." From Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution:This motivational meme is great for identifying next steps.
There is sometimes solace in this notion. Life, the unstoppable passage of time, the responsibilities of reality, all these things contribute to my less frequent blog posts. Lament, sometimes, for not writing more could easily be the sort of thing I might beat myself up about. But not so anymore. This "least" idea is so ingrained in my world view that I quickly think of the VCC report that came out earlier this year, all the media work that followed, the creation and distribution of the hand-count calculator tool - and the responses it generated from people who adapted it and put it to work in their communities.
I remember five years ago working with the premise that traditional American activist techniques were futile and we should be reinventing activism. Back then I had published nothing and never even spoken on the record at a public event. But I had an e-mail list, because sending important news articles to friends was the least I could do. Then some readers suggested, and helped me build and launch, the GuvWurld News Archive, a permanent public repository of information the government would probably prefer history not record. It too had become the least I could do.
As I began blogging and organizing, my least repeatedly increased. I recognized this as part of the phenomenon itself - it is inherent, that successive small incremental achievements will necessarily increase or enhance what then becomes the least you can do.
So as I review my activities of this year, I realize I have achieved far beyond what once may have been my least. I conclude that I have at least done my least this year, if not more. Given that, the writing I wish was getting done doesn't hang over my head. It sometimes seems so basic that it ought to fit under the umbrella of least, but in reality much more is required of me to keep up my previous blogging pace than is needed to do the other things I've done this year.
Now back to these projects that stream through my inbox. I don't have the time or resources to do justice to the ones from this week, and this is pretty common. Now, it occurs to me that the Project-Based Format, an experimental talk radio show format that I have previously described, would be ideal for maximizing support of each of these projects and others.
The idea of the show is that the host acts like a project coordinator hooking up with citizen organizations and individuals to advance the work being done for change. It is the same advocacy journalism concept that has driven WDNC and the GuvWurld Blog before it. The success of the radio show will not be determined by ratings or money or audience size, but instead it will be judged solely on its ability to facilitate change. To be in the position, as the host of the show, would elevate one's least to an awesome level.
Since I first wrote about the Project-Based Format, I have always put it out there hoping any radio host already on the air would try out the approach. So far no takers. It may just be that I have to make it work for me to be the host if the format is ever going to be tested. But for all these years now it has been far beyond my least, a goal I haven't really fancied to pursue, though I've had a few encouraging conversations about it with people in radio.
This has been a year of great personal change for me, which I know will continue and hopefully accelerate in the new year. If all goes according to plan, by spring I will dramatically reorient my relationship with time, money, and freedom. Of course my head is full of lots of big ideas, not just the radio show. These are beacons in the distance, glowing signs showing the way the baby steps of least should take me.
I write about the Project-Based Format today because these recent projects genuinely reminded me of an idea I'd only temporarily set aside. But I also write because I so often have the urge to write, and this is just a fortunate moment when I let it happen. Most importantly, though, I write because it is a powerfully positive thing to assert intentions, goals to be manifested. Even this simple thing may be your least. I encourage to you check and find out. Discover the least you can do, and commit to doing at least that much.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/11/time-to-check-your-least.html
Labels: Least you can do, Paul Lehto, Project-Based Format, Reinventing Activism, Report on Election Conditions, spreadsheet tool, VCC
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Election Advisory Committee Gets Latest Humboldt Election News
Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich convened the monthly meeting of the citizens' Election Advisory Committee Tuesday night at the County Courthouse. First on the agenda was the Election Department's two personnel vacancies. The application period closed Friday for both the Election Specialist, a front office position, and the Election Manager, the central scrutinizer of the department. The Registrar said there are four applicants for the first job and she did not know about the second. The County's Personnel Department will screen the candidates and can refer up to six per position for further consideration. I won't make public the name but there is a high profile candidate we will be lucky to get. Stay tuned.
Also at Tuesday's meeting, the Registrar revealed she received a "Dear John" letter in response to her application for the Pew grant money. The Registrar was hoping to use the funds to buy high-speed off-the-shelf scanners for the so-called Transparency Project (a scanned copy of every ballot would become a .tif file made available to the public on CD). It now seems the Transparency Project will be on the back burner, given the hiring situation, four elections between this November and next, and evolving procedures to keep up with Secretary of State Bowen's conditions of use. Do not expect the Registrar to completely let it go.
The Registrar discussed Secretary Bowen's proposals for new post-election audit standards. The general idea is a variable sample where a close race would have more votes audited than a contest with an apparently bigger margin of victory. The Registrar said the legal requirements are flexible and she couldn't give any specific numbers that would match an audit percentage with a victory margin. When I asked, she refused to commit to seeking a qualified statistical adviser.
