Rep. Rush Holt HR 811 Avante International Questions

coming across more food for thought with Avante's response to criticisms and Mercuri's piece.

Are we still unsure whether Kevin Chung met Rush Holt at any time prior to creating the Avante Auto-trakker voting method? Well of course we are...

The following postings were taken from Holt Paper-Trail Election Bill Dead? -- UPDATE: Not Dead Yet By Kim Zetter July 18, 2007 | 11:01:02 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/holt-paper-trai.html

visit that site for how the conversation online unfolds. Revisit Rebecca Mercuri's piece as well.

See specifically, Avante's response which contains a link to

http://www.avantetech.com/uploads/pdf/Clarification%20of%20AVANTE%20voting%20system%20position-FINAL.pdf

Read that in its entirety.

There is no doubt the former Holt Bill HR 811 continued to permit the use of DREs and with the voter verified paper audit trail would have been acceptable to use in an election.

Black Box Voting discussed the issue at quite some length.

As for Pennsylvania and Marybeth Kuznik's reply in the Wired posting, while it provides a good argument about PA laws requiring a secret ballot which the paper trails wouldn't have met, it's likely to qualify for the monies from HR 811, the state would have rushed to adopt some form of paper trails for the DREs.

See our previous posts in the sidebar, or conduct a search from the top left of the page.

It's important to put things in perspective. When election integrity people speak, we have to wonder, who are they? Why do some want paper ballots only counted by hand, when others find it acceptable to provide for the voter verified paper audit trail?

We're just following along, sharing our findings here in the interest of truth.

Note: Paul Lehto mentioned:

BLOGGED BY John Gideon ON 7/12/2006 12:54PM
BREAKING: Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia Sued By Competitor for Patent Infringment!
Avante International Technology Corporation Files Suit Against Use of Paper Trail Printer, Op Scan Technology by Voting Machine Giants...

Inventor of Electronic Voting Verification System Takes Industry Giants to Court for Patent Infringement Wednesday July 12, 11:19 am ET

SimmonsCooper Files Lawsuit on Behalf of AVANTE International Technology Corporation

"AVANTE isn't the only victim here," said Paul Lesko, the SimmonsCooper lawyer representing AVANTE. "Local governments, acting in good faith in determining which electronic voting system would serve the needs of their districts, also have every reason to be upset at these companies.

"We believe the evidence will show that these companies sold infringing equipment to public officials, and that they did so consciously, with knowledge of AVANTE's intellectual property," added Mr. Lesko.

SimmonsCooper is seeking damages and an injunction on behalf of AVANTE.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3061

See our past posts.


The following contains posts excerpted from:

Holt Paper-Trail Election Bill Dead? -- UPDATE: Not Dead Yet
By Kim Zetter July 18, 2007 | 11:01:02 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/holt-paper-trai.html

Rep. Holt is not being an honest broker in this debate. He has ties to (and an office next to) Avante International which will reap millions in profits if the Holt Bill passes.

http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2007/07/rush-holt-hr-811-and-avante.html

Paper trails don't fix the problem, and none of the DRE companies are going to turn over their source code. You can’t have honest elections with proprietary, for-profit DRE companies running the show.

This bill is a band aid that won't make the elections more honest.

Posted by: Dr. John R. Moffett | Jul 19, 2007 11:48:04 AM

The bill, if passed, would give PA paper trails instead of paperless DREs and it would be easy as pie to steal 3 to 5% or more of the vote and it would pass all the Holt audits or any other audit or recount, because paper will be equal to electronic. Only with Holt passed, even many activists would be fooled.

Some know of what I speak, some don't. Those who know of the studies that suggest or show that this can be done and support HR 811 or any other "audit" proposal ought to be deathy curious to fund studies to disprove somehow the existing studies that the paper trails don't work to properly capture voter INTENT. Moving forward to pass the bill in the face of about 3 uncontradicted studies is reckless like racing down a mountain road after seeing a sign that says "road damage ahead; caution."

