August, 2011 | CTVotersCount.org

Bridgeport waits for justice, while watchdogs shrink

While the citizens of Bridgeport wait, the merged watchdog agencies must make do with smaller staffs. No word from the Governor on the reasons for the watchdog cuts, consolidations, and the message he is actually sending to the watchdogs.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) is not not know for speed. As covered last week, it will rule on the rejection of petitions for a slate in Bridgeport, well after the election. If the past is any indication it will also be a long time before we hear if financial complaints against the mayor are valid. The public and the mayor deserve answers on all these issues in time to make a difference in the candidates they can vote for and to have guidance on the integrity of the candidates they are choosing among.

The administration ordered 128 layoffs earlier this summer for non-union personnel. About half of them were connected with agency consolidations approved by the legislature in June. The remainder were linked to efforts to cut costs when it appeared union concessions wouldn’t be forthcoming.

“We haven’t finalized our decision-making on these” jobs, Barnes said. “But we’ve invited each department to submit a plan” to try to reclaim those jobs it deems are most crucial.

This position already has sparked criticism from the state’s three chief watchdog agencies, which were rolled on July 1 — along with six others — into a new, unified Office of Governmental Accountability.

The heads of the Freedom of Information Commission, the Office of State Ethics and the State Elections Enforcement Commission, have said they shouldn’t have to ask the governor to restore positions in their budget. Malloy laid off three non-union watchdog jobs and to date has not allowed these agencies–now divisions within the OGA- to fill newly vacant posts.

That’s because at the height of the scandal that drove former Gov. John G. Rowland from office in 2004, state lawmakers legally insulated the freedom of information, ethics and elections enforcement agencies with a measure sparing them from any emergency cuts after the budget had been adopted, arguing this was essential to keep government open and honest.

The watchdog agencies say Malloy is violating at least the spirit, and possibly the letter of that law, by laying off their staff and using the governor’s control over state hiring rules to prevent them from using their approved budgets to fill the positions.

P.T. Barnum’s city continues three-ring election circus

Ringling Brothers’ city of Sarasota is famous for the 2006 congressional election show, but Bridgeport Connecticut, resting place of P.T. Barnum continues to be the home of the three-ring-circus. Ring 1 and 2 are allegations of money hi-jinks involving the Mayor. Ring 3 is the rejection of petitions for a slate of candidates, lead by a candidate for mayor, ready to challenge the establishment in the primary. Stay tuned, especially if there is a write-in campaign.

Ringling Brothers’ city of Sarasota is famous for the 2006 congressional election show, but Bridgeport Connecticut, resting place of P.T. Barnum continues to be the home of the three-ring-circus. Ring 1 and 2 are allegations of money hi-jinks involving the Mayor. Ring 3 is the rejection of petitions for a slate of candidates, led by a candidate for mayor, ready to challenge the establishment in the primary.

They had more than enough signatures validated with many left over available to check; the problem is they had one too many candidates on the petition; yet the petitions were drawn up by the same Registrar of Voters who rejected them. Whose fault is this? Should the slate be allowed on the ballot? Is this a violation by the official or not? From the Connecticut Post the story of three complaints to the State Elections Enforcement Commission <read>

A state watchdog commission has begun an investigation into a political action committee that gave thousands of dollars to Mayor Bill Finch and his chief of staff, as well as a separate complaint regarding the city Democratic registrar’s rejection of Democrat Mary-Jane Foster’s mayoral nomination petitions.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission on Wednesday voted to act on a trio of complaints filed by Foster, whose hopes of challenging Finch in a Sept. 13 primary appeared crushed Monday after Registrar Santa Ayala ruled Foster’s nominating petition was invalid.

Among the issues to be probed by the SEEC is the relationship among the “People for Excellence in Government” political action committee, Finch and William P. Beccaro, a legal consultant who was paid $91,000 last year by the city.

