2015 | CTVotersCount.org

Testimony – Do for Elections What We Have Done for Probate

How often is there a bill with everyone testifying for it? Not often!

Monday I testified to the Government Administration and Elections Committee on S.B. 1083 that would empower a task force to study regionalization of election administration.

Monday I testified to the Government Administration and Elections Committee (GAE) on S.B. 1083 that would empower a task force to study regionalization of election administration. From my testimony: <read>

In evaluating various organization structures it is customary to look at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

The strengths of our current system are:

Its low cost compared to other states, as shown by Matt Waggner on S.B. 1051 last week, and

resistance to fraud or error in statewide elections, based on a decentralized, adversarial system (Yet, not in local elections, where the current system has weaknesses which pose risks.)

Its weaknesses, several of which have been obvious of late are,

its lack of professional training and. in some cases, action,

an inability to attract, grow, and compensate skilled professionals, and

the inability of the system to solve and correct problems

To elaborate on that last point. The Citizen Audit conducted an unofficial recount of Bridgeport in 2010 – we found that votes were not counted and that ballots counted and voters checked-in varied significantly in both directions.

The current system never investigated, or corrected those specific problems, nor developed effective means of preventing or recovering from such problems. Cases-in-point,

towns continue to run out of ballots, and

Hartford’s recent discrepancies in absentee ballots, accompanied by official reports of more votes counted than ballots, that I believe, have not been investigated, and officially corrected.

The current system has limitations that, in my opinion, cannot be overcome with municipal election management. Regionalization offers opportunities not possible under the limitations of the current system, including:

Regions with multiple full time jobs with specialized expertise, with opportunities for individuals to gain experience to be effective professionals. As articulated by Mr. Waggner last week — when it comes to elections there is a lot for a single person to know and to manage.

The opportunity for shared expertise and resources can provide more voter service, with regional “vote centers” safely supporting early voting and election-day convenience.

How often is there a bill with everyone testifying for it? Not often!

I was joined by the Registrars Of Voters Association Connecticut (ROVAC), the Town Clerks Association, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, the League of Women Voters, and Fairfield Registrar, Matt Waggner. Here is the written testimony posted by the GAE <read>

ROVAC had one concern, that Jan 2016 was too soon to start the reorganization before a Presidential Election. I agreed for “radically different reasons” ending my testimony cautioning against a quick fix:

Rome was not built in a day. No matter what change is appropriate, it will require several years to evaluate, plan, and execute a significant transformation, while we continue to support elections along the way. I suspect 1-2 years for the task force and Legislature to choose a direction, 1-2 years for a small agency of appropriate professionals empowered to plan the transition in detail, and likely 2 years to perform the transition. Probate reorganization, a similar, yet simpler, transformation, I believe took at least four years

Lottery better pay-off than witch hunt

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.

Iowa spent a lot of time, money and rhetoric on a witch hunt for illegal immigrant voting. As summarized by VerifiedVoting <read>

Former Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s two-year, $250,000 witch hunt ended ignobly Friday. Schultz’s successor, Republican Paul Pate, dropped his office’s Iowa Supreme Court appeal of a lower court ruling that held Schultz overstepped his authority in a crackdown on immigrant voters. Schultz had broad-based GOP support as a candidate condemning what he suggested was widespread voter fraud, particularly by documented immigrants who were not citizens. Schultz’s exhaustive investigation compared voter registration lists with federal and state immigration lists, including the federal database used to verify entitlement benefits. So instead of targeting the behavior based on evidence of unlawful voting, Schultz went hunting for voters he suspected might be immigrants.

The Iowa ACLU and League of Latin American Citizens filed suit, claiming the targeted enforcement was discriminatory and beyond Schultz’s authority. Schultz lost his first round in court and appealed. On Friday, his successor withdrew the challenge.

So how effective was Schultz’s obsession?

His own report disclosed evidence suggesting 117 illegally cast votes. Considering that 1.6 million Iowans voted in 2012 general election, Schultz’s success rate was no better than .0073 percent. The investigation led to six criminal convictions, or .00037 percent. Lottery players would seem to have better luck.

I guess you could say there is votER fraud, yet it does not hold a candle to votING fraud via absentee voting or insider manipulation. 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.

CORRECTED: Testimony On Five Bills

Monday I testified to the Government Administration and Elections Committee on five elections bills. For one bill and against four others.

Most of the testimony was on the Secretary of the State’s bill, S.B. 1051, that would turn elections over to a single registrar in each town under the direction of an official appointed by the town council or similar body. Like the registrars, I testified against that bill. Unlike the registrars, I only favor a couple of the many details in the bill, while they support many of them.

