2004 Ballot Recount: Observer Report
- December 13, 2004:
Report by Green Party Observer
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"Please do not think that Lake County results are typical of Ohio... . Employees are nominated by the Democratic and Republican parties so they are trusted by each. The 5th board member is Ken Blackwell, so of course the current director is Republican." "The machines will allow you to change your vote for an office, but it will only accept the last chosen option for an office meaning overvoting is not possible." — Green Party Observer |
December 13, 2004:
Report by Green Party Observer
Please do not think that Lake County results are typical of Ohio. Lake is one of a few counties that has Direct Recording Electronic machines in all polling stations. Only absentee/provisional ballots are by punchcard and even then, they are attached to styrofoam backing which eliminates most of the "chad" or misalignment problems typical of punchcards. Lake was actually the first county in the state to report its preliminary totals to the state on election night.
Lake also has a bipartisan board and employees. Employees are nominated by the Democratic and Republican parties so they are trusted by each. The 5th board member is Ken Blackwell, so of course the current director is Republican.
The machines are run with WinEds 2.6 software. They were purchased in 1999 and no updates have been allowed since that time. The software is operated in a similar manner to Excel or any spreadsheet program. You assign cells to particular candidates (i.e. cell B16 will tally all Bush votes, B19 Kerry Votes, B25 Cobb votes, B28 Budnarik and B30 for Write in candidates (not tabulated — they must be hand counted). The cell that is actually activated does not "know" which candidate it is for but passes on the vote to a grand total cell that is labeled for a particular candidate. While this grand total cell is labeled with the candidates name, it is not told the party affiliation.
Cell assignments are rotated at each precinct so that a particular candidate does not always get the top spot. The machines will allow you to change your vote for an office, but it will only accept the last chosen option for an office meaning overvoting is not possible.
Results are stored in 3 separate manners. There is a hard drive on the machine, results are printed and posted at the polling place the night of the election, and the results are loaded into removable cartridges that are taken to tabulation centers at the end of the night and then returned to the main BOE where they are subject to the two-key lock system. Defeating these safeguards at any of these points would require the cooperation of all the poll workers in attendance (who are from both parties).
The voting machines are kept locked with a two key system. It requires both the Director (Republican) and Assistant Director (Democrat) to access these keys. Can these machines be tampered with and programmed to steal votes? Not in a likely manner if all safeguards are followed although I couldn't say it is impossible.
The machine code is compiled so even an expert couldn't read it to check for flaws. If someone were to defeat the 24 hour security where the machines are stored and had access to the keys, they could load malicious software into the machines. I'm not saying it happened, only that there is at least a small chance of it occurring.
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"Jan Clair, Director then allowed me to choose enough machines to represent 3% of the vote... . The totals matched the reported totals perfectly." "One thing I found disturbing was that many of the write-in candidate votes were disregarded. If the listed candidate was not a registered write-in candidate, that vote is disqualified. There were many write-ins for both Bush and Kerry which could not be counted because they were not write-in candidates." — Green Party Observer |
We spent about 3 hours talking about the safeguards and operating procedures of the BOE. Jan Clair, Director then allowed me to choose enough machines to represent 3% of the vote. The chosen machines actually totaled 3.5%. We then headed to the warehouse to look at the machines used in those districts. We then opened up two of the machines and had them reprint the results stored on the hard drive, and then the cassette (which was released from the two key system after I chose precincts to audit).
The printout included "images" for each voter. This is a list of cells that the voter chose. It might look like B16, C18, D1, E14 and so on. The "B" votes represented the presidential votes so we hand counted those. This took about a half hour to complete. The totals matched the reported totals perfectly. One thing I found disturbing was that many of the write-in candidate votes were disregarded. If the listed candidate was not a registered write-in candidate, that vote is disqualified. There were many write-ins for both Bush and Kerry which could not be counted because they were not write-in candidates.
The wording on the law must be changed to allow write in votes for any qualified candidate, not just those who are qualified write-in candidates. Clear voter intention is being disregarded over a technicality.