TrueVote Opposes Proposed Legislation
(4/18/06)TrueVote Connecticut opposes two bills
currently before the State Legislature.
- SB 67 would reconstitute the Voting Technology
Standards Board as a permanent body, which we
favor. However SB 67 would dilute the technical
expertise on the board and strip it of its role as
an independent impartial entity in voting
technology matters. The changes to eliminate the
Governor's mandate to appoint a representative "for
governmental accountability", to give the SOTS the
power to designate the chair and vice-chair, and to
restrict the pool of technical experts available
for service on the Board to just those from the
Connecticut State University System, all damage the
Board's ability to solve the complex voting
technology issues facing the State and make it
little more than window-dressing for decisions that
the SOTS is already empowered to make.
- SB 181 would mandate a full-face ballot for the
State. Voting technology is in a period of rapid
change. A full-face ballot is only one possibility
for addressing the problem of "fall-off" voting,
where voters fail to vote for lesser offices, and
it introduces problems of its own when combined
with modern voting machine technology. Other
technologies, such as those requiring an explicit
"no vote" indication from the voter for every
office, might prove to be both more effective and
less expensive than a full-face ballot. It is
premature to be mandating one solution over another
to a complex technical problem such as this.
Please
click here for a fuller description of our
reasons for opposing both bills.
TrueVote Connecticut Requests Revision of State
PlanTrue Vote Connecticut announced at a
press
conference on Thursday, December 8, that it has
delivered a letter to
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz calling on
her to revise the
2003 State Hava Plan to account for material
changes in the voting landscape resulting from:
- The availability of Federally-certified
accessible op scan technology.
- The passage of
SB55 requiring voter-verified paper
records.
- The passage of
HB6669 establishing the Voting Technology
Standards Board.
- The EAC advisory
ruling requiring the towns to replace their
lever machines by 1/1/06.
- The failure of the EAC to publish updated
voting machine standards, leaving to the State the
job of judging technical compliance of voting
machines with HAVA requirements.
- The long delays in the RFP process, making it
impossible to meet the 1/1/06 deadline for having
new equipment in place.
- The inadequacies of the three finalists as
shown in the demos.
Procedures for revising the Plan are spelled out
in the HAVA
legislation and in
section (K) page 19 of the Plan.
TrueVoteCT Responds to SOTS Letter of October
5In a letter to
Secretary Susan Bysiewicz dated October 26, 2005,
TrueVoteCT Director Willard W. Bunnell reiterates
TrueVoteCT's status as a non-profit, non-partisan
organization with no vendor affiliation, and he
addresses Bysiewicz's apparent confusion over
TrueVoteCT's reasons for focussing on certain voting
machine technologies. TrueVoteCT remains
perplexed by the SOTS's dogmatic pursuit of DRE's and
her continued shunning of a prudent technical and
economic assessment of the range of voting systems
and technologies available today.
SOTS Refuses to Meet with
TrueVoteCTTrueVoteCT has sent three letters to
the Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz since May
2005 expressing our concern with the current RFP and
its plan to acquire DRE machines to the exclusion of
alternative technologies such as optical scan with
ballot marking devices.
The SOTS response to the first two letters shows
a lack of understanding of many of the subtle issues
involved in voting technology. The September
19 letter addresses the recent EAC advisory
ruling requiring the replacement of lever
machines and offers to meet with the SOTS to discuss
these issues. In her October
5 response, the SOTS ignores the substantive
issues we raise, groundlessly impunes the integrity
of TrueVoteCT, and refuses to meet with us. We do not
understand why she and her office attempt to
discredit her critics rather than openly addressing
their concerns.
Analysis of the RFP for Voting Machines in
CTThe voting machine landscape has changed
dramatically since December 2004 when the SOTS issued
an RFP to put one DRE machine in each polling place.
Experience of other states has shown DRE machines to
be more costly to operate and less reliable than
previously believed. At the same time, there are now
better alternatives for providing disabled voters
with the ability to vote privately and independently.
Unfortunately, Connecticut cannot consider these
newer alternatives under the terms of the current
RFP, but the State does have the right to modify or
reissue the RFP if deemed to be in the best interests
of the State. TrueVoteCT has prepared a new document,
An Analysis of the Request for Proposals (RFP)
for Voting Machines in Connecticut, that
gives compelling reasons why the SOTS can and should
modify or reissue the RFP.
