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| (Diebold/Premier) 9/08 - TSx: Speed r... |
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Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9711
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 - 7:38 am: | 
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(From BBV Admin): I was first alerted to this by voting rights activist Phil Lindsey during the recent Kansas election. Lindsey, from Missouri, had recently been arrested for refusing to provide non-required ID when he showed up to vote. (More: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/77453.html ) Phil called me to let me know of the 2 1/2 minute timeout in Johnson County.
I have been particularly concerned about this because of the recent DRE voting machine allocation study in Ohio (more: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/70328/77910.html ), in which researchers learned that ballot length -- always a factor in the big November general elections -- can produce explosive increases in line length, because it takes an average of 30 seconds per ballot question, and with DREs (unlike optical scan machines), voters must monopolize the machine while voting.
The huge significance of this article lies in the confluence of expected record turnouts, combined with expected high number of ballot questions, combined with a timeout feature if voters pause for 150 seconds. Forcing voters to a provisional ballot is a terrible idea: Provisional ballots, while they may (or may not) eventually count, are NOT counted when the media "calls" the race on Election night. Provisional ballots are second class ballots.
Now add this: Diebold/Premier admits that this feature is in 1,700 jurisdictions. However: I'm not sure I understand how this feature could be involved in optical scan machines, and the 1,700 figure appears to include optical scan locations.
Kansas City Star - Sept. 10, 2008
http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/14307
Johnson County computer voting machines prone to take a 'time out'
Fifty-five days before an election of a lifetime, a tiny bit of computer code is threatening to erode public confidence in Johnson County's election process.
An e-mail circulating in the suburbs is scaring some voters into thinking they must be speed readers this fall. It suggests that if you don't cast a ballot in 2½ minutes -- too bad. Your vote does not count.
Wrong.
Still, the confusion has prompted county election officials to make sure that voters are educated on Election Day.
It's caused one county commissioner to suggest that the dustup is a ploy to influence the outcome of a November ballot issue to raise taxes to fund a proposed Johnson County Education & Research Triangle.
And it has left the county's election commissioner frustrated.
"This is hardly a crisis, but it can be a distraction to voters and impact their confidence in the election process, which, of course, would then be a crisis," Election Commissioner Brian Newby wrote in a recent e-mail to county officials.
In February, Johnson County upgraded touchscreen voting machines with a new software release from Premier Election Solutions Inc., based in Allen, Texas.
Buried in the release notes was a mention of a new "time out" feature that makes the voting machine eject a voter card if there has been no activity for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
If a selection has not been made for two minutes, a screen pops up to say the ballot will "time out" in 30 seconds unless the voter touches a "continue" or "resume" button, Newby said.
Don't touch it and the voter card is ejected and the ballot is canceled.
That still doesn't mean a voter is out of luck. It just means you have to start over.
Newby said he was dismayed to see the "time out" pop up once in the April elections and about 15 times during the Aug. 5 primary. In all cases, voters were asked to complete provisional ballots and in all cases the ballots were counted, he said.
In November, Newby estimates it will take four minutes to vote.
He blames "lazy software development" for the time-out problem. The function can't be changed or turned off.
"I have notified Premier of our unhappiness," Newby wrote in an e-mail to county staff and commissioners.
Spokesman Chris Riggall said Premier, a wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold Election Systems Inc., is working to make the "time out" function optional.
But that would require federal recertification so the fix would not be ready for at least two years, he said.
The new software is being used without any other complaints from roughly 1,700 governmental entities in 34 states, Riggall said. Some customers requested the "time out" as a security feature should a voter leave the polling station before casting a ballot.
Overland Park resident Janis McMillen, a board member of the national League of Women Voters, received an e-mail telling voters to cast an advance paper ballot to avoid a Nov. 4 computer time out. She then raised the issue with Newby.
Advance balloting is good, McMillen said, but not if it is motivated by fear and ignorance.
Newby worries that the voter "time out" could be seen by some as a deliberate attempt to sway the outcome of the election. "This could be spun" for political gain, he said.
It may already have.
