FL-13 STATE AUDIT WHITEWASH: Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 02/25/07

[freedomfries]

FL-13 STATE AUDIT WHITEWASH: Election Reform, Fraud, & News Sunday 02/25/07
:grr:

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.
:patriot:

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread.
If you can:
:argh:

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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233
3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.
4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.
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:patriot:

[freedomfries]

1. FL: Audit finds voting machines "work"[sic] ???

Audit finds voting machines work
But poorly designed ballots could lead to missed votes, a state report cautions

Rodd Ruger
Herald Tribune, Srasota, FL
February 24, 2007
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070224/NEWS/702240339


SARASOTA -- The three-month state audit of the contested November election found "no evidence" that the county's voting machines didn't record votes accurately.

But the state's final report released Friday -- and an accompanying review of the voting machines' software by a state-hired expert -- did little to quiet the controversy over why 18,000 ballots did not register a vote in the District 13 congressional race.

Both of the reports released Friday hinted that bad ballot design might have caused voters to miss the race on the touch-screen machines, a long-favored theory of those guessing what happened.

And the final audit report states it could not test for one of the major factors that could contribute to voting problems: human errors.

"Further in-depth study is warranted in this area, particularly in the area of effective ballot design," the state report says.

The campaign for Democratic candidate Christine Jennings, who lost to Republican Vern Buchanan by fewer than 400 votes, called the reports "sweeping the problem under the rug."

People for the American Way, a voter advocacy group, called the audit a "whitewash."

Both groups said the audit results are a compelling reason to continue lawsuits over the election.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070224/NEWS/702240339

[freedomfries]

4. FL: D-13 St.Pete's Times chimes in

Jennings has another loss at voting machines
A state-funded audit says the machines didn't malfunction in Sarasota's congressional race.

Amita Kumar
St.Petersburg Times
February 24, 2007
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/24/State/Jennings_has_another_.shtml

Results of a comprehensive audit released Friday show that the voting machines used in the disputed Sarasota-area congressional race were not flawed.

The findings are a blow to Democrat Christine Jennings, whose main argument in disputing her narrow loss to Republican Vern Buchanan is possible machine malfunction.

The state-funded investigation included for the first time an examination of the source code, the software that makes the machines run.

"I am confident that the race in Sarasota County was fair and accurate," Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning said.

The result - though significant - does not mean the case is over.

Jennings and a group of voter advocacy groups vow to continue seeking access to the source code so they can conduct their own reviews. Jennings' campaign described the study as flawed and incomplete, and said that experts were not allowed full access to the machines.

"It's unfortunate that the state's election officials were more concerned about sweeping the problem under the rug than finding out the truth about what went wrong with Sarasota County's voting system," Jennings spokesman David Kochman said.
...

The state Division of Elections, which has access to all source codes but cannot share them with the campaigns or the public for proprietary reasons, hired a team at a cost of $45,000 to examine the machines.

The study, which began Dec. 15, was conducted by a team of eight academics and led by Florida State University's Security and Assurance in Information Laboratory.

The team determined that the source code did not contribute to the undervote.

"We have a strong level of confidence that the machines did not cause or contribute to the undervote," said Alec Yasinsac, an FSU computer science professor and project leader. "We don't know if it was ballot design or voter discontent, but the problem was not in the source code."

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/24/State/Jennings_has_another_.shtml

[robinlynne]

14. Whitewash is way too polite. Anywhere else in the world, this would bring

thousands into the streets.

[freedomfries]

2. FL: "Voting machines worked"

Voting machines worked
Audit suggests ballot design might have muddled Sarasota results

Jim Stratton and Mark K. Matthews
Orlando Sentinel
February 24, 2007
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-voting2407feb24,0,2075468.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state

The voting machines used in Sarasota's disputed congressional election worked properly despite an unusually high number of blank ballots and widespread complaints that votes were lost, Florida officials said Friday.

After conducting a test election and inspecting the computer codes running the touch-screen-voting machines, a state audit concluded that "there is no evidence that the results are in error."

The audit, however, suggested ballot design might have led to voter confusion in the race between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings.

"I am confident that the race in Sarasota County was fair and accurate," said Secretary of State Kurt Browning, a Republican.

Browning's assurance did nothing to appease critics who said the audit was not thorough enough.

Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, called the investigation "a whitewash" that "papers over" evidence of widespread voting-machine malfunctions.

A spokesman for Jennings -- who lost to Buchanan by 369 votes -- said too few tests were run and that auditors were not allowed to inspect the machines.

"I think this report just confirms the need for a through investigation by outside experts," David Kochman said. "The report has so many parts that are missing."
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-voting2407feb24,0,2075468.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-state

[Botany]

3. Why do these design errors & glitches always help the repugs?

If it was and is truly a random error then the mistakes will fall evenly on
either side of the middle in a bell curve.