Most of my testimony was on S.B. 1041 which I drafted and was endorsed by the Citizen Audit. It would greatly strengthen the post-election audits, while reducing costs by about 40%. I am pleaed that ROVAC (Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut) endorsed the bill, except for two clauses.(*)

My testimony, which also points to the text of each bill:

https://ctvoterscount.org/CTVCdata/15/03/SB1041ElectronicAudit20150309.pdf
https://ctvoterscount.org/CTVCdata/15/03/SB1042ElectronicAudit20150309.pdf
https://ctvoterscount.org/CTVCdata/15/03/SB1051SingleRegistrar20150309.pdf
https://ctvoterscount.org/CTVCdata/15/03/HB6904SingleRegistrar20150309.pdf
https://ctvoterscount.org/CTVCdata/15/03/HB6950ElectronicAuditCrossEndorsed20150309.pdf

There is also a recording of the nine-hour hearing at CT-N: <video>
I would suggest:
5:50 My Testimony and Matt Waggner the 2nd person after me.
0:00 The Secretary of the State’s Testimony

(*) An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that ROVAC subsequently changed its position in later testimony. (The problem of listening too quickly when bills are numbered 1041 and 1051). We regret the error.

Testimony on another flawed bill

Last week there was a public hearing for another well-intended yet risky bill. This bill would allow absentee voting for any person who was absent for any amount of time from their town on election day. We are sympathetic to those who are gone most of the day and cannot be sure if they will get back from work in time.

Absentee voting is most prevalent cause of detected voting fraud in Connecticut and across the country.We offered a compromise of allowing an absentee ballot to anyone gone from 7:00am to 6:00pm. That should give them time to vote in the morning or in the evening, even if they are a bit late returning to town.

Our testimony <here> All testimony <here> (The 0fficial web page does not have the corrected version of our testimony – a member of the Committee pointed out one of the links was broken – I corrected and emailed the testimony, but it did not get posted)

Courant Editorial: Cheap Way To Boost Turnout

Today the Hartford Courant printed an editorial citing the Citizen Audit’s latest report: Cheap Way To Boost Turnout

The headline was different from the online version posted earlier:

Good Election Info On Town Websites Can Boost Turnout

March 2, 2015

It’s simple: Just providing voters with election information is key to improving voter turnout, according to a volunteer election watchdog group that has recently released a study of municipal websites.

The group, the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit, found many of this state’s 169 municipal websites surprisingly lacking in basic information — like “what’s on the ballot?” and “where do I vote?” —- that one would think would be posted before an election. (1)

Putting such information online and keeping it current ought to be a top priority in towns.

Such basic information can, as the Citizen Audit believes, drive up voter turnout. And it wouldn’t cost very much.

Every municipality won’t match Cornwall, which, with 74.77 percent turnout in the last general election, was the small-town winner of the secretary of the state’s Democracy Cup. But every city and town should make it a goal.

The audit’s study suggests that for many municipalities it’ll be a stretch.

The study of municipal websites, finished last year just before the November election, found that only 28 percent of them said what was on the ballot. Only 56 percent provided the date of the next election. Only 64 percent told people where to vote. Only 15 percent posted results of the 2013 municipal election.

Many websites didn’t tell people they can register to vote online. Many had broken links and outdated information.

That’s not much of an incentive to vote.

See the full report at CTElectionAudit.org.

(1) Corrected. One extra line included inadvertently in earlier version of post 3/4/2015

SOTS Plan: Real problems, yet no solution

One Wednesday, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill held a press conference to introduce her solutions to the recent problems with elections caused by registrars in several towns. The problems are real. These solutions will do little to help, and might actually might make things worse. Its not worth the effort and the risks. As we have said many times, the solution is to “Do for elections what we have done for probate: Regionalize, Professionalize, Economize”.