Commissioner John Toplikar said in a recent e-mail to his supporters that he fears the concerns raised by McMillen are a ploy to engineer "yes" votes to fund the research triangle.
In the e-mail, Toplikar described McMillen as a roommate of former county commissioner Dolores Furtado.
Furtado, Toplikar said, is a former career microbiologist and researcher with KU Medical Center "who collects a nice pension from that entity which stands to benefit greatly" from the triangle tax.
Repeated messages left for Toplikar were unanswered.
But Furtado said Tuesday that Toplikar missed the mark because she has publicly opposed the triangle tax on the grounds that funding higher education is a state responsibility.
McMillen, a longtime civics watchdog, said she and others raised the time-out question with Newby to promote the integrity of the election process.
Newby said he plans to create a "time out" handout for voters to read before casting their ballots this fall. Ballot questions will also be printed for voters to read while they wait in line, and polling places also will be stocked with additional paper ballots if residents want to vote the old-fashioned way.
"We will be prepared," Newby said. "Under no circumstance will someone be unable to vote because they aren't speed-readers." |
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 272
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 11:00 am: |
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There is a fair amount to criticize in this story, but the first in my mind is the failure to clarify that it doesn't mean voters have 2.5 minutes to vote. I assume they just have to touch the screen at least every 2 minutes. This is no different than using an ATM, which will give up and swallow your card after a while.
But if someone is carefully reading a long ballot initiative, or distracted by something else going on, or stepped out to ask a question, I wonder if the timeout warning is sufficiently "in your face". Does anyone have a picture of what this looks like? |
christine c reid
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Ctwatcher
Post Number: 960
Registered: 12-2007
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 3:12 pm: |
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I think this is likely to increase the undervotes on downticket races as well as referenda.
Maybe that's a good thing when the delay was due to rolling the dice (grin).
But the best thing is to take actions and make communications consistent with increasing the number of ballot-familiar and informed voters in your line so it goes smoothly, not to influence the outcome of the vote by adding this intimidating warning buzzer thing -- but having voters no more informed and no more able to make their selections in a timely way. |
Fiora Starchild-Wolf
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Fiorastar
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 6:23 pm: |
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So it seems as if, with all the potential for absentee ballots, early voting ballots, and provisional ballots, the thing to focus very heavily on from the beginning, and with both campaigns and state elections offices, is a "Count ALL the Votes" movement.
Instead of letting them get away with declaring the election by only counting "regular" votes, and disenfranchising anyone who votes a different, legal way, we actually end up with a large number of voters who have PAPER ballots that are verifiable.
Let's end this nonsense by doing an end run around it. |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9730
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 - 11:02 pm: |
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Hi Fiora,
You mean the media declaring the election? I think that's a good idea, and would be a healthy theme. We did something similar in 2004, urging candidates not to concede until the canvass and audits were complete.
One or two paid attention. This is a good theme for 2008 -- I understand that the stock market hates it when uncertainty lasts more than 3 hours, but tough. |
Mike LaBonte
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Mike_labonte
Post Number: 275
Registered: 12-2005
Best of Black Box?
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 - 8:58 am: |
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This business about calling elections ASAP must drive most election officials crazy. The election is not truly over for quite a few days, and doing all that work to complete the election after everyone thinks it is over is disheartening. It takes a LOT of work to process provisional ballots. In my city the work spent on 100 provisional ballots plus 500 absentee ballots is about equal to the work spent on the 12,000 to 20,000 in-person machine-counted ballots, maybe more, for the election staff (not counting poll worker time).
So the end run discussed here is the idea of having enough votes uncounted on election day to exceed the margin of victory for some races? In districts that use only paper ballots, only the provisional ballots remain uncounted at the end of the day. And I have seen reports of some counties attempting to resolve those the same night (no idea how that would be possible). Even with DRE voting I don't see why they wouldn't have the absentee ballots counted the same night, assuming they are centrally scanned.
How is it legally possible to make elections uncallable on election night? |
Bev Harris
Board Administrator
Username: Admin
Post Number: 9738
Registered: 12-2004
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, September 12, 2008 - 10:03 am: |
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It's not legally possible. It might be socially possible. |
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