Iowa Voters

Dubuque Representative Pam Jochum has filed two bills that would open Iowa elections to more voters and more candidates.

HSB 46 allows voters to register at the polls. This change more than any other would boost turnout. The states that have it now–including Wisconsin and Minnesota–have the highest rates of voting.

Today she introduced a bill that takes ownership of campaigns away from private donors by financing state campaigns from the public treasury. Sort of the way some institutions pay people to come for a job interview, Jochum would pay the campaign expenses of applicants for public office.

In criticizing the bill on Iowa public radio, Senator Mark Zieman said it would be the “incumbent protection act,” because challengers could not outspend incumbents as a way of overcoming the incumbent’s advantage.

Jochum countered that incumbents are already protected by their superior ability to raise money and get news coverage. She noted that over 90% incumbents get re-elected now.

If incumbents win under either system, I’ll take incumbents who are not in hock to contributors.

Not enough poll workers? Why not draft some, same as we draft jurors?

They already do it in Omaha and it works “brilliantly,” according to election director Dave Phipps.

Now Ohio’s new Secretary of State wants to do it there. Here’s two accounts of the proposal, containing different details: NY Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

An odd bill was introduced this week in both chambers of the IA LEGIS. It looks like a paper trail bill. Most of the usual backers of paper trails have quickly signed up for it. But it has a very serious, indeed fatal, flaw.

Most of the words in the bill come from last year’s paper trail bill which passed the Senate 48-0. Some words were added . . .and some others are missing. Hmmmmm. The revisions change the substance of the bill. In fact the revisions destroy the intent of the bill passed by the Senate last year.

The bill creates a new section of the Iowa Code, requiring a paper trail for users of paperless touchscreens to verify. BUT, it gives this paper no standing in the event it is actually needed for an audit or a recount or to recover lost data from a computer crash.

Elsewhere the words added to a different section of the code have played the trick of awarding standing to something else–the mysterious “electronic ballot image” that lurks in the motherboard or in the smart card or on the hard drive or wherever it is that 1’s and 0’s lurk while waiting to become official documents that can decide disputed elections.

Here is the offending part of the bill.

2 8 b. Store an electronic image of each ballot cast separate from the ballot tabulation function, which ballot image shall be reproduced on paper and considered as evidence in the case of a recount, manual audit, or machine malfunction. This printed ballot image shall be the official record for use in a recount.

This bill requires a voter-verified paper audit trail, and then requires that a “printed ballot image” voters have NOT verified be used for recounts, audits, and machine malfunctions. The verified papers would be used for nothing.

Only the vendors will win if this becomes law. They get to sell printers that will cause headaches, fool voters, and serve no useful purpose whatsoever, since the VVPAT’s they print will never be used. We get disposable paper trails. We’ll be the only state to have them.

And think about this: This bill would require using a record printed from a malfunctioning machine to check the accuracy of the malfunctioning machine. This makes no sense.

Some of the sponsors of this bill have realized the flaw in the bill. Contact your legislators and point out to them:

- the importance of having a paper ballot the voter has actually verified
- the uselessness of requiring such a paper ballot unless it has legal standing
- the fact that if a machine malfunctions, its electronic ballots may be corrupt.

Iowa should dump touchscreens altogether. Some counties already have a better system. Every county should follow Polk, Woodbury, Webster and the others (even tiny Van Buren) who got it right the first time.

Two high ranking county election workers in Ohio have been found guilty of rigging the recount in 2004. They were required to recount three per cent of their presidential votes. If any discrepencies were found, a full recount would be conducted.

So to make sure they avoided the full recount

the employees broke the law when they worked behind closed doors three days before the public Dec. 16, 2004, recount to pick ballots they knew would not cause discrepancies when checked by hand so they could avoid a lengthier, more expensive hand recount of all votes.

Remember how Diebold claims its election software doesn’t really need to be secure because there is no such thing as dishonest election workers?

What a great acronym–VOICE–Voter Owned Iowa Clean Elections. (Actually it was my idea.)

You can help Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) lobby to get our VOICE back from the monied special interests who now own our elections. They are having a lobby day next Monday, January 29 from 11 am to 3 pm. Contact them for more details at iowacci@iowacci.org and visit their website at http://www.voterownediowa.org/

California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein has begun inquiring about the so-called independent lab that has tested all of Iowa’s high tech voting machines. Thus has the concern of voters (driven by computer scientists, activists, and bloggers) reached at last to the top of the Washington scene.

In a letter to the Election Assistance Commission, Feinstein asked

why the Commission failed to notify election officials or the public about a serious problem with Ciber Labs of Colorado, one of three major labs that tests much of the nation’s software used in voting equipment.

Senator Feinstein also asked for information regarding what went wrong at Ciber Labs to warrant its loss of accreditation.

You can read the Senator’s entire letter here. It’s a virtual FIOA demand from the Senate Rules Committee to the EAC.

Meanwhile another prominent Senator has taken up another favorite topic of IowaVoters: the public financing of election campaigns. Dick Durbin of Illinois will propose federal legislation for clean elections similar to those now held in Maine and Arizona for state offices.

