ACORN

[Undertoad]

I'm wrong and so is tw. Hell, most of us are wrong.

I'm wrong because I thought the feds could not rule how the states run elections. They have done. That's what HAVA is. It's the Help America Vote Act of 2002. It passed Congress and was signed by Bush.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act

Currently all electronic voting machines are HAVA-compliant, including those of Diebold/Premier Election Systems.

In fact, one of the criticisms of HAVA is that it causes election officials to switch to the electronic machines because their current punch card systems were not HAVA-compliant. By Election 2006, a third of the nation's precincts had switched to HAVA-compliant -- mostly electronic machines. Can't find numbers on how many more have switched since then.

Originally Posted by The Commission on Federal Election Reform's 2005 report

"The Help America Vote Act of 2002 authorized up to $650 million in federal funds to replace antiquated voting machines throughout the country. States are using these funds and their own resources to upgrade voting technology, generally to replace punch card and lever voting machines with new optical scan and electronic voting systems...

TW read an IEEE Spectrum article in 2004 that said not all HAVA money was spent by NIST -- and assumed wrongly, for four years apparently, that it was "killed" or that the administration strategically de-funded it. That is not the case. They were just late. The standards were finished in Dec. 2005. Here is the PDF of it.

[richlevy]

I was going to follow up with how you were probably right pre-HAVA. Even though HAVA did not require electronic machines with no paper trail, that is what many counties ended up buying.

Remember, in 2002 the Republicans were in complete control except for overturning a filibuster. After the 2000 election, the electorate pretty much demanded reform, but the Republicans demanded a 'registration fraud' component. Hence the use of Social Security verification, which can be a problem. I still have a Social Security card that states that the number is only to be used for Social Security.

Each state still can pretty much go their own way in deciding how the popular vote affects its electoral college votes. Ex-felons in Florida must have their voting rights reinstated but not in other states. Some states force the elector to adhere to the popular vote and others allow them to switch. Most states are winner-take-all, but two are not. Here is a nice overview.

Remember that presidential candidates must also register individually in each state.

It does seem odd that there are 50 different rules for voting for the same national office, and that a person could be eligible in one state and not in another.

BTW, this would be fun

What happens if no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral votes? If no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most electoral votes. Each State delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.

Imagine an Obama-Palin adminstration.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Currently all electronic voting machines are HAVA-compliant, including those of Diebold/Premier Election Systems.

Voting machines where I vote don't use PC. They use a superior system where the paper ballot is read by a scanner, asks about any anomalies, provides the option of making corrections, then stores both the electronic count and paper ballot in a secure box.

Therefore I have never seen a Diebold system. But if you have one, well some facts from UT's well appreciated discovery of the HAVA standards.

2.2.9 Ballot Counter
For all voting systems, each device that tabulates ballots shall provide a counter that:
a. Can be set to zero before any ballots are submitted for tally;
b. Records the number of ballots cast during a particular test cycle or election;
c. Increases the count only by the input of a ballot;
d. Prevents or disables the resetting of the counter by any person other than authorized persons at authorized points; and
e. Is visible to designated election officials.

Previously defined is the only counter that achieves these requirements with reliability. Any memory card, that involves writing rather than incrementing an internal counter, would violate those standards. However the lawyer can argue that the memory card cannot be changed without the PC. Therefore the memory card is secure. That is bogus; but acceptable where spin can replace honest technical facts.

Of course, that memory card (actually cards per next quote) must be located so as to be in constant view by poll officials.

3.2.6.2.3 Memory Stability
Error-free retention may be achieved by the use of redundant memory elements, provided that the capability for conflict resolution or correction among elements is included.

HAVA also demands redundant memory. Whereas a lawyer could claim redundancy by two memory chips on the same memory card, again, honest technical facts demand two separate memory cards. Therefore both must always be visually obvious to election officials.

Moving on:

3.2.2.4 Electrical Supply
c. All systems shall also be capable of operating for a period of at least 2 hours on backup power, such that no voting data is lost or corrupted, nor normal operations interrupted. When backup power is exhausted the system shall retain the contents of all memories intact.

That means no plug-in UPS such as from APC. If electricity goes out, voting must continue uninterrupted for two hours. That means a serious generator system. Club houses and churches (were voting is often conducted) do not have sufficiently reliable power that PCs would require. Therefore power hungry PC based voting systems require external power provided by a serious backup power system - something that would typically be as large as the entire voting booth. It's not just a simple PC. The electrical requirements make a PC based voting system significantly more expensive. Just another requirement that can be 'forgotten' since most would not know this.

Is your PC based voting station HAVA compliant? Two obvious requirements that any informed voter could quickly determine.

The most serious argument against PC based voting systems is the auditing function. Whereas the above defined voting system can audit in cases of hardware failure, a PC based system cannot. PC voting machines says that auditing is by printing the final results on a printer. It assumes voting occurs perfectly through the day. Any anomaly or exception - there is no record to identify a problem or confirm the vote count. If the voting machine works fine all day, then the only paper confirmation is a total printout at the end of the day. Hardly reliable. Considered sufficient by these HAVA standards and yet the most common criticism I have read from multiple sources.

The HAVA standard also says that any anomaly need only be recorded visually. IOW that Blue Screen of Death seen when defective hardware crashes Windows. Even that failure need not be recorded; only viewed on a video screen. Useful auditing of suspect security breaches would not be possible with acceptable PC based voting machines. Proper security demands all those 'problem' messages be recorded. As best I can tell, HAVA does not require it.

Little respect for any PC based voting system because - first and foremost - the memory card all but begs to be hacked - has no hardware security. Where I vote, the system can be completely audited from scratch due to its simplicity and alternative audit trail (called paper).