MR. SCHUTZER: We will go on to Annie Connole. Did I pronounce that
right?

MS. CONNOLE: Yes. This is a tough act to follow. My name is Annie
Connole. I thank you all for inviting me to be here before you. I am
really a behind the scene person. I am not used to coming up here talk
to you. One on one would be great. I just happen to be in the wrong
office at the right time when Allan called and said, \"Hey,\" and our
general registrar said, \"Why not?\" So, I\'m here with Fred Burkhoffer,
our Secretary of the Electoral Board.

I\'m going to rundown briefly. At 1:30 this morning I woke up because I
had been trying to get the ballot ready. We have the election, of
course, which is the most important thing. I will give you just a brief.
I\'m not going to read the whole part.

In the election of November of \'75, when I was invited to be an
election officer, I became a member of the election family. Believe me.
It\'s the most wonderful family I have ever been associated with. The
following year, I received a call from general registrar and began
working as a part-time assistant registrar and also worked in the
registrar\'s office during the month prior to the elections. Election
day, I would be back at the precinct.

I became chief election officer in \'78, and enjoyed my many, many
elections until \'91, when our then current general registrar, Charlie
Cleary, handed me a screwdriver and said, \"Would you be our
custodian?\" Knowing that I couldn\'t resist the screwdriver, I became
the custodian for the 1242 strip-tronic DRE\'s, which were our first DRE
machines full phased, which I loved, which I maintained, which worked
very, very well for us for all these years.

They were a machine that you could lower into a handicapped position for
anyone in a wheelchair or with inability to raise their hand. It was a
wonderful machine. However, technology moves on. The DRE\'s and the
touch screen came out. The HAVA kind of pushed us a little bit forward,
and we now have purchased a system which I very much like and I feel
that it does a good job for the voter, for the blind, for anyone with
any kind of disabilities.

There is one thing that was not mentioned before and I think this ought
to be written and I don\'t know how far it carries in. Handicap
accessibility at polling places is a very important thing. In Virginia,
they have come out. They have monitored us. They have gone in behind us
to make sure that every place is accessible for a person who has trouble
getting into and out of the voting place.

I have been in the field for over 32 elections. I have developed
approximately elections being the technician, custodian, whatever you
want to call me, the manager, which I like, and I hope I get a promotion
out of that one. That is 30 to 62 elections done over the years.

So, I was trying to count it up this morning, at 3 o\'clock this
morning. I\'m counting on my fingers how many elections that we have
each year. I said, \"Thank god we\'re not back at the paper ballots
because I never got the same figure twice. So, I just put something
down.\"

We have already had two elections this year. Of course, the big one, the
only one that people think is the most important one is coming up in a
few months. I\'m kind of surprised that other states don\'t have as many
elections as we do. So, we really get a run.

I work for the best electoral board around here. I don\'t know whether
Fred can hear me. We have a great GR. We have a great staff. It\'s
wonderful to work with. Our board is involved.

What I do is I program the ballot we have to send to the state for
approval. Once it\'s approved, they are down there with me. Fred is with
me all the time down at the warehouse and making sure that everything is
kosher.

Now, he has gone beyond and invited the press to please come. I set up a
machine. I set up forms to show how we document everything that we do.
We document the number, the protective counting when we get done. We
enter the seal number. These documents go out.

If anybody is ever interested in seeing the statement of results that
the State of Virginia does, I would be glad to provide them with a copy
electronically showing how we document from the warehouse, how the
election officer on the morning of election documents that that is the
seal number, that is the protective counting number. If it is not, we
are to be called.

Calibration, I heard earlier, yes, we were testing the calibration and
also, Merle, I think there was one other thing you mentioned. The
calibration and?

MR. KING: The date and the time.

MS. CONNOLE: The date and the time. My assistants and I will be down
there testing every one. We are not on the major scale of Georgia or
going across the whole state. We do deal with just Arlington County. We
now have at present 309 machines in our possession, and every one of
them will definitely be tested prior to them going out to the precincts.

We will put the ballot on. We will run an L&A test on it. On we also run
another type of certification where we push the button to make sure that
the buttons are working, that it conforms to the amount in total that we
have.

Basically I have turned away what I wrote at 2 o\'clock this morning,
but I wanted to let you know that I don\'t think that this can be
encountered by a blanket type of instruction. I think it would be
beneficial to take the different systems, ask the people who deal with
them to come in with their set of how they document what they do, and
then maybe on overall thing can be comprised and sent out not as a do or
die, but one that people can read or look at and say, \"Yes, this will
work. No, let\'s make the modification,\" and then make it a blanket
type of instruction.