The details will be in the actual legislation, but from the press release and press conference we can assume:

Towns will have the option of appointing a single registrar, rather than the current two elected registrars. The changes are not mandatory and would require a charter revision in each town for them to apply.
We are not sure what the Secretary means by non-partisan. In any case, the change is likely, in many towns, especially those that have had problems, to result in a partisan appointment by a partisan town council. The effect might be to further politicize the town clerk position as well.
Certification of registrars is a good idea. Not sure that it can be mandated for an elected registrar, yet a good program would provide needed education and where certified individuals are available it could be a positive factor in the selection of elected or appointed registrars. Yet it depends – depends on the content and the rigor of certification. I am a certified moderator. I can attest that the certification program is useful, yet has its problems. Revised a couple of years ago, the online portion of the training was useful, drawn out, and too simplistic – yet the online tests had errors, expecting incorrect answers.
Mandatory yearly training is also a good idea. Yet there is currently yearly non-mandatory training available, attended by the majority of registrars. Our understanding from those that regularly attend is that the training from the Secretary’s Office is all but useless.
“As a municipal employee the Registrar would have all the support staff necessary, and would be required to follow all state and federal election laws, as well as election directives issued by the Secretary of the State”. We see no reason moving the job to the town clerk would, in itself, force towns to fully staff the function. Clearly registrars today are required to follow all election laws. Of course, if the long sought change to the law to require officials to follow SOTS directives were passed than that would be the case.
“

The problems are real. We need more professional election administration. In our opinion these solutions do not go far enough.

They would change from two opposing officials, to a single individual in each town – making it easier for a single individual to manipulate or even rig the system toward the party in power, or toward their chosen path.
There would still be a need for multiple competent individuals in each town, especially in case sickness, death, or family emergency occurred to the single chief election official.
The problem of registrars with insufficient resources, insufficient hours to do a good job, keep up with technology, and attract qualified individuals would largely remain, especially in small towns.
The SOTS said: “Other New England states leave election administration to the local municipal clerk, or through local bipartisan boards of election who hire professional staff to manage day-to-day operations.” We say, “No system is perfect.” For instance here is how well the system works up north in East Longmeadow: <read>

This “solution” will do little to help, and might actually might make things worse. Its not worth the effort and the risks. As we have said many times, the solution is to “Do for elections what we have done for probate: Regionalize, Professionalize, Economize“.

As might be expected, there has been quite a bit of push back from registrars. Here are some of the recent press reports, quoting some of the critics.:

<CTMirror, including some of my comments>
<CTNewsJunkie>
<Newtown Bee>
<Bristol Press Editorial>
<WAMC>

Aaron Swartz, me, you, and our money.

Aaron Swartz “killed by our Government.” ? Fittingly his life, torture, and death available for all in an outstanding, free documentary. What does this have to do with you and me? Why is it fitting that the documentary is free? Read on.

Some who believe that our Government is always right or don’t know the full Aaron Swartz story, simply see it as:

“He was a criminal, so he deserves what he got.”

True, he was a criminal like Daniel Ellsberg or Martin Luther King. What he did was more like King than Ellsberg, a virtual protest against a certain type of copyright, yet he was facing 35 years in prison. Actually he was yet to be convicted, committed suicide. Our Government did the prosecution. Was it fair or was it overkill?

There is more. The enormous loss is ours. A powerful life cut short, enormous potential lost. As he said “I want to make the World a better place.”. You be the judge of his actions, and history will judge how far the changes and his influence will last. (Yet, today as we celebrate net neutrality, we can see that we might not be here without Aaron’s efforts.)

What Was The Crime?

Was it at the level of terrorism? Or more like blocking traffic in protesting a business he disagreed with, trespassing at a Government facility, or speaking out at a Congressional hearing?

Aaron was protesting at the time of his arrest against a certain kind of copyright, legally demonstrating a certain type of theft, yet protesting a theft from us, of the rewards of our investment. All of us.

He violated some rules at MIT, broke into the network and downloaded a trove of files – making illegal copies of a large database of research papers, largely paid for by our Government and foundations. Some would say our property. The crime he was protesting was private libraries that charge for public access to those publications. Make huge sums, yet neither the creators of the information or their sponsors (largely us) reap the rewards. Watch the film. It is a very good film, yet it has a sad ending.

Me and You

As the documentary points out, we all lose when information we paid for is not available for our use. Cures for cancer? Food safety? Information needed by our legislature.

This all came home to me yesterday. I was testifying against a bill to the legislature. My testimony was basically a cut-and-paste of past testimony – presenting past arguments to the current legislature the same concerns with a law proposed this year, similar to previously proposed laws. As usual my testimony was based on documented facts.

