Iowa Voters

No, I don’t have any inside information about the Republican’s sending an S-O-S because they can’t find a candidate to run for Secretary of State. But how bad is this?

Council Bluffs businessman Jeff Ballenger said he is “pretty confident” he will not run as the Republican Party candidate for Iowa Secretary of State. . . .

A member of that committee contacted Ballenger a few days ago and expressed the committee’s confidence he could be a good candidate, Ballenger said.

Ballenger was a political unknown when he ran for Congress in 2002. He ended up third in a four-person race, finishing ahead of a longtime state lawmaker from Sioux City.

“They (the committee) said I had the energy and the ability to win the secretary of state race, and they seemed to think I still have name recognition,” Ballenger said.

Name recognition? Jeff Ballenger???? Who’s that?

Ballenger evidently saw through that flattery.

Republicans need a candidate for Iowa Secretary of State, the chief elections official in Iowa. Their “placeholder” candidate has dropped out after winning a contested primary. There must be some skeletons in his closet!!

The new candidate should . . .

A. Understand computers at least to the level of the old adage “Garbage in, garbage out.” In other words, a healthy dose of skepticism is in order. Computers can be programmed honestly, erroneously, maliciously, and surrepticiously. Hackers have caused trouble for the Department of Defense and for Microsoft. It is only a matter of time before they steal votes. Maybe they already have. This means any current county auditor who uses paperless voting equipment is disqualified for being too trusting.

B. Believe in auditing elections even if it means exposing his/her own errors. This means we need something worth auditing, namely a written ballot verified by the voter. Audits should be regular, widespread, and random.

C. Insist on public control of all aspects of the election. That includes the software that runs any computers and the maintenance of any hardware that the state or county uses to facilitate election administration. Control should not be in private hands, whether corporate hands, candidate hands, or criminal hands.

Those three steps will go far to make elections transparent. Now as for making them open, a good candidate will

D. Advocate for a new registration regime for poltical parties. Iowa law prohibits registration for any party except Republican or Democrat. The Green Party currently has a lawsuit pending with Secretary Culver on this matter.

E. Advocate for public funding for campaigns. We all know that “who ever pays the piper calls the tune.” The public should pay the campaign expenses so that we can call the tunes when the legislature convenes.

F. Advocate for instant runoff voting (IRV) in Iowa’s non-partisan races for mayor. Currently a second runoff election is ordered if a candidate fails to get a majority in the first round. This is expensive and needless. The IRV system can do it all at once.

Who can be this candidate?

You read it here first. In my first week of blogging I called Chuck Allison a “placeholder” in his weak bid to be Secretary of State. That was back in January.

Now he has quit the race, after having inexplicably defeated a qualified candidate (Robert Dopf) in the June primary. It”s pretty ironic that a man running to oversee the state’s elections would defraud the voters by pulling out of the race AFTER he has won a contested primary. I’m glad he won’t be overseeing our elections. Soon we’ll see just whose place he has been holding. The Republicans have until August 18 to slip in a new candidate.

Gasp! What would the Register’s gardeners think? Here’s a candidate who lost his election by a landslide but still challenged it. And he “won” a significant victory in doing so.

He won (a) more voting machines for underserved precincts, (b) better pollworker training, (c) better security after the ballots are cast, and even more stuff–basic stuff–that make me think they must have run a pretty sloppy election in that Indiana county.

Roses for him.

Thanks to John Gideon whose Daily Voting News service tipped me to this story, as it has to many other stories where he went unthanked.

Mike Mauro, candidate for Iowa Secretary of State, “left some opening” for tougher ID requirements at the polls, according to a reporter with the Marshalltown Times-Republican. Reporter Ken Black wrote about Mauro’s appearance there Tuesday.

Mauro said such an ID card would have to be provided at no charge to the voter. But he said it was unnecessary to require ID cards because pollworkers can already card voters when they deem it advisable. Chapter 49.77 (3)

People worried about unauthorized voting should look beyond the very rare person who tries it at the polls. They should worry about the fraudster who knows computers better than the election workers do. He can cast many unauthorized votes and cover his trail better than anyone who foolishly signs in as someone he is not, or registers under false pretenses.

