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Monday, November 20, 2023

Voter Verifiable Ballots Will Help Minimize Election Errors

Over the weekend, I received a comment from a reader suggesting that "newer technology HAS already disrupted and changed final totals all across this nation." He suggests that if a system fails more than once, it should be replaced. "Accurate elections are too important," he concludes. I'll agree that newer technology, combined with mail-in ballots, have undermined public confidence in election integrity. But under this reader's logic, we'd have to get rid of democracy entirely to fix this problem. That is because ALL voting systems fail, and more than once. This can be established through our own history of voting. The only difference between the problems with elections now and those under other systems is that we are acutely aware of these problems on election day. That is because of voter verifiable ballots, under which voters can see for themselves if their intentions are being honored. Thus, when a problem is discovered on election day, voters are the first to know.

Voting in America was originally "viva vocce." If you were white, male and over 21, you'd go to the courthouse on election day, swear an oath and publicly announce your choices in front of everyone who was in there, actively campaigning. Obviously, the potential for fraud and abuse was great. You could easily sell your vote. But turnouts were great and alcohol flowed freely. 

To prevent that, elections officials decided to replace voice voting with secret paper ballots. At its advent, you could just scrawl your candidate's name on any piece of paper. Then political parties got wise, and began preparing their own ballots (called tickets) that you could throw in the box. This led to accusations of voter fraud and ballot box stuffing, something that I'm told (anecdotally) did happen here as ballot boxes made their way to the courthouse from the four corners of the county. 

In an effort to prevent this kind of fraud. the first green monster - a heavy lever voting machine - was invented and widely used in America throughout the 20th century. Like an old Crown Victoria, something about those hulking machines inspired confidence. Draped in a privacy curtain, you could select individual levers or straight party and then cast your ballot by pulling the main lever to open the curtain. You'd hear a solid thud and would be confident that your vote was cast. 

But did your vote actually count? Behind that secure curtain, there were problems

"For one, these machines had thousands of moving parts. They required careful maintenance and were difficult to test. When the last machines were produced in 1982, fixing and replacing worn parts became nearly impossible. Lever voting machines were also not tamperproof: they were vulnerable to the very technicians who were supposed to maintain them. The machines were also inaccessible to voters with physical limitations: the labels with candidates’ names were hard to see, and pulling the levers required strength and mobility."

As the teeth on gears began to wear, the result would be miscounts rarely caught by elections officials. Everyone had confidence in and loved these behemoths, but they were increasing undercounts in elections. 

Some jurisdictions began replacing the lever machines with punch cards, but that was a nightmare. We witnessed that during the 2020 Presidential, when election workers in Florida had to decide whether a dimpled or hanging chad should count.   

Northampton County fought to keep the lever machines in place as long as it could, but eventually had to replace them. 

In its first foray into life beyond the lever, NorCo chose what may very well have been the worst voting machine in the US. - the AVS WinVote. This system was so bad that music on your cell phone could cause it to go haywire. To make matters worse, the version NorCo used in an election had never been certified. Oops!

touchscreen that looked like a lever machine
Northampton County then opted for 300 touch screen voting machines that at least looked like the old lever machines. - the Advantage D-10. This heavy (200 pounds) touchscreen computer was user friendly, even to those who are differently abled. People really liked using it, and I'm unaware of any problems with it other than screen sensitivity. But it had one major drawback. Just like its green cousin, there was no way for a voter to determine if his touchscreen choices were actually registered. 

In response to concerns that there be a paper trail, Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act, which required the states, over time, to have a paper record of each vote cast, and one that the voter himself could verify. 

That's how Northampton County ended up with the Express Vote XL, which combines the convenience of a touch screen with a summary card on which you can review your choices. If you dislike them, you can spoil your ballot and choose again before casting your vote. Some people liked paper ballots that could be scanned, but I liked the redundancy of having my vote on both a flash drive and paper ballot, and with the understanding that the paper ballot rules. 

In 2019 and again this year, there have been problems with this system. The machine itself has been fine. It has been certified and recertified. It survived challenges in both federal and state court. There have been problems with programming, pre-election testing and having paper ballot backups at the polls. This has understandably created a crisis of confidence. But these are problems that would never have been noticed but for the voter verifiable ballot. 

Like you, I'm unhappy to see just one voter deprived of that right, which certainly happened. But thanks to the paper trail, voters and elections officials were able to detect a problem and make attempts to fix it. 

