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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.

Brad Friedman questions value of “Faith Based ‘Recount'” – we agree.

What’s the point of having a “recount”, or of using security procedures and physical seals for the ballots after the election, if violations of those procedures and seals are of little concern to the state’s top election agency?

Brad Friedman at BradBlog provides updates on the lack of integrity in the Wisconsin Recount: Tale of the Tapes: Wisconsin’s ‘Dog-and-Pony Show’ Faith-Based Supreme Court Election ‘Recount’ <read>

What’s the point of having a “recount”, or of using security procedures and physical seals for the ballots after the election, if violations of those procedures and seals are of little concern to the state’s top election agency?

Worse, if the results printed on the poll tapes are the ultimate proof of the accuracy of results, what happens when — as discovered among poll tapes from the City of Pewaukee in Waukesha County late last week — the “recount” uncovers “Official Results Report” poll tapes dated a full seven days before the actual election was held?

Or, worse still, what happens when poll tapes failed to print at all on Election Day, as has been seen in a number of towns across the state?…

Faith-Based ‘Recounts’

“Even if the container or [ballot] bag is somehow opened later, or if the chain of custody is broken,” the G.A.B. wrote on their website in response to the concerns late last week, “election officials have the original print-out tape from the machine, as well as the electronic memory device from the machine. This enables election officials to determine the election night vote count.”

Setting aside that the “recount” process in WI does not include examination of “the electronic memory device from the machine[s]” at all, the print-out tapes from the systems may enable election officials to know what the tabulation machines reported — either accurately or inaccurately — as the “election night vote count”, but do those digital elements actually tell us what the intent of voters was? If they do, then why bother to have a “recount” at all?

“If the ballots had been tampered with between the election and the recount, there would be a break in the chain of custody and an unexplained difference in the results [of the ‘recount’],” says the G.A.B., suggesting that they seem to have little or no idea how election fraud may be carried out under their very own noses…

As if the opened ballot bags, missing and scratched-out serial numbers, and mis-dated poll tapes aren’t enough, the minutes from the “recounts” in three different cities in two different counties have revealed that the so-called “Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails” on touch-screen voting machines didn’t actually print at all, because the paper rolls were inserted backwards.

Most disturbingly, no one noticed or bothered to complain about it during the election! What does that tell us about the validity of the so-called “paper trails” printed out with touch-screen voting machines in Wisconsin, and the many other states which use the exact same unverifiable voting systems?

We are always told we can “trust” the results of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines because voters review the “paper record” before they hit the “Cast Vote!” button. Unfortunately, as we’ve been explaining for years, no, they don’t — and here, once again, is more evidence…

And if these new photos of duct taped ballot bags from the Village of Menomonee Falls in, you guessed it, Waukesha County (as taken by an observer who has asked not to be identified) doesn’t “invoke confidence”, we don’t know what will…

Sadly there is no reason to believe that a full statewide recanvass in Connecticut would generate more confidence than the recount in Wisconsin. Our observations of recanvasses reveals huge variations in the process from municipality to municipality, especially in the quality of the review of ballots for marks that might not have been read correctly by the machines. Also the Coalition observations of post-election audits continue to demonstrate concerns with ballot chain of custody.

“Wisconsin is no Minnesota” (Psssst: neither is Connecticut)

Many of the problems in Wisconsin are similar to those we are led to “expect” in states like Connecticut. One unique concern in Wisconsin is several coincident actions of one of the candidates.

Brad Friedman covers issues in the Wisconsin recount, so far. <read>

Many of the problems are similar to those we are led to “expect” in states like Connecticut:

Bags not sealed
Seal numbers missing
Seal numbers don’t match
Faith in sealed bags
Extra ballots found outside bags
Batches of ballots not counted or reported on election night
Officials making errors in calculations or submitting results to the state
Homegrown accounting systems
Local and state officials making errors in transcription and addition

We point out that incompetence or mistakes are good cover for skulduggery , especially where they occur regularly and are routinely accepted/ignored. CTVotersCount readers know that Connecticut Post-Election Audits frequently expose similar problems, as the citizen Bridgeport Recount found, usually followed by no action. The recent exception being some useful, but incomplete, steps to reduce the odds of problems occurring similar to those in Bridgeport, but little to cause the system to correct similar counting, calculating, and reporting errors.

One unique concern in Wisconsin is several coincident actions of one of the candidates, issues including misstatements by the candidate, the activities of the candidate after the election, the location of the changes in votes right after the election, and the location of some of the chain of custody problems (See Brad’s Report).

We are pleased that Wisconsin is holding the recount, such as it is, and that citizens are reporting issues and concerns. The best result would be a recount that ultimately provides real integrity and confidence, followed by positive reform in Wisconsin and other states. At this point we remain open but skeptical that this recount will be satisfactory.

Wisconsin: Democracy In The Gap: Between Impatience And Incompetence

The best outcome of a recount would be to determine the correct winner of the election, leading to an improved system in Wisconsin, and serving as an example to other states. Yet, Democrats should not get their hopes up for a change in the result.

Let us hope that something good comes from the election error and concern in Wisconsin.

Most CTVotersCount readers have been reading various stories of the recent Wisconsin election, for example <here> or <here>

Overall the situation points out the weak underbelly of elections in many of our states, including Wisconsin and Connecticut. There is little reason to have confidence in the accuracy of election results reported on election night and marginally little additional reason to trust the certified results which usually conform closely to the original reported results.

