This is an update to yesterday’s post on Diebold’s handy one-touch deletion of e-voting machine logs. As I posted in the comments of yesterday’s piece, I spoke with Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian D. Newby. He assured me that he was aware of the issues with Diebold systems and that Johnson County uses an updated version of the GEMS software, version 1.18.24.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the problems mentioned are not confined to the older versions of the vote tabulation software. In reality, every Diebold/Premier Election Systems machine that is being used to vote in the United States (optical “scantron” and touch-screen), not just here in Johnson County, KS, does not log critical information such as when files are intentionally deleted from the system or unintentionally erased. In plain English, the Diebold/Premier system doesn’t keep track of the paper trail of your vote and has a one-touch delete button for anyone to destroy any record of them not keeping that paper trail.
This all came to light in a hearing earlier this week in California. You can view the video of that hearing after the jump including this choice snippet, the only question about the logs, 45 minutes into the video (yes, you can jump ahead):
“The failure to log certain system events,” [California Deputy Secretary of State Chris] Reynolds said, “I think you mentioned that in subsequent versions of this, these things have been corrected?”
“Uh no, not . . . not yet,” said Justin Bales, western regional manager for Premier/Diebold.Wired.com
Basically, if you vote in Johnson County, KS (or any of the more than 30 other states that use Diebold/Premier systems), you should have ZERO confidence that your vote is being counted. There is no transparency in your elections and you should demand that your election officials implement a plan to fix your electoral system before anyone “votes” again.
For those of you in JOCO, I can tell you that Commissioner Newby is very personable and called me back within a couple hours to answer my questions about the system. He is an award-winning election official, so let’s hope he holds up to that past standard and responds to the concerns of his citizenry. After all, transparent, fair elections are the cornerstone of a (d)emocratic society. That’s what we want to pretend to be, right?
Contact Brian D. Newby, Johnson County Election Commissioner, at (913) 715-6850 or at brian.newby@jocoelection.org or Assistant Election Commissioner Karen Browning at (913) 715-6815.
While you are at it, you might want to let the Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh know that he should de-certify these voting systems. He can be reached at Ron_Thornburgh@kssos.org or call him at (785) 296-4564.
#1 by Courtney on March 22, 2009 - 12:14 am
Patrick, righteous reporting man! And as a reminder to everyone, there is an election coming up in JoCo in just a few weeks, so this isn’t necessarily an issue everyone can pretend doesn’t exist for the next 4 years.
#2 by Patrick T. Lafferty on March 26, 2009 - 10:44 pm
Thanks, Courtney! This is so important and the word just isn’t getting out there. Tell all your friends!
#3 by Brian D. Newby on April 2, 2009 - 8:29 pm
Hi, Patrick.
I just stumbled on this site. First, thank you for typing some kind things about me.
I don’t have your number anymore or your email, but please email or call me. I’d like to meet with you and give you a more in-depth view of things. I’m not sure that any of that would change your mind (I hope it would) but I certainly don’t want our system to be viewed as non-transparent.
I have election worker training on Friday and Saturday and meetings on Monday, but maybe you could even come out on election day or night.
#4 by Patrick T. Lafferty on April 9, 2009 - 3:04 pm
Brian, sorry for the late reply. I was away from the blog for a few days and just saw this comment. I really do appreciate the concern you show with having a free and fair election. My issue does not stem from a distrust of you and your staff in particular, but with any system that cannot be independently verified and that has no tamper-proof paper trail.
Therefore, there is no amount of assurance you can provide that can take the place of a completely transparent election. That can only be achieved by using simple electoral processes and open-source counting methods. That can mean something as simple as colored sheets of paper signifying the different candidates which are then counted by hand (not my first choice) to something as complex as open-source software that reads scantron (not touch-screen) ballots and prints receipts for each voter and reports for you and your staff, while allowing the safeguard of the actual, physical ballot and tamper-proof, verifiable data.
I’m sorry I missed the chance to get an in-depth look at how you run an election. I may take you up on that offer in the future. I hope by then you have completely overhauled the electoral process in Johnson County so that the voters you represent will be able to rest assured that their votes are being counted and they will have the means to independently verify those results. That should be the goal of every electoral official.
Anything less is simply untrustworthy.
Thank you for taking the time to write and I hope you keep reading and commenting at Fortuna Faveat!
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