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Voting Machines Modernization Act

Our Position: oppose
Bill Number: S1809
Sponsor: Senator Flannagan
Legislative Session: 2006

Status

Action Needed

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Background

February 7, 2005

Memorandum Of Opposition

In Senate 1809 by Senator Flannagan

Title: An Act to amend the election law, in relation to enacting the “voting machines modernization act of 2005”

Provisions:The bill proposes to ban the use of punch cards. Further, the bill directs the New York State Board of Elections (Board) to adopt standards for voting machines. S.1809 imposes several standards that machines must meet including: all machines must produce and retain a voter verified permanent paper record; the manufacturer must agree to place in escrow with the Board, the machine’s programming and source code. The bill provides that after every election the relevant board of elections must manually audit the paper records from 3 percent of voting machines in that jurisdiction. Finally the bill proposes to establish an advisory committee to recommend standards for machines to the Board.

Statement of Opposition:

To further the conservation goals of the organization the Sierra Club – Atlantic Chapter, endorses candidates for election and works to support the election of these candidates. As such we have a strong interest in the legislation proposed to implement the Federal Help America Vote Act.

Our primary concern is that any legislation governing the use of voting machines in the state be structured to ensure reliability and security. We do not think touch screen electronic voting machines (also known as DREs) are reliable or secure. We support a system of paper ballots either counted by hand or by optical scanner, supplemented by a ballot marking device for those disabled voters who choose to use it. A ballot marking device can offer all the features which a DRE can, such as audio and sip and puff.

We oppose S.1809 because it does not explicitly allow for the use of the above mentioned voting systems. We request that S. 1809 be amended to include a list of voting systems/machines that would allowed if the bill were to become law and that paper ballots with optical scanner be included in that list. We also suggest that the advisory committee called for in S. 1809 be expanded to include two computer experts who are connected with a voter integrity group. Whether the voting system uses DREs or optical scanners, such expertise is needed on the committee.

Other amendments we suggest include: amendments to require a full manual audit when a partial audit finds discrepancies between the paper tally and the machine tally; amendments to require that the state's vote tallying system be made secure and transparent by requiring a fully documented audit trail that is publicly available at every level of the reporting system. Fully automated, electronic systems should not be sanctioned because they may be susceptible to computer hacking, programming errors or electronic noise and interference.

Background:

On Jan. 29, 2005 the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club passed a resolution in opposition to DREs (touch screen computer voting machines) and in support of paper ballots, either hand counted or optically scanned by precinct. The resolution also calls for each polling place to have a ballot marking device for disabled voters who choose to use them.

If counting of ballots is done by optical scanners, these safeguards are needed:

a. Wireless communication devices must not be used to compile results from election districts, or counties;

b. Source code used in election equipment and certification reports from independent testing authorities must be freely available for public examination;

c. Conduct surprise random recounts of a statistically meaningful number of precincts to compare optical scanner results to paper ballot totals, not just when vote counts are challenged.

Even a voter verified paper ballot attached to a DRE cannot assure against software error or fraud as, for example, the paper ballot can indicate a different vote than what is happening inside the computer.A March 30, 2001 report by CAL TECH/MIT: “Residual Votes Attributable to Technology”, found that manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted, and unmarked ballots, followed closely by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. Punch card methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices (DREs) had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems. Canada successfully uses paper ballots hand counted. If it is not feasible to adopt a similar system in New York State, then The Sierra Club – Atlantic Chapter believes that the next best system is paper ballots counted by optical scanner by precinct.