(OH) 10/05 - VIDEO: $21,642,717.80 vo...

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Author Message   BBV Admin Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2723 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 5 (A keeper?) Posted on Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - 12:27 pm:    Citizen Norm Robbins shows the slipshod paperwork provided by Cuyahoga County, Ohio in its "financial analysis" of a Diebold purchase of nearly $22 million. Is this how you want your tax dollars handled? Video: http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/NormRobbins.mpg (mpg file, 11,403 KB) Transcript of video: Cuyahoga County Public Hearing - Oct 17, 2005 Dr. Norman Robbins asks questions about the budget: DR. ROBBINS: I'm going to go on, though, with financial issues and make three points. The first is that UNTIL about a week ago the entire analysis that was available to members of the public the financial analysis on this choice between optical scan and DREs could be put on one page, here it is, sent to us on Feb. 28. Other people requested it, got the same analysis. This was the basis, apparently, for three times that the board each time decided in favor of DREs. This is entirely inadequate, this is a very complicated matter [laughter from the citizens at the absurdity] I can't understand how that can be the case. Could I ask Mr. Vu, when did you complete that full financial analysis that you sent to us about a week ago, when was that done? [clip] MODERATOR: The fiscal officer is going to respond, thank you. MS. DURKIN: The document with the full detail of the cost for the optical scan was completed last week with the full detail. MR. ROBBINS: So prior to that, am I correct that this statement which was put on one page, it's from you on February 28, was the only data to either the board or to the public? MS. DURKIN: That was the only data that was available to the public. The rest of the information that was available to the Board was unofficial information, mostly given by word of mouth that we gathered from other counties using optical scanning.   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 3616 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 3 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, February 9, 2006 - 8:25 am:    Dr. Robbins' full testimony (courtesy of Ohio Vigilance) Begins on page 37 of this official transcript Cuyahoga County Public Hearing - Oct 17, 2005 Dr. Norman Robbins asks questions about the budget: DR. ROBBINS: My name is Norman Robbins, I live at [redacted], and I'm here on behalf of the Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition and I'm going to confine my remarks to financial issues in terms of this decision we're talking about today. I do think it's very interesting that if the decision has not been made, then the entire discussion this morning about an issue that certainly has pros and cons was entirely on one side of the issue. We heard nothing from anybody in favor of optical scan, I don't call that a balanced discussion at all. Now, I would like to go on, though, with financial issues and make three points. The first is that UNTIL about a week ago the entire analysis that was available to members of the public the financial analysis on this choice between optical scan and DREs could be put on one page, here it is, sent to us on Feb. 28. Other people requested it, got the same analysis. This was the basis, apparently, for three times that the board each time decided in favor of DREs. This is entirely inadequate, this is a very complicated matter [laughter from the citizens at the absurdity] I can't understand how that can be the case. Now a week ago, after we went and complained to the county commissioners, then we got their extensive financial data, which I'm glad to have and thank theBoard for, but either that was never made available to the public before or it didn't exist, I don't know which, but we certainly asked for it. So I'm saying that the decision-making, as far as the public knows, was done on an inadequate financial basis. Secondly, with the new data that has been supplied to us by the Board, and by the way, which has been a very last minute business, it's very hard to go through all of this detail in less than a week, there are still some very strong red flags. First of all, there are questionable financial projections that are there. On this original one pager, the cost of outfitting a warehouse was listed as identical whether we went with DREs or with optical scan, but the fact is that the number of machines required for a DRE system is twice the number as for an optical scan system. So one would think that the space required would be twice as large and that, therefore, the 750,000 would be cut in half for optical scan. There's no discussion of this. Same for warehouse leasing later on in the budget, it should be less for optical scan. That is not addressed. Cost of ballots -- I'm going to have to go very quickly, my testimony gives a lot more detail. Cost of ballots we're using 45 cents. Other places that use optical scan are as low as 18 cents per ballot. Why are we told it's so high? Personnel costs are in fact said to be lower with DREs than with punch cards, yet you have over 6,000 very sensitive pieces of equipment requiring mainenance, delivery, everything else. I don't understand how the personnel costs could be lower, especially when other places have found that personnel costs are significantly higher. Indeed, in Florida, where they did a study of 32 counties that switched from punch card either to optical scan or to DRE, they found that the total costs of the Board of Elections for all things -- so it's not just for elections but the total cost for going to DREs -- went up an average of 57 percent, not down but up. Whereas those counties that went from punch cards to optical scan increased their costs only 17 percent and none of this clearly includes cost of living allowances. Something is going on very strange. How could