It’s not the voters, it’s the technology that ought to worry us. The fact that ID cards get discussed at campaign stops whereas voting machines do not also worries me.

How bizarre! Two county recorders ousted by newcomers in two elections run on the same type of voting equipment on June 6?

Well, no. We know the Pottawattamie recorder actually won his election. The Pottawattamie people saw their mistake on election night. It affected every race on the ballot. It was easy to spot, perhaps because long shot Sal Mohammed was also getting lots of votes when he got so few in every other county.

The ballot scanners had been set up incorrectly.

But now Polk County’s recorder is claiming his defeat may be explained the same way. Why this claim took over two weeks to surface is only one of the mysteries here. Another is whether bad blood between the defeated (?) recorder and the county auditor may be affecting the call for a recount.

Luckily both counties had paper ballots to re-examine. Polk County auditor Mauro has always said it is foolish to run an election without paper ballots that would enable him to “re-create” the election.

According to this story in the Des Moines Register today, Democrat Mauro has the confidence of some Republicans in his race for Secretary of State.

The Democratic candidate for Secretary of State has run a good many elections as Polk County auditor. He has developed one good habit that election protection activists want everyone to adopt: he audits his own ballot counting machines.

He has already begun work on his audit of the June 6 primary, he said Saturday at the Democrat’s state convention.

His practice is to wait until the official work is all done and the time for demanding recounts is past. During that time no one touches a thing. Only when it is clear that he can do no harm by running an in-house investigation. . . .only then does he say, “Let’s see how accurate our scanners were.” He selects a precinct at random and looks at the ballots the old fashioned way–with his eyes. He did not say if he makes any public announcement of his findings.

All counties do pre-election testing of their machines for accuracy. But Pottawattamie showed that such tests are often inadequate.

This sort of auditing is what auditors ought to do in every county. It is one of the goals of voting machine critics. It would be required by federal legislation that now has 191 co–sponsors.

Mauro already does it. Good for him. Is it done in any other county?

Hundreds of flyers were passed out today at the state conventions of Iowa’s biggest political parties. (Wasn’t it convenient that they met simultaneously only a few blocks apart!!) The flyers were from Iowans for Voting Integrity (IVI) and they mentioned this website at the very, very bottom. So maybe there’s even a new reader in the audience as a result.

The response was overwhelmingly receptive to the flyer’s message about the lack of security in paperless voting. One computer programmer said that it’s a no-brainer. But one–only one–delegate declared that she liked voting on the touchscreen toy and she was not interested in what computer scientists and programmers have to say when they warn against this folly.

Senator Harkin even brought up the issue in his speech to the Democratic convention. He condemned paperless voting, getting a rousing cheer. But he made a glitch of his own by saying voters should get TWO paper trails–one to deposit in the ballot box and one to take on home. A Harkin aide later acknowledged that such carry-out ballots were inadvisable. He said Harkin had been speaking off the cuff.

Five members of IVI pressed the Dem candidate for Secretary of State on the matter during a lengthy stand-up meeting in the lobby during the noon recess. Mauro is an aggressive conversationalist but he had nothing on the women from IVI, who bore down with point after point and several questions for Mauro, currently the election chief for Iowa’s largest county.

Mauro’s heart is in the right place on this issue. He stayed away from paperless voting machines and expresses amazement that any county would take the risk. But he does not give me the impression that he is studying this problem or keeping up with the news. There has been quite a bit of news since he became a candidate last summer. This issue demands some study from a would be Secretary of State, as any of the activists can attest. They are studying and they want the officials and the candidates to get up to speed, too. Maybe they motivated Mauro today.

Democratic Party candidate for Secretary of State Mike Mauro last week released his fundraising report, as did all Iowa candidates. Mauro claimed nearly $100,000 cash on hand. He has no primary opponent.

“Republicans Chuck Allison and Robert Dopf reported $8,044 and $7,206, respectively,” according to a report at IowaPolitics.com

Meanwhile Dopf is quoted in the Sioux City Journal on his campaign to reign in absentee voting. To that end he accused Chet Culver of not attending to the issue:

“Under eight years of Chet Culver, I heard a lot about getting out the vote,” Dopf said. “I never once heard anything about the security or integrity of the process.”

