Should our review of the election process also include the AP vote collecting and NEP exit poll operations?
E-voting machines may have malfunctioned. Local election officials may have performed questionably. How do exit polls serve the election process? Are they requisite for an election system with checks and balances?
It appears that it is possible that AP (voting results collectors) and NEP (exit survey gatherers and analysts) played their part in casting a shadow on Election 2004. Each should be questioned and give testimony to the GAO.
(This is long, but I needed to lay it all out with sources to begin to get a handle on it.)
I have spent part of my day trying to improve my understanding of
- the history of e-voting machine acceptance in the US,
- the correlation between results from voting sites and exit surveys, and
- the folks who are responsible for collecting voting results, for gathering survey data, for analyzing poll/survey data, and for informing the media.
Before the November 2, 2004 election questions were raised about the United States capability to hold free and fair national elections.
Jimmy Carter offered cautionary comments in September.
"The disturbing fact is that a repetition of the problems of 2000 now seems likely, even as many other nations are conducting elections that are internationally certified to be transparent, honest and fair."
Carter states that Carter Center seeks basic international requirements for a fair election,
"A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place. . .
"Uniformity in voting procedures, so that all citizens, regardless of their social or financial status, have equal assurance that their votes are cast in the same way and will be tabulated with equal accuracy.. ."Still Seeking a Fair Florida Vote", By Jimmy Carter, The Washington Post, September 27, 2004; Page A19,
Immediately Carter was criticized: Why Floridians Shouldn't Trust Jimmy Carter, Brent Tantillo and Winfield Myers (10/04/04), American Daily.
In July 2004 The New York Times warned,
"This November, millions of voters will use electronic voting machines of questionable reliability.
"Here are some things voters should demand:
- "Physical security for electronic systems Electronic voting machines must be kept secure at all times. . .
- "The locks and antitampering devices on machines must be more secure. . .
- "Rigorous testing of electronic machines
In many jurisdictions, testing is woefully inadequate. . .
- "Randomly selected machines should be continually tested throughout Election Day. . .
- "*Properly trained poll workers, and rapid-response teams on Election Day
Many of the problems that have occurred so far with electronic voting were due to election workers' errors. . .
- "Public records at the precinct level The more records that are created of vote totals, and the earlier in the process such records are created, the harder it is to steal votes. . .
- "The option to vote non-electronically Many voters do not trust electronic voting, and many are not confident of their computer skills. . .
- "Independent security experts The short history of electronic voting has shown that manufacturers cannot be trusted when it comes to the reliability of their products. . .
"In the long run, electronic voting should not be allowed without unimpeachable and mandatory security standards, and machines that allow voters to see paper records and ensure that their votes are properly recorded. Unfortunately, a large part of the electorate will be using electronic machines this fall that lack these safeguards. Election officials have an obligation to act now to make the system as reliable as possible."
Insurance for Electronic Votes, NY Times, July 23, 2004.
Did the US elections officials heed the NY Times advice? Daily we are reading about malfunctioning machines, machines in the hands of suspicious programmers days before the election, public records not being totaled at county level with media observers barred because of DHS threats, etc.
What about independent computer security experts? Were they consulted? If so, with what outcome?
"I do not know of a single computer security expert who would testify that these machines are secure. . ."
Electronic Voting Hearings Set to Begin (AP), 5 May 2004,
Barbara Simons, former president of the Association of Computing Machines (ACM), the computer scientists' professional organization: "What we're fighting about is democracy. If we lose confidence that our votes will be accurately counted, that's it," she said.
"On a spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible," Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. "Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy." Experts Criticize Electronic Voting Systems (AP), 05MAY04.
Further, objections were voiced that software security patches were not in place before the election. Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?, Wired, Oct. 13, 2003.
If the e-voting machines failed would there be a way to "check" the ballots.
"My primary concerns ... are there is no way for voters to verify that their votes were recorded correctly, there is no way to publicly count the votes, (and) in the case of a controversial election, meaningful recounts are impossible," said Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, who was scheduled to testify before the commission.
"Electronic voting hearings set to start",, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 5, 2004.]
When other nations run up against this audit problem what do they do?
Dick Morris writes Those Faulty Polls Were Sabotage in The Hill,
"So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox's campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible."
We had been warned about the insecurity and unreliability of electronic voting machines. It appeared that we would employ those same audit mechanisms used for elections in Third World countries - exit polls. However, the exit poll experience in Election 2000 was not well-regarded in the US.
To remedy the debacle of Election 2000, the six major networks contracted with a new entity, the National Elections Pool (NEP), a consortium made up of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.
