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Champaign County Election Equipment Recommendation Committee
report
J.B. Nicholson-Owens jbn@forestfield.org
First posted on 2004-09-06 to the Prairiegreens mailing list.
I am the delegate from the Prairiegreens (the local Green Party
chapter) to the Champaign County Election Equipment Recommendation
Committee. This unelected committee features people from a variety of
political groups and civic organizations in Champaign county. We will
make a recommendation to the County Board so they will know what
voting machines to purchase. Champaign county will use punch cards in
November 2004 but we will switch to electronic voting machines for the
following elections.
The elected County Board has the real power in this relationship;
they will ultimately decide what machines to buy. It is my hope that
the Election Equipment Recommendation Committee will make a good
recommendation and that the County Board will follow it.
This Committee meets monthly (with three exceptions: October and
November to make time for voting preparations, and one month in the
summer to accommodate people's vacations).
What follows is my latest report to the Prairiegreens about the
Committee's latest meeting.
Executive summary
- Consolidation of polling places is underway. Schools pose an interesting dilemma.
- RFPs are not yet available for us to review.
- Hart InterCivic's "eSlate" demo was a bust.
Introduction
On August 31, 2004 I attended another meeting of the committee
which will recommend voting machine equipment to the County Board. We
have been considering machines presented to us by "approved vendors"
— a short list of vendors that meet state approval criterion
which we had no power to set. At the meeting we heard from a surprise
candidate, a corporation we had no idea would be submitting for
Illinois' approval — Hart InterCivic. We also received a
preliminary report on polling place consolidation.
Requests for Proposals
We had planned on receiving copies of Request for Proposals (RFPs).
RFPs are a summary of what we want the machine to do and they specify
some contract highlights on how the machine should work. They are not
contracts, but they provide a useful guideline to illustrate what
we're looking for. RFPs come from Mark Shelden's office, go through
some kind of group editing and revision by the recommendation
committee, and then be sent to the various vendors who will ostensibly
make sure that their proposals meet our criteria.
Electronic Voting Machine Installation and Budget
The machines will be installed by March 2006 which complies with
the "Help
America Vote Act" (HAVA). The budget for the machine purchases is
$400,000 to $500,000. Polling place consolidation (more on this
below) will help save about $250,000 (meaning that we can't afford to
place electronic HAVA-compliant machines in extant polling places).
This means spending about $5,000 to $6,000 per polling place.
Polling Place Consolidation
Three members of the committee, Guy Hampel, Margaret Olsen, and
Mark Shelden worked on consolidating precincts. The goal of polling
place consolidation was to reduce the number of polling places so that
we could afford to fill them with electronic voting machines that meet
federal requirements. HAVA requires that the first federal election
after January 1, 2006 must use HAVA-compliant voting equipment. If we
are to meet this requirement and come within budget, we need to reduce
the number of machines we buy and that means reducing the number of
polling places in Champaign county.
The number of election judges won't change. In each polling place
we will try to use one vote-counting machine, one direct recording
machine (for the blind), and multiple optical scan paper ballot
machines (for everyone else). Blind users are welcome to not use the
direct recording machine if they wish. I recommend all voters use
only voter-verified paper ballot machines. We'll buy 88 machines
total after consolidating districts.
Polling place conundrum
School gymnasiums are a double-edged sword when it comes to
deciding where the polling places will be. They provide an attractive
facility because of their size, electrification,
wheelchair-accessibility, location, and parking, but they present a
dilemma for sex offenders. Sex offenders can't go within a certain
distance of the school and yet that's where the polling place may be.
Options for solving this include not having a school serve as a
polling place (this requires a viable alternative to be a valid
option), possibly having someone supervise them voting (but not
entering the booth because anonymous voting is important) somehow
inconspicuously walking them into and out of the area where they could
normally not go (is this even possible?), taking the voting machine to
the sex offender instead of taking the sex offender to the polling
place (which requires non-disclosure agreements to be done if the sex
offender's voting location is not public information).
