Read it and weep.

by

Bob Herbert has a depressing column in today’s New York Times. Some highlights:

“State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando and interrogated them as part of an odd “investigation” that has frightened many voters, intimidated elderly volunteers and thrown a chill over efforts to get out the black vote in November.

The officers, from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which reports to Gov. Jeb Bush, say they are investigating allegations of voter fraud that came up during the Orlando mayoral election in March.

Officials refused to discuss details of the investigation, other than to say that absentee ballots are involved. They said they had no idea when the investigation might end, and acknowledged that it may continue right through the presidential election.”

Many of the people interviewed turn out to belong to the Orlando League of Voters, which does voter registration and education in Orlando’s black community.

“Now, said Mr. Egan, the fear generated by state police officers going into people’s homes as part of an ongoing criminal investigation related to voting is threatening to undo much of the good work of the league. He said, “One woman asked me, ‘Am I going to go to jail now because I voted by absentee ballot?’ ”

According to Mr. Egan, “People who have voted by absentee ballot for years are refusing to allow campaign workers to come to their homes. And volunteers who have participated for years in assisting people, particularly the elderly or handicapped, are scared and don’t want to risk a criminal investigation.”

It would of course be nice to say: Bob Herbert presents no evidence that the police interrogation of people involved in voter registration in a community that tends to vote Democratic is politically motivated, and we should give the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the benefit of the doubt. But it’s hard. Even leaving aside everything that happened in 2000, we’re talking about a state that only a month ago had to drop plans to purge 47,000 supposed felons from its voter rolls after it turned out that at least 2100 of them had already been granted clemency and had their voting rights restored. Oddly enough, there were only 61 Hispanic names on the list, which is strange since, “while blacks make up 48 percent of the prison population and 46 percent of the purge list, Hispanics make up 11 percent of the prison population but less than 1 percent of the list.” (link.) In Florida, blacks tend to vote Democratic, while Hispanics tend to vote Republican. And in two recent Miami elections, touchscreen voting machines didn’t create a log of votes cast, so no recounts were possible, and “on other occasions, votes simply vanished when the totals were transferred for tabulation.” Oops!

So while I’d like to give Florida officials the benefit of the doubt, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Charley, I can’t see what they have done to earn our confidence recently.

29 thoughts on “Read it and weep.”

  1. If its limited to Orlando, then its hard to make much of this. It has the potential look of a pretext for an intimidation tactic, but it makes no sense if it is that localized.

  4. I know many Democrats don’t express interest in making sure that those who vote are actually eligible, but it is a proper area for investigation.
    But I don’t have any problem criticizing the touch screen voter protocols around the nation. There is no reason in the world not to provide a paper verification trail for each vote. Or rather the stated reason (expense) is so small compared to the importance of providing authentication possibilities for democratic voting procedures that it doesn’t provide a sufficient excuse. (I honestly don’t understand why neither party makes a big deal of this. Both feel like they have been burned by voter fraud. Do they both engage in it so regularly that both think they are going to get the better of a non-verifiable system?)

  5. “I know many Democrats don’t express interest in making sure that those who vote are actually eligible, but it is a proper area for investigation.”
    I agree. My point was just that this might be either a legitimate investigation or an exercise in intimidation, and that I see no reason to have faith that it’s the former, given Florida’s history on these issues. Like you, I’m mystified by the failure of either party to make an issue of touchscreen voting machines, or better still, for a coalition of people from both parties to do so, since it really ought to be a bipartisan issue.

  6. I know many Democrats don’t express interest in making sure that those who vote are actually eligible, but it is a proper area for investigation.
    Yes, and if Florida was as concerned about verifying the eligibility of all voters as it seems to be about black voters these incidents would not be as suspicious as they are.

  7. “Yes, and if Florida was as concerned about verifying the eligibility of all voters as it seems to be about black voters these incidents would not be as suspicious as they are.”
    I presume that you are relying on this:

    A week later, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune found that the potential felons list had only 61 Hispanic names because the ethnic category was included in voter registration lists but not on Florida Department of Law Enforcement lists.
    The paper found that while blacks make up 48 percent of the prison population and 46 percent of the purge list, Hispanics make up 11 percent of the prison population but less than 1 percent of the list.

    This is typically awful statistics reporting. Without knowing what percentage of Hispanic ex-cons try to register to vote, this statistic is almost meaningless. I’m not complaining that you relied on it, I’m complaining about how poor the reporting is. Also, do all convicts in Florida lose voting rights or just some convicts?
    Also doesn’t it appear from the statistics we do have that whites are over-represented on the list compared to the prison population? Is that racism, or merely higher voting registration? Is it possible that some of the ‘missing’ Hispanics could fall in the ‘white’ catagory?

