Essex County Task Force on E-voting

[FogerRox]

There are about 6 Countys that may be considering purchase of new voting equipment, including Essex (my county), Warren, Passaic, Monmouth, Cumberland, Cape May and Camden. This rush to buy is driven by the HAVA act of 2002. Federal funds totaling 3.8 billion dollars made available to the states is a powerful incentive. Warren County currently owns 95 Optech 3-P Eagle optical scanners manufactured by ES&S. This device optically scans a paper ballot. If N.J. passes S29, a Voter Verified Paper Trail law, these Optical scanners dont come under the purview of S29, which would apply to only DRE's (Direct Recording Electronic) or touch screen voting machines. So far 21 state legislatures have passed a VVPT law of one form or another. 19 Governors have signed VVPT laws. It seems with S29 coming out of commitee with unaminous bipartisan support, that New Jersey will soon join the ranks of states passing VVPT laws. I believe the impetus for this trend is simple, People dont trust DRE's, and feel the need for some sort of audit tool legislativly speaking. Unfortunately most of these VVPT laws mandate a random selection of 2% or 3% of precincts to be audited. Statistcally speaking the odds of finding fraud, irrgeularites, or even defining ballot spoilage, are very slim, next to zero. Let me put it this way, If there say 100 percincts in an election, and I commit fraud in 5 precincts. and you randomly select 2 or 3 precincts to audit, do you think you will catch me? So VVPT law is not really an effective tool, but it is better than no VVPT law.

Warren County is apparently looking to buy the Sequoia Advantage DRE. Sequoia does not currently have a VVPT compliant printer available for the Advantage. N.J. state law concerning the dolling out of HAVA funds apparently has a deadline for purchase--or placing a RFP (IIRC, Request for Purchase) of Sept. 1st. The Warren County Freeholders may be currently meeting (just like the Essex Freeholders) to discuss what voting equipment to buy. If they do procede with the Advantage purchase, and then N.J. passes a VVPT law, Warren is stuck. They will have pruchased non VVPT compliant equipment, that gets used in 2006 and 2007 but cant be used in 2008 when S29 goes into effect. On May 25th I attended a meeting of the Essex County Freeholders on voting equipment selection, and they seemed distressed by the situation. I talked to Freeholder and V.P. Pat Sebold on the phone prior to the meeting, and she felt that the Freeholders were "very limited" by the choice. Which brings me to the N.J. Attorney General.

The N.J. Attorney General has certified just 3 machines. The Avante DRE, The Sequoia Edge and Advantage DRE's. But the list of Federally certified equipment under HAVA is huge, why is that not reflected in the certification process in N.J.? The Avante and Edge can be bought HAVA and VVPT compliant for about the same price: roughly $6,000. per machine. The Advantage starts out at $6.000. Add the HAVA mandated disabled voter equipment for $2,000. and then the VVPT compliant printer for another $2,000 and the Advantage comes to $10,000. Interestingly enough the base price of the Sequoia Edge is about $3,500 and the Sequoia Veri Vote Printer is about $500. Why is Sequoia charging $2,000 for a printer on the Advantage, when they offer one for $500 ?

There are 3 groups of grassroots acitivists in Essex County: BluewaveNJ, DFA Essex (Deans old group) and my Voting Issues Project. Within the last week the Election reform components have banded together as the "Essex County Task Force on E-Voting". I saw the need for an organization that could develop a comprehensive strategic and tactical doctrine to deal with the situation. It was an easy sell, to say the least.

The Task Force sees the need to get Public Officials at the highest level involved as soon as possible. The N.J. Attn. Gen. needs to understand that the certification process may put this group of countys in the situation where they need to buy new equipment in the Summer of '05 and then again (without HAVA money) before the '08 election, to be S29 compliant. I told Pat Sebold that would be an easy 30 million, she said yes it might be 30 million. State wide it might be 140 to 160 million.

If a positve solution can be found it may save Warren and Passiac Countys tens of millions of dollars, Essex county alone may save 30 million.



Roger Fox
Founding member: Essex County Task Force on E-voting
Chair, NJ Voting Issues Project
[email protected]

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Gott'em in Bergen, Ramsey specifically.

Yikes.