Congressman Steve King (R-Xenophobia) has greeted the winners of the November election with a lawsuit, saying they should not help voters who are deficient in English. Press coverage–like usual–amounts to “he said-she said” on the meaning of the law. So here’s the law, followed by more comments:

1.18 IOWA ENGLISH LANGUAGE REAFFIRMATION.
1. The general assembly of the state of Iowa finds and declares the following:
a. The state of Iowa is comprised of individuals from different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. The state of Iowa encourages the assimilation of Iowans into Iowa’s rich culture.
b. Throughout the history of Iowa and of the United States, the common thread binding individuals of differing backgrounds together has been the English language.
c. Among the powers reserved to each state is the power to establish the English language as the official language of the state, and otherwise to promote the English language within the state, subject to the prohibitions enumerated in the Constitution of the United States and in laws of the state.
2. In order to encourage every citizen of this state to become more proficient in the English language, thereby facilitating participation in the economic, political, and cultural activities of this state and of the United States, the English language is hereby declared to be the official language of the state of Iowa.
3. Except as otherwise provided for in subsections 4 and 5, the English language shall be the language of government in Iowa. All official documents, regulations, orders, transactions, proceedings, programs, meetings, publications, or actions taken or issued, which are conducted or regulated by, or on behalf of, or representing the state and all of its political subdivisions shall be in the English language.
For the purposes of this section, “official action” means any action taken by the government in Iowa or by an authorized officer or agent of the government in Iowa that does any of the following:
a. Binds the government.
b. Is required by law.
c. Is otherwise subject to scrutiny by either the press or the public.
4. This section shall not apply to:
a. The teaching of languages.
b. Requirements under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
c. Actions, documents, or policies necessary for trade, tourism, or commerce.
d. Actions or documents that protect the public health and safety.
e. Actions or documents that facilitate activities pertaining to compiling any census of populations.
f. Actions or documents that protect the rights of victims of crimes or criminal defendants.
g. Use of proper names, terms of art, or phrases from languages other than English.
h. Any language usage required by or necessary to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America or the Constitution of the State of Iowa.
i. Any oral or written communications, examinations, or publications produced or utilized by a driver’s license station, provided public safety is not jeopardized.
5. Nothing in this section shall be construed to do any of the following:
a. Prohibit an individual member of the general assembly or officer of state government, while performing official business, from communicating through any medium with another person in a language other than English, if that member or officer deems it necessary or desirable to do so.
b. Limit the preservation or use of Native American languages, as defined in the federal Native American Languages Act of 1992.
c. Disparage any language other than English or discourage any person from learning or using a language other than English.

Notice these words in section 4h:

“4. This section shall not apply to: h. Any language usage required by or necessary to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America or the Constitution of the State of Iowa.

There’s an even bigger loophole in section 5:

” 5. Nothing in this section shall be construed to do any of the following:
a. Prohibit an . . . officer of state government, while performing official business, from communicating . . . in a language other than English, if that member. . .deems it . . .desirable to do so.

To my cynical eye this law was mainly a way pander to King’s base. It has little, if any, practical effect, given the execptions in sections 4 and 5.

King (R) raised this objection last fall and Attorney General Miller (D) backed Culver (D). We can be cynical about that, too: two Ds sticking together.

King also raised a similar point during Congressional debate on the Voting Rights Act last summer. He lost then as well.

State election director Sandy Steinbach reports that all of the voting machines in Iowa were tested by Ciber laboratory. Ciber has now been barred from further testing by the federal Election Assistance Commission(EAC). The EAC action was taken in July but kept secret until the New York Times broke the story last week. According to the Times, Ciber was suspended because it “was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.”

Steinbach was until recently an overseer of Ciber and two other test labs(ITAs), in that she directed the volunteer voting technology board for the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED). The NASED board was supplanted by the EAC last summer. Steinbach said her NASED board over the years

noted deficiencies in ITA reports and returned reports to the test labs for additional documentation on numerous occasions. . . .NASED . . .[had] neither the authority nor the resources to go in and audit the labs

Steinbach characterizes the 2006 decision of the EAC to bar Ciber this way:

These labs have to, first, be certified by [the National Institute for Standards and Technology] and then comply with the EAC criteria. These criteria contain
extensive administrative requirements as well as technical requirements. . . . The reason that the Ciber did not receive EAC certification was the administrative requirements. Ciber’s technical capability is not in question.

Ciber may indeed be technically savvy, as Steinbach believes. But if they weren’t documenting that they did the testing they said they were doing, well, then maybe they weren’t actually doing it. Maybe those savvy techicians were busy elsewhere since NASED had no way to double check. Stranger things have happened.

Software tester John Washburn suspects Ciber’s work, too. He cites a list of questionable work by Ciber and discusses the certification process that Ciber flunked. John Gideon has even more on the EAC decision.

More than once (in Pocahontas, in Fort Dodge) I personally heard voting machine advocates tell an audience that touchsreen software was tested to the N-th degree, even “line by line”.

Only a couple federally sanctioned labs ever tested software in voting machines. Now comes news that one of them (Ciber) has been blocked from further such work because of poor quality control.

Score another point for the critics of current voting machines and the way they get evaluated. The score is about 183 to 0 now.

It’s a bit of a relief to hear that our new Secretary of State took office today promising to work for a paper trail in Iowa voting booths.

To be sure, it was his main campaign promise. But his appointment of Linda Langenberg as his deputy in charge of elections raised doubts regarding his committment. In October Langenberg accused voting machine critics of practicing a “form of terrorism.”

Mauro also was quoted as indicating the paper trail “allow[s] election officials to audit results.” Let’s hope he means what this should mean: That he wants to check the paper results against the computer count in a routine way every election.

Meanwhile real reform advocates have moved beyond the paper trail solution. Election officials have opposed paper trails as unworkable and reform advocates are adopting that view. Reformers say real paper ballots are the only reliable ballot, whereas officials are still largely content to do nothing about the problem they have bought in to.

So watch out, Secretary Mauro: Paper “trails” may be yesterday’s news.