Registrar of Voters - Authorize the Registrar to negotiate a contract with Diebold Election Systems Inc. (Principal: Thomas W. Swidarski; Location: McKinney, Texas) for an upgrade to its voting equipment that includes a voter verified paper audit trail printer for use in the November 8, 2005 Consolidated District Election - CAO Recommends: ApproveCurrently Alameda county uses Diebold DREs (Direct Recording Electronic voting machines) with no paper trail. Local activists turned out in force to oppose this item and request a hearing with Diebold present. It helps that the proposed system was not yet Federally qualified and is not California certified. The Board listened and deferred the item and is going to have a hearing with the public and Diebold prior to the June 16th state certification hearing.
For the full audio of the session, go to:
http://www.acgov.org/jsp_app/board/bos_calendar/ag_min.jsp?subType=REG,
look for the 5/17 meeting, and click on the far right "yes" under
"audio". It downloaded a file named:
bos_reg_05_17_05.rpm
(To play it, you need "RealPlayer" which can be downloaded from:
http://www.real.com/player/index.html?src=downloadr.
Click on the "Free RealPlayer" button in the upper right right under
"Free Games". I installed it easily under Mac OS 10.3; and failed on a
Mac OS 10.1 system. Good luck.)
The question of negotiating the upgrade with Diebold is item 14; fast forward to 1:38:45 in the audio.
Below is some of the testimony. I tried to transcribe exactly the most important testimony and abbreviated and summarized the rest. There is no guarantee I transcribed correctly.
- Jerry Berkman
1:38:45 Clerk:
Item 14: Recommendation from Registrar of voters that
your board authorize the Registrar of voters to negotiate a contract
with Diebold Election Systems for an upgrade to its voting equipment
that includes a voter verified paper audit trail printer for use in
the November 8th 2005 consolidated district election. Your board is
aware that a statute requires that the Registrar have a voter verified
paper printer on each touch screen voting machine effective January 1,
2006. He has been in discussion with the elections equipment committee
composed of representatives of the county including county council,
county administrator's office, information technology and the general
services agency and it is this committee's recommendation that your
board proceed to negotiate with Diebold systems.
... we are hopeful that there will be HAVA funds in the amount
of up to 8 million dollars to help finance this upgrade.
1:41:10 Dan Ashby, WDRC, San Pablo:
Gave the following documents to each supervisor -
1:44:00 Michele Gabriel:
Cedes time to Jim March
1:44:10 John V.:
Cedes time to Jim March
1:44:30 Lowell Finley, Attorney, Berkeley:
Represented plaintiffs in lawsuit against Diebold by Alameda County, etc.
Defer any action because
1:48:30 - Jim March, BlackBoxVoting.org:
Last here before board in
June, 2003, alerting county to security problems in Diebold election product.
was coplaintiff in suit against Diebold, this county received $500,000
due to that suit.
It is a matter of ethics. Three weeks ago, I talked to Connie McCormack in Los Angeles, the Registrar. I was talking about various ethical lapses of Diebold, and she said to me "I'm not worried about ethics, I'm here to count votes". That disturbed me and it should disturb you and Diebold's conduct should disturb you.
A credible question could be raised as to whether their products are legal to operate. ... In the Federal Election Commission's standards on election machines in general, both the 1990 and 2002 standards, both require individualized logins on all the computers. You are supposed to be tracking which human being performs which action at a given time. That way if something funky happens, some votes get added, an extra memory card gets thrown in you know which human being was involved to start asking questions maybe leading all the way to a criminal investigation. If you ask your Registrar of voters here in Alameda County to print you a list of the audit trails for your central tabulators which you own now, every single line item shown will be performed by user "admin", user "admin", user "admin", across years. ... Everybody logs in as user "admin" and usually the same password nationwide.
We have a manual 1% recount in this state. You are supposed to check and make sure the machines are accurate by looking at least some of the paper.
(Interruption due to misunderstanding of timing - Jim gets 2 min. more instead of the 6 min. more we thought he would get by the ceding)
This county lost an opportunity recently when an early settlement to the lawsuit was rammed roaded down the throats of myself, Bev Harris, and Lowell Finley. We were told by county attorneys and A.G.'s office that take this settlement and leave it we're not going to discovery and we're just going to get 2.6 million dollars total out of Diebold. That threw away an opportunity to do discovery.