One of the legislators pointed out one of my links to an academic paper was broken. It was a link to a paper by researchers at the University of Wisconsin partially underwritten by PEW, formerly for several years, available for free at PEW. No longer. It is now behind a “pay wall” at one of those libraries. Just the type of paper and wall Aaron was protesting. I was able to point the legislators to a) A summary of the paper, b) An abstract, and c) The pay wall where anyone could purchase a copy. Unfortunately,

These proved there was such an article, gave the general drift of the article, yet failed to cover critical statistic in my testimony; failed to describe in extensive detail why many earlier studies were flawed and the care taken by these researchers to provide a more complete analysis.
Left anyone wanting more; wanting to verify my claims with only the option of paying the fee.
I could have accessed a .pdf for that same fee, but posting it for the legislature to see would risk the same crime and potential prosecution.
And what about that person or legislature in another state doing research on similar laws, they may never find this critical information, that they helped underwrite?
So we all lose the value of the research we paid for.

Watch the film and see what we also lost with the loss of Aaron Swartz.

Citizen Audit Study Shows Low-Cost Way to Improve Turnout

Review of 169 municipal election websites shows election
information lacking, yet easily remedied

From the press release:

February 25, 2015. The Connecticut Citizen Election Audit released a study evaluating election information provided to voters in all 169 municipalities across Connecticut. Information was collected by volunteer evaluators in the days just prior to the 2014 November election.

Citizen Audit spokesperson Luther Weeks stated, “Many towns do not provide the information most sought by voters across Connecticut, such as ‘What is on the ballot’ or ‘Where do I vote?’. Many also failed to inform citizens of online registration, which could have saved citizens time and municipal expenses.”

Municipal website findings include:

Only 28% answered, “What is on the ballot?”.

Only 56% provided the “Date of the next election”.

Only 64% answered “Where do I vote?”

Only 15% posted results for their 2013 municipal election.

Many with broken links and obviously outdated information

Many with up-to-date event calendars and front page bulletins, listing current events, and Ebola preparations, that did not list election-day.

Review of 169 municipal election websites shows election
information lacking, yet easily remedied

From the press release:

February 25, 2015. The Connecticut Citizen Election Audit released a study evaluating election information provided to voters in all 169 municipalities across Connecticut. Information was collected by volunteer evaluators in the days just prior to the 2014 November election.

Citizen Audit spokesperson Luther Weeks stated, “Many towns do not provide the information most sought by voters across Connecticut, such as ‘What is on the ballot’ or ‘Where do I vote?’. Many also failed to inform citizens of online registration, which could have saved citizens time and municipal expenses.”

Municipal website findings include:

Only 28% answered, “What is on the ballot?”.

Only 56% provided the “Date of the next election”.

Only 64% answered “Where do I vote?”

Only 15% posted results for their 2013 municipal election.

Many with broken links and obviously outdated information

Many with up-to-date event calendars and front page bulletins, listing current events, and Ebola preparations, that did not list election-day.

Testimony on two well-intended, yet (hopefully) fatally flawed bills

A week ago Friday, I testified against two well-intended, flawed bills that hopefully will not go forward. One illustrates a terribly written bill that may have some underlying merit, yet leaves the public with no opportunity to understand the merits, the risks, and propose reasonable solutions. The other intended to save work for registrars of voters, would not save much work at the expense of the voters and pollworkers.

My prepared remarks:

Chairs and members of the Committee, my name is Luther Weeks. I am Executive Director of CTVotersCount, a webmaster, and a Certified Moderator.

I have three objections to S.B. 27 as drafted.

First, as written the bill is way too broad, likely unconstitutional, and would shut down the Internet as we know it.

Second, Public access to voter lists is an important check – that only qualified individuals are registered and that people that did not vote, are in fact listed as not voting.

Finally, without knowing what might be proposed in a workable, detailed bill, it is difficult to provide testimony to the Committee that would articulate the benefits of keeping some information off the web vs. the risks to democracy of suppressing that information.

The public should have another opportunity to comment on a more fully formed bill.

I oppose S.B. 601. It is intended to reduce work for officials in counting and accounting for multiple votes for cross-endorsed candidates. However, the bill would do little to reduce work for officials and have unintended, negative consequences, especially for voters.

The first thing to note is that our current optical scanners likely cannot meet the certification requirements of this bill. If the certification requirements are interpreted to de-certify our scanners, then until they are replaced, the only legal method for voting in Connecticut would be paper ballots and hand counting.

In any case, S.B. 601 fails to do what the title implies, “eliminate overvoting for a candidate”. It would require a more error prone process than we have today.

It would result in a less positive voting experience for voters and for poll workers as voters are told they have “done something wrong” and need to vote again.

Time savings, if any, would be minimal and offset by increased time explaining the problem to voters, replacing their ballots and added hand counting of more ballots.

This change will be unnecessary, with electronic election night reporting, all calculations would then be handled automatically, relieving moderators of the allocation task.

