Doylestown, PA, Jan. 18, 2006 The Coalition for Voting Integrity, and its co-founders Mary Ann Gould and Ruth Matheny, filed a lawsuit today against Pedro Cortes, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Complaint alleges that Cortes erroneously discounted lever voting systems, applied inconsistent certification standards to the voting systems being reviewed for Pennsylvania, and that the integrity, security and proof of the voters’ ballots are not being sufficiently considered to satisfy United States and Pennsylvania constitutional standards.

Details of the Lawsuit

The federal “Help America Vote Act” (HAVA), passed in 2002 attempts to alleviate some of the problems encountered in the 2000 elections, specifically allows lever machine voting systems. Cortes seems to have reinterpreted HAVA, stating in his Commonwealth State Plan to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that “because HAVA requires all voting systems to have manual audit capacity, the 24 counties now using lever machines must replace them.” The plaintiffs believe this is erroneous. Shortly thereafter Cortes then published “What Constitutes a Vote,” making contrary statements by saying the various voting systems of paper ballots, punch cards, touchscreens (DREs), and lever machines are legitimate.

     The complaint alleges that Cortes is applying glaringly inconsistent certification standards to the alternative voting systems being considered. He has no established, written certification standards to apply to all systems. After officially certifying several touchscreen voting systems, Cortes then introduced the concept of “hacking” to the issue. He used this concept to specifically exclude an optical scanning system, based on a report that votes could be manipulated. There is overwhelming evidence of major security flaws in touchscreen systems acknowledged in a September 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report .The GAO reports, in part, “significant concerns about the security and reliability of electronic computer systems” have been raised. “(S)ome of these concerns have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes ... The security and reliability concerns raised in these reports merit the focused attention of federal, state, and local officials responsible for election administration.”

     Mary Ann Gould said, “By both failing to incorporate strong security requirements in the official certification process and also not applying those security measures equally to all systems, Cortes is not complying with Pennsylvania Election Law.”

     The plaintiffs also allege that there is no meaningful guarantee that their votes will be recorded, counted and be provable should the lever machine system be discarded and replaced with a touchscreen system, which has absolutely no paper ballot backup to substantiate the voter’s choices. There is no recount or audit possible with touchscreen voting systems as currently certified in Pennsylvania. Cortes has certified only one voting system to date that would meet the “proof” requirement needed, an optical scan system with voter-verifiable paper ballots. Governor Rendell, the Pennsylvania Republican Committee and the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee all favor voter-verifiable paper ballot systems.

     The plaintiffs request the court to enjoin Cortes from compelling the Bucks County commissioners and any other election administrators in Pennsylvania to replace their current lever machine voting systems with any systems currently certified. Any replacement voting systems must take into account the security requirements and provide voter-verifiable paper ballots. New certification standards should be published and uniformly applied to previously certified systems, which need to be retested with strong security standards.

Plaintiffs are represented by Bucks County attorney Lawrence M. Otter.