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PDF File of Testimony
Testimony of VotePA
September 25, 2008
Public Hearing on Preparedness for General Election
State Government Committee, Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Ladies and Gentlemen of the
State Government Committee:
Forty days from now our nation
will select the leaders that will govern us for the next four
years. With the many problems we are facing today, this is an
incredibly important election with great public interest. There
are huge numbers of newly registered voters, and record turnout
is expected on Election Day. This turnout may reach 80% in some
areas.
As one of the largest swing
states, Pennsylvania may well become a deciding factor this year.
It is more important than ever that every eligible citizen who
wants to vote gets to vote and to have his or her counted accurately.
We absolutely have to "get it right" this time.
Public officials and citizen
organizations all over Pennsylvania are working hard to help
ensure a fair, smooth, and accurate election on November 4. But
there are a number of issues that remain very concerning, especially
with our voting systems.
PROBLEM #1: POTENTIAL FOR LONG
LINES AT POLLS
Six of the ten voting systems that Pennsylvania will use this
November 4 are software-dependent Direct Record Electronic (DRE)
voting machines. Approximately seven million Pennsylvanians will
cast votes using these paperless systems.
Of great concern is that in
counties using DREs, a record turnout may create long lines at
the polls due to not enough machines. With each voter having
to occupy a DRE machine for the entire time he or she is voting,
this will happen in any polling place where the number of voters
exceeds the capacity provided by the number of machines available.
Under the Pennsylvania Election
Code 25 P.S. § 3031.5 (b), the Secretary of the Commonwealth's
certification report for each voting machine specifies "the
capacity of the components of that system, the number of voters
who may reasonably be accommodated by the voting devices and
automatic tabulating equipment which comprise such system and
the number of clerks and machine inspectors, if any, required
based on the number of registered electors in any election district
in which the voting system is to be used, such specifications
being based upon the secretary's examination of the system."
These certified numbers are
based on the vendors' recommendations and the state examiner's
observations during a brief one-day examination conducted for
each machine in Harrisburg. Many of our counties have used these
certification numbers as a basis for deciding how many voting
machines to purchase or lease.
Unfortunately these certified
numbers, ranging from three hundred to four hundred voters per
day per machine, are unrealistically high for all six DRE machines
used in Pennsylvania. Based on the three-minute time limit allowed
voters under the Pennsylvania Election Code at 25 P.S. §3057,
any single DRE voting machine no matter what the brand
can only accommodate twenty voters per hour or 260 voters
in a thirteen-hour voting day.
And that is assuming voters
come through the line in perfect three-minute intervals from
7 AM to 8 PM. As we all know, in real life voters tend to come
to the polls in spurts. There is a higher concentration of voters
in the early morning and after working hours in the evening.
The three-minute rule dates
from the time when mechanical lever voting machines were used
in much of the state. But for a Direct Record Electronic voting
system, especially one where the voter has to move from screen
to screen, three minutes is an incredibly short time frame for
any voter to cast a ballot.
In my own experience working
as an elected Majority Inspector of Elections in Westmoreland
County (where we now use ES&S iVotronic touchscreens), each
voter takes an average of at least four and a half to five minutes,
especially allowing for time between voters to reset the machine.
A voter using the disability accessible machines with an audio
ballot can take much longer; as much as an hour or more.
Let's look at this situation
in real-life terms. My own Westmoreland County precinct, Ward
4 Precinct 2 in Penn Township, uses three ES&S iVotronic
voting machines. We have registration that is nearing 1100 voters.
With an 80 percent turnout this means we would see as many as
880 voters casting ballots in my polling place on Election Day
this year.
According to the certification
report provided by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, our ES&S
iVotronics are rated at 300 voters per machine per day. Doing
the math, it appears that our 880 voters should be okay because
based on the Secretary's estimate of 300 voters per machine,
900 voters should be able to be accommodated by our three machines.
But using the state's three
minutes per voter rule, our three machines can accommodate only
780 voters, which is barely 70 percent.
Using a more realistic (but
still fast) four minutes per voter, the three machines in Ward
4 Precinct 2 will only be able to handle 585 voters during the
thirteen hours our poll will be open. At only four minutes per
voter not even a 60 percent turnout (660 voters) can be accommodated
during the voting day. There will be lines in Ward 4 Precinct
2, perhaps long ones, and most likely in the evening hours and
at closing time.
Some counties have purchased
or leased additional equipment to remediate this problem, but
many have not. Recent press articles reported that some precincts
in some Pennsylvania counties have as many as 900 voters allotted
to one DRE voting machine. Clearly this is absurd, and a recipe
for disaster on November 4 when we get the expected huge turnout.
Voters who are forced to wait for a long time to cast a ballot
become angry and disillusioned with our electoral process. Worst
of all many are forced to simply to leave without voting due
to family, school, or employment responsibilities.
When asked about this problem,
officials at the Department of State pointed out that the process
for signing voters in to the poll book can be a bottleneck where
lines form in polling places. They have suggested that improving
sign-in procedures will alleviate the problem of lines at the
polls. Of course eliminating any bottleneck will help move things
along, but where there are simply not enough machines present
to handle the number of voters turning out to vote, lines are
going to form.