Cuyahoga say they're going down 10 percent when we have these other figures? Indeed, in the largets three counties in Florida, it was higher than a 70 percent increase. Also, if we compare to the Miami-Dade, which is in my testimony, and did a complete financial analysis, they had the experience of having gone to DREs from punch card, they show this increase, they are now considering optical scan because they have calculated it would be 3 million dollars a year less than DREs, where our county is saying it's going to be almost a million dollars more. There's a big discrepancy. We need an independent analysis of this data. This has been very much an advocacy procedure from start to finish. Thank you. THE MODERATOR: Some of the panel would like to respond. Mr. Vu, did you want to go first? MR VU: There's a couple of things relative to a comparison between Miami-Dade County. We also looked at Miami-Dade County and looked at Cuyahoga County. There is a couple things that one needs to look at when you're doing a cost analysis and trying to compare that to Miami-Dade County and Cuyahoga County. The very first thing is what is within statute. Ohio laws are very different from Florida laws, period. Things like rotation of the ballot that exists in Ohio does not exist in Florida. Those are considerations that one needs to take into account when conducting an election. The other item is actually the Secretary of State contract, what is negotiated within the Secretary of State's contract versus what was originally neotiated with Miami-Dade County and what is the first cost of that. When we looked at it, we looked at it and considered those two items. Also, there were other items we looked at in comparing it, too, and we looked at why optical scan was larger or more costly than in a DRE environment in Cuyahoga County. All of those things were taken into consideration. The third item, as far as the timeframe goes relative to the actual document, there's two items that I need to answer regarding that. Number one, we had to address the legal nature of the documents to determine whether or not specific items in there could be actually more public items, public information items, because we're still in negotiation with Diebold. The second item relative to that document was the Secretary of State's contract as a whole in that he negotiated things like a five-year plan, he also negotiated specific things that potentially were not considered within the Miami-Dade cost analysis. The other item is Miami-Dade County's analysis is different than the Cuyahoga County in the fact that they use an entirely different system than we do. As far as things like batteries goes, whereas the cost of batteries for Miami-Dade County climbs, ours is not as great, and so those ar some of the reasons why. As far as the analysis of the actual optical scan ballot costs, Ohio Law says that we have to use a vendor within Ohio to go to printing. That's a state law. The other item regarding this, how do we do our analysis, the company is in Ohio doing optical scan, and they said the average was 45 cents a ballot. Again, I'm going to reiterate this, if you look at Franklin County's ballot -- I should have asked Mr. Damschroder to mail that to me -- it's on the largest sized optical scan ballot, printed on both sides, and it's on two pages, it costs over a dollar a page for each voter. So we are getting these from the facts of what was submitted to us in our analysis from other counties. MR. ROBBINS: Could I ask Mr. Vu, when did you complete that full financial analysis that you sent to us about a week ago, when was that done? MODERATOR: The fiscal officer is going to respond, thank you. MS. DURKIN: The document with the full detail of the cost for the optical scan was completed last week with the full detail. MR. ROBBINS: So prior to that, am I correct that this statement which was put on one page, it's from you on February 28, was the only data to either the board or to the public? MS. DURKIN: That was the only data that was available to the public. The rest of the information that was available to the Board was unofficial information, mostly given by word of mouth that we gathered from other counties using optical scanning. MR. VU: If I could respond, partly also the time frame that everyone needs to consider on the cost analysis is that we didn't know everthing that was contracted through the Secretary of State and all the various parts we needed to take into consideration, and we needed to take into consideration, and we needed to compile that and that was one of the implementations we, at the Board of Elections, had to understand all the various components. MR ROBBINS: If I could say one more thing, the difference, a large part of the difference in cost for DREs over optical scan in Florida was personnel costs, extra people coming on, extra time, etcetera, if you look at their data, and I think those personnel costs are very expected from a system with more complexity, of greater set-up, and in fact, we just heard today that you're still exploring it, what to do about security on the systems, and frankly, I applaud that, but I also say that that could be a very, very substantial personnel cost, the whole line of security from the very beinning all the way to testing, transporting, etcetera. So your figures aren't even now inclusive of what could be some very substantial costs. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Robbins.   anwar adi Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Anwar Post Number: 53 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 2:49 pm:    It's up. I included the transcript. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1797532839468740230 peace 2 u, -anwar   Catherine Ansbro Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Catherine_a Post Number: 1730 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Saturday, February 11, 2006 - 2:58 pm:    Well done. It's a big help having the text.

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