Joe Weinberg – Memphis Flyer

Robert Meyers, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC), informed Memphis Rotarians, according to the August 7th edition of the Flyer, that I do not know what I am talking about when expressing concern about our continued use of Diebold Accuvote TSX electronic voting machines. I hope the Rotarians did not take any solace from these vacuous remarks from the leader of the much maligned and censored SCEC.

Let me share some of what disturbs me about our use of these machines:

1) The software that runs the elections for our Diebold Accuvote TSX machines was never tested in the certification process relied upon by Tennessee and Shelby County in purchasing the machines. Thus this certification was corrupted and should be considered invalid.

2) Shelby County is the only county in the state to use the TSX with GEMS software without a voter-verifiable paper trail.

3) Other states have reported problems with elections run with the Accuvote TSX system. Some have decertified the machinery. Others requested changes to the software.

4) No changes have been made to our machines since they were purchased in 2006. Indeed, the SCEC has repeatedly ignored and trivialized reports of problems from other jurisdictions using the TSX as not pertinent to Shelby County.

5) The TSX machine and the GEMS software package run on a Microsoft Windows CE operating platform. The interfaces between the Microsoft and Diebold components were specifically not tested in the original certification. The interface between Diebold software and Windows 2000 has been problematic elsewhere. Microsoft has provided many patches and updates for the CE operating system over the years. None of these has been applied to our machines. Indeed, the SCEC has not even investigated these updates to determine if any would be relevant to our system’s functioning.

6) Meyers and company defend the TSX machine by stating that we have never had a problem in Shelby County. Unfortunately, the SCEC steadfastly does not look for trouble. Computer experts have demonstrated many times that these machines and the GEMS server that compiles the ballots are easy to hack. We know from previous lawsuits that at least one back door exists that would allow results to be manipulated. Our current audit procedures are inadequate. The auditors totally missed the recent problems in the County Commission District 10 Democratic primary.

7) Meyers and the rest of the SCEC were unaware that the TSX stores virtual images of all ballots cast until I informed them of this in 2013. The SCEC makes no use of this data.

8) The Diebold name became such a liability that the company changed the name of its voting machine division to Premier. In September 2009, Diebold divested itself of the voting machine division, selling it to Election Systems & Software (ES&S). Eight months later, ES&S sold Premier to Dominion, which holds the rights to the TSX machine today. Despite this, the SCEC continues to use ES&S as its support vendor for the TSX machines.

9) Meyers glibly points out that the public is protected by the presence of three Republican and two Democratic commissioners. He knows better. Most decisions by the commission are decided by 3-to-2 party line votes.

Democratic commissioners have complained about altered minutes and being asked to vote on material without time for review. Just ask former Commissioner George Monger if he had access to all the information and cooperation from commission staff that he required.

Given that we don’t have any independent verification that these machines work as claimed and that the SCEC makes only ineffectual attempts to verify the correctness of the vote count, how can the commissioners have faith in any of the numbers they certify? That remains a mystery to me.

Let us get rid of these aging, highly vulnerable, insecure, and non-updated machines and move to paper ballots with a voter verified paper trail and optical scanning.

Joe Weinberg is a physician and Democratic activist with an abiding interest in election issues and voting-machine technology.

The Shelby County Election Commission “has demonstrated an inability to conduct elections without significant inaccuracies,” concluded the Tennessee comptroller’s office in an audit triggered by the fiascos of the last two August elections.

Has the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) rebounded from these depths? I have participated in an email skirmish with members of the SCEC over the last few months which revealed startling information and provided a window into their ongoing dysfunction.

Specifically, we have discovered that: 1) the commission has the ability, previously denied, to perform manual recounts; 2) internally, the machines keep a duplicate record of the votes; 3) the commission either did not know of or chose not to use this capability; 4) the commission cannot state the likelihood that the TSX voting machines will accurately record a vote; 5) they are extraordinarily dependent on their voting machine vendor for even routine tasks, which wastes money; and 6) my raising these questions has yielded obfuscation, non-answers, and defensiveness.

I recently found a 2007 report claiming that the county’s TSX voting machines keep internal images of ballots with a 25 percent error rate in manipulating these images. I forwarded this information to SCEC administrator Richard Holden. He referred the question to the vendor, Elections Systems & Software (ES&S). They did not provide any data on error rates but did state, “As you know, the units have the ability to print (post election) the ballot images for hand recounting, if so desired.”

Duplicate records did exist. Discovering the machines had a capability to do manual recounts, something previously denied by the SCEC, was startling. Equally jarring was that such information, possibly of interest to those litigating the last few elections, had been available in the system all along.

Access only existed after the voting ended, however, so a paper trail would still not exist. This lack of a paper trail concerned many. Voters could not be sure that the machine accurately reflected their vote.

Concerns about these issues only heightened as computer scientists from Johns Hopkins, Rice, Berkeley, Princeton, and the Argonne National Laboratories began to report grave concerns about the security of these TSX machines. The SCEC ignored these reports, despite the reality that other states were decertifying TSX. They put their trust in the vendor.

I thought this discovery would be of great interest to the SCEC, and I have, in tandem with election commissioners Norma Lester and Anthony Tate and county commissioner Steve Mulroy, been trading emails with Holden. He professes not to know the probability of error on the machines used for voting in Shelby County, even though it is his responsibility to do pre-election testing.

Regarding using internal images for recounts, Holden asserts that the commissioners have “never deemed this feature necessary.”

Technical support for the voting machines and tabulation process remains the province of ES&S, by contract. At the most recent SCEC meeting, it was revealed that an ES&S technician had access to the tabulation server without any supervising SCEC employee. The SCEC administration tried to minimize the significance of giving an ES&S employee unfettered access to the tabulation servers — something that would seem a major breach in election security.

The state division of elections should thoroughly examine the operations of the SCEC administration and mandate necessary changes, including those relating to personnel.

The SCEC should act immediately on county CIO John Halbert’s suggestion that they start now amassing information to determine whether new voting machines are called for — and, as I and others have advocated, the best available alternatives would be optical scan machines with a voter-verifiable paper trail.

Further: The SCEC must thoroughly explore the utility of the internal images for recounts, testing, and audits as well as for any risks to voter privacy.

The SCEC must determine the probability of an error on our machines and make the results public.

The SCEC should report on lessons learned from the problems with the 2010 and 2012 elections and on any and all corrective actions taken.

The SCEC should establish standards for the prompt resolution of voter and candidate queries regarding voting irregularities.

Despite a long string of election problems, the SCEC administration’s poisonous combination of prideful arrogance and defensiveness remains unchanged. My recent experience should cause all of us to worry about their ability to make things right.

Joe Weinberg is a physician, activist, and student of the election process. A somewhat different version of this essay appeared in the Flyer‘s print edition.