Note that the extra candidate was for the Board of Education, recently taken over by the state. Nobody is sure there needs to be an election for BOE, and it would be meaningless, unless a court overturns the state take over. (Same circus, different tent?)

The most interesting details are in the SEEC complaint concerning the nominating petition. It is an easy read: <.pdf>

Unfortunately, the SEEC will not rule until well after the primary election. Perhaps the slate will seek redress in the courts.

Details of the investigations will be withheld until a hearing officer’s report is put on a future commission agenda. Probes usually take months, and it’s unlikely that Foster’s request to set aside Ayala’s ruling could be reviewed before the next regular commission meeting set for Sept. 21, eight days after the Democratic mayoral primary vote had been scheduled.

A subsequent article in the Post suggests the candidate for Mayor may try the write-in route. And raises questions concerning the responsibility of a Registrar of Voters. <read>

However long it took Bridgeport to count all the ballots in last year’s gubernatorial race, it may take longer — way l-o-n-g-e-r — to tally all the mayoral votes in this year’s election. That’s because of the possibility of a write-in.

Keep in mind that write-ins can prove victorious. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura ran and won as a write-in candidate. And so did Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski against a tea party candidate backed by Sarah Palin. Imagine how much more time-consuming tabulating the turnout’s gonna be with all the voters scribbling in mayoral hopeful Mary-Jane Foster’s name on their ballots. Once those ballots go through the city’s high-tech voting scanners, they’ll likely have to be sorted (by the name of each write-in candidate) and counted by hand…

With Ayala it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with. After reading her comments about the latest uproar — that she knew the nominating petition she was handing the Foster forces was flawed — I’m convinced she’s plenty smart, politically adroit and diabolical. A real triple-threat. She knows election law. She can probably recite the Bridgeport City Charter by heart. Even if registrars of voters have no legal duty (operative words here: RIGHT NOW) to advise a candidate of a problem with their paperwork, don’t they have an ethical obligation? It’s telling that the president of the Registrar of Voters Association of Connecticut, Anthony Esposito, Hamden’s Republican registrar, says he probably would say something about the defect to the candidate “in the interest of fair play.”

A registrar of voters is more than an election administrator ensuring that voter lists are up to date and people are properly registered to cast ballots. They’re supposed to empower citizens to exercise a fundamental American right: political speech.

Stay tuned, especially if there is a write-in campaign. We added our comments on the second article at the CT Post:

The latest research adds one more challenge. Many write-in votes, under the standard of voters intent, are not recognized by the scanners as write-ins. Recanvass (recount) laws do not take this into account. If a write-in candidate gets more than about 42% of the vote, then they may well win if they can convince the courts to authorize a recount. For the details see: <CTVotersCount post on the latest research>

Update: As someone has pointed out to me, there is a complaint and it is being heard Monday.

Update: Agency examining Ayala’s ruling has been tough on previous registrars <read>

Update: Day 1 of court hearings on slate petition <read>

EVT/WOTE: Design a complete voting system, then ask vendors to satisfy needs.

Editor’s Note: August 8th and 9th, we attended the EVT/WOTE (Electronic Voting Technology / Workshop On Trustworthy Elections) in San Francisco. Over time, we are highlighting several papers and talks from the conference.

Monday’s keynote by Dana Debeauvoir, County Clerk, Travis County, Texas, was a call to design a new voting system to meet the needs of voters, election officials, and integrity advocates, then provide the specifications to vendors to compete to satisfy those needs. Debeauvoir pointed out that HAVA worked the opposite way: Officials with little notice, and little computer expertise were forced to comply with HAVA on short notice. They had to choose from what was made available by vendors.

Debeauvoir presented a possible draft design for a complete system, to start the conversation.
Keynote talk: <.pdf> <video> Full diagram with notes: <diagram>

This is just one draft on one possible design

Debeauvoir emphasized that this is just one start at a design. It provides thoughtful ideas that highlight the benefits and challenges in designing, building, and implementing a comprehensive design. It would take a lot of cool heads, research, contemplation, and redesign to get the job done well.