The underlying causes are our media fueled goal to get results immediately from tired officials, regardless of their accuracy; followed by officials wish to get it over-with, avoiding any any questions of accuracy or if every vote was in fact counted; playing a role is the lack of public attention and budget necessary for trusted, accurate elections; and the initially apparent winner claiming victory along with the real or imagined risks to the initial looser in being labeled a sore looser. We are aware that many Republicans continue claiming irregularities in the Minnesota 2008 recount while they accuse Democrats of not getting over Florida in 2000.

I agree and caution those that are calling for a complete recount in Wisconsin:

A thorough recount may expose the weak underbelly of the system in Wisconsin. It may show many small errors; uncounted votes; inappropriately adjudicated absentee ballots; slight changes due to machines and people missing voters’ intent; and even uncover some system flaws like those found in Humboldt County and in Ohio in after the 2008 election.
Democrats should not get their hopes up unless they find additional suspicious results in other precincts and counties. Chances are that a recount would uncover many small differences but unlikely that they would add up to enough to overturn an election. Everyone should avoid pushing unfounded or highly speculative theories.
The best outcome of a recount would be to determine the correct winner of the election, leading to an improved system in Wisconsin, and serving as an example to other states. A transparent, credible recount of integrity would serve to provide confidence in this one election to the ultimate looser and the majority of voters in Wisconsin. I expect it would uncover additional problems with the system beyond the “lone wolf” spreadsheet accounting in one county which could lead to an improved system. Admittedly this is an optimistic view, yet there are often at least positive incremental improvements after election vulnerabilities are discovered, with unfortunately the risk of expensive, knee-jerk reactions of questionable impact (see 2000, HAVA, vendor “help”).

Waukesha County, Wisconsin vs. Bridgeport Connecticut

Connecticut has little to offer Wisconsin as an example of accurate accounting. We do have some “lone wolfs” that use spreadsheet accounting, but many others use the old fashioned system of human transcription and accounting. As one Representative characterized our election system, it is a bit of the “Wild West”. In general, by hand or spreadsheet it is a three step process of manual transcription and accounting with a record of errors and omissions.
We have no idea what a recanvass would show in a statewide Connecticut Election. In the recent race for Governor we understand that about eight towns (nobody knows, there was no requirement to report it) ran out of preprinted ballots and produced copied ballots that would be counted by hand. At least two of those ran out of ballots in polling places. The state recounted none of those towns. The Connecticut Post newspaper and citizens recounted one of those towns demonstrating extensive counting and accounting errors along with wide discrepancies in ballot counts vs. check-off lists. Ten percent of districts were subject to post-election audits of district machine counted audits. No official report is yet available, however, the Coalition audit observation report demonstrated the usual level of significant differences that indicate inaccurate counting and the possibility of machine errors. The audits do not check hand counted ballots or centrally counted absentee ballots. As far as we know, five towns have yet to supply official audit report to the Secretary of the State for the audits which would have been completed by November 22nd 2010.
Connecticut has little to offer Wisconsin in the area of recounting. Like Wisconsin, our recanvasses are primarily a modified recount by similar machines and memory cards. Unlike Wisconsin, we have no provision in our recanvasses for our adjusting vote counts if check-off lists counts do not match. In fact, Connecticut recanvass do not check check-off lists. Recounts in Connecticut are possible via a court order. Procedures are not defined in our state law.

We also recommend that citizens of Wisconsin with concerns under take a thorough review of all posted results and confirm election documents to uncover any other potential specific questionable counts. To his credit, the well supported and financed losing candidate in Connecticut in November 2010 did that to satisfy himself that the result was accurate enough to select the actual winner.

We also note that the Connecticut Legislature and Secretary of the State are proposing steps that would reduce the possibility of similar ballot shortages in the future, yet we have much more work to provide election integrity and credibility equal to the promise of democracy.

Let us take no comfort in the election error in Wisconsin. Let us hope that something good comes from the concerns.

Update. More reasons to Investigate:

Worth checking the source of numbers reported and the accounting details. Alleged history of some questionable results in the county: 20,000 more votes than ballots (Waukesha, 2006) <read> <read>

Also Democrat refutes earlier impression that she endorsed/understood revised result <read>

Security Theater: Scary! Expert Outlines Physical Security Limitations

Connecticut’s ballots and voting machines are vulnerable. We are subject to many of the characteristics of “Security Theater” outlined by Dr. Roger Johnston of Argonne Lab’s Vulnerability Assessments Team. “Security” seals can be compromised, undetected in seconds. That is only the tip of the iceberg. Forget those Dracula movies. Contemplate the value of ballots to our democracy while watching the video.

Back in January, we covered reports on six failed attempts by New Jersey to successfully secure voting machines with “security” seals – seals like those used in Connecticut to “protect” our ballots and voting machines. A computer expert and a security expert provided reports outlining the ease with which those seals can be compromised by an amateur and an expert.

“Security” seals can be compromised, undetected in seconds. That is only the tip of the iceberg. Full security often involves a lot more, locks, vaults, chain-of-custody, alarms, video surveillance, and guards. Unfortunately, most physical security can also be easily defeated, according to one of the experts, Roger Johnston of the Argonne National Lab Vulnerability Assessments Team.

