2015 | CTVotersCount.org

Will encryption save us? No, “It’s Saturday Night!”

Last Saturday, some may have been channel surfing and mistakenly thought they were watching Saturday Night Live. As one the 2% of voters spending last Saturday night intentionally watching the debate between the Democratic candidates and two ABC hosts, I was not the only one that noticed the flaws in one candidate’s claims for encryption that went unchallenged.

Fortunately, Jenna McLaughlin of The Intercept articulates the issues and the faulty assumptions of candidates and pundits: Democratic Debate Spawns Fantasy Talk on Encryption <read>

During Saturday’s debate, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton said the U.S. should commission a “Manhattan-like project,” a reference to the secret World War II-era atomic bomb endeavor, to address the alleged threat encryption poses to law enforcement. She also admitted she doesn’t actually understand the technology.

Last Saturday, some may have been channel surfing and mistakenly thought they were watching Saturday Night Live. As one the 2% of voters(*) spending last Saturday night intentionally watching the debate between the Democratic candidates and two ABC hosts, I was not the only one that noticed the flaws in one candidate’s claims for encryption that went unchallenged.

Fortunately, Jenna McLaughlin of The Intercept articulates the issues and the faulty assumptions of candidates and pundits: Democratic Debate Spawns Fantasy Talk on Encryption <read>

During Saturday’s debate, Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton said the U.S. should commission a “Manhattan-like project,” a reference to the secret World War II-era atomic bomb endeavor, to address the alleged threat encryption poses to law enforcement. She also admitted she doesn’t actually understand the technology.

Clinton was largely parroting a popular FBI talking point that’s been highly publicized following the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino — that encryption is law enforcement’s Achilles heel in preventing crime — though there’s no evidence encryption enabled the plots to go undetected…

..law enforcement argues, the government needs some sort of a way in — a “backdoor,” “front door,” or “golden key” — to stop the bad guys in their tracks. For months, FBI Director James Comey has been proclaiming his wish for some sort of magical solution to allow law enforcement access to encrypted communications. Comey has repeatedly insisted that smart people working on technology simply need to try harder, or be incentivized properly.

But technologists and cryptographers have been saying for years that it’s impossible — without severely handicapping the protection encryption affords its users…

Yet the government has never presented a clear case where encryption has crippled a critical terrorism investigation, and law enforcement has other investigative tools in its arsenal — like traditional informants and tips, for example. Even when encryption is present, there is evidence that the FBI and other government agencies can hack into suspects’ computers and phones — bypassing encryption entirely.

And as Ed Snowden reminds us, be careful in setting precedents:

No matter how good the reason, if the U.S. sets the precedent that Apple has to compromise the security of a customer in response to a piece of government paper, what can they do when the government is China and the customer is the Dalai Lama?” he wrote to The Intercept in July.

Perhaps it is too much to ask in the limitations of the debate format, no candidate challenged these remarks and assumptions. Yet it is not just candidates and government officials that need to be fact checked. Increasingly it is correspondents and debate moderators:

Raddatz, ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent, framed her questions in the debate as being about encryption as a “new terrorist tool used in Paris.” But criminals and terrorists have been using encryption for years, and encryption is also used legitimately by people around the world to protect sensitive information.

Read the full article for more of the arguments against and references to other pertinent articles.

* You might rate us “Mostly True” here as we rely on media reports that just under 8 million tuned in to the debates, assuming they reflected the U.S. population and most were eligible to vote, although considerably fewer do so.

Does All Mail Voting Increase Turnout?

In the long run, apparently Not or Not Much.

Article from the Washington Post, from researcher Elizabeth Bergman: Voting only by mail can decrease turnout. Or increase it. Wait, what?

My research found that when you can only vote by mail, voter turnout actually drops by about 13 percent. I examined what happens to turnout if voting by mail is compulsory. I studied more than 90,000 voters who could vote only by mail across four elections from 2006 through 2008 in five of the most populous urban counties in California. (In that state, if a precinct has fewer than 250 voters, elections officials are allowed to forego a polling place and accept ballots only by mail.)