Any hacker or rigger would have to be a COMPLETE IDIOT to do anything other than make paper MATCH electronic, especially when they know there will be audits. So auditing to see if paper matches electronic is like nailing down one corner of the picnic tablecloth on a very windy day.

Posted by: Paul Lehto | Jul 19, 2007 2:23:03 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/holt-paper-trai.html

Paul Lehto said, "The bill, if passed, would give PA paper trails..."

WRONG, Paul. If HR 811 as it came out of Committee passed today the bill would give PA 100% Optical Scan, because there is NOTHING ELSE currently available that will both comply with the bill AND comply with our PA State Constitution.

Paper trails as they currently exist are ILLEGAL in Pennsylvania.

Posted by: Marybeth Kuznik, VotePA.us | Jul 19, 2007 5:00:09 PM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/holt-paper-trai.html

For those care for the truth and facts, please read our reply to these unfounded smearing between Holt and AVANTE.

http://www.avantetech.com/uploads/pdf/Clarification%20of%20AVANTE%20voting%20system%20position-FINAL.pdf

For those that are too busy to read, here is the summary:
AVANTE’s positions and actions:
1. AVANTE has deep respect for the tireless efforts by the election integrity activists, academics and technology experts. Their efforts have contributed to the many and continuous improvements of the voting systems and processes.

2. AVANTE respects the desire to have open sources in election system or having the voting system as transparent as possible. Our company software is always available for scrutiny. We differ in the feasibility of having ALL of the source codes made available for at least in the near term of five to 10 years without dramatic lowering in the voting system accessibility requirements in HAVA.

3. AVANTE believes that the current problems in electronic voting systems are related to the design and engineering rather than the solution and concept. AVANTE have proven that all of the specific problems known and caused tremendous constellation have a solution.

4. AVANTE affirmed that it is suing all of the largest competitors for patent infringements. However, we also continue to offer licensing whenever they are ready.

5. AVANTE is located in Mercer County NJ. The company has never donated to any national parties or political leaders. All of the company’s founders and stockholders have not donated to any national elected officials with more than $100.

6. AVANTE does not belong to any trade lobbying organizations and has not joined the Election Technology Council or its predecessor ITAA. AVANTE continues to maintain its independence and voice of supports to the those promoting election integrity.

7. AVANTE believes that current optical scan voting systems and processes are much less than equal to the integrity required by the current EAC 2005 voting system standards dictating the DRE with VVPR. They lack the ability to prevent tampering once the ballots have been submitted.

8. AVANTE continues its commitment and efforts in selling its paging and full-face DRE with properly engineered and designed VVPR.

9. AVANTE continues its commitment and efforts in selling its ballot marking device as well as precinct-based optical scan system that captures the digital image of each ballot and show the voters as exactly how the system is registering their ballots not just having over-voted or under-voted contests.

Posted by: Kevin Chung, CEO, AVANTE | Jul 21, 2007 6:28:33 PM

Avante quoted me -- a little out of context. Here's what I wrote in response:

http://gnosis.python-hosting.com/voting-project/July.2007/0027.html

Posted by: Alan Dechert | Jul 25, 2007 7:31:11 AM

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/holt-paper-trai.html

More and related

DRE systems offered by AVANTE feature redundant ballot result storage devices whose data can be verified against voting machine printed "cut-and-drop" paper records previously verified by the voter. The records are then dropped into and secured inside a uniquely designed voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) printer ballot box

http://www.avantetech.com/products/elections/dre/

Clarification of AVANTE’s position on Election and Voting System Integrity
(Rev. A June 18, 2007)
AVANTE International Technology, Inc., Princeton Junction, New Jersey 08550
www.vote-trakker.com
In recent weeks, AVANTE found itself being cited as an unwilling participant of a national debate on voting system

