Rosemarie F Myerson
January 1, 2006

Dear Commissioner

A cost study of Florida counties shows that Sarasota county can save approximately $800,000 a year by discarding ( or trying to resell) their ES&S iVotronic touch screen machines (DREs) and purchasing an optical scan voting system. The scanner system produces the actual voter ballots which can be manually recounted so that the election results can be audited. It is difficult to recommend any present electronic voting system because both DREs (touch screens) and optical scanners have security weaknesses. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) in September released a report that stated that one major problem with electronic voting systems is that they can be hacked because of the inadequacy of their security systems at every level of voting; they are especially vulnerable at the tallying points. Leon County showed that the vote totals could be changed by one person without leaving a trace.

The real electronic voting problem is that there is no way to verify the accuracy of what has gone on inside the computer on election day because of the machines’ designs. We truly have a black box voting system with the manufacturer of the machine running the election. Furthermore if you have a system where you can cheat and never be caught, and if the winning stakes are high as in public elections, then there is a huge likelihood that there is going to be fraud and the level of fraud will increase with time. Whatever electronic voting system is used, there must be a mandatory manual audit of at least five percent of the votes and this auditing must be done before any vote total is announced. Furthermore the machines or precincts that are audited must be randomly chosen just after the precinct tallies have been printed. Right now we are relying on voting systems that we know lack rigorous security and reliably. Until Congress responds to the problem, we need the county and the state to preserve each American’s right to have his vote counted honestly. “No electronic voting system has been certified to even the lowest level of the US. government or international computer security standards.” Rebecca Mercuri

From a study on costs of electronic voting in all 67 Florida counties, we found that the purchase for optical scanners is between $5,000 and $6,000 depending on various perks and the number of machines the county purchased. We need one machine per precinct. I have enclosed a 2002 cost estimate for purchase of optical scanners from Mrs. Dent. I compared this with data from one Florida county of size similar to Sarasota’s. The other county bought 163 optical scanners in late 2001. Their record shows that the Precinct Tabulators cost $5,2000 each and this price included Visible Spectrum Reader, Uninterrupted Power Supply, Internal Modem, Memory Cards, Carrying Case, Ballot Box, and 20 extra Memory Cards, total purchase cost for 163 precincts was $858,000. Extra cost were software $40,125, 2 AccuFeed Units $8,000, Ballot Transfer Cases $11,550, and Installation and Training $19,500. This brought the total NET COST to $937,175. The Shipping and Insurance cost added $17,577. Annual software maintenance and extended warranty agreement (total $33,485) are expenses that are part of the annual budget and not part of the initial purchase cost.

The Sarasota Supervisor of Elections’ estimates $6,761 for the original purchase, a figure approximately $1,000 higher than any other county in Florida spent in 2002. Furthermore I do not understand her $121,698 for Spare and Replacement machine allowance, since the other county did not list that as an item and I would expect that new machines would be covered under the extended warranty. You can ignore her estimate for 2 Absentee ballot counters as we already own them. Her estimate for Software is almost twice as high as the other county paid ($40,125 versus $75,000.) We have already bought Transportation Carts for our DREs and we have air conditioned storage for our DREs so this is not needed again. The Modems are included in the original cost of the machine for the county that I quoted above. Printed Paper Ballots were bought by Manatee County in the 2004 election for 20 cents so 230,000 ballots would cost $46,000 not $230,000. In any case paper ballot printing is an annual expense not a part of the original purchase price The other county paid $19,500 for Training not $75,000 in the SOE’s estimate. Adjusting the SOE’s 2002 estimate based on actual expenditures by a comparable Florida county brings her estimate down to $1,260,500.

We know that Leon County now is replacing its Diebold machines with other optical scanners at a cost of one million dollars and that Volusia County expects to spend two and a half million dollars for new scanners and AutoMARK machines for the handicapped. This shows the possible range of expenses to replace our DRE system with optical scanners.

Knowing that we can save up to $800,000 per year in operating expenses by discarding our DREs and getting optical scanners. (See Myerson 2004 report comparing Sarasota to Manatee Countess' total annual costs and Myerson and Myerson 2005 report on total annual expenditures for Touch Screen and Optical and that Optical scanners), providing an actual record on paper of each voter’s choices with optical scanners seems an intelligent decision..

Each election must also have a mandatory manual audit of 5% of the precinct totals in order to show that no machine failure or adulteration has happened. If these manual recounts do not jibe with the machine’s , then there has to be a total manual recount; only then should the county announce the tally results. I believe that a manual audit of the machine results should prevent tampering because of the significant risk of being caught..