Monday June 7, 2004
Please help educate the League of Women Voters
By Bev Harris, with Robert Dean and Jane Dean

As members of the League of Women Voters, we are concerned that the League has become perhaps the single biggest obstacle to getting proper auditing of elections. Had the League's national office acted promptly to learn about this issue, legislation would already have been passed to enact not only a paper ballot, but to require the four audits which must become part of every election. One of the main obstacles to legislation is the League's strange position against (you heard me) -- AGAINST -- voter verified paper ballots.

Many local League chapters are aghast at the peculiar stance taken the League's current national leadership. This weekend, in Washington D.C., local chapters may have the opportunity to enact a vote of no confidence in the leadership of the League of Women Voters. Now is a very good time to educate every League of Women Voters member in the USA.

This week we have a unique opportunity to persuade the League of Women Voters to change their stance. Attend the meeting if you can. Pass out this information to everyone. Get over to the Washington Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Avenue, Washington D.C. on June 12, 13, 14 and 15 and pass out the Educate the League (Word document) to everyone you know. Here is a LWF E-voting flyer (one-page, pdf). These materials were designed by Bob and Jane Dean, specifically to educate the League of Women Voters. Also give these materials to your local press, and to national and Washington D.C. media.

If you are not a member of the League of Women Voters, join the organization and make your voice heard. Bev Harris is a member. Dr. Barbara Simons, who helped to derail the ill-thought-out Pentagon "SERVE" project for Internet voting, is a member. You, too, can become a member. The Deans are members.

We appeal to the membership to raise this issue at our National Convention. Bring it to the floor for discussion, reconsideration, and reversal.

At its Convention in June 2004, the League Membership Can and Must Reverse the Organization’s Current Official Position

By Jane and Bob Dean
League of Women Voters - Lancaster, PA Chapter

One of America’s greatest organizations for the promotion of democracy has recently taken an astonishing position that seriously threatens the future of voting in our nation. Our own League of Women’s Voters now officially opposes the only effective means of guarding against electronic voting fraud and abuse. Our LWV favors electronic voting machines, while opposing vital safeguards. This position actually undermines the sanctity of democratic elections.

We appeal to the membership to raise this issue at our National Convention. Bring it to the floor for discussion, reconsideration, and reversal.

Background

All of us know that computers are far from perfect. They have bugs. They can be invaded by hackers. They can magically and mysteriously lose important information we thought had been safely stored away. Since the Florida voting debacle in 2000, states have been rushing to install Electronic Voting Machines. Electronic voting machines are simply computers with voting programs.

When you vote using most DRE touch-screen computers, no physical record is kept. Your vote disappears into the black box of bits, bytes, mega-this and giga-that. From then on, the only people who really know whether your vote is counted correctly are the machine manufacturers, programmers and hackers who may or may not have a vested interest in the outcome.

Software can never be pronounced absolutely free of bugs or safe from potential hackers. Every few weeks, Microsoft-the world’s leading software company-announces a “fix” for Windows, the biggest selling software in the world. We often hear on the news about newly found, dangerous security flaw in Windows. Why is that? Is Microsoft incompetent? No. But software is by nature profoundly complex. Errors can be overlooked for years. Security gaps can be easily missed-even by teams of experts. Even more ominous, inserting just a couple of characters in a program is all that’s needed to allow a hacker to manipulate the outcome during an election.

The Solution

Virtually all experts agree that the only way to make sure a computer voting machine works correctly is by carefully evaluating its results. That means a physical printout of each voter’s confirmed choices must be locked away, and then there must be routine, robust comparisons, or audits, to test these paper results against selected machines at each election. This system of safeguards is known as the Voter Verified Paper Ballots (VVPB) solution.

Computer and voting experts universally agree that Voter Verified Paper Ballots are the only viable solution. In fact, the only people really opposed to voter verified paper ballots appear to be the machine manufacturers, like Diebold, Inc., and the League of Women Voters!

The League’s Current Position is Incorrect

On it’s web site, the leadership of the LWV has posted several reasons for opposing voter verified paper ballots. Let’s review each of the points posted on the national web site League of Women Voters National Web Site.

"LWV:
The VVPB requirement is costly. It will slow down replacement of existing machines.
The Facts:
The cost of putting a printer in each voting booth is minimal. In cases where manufacturers have marketed uncertified and/or flawed software, consumer protection laws can be used to force manufacturers to pay for retrofitting. There need be no slowing down of machine modernization if the LWV will support the voter verified paper ballot system, rather than obstructing it. Americans demand a voting system that is safe, accurate, and trustworthy. These qualities are more important than either speed or cost.

LWV:
A voting machine can be programmed to produce misleading ballot printouts.
The Facts:
That's why it must be a voter verified paper ballot. It is absolutely true that a machine can be programmed to produce misleading ballot printouts, which is why you cannot use "ballot facsimiles" (printing out individual paper "ballots" after voters have gone home) to audit the vote. Voters must actually review their paper ballot to make sure it correctly shows her or his vote. We believe American voters are capable of reading a paper printout, and verifying that it is accurate.

LWV:
VVPB advocates say the paper confirmations can be counted, but paper ballots are notoriously difficult to recount accurately. And there is a long history of lost, mangled and manipulated paper ballots.
The Facts: Nonsense. Paper ballots were the main way Americans voted for 200 years. Almost half of American precincts still use paper ballots. Voter Verified Paper Ballots are needed: (1) for recounts in extremely close races, and (2) for routine machine audits to assure the accuracy of the computer count. Also, if computers are used to print ballots which voters then verify, legibility problems will be eliminated.

LWV:
VVPBs “undermine voting access” by requiring the voter to confirm the ballot printout, which means the voter must be able to read.
The Facts:
The minor inconvenience of requiring assistance for those who cannot read must never stand in the way of safeguarding democracy for all Americans.

Note from Bev Harris: But throwing away paper ballots is not the best recourse for visually impaired voters anyway. In Rhode Island, and in Europe, tactile ballots are used for the visually impaired. These are simply ballot styles which allow the blind voter to feel his way to voting privately, and — much better than relying solely on touch screens — they allow visually impaired voters to vote either at home, as absentees, or at the polling place, in both cases, in privacy. The federations for the blind have never objected to tactile ballot systems.

The National Federation of the Blind has, however, been promoting unauditable paperless voting on DREs, without disclosing that other methods are available. This organization did not mention to the League of Women Voters or to local voting officials that it took a $1 million contribution from Diebold Inc., and that it has formally announced that it is in partnership with Diebold on ATM machines. This failure to disclose alternate methods, when combined with nondisclosure of fiduciary relationships with a vendor, should be considered by the League in making a decision to rescind its earlier opposition to paper ballots.

Tactile ballots are cheaper, more auditable, equally private, and more accessible to visually impaired voters, since they can be used absentee, and some blind voters have difficulty driving themselves to polling places.

It is time to act now to correct the stance taken by the League of Women Voters.


Jane Dean is a designer and President of Dean Design/Marketing Group, Inc.
Robert Dean is a software developer, and President of Beacon Technology, USA, LLC