Last week I was fortunate to hear Dr. Johnston speak at a voting integrity conference in Chicago. Although I don’t have his slides or a video from that conference, I do have video’s of a short appearance on NBC and a longer talk he gave last year:

Getting paid to break into things: Argonne’s Roger Johnston on NBC <watch 4min>
Proving Voltaire Right: Security Blunders Dumber Than Dog Snot <watch 127min>

What I found most enlightening last week was a slide showing fifteen characteristic attributes of “Security Theater” (you can see it at about 5 min into the second video). Some of the attributes we often observe in Connecticut ballot security are:

“Sense of urgency”
Urgency can be seen and felt on election night as officials are rushing to finalize results, complete paperwork, and complete a seventeen hour day. Is the seal applied correctly to prevent access without tampering? Do two officials check the seal number on the ballot case and the moderator’s return? Is the return completed in ink or pencil? Are the ballots under observation by at least two officials until they are locked in town hall? Is the seal number on the bag checked against the moderator’s return when the ballots are locked in town hall? Officials complain that may take days for both registrars to be available to checking ballots and sealed paper work after an election.
A very difficult security problem
Budgets are tight. Very few towns keep their ballots in vaults or securely locked facilities. We observe weak single locks or padlocks, ballots stored in isolated storage rooms with weak building security. Or no locks at all.
Involves fad and/or pet technology
We have seen seals made by with office printer labels with no numbers and seals that are entirely written by hand.
Questions, concerns, & dissent are not welcome or tolerated
Any suggestion that someone might compromise security is instead defensively interpreted as an accusation against the integrity of a registrar or all registrars. We are told that Connecticut towns cannot afford to improve security. Security does cost money, yet there are economical alternatives to dramatically increase ballot security. Can we afford to leave our democracy conveniently vulnerable?
Strong emotion, over confidence, arrogance, ego, and/or pride related to security
(see above)
Conflicts of Interest
Most registrars and election officials are closely aligned with parties – that is why we have at least two registrars in each town, of opposing interests. Everyone in town hall is dependent on the outcome of budget referendums and the plans of those elected. (as a counter example, the owner of a jewelry store, bank president, or jail guard normally has little conflict of interest in security)
No well-defined adversary
Most individuals, election officials, candidates, candidate supporters, and town employees are honest. Yet, almost every person, agency, or business has stakes in election outcomes.
No well-defined use protocol
Our statutes are on ballot security are weak and ambiguous, it is unlikely that the pending technical bills will change that. Towns follow (or don’t follow) a variety of procedures, mostly unpublished, vulnerable, and unverifiable.
No effective [vulnerability assessments]; no devil’s advocate
You could say that CTVotersCount and the Coalition have been devil’s advocates, yet so far to little avail.
People who know little about security or the technology are in charge
Many of our registrars and their staff demonstrate and will admit lack of knowledge of our voting technology. How many actually understand security? How many understand security technology such as the vulnerability of seals, locks, and the lack of security in a chain-of-custody filled out using an “honor system”? What security is there when most towns provide access with a single key and many provide access to that key for anyone working in the registrars office? How secure is access to the key or to the ballot storage by other means?

Forget those Dracula movies. Contemplate the value of ballots to our democracy while watching the Dog Snot video.

Not up for a scary movie? Here is a recent interview of Dr. Johnston on Op-News. He provides suggestions for improving voting security. <read> Here the context is voting machines but the same considerations also apply to ballots. How many of these are in effect in your town?

Suggestions for better election security:

1. Let’s try to separate concerns, questions, and criticisms about election security from political attacks on election officials (who are often elected themselves). Security should be controversial and we need to listen to all input about it.

2. Election officials need to think like the bad guy. How would you cheat?

3. Establish a health security culture and climate, where security is constantly on everybody’s mind and open for discussion and debate and review and outside analysis.

4. Ironically (and counter-intuitively), the best security is usually transparent.

5. Security is hard work, so expect to put in hard work.

6. Do periodic background checks on people who move and maintain the voting machines.

7. Somebody has to sign for the machines when they reach the polling place prior to the election (there can’t be a delay in delivery), and at least semi-watch them. Use custodians, teachers, secretaries, and school kids (a great civics lesson!) to keep an eye on the machines if you can’t lock them up.

8. Consider escorting the machines to and from the polling places.

9. Lean on manufacturers of voting machines to get serious about security.

10. Have a real, secure chain of custody, not bureaucratic forms to sign or initial purporting to be a chain of custody.

11. Try bribing your people, then make them public heroes and let them keep the money if they decline. (Wait at least one day, though.) Word will get around it isn’t a good idea to accept a bribe.

12. Form a pro bono citizens panel with local security experts to provide guidance.

13. You must randomly select some machines before, during, and after the election to completely tear apart, examine, and reverse engineer. Just seeing if they appear to run correctly is not good enough! It’s too easy to turn cheating on and off.

14. If you are going to use seals, provide at least a few hours of training in how to spot attacked seals. Give lots of examples of attacked seals. Discuss how the seals will likely be attacked.

Public hearings for 15 election related bills – Update: Our Testimony

Today we provided testimony on ten bills. We talked six times and complemented the Committee on their new format of handling bills one at a time, allowing each person who wanted to the opportunity to testify on each bill separately. It worked very well and did not take as much time as one would expect over the old format of one opportunity per person for the day. Most of the testimony today was agreement or friendly disagreement between registrars, town clerks, state officials, and advocates. In the end we expect that better laws will result.

Note: The General Administration and Elections Committee has taken up several election bills and concepts for this session. We are optimistic that some of the concepts will be developed and passed to provide increased election integrity. Many of the bills taken up, often well intended, have unintended negative consequences. We are highlighting several of them to point out highlighting several of them to point out the good, the bad, and the unbelievable.

Update: 1/14/2011:

Related: Secretary of the State Merrill’s press conference CTNewsJunkiee report and CTMirror.

***********Original Post:

On Monday the General Administration and Elections Committee will hold hearings of 15 elections related bills <agenda>

Most of these bills became publicly available on the Legislature’s website on Wednesday morning and late Wednesday they appeared on the agenda for Monday’s public hearing. A lot to absorb in a few days, yet we can say at this point that there are some good, not so good, and some highly questionable proposals in these bills.