If Britt is on the phone, I would like to say hi. I\'m one of his
groupees. I have been down to Richmond for just about every machine
being tested possible. I have been lucky that our board and our general
registrar has let me go down there.

I appreciate Britt and Matt Able inviting us to go down and test. It
gives you a good idea of what\'s out there, what works, what does not
work, and some machines were good and some were very good, and some were
not worth it. They were no good. But Britt was very good. He really put
them through their paces and I came to admire him because of his
knowledge of the machines and what is needed by the State of Virginia.

Now, the State of Virginia does mandate that we have training. I cannot
emphasize enough that training should be a very, very big part of it
because if the election official does not know how to use the machine or
turn on the machine or put it through its paces, there is no way that
they can help the voter come in.

The voter machine we have actually is very friendly to you. I mean,
it\'s just a simple touch here and go through. You have a chance to look
at a summary screen before you vote and it gives you a couple of
chances. I mean, it just doesn\'t let you hit the vote pad and say I
voted. It tells you you can go back. Hopefully it does have audio. They
have improved it.

I, as a sighted person, it is very difficult when you are testing to
really comprehend. I have seen the blind come through and they absorb
every bit of the instruction prior to it going through its paces. As a
sighted person, I want to see what\'s there. But they have improved the
instructions. Hopefully they will keep working and improve it to the
point where a blind voter comes in, which they have voted on it, but
just to make it easier for them.

I don\'t know. The paper trail \-- not the paper trail because it does
give a ballot imagining on it. But the thing to stick a printer on the
side or inside of it to give a paper receipt to everybody that comes
through is not \-- I\'m personally against it, I don\'t think anybody I
have talked to, other than the people that are voting it. I hope we
never have to come to that. I feel the machine works. The machine has
given us results.

Arlington is unusual because we have great wards, and they have invited
people to come down prior to the certification also that we would give a
private demonstration. Hopefully they will show up on the 29th time of
September. And, Fred, that\'s an open invitation for anybody who wants
to come to our county to watch this. We will answer questions as to how
we seal them, how we secure them, how we deliver them, how they work.
Hopefully things will go through. The newspaper has been invited twice
and has yet to shown up. So, I guess we\'re not worth writing about.

Basically, as I said, I\'m a hands on person. I\'m sorry if I didn\'t
cover possibly what you all wanted to know but I am willing to answer
any questions.

MR. CRAFT: This is Paul Craft. What system are you all using?

MS. CONNOLE: System, ABS, which is Win Vote.

MR. CRAFT: Sequoia?

MS. CONNOLE: No. We\'re not making the news. We run great elections in
Arlington. Well, actually, the Win Vote did make the news from Fairfax
County. They didn\'t really have a problem. The papers had a problem
reporting what really happened.

So, in fact, I think at the last NIST, the election manager there, Judy
Flagg, got up and tried to correct it but it never went anywhere. They
still write that 100 votes had been lost that were not lost. So, I think
we have a good machine and we kind of keep it low.

MR. SCHUTZER: Any more questions?

MR. HARDING: Yes. General question for all three of you. This is J. R.
Harding. As I understand things, our goal, Mr. Chairman, is we\'re going
to write some guidelines and standards and the states and counties and
so forth are going to implement these standards.From that viewpoint, I
have seen three documents that have been drafted that we have produced.
The thing that jumped out to me was the standards that have been added
were inclusive for folks with disabilities. My question to you is what
would be the best way for us to provide you direction so that then the
volunteers and ultimately the voters are included in this process fairly
so it\'s clear?

From the documents that I saw at this point, we\'re an afterthought at
this point. I want to correct that. So, what kind of advice could you
give to us help you ensure that our population is included
wholistically? Is my

question clear?

MS. NOREN: One of the things I see \-- yeah \-- and the problem with the
blended models that we\'re going to see of maybe an optical scan reader
to handle the second chance voting and one DRE for the disabled people
is the training issue, and that the bulk of the voters will go to this.
So, when it comes time for somebody with a disability to come in, these
poll workers are going to totally ignore it.

So, one of the things that really has to be part of these standards are
training standards. I think, you know, when you develop a system, that
the training needs to be a part of it. We purchased the defibrillator
for all our county buildings. Have you seen these?