[freedomfries]

5. FL: Palm Beach Post joins chorus

"Missing votes in Sarasota not caused by machines"

Dara Kam
Palm Beach Post
February 24, 2007
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/state/epaper/2007/02/24/a4a_election_0224.html

TALLAHASSEE — Neither voting equipment nor election software caused more than 18,000 votes to disappear in a disputed congressional race to replace former U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, according to two audits released Friday by the Florida Secretary of State.

But what went wrong Nov. 7 in the Sarasota County District 13 election is still a mystery, the audits found.
:think:

...
"The team's unanimous opinion is that the iVotronic firmware, including faults that we identified, did not cause or contribute to the CD13 undervote," reads a report authored by a team of eight computer scientists based at Florida State University who conducted the audit.

But the report goes on: "There is no dispute that this undervote is abnormal and unexpected and that it cannot be explained solely by intentional undervoting."

Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning issued a statement Friday saying the audit confirmed that "there is no evidence that suggests the official results are in error."

Jennings and voter advocacy groups, including People for the American Way, mounted a legal battle to gain access to ES&S' source code for the machines.

That lawsuit is awaiting a decision by the 1st District Court of Appeal after a circuit judge ruled Jennings' arguments about the possibility of lost votes were "conjecture" and did not warrant disclosing the trade secrets of the voting machine company.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/state/epaper/2007/02/24/a4a_election_0224.html

[freedomfries]

6. FL: CBS4 top story: "not broken, State says"

District 13 Voting Machines Not Broken, State Says
Machines Involved In Congressional Race Undervote Did Not Malfunction, Audit Claims
One Candidate Praises The Result, The Other Claims 'Whitewash'

CBS4.com
February 23, 2007
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_054210600.html

(CBS4) SARASOTA There are still no explanations as to why Gulf Coast voters cast 18 thousand ballots in last November’s election without casting a vote for congress, but Florida’s Secretary Of State says it’s not because the voting machines were broken.

An audit of touch-screen voting machines at the center of a dispute in a congressional election in Sarasota County found no evidence of malfunction, secretary of state Kurt Browning said Friday.

"Governot Crist and I are committed to ensuring that every Floridian's vote is counted and I am confident that the race in Sarasota County was fair and accurate," said Browning in a statement about the official audit report.

The audit was conducted after more than 18 thousand ballots were cast in Sarasota County without a selection in the District 13 congressional race in November between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings. The state certified Buchanan as the winner by 369 votes, but Jennings sued the state alleging that Sarasota's high "undervote" rate -- which was about 10 percentage points higher than in surrounding counties -- was evidence that voting machines malfunctioned. She also presented testimony from voters who said they had trouble recording their votes on the machines.

Buchanan was seated in Congress in January, but Jennings has yet to concede the race.

Third-party voter advocate groups, along with Jennings, have been asking to examine the machines' source code, or programming chips, to find out whether they malfunctioned. The audit report released Friday said an independent study of the source code of the iVotronic machines used in the election was performed by a Florida State University lab, which found no evidence of malfunction.
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_054210600.html

[freedomfries]

7. FL: BradBlg: "Conflicting conclusions"!

Official Florida Audit On Fl-13

Opinion
Brad Friedman
Bradblog.com
25 February 2007, 11:04 pm

OFFICIAL FLORIDA AUDIT ON FL-13 RELEASED:
Conflicting Conclusions Revealed Despite State Claim of 'No Evidence to Suggest Official Results in Error'

Election Integrity Advocates Contesting Race Call Report 'A Whitewash,' Cite Partisan Makeup, Conflict of Interest, Flawed Test Methods of Audit Commission
Two State Reports Released Late Friday Afternoon Reveal Contested Results Imperiled by Extraordinarily Complex Touch-Screen Voting System...
By Brad Friedman, 23 Feb 2007
From: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4181
Late this afternoon, the state of Florida released a state-commissioned audit report detailing their investigation into the contested U.S. House Election in Florida's 13th Congressional district between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R).

In two lengthy and carefully worded reports, released along with a statement from the new Secretary of State, Kurt Browning (R), the state audit report concludes that "The audit team found no evidence to suggest or conclude that the official certified election results did not reflect the actual votes cast."

A statement issued in response by People for the American Way (PFAW), who, along with VoterAction.org, are representing the voter plaintiffs contesting the election in the state, have described the report as "a whitewash." Their statement, posted in full at the end of this article, points to the partisan makeup and conflicts of interest in the commission empaneled by the state to examine the firmware of the paperless ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines used in the race.