Several of the bills are consolidations and committee rewrites of other bills, specifically for no-excuse absentee voting and an associated Constitutional amendment. One focuses on “Election Integrity” dealing with some of the issues raised by ballot shortages in Bridgeport, moderator training, registrars identifying polling places to the Secretary of the State etc. Another focuses on “Post-Election Audits”, authorizing local officials to audit via “independent machine rather than a tabulator” as an alternative to the current manual count.

Many of the bills are “Technical Bills” primarily intended to make small “technical” changes to the statutes to adjust to the move from lever machines to optical scanner. By our count these bill total 256 pages of details and redundancy since many address the same existing statutes. It seems they must have been written by different groups but perhaps based on previous bills which failed to pass the legislature over the last three years. We are in the process of reading through the bills to prepare detailed testimony for Monday, with suggestions for revisions, deletions and improvements. After reading through all the bills and discussing some portions with other advocates we can summarize a few items at this point:

It is all well and good to replace “machine” with “tabulator”, replace “registrars” with “registrars of voters”, and remove “he”s throughout, we doubt these changes will make any difference in the interpretation of the law by registrars of voters or the courts.

There are many changes that seem necessary to the conduct of elections by optical scanner that are not included. For instance, several sections do not seem to recognize that in addition to optical scanners and absentee ballots we now have polling place paper ballots, both scanned and hand counted to deal with secure and count.

The election laws, I suppose like many others, remain highly convoluted from amendments over the years and redundant. For example there are extensive, almost completely redundant, separate sections for primaries and elections. The problem is that they often differ in critical, substantial ways that make little sense. One bill makes a positive change that would allow officials from other towns to serve in primaries as they the existing law allows for elections. Asked to serve in another town for a primary, I declined to avoid breaking the law.

Within the bills are many good changes as well as some needing improvement. For example, the bill for “Integrity of Elections” calls for registrars to file plans for ballot printing with the Secretary of the State, locations of each polling place, and the names of moderators for each polling place to the Secretary of the State in advance of the election. Our reading indicates that moderators can be rejected by the Secretary but with no specified deadline for such rejections. We have called for the Secretary of the State to have an accurate list of polling places to restore the integrity of the post-election audits. While we applaud that change to enable an accurate list,we will also suggest a possibly more efficient method to accomplish that same goal.

But also within these 256 pages are several significant changes that may or may not be advisable. For instance, one calls for a demonstration “device” for voting in each polling place instead of a demonstration “machine” – it is hard to tell what would satisfy the requirement or if such would also be required for the IVS machines intended for voters with disabilities; our reading of another clause intended to codify the current recanvass procedures would eliminate a critical step in the process; another in our reading would significantly change the counting of cross-endorsed candidate votes – to the likely detriment of candidates and voters.

I am a strong supporter of new techniques and technologies that support independent machine auditing, but we will oppose change authorizing local officials to audit via “independent machine rather than a tabulator” as an alternative to the current manual count. While well intended, the proposed law provides no restrictions on such a machine, no requirements for the process, no standards, no guarantee the process would be anything like the successful example in Humboldt County, CA, and no budget for implementation. Voting integrity and confidence require that any independent machine audit be required to meet requirements that provide for public transparency and validation. In other words, vendors need to dot the “i”s and cross the ‘t”s in software and hardware products, while the law must require election officials to also dot the “i”s and cross the ‘t”s in implementing such audits. Municipalities that balk at spending a few hundred dollars on an audit when they are randomly selected are hardly in a position to acquire such equipment, let alone evaluate the equipment, and develop an effective, satisfactory process.

CO Chain-of-Custody: Rest assured, we would never see this in Connecticut

Once again we can rest assured that Connecticut, “The Provisions State”, has provided little provision in our statutes for discovering problems like those surfaced in Colorado

Colorado Springs Conservative Examiner: Secret count preceded Saguache election ‘retabulation’ <read>

What a great idea for election and chain-of-custody transparency:

Examination of election videotapes reveal that the Saguache County Clerk’s office and two judges conducted a secret vote count Nov. 4 from 2 p.m. to about 7:12 p.m. prior to the Nov. 5 “retabulation.”

The video recording copies were obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request Nov. 16. The county clerk’s office is required by law to keep continuous recordings of all election areas and activities, beginning two months before the election, up to and including any recounts, for two years

They were caught ballot handed. Activist Marlyn Marks summarizes what happened and what is wrong. From the article:

“Reports of a significant private hand count on the afternoon of Nov. 4 appear to validate just how severely the election process and citizen oversight had degraded by Nov. 5, the date of the so-called ‘re-tabulation.’ Reports indicate that ballots were pulled from storage bins and hand-counted by three individuals without notification to candidates, special districts, press, canvass board, or poll watchers. Parties, candidates, special districts, and the press all have statutory rights to have authorized watchers present during every step of the election process. The fact that the count was done in secret and results never disclosed, nor interested parties informed are all serious breaches of trust by the clerk.

“The timing of this alleged hand count one day in advance of a scheduled machine “re-tabulation” raises even more questions as to the purpose of that private count, and the goals of the “re-tabulation.” Why was such a close-door count necessary? Furthermore, the initial machine tabulation and the “re-tabulation,” were not legitimate and not allowed by Colorado election law due to the security incidents prior to election day. The law prohibits the machine from being used to tabulate the election on Nov. 2 and required hand counts instead. That law was ignored by the clerk. We should remember that a Nov. 5 “re-tabulation,” does not legitimize using a faulty, prohibited machine on Nov. 2 or 5, when a hand count was required all along.