Hart InterCivic
To our surprise, there was a latecomer submission in voting
machines. At previous meetings, Hart InterCivic was not one of the
corporations providing demonstrations of their machines. We heard
from Diebold (via Fidlar, their approved vendor for Illinois) and
ES&S (Election Systems and Software). Now we'll hear from another
big name in the voting machine industry. Hart InterCivic is currently
seeking Illinois state certification.
The Hart InterCivic "eSlate" system consists of two machines which
interact via a large cable. The first machine is called a "Judge"
machine which costs $2500. The second machine is the eSlate which
(coupled with the other necessary parts like booth wall hardware, a
paper trail printer, and a battery) costs $2700.
The election judge uses the Judge machine to set up the eSlate
machine in the booth. The Judge machine generates a 4-digit numeric
code which is printed on a slip of paper. The election judge hands
this paper to the voter. The voter has a predetermined number of
minutes to find an unused booth and input the 4-digit code correctly.
The 4-digit code unlocks the eSlate machine and loads in the proper
ballot style. Then, and only then, can the voter navigate through the
ballot with the eSlate machine. Complicated enough?
The eSlate system poses multiple problems:
- It appears to be a DRE (Direct Recording Equipment) without a
voter-verified paper ballot. Lawrence Leach, the Hart InterCivic rep
who demoed the machine for us, said that they could add a sealed log
printer which would let the user see a hardcopy that echoes their vote
but can never be touched by the voter. Like my reaction to Diebold,
who promised a hardcopy add-on, I say if it's not demoed for us it
doesn't count.
- The input mechanism is a wheel you spin around like a paddle on a
video game (think "Tempest") or a jog/shuttle dial on some video
equipment. Even I had a problem navigating with this, I can't imagine
someone who is computer illiterate using this in a reasonable time
frame on a busy voting day.
- The Judge machine could easily be mistaken for a vote monitor --
it would be impossible to convince some voters that the election
judges weren't monitoring and/or altering their vote, assuming we
could verify this wasn't true.
- Even if the hardcopy is accurate and voter-verified, if we're
relying on the electronic count we subject ourselves to the same
problem as described at the top of http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
which is Bev Harris' website. This problem can only be fixed with a
hand count of voter-verified paper ballots (which I think we should
have regardless of what machines we get -- anyone who can't wait a few
days for the results simply needs to be more patient).
Alternative inputs for the eSlate
The eSlate can also use a pair of "jelly switches" which are a
simple pair of colored large buttons. You press one to navigate the
ballot by moving the cursor one way through the choices and the other
jelly switch to select a choice. The controls are simple but their
lack of expressive capability makes them slow to use. The hassle
involved discourages voters from voting for write-in candidates:
Imagine typing a write-in candidate's name with a virtual keyboard
where your only controls are "next letter" and "select letter". Now
imagine if a candidate with a long name like "Blagojevich" was a
write-in candidate. The eSlate can work with a sip and puff interface
which paraplegics can use. Hart InterCivic is working on a carrying
device to allow curbside voting with the eSlate.
The ballots are all stored electronically and so, like any DRE
without a voter-verified paper ballot, they are completely
untrustworthy. It appears that the votes are stored in a PCMCIA card
(those of you who have laptop computers might be able to mount the
storage device and load the votes or store something else on the
card).
Hart InterCivic owns all the code to the system, and this would
ordinarily be a significant first step in negotiating for a free
software license to the voting machines source code. But there are
many show-stopper flaws, most notably a lack of demonstrated
voter-verified printed ballot, so I don't think it's wise to purchase
these machines.
By now I've taken more than enough of your time on this matter. If
you would like more information on the eSlate system, the demo I saw,
or any other aspect of our meetings, please feel free to write me.
Copyright 2004 J.B. Nicholson-Owens
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