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Skulduggery and Errors

The Selfie Threat To Democracy

By Luther Weeks on August 21, 2015

What could be more patriotic in our narcissistic social-media age than posting a picture of yourself on Facebook with your marked ballot for president? Show off your support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) or former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.  Last week, a federal court in New Hampshire struck down that state’s ban on ballot selfies as a violation of the First Amendment right of free-speech expression.

That might seem like a victory for the American Way. But the judge made a huge mistake because without the ballot-selfie ban, we could see the reemergence of the buying and selling of votes — and even potential coercion from employers, union bosses and others…

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Lottery better pay-off than witch hunt

By Luther Weeks on March 16, 2015

Iowa spent a lot of time, money and rhetoric on a witch hunt for illegal immigrant voting.

If I were an illegal immigrant, my goal would be to stay under the radar. I would avoid speeding, drunk driving, and doing anything that might get me caught.

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UConn Researchers: Turnout goes down as corruption goes up.

By Luther Weeks on February 11, 2015

As we have mentioned before, turnout is the “Holy Grail” of elections.  Any election reform is touted as a means of increasing turnout. From touch screens to early voting that is one of the justifications, yet in actuality touch screens create annoying lines and early voting actually DECREASES turnout.

To increase turnout, lets avoid the gimmicks with integrity risks or unproven claims. Lets start with the hard work of rooting out corruption. There is a worse alternative, we could avoid looking. Maybe the public would be more likely to vote if corruption were ignored.

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Hartford Election Report: Sad, yet an easy recommended read.

By Luther Weeks on January 18, 2015

As they and we often say, “Diagnosis before cure”. Lest the cure be ineffective or worse than the disease.

The Hartford Common Council empowered a Committee of Inquiry to gather facts on the widely reported late opening of polls on election day, the long known disfunction in the Registrars Office, and the less reported inaccurate, yet to be corrected reports of election results. We recommend reading the whole report. It is an easy read, yet sad, disappointing, and as some have said outrageous

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Connecticut not alone in election adminstration challenges

By Luther Weeks on November 27, 2014

MapSince the election on November 4th we have had all sorts of complaints about Connecticut election administration. Claims that we are the slowest, with the most clueless election officials. And all sorts of cures proposed including more mail-in votes, electronic calculation of results, and reorganization of election administration.

We agree with that their are many problems. We agree with the general outlines of some of the cures. Yet, we caution against knee-jerk reaction, and change without planning and analysis.

We suggest looking at the best practices from other states. Yet, we can also learn from the mistakes and foibles of other states. Often those employing some of those very cures proposed for Connecticut.

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“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 6)

By Luther Weeks on October 6, 2014

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered CTVotersCount posts from the 1st half of 2011.

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“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 4)

By Luther Weeks on July 13, 2014

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts.

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The dirty secret(s) of vote counting

By Luther Weeks on June 17, 2014

In college I followed our nationally ranked hockey team. With ringside seats at an ECAC semi-final game, we struck up a conversation with a referee, who frequently stood just in front of us on the ice. For a long while it was a tie, and we learned from him that refs do no like tie games, with the pressure on every call in a sudden death overtime. Elections can get rougher than hockey, there are more and tougher calls in close contests – calls that can easily expose the little know vulnerabilities of our election system and the flaws in the promise to “count every vote”.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

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“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 3)

By Luther Weeks on June 12, 2014

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts, covering 2009.

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“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 2)

By Luther Weeks on June 7, 2014

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

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