“In summary, the machine tabulation was illegitimate, the private count on Nov. 4 was illegitimate, and the “re-tabulation” Nov. 5 was illegitimate, all worsened by a lack of proper security. There is nothing on which to base reasonable conclusions as to the outcome of the close races in this election.”

The Colorado State Attorney General’s Office, Criminal Investigations Division is reviewing complaints made by a growing number of local residents and other Coloradans, including Marks, concerning the conduct of the election.

This was not a very independent recount: Saguache County: A test case in Colorado election integrity <read>

When a county clerk in a poor, rural county in south-central Colorado reversed the results of the Nov. 2 election three days later and declared herself the winner, many of the residents there cried foul. Not only did Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers go from loser to winner during what many consider to be an improper retabulation, so did the incumbent county commissioner of the same party affiliation. A slew of bipartisan complaints to the secretary of state have fallen on deaf ears…

A trail of private e-mails and public documents shows that even though the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office acknowledges a number of problems with the election, the agency has failed to do much about it. Worse, the secretary of state’s lead officials may have even made untrue claims in their attempts to make the matter go away.

We would never see this sort of thing in Connecticut

Yesterday, we covered the flawed chain-of-custody and court actions in New Jersey. We pointed out how such problems would be unlikely to be surfaced in Connecticut. Once again we can rest assured that the “Provisions State” has provided little provision in our statutes for discovering problems like those surfaced in Colorado:

We have no law or chain-of-custody requirement similar to the video requirement in Colorado. We have no standards for the facilities where ballots are stored. In most Connecticut municipalities it is easy for one official, to obtain and use a single key, to access ballots alone, undetected, for hours at a time. Ballots are stored in hallways, schools, closets, under desks, and abandoned classrooms. [If you think they are protected by seals, read yesterday’s post]
We are unaware of any Connecticut election law that prohibits machine counting due to “security incidents prior to election day”, but we would certainly expect better than this incident in Colorado – we would expect that any security incidents would be corrected or compensated for unless discovered at too late a date. Even in very close elections we count ballots a second time in recanvasses using the same type of machine and duplicate memory cards.

Update 3/15/2011: Denver Post: Secretary of state, clerks battle over Saguache ballots

Update 3/25/2011: Center Post Dispatch: Secretary of State sues clerk to review ballots

Update 4/6/2011: The ballot access debate continues, between the Secretary of the State and local officials:

The Chieftain: State official lacks review authority, Saguache clerk says <read>

Myers’ response, filed Thursday in Saguache County District Court, said the state constitution required her not to disclose how an elector voted and the proposed review of voted ballots may violate that duty.

The Denver Post: Saguache clerk tells court ballots should be kept secret, even from state <read>

The Colorado County Clerks Association says they shouldn’t. The association’s president, Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Scott Doyle, has said ballots are “sacred” and keeping them private is essential to democracy. Allowing the secretary of state to review Saguache County ballots would set a dangerous precedent, he has said.

A group of Saguache County residents and election integrity activists argue that because ballots are anonymous, inspecting them should not reveal how anyone voted. While voting should occur in private, voted ballots should be publicly interpreted and counted, they say.

They point to previous instances in which the secretary of state has inspected voted ballots and to notable examples in other states — namely the 2000 presidential election in Florida in which a group of newspapers reviewed every discounted ballot after the election was certified.

Update 8/11/2011: ES&S facing contempt charges <read>

NJ Chain-of-Custody: Six unsuccessful attempts to seal voting machines

Nothing approaching these six regimes and court challenges could happen in Connecticut! Unlike New Jersey, we have no standard seal “regime”, no standard for seals or ballot containers and any election regulations and procedures going beyond the law are unenforceable. Similar court challenges in the “Nutmeg State” would be about as useful as carved wooden nutmeg seals.

New Jersey has attempted six “Seal regimes” to protect their voting machines. Two new reports demonstrate the inadequacies of the seals and associated procedures. The reports document court testimony and contain sometimes graphic demonstrations of how easily various “tamper evident” seals can be compromised. [May not be deemed appropriate reading for officials and voters in some Connecticut towns]

Nothing like this could happen in Connecticut! Unlike New Jersey, we have no enforceable standards. See our editorial below.

The Reports

Security seals on voting machines: a case study, by Andrew W. Appel”Security seals on voting machines: a case study”, by Andrew W. Appel, Princeton University

Insecurity of New Jersey’s seal protocols for voting machines, by Roger G. Johnston

From Johnston:

In 2008 and 2009 the plaintiffs in the New Jersey voting-machine lawsuit, Gusciora v. Corzine, asked me to study the use of tamper-indicating security seals proposed by the New Jersey Division of Elections to secure their voting machines. In this paper I am making some of my assessments available to the public.

I found that the proposed seals and security measures are insufficient to guarantee election integrity. The skills, time, and resources to spoof these seals and security measures are not a major barrier to an adversary, and are, in fact, widely available. The design of the AVC Advantage voting machines themselves is not conducive to good security, especially the lack of security on the voter’s end of the machine. There are vulnerability and other problems with the seals chosen by New Jersey. Another serious problem is New Jersey’s failure to have well-designed seal use protocols in place. The lack of internal inspections of the voting machines is unfortunate, as is the State’s lack of concern about possible attacks on small numbers of voting machines (not just statewide attacks). I found that New Jersey does not exhibit a healthy security culture for elections, has no independent physical security experts and vulnerability assessors to advise the state, and misunderstands key security concepts. The poor security practices involved in storage, transport, and chain-of-custody for the voting machines are troubling as well…

154. In summary, I can state to a reasonable degree of certainty that the seals and security measures proposed by New Jersey to provide security for the AVC Advantage voting machines are insufficient to guarantee election integrity. The skills, time, and resources to spoof these seals and security measures are not a major barrier to an adversary, and are, in fact, widely available.

