12/11/18
Dear Georgia Officials,
The State’s voting system commission needs to promptly hear from Georgia’s civic leaders that a new voting system must meet the best practice standard of hand-marked paper ballots counted by optical scanners, with results verified through hand count sample audits.
Tomorrow, at 10 am December 12, the
SAFE Commission
is scheduled to conduct what may be their last meeting, long before fundamental issues regarding requirements for a new voting system have been addressed. A near-term RFP process is being planned that will apparently approve Governor-Elect Brian Kemp’s and Secretary-Elect Brad Raffensperger’s stated choice for a new electronic voting system, despite the fact that the system will offer no better election security than the current failed DRE touchscreen system, and will require a change in the law to permit barcodes to count as votes.
Read on and try a test below to determine whether you could verify your voted ballot on the recommended electronic machines.
Responsible leaders must speak up to avoid another vendor-influenced mistake of the same type made in the purchase of the electronic voting system in 2002. Our members ask that lawmakers, local county election boards, county commissioners, election supervisors, political parties and citizen activists weigh in on requirements on behalf of their constituents before RFP’s are drafted and issued.
The system being promoted is one in which the voter cannot read or know the vote they are casting because the vote is encoded in a barcode by the touchscreen machine.
It is simply wrong to require a voter to cast a vote that he or she cannot read.
Key problems with the new preferred electronic voting system include the following. All are backed up by considerable research, documentation and facts:
-The acknowledged favored system is a touchscreen Ballot Marking Device, piloted in Conyers last year that produces barcodes that become the
official vote cast
. Voters cannot read or verify barcode ballots. See this
video
of how the touchscreen system operates, producing a ballot summary card.
--The “paper trail” claimed by the vendor and proponents in this system is a ballot summary card that looks like
this.
The barcode is the official record of the vote. The human readable text is the purported representation of the barcode. Note that the ballot summary card only includes voter selections and requires the voter to remember the full ballot content, including the substance of the ballot questions, in order to “verify” their ballot card. If ballot cards are not verified by the voters, they cannot be properly used as records for post-election audits.
--Computer scientists note that barcodes create well-known vulnerabilities to hacking.
--Few voters can remember the full ballot content and how they voted on each contest in order to verify a ballot card created by the touchscreen Ballot Marking Device. See Princeton Professor Andrew Appel’s paper and referenced
research
.
(Disclosure-- Coalition for Good Governance participated in the research effort.) And try it yourself below. See GA Tech Professor Wenke Lee's
memo
to his fellow SAFE Commission members, recommending hand-marked paper ballots, and pointing out the cybersecurity dangers of electronic ballot marking devices.
--The touchscreen electronic Ballot Marking Devices under consideration by the SAFE Commission do not meet basic mandatory federal HAVA (Help American Vote Act) requirements for an auditable paper trail. Although a “paper trail” is present, it is not an
auditable
paper trail, as research demonstrates that it cannot be relied on for post-election audits.
--Electronic Ballot Marking Devices will cost at least $130 million in acquisition costs, 4 times more than the best practice “gold standard” of hand-marked paper ballots counted on optical scanners followed by post-election audits. BMD’s are also far more expensive to maintain after the acquisition is made.
In short, the preferred solution by Governor-elect Kemp and Secretary-elect Raffensperger, likely to be recommended by the commission Wednesday,
puts a computer between the voter and his or her ballot
—never a good idea. Putting unnecessary technology between the voter and the voter's ballot invites error and undetectable manipulation. Georgia is not improving its unreliable voting system by choosing vulnerable electronic ballot marking devices.
Decide for yourself whether the majority of voters can or will “verify” their summary ballot card votes before casting them in the scanner. Assume that
this is the ballot content
,
and that this
printed summary card from the touchscreen shows these voter choices.
Can you quickly determine whether contests are missing or inaccurate without looking back at the sample ballot? Research shows that voters do not take the time to try to verify that the machine printed all the contests, or printed them correctly.
But even if voters attempt to verify the card, can voters realistically remember all the ballot content to determine whether the card reflects all their choices correctly? Would voters note an error, such as we have made in the mock up card? Research and common sense tells us that voters cannot accurately verify their voted ballots. They certainly should not be expected to do so. This places far too much burden on the voters. Voters should simply be able to read the vote they are casting without taking on the responsibility of testing the machine!
Those who claim that hand-marked ballots are a “throw back” to old ways simply have not canvassed the leading voting system computer experts across the nation who agree that hand marked paper ballots are the right solution.
Feel free to contact me if you would like further information.
Thank you for your service to Georgia voters.
Marilyn Marks
Executive Director
Coalition for Good Governance
(704) 292 9802
