Statement of Carl Lundgren

2267 Haviland Ave.
Bronx, NY 10462
718-792-1728

before the Mayor's Task Force on Election Modernization

May 4, 2005
                                
Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today.

My name is Carl Lundgren. I’m the Chair of Bronx Greens, a local of the New York State Green Party, and coordinator for True Vote NY, a voting reform group started by Green Party members. I've discussed voting system technology with a number of elected officials in the Bronx.  

I’m here to voice my concerns about the lack of certain provisions in Assembly bill A5 and Senate bill S1809 that, if not addressed, would seriously jeopardize the integrity of our future election systems, as well as citizens' confidence in them, and would result in a real threat to our democracy.
There are three specific points that need to be understood.

The first consideration is the banning of any type of communication capabilities within voting systems. I had one Senators aide ask me why there would be any to begin with. He didn’t understand that one of the selling points for electronic voting systems is their ability to tabulate and transmit vote totals from the individual  precincts to a central location. The deeper understanding that he missed was how easy it would be to dial into a voting  system at any time, or to  intercept the data anywhere along the transmission line . Think hackers. Information could be compromised in milliseconds, that’s thousandths of a second, by anyone with just little more than  a passing knowledge in computer technology. Therefore, phone lines, internet connections, wireless infra-red ports or any other type of  communications  technology  must never be allowed in voting systems.  

This leads logically into the  second consideration: if election officials, poll workers  and legislators don’t understand these systems, who will be running them once we get them? The vendors have been quite accommodating and gracious in taking on that responsibility, offering to do maintenance and in some cases even running whole elections - managing the voting machines and tabulating the votes.  No one else need dirty their hands with these mundane chores. As Sherole Eaton, the deputy director of elections in Hocking County, Ohio said recently,”We pay them for that.” There is a word for paying a private business to run your public system: Privatization. Are we to seriously consider  conceding and sacrificing our hard fought and hard earned right of the people, and the peoples public servants, to run our own elections,  to a private company that may not have the public interest at heart? That may, in fact, be in direct opposition to the public interest?

The third and final consideration  is that both of these bills require only a 3% sampling in order to verify election tallies. This means that 97% of the votes are not counted except electronically. How is this remotely logical or democratic? If a teacher  gives a test  with 100 questions, and then only  checks three answers, and if correct,  is the student given 100%?  There's no excuse for counting less than 100% of the voter-verified paper ballots, and it should be done publicly with multi party observation of the count. Or do we let the vendors run this too?

I think these concerns are ample proof that New York State should not consider the purchase or use of electronic voting systems.

Thank you.