http://www.wheresthepaper.org/AVANTEclarifiesPosition070618.pdf

On the issue of AVANTE being located in Mercer County, New Jersey, the home State of Congressman Holt
AVANTE, as a company has not contributed any money to any politician including Congressman Holt. None of the owners have donated more than $100 to any national figure or party.
The fact that the company and Congressman Holt happen to reside in Mercer County NJ is coincidental. The coincidence also applies to Mercer County based Princeton University and many of their professors involved in election integrity. For the record, the company and its founders have been residing in Mercer County for at least 27 years and more than 37 years in the State of New Jersey.
As a company, we have not received any favorable treatment from our home State of NJ or from any national elected officials. This fact is self-evident.
For the record, AVANTE intentionally keeps an arm-length relationship with those involved in election integrity as to avoid potential allegations such as those we are seeing today. We will continue to provide help to those that make requests. That includes things like loaning a DRE with VVPR and facilities free-of-charge for a Newsweek article on Ms Rebecca Mercuri when she was a pro DRE with VVPR expert few years ago...

http://www.avantetech.com/uploads/pdf/Clarification%20of%20AVANTE%20voting%20system%20position-FINAL.pdf

Brad Blog: False Dichotomies Being Used by Democrats...

"The False Dichotomies Being Used by Democrats and Their Public-Advocacy Group Supporters to Prop Up the Failings of the Holt Election Reform Bill"

Misrepresentation of the 'Opposition,' Fear of Failure, and a Bizarre, Unsubstantiated 'Civil Rights' Argument All Employed to Avoid Legitimate Debate on the Dangers of the Pending Legislation...

We've been discussing the pros and cons of Rep. Rush Holt's Election Reform bill (HR 811 [PDF]) since it dropped two weeks ago in the House.

There is, no doubt, much more to say about the specific pros and cons in detail here as we move forward. For the moment, allow me to first address three false dichotomies opportunistically and/or disingenuously and/or naively being used by supporters of Holt's legislation in order to help see it passed by Congress.

In doing so, I'll share some of what I've learned over the past several weeks via my personal investigations into why the Democrats who support the bill, along with their closely-allied public advocacy groups, are currently unable or unwilling to show the necessary courage to insist upon the banning of disenfranchising, failed DRE/touch-screen voting system technology from all American elections.

The inability, or unwillingness, of such groups to stand up and call for what most know to be the right thing is occurring despite the fact that most of those groups actually agree --- and will admit privately, if not always publicly --- that DRE technology has no place in our electoral system and is a grave menace to true Electoral Integrity.

Collectively, these three arguments are being used to shore up support for a bill which offers much good (DISCLOSURE: I participated in the drafting of the bill myself, and did what I could --- sometimes successfully, sometimes not --- to improve its language and provisions), yet ultimately may prove to be as dangerous as the disastrous Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and risks becoming known as HAVA 2 by 2008. And, as I've pointed out before, this time the Democrats won't have the Republicans or Bob Ney to blame.

FALSE DICHOTOMY #1:
It's Either Holt or Hand-Counted Paper Ballots...

The first of the three false dichotomies being forwarded by some of the bill's supporters is to suggest that there are only two choices: Pass the Holt bill 'as is,' or continue an unwinnable campaign for all hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB).

The now oft-repeated intimation is the very definition of a strawman, a canard, and a truly disingenuous false dichotomy. ...


While Hand-Counted Paper Ballots might be swell and offer maximum transparency and citizen oversight --- as well as not being nearly as difficult or unwieldy to accomplish as many under-informed folks may believe --- the majority of Holt detractors, including myself, are not fighting for hand-counted paper ballots at this time. Rather, we are fighting for a necessary ban on the failed and disenfranchising technology of DRE/touch-screen systems, which succeeded spectacularly in 2006 in ensuring that thousands (or perhaps millions) of legally registered voters were unable to cast a vote at all, much less have that vote counted either accurately or transparently.

Banning DREs does not mean all votes must be counted by hand. Most supporters of the Holt Bill know that --- or should, if they don't --- yet seem to be using the false argument when convenient to distract from the real shortcomings and concerns of the Holt legislation.

Optical-scan systems, while also presenting their own security and accuracy concerns, could easily and (fairly) safely be used with publicly-disclosed source code and a mandatory random hand-audit protocol of a sufficient number of ballots to achieve 99% scientific certainty that the reported results of any optically-scanned election are correct.