That decline may seem counterintuitive. Presumably voting by mail is easier and more convenient than going to the polls. So why doesn’t turnout go up?

In the long run, apparently Not or Not Much.

Article from the Washington Post, from researcher Elizabeth Bergman: Voting only by mail can decrease turnout. Or increase it. Wait, what? <read>

Note that we here are talking about all mail elections, not no-excuse absentee voting, which tends also to decrease turnout.

Supporters hope that voting by mail means more citizens will vote. Is it so?

Generally, the answer is both “no” and “yes,” but with important qualifications…

Some early research in Oregon claimed that voting by mail increased turnout by 10 percentage points. However, since then, scholars have been unable to reproduce those results. Apparently that boost to Oregon’s turnout grew from a “novelty effect” and recurred only in special elections.

In Washington, researchers found that switching to all-mail elections increased overall participation by about three percentage points in presidential and midterm elections. In the California pilot, after the Nov. 3 elections, the San Mateo County elections office received 105,325 ballots out of the approximately 353,000 that were mailed. That’s 29.5 percent voter turnout, or 4.1 percent more than a similar off-year polling place election in 2013, when 25.4 percent of registered voters cast their ballots…

The media was quick to attribute the “eye-popping” increase in voter turnout to simply switching to vote-by-mail. But it’s not that simple.

Mail-only balloting actually decreases voting

My research found that when you can only vote by mail, voter turnout actually drops by about 13 percent. I examined what happens to turnout if voting by mail is compulsory. I studied more than 90,000 voters who could vote only by mail across four elections from 2006 through 2008 in five of the most populous urban counties in California. (In that state, if a precinct has fewer than 250 voters, elections officials are allowed to forego a polling place and accept ballots only by mail.)

That decline may seem counterintuitive. Presumably voting by mail is easier and more convenient than going to the polls. So why doesn’t turnout go up?

According to a 50-state study that examined elections over a 30-year period, voter turnout is less about convenience than academics once thought. Most voting reforms, like all-mail balloting, do not attract new voters.

What’s more, alternative voting methods are most likely to be launched in states that already have high voter turnout.

Why does voting by mail decrease turnout? Because mail voters have a longer voting “window,” they receive less stimulus to vote. Scholars have found that reductions in stimulation to vote are greater than the modest positive benefits of additional convenience from mail voting…

But reminders make a difference

Reminders are critical. My research found that when the elections office communicates more often with voters, more of them vote. In particular, four official communications can wipe out the 13 percent decrease in turnout that I found. ‘‘Official communications’’ include such documents as a Sample Ballot, a Voter Guide, letters on county letterhead and postcards from the Registrar of Voters. Each additional communication improved the odds of voting by 4 percent. And a voter who received five communications was 4 percent more likely to vote than a voter who received no mailings.

That leaves us with another question. What effect would those same reminders have on election day voting? Could we wipe out the 13% deficit by avoiding all mail voting, and add those same five reminders to increase turnout altogether, say by 10% or so?

What if we used computers for voting, not just driving?

From OpEd News, Interview with Barbara Simons: What the Heck Does the Recent Volkswagen Scandal Have to Do with Our Elections? <read full interview>

Since the Volkswagen hacking was disclosed we have been using that to highlight the potential of rigged elections as we have for earlier, more dramatic, vehicle hacking demonstrations.

Any large software program contains undetected bugs. That’s why software vendors such as Microsoft and Apple send out frequent software updates, many of them to fix security holes. Likewise, it also can be very difficult to detect cleverly hidden malware.Computers can greatly facilitate both car performance and ballot tabulation. But just as laboratory tests are not adequate for testing pollution controls in the presence of malware, so too we cannot depend solely on voting system “certification” to verify that our voting systems are accurate and secure

From OpEd News, Interview with Barbara Simons: What the Heck Does the Recent Volkswagen Scandal Have to Do with Our Elections? <read full interview>

Since the Volkswagen hacking was disclosed we have been using that to highlight the potential of rigged elections as we have for earlier, more dramatic, vehicle hacking demonstrations.

Both modern cars and voting systems are significantly computerized. VW was playing a very high stakes financial game that led someone to installed cheating software (malware).