So far no full formal investigation into Diebold's ethics, business practices, and products has been conducted. What I'm asking you to do, is hold a one day hearing, bring the Diebold people in, bring technically competent members of the public who've been dealing with this stuff, myself, Bev Harris, Prof. Doug Jones out of Iowa, we've got a few people. Let's pin this issues down.
Its an ethical problem. There has to be ethics tied to our voting machines. If there isn't, there's no public confidence in the vote, and that means democracy has just gone down the tubes. You've got to restore public confidence. At a minimum, hold an investigation between now and the 16 so we've got something to report to McPherson's [Secretary of State] office at the June 16th VSPP hearing. Thank you.
1:54:50 David Kadlechek(sp?), Oakland, Californian's for Electoral Reform:
Promote proportional representation and instant runoff
voting. Several upgrades need to be done for next year - voter
verifiable audit trail - Berkeley and San Leandro hopefully having
instant runoff voting for November, 2006, Oakland in any future special
elections, such as if either council member expected to be running for
mayor wins, there will need to be a special election for council in
early 2007. Put all these major upgrades together, and put it out to
bid so it is not just a sole source contract negotiated with the
current vendor. Delay until you know if the election this Nov. will be
big election or small election. Right now, just consolidated for a few
smaller cities, and school districts, then can use it as a pilot for
voter verified audit trail, but it will be entirely different if the
Gov. call a special election and you have to run a county wide
election. Whatever you do, structure it so it doesn't give a major
advantage to the current vendor.
1:58:07 Sharon Maldenado - WDRC and California Teachers Association:
I am a retired Calif. teacher after having taught for 30 years.
Because of my 30 years of teaching government students in Alameda
county ... concerned for younger generation of voters ... it is very
important to me that they know their vote is going to count. We've had
tremendous difficulties with elections in the last few years. One of
the players in that is the Diebold company. I'm sure you are aware of
the difficulties in San Diego, and heard today, about ethical and
technological problems. Supervisors have tremendous responsibility;
one of the most sacred is that people know when they go to the polls,
their vote will count. Endorse Mr. March's proposal for one day
hearing. Do a thorough investigation; not to approve this today.
2:00:35 Chris Jordanek, Fair Vote:
It doesn't make sense to enter
negotiations on a new contract with a company not following through on
a contract already signed. Five years ago, Diebold told Alamdea
County that its equipment is the only system on the market today that
can handle preferentail or rank choice voting. It was one their
big selling points. Five years later, they are telling they can't
do it ... and coming out with a two million dollar figure for something
five years ago they said could easily be done. Diebold has shown
it can not be trusted.
2:20:30 Judy Bertelsen, WDRC, Berkeley:
Don't approve item 14 to negotiate with
Diebold at this time. The AVVPAT has not been certified by
California. What we know from Diebold's marketing makes it unworkable
and unacceptable. It involves tiny print requiring a magnifying glass
to read, on a role of paper in which the order of voting is preserved,
therefore the confidentiality of the voter is compromised.
This flimsy piece of paper is likely to require exhorbitant amounts
of money if it is ever actually to be used for a recount.
Should have input from Registrar who will have to conduct that recount.
Current Registrar is leaving. No need to do this today. Instead
Registrar and Supervisors should be working with community groups and experts
on electronic voting matters to find ways to improve the reliability
and security of our election. Need to get away from privatization
of the electoral process. Need to return to transparent and public
management of elections.
2:05:00 David Heller, Berkeley:
Diebold negotiates in bad faith.
Internal emails I read are very reminiscent of Enron. Told growing up
by a judge I worked for "Fool me once and you're the fool, fool me
twice and I'm a fool". ... blatantly misled and done nefarious things
with their equipment in this county; I think it is foolish to negotiate
with them. Quotes from Berkeley Daily Planet article citing email from
one Diebold person: "any after sale changes should be prohibitly
expensive". Also need IRV. Shouldn't need to pay 1 million dollars.
Accupole runs IRV, VVPAT, federally certified.
2:08:38 Jerry Berkman, Berkeley
UC Berkeley programmer for 30 years,
not representing UCB, has SANS computing security certification,
i.e. one of the geeks here
- don't need to negotiate now; not certified or qualified
- they don't live up to their agreements
- departing Registrar should not decide; staff remaining should do it
- VVPAT is 290 foot role like cash Register, not cut, study shows most
people can't deal with it, need to use a magifying glass, thermal paper
which could be erased if stored in wrong way, does not
preserve privacy which is required by California Constituion.