The days of blissful ignorance are over.  Our confidence in the green lever machines was misplaced. The paper trails we see on elections day can make them more sloppy and chaotic. But they will be more accurate. 

20 comments:

  1. Enough with the mumble jumble. who is going to be responsible that this never happens again. I hope not the idiot in charge now. Rumors around the CH are that someone is going to be terminated?

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  2. Yeah the AVS Winvote sucked and had to be ditched. Guess who picked that dud...Charlie! But he still felt free to strongarm the XL through AND drop the ball not once but twice on the pre-election tests of the machines. His head should roll for this.

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  3. Bernie, you’ve made a really brilliant, and needed, contribution with this piece. Citizens are apprehensive about current voting integrity in our nation. This needs to change, and your historical review can go a long way in educating each of us. Good job!

    I suggest the Morning Call and others consider a return to such reasoned and LEVEL journalism.

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  4. No I.D. = No integrity. Why is this so difficult to grasp? I have voted for my deceased father for 17 years. Ive voted for mom since 2018. They also keep calling dad for jury duty. You'd think after three jury attempts, his name would be purged. Nobody is paying attention because the home team controls the process and consistently wins. Fact. Vote a lot. Everyone's doing it. The rules demand it if you want to win. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. Play to win.

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  5. Election DAY. Not weeks. Mail in, ballot harvesting......
    Military overseas, yes, mail in.....
    Why no ID? Abolish ID then!!!
    Most important thing we can do is vote and anyone realistically can do it.

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  6. If there is no number or identifier attached to the paper to coincide with the voter, it can not be authenticated. Paper ballots and hand counting at the district is most secure. counters from both parties working together, could create real confidence in the process. Most polling place have 2000 or less voters, not a big deal to count. You would count and so would many others.

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  7. I agree with most of your synopsis. Let’s not forget this 2023 council has 2019 leftover members. Reviewing the streaming of Nov.16th council meeting was painful. This current council has ignored the fact that some are current owners of the
    2019 ESS contract problem, and many of them voted to approve the contract.. Those members and administrators that were were part of the 2019 gang forgot to note that during the ESS courting and marketing to Dertinger, Cozze, and McClure, many red flags were exposed about concerns like screen sensitivity, and flipping..all denied by Carbullido who was, to the best of his knowledge, unaware of such things under question.
    So, this 2023 council, with 2019 leftover member yes votes on the ESS contract, should be reminded that they should have done their homework on what occurred in 2019 as the governing body of this county.This 2023 council, with 2019 leftover members, will be accountable for holding ESS Carbullido and the administration responsible for election trust in 2024, and one of the most important elections in U.S. history.

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  8. RAY NEMETH AT 7:15, "If there is no number or identifier attached to the paper to coincide with the voter, it can not be authenticated. "

    You do not live or vote in NorCo and are apparently unaware how the Express Vote XL works. Before a voter casts his ballot, he previews a paper copy that reflects the choices he made on the touchscreen. If it fails to accord with his wishes, he can spoil his ballot and do it over so long as he has not cast his ballot. So every voter can authenticate his vote before his ballot is cast. In fact, that is how the problem is discovered. And the only person who should be able to authenticate anything concerning that ballot is the voter himself. Voting is by secret ballot. That is now part of every state constitution. It is there to prevent party hacks from "authenticating" how someone voted.

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  9. "Yeah the AVS Winvote sucked and had to be ditched. Guess who picked that dud...Charlie! " I believe Dertinger was involved in the selection of that machine but as a member of Council. I'll agree that the Winvote was a terrible voting machine. I opposed it from the onset and was especially troubled when I noticed that we actually ran an election without having the latest software update certified. It was a truly bad machine. The Express Vote XL is completely different. Yes, Charles liked that machine. So did I. So did the majority of those who examined it. It was endorsed by the Elections Comm'n. It was endorsed by county Council 8-1 despite a big push for the optical scanning system used in Lehigh. Before taking its vote, County Council took its time. There was a review of four or five competing systems in Lehigh County. County Council even waited to see how the XL worked in Delaware before voting to purchase. It was a carefully considered decision, and contrary to what one reader expressed, Council did its homework. I can be more critical of County Council than anyone, but this is not one of those times.

