PRESS RELEASE: 92% of Americans Oppose Secret Vote Counting; Favor Public's Righ

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" Magginkat " <magginkat

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:50:31 -0500

PRESS RELEASE: 92% of Americans Oppose Secret Vote Counting;

Favor Public's Right to Know In Elections

 

 

 

 

 

 

" Kathy Dopp " <kathy.dopp

 

 

 

PRESS RELEASE August 21, 2006, Park City, UT

 

92% of Americans Oppose Secret Vote Counting; Favor Public's Right to

Know In Elections

By Kathy Dopp

 

A new Zogby poll will be released on Tuesday reveals that fully 92%

of every single demographic group in American favors the public's

right to observe vote counting and to obtain any information regarding

vote counting, according an August 12-15 Zogby telephone poll of

approximately 1200 likely voters nationwide.

One actual survey question and answers is:

 

" In some states, members of the public have the right to view the

counting of votes and verify how that process is working. In other

states, citizens are in effect barred from viewing vote counting even

if they would like to view the process. Which of the following two

statements are you more likely to agree with A or B? "

 

Statement A: Citizens have the right to view and obtain information

about how election officials count votes.

92%

 

Statement B: Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain

information about how elections officials count votes.

6%

 

Neither/Not sure

2%

 

The survey was commissioned by election protection attorney Paul Lehto

of Washington State. According to Lehto, " The public overwhelmingly

opposes secret vote counting and favors election transparency and the

public right to know. "

 

Here in Utah, our Utah election officials are out of touch with the

public, as shown by this new Zogby poll. Utah Lt. Governor's office

implemented state-wide voting systems with secret ( " proprietary " )

programming code and decertified Utah's former paper voting systems to

force counties to adopt new electronic ballots that are not humanly

viewable.

 

Bruce Funk of Emery County, Utah invited computer security experts to

examine Utah's new voting machines in March, 2006. The findings were

reported in the New York Times on May 12, 2006. The security flaws

that Funk found caused PA and CA to issue urgent security directives

and Avi Rubin, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins

University said " I almost had a heart attack. The implications of

this are pretty astounding " and Michael Shamos of Carnegie Mellon

University said " It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in

a voting system " . Yet Utah's Lt. Governor's office reacted by holding

a closed executive session meeting with Diebold officials and Emery

County officials, after which the doors on Bruce Funk's office were

locked to prevent this 23 year elected official from doing the job he

was elected for. The minutes of their secret meeting have yet to be

publicly released.

 

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Salt Lake County's former election

official Michael Vu now officiates, it was found that 15% of the paper

ballot records did not match Diebold touch-screen electronic counts in

the recent primary. According to Kitty Pilgrim, CNN correspondent,

" The May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, using Diebold

electronic voting machines was a debacle. "

 

The only way to be sure that electronic counts are correct is to count

the voter verifiable paper records. Yet, the Salt Lake Tribune on

July 7, 2006 quoted Utah Election Director Michael Cragun saying that

a recount would consist of reconciling the electronic polling place

records by " re-accumulating the memory cards " and " The permanent paper

record comes into play only in an extreme situation. "

 

Counting the paper roll ballot records by hand to verify the accuracy

of electronic counts requires equipment called " paper roll advancers " .

Yet Utah election officials have not purchased any paper roll

advancers; have not purchased the equipment required to install a

known clean software system on Diebolds; and have kept Utah's security

procedures a secret. " Security by obscurity " is a formula for insider

tampering.

 

Utah election officials have actively worked against the transparency

in elections that the public overwhelmingly wants. The US

Constitution created a government with checks and balances, not a

system of blind trust in the infallibility and good intentions of

others. Yet Utah election officials implemented a new " faith-based "

voting system which lets private companies secretly count unseen

electronic ballots and determine outcomes of elections without any

checks.

 

These nearly unanimous Zogby poll results bolster efforts to convince

the Utah Lt. Governor's Office that the public recognizes this as a

crisis on which they must act to change our election conditions. The

staff of the Lt. Governor's office should be willing to admit the

problems inherent with the secret vote counting machines and consult

with expert computer scientists and mathematicians to develop methods

to ensure our election outcome integrity.

 

In concert with Tuesday's full announcement of the Zogby poll, the

National Election Data Archive has developed a new method for ensuring

election outcome integrity. In this new paper to be released soon by

the National Election Data Archive " The Election Integrity Audit "

NEDA's releases a new method for calculating audit amounts -- hand

counting of ballots done to check the accuracy of vote tallying

machines—that would reveal any corrupted vote counts that could

wrongfully alter any election outcome.

 

According to NEDA, a fixed rate audit of 1 or 2% or even 5% is not

capable of detecting outcome-altering vote miscount in close races.

This is extremely relevant given the enormous financial and legal

barriers to bringing a challenge to a close election. Attached to

NEDA's paper is a computer algorithm and spreadsheet that offers

readers the ability to calculate, for particular races and elections

the audit size to detect vote total corruption. NEDA recommends that

their new calculation be adopted as the standard for calculating

election audit percentages.

 

It is from the " Consent of the Governed " , according to the Declaration

of Independence, that government derives " Just Power. " It is time for

state and county election officials to listen to the public and make

Utah's election process publicly transparent and verifiable.

 

Kathy Dopp, kathy

National Election Data Archive, President

P.O. Box 682556, Park City, UT 84068

435-658-4657 http://ElectionArchive.org

 

This press release can be found online at:

 

http://utahcountvotes.org/docs/ZogbyTransparencyPoll.pdf

http://ElectionArchive.org/ucvInfo/release/ZogbyTransparencyPoll.pdf

 

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