TrueVoteCT Calls on SOTS to Consider Optical Scan
SystemsModern optical scan systems offer
significant advantages over DRE machines, not only
for lever machine replacement, but also for meeting
HAVA's accessibility requirements for the disabled.
Supporting arguments were sent in a letter
to the SOTS on September 19, 2005, urging her "to
reevaluate the various technological options that are
available." The current RFP, which considers only DRE
machines and addresses only the accessibility
requirements of HAVA, should be cancelled and
replaced by a new comprehensive RFP that addresses
all of the voting machine requirements that the towns
must meet and considers all available technologies.
EAC Advises that Lever Machines Must Be
ReplacedThe Election Assistance Commission
issued an advisory
ruling on September 8 that lever machines fail to
meet HAVA requirements for manual audit capacity,
even if outfitted with a "Print-o-Matic" device, so
they cannot be used in any federal election after
January 1, 2006. This means that Connecticut has only
a short time for replacing the lever machines in all
169 towns. The SOTS issued a press
release in response to the advisory announcing
that she "is convening a meeting of chief municipal
and election officials and legislative leaders on
Wednesday, September 21st at 10AM in order to ensure
that Connecticut is prepared to comply with the
advisory opinion."
Response to SOTS Q&A
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz sponsored a
panel discussion titled "Best Practices for
Voting Machines in Connecticut" on Wednesday,
June 15, 2005. At that time, she passed out a handout
in Q&A form, New Voting
Machine Update for Connecticut, which addresses
many questions of importance concerning Connecticut?s
plans to buy new voting machines. We find some of the
Secretary's answers to be inaccurate or incomplete,
so we have prepared a TrueVoteCT
response with our own comments and opinions.
News Since Spring
The web site has been inactive since last spring.
The major piece of news is that
Senate Bill 55 has become
"Public Act No. 05-188" and was signed into law
on July 1, 2005, by Gov. Jodi Rell. Voter-verified
paper trails are now required of all DRE machines in
Connecticut! Congratulations to everyone for their
help in making this a reality.
Show Your Support for Senate Bill 55
Senate Bill 55, which requires a voter-verified
paper trail so that meaningful audits and recounts
are possible, was passed unanimously by the Senate.
Now it goes on to the house. Please go to the
action alert and let your
representatives know how important it is to get this
bill passed by the House and signed into law.
SB 55 Progressing Through the Legislative
ProcessCommon Cause and
TrueVoteCT held a
joint press conference with Lieutenant
Governor Kevin Sullivan on Monday, April 4, at
the state Capitol in Hartford. The Lieutenant
Governor, Rep. Caruso, Rep. O'Brien, and Rep. Floren
joined the two advocacy groups in urging support of
Senate Bill 55 which requires an accessible,
voter-verifiable paper ballot for all new voting
machines purchased by the state. SB 55 was favorably
reported out of the Government Administration and
Elections (GAE) committee last week and is now headed
for the floor of the State Senate. Also released
today are three statements in support of voter
verified paper records:
The current draft of SB 55 is available here.
TrueVoteCT Meets with Senator Christopher Dodd's
StaffMembers of TrueVoteCT discussed
HAVA-related issues at length with Ms. Kennie Gill in
a conference call from Senator Dodd's Connecticut
Headquarters on March 17. Ms. Gill is described as
Senator Dodd's HAVA expert and is the person who
drafted HAVA in the first place. Our impressions of
the many issues discussed are summarized in a
meeting
report (also available in PDF format).
What Will It Cost to Replace CT's Lever
Machines?Connecticut's aging lever machines will
need to be upgraded or replaced by January 1, 2006,
in order to comply with two requirements of the
Help
America Vote Act (HAVA):
- At least one voting machine in each precinct
must be accessible to individuals with
disabilities;
- Each voting machine must produce a
(non-voter-verified) permanent paper record.