Perhaps most intriguing and controversial is the idea of a ballot marking device for all in-person voters. There are several advantages: The elimination of incomplete in-person votes; write-in accuracy for in-person votes; perhaps easily integrated to serve those with disabilities; savings in paper. There are potential disadvantages: Requires a backup plan (paper ballots available?) in case of power failures, software errors, equipment failures etc. – a backup plan may or may not offset savings. Would the value of more accurate votes be worth the purchase, maintenance, programming, testing, and operational costs?

A good design would likely be a system with components that integrate, yet are not all required, or can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The Debeauvoir draft would work fine without the ballot marking device, ballot marking devices only in voting centers, or ballot marking devices optional in polling places intended mainly for use by persons with disabilities.

The value of careful design and planning with everyone at the table:

The way to waste time and money, while creating more problems than those solved is to go forward without a comprehensive review, without a comprehensive design, grabbing at solutions without looking at the big picture. This can continue through time, retrofitting one solution after another onto an inadequate system solving one problem while ignoring other problems and creating unintended consequences.

Sometimes buying add-on or standalone systems works and sometimes it does not. It usually depends on the level of integration and implementation costs, for example:

Relatively easy: It would seem relatively easy for Connecticut to use independent scanners to assist in post-election audits. Such a systems do not require integration with our current optical scanners. We would need a moderate number of scanners, easily updated software, and off the shelf equipment.
Extremely costly and difficult: If we were to purchase ballot marking devices as described in Debeauvoir draft design, without acquiring new scanners, it would be very complex, far from optimum, and severely limit options by requiring ballots that would work with our existing optical scanners. Considering the expense we would be stuck with the system for a long time, or huge sunk costs for a short term gain.
In the middle: It we were to purchase electronic check-off (poll books) devices, they should communicate effectively with a new or redesigned central voter registration system. They would not need to integrate with our existing scanners. We would need several per polling place, yet considerably less than the number of ballot marking devices.

The solution is taking time and including everyone at the table in some way: Election officials, voters, technologists, integrity advocates, and vendors. Taking time to consider what could work and what might not, taking in the perspective of the variety of needs across Connecticut and the experience of jurisdictions across the country.

At some point in the future we will need to replace our optical scanners. Assuming that is in the five to ten year timeframe, this would be a good time to participate in understanding and contributing to an integrated design. The alternative is scrambling later, risking expensive, less than optimum solutions.

A pleasantly surprising answer

In the Q&A after the talk, I suggested the audit portion of the design needed transparency, so that the public could have confidence in the result. The the whole system should take transparency into account.

I was pleasantly surprised by Debeauvoir’s’ answer. She agreed that transparency is important. It was overlooked in the diagram as they assume and provide for transparency in their operations.

EVT/WOTE: Keynote – How salty is the soup? And why risk limiting audits are insufficeint.

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet.

The keynote speaker was Professor Philip Stark, Department of Statistics, U.C. Berkeley. He is the leading researcher and advocate for single ballot auditing, which would make post election audits much more efficient, while also provides the basis for efficient auditing by machine. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet. I recommend reviewing the slides from the talk, with one caveat: The slides are a large download, but well worth the wait. <slides – large download> <video> <listen>

His talk is titled: Risk Limiting Audits: Soup to Nuts, and Beyond.

Soup refers to the analogy he frequently uses to describe the statistical basis of risk limiting audits. Pollsters know that the accuracy of polling depends on the number of voters polled, not the size of the population eligible to vote in a particular contest. Thus the accuracy of an audit depends on the number of ballots checked, not the number of ballots in the election. It is just like tasting soup (or an ocean):

To know whether the soup is too salty, don’t need to eat all of it.

Enough to taste a teaspoon, if soup is stirred well.

Doesn’t matter how big the pot is: a teaspoon is enough.