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  10. "No I.D. = No integrity. Why is this so difficult to grasp? I have voted for my deceased father for 17 years. Ive voted for mom since 2018. They also keep calling dad for jury duty. You'd think after three jury attempts, his name would be purged. Nobody is paying attention because the home team controls the process and consistently wins."

    First, I don't believe you that you're voting for your parents every year. But if you are doing that, you're breaking the law. Investigations by law enforcement and both parties have turned up very, very few examples of this kind of voter impersonation -- but there are cases of it, and if you're doing it, hopefully you'll go to jail.

    Second, as far as Voter ID goes, some form of voter ID is required to be shown by the voter the first time they vote at their polling place. On subsequent elections, the voter ID doesn't need to be shown. This has been the case since in Pennsylvania since 2014, meaning these were the rules in place when Donald Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 and when Joe Biden won in 2020. You show your ID the first time, and the idea is that after that, you should be familiar to your local voting officials and don't need to keep providing it. As far as "the home team" controlling the process, there are Democratic and Republican election officials in every polling place in the county, they put their party hats aside to work the polls, and they're some of the most honest and diligent folks you'll find anywhere. If you want to sign up to be a poll observer for one of the parties/campaigns, to make sure that the election officials in each polling place are doing their job honestly and correctly, you can do that, too.

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  11. "No I.D. = No integrity. Why is this so difficult to grasp? I have voted for my deceased father for 17 years. Ive voted for mom since 2018." If you are voting for a deceased parent or a mother without her permission, you are committing voter fraud and should be prosecuted. The reason your deceased father has not been removed from the voting base is bc you keep casting his vote, which is illegal. Most people are law abiding, and what happens when a voter dies is someone from the family will alert the elections office or his name will be removed after he fails to vote in two consecutive federal elections. He is given one more chance to vote, and if he fails, his name is purged from the voting rolls.

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  12. "Election DAY. Not weeks. Mail in, ballot harvesting......
    Military overseas, yes, mail in.....
    Why no ID? Abolish ID then!!!
    Most important thing we can do is vote and anyone realistically can do it."


    Having conceded that the most important thing we can do is vote, I find it difficult to understand why you would oppose measures designed to facilitate suffrage. Early voting and MIBs enable people to vote without standing in long lines for hours on election day. Military ballots enable the voices of our active duty soldiers, who are defending the interests of this nation with their lives, to be heard.

    Does ballot harvesting happen? Yes, but it is on a small scale. I am aware of some instances in which it has happened, but a widespread scheme would be caught quickly.

    By ballot harvesting, I refer to a group or politico who collects a large number of absentee ballots from voters, presumably those who support his or their cause, and drops them off or mails them. I do not think a husband who drops off a ballot for his wife and himself, is a criminal.

    Voter ID? I have no issue with it, and think Democrats should stop their objections to this simple requirement. It initially made sense to oppose it, but it is very easy to get ID these days and even most homeless people have some form of ID.

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  13. Ds oppose voter ID because they're still certain that minorities are too dumb or too lazy to obtain ID. This is nonsense, of course. Institutional racism is like that: nonsense.

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  14. The are SEVERAL steps along the way to a vote count being as true and accurate possible. Perfect (100%) accuracy is not really possible. It’s a system in which one step depends upon all other steps to be truthful and accurate. Even if just one step is flawed, the final vote total will possibly not be true.

    From proper voter registration, clean voter roll books, efficient check-in monitoring, correct computer data input and coding, working mechanicals and supplies, post election counting and cross-reference, paid and volunteer training and talent, back-up contingencies, etc. etc. all must be reliable. Even more components in play than listed here!

    Should local human errors happen again with our system, we should expect people to be fired. I kinda like that kind of pressure on those we trust to serve on our behalf. Especially in this case where humans failed us two times before.

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  15. "Does ballot harvesting happen? Yes, but it is on a small scale."

    How do you know? You were opposed to any examination of 2020 and labeled the comments you would permit, as conspiracy nonsense. The winning team has no interest in investigating elections they've won. Your 2020 comments reflected this over and over. Now, disputing elections is insurrection, except when Democrats like McClure piss all over fair elections. But his team won and that's most important. McClure and Dirtinger are insurrectionists for blaming the machines and the last girl and everyone but themselves. What did they know and when did they know it? Was money exchanged? These are valid concerns that an independent investigation must determine. We know the lection was an abortion. Let's start from there and sort it out.

