Ya mencionaba hace meses que lo que pasa en Florida no sucede en ningún lado. Y si hablamos de elecciones, su condado de Palm Beach se lleva la palma. Las chapuzas electorales están ahí a la orden del día (ni el voto por correo del Real Madrid llega a estas cotas).

Leyendo Wired saltan todas las alarmas. Porque lo del condado de Palm Beach a menos de un mes de las elecciones presidenciales de EE.UU. es muy preocupante. Y además llueve sobre mojado. Basta con recordar lo sucedido en las votaciones del 2000, donde las “papeletas mariposa” y el recuento suspendido por el Tribunal Supremo resultaron claves para la victoria de Bush II sobre Gore. En una decisión que aun escuece. Y que ha significado 8 terribles años para todos.

¿Pero qué ha pasado ahora? Prácticamente lo mismo de entonces con una dosis añadida de chapuza y picaresca más propia de Gil que de la primera potencia planetaria. En Marbella desaparecieron expedientes del Juzgado y en Palm Beach 3.478 votos de las elecciones para Juez del condado.

Esta vez no ha sido por las ya famosas “papeletas mariposa”, que había que perforar. Cambiaron el sistema, pero se lo encargaron a la misma empresa, Sequoia Voting Systems. Que por el módico precio de 5 millones y medio de dólares ha elaborado unos scanners ópticos, causantes de los problemas actuales.

Las elecciones judiciales, después de un mes de recuentos, han proclamado dos vencedores distintos. Desvelando graves problemas en la infraestructura electoral del condado. Menudencias tales como papeletas desaparecidas o tabuladores que son incapaces de reproducir el mismo resultados dos veces seguidas.

Se recogieron 102.523 votos. Pero tras el primer recuento sólo aparecieron 99.045 papeletas. ¿Qué pasó con las restantes 3.478?

Una semana después, al volver a hacer el recuento sin las 3.478 papeletas desaparecidas, proclamaron a otro vencedor.

El condado acabó encontrando las papeletas desaparecidas, pero también se encontró con 227 más que no estaban contabilizadas. Así que a volver a contar. Y el primer ganador fue restituido como triunfador.

Las razones para tantos recuentos se encuentran en la ley electoral del Estado de Florida: cuando el margen de victoria es igual o menor a un 0.5% se marca la obligación de efectuar un recuento automatizado. Sin embargo si este recuento establece un margen de victoria de un cuarto de punto o menor, se procede a un recuento manual.

Y el abogado William Abramson ganó por solo 17 votos al Juez Richard Wennet. Fue entonces cuando descubrieron que faltaban 3.478 votos, modificando el resultado electoral. Ahora era el Juez Wennet quien ganaba, por 60 votos. Ante las protestas de Abramson las autoridades electorales del Estado decidieron no reconocer a ningún vencedor hasta que el condado –que ya daba por bueno el resultado- no encontrase las papeletas perdidas. Finalmente tras un nuevo recuento, incluyendo las encontradas más las 227 descubiertas, se repitió la victoria inicial del abogado Abramson. Pero por más diferencia que los 17 votos de la primera vez. Con otro dato que no debemos pasar por alto: en el recuento manual se validaron unas 12 mil papeletas que habían sido declaradas nulas por las maquinas. Porcentualmente estamos hablando del 12% del total de votos emitidos.

Quisiera aclarar que he intentado simplificar un proceso farragoso que ha durado un mes. El cronograma de la imagen resume el proceso y los distintos recuentos.

Existe un precedente -de 2004- en el condado de Napa (California) y que también involucraba la maquinaria de Sequoia. Y está sucediendo con la mitad de su equipamiento en el Estado de Nueva York, que se está planteando sustituir 1.500 unidades.

¿Dónde estaban los votos perdidos? Los encontraron guardados en unas cajas en el centro de tabulación de Palm Beach. ¿Por qué estas papeletas estaban desatendidas? Las culpas parecen recaer en el desorden a la hora de efectuar el primer recuento además de la alta participación registrada.