Nuts refers to the limits on the purpose of an audit, according to Professor Stark:

The purpose of elections is to convince the losers that they lost.
(D. Wallach)
The purpose of election audits is to convince everybody who isn’t
nuts that the losers lost. (Y. T.)…

What’s a nut?

Somebody whose biggest fear is different enough from yours.

Somebody who shares your biggest fear is sane (and smart!).

Somebody whose biggest fear is close to yours has an interesting perspective.

Eccentric ! preoccupied ! irrationally fixated ! nuts.

The “Wayne’s World” test.

Unfortunately, who is a nut is in the eye of the beholder. Some have blind trust in election machines and blind trust in security procedures, Officials with high levels of trust question the need for post-election audits of any type. They would classify anyone questioning the possibility of election errors or fraud as nuts. Others would never be convinced of election integrity, distrusting whatever evidence is presented by officials and judged sufficient by independent observers.

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost:

Strongly Software-Independent Voting System
A voting system is strongly software-independent if an undetectable error or change to its software cannot produce an undetected change in the outcome, and we can find the correct outcome without rerunning the election.

Risk-limiting Audit
Large, known chance of a full hand count if the outcome is wrong, thereby correcting the outcome.

Risk is maximum chance of failing to correct an apparent outcome that is wrong, no matter what caused the outcome to be wrong.

Resilient Canvass Framework
Known minimum chance that the overall system (human, hardware, software, procedures) gives the correct election outcome—when it gives an outcome.

Combine a strongly software-independent voting system with a compliance audit and a risk-limiting audit.

Ingredients for resilient canvass framework

Voters create complete, durable, accurate audit trail.
Strongly software independent voting system.

LEO curates the audit trail properly.
Proper use of seals, surveillance, secure chain of custody, . . .

Compliance audit to ensure that the audit trail is adequately
intact before the risk-limiting audit starts. If not, need a re-vote.
“No smoking gun” is not affirmative evidence.

Timely reporting of all-but-final results for auditable batches.
Smaller batches are better.

Count votes by hand until there’s strong evidence that counting

the rest won’t change the outcome–risk-limiting audit
“Explaining” or “resolving” errors isn’t enough.
Might need to count all votes by hand if margin is small or audit finds enough error.

A compliance audit is what we mean when we say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that the chain of custody in Connecticut is insufficient to proved confidence in our post-election audits.

Take the time to download the slides for a non-technical introduction to post-election audits, single ballot audits, their purpose, and what is needed to provide justified confidence in elections.

Letter: Feedback after first meeting of the Election Performance Task Force

Having reviewed the video, minutes, and the proposed items to be addressed by the task force, we offer the attached general and specific comments and suggestions in a constructive spirit, to forward your efforts to achieve the democratic goals that we all hold dear.

Elections Performance Task Force Coverage <next> <prev>

Today we provide our initial feedback to Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill’s Election Process Task Force with a cover letter and several pages of suggestions. <read>

As we said in the cover letter:

Having reviewed the video, minutes, and the proposed items to be addressed by the task force, we offer the attached general and specific comments and suggestions in a constructive spirit, to forward your efforts to achieve the democratic goals that we all hold dear.

We especially applaud the open and transparent publication of announcements and information on the Secretary of the State’s web site…

CTVotersCount intends to comment further as the Task Force and our research progress. We invite the Task Force and individual members to request further details, clarifications, or to provide criticism of our suggestions at any time.

Information, video replays, transcripts, agenda’s, and the schedule of meetings can be found at the Secretary of the State’s web site <here>

Election Performance Task Force

The Election Performance Task Force has been convened by the Secretary of the State to review and evaluate our election system in order to ensure that elections in Connecticut are fair, accountable, efficient, cost-effective, and work to encourage broad-based voter participation.

We will:

– Examine Connecticut’s current electoral system. What is working well? What are its weak points?

– Identify measures that will increase efficiency and effectiveness of the voting process while maintaining its security and integrity.