155. Various factors contribute to New Jersey’s ineffective security. The design of the AVC Advantage voting machines themselves is not conducive to good security, especially the lack of security on the voter’s end of the machine. There are vulnerability and other problems with the seals chosen by New Jersey. Another serious problem is New Jersey’s failure to have well-designed seal use protocols in place. The lack of internal inspections of the voting machines is unfortunate, as is the lack of concern about attacks on small numbers of voting machines given the number of close elections in the past.

156. Other negative factors include New Jersey’s failure to exhibit a healthy security culture for elections, the absence of independent physical security experts and vulnerability assessors to advise the state, and the state’s misunderstandings about key security concepts. The poor security practices involved in storage, transport, and chain-of-custody for the voting machines are troubling as well.

From Appel:

Tamper-evident seals are used by many states’ election officials on voting machines and ballot boxes, either to protect the computer and software from fraudulent modification or to protect paper ballots from fraudulent substitution or stuffing. Physical seals in general can be easily defeated, and the effectiveness of seals depends on the protocol for their application and inspection. The legitimacy of our elections may therefore depend on whether a particular state’s use of seals is effective to prevent, deter, or detect election fraud. This paper is a case study of the use of seals on voting machines by the State of New Jersey. I conclude that New Jersey’s protocols for the use of tamper-evident seals have been not at all effective. I conclude with a discussion of the more general problem of seals in democratic elections…

Simply slapping seals on a device does not magically protect it. Physical seals in general are can be defeated with simple techniques and at low cost [Johnston 1997a]. In addition the effectiveness of seals depends on having a protocol for their application and inspection [Johnston 1997b], otherwise one will notice if a seal has been replaced with a different one…

Appel demonstrates how, he as an amateur easily defeated several seals, one like many used in Connecticut to seal ballots:

The seals used by Union County are very easy to defeat in a few seconds, by poking a jeweler’s screwdriver into the opening and thereby disengaging the teeth. Strap seals in general are easy to defeat with simple tools [Johnston 1997a]. The jeweler’s screwdriver is not necessarily even the best or fastest way to defeat this seal; it is the one that occurred to the author, who was (at that time) entirely an amateur at defeating seals.

Like Connecticut there is no specific training on seal inspection for pollworkers or Moderators. Such training would likely be more challenging to implement in Connecticut, since we do not have specified standard seals or containers. In New Jersey:

Pollworkers are hired from among the general public to work 15 hours on election day for $200, with two hours of training before election day. This training covers how to run a polling place and conduct elections; it is not specific to seals. I have inspected the pollworker instruction manuals from three different counties; these manuals give no instruction in the purpose of the seals or in inspecting them for tampering.

Of course Connecticut uses different voting equipment and we have paper ballots to recanvass, recount, and audit. Yet, but the same seal challenges and risks apply. From Appel:

Therefore most computer scientists recommend methods of voting that allow computers to count the vote, with random audits to verify that (with high statistical probability) the computers are not cheating. For this to work, there must be a record of each ballot that is not mediated by a computer that could possibly cheat in creating this record. One method that satisfies these criteria is to let the ballots be paper optical-scan forms… Immediately at the close of the polls, the computer can report the candidate totals for that precinct, and in addition there are paper ballots that can be audited in a hand count of randomly selected precincts…

There remains a security problem to solve: how is the integrity of the ballot box to be maintained between the close of the polls and the time of the audit? One method would be to perform the audit immediately, in the presence of the same witnesses (from both political parties and from the State) that have been (presumably) watching the ballot box all day. This might be the best approach, but it has disadvantages: those witnesses may have been working for 14 hours already running the election, and it requires the random selection of precincts to audit to be made by the time the polls close.

Therefore it is usually presumed that some combination of security seals with chain-of-custody arrangements will provide for the integrity of the paper ballots. Therefore, the considerations discussed elsewhere in this paper—regarding security seals and their associated protocols—are very relevant to optical-scan balloting.

In Connecticut, we need to protect the ballots in order to trust the result of recanvasses, recounts, audits and investigations. But the results can only be no more reliable and credible than the chain-of-custody. And that chain-of-custody, is completely dependent on the seals used, seal protocols, actual practices, enforcement and enforceablity.

Editorial

Even if we had standards for seals and their inspection, not much would happen. Most of our statutes remain locked in the lever age, specifying that lever machines will be sealed with “a numbered metal seal” and some statutes covering earlier paper only elections where statutes require “ballot boxes” be sealed with “one adhesive ballot box sealing stamp” supplied by the Secretary of the State. We have no enforceable standards for ballot containers, ballots seals, tabulator seals, and “tamper evident” tape. Most interpret our statutes to mean that ballots do not have to be sealed beyond fourteen days after an election – with post-election audits commencing on day fifteen.

We located one section of the Connecticut statutes that was specifiably updated to address what happens if an optical scanner is found with a broken seal:

9-259 (c)…The seal on the tabulator shall remain unbroken. If the seal is broken, the registrars of voters shall be notified immediately and the tabulator tape shall be produced. If the tape does not show all zeros, the registrars of voters shall be notified immediately and the tabulator shall not be used.

So, even if a seal were broken, allowing an insider or outsider to change the memory card or “permanent” chips on the machine, as long as the the machine produced a zero tape then the election would go forward.

