San Juan voters sue Sam Reed over ballot secrecy
This morning a group of voters and the Green Party of San Juan filed a writ of mandamus with the supreme court against Secretary of State Sam Reed and San Juan County.
The plaintiff's attorneys (Smith & Lowney) sent out a press release describing the cause of action:
The suit alleges that actions of Secretary of State Sam Reed required approximately one million voters to vote on ballots that contained unique bar code identifiers, in violation of the State Constitution’s guarantee of “absolute secrecy” of the ballot and statutes requiring uniform ballots within a precinct.
The suit also claims that Reed has encouraged and subsidized an uncertified ballot tracking “audit” system that links the ballot identifiers to voters’ identities, further undermining ballot secrecy by potentially permitting vendors and officials to inspect how a citizen voted.
The case name is White v. Reed. The petition is available on the firm website.
(hat tip: Rick Hasen)
Of course ... ALMOST ALL ballots in WA violate the essential purpose of a secret ballot, which is to protect voters, and the voting system, from undue influence by other people. With mail voting, your boss, union leader, parent, spouse, etc. can essentially force you to vote a certain way: not only encourage you to do so, but actually monitor you filling out, sealing, and mailing your ballot. This is the main reason why we have a secret ballot, so people CANNOT do that to you.
Wait a minute ... Knoll Lowney is representing a ballot integrity case?! This is a guy who has taken significant action to deny the will of the voters and hurt the integrity of elections. Wonders never ceasing etc.
Statement of state Elections Director Nick Handy on a new lawsuit filed in the state Supreme Court by critics of ballots in some Washington counties:
“Four voters and a local political party have sued the Secretary of State, asking our high court to prohibit use of bar-code identifiers on ballots in Washington. The lawsuit claims that markings on the ballots compromise the privacy of voters. That is simply not true. It is not possible in Washington to trace any ballot back to the individual voter.
“The state Constitution and the laws of Washington vigilantly protect the privacy of voters, and this office and our Legislature have made it very clear that no election official in the state may trace a ballot back to how an individual person voted. The basic underlying premise of the lawsuit is just wrong.
“Ballots do have various bar codes and other markings on them to allow the tabulation equipment to process the ballot properly and to guard against ballots being fed through more than once.
“For those counties using the Mail in Ballot Tracker system, this system has improved the efficiency and accuracy of election operations, while continuing to maintain a secret ballot.
“It’s understandable that some might be concerned when they see the markings, but, again, rest assured that those markings do not compromise the privacy of the ballot. These are an important and reliable tool for accountability and efficiency, and we support our County Auditors who choose this system.
“The litigation brought by four voters and the Green Party of San Juan County specifically talks about the counties that use Hart Intercivic optical scan voting systems. The Hart system has been approved by both state and federal regulators, and you can bet they would not permit any compromise of ballot secrecy.
“We expect to prevail if this matter is actually heard by the Supreme Court.”
Nick Handy
Director of Elections
Office of Secretary of State
O – (360) 902-4156
c- (360) 239-5005
David Ammons
Communications Director
Office of Secretary of State
o- 360-902-4140
c- 360-280-3944
For ease of reference, the news release by the critics is here …
CLAIMS ONE MILLION VOTERS DEPRIVED OF
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO A SECRET BALLOT.
Lawsuit seeks injunctive relief from State Supreme Court
(SEATTLE and ORCAS IS., 14 July 2009) – This morning, four Washington voters and a local political party sued Washington’s chief elections officer, seeking to prohibit placement of unique bar code identifiers on ballots.
The suit alleges that actions of Secretary of State Sam Reed required approximately one million voters to vote on ballots that contained unique bar code identifiers, in violation of the State Constitution’s guarantee of “absolute secrecy” of the ballot and statutes requiring uniform ballots within a precinct. The suit also claims that Reed has encouraged and subsidized an uncertified ballot tracking “audit” system that links the ballot identifiers to voters’ identities, further undermining ballot secrecy by potentially permitting vendors and officials to inspect how a citizen voted.
Information about the case, including a list of Washington counties employing the challenged procedures, can be found at http://smithandlowney.com/secretballot.