Several times in the past I have testified against similar bills, pointing out similar concerns.
I encourage you to drop this bill as your predecessors have so wisely done.

Thank you.

You can see my full testimony at <S.B. 27> and <S.B. 601>. All the testimony at <S.B. 27> <S.B. 601>

For S.B. 27 it is interesting to note than nobody in favor of the bill appeared in person to explain what the bill was intended to prevent. A few days later, we can deduce the motivation from some of the testimony submitted, <here>. Unfortunately, the bill is way overkill for the problem. Perhaps there is a middle ground, yet the public needs access to voter lists including, name, address, age (if not birthdate), party and voting history. Why should such information only be made available electronically to political parties and candidates, while leaving it only on paper in town hall for voters to check that only eligible citizens are registered and that individuals listed as voting actually did so. Perhaps sites could be prohibited from posting the list, while the towns or the state required to publish it – in any case, it should already be a crime to use the list other than its intent. It seems that the Senate sponsor was not interested enough in the bill to come or event write testimony in favor of it, nor was anyone who proposed the bill. Hopefully the bill will not move forward, and perhaps someone will write a more reasonable bill, open to more responsive testimony.

Bills similar to S.B. 601 have been proposed in the past. They actually are designed by the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC) to save themselves a small amount of work, imposed by the Legislature. As you can see from my testimony the scheme would save little work, cause voters work, causes voters disenfranchisement, more work for pollworkers, and may even outlaw our current voting machines. In any case there are simpler, better solutions, suggested by me and others who testified. Notice that some registrars testified for the bill, others against, while everyone else, including the municipal clerks association testified against it.

So you want to connect voting machines to the Internet?

60 Minutes Shows Threats to Autos and Voting Machines are Real

Among the other reform calls in Connecticut are those to “do anything to get results faster on election night – any results”. One proposal is to connect our voting machines directly to the Internet to collect results. There is a reason our voting machines are not connected to the Internet. UConn and other researchers have long pointed out the risks <October 2007 article>

60 Minutes Shows Threats to Autos and Voting Machines are Real

We need a system that does not rely on trusting the Government or the abilities of officials and pollworkers. Sometimes the risks sound crazy and too theoretical and unlikely. For several years it has been known that many vehicles can be taken over via the Internet – but not really understood at a gut level. Last week 60 Minutes demonstrated the risks to Lesley Stahl so she will never forget, and perhaps by watching her we will also understand: DARPA: Nobody’s safe on the Internet <video at 6:45 > Or watch the entire video to understand that the Defense Department is regularly attacked and how they can attack the appliances in and around your house.

If the Defense Department can’t protect itself, if auto companies can’t protect us, why would we think the State of Connecticut could protect us? Or local registrars of voters in our 169 towns?

In fact, Arthur House, Chair of our utility control agency is concerned that utilities and the State together cannot protect our power infrastructure. <here>

Yet its even worse. Not only can’t the Defense Department protect itself, the Federal Government actually makes it harder for private enterprise to protect us – in the name of “national security” they make us more vulnerable, while they also make “security theater” claims of increasing security, NYTimes: Obama Heads to Security Talks Amid Tensions <read>

President Obama will meet here on Friday with the nation’s top technologists on a host of cybersecurity issues and the threats posed by increasingly sophisticated hackers. But nowhere on the agenda is the real issue for the chief executives and tech company officials who will gather on the Stanford campus: the deepening estrangement between Silicon Valley and the government…

Now, the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent companies from greatly strengthening encryption in commercial products like Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones has set off a new battle, as the companies resist government efforts to make sure police and intelligence agencies can crack the systems…

“What has struck me is the enormous degree of hostility between Silicon Valley and the government,” said Herb Lin, who spent 20 years working on cyberissues at the National
Academy of Sciences before moving to Stanford several months ago. “The relationship has been poisoned, and it’s not going to recover anytime soon.”…

The F.B.I., the intelligence agencies and David Cameron, the British prime minister, have all tried to stop Google, Apple and other companies from using encryption technology that the firms themselves cannot break into – meaning they cannot turn over emails or pictures, even if served with a court order. The firms have vociferously opposed government requests for such information as an intrusion on the privacy of their customers and a risk to their businesses.

Meanwhile in the wake of the theft of health records from Anthem, Connecticut legislators are demanding encryption for health insurers <read> We wonder if they will ask the U.S. Government to stop compromising encryption. Others are asking who is benefiting from the Anthem attack? <read>