Ohio Election Reform Plan
Bob Fertik
January 13, 2005

On January 12, 2005 Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced a plan to replace all of Ohio's voting systems with optical scan (optiscan) systems. Voters fill in circles on a pre-printed ballot like an SAT test, and the ballots are read by an optical scanner.

While optical scan systems are generally the most reliable (1) and cost-effective automated voting systems (2), Secretary Blackwell made a crucial mistake when he selected two vendors - Diebold and ES&S - with strong conservative Republican ties.

Democratic voters have absolutely no reason to blindly trust a system operated by Diebold and ES&S under the supervision of Ken Blackwell. Blackwell was outrageously partisan before the election, when he rejected voter registrations from newspaper forms and rejected provisional ballots cast at the wrong table or precinct. He was outrageously partisan after the election when he  refused to testify under oath in Moss v. Bush or to respond to Rep. John Conyers' 102-page report on Ohio election problems.

If Ohio wants to switch to optical scan systems, there are other vendors to choose from. But before Ohio selects any vendors, it must adopt a set of standards to ensure honest and transparent elections. It must then evaluate each vendor and product against those standards.

Moreover, Ohio needs to adopt a set of procedures for handling optical scanners before, during, and after each election.

The following is a suggested set of standards. A complete set of standards should be produced by experts in election systems.

Machine standards:

• Open source software
• No external ports or plug-in cards (so software and results cannot be altered)
• No clock (so the machine cannot behave differently on Election Day)
• Blind programming of each election (so the machine does not know which candidates are Republicans or Democrats)
• No vendor participation required for election or recount
• Software access secure and logged
• Secure box protects scanner from tampering
• Scanned ballots are stored in secure box with scanner

Vendor standards:

• Background checks on all staff
• Ban on convicted criminals (see the Diebold rap sheet: http://blog.democrats.com/Diebold) - perhaps must pass test for Notary Public
• Prohibition on owner, management, or staff engagement in politics
• Requirement to maintain and publish reports of all problems (like drug companies and aircraft manufacturers) and to fix them

Election Board procedures:

• Secure storage of all machines in locked rooms with motion detector alarms; all violations must be reported to the Secretary of State
• Public notice of all technical maintenance, with full public supervision and written description of work to be done (in advance) and work performed (afterwards) with sworn signature of technician
• No vendor participation permitted for election or recount; routine maintenance by bi-partisan staff only
• At election time, representatives of all parties witness secure retrieval and storage of machines
• Pre-election machine accuracy tests in public with layperson's explanation
• All problems should be reported to the vendor and the Secretary of State
• Staff must be certified in all procedures by the Secretary of State and not reliant on vendors

Election Certification procedures:

• Total ballots counted must be compared to total voters
• Post-election machine accuracy tests in public with layperson's explanation
• Manual recount of the top-line (or perhaps closest) campaign in a few precincts chosen (a) at random plus (b) by all parties
• If any discrepancy is found, another group of precincts should be chosen for manual count
• If a second discrepancy is found, then a county-wide manual recount would be required
• Certification must be signed by county election supervisors certifying compliance with all procedures under penalty of law

Recount procedures:

• Scanners and ballots should be stored in secure room with motion detectors
• Recount parties should have supervised access to maintenance logs, security logs, ballots, and voter sign-ins
• Sample precincts should be chosen through a combination of both truly random and party-selected
• Strict rules for going from sample recount to full recount
• Strict schedule must comply with Electoral College schedule
• Court-appointed Special Master must supervise and certify recount

(1) Optical scan systems with precinct tabulators have the lowest error rates (overvotes and undervotes), compared with touchscreen, punchcard, or lever systems. That's because the tabulators can check the ballots for overvotes (which would invalidate the ballot), and give the voter the opportunity to fix the mistake. Optical scan systems with county tabulators have among the highest error rates.

(2) There is a strong case for non-automated voting systems, i.e. paper ballots. Much of the plan described above is focused on making the scanners tamper-proof; all of those elements are unnecessary with paper ballots. The principal objection to paper ballots is the time and tedium of counting them, especially when there are a large number of races to be counted. However, a typical precinct handles under 1,000 votes, so a team of volunteers can conduct the count fairly quickly. Everyone is too tired on Election Night to conduct a tedious count; but if elections were held on Saturdays, the counting could be done on Sundays. And if we built bi-partisan volunteer counts into our election system, we might change the whole "red-blue" adversarial climate into a "purple" climate of civic cooperation.