The stakes are also very high in modern elections. I continue to be amazed that some losing candidates either are pressured not to rock the boat – sometimes by their own party (I know of candidates to whom this was done) – or actually accept negative results without questioning the computerized voting machines that “declare” those results.

Any large software program contains undetected bugs. That’s why software vendors such as Microsoft and Apple send out frequent software updates, many of them to fix security holes. Likewise, it also can be very difficult to detect cleverly hidden malware.

Computers can greatly facilitate both car performance and ballot tabulation. But just as laboratory tests are not adequate for testing pollution controls in the presence of malware, so too we cannot depend solely on voting system “certification” to verify that our voting systems are accurate and secure

Read the full interview <read>

Iowa Caucus: Democrats to vote by “Magic Pony” Express

Des Moines Register: Democrats abroad can phone-in caucus votes <read>
No matter how much we warn about Internet voting, it seems nobody learns. In this case it is telephone voting, just as insecure. These days the phone goes over the same paths as the Internet:

The Iowa Democratic Party on Tuesday announced the first ever Tele-Caucus initiative. It will allow deployed service members and other Iowans living abroad to participate in the first-in-the-nation event.

The effort piggybacks on a satellite caucus initiative the party announced this fall. Both programs aim to expand participation in the Feb. 1 Iowa caucus to those who are normally unable to attend.

“This is to try and be more inclusive as a party,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Andy McGuire said. “We want as many people as possible to participate in this caucus.”

We would add, perhaps there will be people participating they would rather not have, such as hackers.

The Tele-Caucus will be facilitated through a telephone consulting firm, Stones’ Phones.

?Founder of the company, Marty Stone, said participants will essentially phone-in their caucus vote by selecting a candidate with the push of a number on the dial pad. It’s compatible with any landline, cellphone, Skype or other program used for calling abroad.

Anyone planning to participate in the inaugural Tele-Caucus must register online, at iowademocrats.org/telecaucus, by Jan. 6. Those eligible should be registered to vote as a Democrat in Iowa and qualify for the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

As with other such schemes, saying it is secure is not the same as it being secure. No word of actual testing and certification by third parties.

Just this week, we learned a new technical term, Magic Pony, in this article from the Intercept: Comey Calls on Tech Companies Offering End-to-End Encryption to Reconsider “Their Business Model” <read>

It is an educational read about the fallacies of the “Security” of placing back doors “only for the government” into encryption software. One of those things likely only to be used by the public. Anyone aiming at skulduggery would use encryption without backdoors, or avoid the Internet altogether.

Comey had previously argued that tech companies could somehow come up with a “solution” that allowed for government access but didn’t weaken security. Tech experts called this a “magic pony” and mocked him for his naivete.

Now, Comey said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday morning, extensive conversations with tech companies have persuaded him that “it’s not a technical issue.”

“It is a business model question,” he said. “The question we have to ask is: Should they change their business model?”

Voter or Voting Fraud? via AB, immune to Voter Id

Many believe that stronger Voter Id would prevent voter fraud. Actually who would risk going to the polls with the risk of strong penalties if they are caught when there is an easier alternative, absentee voting? This case from Wisconsin shows how easy can be, yet also that sometimes you can get caught. In this case only because there were two votes from one person.

A Shorewood man has been charged with more than a dozen counts of illegal voting, accused of casting multiple ballots in four elections in 2011 and 2012, including five in the 2012 gubernatorial recall.

A Shorewood man has been charged with more than a dozen counts of illegal voting, accused of casting multiple ballots in four elections in 2011 and 2012, including five in the 2012 gubernatorial recall.

Robert D. Monroe, 50, used addresses in Shorewood, Milwaukee and Indiana, according to the complaint, and cast some votes in the names of his son and his girlfriend’s son.

According to the complaint:

Monroe cast two ballots in the April 2011 Supreme Court election, two in the August 2011 Alberta Darling recall election, five in the Scott Walker-Tom Barrett recall, one illegal ballot in an August 2012 primary, and two ballots in the November 2012 presidential election.