  8. Sebastian: All felons in Florida lose their voting rights, but they can petition to have them reinstated. About the statistics: on a list of names to be purged from the rolls, it says that 48% were black. Using my handy calculator, this means that about 22,926 of the 47,763 people on the list were black. By contrast, there were 61 Hispanic names. I gave the percentages of felons who are members of either group in order to give statistical context: after all, this disparity would be completely understandable in a state with next to no Hispanics, or next to no Hispanic felons.
    Actually, the reason why there were so few Hispanics is fairly straightforward: the chief of elections in Florida told the company he had hired to produce it to make sure there was an exact match between names on the felons list and names from the voter rolls. But one of the lists did not have ‘Hispanic’ as a category, so obviously those whose race was identified as ‘Hispanic’ on the other were not included. The chief of elections was told about this early on, but claims not to have remembered this when, at the last minute, he ordered strict matching by race. (Read about it here.)
    This same chief of elections had earlier decided to give the project of creating the list to a corporation with Republican connections over a non-profit which would, among other things, have hired an auditor to check for these very kinds of inaccuracies at a cost of $300,000. At the time, he defended his decision by saying that “the audit would be a waste of money to ‘study the width of columns and other formatting issues.'”
    Both articles also contain troubling details not worth enumerating here; they’re worth reading.

  10. Sebastian,
    I’m relying on the matter of the purged list, and similar events in 2000. Let me note, before you attack any more straw men, that I do not think these practices are necessarily, or even probably, motivated by racism. Rather, if there are nefarious doings, I suspect they are motivated by the simple desire to reduce the number of Democratic voters.

  11. There has now been a continuing stream of vote related discrepancies (to be generous) in Florida.
    Guys, this is a killer for the democratic political process. What are the actions that will make a difference in this?
    You can write letters to editors and such, but I would think this is exactly the thing that a 527 could be creeated to handle. Especially since there is a questionable record to draw on, why not commercials , a web cause, a plan – anything that can be done to create pressure?
    What are the plans to advertise this, broadcast commercials against this, radio ads, billboards, to stop this type of activity, and instead support a transparent process?

  13. Actually, I thought it was unclear. There are all sorts of oddities in this story, including a number of misrepresentations by the Election Commissioner. He had been told that trying to match by Hispanics would end up removing almost all Hispanics from the purge list, and ordered it anyways, at the last minute. He had previously ensured that there would be no audit of the purge rolls. Most importantly, this list was supposed to be secret; it was only revealed under court order. (Obviously, if the list was going to be public all along, the ‘dirty tricks’ hypothesis would be a lot less plausible, since it would have been much less likely to work.)

  14. The purged felons list was a dirty trick used in such a manner to disproportionately strike legitimate Democratic voters. The same stunts were pulled in 2000 and probably gave the state to Bush.
    The problem isn’t that they are trying to purge improper voters — that is a proper function. The problem is that under that pretext, they are deliberately being very sloppy because the net effect of their procedures is to invalidate a lot of proper Democratic voters (and this is probably intentional, or at a minimum, they are happy if in fact that is the probable result). As partisan Repubs would say, “too bad.”

  15. Ok, I see why you would be suspicious.
    This brings me back to my point a couple of comments up. Why do both parties (and it really is both parties) allow for such lax voter verification procedures and why aren’t they more worried about a lack of paper trail in electronic voting? Why doesn’t either party seem to care about such things?

  16. Why do both parties (and it really is both parties) allow for such lax voter verification procedures and why aren’t they more worried about a lack of paper trail in electronic voting? Why doesn’t either party seem to care about such things?
    My guess? Two reasons: first, it’s to the politician’s advantage to keep the laxity and the loopholes, as they can either directly profit from it themselves, or use it as an excuse to rally the troops in the next election. The second, more fundamental, problem is that the electorate doesn’t really care. We pay periodic lip service to it, but beyond that… well, there’s Kobe and Laci Petersen and Survivor and that new Tom Cruise flick…
    The only way I see the system being completely (and properly) revamped is if there are widespread allegations of voter fraud in the upcoming election. Some kind of fuming, furious groundswell of support for change that would force people to take notice or lose votes, permanently. Unfortunately, if there were widespread allegations of fraud, I think that any desire for real, systemic change would get lost amidst all the finger-pointing…

