In the suburban county of Montgomery, just outside of Philadelphia, election officials have, inexcusably, been caught off guard by a new, court-mandated directive by PA’s Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes.
The directive requires that counties have enough emergency paper ballots (EPBs) on hand at polling places to ensure that voters can vote if half, or more, of a precinct’s voting machines break down. County officials admit today that they were completely unprepared for the directive, and even for the likelihood of serious machine failure, despite known problems with the touch-screen voting systems they use, or the extraordinary voter turnout long-predicted for next Tuesday.
The new directive [PDF] was issued yesterday, as we reported last night in our late update to our article on the lawsuit. The successful suit was filed last week against the Democratic Secretary, by the NAACP and a local election protection coalition. It followed on Cortes’ directive a month a go that EPBs needed to be given out to voters only in the event of failure of 100% of a precinct’s machines.
Cortes’ original directive, and even the one issued yesterday, has been seen at odds with a PA statutory provision that allowed counties to offer paper ballots in the event that just one machine has failed. PA uses Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems across most of the state, and is a key battleground for John McCain’s attempt to win the White House this year…
Montgomery County’s voter services Director, Joseph R. Passarella, admits this morning that his county is unprepared for the directive, despite known problems and historical failures of electronic voting machines on Election Day in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, or even the widely-predicted unprecedented turnout that’s expected.
He also says that he believes, according to the Philadelphia Intelligencer, that an “estimated…80 percent of the state’s other counties do not have emergency ballots, having used provisional ballots for both purposes in the past.”
Incredibly, Passarella also admitted today that he had previously planned to give just 100 provisional ballots, and 100 emergency ballots to each precinct…
However, officials do not have any concrete compliance plan in place at this time.
“We are just going to have to train on the fly,” said county voter services Director Joseph R. Passarella, noting that all but one of the county’s 18 poll worker training classes have been completed.
Simply placing a letter with detailed instructions on how to handle the situation in each poll’s box of Election Day supplies “would only cause more confusion,” said Passarella.
Also, there is no time to print additional individualized emergency ballots for each of the county’s 418 polling places, according to Passarella.
Even if there was time, all of the supply boxes for each poll “are packed and ready to go,” he said.
So, in other words, even though the law already says paper ballots may be given out if even one machine breaks down, and even though the machines have broken down historically, and even though there is likely to be record turnout and not nearly enough machines to serve voters as is, this county has not previously — prior to the new directive from the SoS, or even in response to the old one, issued over a month ago — made plans to ensure that voters would be able to vote come hell, high-water, or completely-predictable machine-failure.
Disgraceful.
Who Could Have Predicted It?
According to Wikipedia, Montgomery, a suburban area southwest of Philadelphia, has a population of approximately 800,000. The Democratic-leaning county reportedly voted strongly for John Kerry in 2004, by a margin of 56% to 44%, over George W. Bush. It is the third most populous county in the state.
In the 2004 general election, 379,715 voters reportedly voted [PDF] on the county’s DRE voting systems at their 418 polling places.
That’s an average of 908 voters at each precinct in 2004. And yet, as the Inquirer reports, Passarella was prepared to have just 100 provisional and 100 emergency paper ballots on hand at each polling place this year, even with the predicted historic turnout.
To make matters still worse, Montgomery County forces voters to use the Sequoia Voting Systems’ faulty, error-prone, hackable AVC Advantage DRE touch-screen voting machines. Those are the same machines that wouldn’t start up at all in New Jersey on Super Tuesday this year, delaying Governor John Corzine, and countless other voters’, ability to cast a vote at all for nearly an hour on the morning of primary day.
The same Sequoia machines in New Jersey also reportedly flipped votes from Obama to Clinton that day, before proceeding to misreport vote totals in dozens of counties, and even lose votes entirely, as reported by Princeton University in the recently released court-ordered analysis of the Advantage machines.
“As a consequence of these flaws,” the computer scientists at Princeton wrote, “voters were disenfranchised.” The report was commissioned as part of a lawsuit by NJ election integrity advocates, and the court ordered it’s release just last week. The researchers were also able to pick the lock on the machine in 13 seconds, and do so without breaking the machine’s security seals.
In February of 2007, we reported on the same Sequoia Advantage machines having been hacked in five minutes by a professor at Princeton University, who had purchased five of the machines on the Internet from an on-line government equipment clearinghouse for $86 apiece. NJ had purchased them for $8000 a piece.
John Bonifaz, of VoterAction.org, co-counsel in the successful NAACP lawsuit against the state of PA, writes via email this morning that the legal team in the case has been alerted to the report out of Montgomery County.
Erica Jong is asking for your electronic voting and election advice here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/podunk-dogpatch-politics_b_139365.html
– Tom
How hard is it to draw up a paper ballot and run 10,000 or however many off on a copier for each polling place and find a box, cut a slot and put a lock on it….??? My high school students could put that together in one day.
When the court issued its order, it should have had an appendix with the paper ballots printed up for these idiots.
