[EL] When is a finger not a pen? Article discussing on-line digital signatures.

Fri Mar 1 11:47:20 PST 2013

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
 wrote:

> A technical concern from this program: how good is the ‘signature capture’
> system? I would be very curious to see how many of the people who register
> in this manner have their vote-by-mail ballots accepted or rejected based
> on the signature comparison.
>

Oh, that's interesting. Bad capture would help explain why some counties
thought the signatures were suspiciously similar. I just tried some
signatures in a drawing program on my phone, and my short indecipherable
signature looks pretty good, but I would run out of room if my signature
looked more like my name.

Technically speaking, you could avoid that concern if instead of signing
with your finger, you used the camera that comes with most phones to take a
picture of a paper signature. For example, I often endorse and deposit
checks with my phone camera, and I've used Apple's Preview software to sign
PDF contracts by holding a signature up to the webcam. That would lose the
figleaf with the finger method that the paper is still being signed by a
pen under your control, of course -- you'd essentially be submitting a copy
of the signed application instead of the original.

Coming from the litigation context -- where we keep finding out that
forensic techniques like handwriting analysis aren't as reliable as we
hoped -- I wonder if there's been study of the accuracy of signature
comparison in general. For example, is my signature when I register at 18,
vote for the first time and head off to college likely to be recognizable
when I graduate at 22 and vote in the next election? Do people use
different signatures when they want it to be vaguely legible and when they
don't care? Or when they're filling out a signature at the bottom of a
clipboard on the street? Or if they're cold vs. warm, or have shaky hands
... I can see why you say it deserves more attention.

As another random thought -- the proposed law in Massachusetts to allow
online registration would only apply to people who already have a signature
on file at the RMV. But we don't require a signature to vote in person, and
absentee ballot signatures are compared to the absentee ballot application
-- so I wonder how wet signatures on registration forms fit into the
overall scheme.

(Sorry to ramble -- Friday afternoon is not my most focused time of the
week.)

Best,
Jack

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>wrote:

> A technical concern from this program: how good is the ‘signature capture’
> system? I would be very curious to see how many of the people who register
> in this manner have their vote-by-mail ballots accepted or rejected based
> on the signature comparison. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Note that the County receiving the form almost certainly accepts whatever
> signature is on the voter registration card. But when the voter later signs
> the envelope and submits the vote-by-mail ballot, then the County has to
> match the voter’s real signature to the signature on the card (which was
> captured from the screen). If they don’t match, then the vote’s not counted.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> As we discovered here in LA County a couple of years ago, “rejected
> ballot” counts rarely get the attention they deserve. The issue raised by
> the Allpoint system certainly cries out for a study of the resulting
> accept/reject ballot counts.****
>
> ** **
>
> **-        **Doug****
>
> ** **
>
> Douglas Johnson, Fellow****
>
> Rose Institute of State and Local Government****
>
> at Claremont McKenna College ****
>
> douglas.johnson at cmc.edu****
>
> 310-200-2058 ****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:
> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] *On Behalf Of *Jack Cushman
> *Sent:* Friday, March 1, 2013 10:35 AM
> *To:* bzall at aol.com
> *Cc:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* Re: [EL] When is a finger not a pen? Article discussing
> on-line digital signatures.****
>
> ** **
>
> Interesting! Here's the part of the article that describes the procedure
> we're talking about:****
>
> ** **
>
> The firm, Allpoint Voter Services, “uses remote-control pens to transmit
> ‘signatures’ over the Internet.” After a voter enters information in an
> online form, he “signs” it with a stylus or finger on his screen. Allpoint
> transmits the “signature” to an autopen in California or Nevada, which
> transcribes the signature on to a paper voter registration form. Allpoint
> then mails the document to local election boards.****
>
> ** **
>
> A complete description is available here<http://www.nccivitas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/05.pdf>,
> including the fact that the online form they refer to is the standard
> National Voter Registration Act form including state-specific instructions.
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> I'm more interested in whether that process works in general than whether
> particular people are doing something shady (or outright breaking the law)
> in North Carolina. But to begin with, this Civitas article is slanted to
> the point of just being wrong. The core story they've put together is that
> a contractor retained by the Obama campaign to run a voter registration
> website contacted North Carolina's State Board of Elections to ask whether
> the above procedure was lawful. The SBE's General Counsel prepared a
> legal memo <http://www.nccivitas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/05.pdf>concluding that it was lawful under the NC Electronic Transactions Act and
> stating that "Special Deputy Attorney General Susan Nichols has reviewed
> and concurs in this opinion." Nichols later asked the General Counsel<http://www.nccivitas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/03.pdf>not to use that language in the future because the AG's office no longer
> allowed attorneys to state they concurred in opinions they didn't write.
> She also said "I know we talked about the issue of the remote signing and I
> agreed with your analysis, although I don't specifically recall reviewing
> the final opinion." So as far as we know the process is lawful in North
> Carolina according to the lawyers who reviewed it in both the SBE and AG's
> office, and it resulted in some mail-in registrations being sent and
> accepted.****
>
> ** **
>
> There are a couple of anecdotes in there as well about individual
> incidents that are possible in any sort of registration drive, and that
> might be worth investigating if you enforce election law in North Carolina
> -- a signature that didn't match, a person who was asked for unknown
> reasons to print and mail her form, payments that might have been related
> to the number of registrations obtained. But the core legal story is the
> above paragraph plus a more than generous dose of innuendo.****
>
> ** **
>
> So anyway, in terms of the general issues here --****
>
> ** **
>
> -- Do people buy the argument that this remote-sign process is legal in
> states that have adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act? Has that
> been tested?****
>
> ** **
>
> -- Should this be legal? Is there a good reason to differentiate between a
> form filled out by computer and signed with a touchscreen-controlled robot,
> as opposed to a form filled out and signed with a pen? I assume we already
> make that accommodation for disabled people, and digital or scanned
> signatures are routine for relatively high-stakes business transactions  --
> is there a reason to be wary of it here?****
>
> ** **
>
> Curious to hear what y'all think.****
>
> ** **
>
> --Jack****
>
> On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 11:09 AM, <bzall at aol.com> wrote:****
>
> Hasn't appeared in the blog, so I'll ask about this article,
> http://www.philanthropydaily.com/nonprofits-behaving-badly/, about this
> report: http://www.nccivitas.org/2013/elections-bureaucrats-ran-amok/****
>
> ** **
>
> Excerpt: ****
>
> ** **
>
> In a blatantly partisan move, the staff of the North Carolina State Board
> of Elections (SBE) successfully subverted state law to facilitate online
> voter registration in North Carolina by the 2012 Barack Obama campaign. In
> doing so they coordinated with partisans behind closed doors, lied about
> the NC Attorney General’s Office concurring with the SBE staff on the
> issue, and dodged oversight by their own board and the legislature. The end
> result was to add thousands of people to the North Carolina voter rolls
> illegally.****
>
> The SBE staff’s audacity is so breath-taking that it’s hard to believe, so
> let us emphasize:  The Civitas Institute has documented how SBE bureaucrats
> conspired with a private company, working for the Obama campaign[i]<http://www.nccivitas.org/2013/elections-bureaucrats-ran-amok/#_edn1>,
> to facilitate a form of online voter registration for the 2012 General
> Election – in violation of state law. It’s a classic example of how
> bureaucrats ignore the democratic process and hijack an agency for partisan
> purposes.****
>
> ** **
>
> Leaving aside the criticism of Jane Mayer (which some people argue is
> richly-deserved), I'm curious if there's another take on this actual voter
> registration procedure, or if it's as portrayed, particularly on the
> question of on-line signatures translated into a mailed document. ****
>
> ** **
>
> And the finger-based system does lend another meaning to the discussion
> over "digital democracy." ****
>
> Barnaby Zall
> Of Counsel ****
>
> Weinberg, Jacobs & Tolani, LLP ****
>
> 10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 500****
>
> Bethesda, MD 20817****
>
> 301-231-6943 (direct dial) ****
>
> bzall at aol.com
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