  20. Sebastian,
    One reason that the “paper trail” folks haven’t gotten more traction is that they aren’t accessible to the blind, or to people who don’t read English, at least in the sense of keeping their ballots secret. The “Help America Vote Act” is making some changes, but it isn’t required to go into effect until 2006.
    It also doesn’t help that so many of the arguments made for audit trails have such a “black helicopters” feel to them. Many election officials are honest, hardworking people, and it seems incredible that they might take part in the sort of chicanery that is attributed to them. Not to say that some sort of shenanigans might not go on, but the general perception is that the system is *mostly* accurate, and that the benefit from fooling with new systems is outweighed by the hassle factor.
    We’ve had centuries to figure out ways to beat paper ballots, and there have been some ingenious systems to do so. I’ve talked with a friend who is an astronomer about voting, since his research depends on absolute precision and accuracy in data reporting via electronic means alone, and he confirms that it’s possible to have voting systems that completely avoid paper and yet are anonymous, auditable, and verifiable. People place entirely too much weight on little pieces of paper, when it’s the actual *information* that’s important.

  21. he confirms that it’s possible to have voting systems that completely avoid paper and yet are anonymous, auditable, and verifiable. People place entirely too much weight on little pieces of paper, when it’s the actual *information* that’s important.
    No-one’s ever disputed that it would be possible to construct such a system if people trusted everyone involved. The problem is that, absent such trust, we need a means of verifying the voting outcomes. That’s the utility of the paper trail, and one I don’t see being made obsolete in the near future.

  22. Michael N. One reason that the “paper trail” folks haven’t gotten more traction is that they aren’t accessible to the blind, or to people who don’t read English, at least in the sense of keeping their ballots secret. The “Help America Vote Act” is making some changes, but it isn’t required to go into effect until 2006.
    Language is a trivial issue to address. Simply print the ballot in the voter’s preferred language. If the kiosk can meet this need already in its interface, then all the heavy-lifting has already been done.
    People place entirely too much weight on little pieces of paper, when it’s the actual *information* that’s important.
    I don’t think folks are stuck on the paper itself. They are concerned precisely with the information. The problem is the high level of abstraction that occurs when you use a touch-screen voting machine; it is the very definition of a black box. You, as a voter, have no way of knowing what is going on inside, and even if you verify your ballot on-screen, there is no necessary correspondence between that verification and what the machine ultimately stores in its memory. Paper is merely the most obvious method for providing a low level of abstraction as a backup. Personally, I don’t even feel comfortable driving away from a gas pump when it fails to give me a receipt.
    Of course, if you can describe an all-electronic system that would be auditable and provide a comparable level of voter confidence, I’d be very interested to hear it. But bear in mind that abstraction and voter confidence are inversely proportional, at least in my view.

  23. No-one’s ever disputed that it would be possible to construct such a system if people trusted everyone involved. The problem is that, absent such trust, we need a means of verifying the voting outcomes. That’s the utility of the paper trail, and one I don’t see being made obsolete in the near future.
    It’s not the utility of a *paper* trail, it’s actually the utility of an *audit* trail. If you don’t trust the people who count the votes, then a “secret ballot” system is fundamentally insecure. In the words of Boss Tweed, “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”
    Paper ballots can be reproduced, and if an election official is truly corrupt, what’s to stop him from asserting that Ballot Box A, filled with carefully-prepared ballots, is the actual record of the vote, instead of Ballot Box B, the “genuine” one? Check out some of the current laws about what happens if more ballots are actually present than the voting records say should be. In some jurisdictions, they randomly draw ballots until the number chosen equals the number of people who voted, and if that includes some “stuffed” ballots, well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
    Paper ballots and the schemes that are generally discussed regarding them are what Bruce Schneier refers to as “security theater” — they make you feel better, but they don’t actually do anything to resolve the problem. The only way that the situation can be made truly secure is to have a complete systematic re-evaluation, and then get new machines to accomodate it.
    I’ll write up a post about this sometime soon — hopefully, by the end of the week. Basically, you have to figure out what problems you want to alleviate most, and design to solve those, as it’s not possible to get a perfect system. You also have to figure out who you trust, and what you do if you don’t think things are on the up-and-up. There are also a lot of problems that aren’t obvious that you wind up needing to address — accessibility, reliability, and anonymity being the first that spring to mind.