That’s right Ms Kitty! In an earlier post here i threatened to do just that as a Judge of Elections here in PA. Go to your county web site, find your precinct sample ballot, and print one off. Hell print 50 off! Take it with you to your precinct just in case. And if anything happens with these damn machines and they don’t have EPBs DEMAND you be allowed to mark the one you brought with you!
Passarella seems to have forgotten his old boy scout motto…BE PREPARED! Or maybe he never was one, but WE HAVEN’T!
Whoa Whoa Whoa. That is a major major problem right there. Print one off of your home computer? Whoa. Doesn’t anyone else see the complications with that idea. Now the ability to choose between electronic and paper should be a mandatory event at all polling locations. The concept of personal choice should be left to the voter to decide. Not a Judge or someone who thinks they know better than someone else. Let the arrogance subside and give the voter the ability to choose what media they would like to cast their vote with. Some like electronic and some like paper. Enough with left or right. Enough with thinking on my behalf. Allow me to have access to the tools in which I prefer. Please stop sounding like politicians.
Forcing a way of electronic or paper ballot is just wrong for someone who prefers the other method. Isn’t that really your point? It is about Democracy not Tyrany. FREEDOM OF CHOICE.
Please take a step back from your push and realize that others don’t necessarily think like you. That others are special in their own way and to think that you know whats best for them is simply wrong.
Everything has Pros and Cons.
GOD BLESS!
No, Undecided, I don’t think you should be allowed to let your vote be stolen, or just plain not counted, on a machine. What good does it do me to protect my own vote if you won’t let yours be protected? It doesn’t do any good.
to #5 undecided.
You are dead wrong to say everything has a pro and a con. This is the mistake in logic of giving equal weight to both sides, even if one is obviously wrong.
If I rape my daughter, where is the pro?
If I steal an election and go against the will of the people, where is the pro?
There are many, many things that don’t have a pro because they are ABSOLUTELY WRONG.
[Comment deleted. Knowing disinformation. Please see our rules for posting at The BRAD BLOG. – BF]
My opinion is that the issue at hand here is not just electronic voting Vs. Paper ballots, that the real issues are election fraud and protecting our rights for a fair election.
The article discusses the fact that even though it has been proven that a number of voters are not confident in the electronic voting devices, the examples of why there is every reason to be concerned, and numerous court orders to provide voters with a means of recourse should there be device failure(s) or the voter just simply doesn’t want to take a chance by voting electronically, that the court orders have not been complied with.
As Brad discusses a lot, there is a need to bring the idea of checks and balances back to our government. We need to have the ability to validate election results and have transparency over the entire process so that nobody is in a position where “someone else” has to be trusted without accountability to count the votes.
I’ve spent a number of years programming software and I can tell you from personal experience that one of the most important (and unfortunately overlooked) aspects of programming is error trapping/validation and that is before you even consider whether fraud could be a factor at all.
So in my mind it would be ideal to have a choice for voters where they could vote with paper ballots or vote remotely or use an electronic device so long as EVERY means of voting utilized is able to be verified and that all forms of shady behavior have no place to hide in the process.
Unfortunately that requires the dishonest/corrupt individuals to be removed from the equation so that voters can get their vote counted as they casted it without any tampering or fraudulent activity anywhere along the way. Or the means to identify when there is unacceptable practices employed, who was at fault and SERIOUS accountability for any transgression.
Claims that corruption in government is still rampant, that we still need to take action to protect our rights, that we need to be informed and vigilant for ourselves isn’t conspiracy theory or porch politics…it is fact.
As far as the question “why hasn’t fraud been found?”…what are you talking about? It has been found repeatedly and it has been committed using EVERY means possible. It has been done with paper ballots, electronic machines, registration tactics, the electoral college vote not being given to the candidate that “won” the election etc.
Dear Brad,
Thank-you for this wonderful site. I am horrified with what is happening in Montgomery County and Philadelphia. Thank-you to every who is working to make this election count in every way possible.
At this point, my focus is on getting as big a turn-out as possible, and prepare people for long lines, emergency baloots, etc.
I get a small flicker of hope, from Ohio, where 2004 saw such dirty politics, that the election was stolen, but that in 2006, “the man with the plan” Blackwell, lost the governorship, even with all his malfeasance.
The fact that Obama has gotten this far, indicates to be that the Ancestors are working to overturn this corruption, together with all the good citizens, you and me. Si se Puede! Hold the possibility that we will be “dancing in the streets” Tuesday night, and that more election reforms, are swiftly initiated.
All things are possible, Dare to Hope!
Thank-you for speaking the Truth in such dark times. May our ways of Truth & Justice be BLESSED!
PS Brad, Just wanted to say how grateful again I am for this site and all your work! If my comment above seems naieve or judgmental, I certainly didn’t mean it that way. I honor you for your work very deeply, AND I have to stay hopeful and positive, in order to keep functioning. These are not mutually exclusive. I choose to know the truth and remain optimistic and I honor you for continuing to care and reporting, when there is such gross corruption in your face every day. THANK-YOU BRAD! The TRUTH SHALL SET US FREE!