– Provide future direction for our electoral process: given demographic and other trends, what should our system look like in five years? In ten years?

– Evaluate ways to integrate technology into our election systems. What is in use elsewhere? What offers the greatest value-added to election administrators? To voters’ experience?

– Find ways to increase voter participation among ethnic minority groups and young people. Are there policies in place elsewhere that are working to achieve this goal?

The public is encouraged to submit feedback and ideas to the task force via email to electionperformancetaskforce@ct.gov.

Update: In an interview with the Examiner, after the 1st Task Force meeting, the Secretary described her goals for the Task Force, her concerns with the operation of the current system, and the difficulty of changing it when the weaknesses are not apparent: <read>

Examiner: What will you be doing between now and the next General Assembly session?

Between now and January

Denise: I’ve already launched two task forces. One is on election performance. I want to follow up on some of the problems we identified. We’ve taken some steps to standardize things but I think there’s a lot more we could do. We met this morning and we’re going to look at new technologies in voting, early voting, online voting, online voter registration, and all these kinds of things that would be improvements to our system. That will probably continue for about six months and we’ll probably have some legislative initiatives next session on that. And the other group I’ve convened is called the “Civics Health Index.” I’m very interested in what I’m calling a crisis in civic engagement. I think a lot of people are very concerned about the state of our civic institutions of all kinds. Where are the next generation of voters going to come from? So how do we get young people involved? How do we keep our democracy healthy? A very interesting group has convened around this issue. They will issue a report and have some recommendations on some action to take. We’ve got about 40 people on this group. We’ve gotten some terrific feedback. We’ve really tapped in to something people are very concerned about. The power of politics, the lack of voter participation and civic engagement of all kinds is really bothering people so I hope we can start a really positive conversation on that.

…

Examiner: Do you think that your predecessor [former Connecticut Secretary of the State and now U.S. Senate candidate Sue Bysiewicz]—some of these changes might have been made in times past—do you think you took over an office that was in good shape as far as the elections process?

Denise: I think that elections are a funny area of the law. When everything is going right nobody notices it at all. Its only when things go wrong that it gets attention and I’m not sure anybody could have anticipated this. I’m not sure, given how much trouble I’ve had even, getting some of this through the legislature, imagine trying that if there hasn’t been a problem. I’m not sure if anyone would have listened. It’s difficult. Local registrars and local officials jealously guard their powers and this was not easy to make them understand. I would like to see us reform our entire election system, frankly. I don’t think there’s enough accountability in the system. And I think some of those weaknesses showed.

Update: 09/14/2011: Today our report was sent from the Secretary of the State’s Office to the Taskforce members.

Outlining a possible rigirous evaluation of Internet voting. And the ATM Fallacy, once again.

The third FVAP UOCAVA workshop ended with a general agreement on a plan to move forward with a substantial project to evaluate the potential and security issues with Internet voting.

As a bonus we also recommend the same author’s recent post on the ATM fallacy

On August 5th and 6th, the third FVAP UOCAVA workshop on was held in San Francisco, a couple of days prior to the EVT/WOTE workshop in that I attended. I talked to many of the participants in both conferences. They all reported that the workshop ended with a general agreement on a plan to move forward with a substantial project to evaluate the potential and security issues with Internet voting.

We are fortunate that one attendee, Jeremy Epstein has written a post outlining the proposal on the Freedom To Tinker blog: A review of the FVAP UOCAVA workshop <read>

We have nothing much to add to the Freedom To Tinker post, it is well worth the read. There are details to be worked out. At the minimum the outline suggests the types of rigorous open review and testing that should be required of such a critical system, especially one where this is wide disagreement between officials, advocates, and members of the technical community. We especially agree that states are moving much too fast with a lack of rigor:

In the meantime, there’s little doubt that some states will continue to move forward on the existing insecure solutions. We believe, and expect that most other computer scientists will agree, that this is a case to let science take its course before moving into implementation. We hope that FVAP will speak out publicly against such ill-advised experiments.