The seventeen Pennsylvania
counties that have chosen voter-marked paper ballot systems are
at significantly lower risk for this problem. Their paper ballot-based
voting systems reduce or eliminate lines in polling places because
only the number of privacy booths and pencils available limits
the number of voters who can mark ballots at once. Each voter
does not have to tie up a machine for the entire time he or she
is voting. Scanning and depositing the paper ballot on the way
out of the poll takes each voter mere seconds at the scanner.
RECOMMENDATIONS: If possible,
DRE counties should lease or obtain additional equipment to increase
voting machine capacity to no less than one machine for every
200 to 250 registered voters for this election. Emergency paper
ballots should be issued if and when more than ten voters (a
half-hour or longer wait) are waiting to use a voting machine.
Most importantly, all
counties should train their pollworkers before this election
to be keenly aware that all voters who are in line and waiting
to vote at 8 PM when the polls are scheduled to close must
be provided the opportunity to vote. Polls cannot be closed until
all such voters have cast their ballot.
POST-ELECTION RECOMMENDATION:
Pennsylvania should follow the lead of dozens of other states
and pass legislation requiring and funding the use of voter-marked
paper ballots. These ballots can be scanned and counted electronically
in the precinct while preserving every vote on a voter-verified
piece of paper. Such systems do not require a voting terminal
to be provided to each voter during the entire time he or she
is voting, and allow many voters to cast ballots at once. Lines
are much less likely to form when voter-marked paper ballots
are used.
PROBLEM #2: UNVERIFIED SOFTWARE
MAY COMPROMISE ELECTION RESULTS
A worrisome problem is that DRE machines provide no voter verified
paper ballot, and there is no way to count, recount, or audit
the votes without depending on software in these voting systems.
If machines fail, there could be no way to recover the election
results, and in any event there is really no way to be sure they
are truly operating and counting correctly. We have to trust
that the software in these machines is doing its job properly
if we are to trust the election results.
The Secretary of the Commonwealth
has tested and certified an exact version of this software for
each machine approved for use in Pennsylvania. But neither the
state nor the counties have been verifying that the software
running in machines is indeed the version that was tested and
certified. Additionally, recent reports and testing such as that
done at Princeton University in New Jersey, the "Top To
Bottom Review" conducted for California Secretary of State
Deborah Bowen, and the EVEREST Report conducted for Ohio Secretary
of State Jennifer Brunner, have all shown serious security vulnerabilities
in every machine tested.
Some of the vulnerabilities
found by the computer scientists preparing these reports are
shocking. For example, the Princeton studies show that the Diebold
/ Premier TSX can have a destructive virus implanted on it in
minutes using a simple memory card. The EVEREST report shows
that a voter or other person with brief access to an ES&S
iVotronic could install potentially malicious software on the
machine using only a Palm Pilot and a magnet.
Two-thirds of the computer
scientists that prepared the EVEREST report for Ohio come from
two prestigious Pennsylvania universities: Penn State and the
University of Pennsylvania. Our own officials at the county and
state level know of these reports generated by Pennsylvania experts
for other states, but have chosen to pay little attention to
their warnings. This is very concerning given that the exact
same machines tested and found vulnerable are used by millions
of Pennsylvania voters. If these problems exist in Ohio, they
also exist in Pennsylvania.
Our Department of State and
many county election boards have stated that software version
numbers are checked during Logic and Accuracy testing before
elections, and on Election Day when they are printed out on the
screens and results tapes produced by voting machines. This is
woefully inadequate, especially in terms of finding a virus or
malicious software, because bad software could easily be programmed
to produce the correct version number regardless of what is actually
running. Worse yet, bad software could be programmed to behave
correctly during testing and then move undetectably into its
malicious mode during an actual election while erasing every
trace of what it has done.
RECOMMENDATION: Every county
in Pennsylvania using a software-dependent voting system (meaning
a system that has no independent voter-marked paper record of
each vote) should verify the software in their voting equipment
before and after this and every election. This would be done
by opening a statistically significant sample of the machines,
removing the memory chip or device where the software is stored,
and comparing the software on that device to a known clean copy
of that software as certified by the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
All testing of voting systems,
including Logic and Accuracy and Software Verification, must
be done with the general public permitted to attend and observe
in a meaningful way.
POST-ELECTION RECOMMENDATION:
Pennsylvania should follow the lead of dozens of other states
and pass legislation requiring and funding the replacement of
software-dependent voting machines. We should move statewide
to voting systems using voter-marked paper ballots, producing
a voter-verified paper for each and every vote. Paper-ballot
systems are more cost-effective, and most importantly they allow
meaningful recounts and audits of election results. In the event
of system failure, the paper ballots preserve the intent of every
voter.
CONCLUSION:
We believe that these key areas are among the most urgent right
now regarding our state's voting systems and voting machines.
While it is too late for counties to obtain entirely different
machines (or a new voting system) before the election, taking
the simple steps we have recommended in this testimony will do
much to remediate any problems that are going to occur.
No matter what occurs on November
4, as we move forward into 2009 and beyond Pennsylvania must
address the problem of the unverifiable, software dependent voting
machines in our state along with our lack of meaningful election
audits. If we do not, sooner or later we will pay the price for
our inaction in lost votes or a failed election. Voting systems
and audits need to be a priority because these machines are not
truly safe and the risk to our democracy is simply too great
to let this go uncorrected any longer.
No eligible Pennsylvanian must
ever be denied his or her fair opportunity to register to vote
and cast a ballot, and likewise every Pennsylvania voter deserves
to have full confidence that his or her ballot will be counted
accurately as cast.
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