The NEP spoke reassuringly of its careful preparation (although hurried, they only had one year to get going)in October.
"The National Election Pool's analysis headquarters, above a former Woolworth's in downtown Somerville, N.J., about an hour southwest of New York, will be action central on Election Night.
"Ten high-powered numbers mavens - university professors, statisticians, political researchers - will analyze figures, along with Lenski and Mitofsky, who will decide when winners should be called in each state, and relay their calls to the networks. Each news organization retains control of when and what to announce.
"The experts in Somerville will survey exit-poll data generated by the National Election Pool and voting results collected by the Associated Press, a cooperative owned and operated by more than 1,500 U.S. daily newspapers. The AP plans to station employees at every county vote-tabulating location in the nation, funneling numbers to the counting house." See Results of exit polls lie in hands of 12 experts, Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 OCT 04,.
Joseph Lenski of NEP boasted in October.
"Since 2000, we have a better realization of the limitations of the actual vote. There are certain votes that aren't counted on Election Day, and there has been an increase in the percentage of people voting before Election Day.
"The National Election Pool, whose efforts reportedly cost $10 million, has boosted the number of early and absentee-ballot polls it will conduct more than fourfold, to 13, from the three that Voter News Service performed in 2000.
The AP has installed new quality controls to test numbers before they get into the system, and the National Election Pool has developed new computer models, based primarily on voting patterns, to flag seeming discrepancies.
"The new system performed well in 23 presidential primaries. And, unlike in the past, all the data is available for everybody at the networks to see.
"At any time, any member of the pool can look at any report about precincts and counties," Lenski said.
"The research eggheads have been gathering over snacks and desserts on Thursdays since the beginning of July, subjecting their hotshot software and equipment to upward of five hours a week of a mock 50-state election, without significant problems."
See Results of exit polls lie in hands of 12 experts,Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 OCT 04,
Did the back-up system work -- exit polls acting as quasi-audits -- for our electronic voting machines?
AP was in charge of collecting the voting results and giving it to NEP. NEP had the "research eggheads" who would start analyzing before reporting out to the networks.
What happened? Late election evening the press was abiding by its pledge to not "call" a result inappropriately early. Network commentators were filling air time, while struggling to avoid telescoping what they knew they had seen in the exit surveys.
Highly-respected, Mark Blumenthal, [Mystery Pollster www.mysterypollster.com], writes, 7 Nov 2004,
"Carlson and Begala were both convinced by the partial exit polls that heavy turnout meant `good news' for Kerry. In a commercial break, Carlson listened to Begala and James Carville speculating on who Kerry would pick as chief of staff. Presumably, CNN had briefed them on the partial exit poll numbers, and everyone was convinced Kerry would win. Remarkably, on the air, Carlson all but conceded a Bush defeat.
"Oh, but Carlson and Begala are not real journalists, you say? Then consider this exchange a few minutes later between Dobbs, Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine and Roger Simon of U.S. News & World Report . . ." see Blumenthal's excellent article.
Sometime after midnight the scene shifted. Were the borderline states giving the AP results that were not correlating with NEP's surveys?
In The Hill Dick Morris writes, Those Faulty Polls Were Sabotage,
"But this Tuesday, the networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just some of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong. So, according to ABC-TV's exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points.
"To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible. It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.
"The mistaken exit polls infiltrated all three networks and the cable news outlets and had a chilling effect on the coverage of election night."
"Richard Morin, Washington Post Staff Writer, wrote on Thursday, November 4, 2004; Page A29,
". . .a server at Edison/Mitofsky malfunctioned shortly before 11 p.m. The glitch prevented access to any exit poll results until technicians got a backup system operational at 1:33 a.m. yesterday.
"The crash occurred barely minutes before the consortium was to update its exit polling with the results of later interviewing that found Bush with a one-point lead. Instead, journalists were left relying on preliminary exit poll results released at 8:15 p.m., which still showed Kerry ahead by three percentage points.
A server malfunction . . . but didn't Lenski give assurance that testing and rehearsals had been thorough? What caused the Edison/Mitofsky server failure on Election Night?
After midnight when the voting results started to shift for a Bush victory and the exit polls did not, the anchor persons were scratching their heads. Soon after 1:30AM the exit polls switched dramatically to start matching the voting machine returns in the key battleground states..
An interview with the 12 "research eggheads" from NEP and the AP vote collection staff would seem to be appropriate.
What happened that changed the data between 8:15PM and 1:33AM? What caused the malfunction of the exquisitely-tested NEP server? Was there any interaction between the AP or NEP with any representative of either political party during Nov. 2 and Nov. 3, 2004?
Will the NEP and AP be interviewed under oath by the GAO.