In the presidential election, Monroe cast an in-person absentee ballot in Shorewood on Nov. 1 and drove a rental car to Lebanon, Ind., where he showed his Indiana driver’s license to vote in person on election day, Nov. 6, the complaint charges. Monroe owns a house there, according to the complaint…

The complaint indicates the investigation started in Waukesha County as an inquiry into possible double voting by Monroe’s son, who lives in Waukesha. But the son denied any knowledge of requesting an absentee ballot from his father’s Shorewood address, and the investigation shifted back to Milwaukee County…

The complaint refers to Monroe as an executive within the health care industry who earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2013.

“He has expressed an interest in attending law school,” the complaint reads.

Monroe faces various counts of election fraud, including registering in more than one place, providing false information to an election official, voting more than once and voting as a disqualified person, for a total 13 felony charges. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of up to 18 months in prison, two years of extended supervision and a $10,000 fine.

Time to Hold ’em – Connecticut’s voting machines

San Francisco provides another reason for Connecticut to wait before considering new voting machines: San Francisco Examiner: San Francisco sets sights on open source voting by November 2019 <read>

“San Francisco could help write some U.S. democracy history with its leadership role,” said a Nov. 18 letter to the Elections Commission from Gregory Miller, co-founder of the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Foundation, a collection of executives from top technology companies like Apple and Facebook. “And the total estimated cost to do so [$8 million] is a fraction of status-quo alternatives.”

San Francisco could have an open-source voting system in place by the November 2019 election, under a plan approved earlier this month by the Elections Commission.

The timeline could result in the emergence of San Francisco as the leader of the open-source voting movement in the United States.

For supporters of open-source voting, the importance of that point can’t be underscored enough.

“San Francisco could help write some U.S. democracy history with its leadership role,” said a Nov. 18 letter to the Elections Commission from Gregory Miller, co-founder of the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Foundation, a collection of executives from top technology companies like Apple and Facebook. “And the total estimated cost to do so [$8 million] is a fraction of status-quo alternatives.”

Open-source voting systems bring a greater level of transparency and accountability by allowing the public to have access to the source codes of the system, which is used to tabulate the votes. A system owned by The City could also save taxpayers money…

We have said it before, No Crisis in CT unless we make one, there are few voting system options available today, expensive and, at best, incrementally better than the AccuVoteOS scanners we use in Connecticut. It is time to wait and see the results of efforts underway in Los Angeles County, CA, Travis County, TX, and now San Francisco. There will be dramatically better and more economical systems available in the next five to ten years for Connecticut to benefit from these pioneering efforts.

Essex students assist Secretary in random drawing

Yesterday we observed the random drawing of 68 districts and alternate districts for the post-election audit. Just as last time, it was an effective and educational event for all those present and participating. After each district was drawn they were marked on an map of the State. See the <press release> for more details and a list of the districts chosen.

CT Lottery Hacked. Claimed to be easy “unsophisticated” hack

Once again, we wonder which is safer Gambling or Voting?

Courant story: Suspended Lottery Game Had Too Many Winners <read>

Just how some lottery agents were able to manipulate their machines is not clear, but
investigators believe there was a vulnerability between the time a ticket was ordered at a terminal when it was printed…

[Consumer Protection Commissioner Jonathan] Harris said he does not think those who manipulated the system were sophisticated hackers, but rather people who were able to figure out how the lottery terminals work.

We are not reassured.

Once again, we wonder which is safer Gambling or Voting?

Courant story: Suspended Lottery Game Had Too Many Winners <read>

The Connecticut Lottery and state Department of Consumer Protection shut down the 5 Card Cash game after noticing there were more winners than the game’s parameters should have allowed, and determining that some lottery agents were manipulating machines to print more winning tickets and fewer losers…

Just how some lottery agents were able to manipulate their machines is not clear, but
investigators believe there was a vulnerability between the time a ticket was ordered at a terminal when it was printed…

As for how many agents and terminals were involved, “That’s the part we still don’t know,” Harris said. It’s also not clear how much money was lost, Harris said...

