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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