As a bonus we also recommend the same author’s recent post on the ATM fallacy : Yet again, why banking online .NE. voting online <read>

One of the most common questions I get is “if I can bank online, why can’t I vote online”.

He examines a recent report on banking security, providing its implications for online voting, concluding:

Unsaid, but of course implied by the financial industry list is that the goal is to reduce fraud to a manageable level. I’ve heard that 1% to 2% of the online banking transactions are fraudulent, and at that level it’s clearly not putting banks out of business (judging by profit numbers). However, whether we can accept as high a level of fraud in voting as in banking is another question.

None of this is to criticize the financial industry’s efforts to improve security! Rather, it’s to point out that try as we might, just because we can bank online doesn’t mean we should vote online.

For other answers, read our classic posts on the same subject:
FAQ: We all trust ATM’s. Why don’t you trust voting machines?
E-Voting Is Very Different From E-Banking
Or as it is known around here, Myth #8

CLARIFICATION: Official Post-Election Audit Report

We were surprised and pleased to open the following letter from Deputy Secretary of the State, James Spallone, clarifying/correcting some of the impressions left by the report. We appreciate the clarification.

We remain concerned when the differences between machine counts and hand counts reported by several registrars of voters. We also continue to be concerned, that such differences are attributed to hand counting errors, without investigation.
ADDENDUM ADDED.

Editor’s Note: CTVotersCount welcomes responsible contrary opinions. Even more so, we appreciate factual corrections to information published here.

Last month we posted and criticized the Official Post-Election Audit Report for the November 2010 election, created by the University of Connecticut. We said the audit was “Flawed by lack of transparency, incomplete data, and assumed accuracy”. Upon returning from California we were surprised and pleased to open the following letter from Deputy Secretary of the State, James Spallone, clarifying/correcting some of the impressions left by the report.

Based on the clarifications we now understand that we were under the misimpression that the Secretary of the State’s Office had conduced unannounced, non-transparent recounts of some of the data originally reported by registrars of voters. According to Mr. Spallone such counts did not occur. Secret counts would not be illegal, yet would tend to reduce public confidence in the integrity of the audits and in our democracy. On the other hand, not conducting investigations of significant differences does not inspire confidence or lead to integrity.

We remain concerned with the differences between machine counts and hand counts reported by several registrars of voters. We also continue to be concerned, that such differences are attributed to hand counting errors, without investigation. As we have said in the past “if all differences are attributed to hand counting errors, then if there ever were a machine error or fraud it would not be recognized by the audit”.

We appreciate the clarification and will continue to encourage the investigation of significant differences, announced, and subject to public observation, along with improved auditing procedures, training of officials, and improvements in the audit law without increasing costs.

The audit remains, in our opinion, “Flawed by lack of investigation, incomplete data, and assumed accuracy”.

Addendum:

Perhaps a small yet critical point, we interpret the situation differently. The Deputy Secretary says: “Information gathering and follow-up, however, is not part of the official audit process.” It may not be part of the unenforceable ‘process’ developed by the Secretary of the State’s Office, but we interpret it legally as part of the Audit. The audit law requires the report from UConn, so anything that contributes to the report would, in our opinion, be part of the audit. For instance, past investigations included in the report, and in this case discussions between the SOTS Office and registrars or UConn leading to the dropping of some data from the report etc.

Susan Bysiewicz, former Secretary of the State, claimed that the audit was ‘Independent’ because UConn completed the audit report, rather than her office. We agree with her that the report (and obviously therefore anything included in it) is part of the audit. We disagree that UConn is ‘independent’ legally since their budget for elections depends on the Secretary of the State, and is not ‘independent’ in practice since the Secretary’s Office reviews and contributes interpretations to the report.

Once again, the law does not require investigations to be public – the issue is that transparency would be one of the requirements for credibility of the report and trust in democracy.

