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From the Mailbag
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mailbag
Post Number: 186
Registered: 10-2005
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 2:54 pm: | 
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Subject: Got a new kind of notice from my elections official
CALIFORNIA: I've never gotten this attached letter before where my county is asking me if I want to vote my mail. I'm wary of voter fraud more than ever. What do you think?
Submitted via e-mail by H.W., Santa Clara County CA |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 6762
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 4 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 2:56 pm: |
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Hi, H.W.,
This notice is in response to the increased muscle that California Secretary of State Debra Bowen is applying to voting safeguards.
Don't do it -- vote by mail, that is. And frankly, I don't understand your registrar of voters' rationale.
Mail-in voting has fewer checks and balances than voting at the polling place. BBV recommends ignoring this advice and going to the polls to vote on optical scan machines.
By the way, there is no reason for long lines. This county was using Sequoia touch-screens (DREs), which require far more time at the machine to vote. With an optical scan machine, you vote at a table or booth, and AFTER filling in your ballot, place it in the optical scan machine. It takes less than 5 seconds -- much like putting your subway pass into the ticket machine, it sucks your ballot it and does whatever it is programmed to do. Long lines are really not likely.
With absentee voting, the ballots are also counted by machine but there are more breaks in the chain of custody and fewer procedural checks and balances. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1434
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 3:17 pm: |
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Bev,
You're right! What ABSOLUTE BS! The ONLY place there could be a line is if a bus or van of disabled voters arrived at a precinct and held up the DRE for a long time.
One of the BEST things about ANY paper-based system, especially a hand-filled-in one, is that it makes lines caused by VOTING virtually disappear. Of course, if the line is caused by slow signing-in of voters, then there is no net effect.
In opscan systems, a voter COULD just go off to a private spot and fill in the sucker at their leisure. It is ONLY the few seconds at the scanner that COULD be a MOMENTARY bottleneck.
I think Jesse Durazo might be getting dizzy from spinning so much. And THAT comes from someone who used to hold a similar job in another state.
I hate to say it so bluntly to a former colleague, but Jesse, you've taken leave of your senses. Stop scaring the voters in an effort to lobby against your Secretary's doing her job as she sees it and is empowered to do it. All that is apart from my personal views on Secretary Bowen's policies. They ARE indisputably her calls to make, and the county registrars need to largely get over themselves and do their damned jobs. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 6764
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 3:54 pm: |
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Just received this from S.S. via e-mail, and he's right! Another check and balance that is disabled with absentee voting: Exit polls. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1503
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 5:01 am: |
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No bottlenecks, unless they don't provide enough tables/booths/privacy curtains. Always a wrinkle...... |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1437
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 5:32 am: |
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I was referring to several voters arriving simultaneously at the scanner. Hence "momentary". |
John Washburn
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Johnwashburn
Post Number: 316
Registered: 02-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 3 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 10:31 am: |
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Here is Wisconsin every polling location is optical scan or hand counted and has one DRE or other "disability" device.
The Town of Greenville, in Outagamie County has the most optical ballots scanned by a single op scan in the state for November 2, 2004; 4528 ballots scanned in 14 hours (7:00 am to 8:00 pm)(source: http://elections.state.wi.us/docview.asp?docid=1407&locid=47. Scanners can handle the volume in California.
It is the other lines that cause the delays.
There are 4 lines in a polling place here.
1) The line for same-day registrants presenting ID and proof of residency. (This is a long line up to 100).
2) The line to check-in for registered voters already on the poll lists (This line is long. One to several hundred in many locations)
3) Line of voters with blank ballot in hand waiting for a privacy booth to open up (moderate 2-4 dozen at most)
4) Line of voters with voted ballots in hand waiting for access to the precinct scanner (Short. I have never seen more than 10)
(Message edited by johnwashburn on October 03, 2007) |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1440
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2007 - 4:29 pm: |
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BINGO, John!