That is an overstatement. Culver has recently advocated for paper ballots as insurance against paperless computer voting. That is the main problem in election integrity these days.

Governor Vilsack has issued a challenge to the Secretary of State candidates throughout the nation. He wants them to take a VOTES pledge (everything has to have an acronym these days).

VOTES goes like this:

To restore public confidence that voting is a right not a privilege, I believe:

*VERIFIABLE:* Every vote cast must be counted by a system that is auditable with a verifiable paper trail.

*OBJECTIVE*: Every election official must conduct their
responsibilities openly and objectively to restore public confidence.

*TOUGH*: Every law to prevent voter intimidation and fraud must be vigorously enforced.

*EQUAL*: Every citizen must have equal access to locations, adequate machines and well-trained election judges.

*SECURE*: Every voting machine must be secured during all aspects of voting to protect the integrity of the count.

You can also sign on to this campaign at Vilsack’s Heartland PAC website here.

A recently announced Republican candidate for Iowa Secretary of State is urging the Iowa House of Representatives to pass a paper trail bill. Robert Dopf, a former federal prosecutor, is leaning on his own party to take immediate action, saying

“If you wouldn’t trust your money to a charity that refuses to perform an audit, why would you want to trust your vote to a system that has no independent means of verifying its accuracy?”

The bill supported by Dopf has already passed the state senate 48-0. It is being held hostage by Republicans in the House who could bring it out of committee at any time. If they don’t do so by Friday, the bill apparently falls victum to the “funnel” rules of the state legislature and will be dead for this session.

Here’s more of today’s press release from Dopf:

“If we are to maintain public confidence in the integrity and security of our voting processes it is imperative that we require that newly acquired electronic voting machines (DRE) have the ability to create a voter verified paper record for audit purposes,” Dopf said. “DRE machines currently being installed in 18 Iowa counties do not have this capability. Adoption of this security feature will help us avoid unwarranted challenges to the integrity of the voting process.”

The move to require a paper audit trail has been fueled in recent months by mounting evidence documenting the vulnerability of the DRE machines to malicious manipulations potentially altering the vote count.

“This is not a partisan issue. Every Iowan – Republican, Democrat or Independent – has a stake in ensuring we maintain a voting process in which we can have confidence,” Dopf. “And, we need a Secretary of State who is going to be focused on that issue every single day and capable of getting it done.”

That last sentence puts real pressure on the House Republicans. Dopf has reminded us that outgoing Secretary of State Chet Culver has been backing SF 351 but has not gotten it passed. Democrat Culver can claim to be the victum of the House Republicans, but Dopf is hinting he can get them to act. Let’s see if they snub him or make him look effective.

Candidate for Secretary of State Robert Dopf wants to address two aspects of elections that he sees as potential points of abuse. The first problem is absentee ballots. He sees them “spiraling out of control” as both parties use them to roll up their votes before election day. He fears fraud will eventually occur and he says this is the top election-related concern of federal prosecutors across the nation.

Dopf wants to return to the days when absentee ballots were for, um, absent voters–people on trips or unable to go to the polls for legitimate reasons. Currently Iowa has no restrictions on my ability to get an absentee ballot. He did not explain how he would enforce this if he got the law changed. What if my imaginery business trip is cancelled after I send back my completed absentee ballot? Who is to say whether my health keeps me from voting at the polls? Can we predict those November ice storms in time to decide if it is safe to walk into the polls? I agree with Dopf, but I wonder if we can really put this cat back into the bag. I hope he elaborates on this.

Dopf’s second issue is paperless voting machines. He said paperless voting machines have sneaked into our polls the way slot machines sneaked into our convenience stores. He quoted Iowa City’s Prof Jones regarding the need for voter verified paper ballots, and said he wanted SF 351 to be passed by the legislature. He also wants to see the source code for electronic voting machines and (I think) he endorsed federal legislation that would accomplish that goal. Dopf is looking at possible fraud here, too, as with absentee ballots. (He is not merely concerned with poor quality machines that sometimes lose votes and sometimes show more votes than voters. He hardly mentioned machine error rates, which are astonishingly high.)

