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Chain of Custody

Aspen Ballots, An Issue For Us All

By Luther Weeks on August 23, 2009

We side completely with the activists, they are on the side of democracy, integrity, and transparency of government. Beyond a CD ballots should be made available to the public, the actual ballots should be made available to the public.

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Phoenix: Ballots Missing – Integrity and Confidence Also Missing

By Luther Weeks on April 16, 2009

“If we are correct,” Risner wrote in his Monday letter to the Attorney General’s office, concerning the absence of as many as 19,000 paper ballots, as estimated by observers of the counting in Phoenix, “the question arises as to what happened to those ballots.” The latest mystery adds still more fuel to the already high-stakes, long-sought hand-count, and raises new questions in the nearly three-years long

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Reminder: We’re Better Off With Optical Scanners

By Luther Weeks on February 27, 2009

OpEd News reminds us that it could have been much worse. A picture is worth a 1000 words!

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CTVotersCount Testimony To The GAE Committee

By Luther Weeks on February 18, 2009

Update: We provide Testimony Response & Clarification

The primary issues needing your attention are the post-election audits, ballot chain-of-custody, and the reporting of election results…As you consider the current audit laws and other bills before the committee effecting voting integrity and security, we encourage you to seek the best advice of legal experts, computer experts, security experts, and the experience of other states…What often is an attractive idea, also often has risky unintended consequences as well…

We want every citizen’s vote to be counted!
To be counted accurately!
And to be counted only once!

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Report: CT Nov 08 Election – Large Differences From Optical Scanner Totals

By Luther Weeks on January 28, 2009

We conclude, based on our observations and analysis of audit reports submitted to the Secretary of the State that the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence…Among our greatest concerns are the discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by several municipalities. In many cases, these discrepancies are not thoroughly and reasonably explained. We believe that the ad-hoc counting procedures used by many municipalities were not sufficient to count ballots accurately and efficiently

In some cases as many as twenty-four (24) fewer ballots were counted by hand than recorded by optical scanners. For individual candidate races, vote counts between hand counts and scanner tapes varied by as much as three-hundred-sixty-six (366) votes in one race or as much as 46% in another.

We find no reason to attribute all errors to either humans or machines.

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Petition Delivered: 994 Connecticut Voters Call For Action

By Luther Weeks on January 8, 2009

We call for action to enhance integrity and confidence in Connecticut elections, during the 2009 legislative session.

We believe the incremental costs of post-election audits that meet the requirements of the petition are appropriate considering the key role voting plays in democracy. Yet, we recognize that less costly alternatives may need to be considered.

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DemocracyNow: Greg Palast – Jennifer Brenner

By Luther Weeks on October 9, 2008

A full hour on voting integrity: I especially recommend the 2nd segment with Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner.  She demonstrates that while she has her hands full in Ohio, she understands the issues and has moved aggressively to improve voting integrity and voter access.  She commissioned the Everest reports and has used them to […]

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Puma Arizona – Some Good News

By Luther Weeks on September 17, 2008

Things have not been looking good in Puma Arizona. But, some good news is that the Election Integrity Commission is acting to audit ballot security. This is what is supposed to happen with an independent board — when problems are found they are investigated and not ignored or explained away: <read> A Pima County Elections […]

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Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits

By Luther Weeks on September 15, 2008

(Full disclosure: I contributed to, participated in reviewing, and editing this document) Released today at a press conference in Alexandria, VA, after many months of work: http://www.electionaudits.org/files/best%20practices%20final_0.pdf These principles were written to guide the design of high-quality post- election audits. They were developed by an ad hoc group comprising many stakeholders, including election officials, public […]

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Serious, Senseless, Nonsense in Palm Beach

By Luther Weeks on September 4, 2008

Update: As more details come out the story keeps changing. But the problem also gets larger. The latest is that 2500 ballots may actually be missing, the results of additional races in the same election may be questionable, and good old chain-of-custody issues may be more or as much as a problem as anything electronic […]

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