The Cave Dwellers forgot to bring Zorg his offering of welfare mothers and Obamaphones.

[Gothmog]

185. I was on DU back then

I remember Andy Stephenson well and followed his progress. I did not realize that it was the conservative cave idiots who led the attack on Andy Stephenson. Thank you for the information. I did not think that it was possible for me to have a less favorable opinion of the conservative cave posters but your post changed that.

BTW, some of the reforms advocated by Andy are now standard practices. For those who were not on DU back in those days, Andy was very concerned about "black box" voting machines and the fact that there was no way to monitor or test these machines. Back in the early days of DRE machines, there was few if any formal procedures in place and a great deal of concern that the machines could be rigged. In Texas, you now have formal certification and testing of voting machines prior to the election where both parties are allowed to be present to observe. The observation of the testing and certification process in Harris county has been tense at time. There is not more transparency in the process compared to the early days of electronic voting machines.

Sec. 129.023. PUBLIC TEST OF LOGIC AND ACCURACY. (a) The general custodian of election records shall create a testing board consisting of at least two persons. The general custodian of election records shall make every reasonable effort to ensure that the testing board consists of at least one person from each political party that holds a primary election.

(b) Not later than 48 hours before voting begins on a voting system, the general custodian of election records shall conduct a logic and accuracy test. Public notice of the test must be published at least 48 hours before the test begins, and the test must be open to the public.

(c) The general custodian of election records shall adopt procedures for testing that:

(1) direct the testing board to cast votes;

(2) verify that each contest position, as well as each precinct and ballot style, on the ballot can be voted and is accurately counted;

(3) include overvotes and undervotes for each race, if applicable to the system being tested;

(4) include straight-party votes and crossover votes;

(5) include write-in votes, when applicable to the election;

(6) include provisional votes, if applicable to the system being tested;

(7) calculate the expected results from the test ballots;

(8) ensure that each voting machine has any public counter reset to zero and presented to the testing board for verification before testing;

(9) require that, for each feature of the system that allows disabled voters to cast a ballot, at least one vote be cast and verified by a two-person testing board team using that feature; and

(10) require that, when all votes are cast, the general custodian of election records and the testing board observe the tabulation of all ballots and compare the actual results to the expected results.

(d) A test is successful if the actual results are identical to the expected results.

(e) To provide a full and accurate account of the condition of a given voting machine, the testing board and the general custodian of election records shall:

(1) sign a written statement attesting to:

(A) the qualification of each direct recording electronic voting machine that was successfully tested;

(B) any problems discovered; and

(C) the cause of any problem if it can be identified; and

(2) provide any other documentation as necessary.

(f) On completing the testing:

(1) the testing board shall witness and document all steps taken to reset, seal, and secure any equipment or test materials, as appropriate; and

(2) the general custodian for election records shall preserve a copy of the system's software at a secure location that is outside the administrator's and programming entity's control until at least 22 months after election day.

Amended by:
Acts 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., Ch. 682 (H.B. 2524), Sec. 2, eff. September 1, 2009.
Acts 2011, 82nd Leg., R.S., Ch. 1164 (H.B. 2817), Sec. 27, eff. September 1, 2011.

These procedures were not in place during Andy's time. I have attended a couple of these certification sessions for my county and I am told that these certification session can be tense in Harris County due to the fact that teabagger is the head election official in Harris County. These procedures are not perfect but they are better than the total lack of procedures back in Andy's time. We still have black box machines but there is now some transparency and ability to monitor the certification process. I hope that Andy would be pleased that some progress has been made on this issue.