Da que pensar y mucho que según las previsiones para el 4 de noviembre el numero de votantes se va a quintuplicar. Y que la papeleta tendrá el doble de tamaño.

Y la semana que viene escribiremos sobre la 2002 Help America Vote Act y las defectuosas bases de datos, que tienen el perverso efecto de hacer desaparecer a ciudadanos registrados para votar o duplicar los ya existentes.

Comments Please!

The folks at Why Tuesday have been provided a heads up that several Pennsylvania counties are using Sequoia Voting Systems electronic voting machine. These are the same machines that failed dramatically in the New Jersey primary on Super Tuesday in February. The vulnerabilities of these machines have been well publicized by computer science professors Ed Felton and Andrew Appel at Princeton. Appel bought five used Sequoia machines last year at a government auction to explore their guts. Wired Magazine has an account of what Appel learned once he had thoroughly explored the Sequoia machines:

Appel says he opened the machines with a key that came with them, and was able to easily access the machines' motherboards and memory chips to swap them out. But even without the key, a student of his was able to pick the lock in seven seconds. He says that even seals wouldn't thwart a hacker because they're easily counterfeited, and many counties fail to use and track them properly -- as evidenced by recent reports out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

But none of this is really news, is it? We've come to expect human error coupled with crummy machines on Election Day. But, here's the real story for tomorrow, Voter Story.

I've been watching voter hotline efforts mature and scale over the past few years. The idea behind Voter Story is that rather than rely on news reports or even blogs about what's happening on Election Day at the polls, voters can call comment using a form on Voter Story (on its website or through its widgets that are freely distributed). Partners groups working to public Voter Story include VoterAction, Committee of Seventy, NAACP Voter Fund and the National Lawyers Committee for Election Protection.

Rob Stuart, the brains behind Voter Story, also told me that he is working with the League of Women Voters of PA to get the word out about Voter Story.

Voter Story is important on two levels. Local voter assistance organizations will be using the data in real time to pinpoint problems across the state and make state officials aware of them as well as help individuals access the ballot. After the election, geeks like me will be able to use the data to get a broader, data-based picture of what the problems areas were across the state.

We can hope that tomorrow's vote runs smoothly across Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, there are systemic reasons why that won't happen. Let's read about the story as it unfolds in real time at Voter Story.

Judge Orders Mandatory Testing of Machines After Company Previously Threatened Legal Action Against Princeton Professors if They Dared To Examine Machines...

Just out from the NJ Star-Ledger...

Subpoenas were issued in six New Jersey counties today, demanding that officials turn over for testing all voting machines where discrepancies were found in the presidential primary tallies.

Election officials in Bergen, Gloucester, Mercer, Middlesex, Ocean and Union counties were instructed to turn over the machines by April 15. Activists trying to persuade Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg that electronic voting machines should be discarded succeeded in convincing her that examining these counties' machines is critical to their case.

"In order to succeed in our case and show Sequoia machines are insecure and can be hacked into, we need to look at these machines," Venetis argued. Clerks in the six counties uncovered discrepancies in 60 machines when they doubled check the vote tallies after the Feb. 5 presidential primary.

Michelle Shafer, a spokeswoman for Sequoia in California, said her company would try to have the subpoenas quashed. But no motions were filed today with Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg, who is presiding over the case in Trenton.

In the meantime, we repeat our background detail on this amazing (and sometimes hilarious) story in full below, as we ran it this weekend when one of the Princeton professors threatened by Sequoia found the failures in NJ were even worse than previously thought.

Please note: The same failed Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screens are scheduled for use in Pennsylvania in the important upcoming Democratic Primary!...

On Super Tuesday, Sequoia's AVC Advantage touch-screen voting machines failed to boot up in many places, forcing the Governor himself to wait 45 minutes before he could cast his vote. After Super Tuesday it was found that the Sequoia AVC Advantage has misreported voter turnouts.