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  16. If this happened in a private business, people would have been gone. Time for someone to be held accountable.

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  17. Two quotes from the original post:

    “That is because ALL voting systems fail, and more than once.”

    “But thanks to the paper trail, voters and election officials were able to detect a problem and make attempts to fix it”
    —————————————————————-
    I agree with those statements 100%, which is why it perplexes me that in a prior article you advocated that NorCo adopt Lehigh County’s system.

    In Lehigh County you fill in the ovals on a paper ballot, and then run it through a scanner to have your votes recorded. But instead of seeing how the machine is reading your choices, you only get a “Thanks for Voting” message. There is no paper receipt for voters.

    For all Lehigh County voters know, the machines could have done the exact same thing that NorCo’s did. Or they could have failed to record a single vote for any office on the ballot. Or it could have simply shredded your paper ballot when it was fed into the machine.

    Okay, that last one’s a joke (I hope) but you get the point. Voters in Lehigh County have no idea how the machine is reading their ballots or if there is a problem.

    As you noted in the two quotes above, no machine is fool-proof, and without a paper trail (coupled with at least seeing on-screen how their votes are being counted) voters have no way of knowing if the machines are functioning properly.

    Yes, two major problems in four years with the machines in NorCo is absolutely unacceptable. But so is the current system in Lehigh County. I’d argue that fixing the process in Lehigh County is a much more urgent issue for election integrity and voter confidence.

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  18. 12:14, You should not get a receipt showing how you voted. If you did, you'd be able to sell your vote to the highest bidder. In LC, you are able to verify your ballot bc you are the person filling it out. I'd agree that you should be able to see your ballot once you feed it into the scanner to verify that it will record the vote the way you intend, and if not, you should be able to spoil your ballot. If LC system does not give you that option, I'd seek one that does once the useful life of that optical scanning system is at an end.

    I am uncertain how long the XL is intended to last. When it reaches the end of its useful life, I am suggesting that we review all options available. I am unhappy with the way ES&S has performed its contract with the county. I am happy that these errors were noticed and flagged by voters. This is something that would not have happened but for the voter verifiable ballot.

    My concern with optical scanning is privacy. I do not believe voters get enough when they stand in line at a scanner. I may be mistaken as I have never visited a LC poll.

    I'd agree that once you feed your ballot into the scanner, you should habe a preview so that you know your vote is being counted the way you intend.

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  19. However, does the bar code added to the vote image truthfully record how the individual actually did vote? A computer can be coded to assign some different result every 10th time a scan is done, regardless what the voter can see. Anything is possible, and how would we know?

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  20. Complaints about the XL based on the bar code are absurd.

    "A barcode is a pattern code—a group of lines or blocks and space that represent specific characters—that computers can read automatically to identify information in a database. Because barcodes offer a reliable way to accurately read information, the technology eliminates the possibility of many kinds of human error (e.g., poorly marked ballots) and provide a layer of tamper resistance, as they are virtually unmodifiable, especially when employing a check digit or signature. Displayed along with human-readable text, summary cards with barcodes are fully auditable.

    "Whether votes are cast on a hand-marked paper ballot or a machine-marked paper ballot, when paper ballots are tabulated by machines, barcodes are used to count votes.

    "Barcodes are a trusted, tested, universal technology used in a variety of ways across many
    different industries to improve safety, accuracy, speed and efficiency. DMVs, pharmacies, hospitals, banks and food manufacturers all use barcodes. They are reliable and have been used commercially for more than 50 years. They are used extensively in the medical field where errors could be catastrophic."

    Case 2:16-cv-06287-PD Document 123-5 Filed 12/12/19 Page 12 of 22

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You own views are appreciated, especially if they differ from mine. But remember, commenting is a privilege, not a right. I will delete personal attacks or off-topic remarks at my discretion. Comments that play into the tribalism that has consumed this nation will be declined. So will comments alleging voter fraud unless backed up by concrete evidence. If you attack someone personally, I expect you to identify yourself. I will delete criticisms of my comment policy, vulgarities, cut-and-paste jobs from other sources and any suggestion of violence towards anyone. I will also delete sweeping generalizations about mainstream parties or ideologies, i.e. identity politics. My decisions on these matters are made on a case by case basis, and may be affected by my mood that day, my access to the blog at the time the comment was made or other information that isn’t readily apparent.