  24. Gromit wrote:
    Language is a trivial issue to address. Simply print the ballot in the voter’s preferred language. If the kiosk can meet this need already in its interface, then all the heavy-lifting has already been done.
    This assumes a literate voter, and also one that can see to read. There are millions of blind and visually-impaired voters who need some help, too, and we need to make sure their ballots are just as secret as yours and mine.
    Paper is merely the most obvious method for providing a low level of abstraction as a backup. Personally, I don’t even feel comfortable driving away from a gas pump when it fails to give me a receipt.
    But it’s not a complete backup, even if it feels like it ought to work. To continue with your example, what will you do if the gas station bills you for another fillup? Contest it on the grounds of “I don’t have a receipt, so the transaction never occurred”? Will you compare your pile of receipts every month with your bank statement to make sure there aren’t any unauthorized transactions? Your bank and the fuel provider are probably more interested in keeping you as a satisfied customer than in stealing $15-20 from you, so they’ll let that slide a few times… but that forbearance has limits. There are rules about what evidence must be provided to establish the validity of a transaction, but they aren’t as strict as you might think.
    A secret ballot requires some level of trust in the system. That may mean making some compromises, in that you’re trading off voter anonymity for some level of abstraction. We accept a suprising amount of that abstraction without perhaps realizing it — as I mentioned before, the security of paper ballots isn’t as high as many people think. Just because there is something physically present to recount doesn’t mean that the actual will of the voters is represented.
    That’s the big advantage to a properly-designed electronic system — it can have transparency and redundancy built in. It can certainly be built without those things… but any system can be implemented poorly. I’ll have a post on this up soon, and we can argue about the details there if you’d like.

  25. Paper ballots can be reproduced, and if an election official is truly corrupt, what’s to stop him from asserting that Ballot Box A, filled with carefully-prepared ballots, is the actual record of the vote, instead of Ballot Box B, the “genuine” one?
    Michael,
    I think what you are overlooking is the scale of fraud that electronic voting makes possible. One dishonest official in one precinct can only do so much harm, and if the dishonesty is equally distributed between the parties, as seems plausible, then there is a degree of offset.
    Electronic voting is different. If the machines can be hacked into, or their software altered to produce biased results, then the scale of vote fraud expands hugely. Requiring the paper backup is not a perfect solution, but it cuts the problem down to size. Further, where election officials are honest, it might serve to expose electronic fraud by demonstrating the incorrect tallies. That alone is a deterrent.

  26. “It’s not the utility of a *paper* trail, it’s actually the utility of an *audit* trail. If you don’t trust the people who count the votes, then a “secret ballot” system is fundamentally insecure. In the words of Boss Tweed, “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”
    As Bernard says, the scale of the potential fraud is far more dramatic with electronic voting. The nice thing about having an electronic system and a paper audit trail is that discrepencies can be highlighted and independently investigated. In order to successfully cheat, I would have to change the electronic system, have someone cheat the audit trail, and avoid detection. It is fairly likely that the people who could change the electronic system are not the same people who could make changes in the paper audit. If someone tried to do both, it is far more likely that he could be caught than if he was just doing one. If someone tried to have a conspiracy to do both it would be large and difficult to keep secret. I’m not suggesting that fraud will ever be impossible but that doesn’t mean that we can’t take simple steps to make it very difficult to pull off in practice.

  27. Michael N.: This assumes a literate voter, and also one that can see to read. There are millions of blind and visually-impaired voters who need some help, too, and we need to make sure their ballots are just as secret as yours and mine.
    Sure, the visual impairment problem is harder than language (though by no means impossible to overcome), but that doesn’t mean we should sacrifice security and general voter confidence. I would argue that even if a blind person or an illiterate person can’t verify the ballot without assistance (though they can still vote in complete secrecy), the benefit of the system is still universal, in that it still discourages fraud.
    I could certainly envision systems to overcome both problems, namely printing in braille, and using a symbolic key and/or printed photos for the illiterate. I just don’t know the technical or cost issues associated with each.
    But it’s not a complete backup, even if it feels like it ought to work. To continue with your example, what will you do if the gas station bills you for another fillup?
    That’s completely beside the point. I don’t like driving off without a receipt because I want a record that I paid for the gas I just put in my tank. The display on the pump is too abstracted and too ephemeral for my comfort (it is gone by the time the next person pulls up). And compare “not a complete backup” with “no backup at all”. I’ll take the former, thanks.

  28. Getting back to the article in question, I have the following racist observation to make:
    Herbert is an idiot. First, he’s writing an article on something the fairly liberal Orlando Sentinel has passed editorial judgement on ten days previously, which makes him so late to the game that no one’s going to care. Secondly, because of this:

    The vile smell of voter suppression is all over this so-called investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

    Really? Based on what evidence, exactly? Sense of smell? We’re supposed to take this seriously, somehow?
    The reality of the situation is this: Florida’s got so many different, competing brands of electoral incompetence going on simultaneously, that it’s going to take years to straighten out. And it’s not just those mean old Republicans doing it, either, as any avid reader of Carl Hiassen’s columns in the Miami Herald would surely know.

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