11/13/2007: "Vote flipping by ES&S election machines in Oregon" (No Reply)

Dear John,

The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition continues to be concerned with the election hardware and software used in Oregon.
The last we heard, the apparent vote flipping in Jackson County in November 2006 had not been resolved. County Clerk Kathy Beckett is on record saying that the errors were not human or "power glitch" errors but rather were a result of problems in the software. We know only that ES&S was called in to review the situation. As you can see in the first two articles cited below, ES&S software continues to be at the nexus of vote flipping and other problems. ES&S produces and services most of Oregon's voting counting systems.

The third article below, describes how New Mexico received a very unpleasant surprise from ES&S after converting to optical scan election equipment. Election supervisors facing sticker shock from enormous ES&S maintenance contracts have no way to save taxpayers' money through competitive bidding. ES&S claims it is the only company that may service the equipment.

As you may remember, we demonstrated a successful hacking in 10 minutes on similar, Microsoft PC-based software that enabled us to switch votes in a test election. We believe you witnessed this demonstration along with then-Deputy SOS Paddy Maguire and SOS Bill Bradbury. At that time, we were assured that outside vendors do not have access to Oregon's election software. Or, if they do, they are under county supervision during such access. >From the indications in the second article, it appears the vendors or sub-contractors not only have full access to Oregon software and machines, but they charge taxpayers a huge amount to maintain them.

We would like to know the findings in the ES&S review of the Jackson County vote flipping incident, your findings in such review, and any remedial actions taken by any state or local agency or official.

Sincerely,

Ginny Ross and Nancy Matela
Verification Team
Oregon Voter Rights Coalition

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Article 1:

Source: www.irontontribune.com/articles/2007/11/08/news/news170.txt

Township race result flipped because of error
By Mark Shaffer/The Ironton Tribune

Thursday, November 8, 2007 11:03 AM CST

The voting may be over, but the counting of the ballots continues in Lawrence County.
In one race, the results were flipped and in five races, the votes were close enough for them to be checked again.
In the race for the open Hamilton Township trustee position, the Lawrence County Board of Elections is having voting machine programmers review how the machine was set up.
Lawrence County Board of Elections Deputy Director Eric Bradshaw said the results were flipped, that Bill Robinson is the actual winner with 374. Allan Blankenship got 170 votes.

“It was a programming error and that race got recorded exactly opposite,” he said. “I don’t know what happened. We have people coming in from ES&S software in Omaha and a programmer from Columbus.”

(See link above for full article.)

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Article 2:

Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/glitches_and_bugs/index.html

Votes Flipped in Ohio Race that Used E-voting Machines
By Kim Zetter November 08, 2007

Votes cast yesterday on e-voting machines made by Election Systems & Software went to the wrong candidates, according to officials in Lawrence County, Ohio. Although a tally printed from the machines at the end of the day and posted on the door of a county precinct got the numbers correct -- 374 votes for Bill Robinson in the Hamilton Township trustee position and 170 votes for Allan Blankenship -- a tabulation machine at the county's headquarters flipped the numbers and gave 374 to Blankenship and 170 to Robinson. Officials noticed the problem when they compared the two tallies.

Lawrence County Election Director Catherine Overbeck told me that officials have called in technicians from ES&S to investigate the problem. She didn't say how they determined that the report from the voting machines was correct and the one from the tabulation machine incorrect. The votes on the tabulation machine are tallied from memory cartridges retrieved from the voting machines.

Overbeck said this was the only race affected in this way on a ballot that included more than 100 races.

Voting activists say that this is one reason why all voting districts that use electronic voting machines should be required to post a tally from each machine on the door of precincts at the end of the day -- so that voters and candidates can independently compare those tallies to the county's final results and catch problems like this.

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Article 3:

Voting Machine Maintenance Bills Shock Clerks
2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Capitol Bureau
By Trip Jennings
Sunday, November 11, 2007

SANTA FE— County clerks across New Mexico are in sticker shock. A year after Nebraska-based ES&S sold New Mexico a fleet of new voting equipment for $18 million, the firm sent out maintenance bills this summer to all 33 counties. The numbers were eye-popping for offices that are used to taking care of things in-house and paying next to nothing to maintain voting equipment.