Sequoia offered a feeble excuse for the failure, without offering evidence to support it, which blamed both voters and poll-workers instead of themselves for the multi-million dollar embarrassment. County election officials across NJ then unanimously called for an independent investigation of the machines by Princeton computer profs Felten and Andrew Appel.

Sequoia then threatened legal action against both the professors and the counties should they undertake such a technical review of their self-described "tamperproof" machines. The counties folded to the company's strong-arm tactics, while hoping either the state AG or SoS would commission such a review.

Sequoia's website was then hacked, but not before they could release misleading propaganda claiming they loved third party independent reviews so much they were willing to then sponsor one on their own by selecting and paying an unknown "independent company" named "Kwaidan Consulting" to do one on behalf of Sequoia.

Kwaidan was then revealed by The BRAD BLOG to be no more than a "blonde nymphomaniac"-seeking babe-magnet named Mike Gibbons, who, after being commissioned by Sequoia for this important analysis, suddenly discovered a new-found love for George Bush, Jesus Christ, Albert Einstein, and the U.S. Constitution. The babes and the Jim Beam would have to wait.

Much as those voters and election officials in Pennsylvania, set to use the exact same machines two weeks from now in the upcoming, all-important, Democratic Primary, will have to wait to see if the machines work at all. Then, of course, they will simply have to trust the reported results, no matter what the machines tell them, since it is strictly impossible to discern whether any single vote cast on them was actually recorded as any single voter intended.

In Alaska: Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, prompted by California's recent decertification of the Diebold electronic voting system, has asked the University of Alaska to review the machines, which are used in Alaska's elections.

In Ohio: Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner responded last week to an interrogatory by the state's Republican lawmakers, who served up 23 questions about her intended methods for an electronic voting review similar to California's tests.

Brunner answered all questions, and summed up, “Respectfully, I believe further delay is tantamount to opposition to the project.” In Ohio, any election reform activity will be viewed through the unfortunate prism of partisan bitterness resulting from its controversial 2004 general election.

The need for political harmony may partially account for the involvement of Ohio's county election officials in the tests. The omission of election personnel from California's technical testing has been repeatedly cited (oddly, the Reasonable Reporter believes) as reason to refute the entire disastrous accounting of engineering deficiencies in the machines and their peripheral devices.

Funding for the Ohio test was approved earlier this week.

In New Jersey: The legislature required a retrofit of voting machines so that they print out a paper ballot. The New Jersey Institute of Technology conducted tests, and declared the technology produced by Sequoia Voting Systems for producing a paper trail to be unreliable. (Sequoia is the system used by Nevada.)

So a judge has moved the deadline for the retrofit, and the machines will not provide the paper trail in time for the state's February primary. New Jersey's election watchdogs want to can touchscreen machines entirely and use optical scan devices instead. That isn't happening. At least not yet.

In Florida, where the Bush-Gore debacle spawned the nation's rush to touchscreen machines, millions of dollars worth of them have been sent to the morgue, packed away in warehouses on orders of the state legislature. Optical scan systems will be used instead.

Meanwhile, Volusia County, Florida election officials are in a tizzy, replacing faulty memory cards just days prior to a local election. The cards are part of Diebold's optical scan system. They were found to have failed at four times the acceptable rate in the 2006 election. All of the county's memory cards had been replaced in June of 2006.

In Washoe County, Nevada: The county commission will reconstitute an elections task force for a review of elections procedures. Voter Registrar Dan Burk says the focus will be on administrative procedures, as opposed to the technological security of the Sequoia Voting System.

Nonetheless, the task force will have in hand the technical reports from the “top-to-bottom review” by University of California computer scientists. Those reports found the machines, and indeed the entire Sequoia System, to be easily hacked at every level, and resulted in its decertification by the California Secretary of State. Burk says the panel will ensure county procedures are in place to avert the attacks described in the U.C. Reports.