Not Quite a Blog

The State of Connecticut is now claiming that a certain law never existed. I told them about this over a year ago!

Here's the skinny (from "Supposed state requirement for voting machines never existed" ):

After being forced to scrap plans to buy thousands of new high-tech voting machines because no company could meet Connecticut's requirements, state officials revealed Friday that one of those requirements never existed in state law. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said there is nothing in state statutes or regulations that require a voting machine to show a full ballot on the screen.

and ("'Full-face ballot' not required by state" ):

One of the apparent stumbling blocks to Connecticut’s drive to obtain electronic voting machines -- a tradition which shows all offices and candidates on the ballot at once -- turns out not to be a legal requirement at all.

This "law" greatly reduced the number of electronic voting systems vendors that could respond to a recent Request for Proposals (RFP). Only two vendors could respond to the RFP because of this supposed law that demanded that all voting systems display all contests on a ballot on one screen (this is known as a "full-face" DRE).

However, I know that Connecticut knew that this provision didn't exist over a year ago!!! More below the fold:

UPDATE [2006-01-19T11:39:32]: The URL for the December 22, 2004 press relase has been changed to:
http://www.sots.ct.gov/releases/2004/RFP12-22-04.pdf

The link to the CT statue provision I talk about in the email below is now:
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/pub/Chap147.htm#Sec9-279.htm

Follow up:

Compare the email below, that I sent on 4 Jan 2005, to the contents of the news stories I point to above... (I never did get any response from CT):

Note: the two links referenced in the email have changed; see above.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <...>
Date: Jan 4, 2005 2:51 PM
Subject: questions related to CT election law in relation to the
recent DRE RFP...
To: Susan Thomas <susan.thomas@...>
Cc: Michael Kozik <Michael.Kozik@...>, <lead@...>

CC: Michael Kozik

Ms. Susan Thomas (Department of Administrative Services),

My name is Joseph Lorenzo Hall, an election policy researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. Michael Kozik, the Managing Attorney for the Legislation and Elections Administration Division of the CT Office of the Secretary of State, told me to contact you about this matter.

Connecticut has released an RFP for procurement of DRE voting machines and I have a question about one small, but influential (from a policy perspective) part of this RFP.

The RFP states (as does a press release from the Office of the Secretary of State dated December 22, 2004 [1]) that Connecticut Law has a "full-face" ballot provision (which means that the law states that only voting systems which display all contests simultaneously are allowed and, therefore, will be considered in the RFP process).

[1] http://www.sots.state.ct.us/Press/Releases/RFP12-22-04.pdf

I have been unable to locate this provision in the CT General Statues. I asked Mr. Kozik for a citation to this part of CT law, and he said that all such requests must go through you.

What part of the Connecticut General Statutes contains a "full-face" ballot provision as stated in the above press release and the RFP document?

The closest thing I could find was § 9-279 [2] which states: "The ballot shall be [wide enough] as is necessary to contain the names of all candidates nominated [...]." Is that the proper citation? If so, should such a provision that obviously applies to paper-based voting systems be used in an RFP about purely computerized voting systems?

[2] http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/pub/Chap147.htm#Sec9-279.htm

To be sure, this is not the only problematic feature of the current RFP, just the most significant one. (I could go on about other problems, but don't want to waste your time.)

Sincerely, Joe

---

Some further background explaining why I'm interested in this issue as a researcher:

The reason I am concerned about this (as well as other aspects of the RFP) is that this one "full-face ballot" requirement of the RFP eliminates most vendors from bidding. That is, only two (maybe three) DRE voting systems can provide full-face ballot functionality (these systems are the Sequoia AVC Advantage, the Shouptronic / ELECTronic 1242 and possibly the Microvote Infinity). Not only does this reduce the amount of competition in your RFP process drastically, the only machines that qualify are 15 years old (which means they're Babylonian in computer terms).

My adviser, Deirdre Mulligan from Boalt Hall School of Law, and I recently submitted a whitepaper to the National Research Council's Committee on Electronic Voting that pointed out the most problematic voting systems were exactly these older "full-face" voting systems. You can find a copy of this whitepaper here:

Preliminary Analysis of E-Voting Problems Highlights Need for Heightened Standards and Testing, Deirdre Mulligan and Joseph Lorenzo Hall, University of California, Berkeley http://www7.nationalacademies.org/cstb/project_evoting_mulligan.pdf

Once again, thanks for your time, Joseph Lorenzo Hall

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Joseph Lorenzo Hall
UC Berkeley, SIMS PhD Student
http://pobox.com/~joehall/