Reply #2: Minimum auditing requirements

[BevHarris]

Five percent truly random spot check of paper ballots against machine tallies.

Run reports at more checkpoints through the system. (As the vote travels through the system, it gets committed to paper reports, signed by multiple observers, and the votes are compared from checkpoint to checkpoint to see that they have not changed. Simple, cheap, effective.)

Put real teeth into noncompliance. Set penalties for election officials who do not comply.

Take effective action on anomalies. Mismatched reports must automatically trigger an audit of the paper ballots for that system.

And, lest you still think that simply passing a bill requiring paper ballots at some future date will protect us in November, let's take a look at what really happened in California last week:

1) In one polling place, 25% of the machines which had been voted upon printed reports that said "zero votes" had been cast, at the end of the day. Nothing was done about it. They could have examined the flash memory to audit the discrepancy a little bit, just like they could have looked at the paper ballots, if there had been any, but they didn't. You see, there is no rule that says they have to do anything at all about auditing discrepancies.

2) In another county, a voting machine vendor's employee was observed putting a ballot box (memory card) in his pocket and leaving the building with it. He then handed a memory card to a colleague and said "see if this one will work." Nothing was done about it.

3) In several locations, memory cards (electronic ballot boxes) went missing for a period of time. Nothing was done about it because they were "found." (But were they the same???)

4) Absentee ballots -- we still have a gaping hole in chain of custody, when simply running an extra postal receipt and comparing it with the number of ballots that show up at the elections office would help immensely and cost nothing.

5) Even though counties were directed to post results at the polling place (and California law appears to require this) the counties did not comply and there were no penalties. Indeed, poll workers were not even trained to do this.

6) Software, once again, was changed in the system used in San Diego County, just days before the election. No one did anything about it.

The above reports come from election judges, poll workers, voting machine inspectors and voters. Even when in an official capacity, voting officials are often told it is not their business to report these anomalies.

The solutions are simple, but not if we ignore them and talk only about one part of one solution.

Bev Harris