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Enthusiastic support for the Secretary’s Performance Task Force Recommendations

By Luther Weeks on March 12, 2012

Given the many members, the brief meetings, and the lack of representation of all interests, we were skeptical when the Task Force was convened. To our delight, we find that we can offer endorsement of each of the twenty-one recommendations in the report.

There is a lot to do in all the recommendations. It will take time, money, and deliberate work with everyone at the table. Our hope is that each of the recommendations will be thoroughly explored, evaluated, and acted upon, that none get overlooked.

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Common Sense: Tension between Convenience, Confidence, and Cost

By Luther Weeks on March 7, 2012

Many of the issues we discuss here and debate in the Legislature revolve around tradeoffs between Convenience, Confidence, and Costs. At a basic level we find three fundamental values/goals behind every initiative and debate: These tradeoffs and competing goals are the context within which we all constantly evaluate new laws and proposals.

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Busy Day: Testimony, Inaccuracy, and more

By Luther Weeks on March 2, 2012

It was a busy day in Hartford today. I testified on two bills along with many others also testifying on those and other bills before the Government Elections and Administrations Committee. There is an AP article which may leave misunderstanding of my testimony and positions. Finally, the Secretary of the State released the final report of the Elections Performance Task Force. UPDATED

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Absentee Ballot Hijinks in Hartford?

By Luther Weeks on March 1, 2012

Evelyn Cruz filed a complaint accusing another resident, Clorinda Soldevila, of hand-delivering three absentee ballots to her home on Bond Street, and then picking up those ballots and delivering them to city hall.

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Scanners 0, Hand count 0, Officials 0, Press/Citizens 2

By Luther Weeks on February 28, 2012

Connecticut has little reason to take comfort in New York’s latest election embarrassment. We do not expect an official system to recognize unofficial counts, yet we do expect a system that recognizes problems, and reacts by taking reasonable steps to correct errors.

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How All the votes were lost in D.C.

By Luther Weeks on February 25, 2012

Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server. We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot. Election officials did not detect our intrusion for nearly two business days—and might have remained unaware for far longer had we not deliberately left a prominent clue.

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Internet Voting, more problems beyond the News Hour report

By Luther Weeks on February 22, 2012

Last week there was a PBS News Hour report on Internet Voting. It was fair and balanced as far as it went, but maybe a bit too fair to non-scientists and vendors touting Internet Voting. At Brad Blog, Earnest A Canning has an excellent piece pointing out some additional information not covered in the short News Hour segment.

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Testimony on powers of the Secretary of the State

By Luther Weeks on February 18, 2012

One bill H.B. 5026 covered the emergency powers of the Secretary of the State…there were some additional important distinctions which should be included to expand and limit the bill, along with a related power the Committee should consider for unnatural disasters

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“Military Grade Security” for elections is a non sequitur

By Luther Weeks on February 15, 2012

Who should we believe? Vendors selling internet voting or computer scientists and government intelligence experts? We point out that the greatest danger to internet voting is insider manipulation, even easier for a single rogue election official or network insider. No need to steal paper ballots and fill them out. No risk of being caught in an audit or recount of voter verified paper ballots. UPDATE: Videos

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The Wild West: Presidential Primary “Election” Edition

By Luther Weeks on February 10, 2012

Selecting candidates for President is less safe and less democratic than most of us realize.

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