Year: 2008

Election Costs $ – Democracy? Priceless!

We have said that conducting elections cost from $5.00 to $20.00 per ballot cast and that our estimate of $0.20 to $0.50 for an audit is a small price to pay to assure that the votes are counted as the voters intended. But the news from Norwalk indicates we may need to revise the high-end cost of running an election upwards from that $20.00. <read>

“Everybody has their right to have a primary, but they should consider the costs and if they really statistically have a chance to win,” said Betty Bondi, Democratic registrar of voters in Norwalk, where 6.3 percent of registered Democrats voted.

Bondi said the primary will cost Norwalk taxpayers about $50,000 by the time the bills get sorted – all that for a contest in which Himes got 899 votes and Whitnum got 70

The calculation is $50,000 / (899 + 70) = $51.59 per ballot cast to run the election, totally dwarfing the cost of a strong, effective post-election audit.

A story earlier this week highlighted complaints of high barriers by third-party candidates. Today’s article features complaints from election officials of barriers being too low for primary challengers.

We cannot help but agree with one comment from Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz:

Lopsided results and low turnouts must be put in perspective, Bysiewicz said.

“Sometimes democracy costs money,” she said

We would add that the costs of the peoples’ intention not being followed can be trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, no matter how you look at it, Red, Blue or Green. The value of Democracy? Priceless!

New York – Test/Think Before You Buy

New York has an extensive testing and review program to test voting machines before they purchase them. Of course that means, given the information we have from various reports in California, Ohio, and Connecticut, its quite predictable that none will pass reasonable tests and review <read>


New York State’s new voting systems are failing certification testing. The two systems undergoing testing for use in 2009 are showing large numbers of defects against New York requirements, have as yet unresolved design and manufacturing issues, and during the initial stages of my source code review I found a software back door that would allow a rogue program to load from an inserted memory card. What’s not to like?

Now, you may be thinking that these all sound like bad things. And of course, on one level they absolutely are. As I’ve written about in earlier posts, what gall vendors have providing New York’s voters with such flawed equipment, sold at astronomical prices, and which have apparently not undergone basic quality assurance testing before being shipped. So what’s the good news? The good news is that we’re identifying problems prior to use in an election – the machines are failing New York’s tests.

Unlike the situation in so many other states, where inadequately tested machines are approved by private companies working for system vendors with no independent review, New York State has changed the rules of the game. Here, we require rigorous testing to the highest standards. Here, we have independent review of not only the machine vendors, but of the vendor performing the testing. Here, we have a Citizens Advisory Committee which has access to the systems and provides advice and analysis to the State Board. Because of this, New York State will not use these machines until such time as they meet the standards required by law and regulation. In other words, the process is working.

Read the full report for more details.

Too High A Barrier?

(Without editorial comment, see Editor’s Note)

Hartford Advocate article on the petitioning effort required to get on the presidential ballot: <read>

In a rare show of third party unity, the campaigns of Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney, the last two former Congress members, are joining forces across state lines to overcome ballot access rules designed to keep minor party candidates out. The camps are sharing workers, swapping petitions and urging voters to sign up for another third party candidate along with their own. They’ve joined forces in Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and now Connecticut, where Barr submitted 13,000 signatures and McKinney turned in “close to the necessary number,” a Green Party boss says…

Sidewalk petitioning can be thankless work: Campaigns pay workers $1 to $1.50 per signature to stand on baking asphalt, asking irritated grocery shoppers to sign in support of a candidate they’ve often never heard of, or might consider a “spoiler.” Nader’s national ballot coordinator, Christina Tobin of Illinois, arrived in Hartford last week to turn in the fruits of their labor…

…petitioners must carry a form for every town—Andover to Woodstock—which the state then mails to those towns. Another law says petitioners must be state residents, which poses a problem because the most reliable workers are the few paid national staffers who travel from state to state, not local volunteers. Beyond that, requiring 7,500 valid signatures when other New England states require a fraction as many (1,000 in Rhode Island, 3,000 in New Hampshire) disadvantages small-dollar grassroots campaigns, Tobin says.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, the state’s top election official, is unsympathetic. She says town officials must validate petition signatures because only they have the original signed voter cards. If something looks suspicious—say, several signatures in the same handwriting—officials need to check the source documents.

Read the entire article for more details and opinion.