- Nevada - Green Party asked for recount and Nevada said they would have
to pay for vendor to come in to help count the paper.
- section 19214.5 SoS can ban them, charge them $10000 so Alameda County
gets $25,000,000 - come with us to Sacramento and ask for that.
- OVC cheaper
- Nov. print ballots centrally and use paper.
- Have hearing under oath
2:12:20 Michele Gabrielle, Oakland:
Can't stand the fact that my votes not counted; I don't want to
get a system that is unusable, and want system to be trustworthy.
2:13:47 James Souper, Open Voting Consortium, Berkeley:
1. former techie, senior consultant at Digital Equipment.
lots of technical problems, unprofessional, shoddy, I wouldn't
to put my name behind this.
2. Ballot type should be big enough to read.
3. Questionable whether Diebold will be certified at all.
2:15:01 Lara Shaffer, Open Voting Consortium:
Gave out bumper stickers: "Those who cast the vote decide nothing, those who
count the vote decide everything." That's what you are doing today; you
are deciding about our democracy. OVC includes verifiable paper
ballot, easily recounted, open software, instant runoff voting,
multiple languages, HAVA, chain of custody, cost: $1200/machine,
Diebold is $3,000/machine.
2:16:55 Brad Clark, Alameda County Registrar of Voters:
[Brad is leaving for a job in Secretary of State's office June 17]
"First of all, I heard a lot of very incorrect information from
the speakers today".
The Diebold system received it federal qualification this week.
All state testing completed with no problem. I anticipate
State certification will come in June.
...
"to negotiate with Diebold to put on the voter verified paper audit
trail which is a requirement of California state law under SB 1438 of
last year. We have no choice but to comply with that law if we hope to
keep our electronic voting system."
...
"There is no other Federally qualified and state certified
system that meets HAVA and disability and VVPAT requirements.
There are none certified in California.
This will probably be the first one ..." Go out to bid => about $14M,
upgrade about 5.5 million dollars. Want to use Nov. 2005 as first use
of VVPAT. If it is entire statewide election, doubtful we could have
paper printers in every precinct. Not required 'til Jan., 2006.
Print is about ... I don't know if it 8 or 10 point; there is magnification. OVC told us IRV development would cost about one and a half million dollars.
Expect up to 8.7 million dollars to Alameda County from HAVA funds. 169 million dollars remaining HAVA funds for California.
Sup. Haggerty(?):
what is the storage time on thermal paper.
I know if I put credit card receipt in my wallet; pull it out a few
weeks later, it is black.
2:25:52 - Sup. Miley:
-
What is the harm of waiting?
Registrar Clark:
hopes to order and use the equipment in November.
Current system is fully certified for use through the remainder of the year. New equipment in a primary election is very difficult because that is a difficult election.
Sup. Miley(?)
"You mentioned there is no other entity that is
certified in the state, nor is there any anticipated?".
Registrar Clark:
Sequoia system, it is conditionally certified, but it can not do a primary
at this point, but we anticipate Sequoia will come back sometime this
summer for a certification of their electronic system with a VVPAT
that would be sufficient for a primary. The other problem they had
was they couldn't print the Asian languages, but they are working on it.
Can't mix Sequoia with Diebold.
Supervisor Lai-Bitker:
Voting Equipment Committee is made up of members of
the Registrar of voters staff, the County Counsel, General Services,
and Information Technology, and the County Administrator's Office.
you have a very successful model of a community advisory group dealing with the special language group, you have the Chinese advisory group and you include many of the committee members consumers and voters ... and seems like a successful project ...
Registrar Clark:
"That could certainly be arranged"
Sup. Carson:
I'd like to hold a public hearing and to see what additional
value comes out of that.
I would encourage board members to be there.
County sponsored hearing.
Sup. Steele:
very technical ... It is very important to me, in something
so technical that I don't understand, if people get up and say something
like you did now, I'd like to get those points written down and have
you answer them so we actually know ... otherwise
what we've been doing all day is looking at perceptions ...
I really like the idea of a hearing.
Sup. Carson:
schedule a hearing so that Diebold could be present ...
as soon as possible.
End of discussion