Reading from her Palm Pilot or Blackberry or Whatever Brand(TM) hand-held mini super computer, the Registrar quoted Secretary Bowen's remarks on a conference call reported by BradBlog. The topic was Sleepovers and the Secretary said they are not legal. Responding to questions, the Registrar said optical scanners could not be delivered on the morning of election day using Brinks trucks or the Postal service. I don't recall any serious explanation of why not. The Registrar often brings her sense of humor to these meetings. Was she for real when she said no more single or living alone people could be pollworkers? This refers to satisfying the 2-person rule, which requires the secret vote counting machines to be in the presence of no less than two election officials at any time. How far backwards is she willing to bend just to be able to send these ridiculous machines home with pollworkers prior to Election Day?
I've been traveling a lot in the past few weeks and so I haven't posted since that one night in NY just prior to my sister's wedding. The next day I phoned in as a guest on KHUM's Humboldt Review (.mp3). The Eureka Reporter correction I requested may have run in the print edition but when I checked the website in the middle of last week the article still had it wrong. To their credit, when I then e-mailed Glenn Franco Simmons about this he forwarded my message to Diane Batley who quickly informed me the text has been corrected. "We should never be required to have faith in election results."
The Voter Confidence Committee continues its community outreach on behalf of hand-counted paper ballots. The local ACLU has invited me to speak at their meeting on Thursday, the second consecutive month I've done so. Positions recently taken by the national ACLU afford the local chapter some leeway to lend support to the VCC campaign. With so much new info, the VCC is working on a new update section for the Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County, CA. Also see revisions made to the spreadsheet tool used for estimating labor, time and cost needs for an all hand-counted election.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/09/election-advisory-committee-gets-latest.html
Labels: ACLU, audit standards, Carolyn Crnich, Debra Bowen, Election Advisory Committee, Eureka Reporter, KHUM, Report on Election Conditions, sleepovers, spreadsheet tool, Transparency Project, VCC
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Humboldt Hand-Count Campaign Maintains Media Presence
Two Tuesdays ago, on the 21st, the Election Advisory Committee had its monthly meeting. The EAC now meets the third Tuesday of the month at 6:30pm at the Eureka Courthouse. The Eureka Reporter ran an article about the meeting the next day, half of which describes the presentation (.mp3) I gave about the the Voter Confidence Committee report, hand-count campaign, and spreadsheet tool (.xls).
Supervisors John Woolley and Jimmy Smith, as well as Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich, all attended the 5.5 minute presentation and participated in the roughly 30 minute discussion that followed. I'm pleased with the way this went. The Registrar stated that she had played with the spreadsheet tool and it is "interesting." Supervisor Woolley said he wouldn't be able to support any kind of change without doing the kind of cost and time analysis that the VCC's spreadsheet tool permits. He said he likes the approach we are taking to developing and presenting this info. We agreed Aryay Kalaki is a fine mentor for community organizing. And I politely emphasized at least three times that we are awaiting the Registrar's best estimates to create the most official labor, cost, and time forecasts.
Last Friday the Eureka Times-Standard (archive) published a column with quotes only from Secretary of State Debra Bowen in response to a study she commissioned on voter confidence. I don't put any stock in these figures showing 44% of respondents have a "great deal of confidence that their votes are being accurately counted." 52% reported "some" or "only a little" confidence. Whatever. Like usual, the un-bylined T-S story strays far and wide from the crux of the matter, which is creating a basis for voter confidence, a reason for people to believe the results.
The Eureka Reporter did not mirror the T-S coverage of Bowen's survey. Last Friday, I did receive a call from Cerena Johnson, the new elections beat writer who had written the EAC article. We spent at least 15 minutes talking about some of the fundamental paradigms of the voter confidence movement. She seemed to understand and I figured there would be an article the next day. Those quotes did not appear until today, in an article that had a gross typo of omission. This is the end of the article:Some say this could create an opportunity to take transparency a step further, with an entirely hand-counted system.
As soon as I saw that on the Reporter website this morning I called Editor Glenn Franco Simmons. I reached his voice mail and left a polite request for a correction to be printed. A little later Ms. Johnson called my cell phone. We spoke for maybe seven minutes or so, continuing to break down and spell out why our current vote counting methods are secretive, how this is the opposite of the basic democratic concept of checks and balances, and that faith and trust are not relevant. She assured me a correction would appear. Also look out for a tight letter to the editor from Ruth Hoke.
Dave Berman, a founding member of the Voter Confidence Committee, said the committee is trying to work with the county by recommending areas for improvement.
Berman said the criteria for a sound voting system should be transparent, secure and verifiably accurate, also distinguishing casting from counting.
"We should be required to have faith in election results," [EMPHASIS ADDED] he said, adding that results should be tangible. "What we have is a secret process."
The committee is in the process of forecasting a workable format by which votes could be hand-counted, factoring in numbers of volunteers, costs and time.
Ultimately, Berman said, the committee would like to be in a position to bring the county information it doesn't have, as well as the support of the community, to advance the idea that there is "not just one way to do elections in Humboldt County."