EVT/WOTE: When is the CT Recanvass law totally inadequate?

To be reasonably sure that the correct candidate is officially designated as the winner in a race with a write-in candidate, it would be prudent to assume the possibility of a 25% undercount of write-in votes. Then require a recount of all write-in votes in a race where the write-in candidate received at least 42% of the votes in a two candidate race (or 42% of the votes necessary to win in a more than two candidate race.)

Editor’s Note: August 8th and 9th, we attended the EVT/WOTE (Electronic Voting Technology / Workshop On Trustworthy Elections) in San Francisco. Over the next few days we will be highlighting several papers and talks from the conference.

We have criticized Connecticut’s recanvass law as inadequate in very close elections, where the result may depend on accurate adjudication of a handful or less of votes where voters’ intent may be critical and subject to interpretation.

In a paper delivered yesterday, An Analysis of Write-in Marks on Optical Scan Ballots, researchers analyzed 100,000 ballots for write-in votes that might not have been counted correctly. They concluded in that one sample, from one election, in one jurisdiction that 16% of write-in votes were not counted by the Diebold/ES&S/Dominion-AccuVoteOS scanners. This means, according to my math, that if a write-in candidate in a two candidate race received 46% of the vote as counted by the scanner, it is quite likely that a rigorous hand count would show that candidate as the actual winner – reversing the election night apparent result.

This is not a problem with the scanners as designed. It is a problem with voters misunderstanding the write-in process. None the less, in most states, like Connecticut, the voters’ intent should and does legally rule.

More research would be needed in more elections and on more ballot formats to determine the range of possible error in scanner counting of write-in ballots. The range might be 10% to 25% undercounted write-in votes depending on conditions. Connecticut uses those same AccuVote-OS scanners, yet a different ballot format. Our rate of undercounting could be higher or lower. In a race that was expected to be close with many write-in ballots a candidate might provide better voter education or bring out many inexperienced voters – once again, the undercount rate could vary either way.

Pending further research: To be reasonably sure that the correct candidate is officially designated as the winner in a race with a write-in candidate, it would be prudent to assume the possibility of a 25% undercount of write-in votes. Then require a recount of all write-in votes in a race where an apparently losing write-in candidate received at least 42% of the votes in a two candidate race (or 42% of the votes necessary to win in a more than two candidate race.)

Heritage Foundation: Military Voting Rights Conference

As one might expect a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, introduced by former Attorney General Ed Meese, with keynote by Senator Cornyn, did get political at times. For those interested in Military voting and the risks of Internet voting, overall the conference was quite informative and provided a variety of views, even though it did not include computer scientists or security experts.

On July 19th a Military Voting Conference was held in Washington, D.C. by the Heritage Foundation: <video>

As one might expect a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, introduced by former Attorney General Ed Meese, with keynote by Senator Cornyn, did get political at times. For those interested in Military voting and the risks of Internet voting, overall the conference was quite informative and provided a variety of views, even though did not include computer scientists or security experts.

8:45 a.m. Welcome and Opening Remarks
Edwin Meese III, Chairman, Center for Legal & Judicial Studies, The Heritage Foundation

9:00 a.m. Panel 1 – A State Perspective on the MOVE Act and Military Voting
Natalie Tennant, Secretary of State of West Virginia
Beth Chapman, Secretary of State of Alabama
Mike Ertel, Supervisor of Elections, Seminole County, Florida
Charles “Cully” Stimson, Senior Legal Fellow, The Heritage Foundation (Moderator)

9:45 a.m. Panel 2 – Exploring Ways to Increase Military Voting Participation in the 2012 Election
Bob Carey, Director, Federal Voting Assistance Program
Donald Palmer, Secretary, Virginia State Board of Elections and former Director of Elections for Florida
Eric Eversole, Executive Director, Military Voter Protection Project (Moderator)

10:30 a.m. Keynote Address:
An Author’s Assessment of the Effectiveness of the MOVE Act
The Honorable John Cornyn (R-TX), United States Senator