I say this knowing that those who support nothing less than 100% HCPB would likely disagree.

In either case, suggesting that those who understand the need for a complete ban on failed DRE technology are actually demanding HCPB is a cheap and unsubstantiated political tactic, unworthy of this necessary debate. It serves only to confuse at a time when all well-meaning Election Integrity advocates (and I include Holt in that group) ought to be having a legitimate discussion/debate about these most important matters...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4163

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 2/14/2007 12:00PM
Holt Election Reform Bill Continues to be Supported by Democrats and Their Public Advocacy Groups, While Being Criticized by the Election Integrity Community
Flawed Bill Continues to Fast-Track While Supporters Ignore the Concerns of Those Who Know the Issue Best
HR811 On Schedule to Become 'HAVA 2' Unless Radically Amended, Improved...
Blogged from the road by Brad Friedman...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4150

Election Report analysis notable findings all around

ESI's Report on the VVPAT
Friday, August 18 Dan Tokaji

Earlier this week, the Election Science Institute (ESI) released this report regarding the use of an electronic voting system with a contemporaneous paper record. The focus of the report is the implementation of a Diebold system in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, but the report is essential reading for anyone who's interested in the ongoing debates regarding electronic voting. It's received a fair amount of coverage, including stories in the Columbus Dispatch and Cleveland Plain Dealer, as well as this cogent analysis from Dan Seligson of electionline.org...

So what was the cause of the major problems with the VVPAT records? Was it mechanical problems or inadequate poll worker training? It's hard to answer this question definitively, but I suspect that it's some combination of these and perhaps other factors.

In any event, the ESI findings suggest that there are serious practical problems with the implementation of present-generation VVPAT systems. We simply don't know whether VVPAT systems in other places have the same problems found in Cuyahoga, because no one's done a comparable analysis.

ESI's report certainly provides additional reasons for doubting the assumption that has been a prime motivation for making the VVPAT the official ballot of record -- namely, that paper records are necessarily more accurate than electronic records. The report suggests the potential for very serious problems in states that have passed such laws. Unless the mechanical and/or training issues found in the ESI report are resolved, it is quite likely that reliance on the VVPAT in recounts will lead to the wrong result in some future election.

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/2006/08/esis-report-on-vvpat.html

Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Cuyahoga+County%2C+Ohio+esi+report&btnG=Search

I. In Focus This Week


News Analysis: The Coming Paper-Trail Debacle?
Ohio report finds challenges abound in evaluating voter-verified paper audit trails
By Dan Seligson
electionline.org

A 240-page report on failures and foibles during Cuyahoga County’s May primary raised more questions about the accuracy and reliability of touch-screen voting machines which researchers say failed to match up electronic ballots to paper versions of the vote.

Perhaps equally significant – and noteworthy – are the details of the considerable woes that plagued the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) system through careless election administration, printer failures or both.

Buried some 93 pages into the report, which was commissioned by county leaders and produced by the San Francisco-based Election Science Institute, are details of errors that included poll workers loading thermal paper into VVPAT printers backwards, blank audit trails, “accordion-style” crumpling of ballots, long blank spaces between ballots that could have represented missing or unprinted VVPATs, torn and taped-together VVPATs and missing ballot text.

ESI researchers found that nearly 10 percent of VVPAT ballots sampled were in some way compromised, damaged or otherwise uncountable, an alarmingly high proportion for a state that requires that paper be used as the ballot of record in the event of a recount.

That led ESI to the ominous conclusion that “in the event of a recount or election contest, the risk of legal challenges is exceptionally high if no significant modifications are made to the current election system.”

“The VVPAT is only as reliable as the administration of the system that produces the paper trail,” said Tracy Warren, the ESI researcher who led the manual VVPAT recount....

To critics, the high percentage of damaged or uncountable VVPATs damaged rated as significantly worse than ‘imperfect.”


