[E-voting] Breaking news of lawsuit in Washington state elections

[Catherine Ansbro]

See below.

Catherine

At 16:52 30/01/2005 -0800, Marian Beddill wrote:
>At 1/30/2005  11:53 AM, Catherine wrote:
>>http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1326/2754.html?1107105987#POST3882
>>
>>Breaking news about a lawsuit in Snohomish County, Washington State, 
>>where there were many kinds of voting irregularities uncovered, and where 
>>the touch-screen results were at variance from the other ballots.
>
>Yup, Snohomish County's right down the road about 100km from me, and I 
>have been on top of it.  There are two major oddities in this state-wide 
>election.
>
>One of the oddities is that the computer-voting numbers were notably at 
>odds with the paper-ballot numbers in that county.  Snohomish  county has 
>three ways of voting: by touch-screen at the polling-stations on Election 
>Day Tuesday, by postal ballot (still called "absentee"), and by 
>"provisional" ballot - for a person who claims to be a qualified voter but 
>shows up at a polling-station which does not have that name in the 
>voters-registry file/book. Their ballot is provisionally accepted, but 
>kept separate from the voters who were in the book, thus were not questioned.
>
>The challenge happened in the race for Washington State Governor, which 
>had an election on November 2nd 2004, and then went through two statewide 
>recounts.  (Gregoire vs Rossi)
>
>The two lead candidates differed STATEWIDE first by only 261 votes(*), 
>triggering a legally required recount, which was by machine, and it 
>changed the difference to only 42 votes(**).  Then Gregoire's party 
>exercised their ordinary right to ask for a manual recount, and posted 
>funds to pay for it (about $US750,000).  That was done, and the result of 
>the manual recount reversed the outcome, ending with an opposite 
>difference of 129 votes(***).  The "new" ("real") winner, Gregoire, has 
>been sworn into office, and the loser, Rossi, has filed suit.
>
>So now there are now TWO lawsuits over this election.
>
>The basis of the FIRST suit (by the now-loser, Rossi's folks) seems to be 
>claimed improper handling of ballots, especially provisional ones.  But 
>the other gross and unexplained disparity is the difference between the 
>sub-totals of the machine votes and the paper ballots.  The machine votes 
>strongly favored one candidate, Rossi; paper ballots the other, 
>Gregoire.  Odd, to say the least.

And there are twice as many paper ballots (which strongly favor Gregoire) 
compared to the touch-screen results (which strongly favored Rossi).  Since 
the historical voting pattern in the county favor's Gregoire's party, it 
makes the touch-screen results seem quite surprising.  However rumours 
abound about dirty tricks in the past as well as the present.  All the 
allegations show how important it is to have a voter-verified paper ballot 
for auditing purposes, and also how important it is to have a strict regime 
regarding accountability and supervision procedures in handling paper 
ballots.  (And strict enforcement of these procedures.)


>The NEW lawsuit focuses on the private, secret status of the machine 
>software, claiming the loss of public process required for all government 
>actions, due to the proprietary hold on the software code in the DRE 
>machines and systems.
>(Background: 
>http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/mediaSnohomishCounty.htm  )
>
>(*)   261 in 2,805,913 counted, a percentage of   0.009302%
>http://vote.wa.gov/general/statewide_results.aspx?o=7FR30bVZqpnn5rCqJv1pVg%3d%3d 
>
>
>(**)   42 in 2,808,341 counted, a percentage of   0.001496%
>http://vote.wa.gov/general/recount.htm
>
>(***)  129 in 2,810,058 counted, a percentage of   0.004591%
>http://vote.wa.gov/general/recount.aspx
>
>Marian Beddill
>Whatcom County, WA
>
>
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