Mitch Trachtenberg: Open Source for Election Integrity

Humboldt County Election Transparency Project and Ballot Browser Mitch Trachtenberg April 3, 2009 Humboldt County Election Transparency Project and TEVSystems.com

Overview 1. use all open source software 2. scan all ballots to digital images 3. quot;signquot; the collected images 4. publish the signed collections 5. do an independent count, using the images

Maintain chain of custody 1. minimum two persons, staff or deputized 2. forms for opening/closing each container 1. who removed container from secure storage, at what date/time 2. who opened container, at what date/time 3. how many ballots scanned, who scanned, starting and ending scan numbers 4. who closed container at what date/time 3. ballot transmittal and return form 4. project scanning logs

Scanner requirements 1. number ballots, in ink, on entry into scanner 2. scan both sides of a ballot at once 3. detect double feeds 4. Linux-compatible (SANE protocol) 5. smooth feeding of ballot weight paper

Scanning speed and costs 1. ETP used Fujitsu FI-5900C, capable of 5K/hour 2. Humboldt volunteers: 65 hours for 130,000 sides (2K sides/hour), scanning SIMPLEX 3. Potential: up to 4K ballots/scanner-hour 4. Scanner cost approx $25-30K (multipurpose) 5. as-a-service costs should be substantially less than 20 cents per ballot, scanned and counted to 0.01% accuracy

Digital signatures (from American Bar Association) quot;...digital signatures have undergone thorough technological peer review for over a decade. Digital signatures have been accepted in several national and international standards ... and by many corporations, banks, and government agencies.quot;

Digital signatures, cont'd quot;The likelihood of malfunction or a security problem in a digital signature cryptosystem ... is far less than the risk of undetected forgery or alteration on paper or of using other less secure electronic signature techniques.quot;

Gnu Privacy Guard (gpg) Image collections are validated with GPG, a free and open source encryption program. Linux provides quot;Seahorsequot; graphical interface: right click signature file icon, select quot;Validate signaturequot;

Ballot Browser (counting program) 1. Open source and fully available to all 2. Not quot;orphan softwarequot; -- commercial support and training are available 3. Operable on wide variety of platforms (Linux, but also Windows and Mac OS X) 4. Understandable code for programmers 5. Understandable output for all observers 6. PHILOSOPHY: NOT A quot;BLACK BOXquot;. Don't just show the results; show how the results were obtained, step by step.

Ballot Browser usage 1. Get one sample of each ballot type in election 2. Define all contests and choices in election 3. Define each ballot layout (5 minutes per card type) 4. Count all scanned ballots 5. Convert quot;dash patternsquot; to precincts 6. Print summary 7. Export details to spreadsheet and/or database 8. Decide on borderline cases needing human intervention

BB Contest definition

BB Layout definition Choose template, click in list, click on ballot. Repeat.

BB Counting 1. Ballots being counted are displayed 2. Votes can be overlaid on ballot images 3. Count can be slowed down for observers 4. Count can be paused 5. Last three ballots can be redisplayed with counts 6. Rate: 7.5 K ballots/machine-hour on Mac Mini (five machines can count 900,000 ballot sides in 24 hours) 7. Results from multiple machines can be easily merged.

Counting results votes.txt: summary counts by precinct and contest, votes.csv: suitable for spreadsheet import Scan, precinct code, contest, choice, quot;Debugquot;, x, y, 0=dark to 255=light quot;BALLOTquot; is a pseudo-contest, quot;CASTquot; a pseudo-choice /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,BALLOT,CAST, Debug, 0, 0, 0 /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,Prop1,Prop1/P1Yes, Debug, 477, 1576, 69 /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,Prop2,Prop2/P2Yes, Debug, 477, 1950, 81 nonvotes.csv: /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,Prop1,Prop1/P1No, Debug, 477, 1613, 243 /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,Prop2,Prop2/P2No, Debug, 477, 1987, 240 /home/mitch/00/00/000001.jpg,80040300,Prop3,Prop3/P3No, Debug, 895, 864, 247 (nonvotes.csv includes quot;just missed being a votequot;) (overvotes have quot;:OVERVOTEquot; appended to choice)

Write-ins 1. BB captures the write-in area whenever the associated oval is filled 2. Write-in images are named after the ballot number and race (Pres_006773.jpg_0.jpg) 3. Write-ins are grouped for ease of validation

Precinct assignment

Import into sqlite3 1. Define votes table (create table votes...) 2. Set mode to csv (.mode csv) 3. Import csv file (.import votes.csv) 4. Perform SQL queries (select...) Time from CSV availability: less than 2 minutes. How many votes for each Pres. candidate? select count(*), choice from votes where contest = quot;Presquot; group by choice;

mitch@mitch-desktop:~/bb50$ sqlite3 votes.db SQLite version 3.5.9 Enter quot;.helpquot; for instructions sqlite> .mode csv sqlite> create table votes (filename text, dashcode text, contest text, choice text, debug text, x int, y int, intensity int); sqlite> .import votes.csv votes sqlite> select count(*), choice from votes where contest='Pres' group by choice; 320,Pres/Barr 3,Pres/Barr:OVERVOTED 204,Pres/Keyes 1,Pres/Keyes:OVERVOTED 1,Pres/Keyes:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 2,Pres/Keyes:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 21707,Pres/McCain 2,Pres/McCain:OVERVOTED 1,Pres/McCain:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 644,Pres/McKinney 3,Pres/McKinney:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 923,Pres/Nader 16,Pres/Nader:OVERVOTED 1,Pres/Nader:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 2,Pres/Nader:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 39661,Pres/Obama 5,Pres/Obama:OVERVOTED 2,Pres/Obama:OVERVOTED:OVERVOTED 432,Pres/PresWrite-in 18,Pres/PresWrite-in:OVERVOTED

sqlite> select intensity, count(*) from nonvotes group by intensity; 216|56 236|113 Less than 0.1% of all nonvotes 217|58 237|201 have intensity from 216 to 235; 218|94 238|943 219|45 239|4287 these nonvotes may be 220|50 240|16062 manually inspected. 221|46 241|46594 222|45 242|102685 223|31 243|180524 Less than 0.2% of all votes have 224|38 244|258391 intensity from 200 to 215 225|30 245|329804 226|25 246|374186 227|39 247|339073 228|36 248|179779 229|42 249|44979 230|52 250|5119 231|51 251|640 232|57 252|188 233|58 253|154 234|76 254|198 235|81 255|441

Vote adjudication 1. All parties agree before election on desired vote intensity threshold 2. Vote intensity threshold is applied to all ballots 3. Human observers need only intervene in exceptional cases

Overvote adjudication 1. All overvotes are flagged 2. Vote intensities of overvotes can be used with objective rules to distinguish false from true overvotes

Moving forward We would like to see all ballots scanned, nationwide, and their images made available as a matter of course. We would like to see independent vote counting become part of standard elections office procedures.

Thank you! Thank you! Contact information: Mitch Trachtenberg PO Box 1352 Trinidad, CA 95570 mitch@TEVSystems.com www.TEVSystems.com (707) 496-0071

Mitch Trachtenberg: Open Source for Election Integrity

by Friprogsenteret on Apr 21, 2009

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Mitch Trachtenberg: Open Source for Election Integrity — Presentation Transcript