By Luther Weeks on February 22, 2019
Citizens Audit Report:
We Must Do Better:
Independent Observation and Analysis of Connecticut’s 2018 Post Election Audit
From the Press Release:
Post-election vote audits of the November 2018 elections failed to meet basic audit standards. Audit should provide voters with justified confidence in elections. Instead, these audits reduce our confidence in election officials, concludes the non-partisan Connecticut Citizen Election Audit. Five percent of the State’s election districts were randomly chosen to be audited, as required by state law.
Among the Citizen Audit’s concerns:
- The audits were not conducted and reported as required by law. The Secretary of the State’s Office continues to fail to take responsibility for that failure by local officials.
- 39% of official audit reports submitted by town registrars were incomplete.
- Human error was still considered an acceptable explanation of differences between machine and manual counts. This defeats the purpose of the audits.
- Weaknesses in ballot chain-of-custody and security procedures.
- Continued use of flawed electronic audit procedures that are not publicly verifiable.
The Citizen Audit was pleased with the following developments:
- Fewer instances of write-in ballots not properly stored in separate envelopes.
- Fewer instances of write-in ballots read into scanners multiple times on election night.
- Electronic Audit equipment had few if any problems reading creased, folded, or mutilated ballots.
“We are frustrated with so little improvement after 20 statewide audits over 11 years,” Luther Weeks, Executive Director of the Citizen Audit said. “Citizens deserve better. If the Secretary of the State’s Office acts to fix these problems and pursues publicly verifiable electronic audits, progress can be achieved in the near term.”
<Press Release .pdf> <Full Report pdf> <Detail data/municipal reports>
Posted in CT, Post-Election Audits
By Luther Weeks on February 16, 2019
On Friday the GAE Committee held testimony on a raft if bills. This is just the first hearing, and first wave this year.
There is a risky trend in the last couple of years that bills are sketchy drafts at hearing stage. So there is no detailed text to comment on and correct details and improve. This means that advocates on all sides have little chance to help the General Assembly avoid errors. So, I find myself testifying more about potential improvements at a high level, while trying to anticipate important details to advise on. And I find others providing short general testimony in favor or against rather than detailed suggestions or critiques.
The bills, and links to my testimony:
Posted in Legislature 2019
By Luther Weeks on February 9, 2019
Do you need a public blockchain? The answer is almost certainly no. A blockchain probably doesn’t solve the security problems you think it solves. The security problems it solves are probably not the ones you have. …A false trust in blockchain can itself be a security risk. The inefficiencies, especially in scaling, are probably not worth it. I have looked at many blockchain applications, and all of them could achieve the same security properties without using a blockchain—of course, then they wouldn’t have the cool name.
Posted in Blockchain, Legislature 2019, National
By Luther Weeks on February 5, 2019
Yesterday, the Connecticut House Committee on Contested Elections concluded its work on the contested election in Stratford. They provided two options to the House: Leave the certified winner in office or hold a re-vote. You can read more at CTMirror: House committee deadlocks on disputed Stratford election The CTMirror article includes the final report.
The crux of the issue is that after a recanvass the certified winner was ahead by 13 votes. 75 voters were given the wrong ballot, without that race. The votes counted in the pooling place district favored the loser, in fact if the 75 had voted as the rest of the district, on average the loser would have picked up 12.55 votes, thus on average, all but even odds for each candidate. The crux of the disagreement is around the issue of if that evidence brought the uncertainty of the election in question enough to justify a re-vote.
Posted in CT Law, Legislature 2019
By Luther Weeks on February 1, 2019
When Connecticut passed public financing of elections a major part of the justification was a history of campaign finance scandals. Avoiding expanded mail-in voting can be justified by the similar pattern of AB abuse. We do favor a form of early voting for Connecticut we call in-person absentee voting – in-person at the municipal clerk’s office, where officials can be expected to easily detect a single person attempting to vote 14 times under different names!
Posted in Legislature 2019, Mail/Absentee Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on January 26, 2019
Not exactly person of the year or prisoner of the month, I did have my picture in Time Magazine! The occasion was the Rhode Island Risk Limiting Audit (RLA) where I participated last week.
Rhode Island wants to make sure their elections are protected from all sorts of problems, after a programming error in 2017 almost caused an incorrect result to be certified. The article contains some very good summaries of what what we and the Rhode Island Board of Elections were up to.
“Democracy and elections are only as good as whether people trust them or not,” [Secretary of State Nellie] Gorbea said. “Confidence in our democracy is critical to every other public policy issue.”…
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National, Post-Election Audits
By Luther Weeks on January 25, 2019
The Committee on Contested Elections had its 1st day of testimony yesterday. Two registrars, a moderator, and a deputy registrar and then a bombshell.
The registrars spent lots of time in their testimony explaining how they emphasized in training that eight of the ten polling places had two districts and that every pack of ballots should be checked by the ballot clerks that it was in the right district. The Moderator emphasized that he trained all the ballot clerks in the morning before the polling place opened. They also highlighted that they are two of the ten trainers for the state, responsible for delivering Moderator Certification classes.
Starratt said he had never been in a polling place before that day, presumably never even voting? He was recruited two days before and had no pre-election training. That is a clear violation of state law which requires that every polling place official receive such training before every election. Even late recruits are often brought in for an hour or two of one-on-one training to fulfill that requirement.
Posted in CT, CT Law
By Luther Weeks on January 20, 2019
On Friday the Committee on Contested Elections met to determine who they would hear on the election contested. The election was decided by some 16 votes while some 76 voters were given the wrong ballot and thus were disenfranchised in the election. I was there. Listening to the Committee members and their lack of knowledge of election administration was painful/disappointing for me:
- They did not seem to know how many moderators there are in a polling place, and if one of them was the head moderator. (Generally there is one moderator and if the town has more than one polling place, as Stratford does, there is one head moderator in headquarters that is responsible of the election and the results.)…
Posted in CT Law, Legislature 2019
By Luther Weeks on January 11, 2019
[The vendors] control the code in devices they sell. That means that technology we buy for one purpose can be reprogrammed without our consent or even our knowledge.
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National
By Luther Weeks on January 3, 2019
WhoWhatWhy: Will Georgia Double Down on Non-Transparent, Vulnerable Election Machines?
Georgia’s newly elected secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger (R), hopes to replace them not with hand-marked paper ballots and scanners (as virtually all independent cybersecurity election experts recommend), but rather with touchscreen ballot-marking devices,..In addition to security concerns, all touchscreen systems tend to cause long lines…The ExpressVote system also would cost taxpayers more than three times as much as hand-marked paper ballots and scanners:? an estimated $100 million as opposed to $30 million.
A system only greedy vendors and fraudsters would love.
******Update: Verified Voting Statement to Georgia
Posted in Costs, Electronic Vulnerability, National