We have discussed seals and security before; highlighting the apparently unforeceable seals on our scanners specified by the Secretary of the State; and an earlier report on seals, also by, by Roger Johnson, and portions of the California Top-To-Bottom Review: FAQ – How can the scanner be hacked? It is kept in a canvas bag protected by a tamper-evident seal!

We also point to the Coalition post-election audit reports which have documented the failure of election officials to follow chain-of-custody procedures, for example <read>

For more on Connecticut chain-of-custody, read our next post about a recent election in Colorado.

In 2008 and 2009 the plaintiffs in the New Jersey voting-machine lawsuit, Gusciora v. Corzine, asked me to study the use of tamper-indicating security seals proposed by the New Jersey Division of Elections to secure their voting machines. In this paper I am making some of my assessments available to the public.
I found that the proposed seals and security measures are insufficient to guarantee election integrity. The skills, time, and resources to spoof these seals and security measures are not a major barrier to an adversary, and are, in fact, widely available. The design of the AVC Advantage voting machines themselves is not conducive to good security, especially the lack of security on the voter’s end of the machine. There are vulnerability and other problems with the seals chosen by New Jersey. Another serious problem is New Jersey’s failure to have well-designed seal use protocols in place. The lack of internal inspections of the voting machines is unfortunate, as is the State’s lack of concern about possible attacks on small numbers of voting machines (not just statewide attacks). I found that New Jersey does not exhibit a healthy security culture for elections, has no independent physical security experts and vulnerability assessors to advise the state, and misunderstands key security concepts. The poor security practices involved in storage, transport, and chain-of-custody for the voting machines are troubling as well.

Video: Dan Wallach channels Stephen Colbert

Must Watch: From the EVT/WOTE conference, Dan Wallach presents today’s word: “Out of Site, Out of Mind”

Must Watch: From the EVT/WOTE conference, Dan Wallach presents today’s word: “Out of Site, Out of Mind” <video>

In addition to channeling Stephen Colbert, Dan was challenging Mark Lindeman’s performance last year of his ballad “Plaudits for Audits” <watch and listen>

What could a Secretary of the State Do?

Much of what we hear from candidates is proposed cheerleading and leadership from the bully pulpit: the bills they would propose to the legislature, the leadership they would provide to improve the business climate, encourage voting, and voting integrity in Connecticut. However, there are items that the Secretary of the State can do on their own initiative to improve business registration, public access to information, and the election process.

Much of what we hear from candidates is proposed cheerleading and leadership from the bully pulpit: the bills they would propose to the legislature, the leadership they would provide to improve the business climate, encourage voting, and voting integrity in Connecticut. Don’t get me wrong these are useful and legitimate roles for the Secretary of the State. However, there are items that the Secretary of the State can do on their own initiative to improve business registration, public access to information, and the election process.

When I talk to candidates for Secretary of the State, one of my main themes is what they could do on their own authority as Secretary of the State to improve election integrity and public confidence.

Here is my initial list of items, which may be expanded:

Provide detailed, accurate, downloadable, election information and notices on the Secretary of the State’s web site, while increasing the integrity of the post-election audit
- e.g Military and Overseas Voters (Added 4/4/2010)
Create jobs, efficiency and election integrity in Connecticut by changing the way memory cards are programmed and tested
Improve documentation and training for election officials, in substance and format
Provide written directives and responses to inquiries from election officials

We recognize that everything costs money, however, most of these items are relatively modest items that appear to be within the authority of the Secretary of the State.

Further Details

Provide detailed, accurate, downloadable, election information and notices on the Secretary of the State’s web site

In a PEW study the Connecticut site ranked 48th out of 50 states. We could debate if we should be higher in the rankings, or instead work to emulate and surpass the top ranked states.

The process of accumulating voting results in Connecticut is an error-prone three step process of addition and transcription, from polling place, to town hall, to the Secretary of the State’s Office, and to the web. Citizens have identified errors large and moderate – errors of a magnitude which could change election results, the initiation of recanvasses, or ballot access. See <here> <here>

Without reliable, publicly posted results, post-election audits cannot be accomplished which inspire confidence and provide integrity. A trusted audit requires selecting districts for audit against previously posted results. Since we audit against optical scanner tapes, and the tape results are not posted, then we fail to meet that requirement.

What can be done?

Post copies of the original documents: All district and central count absented ballot Moderator’s’ Reports and copies of scanner tapes should be faxed to the Secretary of the State’s Office and posted on the SOTS web site. (We know this is easily possible since the SOTS web site has recently included images of all local ballots, and is capable of the quick addition of press releases)
Post detailed and summary data: The SOTS could use temporary employees or outsourcing to input and double check the input of all that data, then post it to the web site in human and downloadable formats.
Side benefit: A free public audit: As a byproduct the public, candidates, and parties could check and audit the data at no cost to the state. To do that today would involve visiting town halls across the state and performing all the calculations done today by hand – efficient auditing of selected districts is not possible because detailed data is not currently posted.
Consider using the Overseas Vote Foundation facility for empowering military and overseas voters, now in use by seven states. This is an example of what could be done to empower all voters. (Added 4/4/2010)
Improve post-election audit integrity: Stop accepting reports showing wild discrepancies as extremely accurate and make all audit investigations public and transparent. (added 7/31/2010) <Extremely Accurate> <Audit Reports>

Another area of irritation and loss of integrity in the post-election audits is that while the Secretary of the State’s Office is able to post ballots for every municipality, they are not provided with a reliable list of polling districts in those municipalities. By requiring the faxing of district Moderator’s Reports and posting them, this uncertainty would be eliminated.

