We filed our lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the undervote notification in Champaign County Circuit Court.

You can read the suit here.

We’ll keep you updated with additional information and filings.

The formerly Diebold, formerly Premier, now ES&S Accu-Vote ballot tabulation system is under the gun to meet the state standards for rejecting undervotes.  (We do not use the Accu-Vote)  At the State Board of Elections meeting yesterday we learned that their first go around on testing failed, and now they are making programming changes and retesting.  The State Board of Elections will be testing the equipment on Monday and Tuesday next week in anticipation of a Wednesday morning certification.

This last minute process has those who use the Accu-Vote rightly concerned.  Installing a fix just weeks prior to the election starting is not particularly wise.

And then there’s the cost.  When I wrote about the undervote issue in June, someone suggested that the concern of the clerks might somehow be tied to a cozy relationship with election vendors.  I responded:

As to the vendors, they will be more than happy to charge various clerks for the added expense of programming the election.

As I predicted, ES&S is going to charge each election jurisdiction in the state who uses their Accu-Vote system $135 per machine.  The statewide cost will be $378,000, which counties will be paying to ES&S, not including the costs for staff and other expenses for local jurisdictions.

At at a time when the state is not paying their bills and governments at every level are broke, it is remarkable that the state would saddle the voters with this unnecessary, unconstitutional, and costly requirement.

In a good first step to enhancing the confidence of voters in their vote counting equipment, Sequoia corporation announced that they would be revealing their source code.

From their press release, I’m unclear as to what exactly this means.  There is software to run the optical scan machines, there is software to run the DRE machines,  there is software to design the ballots, and software to tabulate the votes.  I’m assuming and hoping that all will be released.

Citizens should expect a host of computer experts who will be critical of the Sequoia software.  There is no computer code that is going to please everyone.  Here are some of my thoughts about what to look for in this move.

First, when citizens hear about so called security issues, they should be asking whether these are real issues, or if they are like some of the vulnerabilities indicated in the EVEREST report in Ohio.  One of the “security” issues identified there was based on someone pulling a memory card out of a tabulator at a polling place and manipulating it in the presence of voters and election judges, reinserting it, and then hoping that no one noticed that the number of people who voted didn’t match the number of ballots counted on the tabulator.  It is important that any security flaws identified be classified by their feasibility and by their potential impact.   Security experts will be doing a disservice to the process by hyping problems that really aren’t problems.

I’m very happy that the code is being released prior to certification.  One of the concerns that I have had with vote counting equipment is that flaws in the design can’t be changed without recertification.  That is costly, and generally isn’t going to be done by a company without a glaring need.  Instead, we are forced to work around those issues and test and audit to make sure they are addressed.  By allowing the public to see the logic in the software, these issues can be resolved early.

I believe one of the results of this will be for proponents of IRV to propose code that will allow the machines to accommodate that method of voting.  This will be one of the very positive steps as I believe IRV and similar methods of voting will be gaining momentum.

I’ll be interested in the specs put out on the new Sequoia Equipment.  Hopefully there are a number of statistical items that the new equipment can track.  Despite its overall deficiencies, the core goal of the book The Democracy Index is the aggregation of data.  This new software can hopefully help.  For example, I’d like to see an actual log of the error messages on the machine (which I believe is one of the data elements Gerken is looking for in her book).

In terms of ballot design, I’d hope that the new software will help jurisdictions meet some of the design guidelines set out by the Brennan Center.  Our ballot design software works well, but could be better.
If Sequoia is actually going to listen, and it appears they will, the publication of their source code prior to certification is going to turn their new equipment into the industry leader.

We had our drawing today for the ballot order for the candidates who filed at 8am last Monday, the first day of filing.  We draw numbers out of a hat that correspond to the names of the candidates in alphabetical order.  The numbers were drawn in this order

2  1  3

Therefore, the order of candidates in this two districts is

County Board District 9 Democrats

Quisenberry
Bennett
Alix  (not part of the drawing as he filed after 8am on October 26)

County Board District 1 Republicans

Holderfield
Doenitz
Maxwell

All other candidates appear in the order of their filing.  That order will be reflected on our website.

Last week I wrote about HR 1719 and expressed my general support for the bill.  Coincidentally, we’re at a time in our process where we need to order some new registration forms for Deputy Registrars.  We are now going to add the e-mail address to our forms in anticipation of some of the changes that might come down regarding e-mail updates.  We already have a location for an e-mail address on our NVRA form.

No doubt, some number of election officials in America will be in the same position as us.  Hopefully, they will add the e-mail address to their forms as well.  At the same time, experience tells us that some will be behind the curve or limited by statutes.  This is the type of practical move forward that is limited by the lack of communication between election officials.   Gerken points to this problem in the Democracy Index.  How it gets resolved is still an open question.

I’d also like to see legislation that protects the privacy of these e-mail addresses.  Campaigns no doubt would love to get ahold of them, but they should be merely for administrative purposes.  Hopefully, that becomes part of any enabling legislation.  For our office, we do not release phone numbers or email addresses.