CT Irony #3: Passed in 2005: Tougher Audits and Custody for Equipment/Paper We Don’t Use

In 2005 the Legislature passed the Voter Verified Paper Trail Bill. They also passed post-election audits along with a minimum one hundred and eighty day seal on the paper. Unfortunately, they had not anticipated optical scan, limiting the audit to DRE (Touch Screen) equipment. We actually have tougher post-election audits and custody laws on the books that would have applied to DRE than apply to the optical scanners we do have. We are not advocating DRE machines, Connecticut voters have a much safer, auditable, economical voting system with optical scan.

We have pointed out many weaknesses in the optical scan audit law passed in 2007 which applies to optical scan. Among the inadequacies of the law are that we don’t audit enough of the votes, we don’t do it soon enough after the election, and we have a questionable chain-of-custody provision which many believe only lasts fourteen days – with the audits starting on day fifteen. But on the books is a much tougher audit law for DRE’s which does not apply to optical scanners. This law has a much bigger audit, started sooner, audits all races and questions, and with a much longer and clearer chain-of-custody This would be an expensive audit as DRE paper tapes are much more time consuming to audit than paper ballots: Sec. 9-242b. Procedures for use of direct recording electronic voting machines

(5) Not later than five business days after each election in which a direct recording electronic voting machine is used, the registrars of voters or their designees, representing at least two political parties, shall conduct a manual audit of the votes recorded on at least (A) two direct recording electronic voting machines used in each assembly district, or (B) a number of direct recording electronic voting machines equal to fifty per cent of the number of voting districts in the municipality, whichever is less. Not later than five business days after a primary in which a direct recording electronic voting machine is used, the registrar of voters of the party holding the primary shall conduct such a manual audit by designating two or more individuals, one of whom may be the registrar, representing at least two candidates in the primary. The machines audited under this subdivision shall be selected in a random drawing that is announced in advance to the public and is open to the public. All direct recording electronic voting machines used within an assembly district shall have an equal chance of being selected for the audit. The Secretary of the State shall determine and publicly announce the method of conducting the random drawing, before the election. The manual audit shall consist of a manual tabulation of the contemporaneously produced, individual, permanent, voter-verified, paper records produced by each voting machine subject to the audit and a comparison of such count, with respect to all candidates and any questions or proposals appearing on the ballot, with the electronic vote tabulation reported for such voting machine on the day of the election or primary…

(6) The individual, permanent, voter-verified, paper records contemporaneously produced by any direct recording electronic voting machine in use at an election or primary held on or after July 1, 2005, shall be carefully preserved and returned in their designated receptacle in accordance with the requirements of section 9-266, 9-302 or 9-310, whichever is applicable, and may not be opened or destroyed, except during recanvass or manual audit as set forth in this section, for one hundred eighty days following an election or primary that does not include a federal office, pursuant to section 9-310, or for twenty-two months following an election or primary involving a federal office, pursuant to 42 USC 1974, as amended from time to time.

What we need in Connecticut is a stronger, independent, more comprehensive, more timely post-election audit of all types of ballots cast with a stronger chain-of-custody.

Editor’s Note

CTVotersCount.org concentrates on issues related to computerized voting and issues related to the voters’ intent being realized. There are many other issues related to voting such as voter fraud, voter suppression, voter registration, campaign finance, candidate qualification etc. for which we have not taken positions. However, occasionally we present news items associated with those issues.

WaPo: Fear Mongers (Scare Voters From Registering)

(Without editorial comment, see Editor’s Note)

WaPo Editorial, Fear Mongers, Virginia’s GOP tries to scare new voters away from the polls: <read>

Republicans are increasingly anxious about retaining their hold on a state that GOP presidential candidates have carried since 1968. What is surprising is their utterly baseless charge of “coordinated and widespread voter fraud . . . throughout Virginia.”

That rhetorical hand grenade, lobbed the other day by the state Republican Party chairman, Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick of Prince William County, bears little relationship to the facts. Nor do Mr. Frederick’s attempts to frighten prospective voters by warning that they could be victims of identity theft if they sign up to vote in registration drives by “a whole lot of groups out there that nobody has ever heard of.” In fact, there is not even a whiff of evidence that identity theft is taking place in Virginia under the guise of registration campaigns. Mr. Frederick’s message amounts to a classic attempt to suppress votes.

EVT ’08 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop

Last week I attended EVT ’08, 2008 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workship, in San Jose. <program and papers>

It was pleasing to see a UConn paper on memory card testing accepted and presented. Their work has been previously covered here. Over the next few days I will cover a couple of the other papers presented.

