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Key government document altered
June 30, 2006
Key government document altered
Denver, CO -- Somebody altered an official government document, and the Secretary of State is being very quiet about it.
The altered document is the Certificate of Approval for Voting System Use for the Hart InterCivic voting system. A copy resides on the Secretary of State website, and it authorizes Colorado counties to use the Hart voting system.
The certificate was issued on February 28, 2006 after what the state describes as extensive testing of the Hart voting system.
Because of concerns regarding secret ballots, the certificate was issued with a restriction. The use of serial numbers on paper ballots is forbidden.
“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado, with the condition that the optional feature for putting a readable serial number on the physical paper ballot will not be used by counties in Colorado.”
The alteration deletes the restriction that safeguards secret ballots; it now says,
“Therefore, the aforementioned components of System 6.0 are hereby certified for use in the State of Colorado.”
As soon as the alteration was discovered, CAMBER notified the Secretary of State and asked for an explanation.
“We can find no evidence that the Hart system was re-certified or re-tested,” says Al Kolwicz, Executive Director of CAMBER.
For the Secretary of State to change the system, Hart would have had apply for certification, and the certification tests would have had to be re-run to verify that the revised system meets all functional requirements, including the secret ballot requirement .
“Serial numbered ballots are definitely not anonymous.” says Kolwicz. “A voter can identify their own ballot; an absentee ballot control system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which ballot; a ballot-on-demand system can maintain a log of which voter was issued which ballot; and provisional ballots are easily associated with their voter.”
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From:
Al Kolwicz [mailto:alkolwicz@qwest.net]
Ms. Gigi Dennis Colorado Secretary of State 1700 Broadway, Suite 250 Denver, Colorado 80290
I find that the web page containing the Hart InterCivic voting system certification document has been altered.
I have attached the original February 26th and the altered web pages.
The altered document removes a vital restriction that safeguards voter anonymity.
We hope that this is a clerical error. We do not believe that anyone has the authority to alter the certificate without first receiving an application for certification from the vendor, and then re-testing the system to ensure that it works with the altered capabilities.
The fact that the altered document is dated June 9th is highly suspect. Deliberations on the Boulder County ballot contract and other communications in the weeks following June 9th did not refer to this “June 9th” change.
Please let us know if this is an error, or somebody’s attempt to intentionally alter an official record.
Thank you very much for your prompt attention.
Al
Al Kolwicz CAMBER – Citizens for Accurate Mail Ballot Election Results 2867 Tincup Circle Boulder, CO 80305 303-494-1540 www.users.qwest.net/~alkolwicz www.coloradovoter.blogspot.com
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