“Ten percent is a complete disaster and totally defeats the purpose of a VVPAT,” said David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor and founder of Verified Voting. “You can blame it on poll worker training, but there are ways to design equipment that makes user error less likely. There are indications that Diebold has done a less than adequate job in design. The company has adopted a generally reluctant and unenthusiastic stance to paper trails and it shows in the design.”

The answer to VVPAT problems, Dill said, would be precinct-counted optical-scan units.

“There are fewer questions about it,” he said. “We know with appropriate care and poll worker training, we can run a good election on optical scan.”..


http://www.electionline.org/Newsletters/tabid/87/ctl/Detail/mid/643/xmid/202/xmfid/3/Default.aspx

Brad Blog disputes the pair

Cuyahoga Co. OH: ESI Report on Diebold Primary Election Failure Bastardized By Anti-Paper Trail Pundits
'Experts' Ignore All But a Few Pages of a 240-Page Report
Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco California was hired to investigate and report on problems with the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The 240-page report was just released this month (August), and some in the elections community have ignored a large majority of the report and zeroed in on a single aspect that supports their thesis that voters don't need any paper, even when voting on a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine.

Daniel Tokaji is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and the Associate Director of Election Law at Moritz. He has testified against a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to a US House committee and the Election Assistance Commission..

In his paper on the ESI report, Tokaji ignores many significant findings of the report and distorts the overall findings by highlighting only the compromised VVPAT. As pointed out by VotersUnite.Org in their analysis of the ESI report

...

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3306

Avi Rubin Blog

...I find it interesting that different people on different sides of the issue have used this report to back up the claims they've been making all along. One thing that is absolutely clear to me, and something I believe pretty much everybody would agree on is that such studies are extremely valuable, and we need more of them.

...I will take this opportunity, as I have in the past, to respectfully disagree with Dan Tokaji, although not entirely. I will concede that the machines used in this study clearly did not implement an ideal paper audit trail. In fact, if you read the study, it is pretty clear that there were many faults with the paper audit trail. Where I part ways with Tokaji's is in his conclusions. I do not believe that the concept of a voter verified paper audit trail should be thrown out just because there was a poor implementation of it. In fact, if you consider a ballot marking system, where there is no electronic tally, such a system qualifies as a VVPAT, and would by its nature avoid many of the problems that arose in Cuyahoga County, Ohio...

http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2006/08/election-science-institute-report.html

Cuyahoga report highlights VVPAT challenges

While much of the discussion in the wake of the second Cuyahoga County report has focused on the questions about the report's audit of the voting devices (and the vendor's response to those questions), our friends at Electionline hit the nail on the head this afternoon.

A great piece in today's Electionline Weekly by Dan Seligson points to the data in the ESI-lead report on the problems the report highlighted regarding the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). It's worth quoting extensively from Seligson's piece, as it is the first media report so far that I've seen that has highlighted the fact that the report found that almost 10% of the VVPAT ballots studied were problematic...

http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006_08_13_archive.html

Report:

http://bocc.cuyahogacounty.us/

http://bocc.cuyahogacounty.us/GSC/pdf/esi_cuyahoga_final.pdf

http://www.caseohio.org/Cuyahoga%20News.html

Related

For Immediate Release: Monday, April 19, 2004
Electronic Frontier Foundation Honors Pioneer Award Winners
EFF to Honor Kim Alexander, David Dill, and Aviel Rubin at the Thirteenth Annual Pioneer Awards Ceremony...

The judges for this year's EFF Pioneer Awards were: Herb Brody (Senior Editor, Technology Review), Beth Givens (Founder and Director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse), Moira Gunn (Host, "Tech Nation," National Public Radio), Donna Hoffman (Associate Professor of Management, Vanderbilt University), Peter Neumann (Principal Scientist, SRI Intl.; Moderator, ACM Risks Forum), Drazen Pantic (Media & Tech. Director, NYU Center for War, Peace & the News Media), Barbara Simons (past President, Association for Computing Machinery & U.C. Berkeley Distinguished Alumnus), and Karen Schneider (Director, Librarians' Index to the Internet).

http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/2004.php

Bev Harris Vote Here

Also see Saul Iversen post

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/45174.html