MR. HARDING: Sure.

MS. NOREN: When we got them last summer, I went, \"This is what I need
on a voting machine.\" It\'s like you take for the poll workers. I mean,
it walks them through, walks you through. So, a human being can
defibrillate somebody by pulling this off the wall, with tape-recordings
and step by step guides.

It\'s that kind of thing that\'s going to be necessary in a lot of these
areas where maybe they might see someone with a disability once every
three elections or something like that and are going to forget how to
use it. It needs that kind of an intuitive training built into the
system.

MR. HARDING: So, if I heard you correctly, the guidelines you would want
to see would be to strongly articulate training for the broadest
population, specifically that of persons with disabilities?

MS. NOREN: Definitely, and much of the training that is incorporated in
to make it as self-using as possible. Now, of course, all of these
things add cost. That\'s one of the other problems why you\'re going to
see these blended systems, because there is insufficient funding to buy
all of it, to go out in most areas and buy. You have equipment that
every single polling place has one type of equipment, all accessible to
people with disabilities. You are not going to see that.

MR. HARDING: Anyone else?

MS. CONNOLE: Mr. Harding, Annie Connole from Arlington. I wish you would
come to our county. We do care. We do have the facilities. We do have
machines in every polling place that would accommodate anyone that would
have a disability.

Of course, if you\'re going to vote at home, we send the optical scan
ballot. If you come in to vote at the courthouse, we have the machines
there. As soon as the books close, we do not use electronic machines
prior to book closing. I think that we have made our election officials
very conscious that they are to treat anyone coming in the same as the
next, but to be able to, if a blind person needs assistance, not to be
really assisting but just basically tell them to feel the screen prior
to starting the election. We\'re gearing in on trying to cover all of
that. Yes, it\'s a training of the election officials that have to be
aware of how to treat the different things this occur at the polling
place.

MR. HARDING: If I hear you correctly, you\'re saying that Arlington has
accessible locations?

MS. CONNOLE: Definitely.

MR. HARDING: That the staff is well trained and you\'re not having an
issue. So, you\'re telling me that you don\'t require any real
additional guidance here?

MS. CONNOLE: I may not require but I think it ought to be in there. The
election officials do die and move on. Right?

MR. HARDING: Right.

MS. CONNOLE: So, I think written down because a lot of times I hear,
\"Well, where is that written? Where is the code?\"

MR. HARDING: I guess my specific question is how would you like to see
that in the document? I mean, like on the table of contents,
disabilities, and then woven into all the subsections? I mean, how would
the directions facilitate the local, you know, election officials and
then into the polling places to make it clear?

MS. CONNOLE: We issue an election guide to begin with, and the training
is done by specialized forms or what have you. We have people
specializing on that. The electoral board, the general registrar and the
staff train the election officials. They give them the documentation.

I think if it comes down to that, they can incorporate it into part of
the training. In fact, they do incorporate it into part of the training.
Let me back that up. They do already tell them. So, I don\'t know.

I mean, to me, if it\'s just within there, I don\'t know whether it has
to be specially pulled out and say \"okay, for disabilities or what have
you.\" That may help because somebody may want to know how to handle it.
If you do have it up in the contents, yes, disabilities. Let\'s go to
that page and see what\'s required of us or what is expected.

MR. HARDING: Thank you.

MR. KING: This is Merle King. I\'d like to come back and address the
question more at the state and the system level. One of the things that
we have discovered in the design of IT is making IT ADA compliant makes
good IT.We see that in websites. For example, when we implement ADA
requirements there, it improves the accessibility and usability of those
sites for all. So, in an organization like the I triple E, there is
usability subcommittees that are kind of blending issues that are not
unique but clearly of importance to the disabled community.

So, I think looking for partnerships, looking for ways to build the good
practices that are inherent with designing systems for disabled voters
will improve how all voters use the system but the \-- I\'m sorry. I
will limit my comments.

MR. HARDING: You were doing fine.

MR. KING: In my earlier remarks I said I think it\'s critical for this
group and for NIST and for other organizations to really understand the
business model of this industry. There is not a single business model
but a few short \--

MR. HARDING: But is there a theme that \--

MR. KING: Not that I can identify. A few short years ago, these
organizations are what I would characterize as mom and pop operations. I
think it is a potential error to presume sophistication in areas of
design from these vendors. That\'s not their history. They are used to
working with very small jurisdictions. They are used to satisfying the
needs of customers on a county by county basis.