Humboldt County will hold its next election on Nov. 6.
Now going back to last Friday once again, in the evening I went down to the Ferndale radio studios of KSLG. Plastic Jackson is the evening DJ and he had recently reached out to me wondering how he could plug in to the work of the VCC. First I sent him a public service announcement, which I mentioned last week. He then let me invite myself in for an interview which you can hear in part one and part two (both .mp3 approx. 5.5 min). I hope to return to PJ's "Happy Endings" show, 6pm to midnight, weekdays on KSLG.com.
On Monday I received a phone call from John Matthews, morning host on KSLG, but also producer of the KHUM public affairs show The Humboldt Review, hosted by Arcata Eye editor Kevin Hoover. This week's show (Thursday 6pm PT) will be about election integrity. I will be a guest via phone.
I so prefer to do interviews in the studio, however, I am currently in NY looking forward to my sister's wedding this weekend. More immediately, tomorrow morning at 10:15, my grandfather and I are going to lead a group discussion with his senior's group at the Suffolk Y Jewish Community Center in Commack. This is going to be fun.
* * *
For anyone who missed Dan Rather's expose about voting machines, it is a MUST SEE available here through BradBlog.com.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/08/humboldt-hand-count-campaign-maintains.html
Labels: Carolyn Crnich, Cerena Johnson, Debra Bowen, Election Advisory Committee, Eureka Reporter, Eureka T-S, Jimmy Smith, John Woolley, Report on Election Conditions, spreadsheet tool, VCC
Sunday, August 12, 2007
How To Forecast Labor, Cost and Time For Hand-Counting Paper Ballots
At the risk of being immodest, what I'm about to describe has the potential to greatly advance the hand-counted paper ballot (HCPB) movement in every community. Credit where it is due, let me first say that last November the Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) began working on the recently published Report On Election Conditions in Humboldt County, California. In the course of researching this report, I came in contact with Nancy Tobi of Democracy For New Hampshire (DNH). She is an amazing resource and an effective advocate for HCPB.
Shortly after the VCC report was first posted, DNH made a presentation that Nancy called to my attention. When I viewed it, something clicked for me. There on the pages was a step by step--SIMPLE--explanation for how many people would be needed to count ballots in a given amount of time. I copied the formula and started working with numbers representative of Humboldt. It was Ernie Stegeman who suggested making it dynamic in a spreadsheet. From there it only took me about 15 minutes.
Why is this so important?
Anybody who has ever tried to lobby local government for change knows the elected officials always want to know the cost, and in this case the other obvious questions are how long will it take to count, and how many people will be needed? As with most issues, there is a talking point meme that says hand counting will take too long or we can't get enough people. Now we have a concrete way to challenge these assumptions.
Hank Sims of The Journal got a sneak peek at the spreadsheet tool (.xls) and then published in his August 2 "Town Dandy" column:Berman's suggestion: Ditch the machines and go to a pure hand-count of all votes cast. Initial twiddling with the numbers suggests that it wouldn't be all that time-consuming or costly -- and wouldn't you rather wait a few days and spend a little more for a trustworthy count?
On Thursday I submitted a letter to the editor of The Journal but I won't post that here just yet. I actually want to point out something I wish I had included in that letter. Even as Sims is saying basically, this is more feasible than you think, he also extends the faulty premise "wait a few days and spend a little more." Says who?
As presented by DNH, the first component of the formula is based on the amount of time allotted for counting. Different counties may allow counting until different hours of the night (11pm or midnight or whenever). Whatever this variable is set to, the needed number of counters adjusts accordingly. If the time allowed was three hours, the formula would calculate more counters needed than if five hours were allowed. The point is that there basically is no argument any more that it would take too long because the finish time could be stipulated. There is still the need to prove that enough People will step up and do the counting.
The VCC is currently expanding community outreach efforts, tabling at various times and places to interact with the public. We're promoting our report with a flier and asking people to sign up if they are willing to hand-count paper ballots on election night. I had a few interesting hours at the Eureka Co-Op on Saturday afternoon. Ernie and I collected about 30 names.
We don't have a target number yet for how many names we'd like. This is a function of wanting Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich to provide her official assumptions for the spreadsheet variables. With these numbers we would then have an official forecast that would add tangible elements to our fledgling campaign. I will report follow-ups in our attempt to get her to provide those numbers. We've been waiting a long time.
Now I know there are HCPB supporters all over the country. I hope some of these people will get their hands on the spreadsheet tool (.xls). It may be one of the best, most direct ways we have to take back our elections.
Permalink:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-to-forecast-labor-cost-and-time-for.html
Labels: Carolyn Crnich, Democracy For New Hampshire, Ernie Stegeman, hcpb, Nancy Tobi, Report on Election Conditions, spreadsheet tool, Voter Confidence Committee