TrueVoteCT has analyzed three possible scenarios
for meeting these requirements. The first two are
based on the current
state plan and RFP
in which limited federal HAVA funds are used only to
purchase DRE machines. Depending on whether the towns
choose to replace their lever machines with
additional DRE machines or with less-expensive
optical scan systems, the cost to state taxpayers
will be an estimated $12-18 million. The third
scenario assumes a new plan that uses existing HAVA
funds to purchase integrated voting systems designed
to comply with both requirements. In this scenario,
the costs are fully covered by federal money.
Our cost model and findings are presented in the
report, Options for
Replacing Connecticut's Voting Machines: A Cost
Analysis. The Excel spreadsheet upon which
the report is based can be used to see the effects of
varying our assumptions (download).
TrueVoteCT Responds to Proposed Amended Bill
55
The Secretary of the State proposed amended
language to Bill 55 on March 8. TrueVoteCT finds
serious weaknesses in the amended language and has
called on the SOTS to make revisions to guarantee
that:
- the accessible VVPR (which we call AVVPR)
actually reflects the voter's intent,
- the voter has an opportunity to review and
correct any errors in the AVVPR before casting the
ballot,
- the AVVPR is the official ballot in case of
recounts,
- mandatory public random manual recounts take
place, and
- any discrepancies discovered be publicly
disclosed.
Further, the effective date should be changed to
July 1, 2005, so that any machines acquired under the
current RFP will be fully accessible for both voting
and voter-verification. These and other issues are
described in greater detail in a letter
to the Secretary of the State sent on March 10.
Thanks to VerifiedVoting.org
for assisting in the preparation of this letter and
for their continuing help to TrueVoteCT in its effort
to achieve verified voting in Connecticut.
SOTS Supports Accessible Voter-Verified Paper
Audit TrailThe Secretary of the State, Susan
Bysiewicz, announced at a meeting with TrueVoteCT on
February 24 that she will support Bill 55 when
amended to require that any voter-verified paper
trail mechanism be accessible to all voters,
including the disabled. Technology already exists
with this capability, so there is no longer a tension
between the needs for voter-verified paper audit
trails and the needs of the disabled to be able to
vote privately and independently.
Bill 55 Supporters Appear before the GAE
CommitteeApproximately 25 supporters of
voter-verified paper audit trails in Connecticut
attended a public hearing before the GAE committee on
February 14 to support passage of SB55. All from the
public who testified were in favor of the bill. The
Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, also
supported voter-verified paper audit trails but was
opposed to SB 55 because of concerns for the disabled
and various federal issues. All speakers were allowed
3 minutes for their
oral testimony, and all were invited to submit
written testimony as well. A selection of the written
testimony presented appears below.
Show Your Support for Senate Bill 55
Public Hearings were held on Monday, February 14,
on
Senate Bill 55, An Act Promoting Voting
System Accuracy, Integrity and Security Through
Voter-Verified Permanent Paper Records. The bill
is now being considered by the GAE Committee. This is
the time to let your legislators know how you feel
about the importance of voter verified paper ballots
in future Connecticut voting systems. The more people
who can attend the hearings, the better. If you can't
come, then write to your legislators showing your
support. See the press
release and action
alert for further information.
The Urgent Problem
The State of Connecticut recently issued an RFP
(Request for Proposals) for purchase of electronic
voting machines to replace the mechanical machines
that have been in service for many years. These
machines are now breaking down and parts are no
longer available to fix them. Also, according to
recent federal law, all states must adopt machines
that are accessible to the disabled.
As a citizen of the state, I'm concerned about the
Connecticut RFP because it seems to favor a kind of
voting machine that cannot be audited and in which
the final vote count is determined entirely by
computer software. Several serious questions have
arisen about the RFP and the process that produced
it:
-
Why does the RFP specify the purchase of
unauditable, paperless, and expensive
touch-screen DRE machines, when voters all over
the country are demanding voter verified paper
ballots?
-
Why does the RFP not allow the purchase of
precinct-count optical scan systems which are
auditable, less expensive, and more accurate than
paperless e-voting machines?
-
Why was the public not allowed to participate
in the RFP process before the RFP was issued?
All concerned citizens of Connecticut should do
whatever they can now to let our state legislators
and Secretary of State know that changes to the RFP
are necessary so that voter-verified paper ballots
are required, optical scan technology is a biddable
option, and elections are conducted openly so as to
ensure full confidence of the public in our election
system.
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