So, I would encourage any group not to make presumptions about
sophistication of vendors in dealing with these issues. They are
learning about them even as we\'re learning them.

MS. NOREN: I just want to add they will write most likely to the
standards. That is what we will see. So, I think that\'s why I think

in some way you have to try to keep them as open as possible.I mean, you
want details. You want printing. You want management things into them,
but you want the creativity that needs to happen and you want the
ability to have components. What works in another industry, move it over
to this side.

You know, there are lots of types of disabilities. When I talk about
paper systems, there are so many problems with it, particularly for
people with learning disabilities. The ballot language is a constant
battle in my state because we have to limit it to 50 words. The reason
we limit it to 50 words is if you have it over that, we\'re going to go
to two ballot pages.

It\'s a legislative issue we fight every year over how long are the
ballot questions going to be. So, you run into these, again, unintended
consequences in trying to save money, or a higher error rate for handing
out two ballots. You cut down on the ballot language, which makes it
harder to understand, particularly for people with certain reading
disabilities, or you make the type too small.

All of these things, when you\'re dealing with paper ballot issues,
become major factors. So, there is lots of disabilities that are out
there that have to be addressed in different ways.

MR. HARDING: So, we\'re getting, if I could, Mr. Chairman, to the core
issue of the independent and reliable vote for the individual. A common
theme in that could then be articulated within the broader standards of
how is that basic function achieved knowing that there are 50 different
ways for the 50 different disability groups to actually execute it, I
guess, and it\'s coming from us to you, the independent vote that\'s
reliable.

MS. NOREN: Well, I think there needs to be a lot more ideas going on. I
agree with him. This is not an industry that has had a lot of R&D going
on. It\'s going to take a lot of working with the disability groups and
them looking at the process and thinking of new ways to do it and
transferring technology used in other areas for people with disabilities
to the voting process.

MR. SCHUTZER: I guess I also heard you say that the scarcity of vendors
and competition out there, I guess, mainly because the marketplace is
small and not that lucrative. So, I guess it would be nice be able to
open it up so a lot of standard components could be employed that people
are more familiar with it and have wider \--

MS. NOREN: Well, the current testing structure discourages, you know,
when a vendor has to pay to have their whole \-- I mean when they have
to have that whole system, it is problematic for vendors to write to
that type of standard that\'s out there and the type of testing systems
we have. And what\'s intended to happen, maybe somebody has come up with
an idea. Vendors purchased the idea and incorporated it into theirs.
That\'s why we have this concentration.

MR. CRAFT: I\'d like to make a comment, if I may. I would kind of like
to expand on what Merle has said and put this in perspective. These
historically have been small vendors dealing with smaller customers.
What we have seen, and I have been doing certification testing for about
12 years, the vendor community up until now has viewed certification
standards as an obstacle to the marketplace, an administrative
requirement must they meet.

They derive their system requirements from the people who are cutting
the checks. They look to their client base for their system
requirements. That often brings us system requirements that become a key
part of the design which are totally inappropriate and dangerous.

I think everybody in the room has heard about depot imbedded passwords.
Well, that was basically in response to someone who was cutting a large
check who didn\'t want to mess with that password, and the vendor had
the choice of taking millions of dollars or walking away. They chose to
go with the wants and needs of their customers.

Sequoia voting systems recently, for Nevada, came up with this serial
paper trail in response to their customer\'s requirement. There is a lot
of debate over how that fits into the current Federal Election
Commission standards, but nonetheless, that kind of thing is still going
on. So, one of the things I think we need to do here is, I think, create
a set of federal standards that will somewhat buffer some of that. I
think out of that, we will get better systems.

One of my big concerns \-- coming back to your issues, J. R. \-- with
accessibility for the disabled, is we have seen \-- in my life I have
seen a lot of money being thrown out by governmental institutions trying
to buy accessibility, buying items that are designed or conceptualized
by people who neither have a disability nor have any knowledge and
experience working with people with disabilities.One of the first voting
systems that we tested with the audio ballot had Braille for votes
spelled Etov, and, of course, it was in such a small form of Braille
that only people with very, very sensitive fingers could even read it.
Our initial tester couldn\'t quite make out what it was. I think we need
to concentrate on defining what is good science for this industry and
taking steps to make sure it\'s in place.

MR. SCHUTZER: Any other questions or comments? Anyone on the phone?