Thirdly, Dopf criticized the way Governor Vilsack restored the right to vote for all Iowa felons last summer, saying it should have gone through the legislature. He said our previous system was working well enough, but did not say he would have opposed Vilsack if the Governor had gone through the legislature. In general Dopf apparently believes in restoring the voting rights of felons.

To see the whole WHO radio interview by Jan Mickelson, read the post below this one.

Since I don’t own a laptop, I won’t get many chances to “live blog” from meetings or polling places, so I will do it for this radio interview. Retired US Attorney Robert Dopf is about to go on WHO radio 1040 AM to discuss his candidacy for Secretary of State.

Dopf jumped into the Republican primary last week. Chuck Allison of Des Moines is already in the race, as is Democrat candidate Mike Mauro. Mauro is currently Polk County Auditor. Allison is a podiatrist.

I will post at each commercial break, putting each update below the previous one. Host Jan Mickelson will be “jm” and guest Robert Dopf will be “rd”. You can call the show. Here goes:

9:08 am:
Rd –I took early retirement last month from the US attorney’s office

jm– Don’t you miss prosecuting people? Give us some highlights from your job as US attorney

rd–I dealt with federal law. Many drug cases are interstate traffic and go to federal court. I did murder cases, economic crime, as well. I was in the Ottumwa case of Cathy Allen.

Jm–do we need the death penalty in Iowa?

Rd –not part of SoS job, but personal view is that “I do support the death penalty in certain narrow cases.”

Jm–tells Dopf he is a “disappointment” (and laughs) because Dopf wants to avoid trash talking about Democrats

Rd–Iowa has a long proud tradition of fair and honest election. I was federal prosecutor of election laws for Iowa. Elections with federal candidates on the ballot are federal concerns. The single greatest potential for fraud is absentee ballots, and they are spiraling upward.

Jm—parties are pushing absentee ballots, right?

Rd–yes it is like a nuclear arms race. Neither party wants to be left behind. Fraud is inevitable if this continues. SoS can help reign this in, and should take the lead at the legislature.

Jm—what changes do you want?

Rd—absentee ballots should be for people who will be out of town or cannot go to the polls But they are being used to try to get partisan advantage. Let’s take the process back to what it was originally intended and away from the ‘no excuse” ability to get an absentee ballot.

9: 20
Jm—Vilsack restored voting rights to former felons –what do you think about that?

Rd—this was a factor I weighed before getting in this race. I don’t oppose restoring right, I was surprised and shocked to see the action last year. It was shameful the way it was done—should have been done by the legislature.

Jm—-some legal beagles say it was outside the law to do this–you are an attorney–

rd —-I heard some valid points like that. Not so sure.

Jm —can another Governor revoke this order?

Rd—I believe succeeding Gov can reverse it but not retroactively. Old system was “functioning in an appropriate manner”.

Jan switches topic to voting machines abrubtly:

Jm—voting machines made error —mistake made by the machine–do you trust voting machine industry?

Rd–I’m glad you raised this issue. After absentee ballots this is my second issue. Computer scientists are documenting that these machines are vulnerable to manipulating.

jm –are you skeptical about paperless voting machines?

rd–should be a paper trail so there can be an audit

jm–why would we select machines that don’t have the attributes to produce . . . .

Rd—that is the question . . . .

Jm—well touchscreens have no dangling chads, so they were supposed to make the process idiot proof, but they haven’t . . .

Rd–experts need access to the source code , but mfg claim a proprietary interest in the source code. If 50% of the vote in 2008 goes on these machines …. Need federal legislation to get to source codes.

jm–why not go back to hand counted ballots? What is the worst that can happen?

Rd–I like seeing ballot scanners retained, but some handicap issues arose

jm–this is the tail wagging the dog. Stupid..

jm–you raised a stinging indictment of the machines a minute ago, Bob. Can you stay a little longer [to keep talking]?

