The following was sent to me in email by Hector DeLeon, the Director of Communications and Voter Outreach for Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart:
I read Dan Wallach’s report of the recount in your blog titled Diaz Still Leads After Recount. In his report he states:
There was no attempt to audit the original electronic systems, perhaps looking for unusual behavior in the original tallying systems’ logs, or perhaps comparing the in-person poll books or absentee envelopes against the number of cast votes.
What Wallach does not mention is that a reconcilation process is conducted between Election Day and the day the results are canvassed to ensure that the number of access codes printed from the JBCs at each poll match the number of signatures on a pollbook.
He also states: “So far as I could tell, the boxes that hold the JBCs have no security seals, which could have at least provided some evidence of chain-of-custody maintenance.”
Here he also fails to explain that there is a chain of custody in place from the moment that the equipment leaves the County Clerk’s possession. Additionally, he fails to say that security seals are placed on the JBC boxes when they are picked up by the presiding election judges. For Election Day equipment set up purposes, the security seals on the JBC boxes are broken in the presence of the Republican and Democratic presiding and alternate election judges at the poll. There is a form which has to be completed and signed by the presiding and alernate election judges attesting that this occurred.
On Election Day, after all votes are cast, in the process of closing the poll, a security seal is placed on JBC boxes before leaving the poll. Again, there is a form that needs to be completed and signed by both the presiding and atlternate election judges attesting that this ocurred.Additionally, the slot where the mobile ballot box (MBB) is located on the JBC has a security seal. the JBCs’ MBB security seals are only broken to extract the MBB after the presiding election judges return the JBCs at the end of Election Day. At the time of delivery, each JBC is inspected to make sure the security seals are in place. Once the equipment is returned the MBB must be removed from the JBC to enable the reading of the votes. All these procedures are documented on forms which most be completed by the PJ and AJ in the conduct of adminsitering the election at each poll.
All security seals have an ID number. Those numbers are reviewed to ensure the number match on all approriate chain of custody forms.
In short, there are procedures in place to ensure the integrity of the equipment and the veracity of the number of ballots cast at each poll.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found this to be quite educational. My thanks to Hector DeLeon for the feedback.
During a recount, everything should be on the table: voter signatures, documentation of security seals, etc. None of this was present or considered during the recount. The JBCs were downloaded prior to the recount, without any candidate or party observers, onto a computer that we can only assume was properly zeroed out to begin with. (A chain of custody with a broken link at the end is far less valuable than one that goes all the way through to the recount, particularly given all the well-known security vulnerabilities of the Hart InterCivic equipment that we’re using.)
It’s worth asking the question, “What is the purpose of a recount?” And the best answer I’ve got is “to spend additional effort double-checking the election results, ballots, procedures, logs, and everything else available to determine if the election result is correct.” That’s not what happened here.