Kim Alexander's Weblog

Yesterday the California Voter Foundation issued this CVF-News Round-up covering the following topics:

• California's voter registration form gets redesigned


• CVF encourages EAC to require "software independence" in voting standards


• 23 of 58 counties' post-election manual tally reports are now online


• California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to receive Profile in Courage award


• Redistricting initiative submitted for qualification

Follow the link above for more details and links.

(# 1:50 PM)

With another statewide election just around the corner, the California Voter Foundation today released its new California Online Voter Guide, providing nonpartisan information on state candidates and measures.

Since 1994, CVF has produced the online guides to help Californians prepare to cast an informed ballot. The guide is now in its sixteenth edition.

This year, California’s primary election was split, resulting in three statewide elections in 2008. The Presidential primary was held in February. On June 3rd, legislative and congressional primaries will determine which candidates face off in the November General election.

The races are highly competitive in a number of districts, with contested primaries in 21 of the state’s 53 congressional districts, 8 of the 20 State Senate districts, and 28 of the 80 Assembly districts.

In addition, California voters will vote on just two statewide propositions this election. However, they are competing measures that address a complicated subject -- eminent domain. To help voters sort it all out, the new online guide provides lists of the top five donors for and against each measure, news articles and links to campaign web sites.

Another factor complicating this election is that the participation rules for nonpartisan, “Decline to State” voters have changed yet again. In the June 3rd election, The Democratic, Republican and American Independent parties will permit nonpartisan voters to participate in their primary elections.

Other resources available in CVF’s guide include a “Voting FAQ”, county-by-county directories of election offices and voting equipment, tips on how to host election house parties, and maps of political districts. The guide also highlights important dates and deadlines, such as the last day to register in order to vote on June 3 (May 19), and the first day voters can request a Vote by Mail ballot (May 5).

CVF’s California Online Voter Guide will be updated throughout the election season. The California Voter Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization advancing the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process. CVF’s 2008 voter education programs are supported by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

(# 10:55 AM)

A lot of the work I do with the California Voter Foundation is focused on how California can set a good example for the nation and world when it comes to responsible use of technology in the democratic process.

There's good reason to think California will have an impact -- it traditionally does. Whether it's property tax revolts, term limits, electric cars, recycling, smoking bans, electronic filing of campaign finance disclosure reports, paper trails for electronic voting....well, you get the idea. The influence is so persistent that in DC there is at times a bias against anything California.

Like it or not, California is no doubt a trendsetter in numerous ways, and within the state, the city of Berkeley is the place where trends begin. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle featured this story by Carolyn Jones about Berkeley's long history of "firsts". A few excerpts are below.

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Sometimes Berserkeley isn't so berserk after all.

Many ideas spawned in Berkeley - and roundly mocked by the rest of the country - have taken root and have been adopted by cities everywhere. Among them: police radios, a ban on Styrofoam, health benefits for domestic partners and a switch to biodiesel for city cars.

These and other Berkeley firsts are part of a painstakingly researched show at the Berkeley History Center that chronicles the city's long history of civic innovation. "Berkeley, a City of Firsts" covers dozens of ideas that started there, including some that flopped and a few that Berkeley claims credit for but really happened elsewhere.

"There's no small city in the U.S. more known in the nation and world - for better or worse - than Berkeley," said Charles Wollenberg, chair of the history department at Berkeley City College and author of "Berkeley: A City in History" (UC Press, 2008). "For a city of 100,000, it has a huge influence."

Berkeley's creative approach to government goes back to the city's early days, when the University of California moved there from Oakland in the 1870s. The mix of academic intellectuals and Bohemian castoffs from San Francisco's Gold Rush era made for a very independent, quirky population, Wollenberg said.

Besides the innovations from City Hall, Berkeley has been the birthplace of less tangible ideas, such as the Free Speech Movement, the disability rights movement and California cuisine.

(# 8:41 AM)

The next statewide election is less than two months away! The California Voter Foundation is busy working on a new edition of our California Online Voter Guide which will debut soon. In the meantime, the official Certified List of Candidates and Statewide Voter Information Guide are available from the Secretary of State.

(# 2:21 PM)

Today's Los Angeles Times online features this excellent blog entry by Andrew Malcolm "reporting" on a Diebold software glitch. The glitch was first "reported" by the Onion News Network (ONN)in this online news video. Andrew Malcolm's story adds some interesting twists to the original Onion report. Excerpts are below. Happy April Fools day!

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An apparent simultaneous software glitch in thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines across the country during the night accidentally released word that Arizona Arizona Republican Senator John McCain will officially win the general election on Nov. 4.

Release of the preset presidential election results months prematurely could become a serious embarrassment to the company whose expensive and allegedly unreliable electronic voting machines have been so controversial in some places.

"We really don't know how this happened," a company spokesman told The Ticket, "but we stress that all the congressional election outcomes are still sealed. So there's still some mystery. And we're asking the news media to suppress the presidential news results in order to maintain the national political suspense for another seven months." Obviously, the appeal for secrecy worked on other websites but not on The Ticket.

The computer error is certain to affect negatively the television....

audience ratings on election night, since viewers will have known the winner for exactly 31 weeks. So election night's mounting popular vote counts, the states changing colors, electoral college totals and pleasant people with perfect hairdos predicting state outcomes and discussing what it all means will look like the sham it is, except this time viewers will know it.

(# 4:49 PM)

Today California Secretary of State Debra Bowen began publishing post-election tally reports from counties on the results of their one percent manual counts which are conducted to audit the accuracy of computer vote counts.

California's manual count law is more than four decades old. Basically, a set of ballots are selected at random and hand-counted, in public. The hand-counted results are then compared to the computer-counted results.