Lora Rae Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Consumer Protection, said the fact there were more winners than there should have been raised a flag…

The Connecticut Lottery and the state Department of Consumer Protection were alerted to the possibility of problems involving 5 Card Cash a year ago. A lottery retailer in Weston was accused of holding back winning tickets and selling losing tickets to unsuspecting customers. State authorities were alerted and suspended the retailer’s license to sell lottery tickets.

We are not reassured.

Is it really an unsophisticated hack? If that is true we are concerned because,
- The vulnerability was not corrected in a year
- They have no idea who did it, how often it was done, how exactly it is accomplished, and how much was stolen
- Apparently ignored red flags that too much money was being awarded
Yet, it could be sophisticated, which would be even more concerning, since they apparently have gotten away with the money

We ask:

Why do they assume it was unsophisticated hackers?
Was it really a hack? Or the did the system simply pay out too much?
What kind of security expertise does the vendor have, if a system could be broken by unsophisticated hackers?
What kind of security review and testing does the Lottery employ, if any?
Is anyone sure the random algorithms that choose winners are operating correctly?
Are they sure it is not an inside job?
Is there an audit trail of tickets cancelled? Can’t they tell which terminals cancelled numbers of losing tickets?

We also wonder if the Lottery is up to the standards of Los Vegas gambling machines or closer to the weaker standards of voting machines <compare>

Little comfort in ‘C’ grade for Connecticut for Integrity

Nor more comfort that the ‘C’ ranks us 3rd in the ‘Class’ of states.

New report from the Center for Public Integrity: How does your state rank for integrity? <read>
With the Connecticut details: Connecticut gets C- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation <read>

Let me start by applauding the Center for the report and Connecticut reporter Jennifer Frank for her contributions to the report. I will have some suggestions and criticisms of the report, yet having created a report on 169 Connecticut elections websites I know how challenging it is to set the criteria and perform uniform objective evaluations across several entities with multiple elevators.

Nor more comfort that the ‘C’ ranks us 3rd in the ‘Class’ of states.

It is interesting viewing the details for Connecticut, other states, and also to see the criteria and evaluation methods. My comments:

No state got an A or a B.
I do not feel as comfortable as some might think, living in Connecticut, one of only three states getting a ‘C’.
Especially sad that the state with the first FOI law, once the envy of other states and countries gets an ‘F’ on FOI, worse that poor score ranks us 7th in the Nation !
Electoral Oversight is interesting for its criteria which has only a partial relationship with our work in Election Integrity, which I would include in a comprehensive report on State Integrity.The report section on Election Oversight is focused mainly on if the state has an independent oversight entity and how that agency functions.I appreciate our State Elections Enforcement Commission and the staff there, especially when they stick their necks out in politically challenging situations. Yet, I would quibble with some of the criteria or the exact ratings. As the reports states the SEEC is resource constrained – some investigations are completed quickly others have been on the books for years with no resolution, and possibly no substantial investigation to date. (Complaints and actions short of complete investigation are apparently not open to public access)I note that for Connecticut and at least some other states, all the information was compiled by one person per state, and since it is subjective might be limited by that’s person’s understanding of the items rated and their evaluation of what they were provided.I would rather have a category like Election Integrity and a sub-category such as Evidence Based Elections including criteria such as ‘Voter Verified Paper Records/Ballots’, ‘Post-Election Audits’, ‘Recounts’, ‘Election Records Security’, ‘Public Access to Election Records’, ‘Public Observation of Elections’, and ‘Election Officials Protected from Interference’.

There is one sub-category relevant to Election Integrity included under the generally relevant category of Election Oversight: “In practice, statewide election data are accessible to the public in open data format.” In the case of Connecticut it scores the state at 25% on the category which is poor, yet I would agree, reasonable for what Connecticut provides. You can click categories and they list the criteria, and under the criteria you can click and get exactly what they found for the state. E.g. for election data:

EXPLANATION

Election returns and voter turnout from 2014 are available online on the website of the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) office. The state does not release election results by precinct, but by municipality, down to each state House district. Results, which are handwritten by the town clerk, head moderator, or other voting official, include information, town by town, on results for any constitutional amendment questions, and the number of absentee ballots issued by the town clerk, the number of absentee ballots received and the number rejected. These results are available for download in pdf format only.

