1/9/2008: John's Reply to "Oregon's Election Systems Decertified by Colorado"

Subject: Oregon's Election Systems Decertified by Colorado
From: "John W LINDBACK"
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:59:50 -0800
To: "Virginia L. Ross" ,
CC: "Dave FRANKS" , "Jean M STRAIGHT" , "Scott MOORE" , "Avakian Sen" , "BRADBURY Bill" , "Brown Sen" , "Metsger Sen" , "Walker Sen"

Good morning Virginia and Nancy,

Thank you for your interest regarding the vote tally equipment used by several counties here in Oregon.

Our office has indeed been in contact with the Colorado Secretary of State's Office since the initial release of their report. In phone calls between Oregon Elections Divisions staff and John Gardner of the Colorado Secretary of State's Office and other members of the Colorado review team, it was clear that the major factor in the ES&S equipment decertification in Colorado was based on a low level of support provided by ES&S staff to two Colorado counties. In Oregon, counties report to us that they are satisified and positive about ES&S support. In fact, several Oregon counties purchased new vote tally equipment this year and stayed with ES&S because they believe the support here is better than that provided by other vendors. ES&S equipment in Oregon is serviced and supported by an in-state contractor who has partnered with ES&S. This local contractor is well regarded by local elections officials and has contributed to the successful use of ES&S equipment in Oregon for many years.

We have also discussed the Colorado reviews with Paul Craft, who served on the Colorado review team and is currently one of Oregon's consultants on tally equipment certification. Mr. Craft reports that he expects ES&S will be recertified in Colorado prior to this year's elections. He advised us, however, to pay attention to one issue - the slow speed of the 650 in processing 17 inch ballots. Counties in Oregon are already aware that the 650 is slower in processing 17 inch ballots than 14 inch ballots. Counties will be trying to avoid using the 17 inch ballot. The unknown factor, of course, is how many ballot measures will be on this year's ballot.

By Administrative Rule all vote tally machines used in Oregon are required to meet federal voluntary system standards. All of the ES&S equipment you reference have met these standards and are listed as certified on the National Association of State Elections Director's web site: http://www.nased.org/certification.htm In addition, all vote tally systems used in Oregon must undergo testing as defined in Oregon Statute (ORS 246.550 and ORS 246.560). With the release of Untiy 3.0.1 ES&S complied with these requirements in June of 2006. We are quite satisfied with the level of testing our consultants do as part of our Oregon certification process. Our staff, including myself, monitor the work of the consultants and we are continually impressed with the
vigorous testing and challenging of the efficacy of the machines. Based on our conversations with the Colorado review team, in addition to the ES&S 650s performance in Oregon so far, we do not see a need at this point to require ES&S to go through a recertification in Oregon. But we will continue to monitor the situation.

Being an all vote-by-mail state, Oregon has many differences from Colorado in our vote tally process. Colorado uses vote centers and precincts in a distributed vote and tally process. Oregon utilizes a centralized vote tally process with all votes received and tallied at County Elections Offices. This centralized practice allows for much greater control of the tally process. For example, each ballot envelope received by the County Elections Officials is scanned, signature verified and then accepted for counting. This process is done using Oregon's Centralized Voter Registration System. This system is completely separate from the vote tally systems used in Oregon Counties. It provides a cross reference in that the number of ballots received and accepted for counting equals the number of ballots counted by the tally systems. In addition local election officials are required by statute (ORS 254.235) to perform logic and accuracy testing prior to each election and after the counting is done. In addition, as you know, the
Legislature adopted a new law that takes affect this year that requires for each general election a post-election handcount of select precincts. These will be conducted in addition, of course, to the normal routine recounts we do in Oregon because each election inevitably includes a few close races.

I must reiterate here an important fact. No recount conducted in Oregon has ever turned up evidence that a tally machine failed to correctly count votes. A full recount is the ultimate test and with each election we always have at least one or two.

jlindback

John Lindback, Director
Elections Division
Oregon Secretary of State's Office