Another problem is public notification of audit dates, times and locations. By procedure (unfortunately not by law), registrars are required to inform the Secretary of the States’s Office three days in advance of the local audits. If these dates were posted by the SOTS Office within 24 hours of receipt, then the public, candidates, and parties would have much better access to actually observing audits.

Beyond audits, having centralized voting district locations and assisting voters in finding their polling place would help the public and partially relieve that burden from towns.

Create jobs, efficiency and election integrity in Connecticut by changing the way memory cards are programmed and tested

Currently, before each election, memory cards are programmed in Massachusetts by our distributor, LHS Associates. The cards are shipped to local election officials for pre-election testing. There are two problems:

We have no effective supervision over the process. One of the risks is insider fraud or intimidation of those who program and ship memory cards.
The process is not perfect, and the memory cards are physically unreliable. Extra effort is required when bad cards are discovered by the Registrars and new cards need to be ordered and shipped. See <UConn Report.>

What can be done?

Perform the programming in Connecticut: In other states (outside of New England) large counties program their own cards and often perform programming at a fee for small counties. We have paid for two machines which we can use to program the cards. They could be used by state employees or outsource the programming within Connecticut.
Independently test the cards nearby the programming: UConn has developed, at taxpayer expense, a program to eliminate many causes of error in the cards and easily detect bad cards with “junk” data. Currently this program is underutilitzed in no non-random testing of cards selected by local officials after pre-election testing and after the election. We can exploit this program to 100% pre-test the cards, enhancing integrity and reducing wasted effort by local officials when they discover “junk” cards.
Side Benefit: Jobs: It might be small, yet every job moved back to Connecticut would be a benefit to the state. Like large counties in other states, we might provide the service to other states in New England – we could compete with LHS for business and with the added advantage of the UConn testing program. Perhaps we could expand beyond New England to service other states.

We also note a large cadre of very part-time election officials, many of whom served as lever mechanics and later as vendor trained optical scan technicians. We expect that several of these same individuals could quickly train to meet the seasonal demand for programming and testing, and appreciate the opportunity for work and public service. It would not take many.

Improve documentation and training for election officials, in substance and format

The current Secretary of the State and her staff have worked to improve documentation and training. This work should continue and be taken to a new level.

What can be done?

Update and improve the value of manuals: The Moderator Manual, the Absentee Ballot Moderator, the Recanvass Manual and the Post-Election Audit Procedures were modified after the commitment to optical scanners. They need to be updated and expanded based on experience. They need to be rewritten and edited by professional technical writers to make them more effective as training and reference documents. For instance,
- The Absentee Ballot Moderator’s Manual still calls for multiple counting throughout the day, but only one count is necessary with optical scanners.
- The Post-Election Audit procedures should provide more details in several areas: Counting incomplete bubbles, counting write-in votes, exactly what levels of differences should call for recounting and investigation, and help with accurate and efficient counting methods.
- The Recanvass Manual should also cover details of counting incomplete bubbles, counting for voter’s intent, voter identifiable ballots, and the role of designated observers.
- There may be value in following the examples of other jurisdictions in creating observer manuals for post-election audits and recanvasses.
Improve and expand certification: The Secretary has begin efforts for Registrar Certification and Training to complement the current Moderator Certification and Training. The Registrars job is much more involved than that of a Moderator, yet Registrars have no formal training and certification program (And currently there is no requiremen for Registrars to be certified Moderators or to attend training. Moderators are supposed to be certified, yet that is not enforced – these are issues for the Legislature and an example of where the Secretary of the State could be an effective cheer leader)

Provide written directives and responses to inquiries from election officials

One responsibility of the Secretary of the State’s Office is to advise election officials on proper procedures according to law, regulations, procedures, and directives. We have heard registrars complain that the advice given depends on who one talks to, and on what day. We have no way of determining if that is true or how prevalent the problem is. The uncertainty and over-reliance on verbal communication should be eliminated.

We hear the same from committee political treasurers. In fact it is the subject of a proposed law before the Legislature. The law would require the State Elections Enforcement Commission to follow-up with a written version of any verbal advice within ten days. <H.B. 5470> However, it is difficult to write law that distinguishes from a simple inquiry from one that provides a critical distinction that the caller must rely on to avoid error and avoid potential fine or jail time.

What can be done?

All directives should be in writing and publicly available. Like any laws, regulations, and procedures there is usually some ambiguity, unanticipated situations, new regulations can take years to be approved, and problems which must be overcome. The Secretary of the State Office from time to time must issue directives to cover these situations. Such directives should be in writing and posted publicly.
All substantial advice and rulings should be recorded in writing. The current Secretary of the State’s Office keeps track of all citizen inquires. The Office should keep track of all official inquires, and summarize any significant election advice and rulings for future reference.
Economies of Scale: Perhaps the state would be best served by a common system, that tracked similar advice for the Secretary of the State’s Office and Elections Enforcement. Perhaps we should use the same or similar laws, and the same system for all agencies that have a similar requirement. The Environmental Protection Agency comes to mind. What do other agencies do today? What do other states do? We have only one Freedom Of Information law for all agencies. Perhaps we need a uniform law for agency directives, rulings, and advice? There will always be a need to consider economies of scale vs. excess bureaucracy – but the third option is to search for the ways that increase economy of scale, increase democracy, while also streamlining bureaucracy. Once again, the Secretary cannot change the law alone, but could cooperate with other agencies to produce efficiency and provide leadership in going beyond requirements of the law.

This list would be a good start. Perhaps we will update and add to it over time.