CRITERIA

A 100 score is earned if election returns and turnout are available online and can be easily accessed, downloaded in bulk, and in a machine readable format. The information must be broken down to the precinct level, with files that track the issuance and return of absentee ballots. A 50 score is earned if such information cannot be easily accessed and/or downloaded in bulk, but it can be downloaded in machine-readable format. A 0 score is earned if such information is not available online or it is but it cannot be downloaded.

SOURCE

Website of the Secretary of the State, (accessed June 10, 2015), LINK?a=3172&q=525432 Interview by phone and email exchange, Av Harris, communications director for the Secretary of the State’s Office, April 7, 2015. Email exchange, Tyler Kleykamp, Connecticut Chief Data Officer, Feb. 16, 2015

No transparent recount; No public access to ballots; No confidence

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky. Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not.

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Because the City of Bridgeport gave the CT Post access to the ballots, we were able to recount them all and assure the state that the declared Governor was actually the choice of the voters. If Bridgeport had not agreed, we would still be wondering and questioning the legitimacy of Governor Malloy.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky.

Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not, for instance from BradBlog: Questioning the Unverified Computer Results of Kentucky’s Governor’s Race <read>

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

Bev Harris, of BlackBoxVoting.org, who I spoke with earlier today, described the higher vote totals in the down ballot races as a “significant anomaly”. She tells me that, at least until more records are requested and examined, the KY-Gov’s race “has to be looked at as a questionable outcome, particularly because of the discrepancies in the down ballot races. More votes in those races and not at the top…that just doesn’t happen.”

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost…

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost.

We’ve seen this before, of course. Too many times.

Is there a problem in Kentucky? How will we ever know, if the public does not have access to the actual ballots or the public can observe and verify a recount or a sufficient post-election audit? Of course, they cannot.

Without that satisfaction the results will always be in question. And even if the election results are completely accurate, they will always be in question. Democracy will be viewed as lacking credibility and the elected officials will always be viewed with doubt by a significant portion of the public.

We note the subsequent developments, reminiscent of our post from way back 5 days ago, also courtesy of Brad: <read>

A KY newspaper fires their well-respected pollster rather than bothering to find out if the polls were right and the results were wrong; Another reminder of why hand-marked paper ballots like those in KY are swell, but only if you bother to actually count them; We weather a few attacks from progressives who charge us with forwarding conspiracy theories and don’t think we should bother to count ballots;

We are skeptical that the information will be made available or that a sufficient audit or recount will be performed. Yet Kentucky is not Kansas Look at this recent news from Kansas: Kansas: Statistician gets support for suit over voting machine tapes <read>

A Wichita State University statistician seeking to audit voting machine tapes after finding statistical anomalies in election counts is garnering legal and other support as she pursues her lawsuit. Beth Clarkson had been pursuing the case herself, but now a Wichita lawyer has taken up her cause. Other supporters have helped set up a nonprofit foundation and an online crowdsourcing effort. A Sedgwick County judge is expected to set a trial date and filing deadlines on Monday. Clarkson, chief statistician for the university’s National Institute for Aviation Research, filed the open records lawsuit as part of her personal quest to find the answer to an unexplained pattern that transcends elections and states. She wants the tapes so she can establish a statistical model by checking the error rate on electronic voting machines used at a Sedgwick County voting station during the November 2014 general election. But top election officials for Kansas and Sedgwick County have asked the Sedgwick County District Court to block the release of voting machine tapes.

Clarkson has analyzed election returns in Kansas and elsewhere over several elections and says her findings indicate “a statistically significant” pattern that shows the larger the precinct, the larger the percentage of Republican votes. She says the pattern could indicate election fraud.

“If she is right, it’s horrifying,” her attorney, Randy Rathbun, said Friday. “And so I visited with her and she has convinced me that she is right. So somebody needed to help her out because it kind of seemed like it was bullies pushing somebody around on a schoolyard since she was obviously out of her element in a courtroom.”

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. I have just returned from a League of Women Voters panel on Election Fraud. The panelists, Political Scientists and Lawyers, saw no real need for FOIability of voted ballots. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

******
Update: An earlier version confused Kentucky and Kansas.