The petitioners filed White v. Reed directly in the State Supreme Court using an unusual judicial procedure for fast-track adjudication by the High Court. According to the petition, Reed’s actions have led to the introduction and proliferation of ballot IDs in most Washington counties by activating an option of the Hart Intercivic voting system. Reed also has encouraged and subsidized many counties to deploy the VoteHere ballot tracking system which links the unique ballot ID with the voter’s ID. Petitioners claim that these systems are not necessary for election auditing or security. Seattle’s King County prohibited ballot identifiers after finding that voters perceived the identifiers as compromising ballot secrecy.
Hart and the VoteHere vendor are aggressively marketing the systems across the country for both poll site voting and absentee mail voting. Washington State requires paper ballots, and votes almost entirely by mail.
Seattle public interest attorney Knoll Lowney represents the four voters and the Green Party of San Juan County, where the offending systems were first deployed. According to Lowney, “Reed’s actions have violated the constitutional rights of one million Washington voters just because of where they live. In King County, where I vote, there are no unique bar codes on my ballot and I am certain of the secrecy of my ballot. Every voter in our state deserves the same confidence.”
A statement supporting the case was released by the national public interest organization, Voter Action, which has participated in lawsuits throughout the country involving election integrity concerns. The statement can be accessed at www.VoterAction.org.
Petitioner Tim White said, “An absolutely secret ballot means your blank ballot is exactly like your neighbor’s. Nobody can reconnect it to your hand. Secretary Reed’s new system permits just that. He subsidized this system with a no-bid contract with VoteHere, a corporation led by Reed’s mentor Ralph Munro and past heads of the Pentagon and the CIA. Voters should not have to trust this or any private company to maintain ballot secrecy.”
Says Petitioner Allan Rosato, “Few voters realize that the bar code they see is unique to their ballot, and in many cases linked with their voter ID. When they learn this, they are very concerned. Our Constitution and statutes do not allow this experiment with ballot secrecy. It certainly is not necessary since two-thirds of Washington voters are not subject to it.”
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The OSOS webpage on ballot secrecy ...
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/BallotSecrecy.aspx
Nick Handy is incorrect. He is quoted here as saying, "It is not possible in Washington to trace any ballot back to the individual voter."
I disagree, both from a theoretical and experiential standpoint. It happened to my ballot! I contested a PCO election in King County, and election officials were able to find the ballot I had cast, which was determined to have been incorrectly "duplicated." The election result was overturned; I was declared the winner of my PCO race, and the entire election was recertified. To my knowledge, this was the only time in recent memory when an election challenge in Washington State reversed the outcome of a race, even one as minor as a PCO race (I had been the only person to have voted Republican in the primary. I knew I had voted for myself, so I knew the outcome was incorrect when I saw that I had drawn zero votes).
Election officials knew exactly where to look where my ballot would be found, by box number. I was actually present when they opened the box and found my ballot. They also located the "duplicated" ballot and were able to see how the "duplication" error had occurred. (Both ballots were then brought to the attention of the Canvassing Board.)
Small precinct sizes will also enable individuals to trace ballots back to the individuals who cast them. Some counties in Washington merge results from adjacent precincts to prevent this from happening, but most do not.
As for electronic voting machines, the combination of a paper trail on a continuous loop, as well as voting logs that show the order in which people voted, will also potentially reveal how individual voters voted their ballots.
Finally, the method of counting the ballots will sometimes enable election officials to potentially figure out how most vote-by-mail voters voted. From 2004 until 2007, and possibly to this day, King County assigned all ballots to batches, which had been sorted down to the legislative district level. Let's say a batch contains 250 ballots. The names of the voters in that batch is a public record (Stefan Sharkansky obtained similar information for the 2004 election). At any rate, this information is certainly available to election officials. The tabulated results are also available to election officials on a batch-by-batch basis (I have written confirmation of this) although they only post results down to the precinct level online, in the aggregate--not by batch. If this hypothetical batch contains results for, say, 150 different precincts in the legislative district, then that means a large number of ballots that have a unique precinct can be traced back to a particular voter. The reason for this is that during the 2004-2007 time period, election officials failed to randomize ballots into new batches once they were removed from their outer envelopes. I complained about this to the OSOS and to KC election officials a few years ago, but I soon moved to another county. I sincerely hope the problem has been addressed. (This issue is slightly more complicated than what I have written here. I would be happy to discuss the details with anyone who is interested.)
Of course, the implication of a non-secret ballot is twofold: voters can be intimidated or bribed into voting a particular way.