9:40
Jm–now is the time to address security issues in voting. Bob gave us serious stuff about potential for abuse. 60 Minutes did a show once on Cincinnati voting scandal.

Rd–Iowa has a bill now SF 351 that would require a hard copy. It is imperative that we have that. I have been informed that bill is stuck in committee.

Jm–this doesn’t need to be debated –just passed. Debate should last 20 seconds. Now who will pay for this?

Rd–feds gave out $4 billion for voting machines.

Jm–has it been spent wisely?

Rd–haven’t followed that.

Jm–Iowa should pay for this.

Jm–how did this happen?

Rd–how did I wake up one morning and find slot machines at my local store??

Jm–we need to fix this.

Rd–quotes Prof Jones that current oversight is not adequate without voter verified paper copy.

Jm–switches topic to legal residents and valid voters: Does Ia have all the checks and balances we need?

Rd–no. We need to obtain an examination of all the facts. It is a legitimate question to ask.

9:52

Jm–thank you for your forthright stand on voting machines. You are the highest ranking person I have heard on this. You are not just some guy off the street. You are an attorney. You have given us a lot to think about.

Caller— says he knows Bob, wants listeners to know Bob has “highest integrity”. Will give Iowa honest elections.

Caller “Christian”:–immigrants can’t even register to vote so they are being checked already.

Jm–what is next in your campaign?

Rd–I didn’t decide to enter the race until the chance for early retirement from the US attorney’s office came along, so I am starting from scratch. I look forward to meeting Iowans.

Newly announced Republican candidate for Secretary of State Robert Dopf will be on WHO radio Thursday March 9 at 9:00 a. m. He may get to discuss his support for SF 351, the paper trail bill.

WHO broadcasts at 1040 on the AM band. Dopf will be a guest on the Jan Michelson show. Here is what he told one Iowan in an email today:

I will firmly address the DRE issue. I did call for passage of the Senate bill during last Friday’s announcement of my candidacy but the press didn’t report on it.

Additionally I will communicate my belief that this measure is
essential to maintaining the integrity of the voting process to Elgin and Jacobs as well as Speaker Rants.

He is referring to Cedar Rapids Representative Jeff Elgin and to West Des Moines Representative Libby Jacobs. Elgin chairs the House state government committee and Jacobs chairs one of its subcommittees. Together they control the fate of SF 351.

I’ll be listening to Dopf, so come back here to see what he says if you can’t listen.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and our Governor Vilsack may both run for President in 2008. Both are now trying to attract attention to themselves. Vilsack has his ten words campaign and Richardson has his paper ballot triumph.

Thursday Governor Richardson will sign a bill booting touchscreen and pushbutton voting machines from New Mexico. All the new voting machines sold since the Florida recount were supposed to reduce the number of overvotes and undervotes—cases where votes don’t get counted because voters mishandled the ballot or overlooked the race. The new equipment warns voters that they skipped races or that they voted for two candidates instead of just one. Voila! No more lost votes.

But New Mexico led the nation in undervotes in 2004 despite their electronic equipment. Paperless machines got the blame. “Eighty-nine precincts had more than 10% undervotes, and all but one of these used pushbutton machines.”

There were also some spectacular cases of phantom voting:

In one precinct in San Juan County 318 voters somehow managed to register 2,161 votes, 2,079 of them to incumbent county clerk Fran Hanhardt and just 82 for her opponent Glojean Todacheene. San Juan County was the first to announce its intention to clear the memory on their voting machines, initially disregarding the legal requirement of notifying all of the political parties involved in the election.

So now New Mexico will dump the suspicious equipment. And Governor Richardson is signing the bill at noon tomorrow. To get maximum attention, the ceremony will be on the web. You can watch it here at noon Iowa time:

www.billrichardson2006.com/reform/paperballots

Richardson’s grandstanding is needed to compensate for New Mexico’s disgraceful disregard of voters’ objections following the 2004 voting and for the state’s failure to investigate at the time. And it won’t get Richardson many votes in Vilsack’s back yard, but it will be noticed in Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina, where the voting machine story is much hotter than in Iowa. Let’s hope Vilsack tries to catch up with the new Richardson on this issue.