11:15 a.m. Panel 3 – Exploring Ways to Enforce Military Voting Rights in Federal and State
CourtsChris Coates, Former Section Chief, Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Christian Adams, Founder, Election Law Center
Hans von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow, The Heritage Foundation (Moderator)

12:00 p.m.Keynote Address:
Understanding the Sacrifices of Our Men and Women in Uniform and the Importance of Protecting Their Rights at Home
Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., USN (ret.), former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Some specific observations:

Many panelists expressed concern with online voting but also strong support of electronic ballot delivery and its value to resolve most problems (I agree).
Other panelists have no fears of Internet voting, say the risks are worth it, and misinterpret or attempt to transfer opposition to online voting as distrust of the military voter. They imply security experts are worried about military voters, rather than hackers and insiders.
Mike Ertel, Supervisor of Elections, Seminole County, Florida is concerned that people view online blank ballot delivery as ‘online voting’ and taint it with the same brush.
Several expressed upset with low compliance by states and the Dept of Defense with the MOVE Act and were disappointed that Eric Holder has not prosecuted (here I suspect political bias). Others defended the states and DOD for the short time and lack of funding for implementation.
I was surprised to learn that there is significant disagreement about the statistics on military participation in elections – the figures always look low, but some claim that all ‘in person’ military voters are not counted as voting, but are counted in the statistics as if they have not voted. Bob Carey, FVAP Director said, that when adjusted for age, the participation is about the same as the general population. It is still clear that there is a problem when many request ballots, but in the end are unable to vote!
Several mentions of the Military’s “right to vote”. That sounds fine to me, yet my recall is that citizens do not have a right to vote and that several in Congress have pressed for legislation to provide that right, apparently in Bush v. Gore the Supreme Court agreed.

Among the missing from this and some other discussions:

Computer Scientists and Security Experts, including those from the Department of Defense
We note lack of concern for the rights, convenience, and support of other overseas voters in addition to Military voters. Such voters include: Military Contractors, State Department Employees, Peace Corps volunteers, business people, and NGO staff.
Actual recent experience of Military and Overseas voters. Generals’ experience can be outdated. When they are in the field, they do not live the same life as the average soldier or overseas citizen.
Despite the claims of success in West Virginia’s Internet voting pilot, it has not been continued by the Legislature, and, as we understand it online delivery of ballots and absentee applications, followed by return in a single envelope would be much more economical, much less risky, and more effectively relieve barriers, which hamper military voter and keep their votes from being counted.

Once again, despite the limitations, the conference is well worth viewing for what it does provide.

Ballot Skulduggery in Wisconsin? Or Inadvertent Errors?

Absentee voting runs the risks of errors and fraud beyond in-person voting. The latest example from Wisconsin: Is it fraud or is it error? For certain it is big money causing disenfranchisement and risking democracy.

Is the Koch-backed conservative group Americans For Prosperity up to no good in the Wisconsin state Senate recalls?

As Politico reports, mailers have now turned up from Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin, addressed to voters in two of the Republican-held recall districts, where the elections will be held on August 9. The mailers ask recipients to fill out an absentee ballot application, and send it in — by August 11, after Election Day for the majority of these races.

“These are people who are our 1’s [solid Democrats] in the voterfile who we already knew,” a Democratic source told Politico. “They ain’t AFP members, that’s for damn sure.”

The response from AFP and the Koch

“This just went out to our members,” Seaholm said. “I’m sure the liberals will try to make a mountain out of a molehill in an attempt to distract voters’ attention from the issues.”

But what of the self-identified Democratic voters who received them?

Seaholm noted that some critics of his group sign up for AFP material so they can keep tabs on the organization, which backs GOP candidates and causes and was co-founded by billionaire activists David and Charles Koch. He said he couldn’t be sure if that is what happened here.

“No (mailing) list is perfect,” Seaholm said.

What do you think?