Miami Dade Group's Position Like Rotten Fish Stinking up the Air

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Florida Governor Crist has left the door open for touch-screens with "paper trails":

The Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition surely bears some responsibility based on their publicly expressed opinion that current optical scanners would disenfranchise language minority groups.

See excerpts from MDERC's "Position Paper" :

"The coalition also opposes merely replacing DRE touchscreens with optical scan systems.
According to Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the coalition's former chair,
'optical scan systems pose serious barriers for language minorities and voters with disabilities.
Those who blindly push for optical scans without addressing these barriers run
the risk of neglecting large numbers of voters in Florida.'"
http://www.law.miami.edu/news/582.html

MDERC has yet to un-paint Governor Crist out of the corner.

This could be done by MDERC issuing a press release stating clear opposition to touch-screens
and reminding the governor that at least one vendor has committed to providing language
assistance on their optical scanner.

The red herring about optical scan has to be stopped here and now -
there must NOT be any further enabling of it.
There should never have to be a reason to beat this overly dead,
extremely rank smelling dead horse ever again:

"A spokesman for ES&S said the company's machines could be reprogrammed to include Spanish and Creole.
''It's certainly a feature that could be part of that technology,'' said ES&S spokesman Ken Fields.
A spokesman for the other manufacturer, Diebold, said a simpler solution would be to post signs
in different languages to advise voters what to do if a ballot is rejected."
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/16602830.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_state

Two Groups with Vision and Courage, with clear statements in favor of optical scan and
opposed to touch-screen/DREs :

The Florida League of Women Voters
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReformCoalition/message/5676

The Florida ACLU
http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/index.cfm?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=2429

And there are simple ways to address language issues:

How San Francisco addresses multiple foreign language voters:
http://www.ncvoter.net/downloads/San_Francisco_Translate_Card.pdf

But the Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition remains an enabler of Failed Florida Elections

Their website - http://www.reformcoalition.org/

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. well, I'm not sure what is going on here

MDERC says they oppose currently certified DREs, currently certified DREs retrofitted with printers, and currently certified precinct-based op-scan.
http://www.reformcoalition.org/ressources/MDERC%202007%20Position%20Paper%20on%20Florida%20Voting%20Systems.pdf
(I copied and pasted that link, funky spelling and all....) It's not totally clear what they are for, except that a voter-verified paper ballot has to be the ballot of record for all purposes including tabulation.

That seems to go along with what the ACLU says in the statement you linked to, actually. It's all pretty ambiguous. It's not that the ACLU came flat out against the use of DREs, did it? (I can't access the Florida LWV statement.) Or maybe it opposes DREs but is open to Automark touchscreens?

[eomer]

2. MDERC's ambiguity is apparently intentional.

Chief among the coalition's proposals: do not attempt to retro-fit existing DRE touch screen with printers. "Our research has shown us that the existing technology is so deficient that attempting to add printers to machines that already have countless problems, would reduce, not add, to voter confidence," stated University of Miami Law Professor Martha Mahoney, a member of the coalition and its lead technology investigator.

The coalition also opposes merely replacing DRE touchscreens with optical scan systems. According to Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the coalition's former chair, "optical scan systems pose serious barriers for language minorities and voters with disabilities. Those who blindly push for optical scans without addressing these barriers run the risk of neglecting large numbers of voters in Florida."

Nor is the coalition simply pushing for a voter-verified paper record. According to Wayland, "while we applaud legislative efforts to require voter-verified paper records, to be effective in the long term, voting system legislation must create a framework for promptly innovating and producing new or improved systems that all Floridians can use to vote secretly and securely. A voter verified paper record is one, but by no means the only, system requirement worthy of legislative attention."

According to Barbara Brandon, a former regulatory lawyer and member of the coalition, "the only solution to Florida's voting problems is the tried and true concept of technology enforcement: the Florida Legislature sets the standards and vendors wishing to do business in Florida are then required to provide equipment that meets or exceeds those standards." Wayland concluded, "the recent media coverage demonstrates that Florida's voters are tired of the vendors telling Floridians how to vote and they are tired of a process that this driven by the business interests of vendors, instead of the needs of voters. We are proposing a solution that will return the power where it belongs - with the
voters."

http://www.reformcoalition.org/ressources/MDERC-PRESS%20RELEASE%2012-15-06.pdf

So they advocate specifying minimum standards in only general terms and then letting the election systems industry come up with innovative solutions that meet those standards. They also recommend some interim measures while we're waiting for the innovation to occur.

Apparently MDERC is following this strategy because of a fear that opscan in its current level of development will be put in as a quick solution that meets some of their requirements and that then they will be unable to get the rest of their requirements met -- particularly the ones related to language minorities.

I don't have a problem with the long term goals. The problem is that in the interim (which would surely extend past the 2008 election) their recommendations would leave a large part of Florida on paperless DREs. They are effectively sacrificing the overall transparency and reliability of at least the next election cycle in order to get some finer points handled. In a way they've hit on a big part of the problem we've had in the past -- that of going for too quick of a solution -- but their timing is off. This time there is a quick solution that satisfies the main requirements.