This year the program expanded from one day to almost two days, complementing the papers with a keynote and panels including computer scientists, election officials, and federal election officials. Missing from the panels, for the most part were activists although they did include some computer scientists and election officials that could be considered activists.

Today the panels: Continue reading “EVT ’08 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop”

Times: Feinstein Bill is Bad – First, do no harm!

Update: Senator Feinstein replies to The Times with letter to the editor – that is, with excuses to counter the substance of objections to the bill <read>

Another right on editorial from the New York Times, A Bad Electronic Voting Bill <read>

Some have faith in the “‘hearings” held last week, that were packed with those who may well have written the bill. At least one paper agrees with us and VerifiedVoting.org. From the Times:

Congress has stood idly by while states have done the hard work of trying to make electronic voting more reliable. Now the Senate is taking up a dangerous bill introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, that would make things worse in the name of reform. If Congress will not pass a strong bill, it should apply the medical maxim: first, do no harm.

Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.

There is still a need for a federal law, so voting is reliable in every state. A good law would require that every vote in a federal election produce a voter-verifiable paper record, and it would mandate that the paper records be the official ballots. It would impose careful standards for how these paper ballots must be “audited,” to verify that the tallies on the electronic machines are correct.

The Feinstein-Bennett bill does none of these. It would permit states to verify electronic voting machines’ results using electronic records rather than paper. Verifying by electronic records — having one piece of software attest that another piece of software is honest — is not verifying at all. The bill is also vague about rules for audits, leaving considerable room for mischief. The timeline also is unacceptable. States might be able to use unreliable machines through 2014 or longer.

This bill goes out of its way to placate voting machine manufacturers and local election officials, two groups that have consistently been on the wrong side of electronic voting integrity. Reform groups like Verified Voting, which have done critical work in the states, say they were not allowed to provide input.

The bill would do some good things, including reducing the conflicts of interest that plague the process for certifying voting machines. But the damage it would do is much greater.

Ms. Feinstein introduced a better bill last year, which would have required a paper record of every vote, but she could not get enough support to pass it. If Congress cannot pass a good bill, it should let the states continue to do the hard work — and be prepared to explain to voters why it cannot muster the will to protect the integrity of American elections.

There is still time to call and e-mail our senators. Remember Dodd is on the Committee <e-mail action>

Connecticut Fails Lastest Holt Standard

Hats off again to Representative Rush Holt. Once again he offers emergency legislation to protect our vote. Even this streamlined bill is unlikely to pass. We admire Representative Holt for not giving up. We encourage him to persevere until we have election integrity. Meanwhile Senator Feinstein supports a phony, star-wars expensive, delaying plan. Here in Connecticut, the law our Secretary of the State calls the “strongest” and “toughest” falls far short of the minimum Holt bill standards. <read>

The bill would authorize funding for states that conduct audits that meet basic minimum requirements, including the use of a random selection, the requirement that audits be conducted with independence, at least a 2 percent audit sample, and public observation. All ballots must be included in the audit and they must begin within 48 hours and be completed prior to certification of the result. Only about a dozen states currently conduct audits.


Random Selection: Connecticut has it but the random selection of races is not always required to be public.

Independence: In Connecticut all decisions are made by the Secretary of the State and counting is done by local officials – this completely fails independence.

All Ballots Included: In Connecticut, hand counted ballots, central count absentee ballots, and provisional ballots are excluded. In addition districts with recounts or contests are excluded.

Begin within 48 hours: By law Connecticut audits cannot begin until after 336 hours.

Lou Dobbs Gets It – Deseret News Does Not

We don’t always agree with Lou Dobbs, but he has nailed it on electronic voting and the Feinstein/Bennett bill. Amazingly the Senator goes against her state and also claims she really cannot do anything but this “compromise” bill. She could do nothing, it would be much much better than this bill.

Video: <watch>

Meanwhile in a story we should expect more of by Deseret News <read>

Civil rights groups, state voting officials and computer experts all praised Wednesday a bill

This is hand-picked computer experts out of the mainstream and some advocates accepting large donations from voting machine vendors. Watch Lou Dobbs for a summary that fits more with what mainstream computer experts would all say, if any were invited to the hearing.

“The legislation allows for innovation and experimentation. The legislation sets objectives but does not dictate how the objective is to be achieved,” he said.

This is a star-wars like program of technology that does not exist being funded, aiming cash at vendors, destined to destroy democracy. Be skeptical very skeptical.

More details in our recent post.