What happens if they don't match? That's been a nagging question for a number of years. Fortunately, when Secretary Bowen was a member of the legislature, she authored a bill to require counties to report the results of their manual counts. So far 12 of the state's 58 counties have done so.

California is one of just two states that I know of (the other being Minnesota) that require reporting of post-election audit results. What these audits show is that vote counting is rarely perfect, but that there is also usually a reasonable explanation of why the results may be off by a few votes. You can view those explanations in the reports.

While California law requires counties to report their manual count results to the Secretary of State, it does not require the Secretary of State to publish these reports online. Kudos to Secretary of State Debra Bowen for doing so. We need this kind of transparency in elections to give the public confidence that election results are accurate.

(# 2:23 PM)

The certified results for the February 5, 2008 Presidential primary were released recently by the Secretary of State. They show a record 9 million Californians voted in the election, more than in any previous primary election in California's history.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen issued this news release on March 15 announcing the certified Statement of Vote.

Some interesting findings from the results: 58 percent of California's registered and 40 percent of California's eligible voters participated in the election. 42 percent of the ballots were returned through the mail; 58 percent voted at the polls. (Vote-by-mail rates have remained at the same level for the past several elections, despite predictions by some that they will continue to rise). Sonoma County had the highest voter participation rate, with 76.4 percent of the county's registered voters casting ballots, followed by Marin at 75.7 percent. Merced County had the lowest participation rate, at 46 percent of registered voters, with Kings county coming in the second lowest, at 47 percent.

(# 10:01 AM)

California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has won this year's John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award! Kudos to Secretary Bowen, who has indeed shown enormous political courage and leadership in her efforts to improve voting equipment security in California.

This Associated Press story provides additional details. Excerpts are below.

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BOSTON (AP) — The secretaries of state in California and Ohio were named winners of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Tuesday for challenging the reliability of electronic voting systems.

Debra Bowen severely restricted the use of electronic voting systems in California six months before the Feb. 5 presidential primary, after computer scientists at the University of California concluded they could be hacked.

Many county registrars were furious with her decision, which they said left them little time to get ready for the early primary.
The switch overwhelmed election workers in some of the state's most populous counties, stretching the election night count into the next morning.

Bowen said the award vindicated the work of many who had preceded her in questioning the reliability of electronic voting systems, "in many cases having been told they were off base or crazy."

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner required counties using electronic voting systems to give paper ballots to voters who requested them in the primary election held this month.

She also ordered county officials to replace their electronic voting systems with paper ballots and optical scan technology by the November general election.

The awards will be presented May 12 at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston by Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made decisions of conscience without regard for personal or professional consequences.

(# 5:06 PM)

The Washington Post published this story today by IDG News Service reporter Robert McMillan that describes a Pennsylvania state web site where 30,000 voter registration records, including birthdate and drivers' license numbers could be accessed online. My comments are included in the article featured below.

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With voting in Pennsylvania's presidential primary just a month away, the state was forced to pull the plug on a voter registration Web site Tuesday after it was found to be exposing sensitive data about voters in the state.

The problem lay in an online voter registration application form that was designed to simplify the task of registering to vote. State residents used it to enter their information on the Web site, which then generated a printable form that could be mailed to state election officials. Pennsylvania's Department of State disabled the registration form late Tuesday after being informed of the vulnerability by IDG News Service.

Because of a Web programming error, the Web site was allowing anyone on the Internet to view the forms, which contained data such as the voter's name, date of birth, driver's license number and political party affiliation. On some forms, the last four digits of social security numbers could also be seen.

"Upon learning of this situation, the Department of State acted immediately to disable the specific page," said Department of State Spokeswoman Leslie Amoros in an e-mail message.

"The Department is reviewing the facts to determine how this information became available," she said. "We are also taking all necessary steps to correct the situation and are implementing processes aimed to prevent future occurrences."

The flaw was first reported by a reader of Digg.com, who stumbled upon the bug after filling out a voter registration form.

"Being a security conscious programmer, I decided to test," wrote the reader, identified only as mtg169, "Very bad PA...very very bad!"

The bug did not expose all registration data, just the information supplied by those who used the Web site's online form. About 30,000 voter registration records appeared to be available on the site.

"That's bad, really bad," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer with Web security vendor WhiteHat Security. In an e-mail, he said he hadn't seen this type of error on a voter registration Web site before, but that it was caused by a common Web programming error. "We've seen a great many vulnerabilities like this in the course of doing our work."

Many counties offer online accessto voter registration data, so that residents can check on their status, but these databases typically remove data that could be misused, such as date of birth, social security numbers and driver's license numbers.

The last four digits of a social security number are often used as a security question, required to access certain types of billing accounts, and a skilled identity thief could use a driver's license number, name and address in a check forging scheme, according to privacy experts.

"There are so many alarming things about this," said Kim Alexander, president of California Voter Foundation, which has studied voter privacy across the U.S. "It just seems to be a case where you have government agencies using sophisticated technology in thoughtless ways."

With an important presidential primary set to occur in Pennsylvania on April 22, it's particularly worrisome that this data could have been accessed by anyone, she added. "All kinds of dirty tricks could be played," she said. "In heated campaigns we've seen cases where someone will call a whole bunch of voters and tell them that the election date has been changed."

While states may make these databases available for political purposes, their use is strictly controlled and sensitive information like driver's license numbers is removed. With the data on the Web, this is no longer possible, Alexander said. "You lose all those protections when you have this data available on the Internet."

"It's unprecedented that this information would be so freely available on the Internet," she added.

Ironically, with many voters already avoiding voter registration because of privacy concerns, Pennsylvania's efforts to help voters may end up backfiring, said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse "When word gets out, it will be one of those things that will deter people from registering to vote," she said.

(# 3:27 PM)