MR. WILLIAMS: This is Britt Williams. I don\'t have a question. I just
want to say hello to my good friend, Annie.

MS. CONNOLE: Hi, Britt. Miss you. He\'s one that I think does not \-- I
get very upset when I hear people saying the testers and whatever are
being bought by the vendors. This guy has never been bought by one, nor
will he ever be. He goes by the guidelines of what the state wants.

I just feel fortunate, being in the State of Virginia, to kind of have
it together. As I said, I was up in Delaware monitoring \-- not
monitoring but helping out with an election as a tech up there. They had
one place where the handicapped, the door was secured that you were
supposed to get in somehow to go get an election official to come out
and bring a ballot. I mean, how were you going to get help at a door
that was locked where the accessibility was?

We\'re fortunate with these machines. They can go into the car or to
someone who can\'t make it into the polling place, and they can vote
right there in the car, have it brought back in and put right back in
with the election.

She mentioned something about a two system of paper ballots and
electronics or a machine. We have that system in our absentee voting. We
have found no problem with it. If anyone \-- I love doing forms. I
don\'t like filling them out but I love making them up. Then I will be
glad to show you how all that can be done to incorporate the two. We do
have paper ballots, ballots that are hand counted.

As Fred said yesterday, the Obtech is a good one. The Scan is a good
one. However, it does have drawbacks. We want to make sure that every
vote counts. So, we have the program to come back to us if it\'s over
voted. The DRE\'s do not let you over vote. You can decide to under vote
or not vote at all, but they will not let you over vote. But looking at
this, we have another set of forms where they can fill in and make sure
every vote was counted.

MS. NOREN: I have a question. Are you all going to consider the printing
part of the technical guidelines? Because just as there are calibration
errors on a screen, there are also, on an optical scan ballot,
calibration errors on the printer.

The way the printer may have, you know, when you run half a million
ballots through a press, some of them have \-- there is a certain error
rate to that. The voter marks it and then, you know, they are passed
through and reads it through a scanner. So, I think the printing
standards have totally not been addressed inprevious sets of standards I
have seen. They kind of say they will be printed to the manufacturer\'s
recommendation.

This is a critical issue in the reliability. It\'s not something you see
very often. It\'s very hard to catch, that an oval might be a 16th of an
inch off on a certain number of ballots. They may show up, they may not,
but it certainly is part of the problem with paper ballots.

MR. CRAFT: Mr. Chairman, if I may.

MR. SCHUTZER: Sure.

MR. CRAFT: I\'m Paul Craft. One of the things we\'re looking at in these
standards and has been discussed quite a bit and something we have done
in Florida and something I\'m pushing for very hard is more of a
wholistic approach to defining and testing a voting system. For the 12
years we have been doing this in Florida, we allow the vendor to specify
how his ballot should be printed and how it should be marked. Then we
test it to that standard.

So, if the requirement is that the line of the oval is no more than
3,000th an inch and that it be aligned with the time marked be no more
than 10,000th of an inch from dead center, then we actually run ballots
falling on those extremes and verify that in fact it will actually read
those ballots. Then when our counties go out and buy printing jobs, they
are supposed to.

We can\'t stand over them, you know, unfortunately. They have a clear
standard where they can actually evaluate the work being turned out by
the printer. We have come close a couple of times in Florida to going
out and regulating the ballot printers. But thus far, our counties have
actually been able to do a pretty good job of that with the standards at
hand.

I think very clearly part of the design system has to include not only
the hardware and the software, but the specifications for the ballots
and the specifications for all the supplies, and even a specification
for the training and knowledge of the various people who will be
operating the system.

MS. NOREN: Looking into the way alternate people do to conserve paper,
you know, the way we handle ballots, again, just sometimes is a little
loosey-goosey. I hate to say it, but the truth is, you know, what\'s
happening to the plates. What\'s happening to the older ones. Are they
being drop-shipped in sealed trucks, all kinds of things that \--

I mean, if you are moving money or the U.S. mint was doing things like
that. But those kinds of issues are all the same kind of security issues
that you look at in a machine that we tend to forget about in these
paper systems. Again, I think at least in the short run, a considerable
portion of the systems are still going to have some type of paper based
component to them.

MR. SCHUTZER: Any other questions or comments? I want to thank the
panel. Is it break time?

MR. EUSTIS: Yes. Take a 15-minute break. Be back at 5 of 11.