The expense to Bernalillo County topped $330,000 a year, before ES&S reduced it to $287,000, said Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver.

For Doña Ana County, the bill was $79,000 a year, slightly higher than Santa Fe County's $69,000.

Tiny Mora County, population just more than 5,000, got a bill for around $7,500 a year.

ES&S has since agreed to give the state until Dec. 1 to re-negotiate the maintenance price tag on behalf of the counties, said ES&S regional manager Chris Moody.

But however low the price goes, counties will likely be yoked to higher maintenance costs than ever before— an unexpected cost of New Mexico's conversion to a single, statewide paper ballot system last year.

To accomplish the changeover to the new voting system— which Gov. Bill Richardson and other advocates said would ensure more accurate and accountable voting— New Mexico purchased 1,900 tabulators and 1,580 specially designed voting machines for disabled people from ES&S.

After being blind-sided by the maintenance bills for the new machines, many clerks are angry and said the blame should go beyond ES&S.

"No one considered in that action the cost that was going to be incurred for ... maintenance of that equipment," San Juan County Clerk Fran Hanhardt said of the Legislature's decision to pass the new paper ballot system.

The changeover to a paper ballot system was pressed for by Richardson as one of his top priorities during the 2006 session.

New one cheaper

Some elections officials are already pondering whether to buy new machines when the current ones act up because of the pricey maintenance costs.

"It's actually much cheaper to buy a new machine at $5,000 than to enter into this contract," Toulouse Oliver of Bernalillo County said.

Previously, many of New Mexico's counties spent nothing or nominal amounts on maintenance because technicians on staff performed that work, county clerks and local elections officials said.

But ES&S doesn't train and certify local technicians— such as county clerks' staffs— to maintain the tabulators it manufactures, meaning the firm or certain vendors certified by it can perform the service, Moody said.

"It's like you bought a BMW," Moody said. "You don't want anyone else to work on it than BMW."

Counties do have the option of contacting the manufacturer of the specially designed voting machine for the disabled community, known as the AutoMARK, to compare maintenance costs. ES&S does not manufacture the AutoMARK, although it did sell it to New Mexico.

Moody, who oversees seven states for ES&S, most of them in the Southwest, said he hasn't heard many complaints from other states about maintenance agreements.

In New Mexico's case, maintenance kicked in after a one-year warranty ran out on the machines ES&S sold to the state.

Strained budgets

For now, many county clerks are taking a wait-and-see attitude and hoping the state can bargain ES&S down to a much-lower price on voting equipment maintenance.

"They are going to have come down a far piece for me to think it is a fair price," Hanhardt said of ES&S' initial charge to San Juan County of around $48,000 a year.

Mora County Clerk Charlotte Duran hasn't told her County Commission of the unexpected expense because she wants to know the state-negotiated price first. But she acknowledged that whatever it is will set her office back.

"We don't get much in our budget," Duran said.

Chaves County Clerk Rhoda Coakley appears to have made up her mind. "I don't plan on taking this maintenance contract. It's an unreasonable cost," she said of the $32,600 ES&S charged her county for maintenance.

Toulouse Oliver of Bernalillo County said she will consider the final negotiated price the state can come up with after talks with ES&S.

At least one county has paid ES&S.

Eddie Gutierrez, Sandoval County elections director, said he paid the firm even though he thought the price quote was much higher than the county has historically paid. He wanted coverage because of the local elections his office was coordinating this fall in Sandoval County.

"I know I'm covered, so if the amount does change the county would have some of refund," Gutierrez said.

The maintenance contract that ES&S hopes to lock up for voting equipment is an example of the firm's growing presence in New Mexico.

In addition to selling voting machines to New Mexico, an ES&S subsidiary is maintaining the New Mexico Secretary of State's Web site, including its problem-plagued online campaign finance filing system.

The firm, formerly known as Office Automation Solutions, was purchased by ES&S this spring to give the voting equipment giant entrance into providing online business service systems to secretary of state offices across the nation, according to an April ES&S press release.

The firm is paid $14,000 a month for its services, said New Mexico Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo II.