The report "is the result of a flawed process overseen by people with a stake in the outcome," said PFAW President Ralph Neas in the statement, which also details a number of other flaws in the state's "independent" commission.

ADVERTISEMENT
Additionally, The BRAD BLOG has found that details in one of the reports actually contradict both Browning's statement and the conclusion of the state's official audit. The reports, as well, reveal a stultifyingly complex process being employed to manage the most basic point of any election: The simple task of adding one plus one plus one...

An extraordinarily high undervote rate, some 18,000 votes (nearly 15%), was registered by the touch-screen voting machines --- only in Sarasota County --- in the hotly contested election to fill the seat of departing former FL SoS Rep. Katherine Harris (R). The final certified result of last November's election favored Buchanan by just 369 votes. The election is also being contested in the U.S. Congress under the Federal Contested Elections Act.

The one page official statement issued by Browning --- a former state election official and admitted "ardent supporter of touch screen voting systems" (see video here) --- misleadingly states that "the audit team concluded that there is no evidence that suggests the official results are in error."

In fact, the "independent" study commissioned by the state from Florida State University (FSU) seems to indicate otherwise in their report today : "There is no dispute that this undervote is abnormal and unexpected and that it cannot be explained solely by intentional undervoting," the report reads.

Nonetheless, that reported concluded, after carefully worded caveats to explain the limited scope of their part of the investigation :


The team’s unanimous opinion is that the iVotronic firmware, including faults that we identified, did not cause or contribute to the CD13 undervote...Our investigation provided no evidence that an iVotronic software malfunction caused or contributed to the CD13 undervote.
The FSU report, led by Prof. Alec Yasinsac, a partisan Republican seen sporting a "Bush Won" button on the FL Supreme Court stairs during the contested 2000 Presidential election, as reported by the New York Times, also admits that the theory forwarded by Republican Vern Buchanan and his supporters that "voter discontent" was to blame for the extraordinary undervote cannot explain the problems in Sarasota.

"Voter discontent does not explain the differences among the undervote percentages in mail ballots, surrounding counties, and the machine recorded votes," the report details. Mail-in ballots in the same race in the same county had revealed a more reasonable 2.8% undervote versus the abnormal 15% or higher rate reported on the touch-screen voting machines in Sarasota.

Buchanan supporters and others have also forwarded the theory that bad ballot design, placing the Jennings/Buchanan race in a difficult-to-notice spot on the touch-screen system ballot (screenshots here) could have led to the high undervote rate. While the Yasinsac/FSU report suggests their report's "findings are consistent with" the theory, they "do not confirm, the ballot design explanation."

As pointed out in both the PFAW statement and the Yasinsac/FSU study, the team was not allowed full access to the actual voting machines used in the race, nor were they tasked with studying the entirety of what might have gone wrong in the election.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0702/S00231.htm
:patriot:

[freedomfries]

8. FL: PFAW: Report "Whitewashes Evidence of Voting Machine Problems"

Secretary of State’s FL-13 Audit Report Whitewashes Clear Evidence of Voting Machine Problems in Sarasota
Report fails to account for eyewitness testimony pointing to machine malfunction; flawed audit process may be responsible

Press release
pfaw.org
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23597

TALLAHASSEE—An audit report released by the Florida Secretary of State’s office regarding Sarasota County’s November election debacle came under fire shortly after its release today.

“This audit’s a whitewash. It is the result of a flawed process overseen by people with a stake in the outcome, and it will not be the last word on this matter,” said People For the American Way Foundation President Ralph G. Neas. “Something went terribly wrong in Sarasota County last November—and voters have provided credible evidence that widespread voting machine malfunctions were part of the problem. Unfortunately, this report papers over that evidence.”

To see just a few of the scores of Sarasota County voter reports of potential machine problems, click here.

Neas said his organization will continue pushing for answers for Sarasota County voters, both in the courts and in Congress. He also said that the Sarasota debacle and other 2006 election problems have led PFAW Foundation to make election reform its top legislative priority in 2007.

“When 18,000 votes inexplicably disappear, you can’t just pretend nothing went wrong,” Neas said. “People For the American Way Foundation and our voting rights partners will continue with our nonpartisan lawsuit seeking justice for Sarasota County voters, and with our efforts to bring about an investigation into this matter in Congress. Fundamental fairness compels a revote. In addition, we are working to enact reforms, such as the bill offered by Congressman Rush Holt, to ensure that this sort of thing never happens again.”

Neas pointed to numerous flaws in the audit that led to his criticism of the report released today. An overview of those flaws follows.