I had MASSIVE lines in my biggest precincts in 2004, and we used Danaher 1242's. There were no feet under the curtains. As you stated (we don't HAVE same-day registration) the line was for checking in, your second item. While hundreds waited, the machines stood empty. The precinct workers were too slow finding people in the pollbooks. It is alphabetical, but that seemed to stress the capabilities of some. |
William Madden
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Willjam
Post Number: 2
Registered: 03-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, October 4, 2007 - 8:49 am: |
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Question
There is no polling place in my precint, so I always receive an absentee ballot. Can I take that to a polling location to be scanned? |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1446
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 7:25 am: |
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William,
That depends on the laws in your state. I would contact your county (or whatever level of local gov't runs elections there) and ask them if you can hand-deliver your ballot for scanning, and whether you can actually watch it happen.
I honestly can't tell you. It's all local. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1510
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 12:39 pm: |
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quote:In opscan systems, a voter COULD just go off to a private spot and fill in the sucker at their leisure. It is ONLY the few seconds at the scanner that COULD be a MOMENTARY bottleneck.
Can you leave the polling place with a ballot? And even if you can't, if you don't have privacy screening everywhere that you let someone fill out a ballot, there can be a guy next to them making sure that they fill out their ballot "correctly". |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1451
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 2 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 2:11 pm: |
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Brant,
In states where I have some experience, the privacy screening is provided, but as far as I know, using it is not mandatory. The choice is the voter's. It's just like the provisional ballot. I've seen voters just go to a remote spot INSIDE THE POLLING PLACE and fill it out, and not use the privacy screen.
I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't recommend it, but people do a LOT of things I wouldn't do or recommend. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 6795
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, October 5, 2007 - 3:39 pm: |
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Here's my "where I vote" story (that is, until my polling place is removed; King County has announced that it is going to forced mail-in voting) --
You go into a large cafeteria-like room of an elementary school. They have tables and each table has many areas that are kind of screened off so you can vote in private. In order to see how someone is voting, you'd have to breathe down their neck.
When you're done filling out the ballot you take it over to the scanner and feed it in. A better solution would be to place it into a translucent plastic ballot box, kept in full public view all day. The translucence lets you see whether there are ballots in it or not, but prevents you from reading the marks on the ballots. At the end of the day, the ballots could be either hand counted in full public view with videotaping allowed, or fed one by one into the scanner (while still at the polling place) with ballot scanner positioned so that the public can videotape each ballot going into the scanner with sufficient precision to be able to examine it on video later on. (That would require making one-sided ballots, however).
Either of those scenarios would remove the "Trust Me" factor from the counting process, turning the process into something citizens can actually view and validate. It does not, of course, have any effect on other components of the election process, like the accuracy of the voter rolls.
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Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1512
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 8, 2007 - 4:56 am: |
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What's on the zip tabs of those zip ties, and why couldn't it be duplicated on more ties? |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1454
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 8, 2007 - 7:20 am: |
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Brant,
It's a serial number with many digits on it, and there are no duplicates of the same color and number. The fonts are unique, the numbers are "burnt into" the plastic, not just printed on, and the seals are "one way" which can't be removed without destroying them. Part of the Election Day process is to match the serial number to the one that the paperwork says was affixed at the previous location where the previous action took place (i.e. the seal was put on at the polling site, and was examined at the central office. This is SUPPOSED to be SOP, whether boxes or DRE's are used. |
Brant Lamb
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brantl
Post Number: 1514
Registered: 01-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 8, 2007 - 11:51 am: |
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I like a lot of that, Kurt, but I work in the electronic printing industry and 'unique font' seems like an oxymoron to me. It still seems to me like an 'inside guy' could jimmy this. Somewhat harder than much of what passes for voting security today, but still not insuperable. |
V. Kurt Bellman
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Formerelecdir
Post Number: 1459
Registered: 04-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, October 8, 2007 - 12:44 pm: |
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Brant,
Agreed. Difficult. Not impossible. |