An overview of the Sarasota audit’s flaws

The state official in charge of the audit was prejudiced against finding problems. David Drury, the state official in charge of the audit, told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that “they’re not going to find anything” before the source code review part of the audit began (12-05). Drury, who is chief of the Florida Bureau of Voting Systems Certification, had a clear conflict of interest: he is the official who certified the machines in the first place and his reputation depends on how they are seen as functioning.

That same official’s competence has been called into question. In addition to questions about his partiality, questions about Drury’s competence have been raised by his pre-election decision to authorize the distribution of uncertified voting machines. (See a complaint filed by the Florida Fair Elections Coalition here.)

The audit tested just ten voting machines—only five of which were used on Election Day. Approximately 1,500 iVotronic machines were deployed in Sarasota County on Election Day, but the parallel testing portion of the audit—the only part where machines were evaluated—involved only ten machines (AP 11-22). With such a small sample size, malfunctioning machines could easily have been missed.

The audit’s lack of independence was scrutinized and criticized by the press. The Palm Beach Post weighed in with an editorial calling for a more “credible” and “impartial” audit (11-22). A St. Petersburg Times news headline asked if this was “An audit to nowhere?” (11-27). And Miami Herald writer Fred Grimm wrote, “No one really thinks paperless, virtual audit that begins today will find 18,300 votes that disappeared” (11-28).

The expert appointed to lead the source code review was a partisan paper trail opponent. Alec Yasinsac, who led the part of the audit reviewing the software that runs the voting machines, wore a button reading “Bush Won” while working against a recount in the 2000 presidential race. Yasinsac is an avowed opponent of voting machine paper trails and cannot be considered independent.
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23597

[freedomfries]

9. FL: Re-Post: The Fight for Sarasota Voters (video)

The Fight For Sarasota Voters
Sarasota County Voters Offer Public Testimony about Voting Machine Problems

On Thursday, November 16, People For the American Way Foundation held a hearing to give Sarasota County voters an opportunity to provide public testimony about the voting machine problems they encountered.

Representatives of PFAW Foundation, the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, Voter Action, Common Cause and the ACLU of Florida sat on a panel that took testimony from voters. Here are just a few of the stories voters provided about the problems they encountered while trying to vote:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=23180

[freedomfries]

11. FL: Ed Felten: "Sarasota voting machines insecure"

Sarasota Voting Machines Insecure

Ed Felten, Princeton University
VoteTrustUSA.org
February 24, 2007
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2284&Itemid=51

This article was posted at Ed Felten's blog "Freedom to Tinker" and is reposted here with permission of the author.

The technical team commissioned by the State of Florida to study the technology used in the ill-fated Sarasota election has released its report.

One revelation from the study is that the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines are terribly insecure. The machines are apparently susceptible to viruses, and there are many bugs a virus could exploit to gain entry or spread:

We found many instances of . Misplaced trust in the election definition file can be found throughout the iVotronic software. We found a number of buffer overruns of this type. The software also contains array out-of-bounds errors, integer overflow vulnerabilities, and other security holes.

The equation is simple: sloppy software + removable storage = virus vulnerability. We saw the same thing with the Diebold touchscreen voting system.

Another example of poor security is in the passwords that protect crucial operations such as configuring the voting machine and modifying its software. There are separate passwords for different operations, but the system has a single backdoor that allows all of the passwords to be bypassed by an adversary who can learn or guess a one-byte secret, which is easily guessed since there are only 256 possibilities. (p. 67) For example, an attacker who gets private access to the machine for just a few minutes can apparently use the backdoor to install malicious software onto a machine.

Though the machines’ security is poor and needs to be fixed before it is used in another election, I agree with the study team that the undervotes were almost certainly not caused by a security attack. The reason is simple: only a brainless attacker would cause undervotes. An attack that switched votes from one candidate to another would be more effective and much harder to detect.

So if it wasn’t a security attack, what was the cause of the undervotes?

Experience teaches that systems that are insecure tend to be unreliable as well — they tend to go wrong on their own even if nobody is attacking them. Code that is laced with buffer overruns, array out-of-bounds errors, integer overflow errors, and the like tends to be flaky. Sporadic undervotes are the kind of behavior you would expect to see from a flaky voting technology.

The study claims to have ruled out reliability problems as a cause of the undervotes, but their evidence on this point is weak, and I think the jury is still out on whether voting machine malfunctions could be a significant cause of the undervotes. I’ll explain why, in more detail, in the next post.
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2284&Itemid=51

[freedomfries]

10. FL: Full text of state team ES&S iVotronic audit

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/FinalAudRepSAIT.pdf

[autorank]

12. They issued a an unreliable audit? "I'm shocked!" K&R

"Say it's not so!"

[Kurovski]

13. K&R, and thank you, freedomfries.

:thumbsup: