Skulduggery and Errors | CTVotersCount.org

Missing the point on solving Bridgeport elections problems

All sorts of elections proposals to solve the Bridgeport elections problems from increasing penalties to a minimum of a year in jail to a 17 member committee under the Secretary of the State to take over elections in municipalities.

They are all missing the point. What we need is …

They are all missing the point. What we need is enforcement!

The penalties already are high enough but there all but no enforcement. As allegations rise, not just in Bridgeport, but all over the state, including campaign finance violations by candidates and other political entities the size of the staff for State Elections Enforcement Commission has slowly been eroded over the years. There are all sorts of allegations in Bridgeport. If even each violation were merely fined $5oo (let alone penalties are much higher including jail time) then several criminals would be facing fines of several thousands of dollars. Soon they and their actual and would-be associates would be completely deterred.

The SEEC has five investigators, one pulled back from retirement, with four of them full time on Bridgeport. That is not enough for timely investigations and a deterrent. There are previous cases referred to the U.S. Justice Department awaiting results for years. The chief culprit in Bridgeport is awaiting any action on allegations from 2019.

Nobody seems to be advocating for more staff for the SEEC. In comparison the Attorney General, admittedly with much more responsibility, has 200 attorneys plus investigators. Could it be that the General Assembly is reluctant to see investigations accelerated on campaign finance violations?

Meanwhile, maybe there should be some municipalities where the registrars responsibilities should be taken over by the State. Yet that will be quite a job for a 17 person committee which as about twice the size of the Secretary of the State’s elections staff. Who will fund the take overs? And what good would it do for a Bridgeport when the responsibility for absentee ballots lies mostly with the municipal clerk’s office? And even in Bridgeport the kind of fraud alleged in recent elections is mostly beyond the registrars and clerks control.

Betting on the SEEC to get to the bottom of Bridgeport AB issues

From the CTNewsJunkie: State Commission Probes Bridgeport Primary Amid Ballot Concerns

I’m betting on the SEEC to get to the bottom of Bridgeport AB issues This might be a bit of work, but straight-forward. We have long advocated against signature checking during AB counting as that is a very sophisticated process requiring experts and a lot more than one signature given years ago or electronically at the DMV. However the value of signatures on AB applications and AB envelopes is just for these cases of suspected mass insider AB fraud…

Republicans focus on eliminating drop-boxes is exactly what not to do. The drop-boxes are not the problem, they are part of the solution…

From the CTNewsJunkie: State Commission Probes Bridgeport Primary Amid Ballot Concerns <read>

The tedious job is going through the applications and envelopes probing for those that have been filled out by the same individual(s). Not looking just at signatures but first those that have been filled out by the same pens and then all the writing to see if it was done by the same person. 1st line up all the ballot envelopes by the date and time received by the Clerk, stamped as required by law. The same to the extent possible with when applications were received and the ballots logged as sent. I would start with those received on the day when the video shows an individual submitting several. Its a big job because all those ballots may not have been submitted on the same day and only by one individual. Once similar items are identified, the experts can get to work to assess and prove they were filled out by the same individual(s) and perhaps identify them.

The great thing here is the video. It is very likely the individual can be identified and charged. It is also unlikely that a single individual was involved. That one individual can be used to identify others who were likely part of a conspiracy, leading to convictions. The bigger job is showing the likelihood that enough illegal ballots were cast to have changed the result. It is also possible that a campaign did legal things to get a large AB turn-out to win an election, even if there were some illegal votes.

Republicans focus on eliminating drop-boxes is exactly what not to do. The drop-boxes are not the problem, they are part of the solution. The video’s of the drop-boxes is what is raising suspicion. For $0.66 per ballot they could be mailed in any post-office or mailbox (1000 for $666, a drop in the bucket for a Bridgeport mayoral campaign.) ABs are risky, yet at this shows it is possible to catch and punish large scale fraud (If indeed it occurred in this case.) Drop-boxes, well secured eliminates all the risks of regular mail from the mail box, through postal employees, postal contractors, and from the mail room in town hall to the Clerk’s Office, where the risks from drop-boxes are concentrated in the Clerk’s office which is only a part of the process with regular mail.

A new twist: Fraud allegations added in Stamford

Earlier this week in Federal Court a former Stamford Democratic Chair was found guilty of absentee voting fraud: Former Stamford Democratic Chief Found Guilty of 28 Felonies in Ballot Fraud Case

For those not familiar with the case, suspicions started with a single voter attempting to vote in-person being told that he has already voted absentee, followed by a State Elections Enforcement Investigation leading to a referral to Federal investigators. The Dem Chair was indicted, while a former Republican Town Clerk turned state’s evidence and was not indicted.

But there was one surprising development in the trial:

Among the documents was a complaint sent to the FBI by a city official alleging improprieties in the town clerk’s office during the 2017 municipal election. Because of that, Randolph said he was obligated to inform the witnesses that they had the right not to testify because anything they said could be used against them by the FBI in its investigation.

Seeger said he’d planned to call Loglisci and two clerks that worked under her, Diane Pesiri and Maria Stabile, in his final chance to question them near the end of the trial. But Pesiri and Stabile declined to testify, as did Willy Giraldo, who also received ballots from Loglisci. After that, Seeger did not try to bring Loglisci or other witnesses to the stand.

Now there is more information: Stamford Clerk Warns FBI of Possible Ballot Fraud in Second Election

Earlier this week in Federal Court a former Stamford Democratic Chair was found guilty of absentee voting fraud: Former Stamford Democratic Chief Found Guilty of 28 Felonies in Ballot Fraud Case <read>

For those not familiar with the case, suspicions started with a single voter attempting to vote in-person being told that he has already voted absentee, followed by a State Elections Enforcement Investigation leading to a referral to Federal investigators. The Dem Chair was indicted, while a former Republican Town Clerk turned state’s evidence and was not indicted – this story says her crimes were less, not so sure

Mallozzi chose a court trial rather than a jury trial, so it was Randolph’s job to render a verdict.

One line in the judge’s decision seems to summarize his thinking on the case.

“By the defendant’s hand alone, 26 people could have had their civil right to vote extinguished,” Randolph said, reading his verdict into the record.

According to the trial record, 26 fraudulent absentee ballots were submitted to the town clerk’s office in a “scheme” involving Mallozzi and former Republican Town Clerk Donna Loglisci. The state, however, raised instances involving 14 voters, charging Mallozzi with 14 counts each of 2nd-degree forgery and false statement in absentee balloting.

Mallozzi, 72, could be sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison, or a fine that could total $140,000, or bo

But there was one surprising development in the trial:

Among the documents was a complaint sent to the FBI by a city official alleging improprieties in the town clerk’s office during the 2017 municipal election. Because of that, Randolph said he was obligated to inform the witnesses that they had the right not to testify because anything they said could be used against them by the FBI in its investigation.

Seeger said he’d planned to call Loglisci and two clerks that worked under her, Diane Pesiri and Maria Stabile, in his final chance to question them near the end of the trial. But Pesiri and Stabile declined to testify, as did Willy Giraldo, who also received ballots from Loglisci. After that, Seeger did not try to bring Loglisci or other witnesses to the stand.

Now there is more information: Stamford Clerk Warns FBI of Possible Ballot Fraud in Second Election <read>

About a year after she was elected town clerk in 2017, Lyda Ruijter discovered an odd database in her office computer files.

It contained information “that never should have been there,” Ruijter said Thursday.

The data listed 230 Stamford residents who’d voted by absentee ballot in the 2017 municipal election, according to Ruijter. She did not understand why the names were separated from the full list of absentee voters, she said.

In any given election, there should be exactly one list of absentee voters, she said…

She continued examining the data and found something else strange, Ruijter said.

Many absentee voters on the short list did not return their ballots to the town clerk’s office. But the full list showed that those same absentee voters did return their ballots, Ruijter said.

Further examination revealed that the converse was also true, according to Ruijter – the data showed that voters on the short list who were marked as having returned their ballots were marked on the full list as not having returned them.

The upshot of the conflicting sets of data was that the total number of voters who’d returned their absentee ballots was about the same, Ruijter found…

Her opponent, Loglisci, had lost the election with 44 percent of the in-person vote, Ruijter said. But Loglisci had won 62 percent of the absentee ballot vote…

In her letter Ruijter told the FBI that, at election time, Loglisci and select staff members sometimes worked “for many hours after closing,” once prompting a union grievance that overtime was unfairly offered only to the two clerks designated to issue absentee ballots.

Insiders are a great threat to elections

It is refreshing to see that main stream media is beginning to recognize the threat of insiders to elections. I agree that election officials are by and large of high integrity, however just like other officials a few are not. Insiders can have access to a wide range of election equipment, ballots, and other data that create and verify election results. A recent Associated Press article by Christia A. Cassidy points that out:

In a handful of states, authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. At least some have expressed doubt about the 2020 presidential election, and information gleaned from the breaches has surfaced in conspiracy theories pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump.

Insiders are not just election officials, other insiders include town hall employees in the mail room and network/computer staff, janitors with access to storage areas and election offices; They include post office workers and various vendor personal with access to networks or to repair election equipment. Here are some examples from Connecticut and elsewhere:

In a handful of states, authorities are investigating whether local officials directed or aided in suspected security breaches at their own election offices. At least some have expressed doubt about the 2020 presidential election, and information gleaned from the breaches has surfaced in conspiracy theories pushed by allies of former President Donald Trump.

Adding to the concern is a wave of candidates for state and local election offices this year who parrot Trump’s false claims about his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

“Putting them in positions of authority over elections is akin to putting arsonists in charge of a fire department,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and former law school dean who serves as Michigan’s top elections official.

Here are some examples from Connecticut and elsewhere:

CO: Colorado clerk is indicted for election tampering and misconduct

CT: VotING fraud via Absentee, this time in Stamford

CT: Chain-Of-Custody Education In Haddam

CT: Sometimes it is just incompetence, insufficient laws and procedures:
Judge orders primary after Bloomfield Democrats sue their own party registrar over petition rejection

Dead Men Don’t Vote (New Podcast)

My friends at OSET (Open Source Election Technology just officially launched a new podcast yesterday: Dead Men Don’t vote. Its goal it to explain all that officials do under the covers to run our elections. The 1st episode, Do Dead People Actually Vote?, lived up to that goal. They packed a lot into 33 minutes. <link>

January 6 was practice. They are much better positioned to subvert the next election.

Bart Gellman article in the Atlantic: Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election

Its a long article, yet, unfortunately the most chilling projection yet of what is awaiting in 2024 and perhaps in 2022. I would emphasize Trump less that Gellman. It can be as bad if he is not the candidate. Its not just the presidency at stake, its all levels of democracy and our democracy itself.

Bart Gellman article in the Atlantic: Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election <read>

In 2022 much of the same playbook could be used to change a handful or less House districts, or a couple of Senate seats and suddenly the House and Senate change to the control of the Republican Party, thwarting the President’s agenda and further harming voting rights and integrity. Fine if the Republicans win one or both houses legitimately, by not illegitimately. In 2024 even more is at stake, even more erosion can be anticipated if nothing changes the current trajectory.

Its unlikely to happen in Connecticut, with our current voting laws and little chance for them to change, yet even in 2021 we have seen several baseless claims by losers (and a couple legitimate claims which will likely be appropriately investigated).

Read and understand. Consider what you might do to support appropriate laws, serve in polling places, and perhaps open some minds.

“Delay” is a dirty word

WhoWhatWhy podcasd interview with Professor Ned Foley <listen>

Ned is the leading legal expert on our presidential election system and how our country reacts to close elections.

In the second half of the interview he makes the point that counting votes after election day and waiting for certified results is a part of the process. He makes the point that the media and everyone else should avoid using the word ‘delay’ to describe results that are not complete on election night – they never are.

WhoWhatWhy podcasd interview with Professor Ned Foley <listen>

Ned is the leading legal expert on our presidential election system and how our country reacts to close elections.

237 Late Absentee Ballots in Enfield. Don’t Panic – Investigate

Hartford Courant Report: U.S. Postal Service investigating why 237 absentee ballots showed up weeks late for Aug. 11 primary in Enfield

The U.S. Postal Service and the State Elections Enforcement Commission are investigating why 237 absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 primary showed up more than two weeks late at Enfield Town Hall…

The ballots showed up in batches more than two weeks after the Aug. 11 primary and were postmarked at the Enfield post office before being delivered on the same day. An initial batch of 65 ballots were suddenly delivered to Enfield’s town hall two weeks after the election, and then 49 arrived two days later, officials said.

“They were postmarked by a stamp by a person at the post office — not by a machine that they run through 1/4 u201a” Rosenberg said. “This is obviously a stamp.”

There were no legislative primaries in Enfield this year but the late-arriving ballots may have been a factor in the GOP primary for the 2nd Congressional District that includes Enfield. In that contest, Justin Anderson defeated Thomas Gilmer by 78 votes, according to results on the secretary of the state’s website.

This obviously may have potential implications for the November election, may be a crime by postal officials or others, maybe not. Don’t panic yet. Some high level possibilities:

Hartford Courant Report: U.S. Postal Service investigating why 237 absentee ballots showed up weeks late for Aug. 11 primary in Enfield <read>

The U.S. Postal Service and the State Elections Enforcement Commission are investigating why 237 absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 primary showed up more than two weeks late at Enfield Town Hall…

The ballots showed up in batches more than two weeks after the Aug. 11 primary and were postmarked at the Enfield post office before being delivered on the same day. An initial batch of 65 ballots were suddenly delivered to Enfield’s town hall two weeks after the election, and then 49 arrived two days later, officials said.

“They were postmarked by a stamp by a person at the post office — not by a machine that they run through 1/4 u201a” Rosenberg said. “This is obviously a stamp.”

There were no legislative primaries in Enfield this year but the late-arriving ballots may have been a factor in the GOP primary for the 2nd Congressional District that includes Enfield. In that contest, Justin Anderson defeated Thomas Gilmer by 78 votes, according to results on the secretary of the state’s website.

This obviously may have potential implications for the November election, may be a crime by postal officials or others, maybe not. Don’t panic yet. Some high level possibilities:

It could be an innocent error or a series of errors that need to be prevented.
It could be a deliberate attempt at election fraud by someone or some group.
It could be a deliberate attempt to discredit mail-in voting.
AND it could have changed the result of a primary for U.S. Congress.

There is much that might be determined by the two investigations. Some questions that can likely be answered:

Who hand stamped the ballots? Why were they not run through normal processes? Where were they found? How did they come to be processed/stored together? Where might that lead?
Open the envelopes, leaving all materials together. Count the ballots. If legally submitted in time, would they have changed the result?
Are they from a single voting district? Likely mailed from a single mail box, or collected by a single mail carrier?
How many are D? How many R? Do the party affiliations closely approximate the D and R submissions for Enfield or the district(s) involved? (If a normal distribution then is less likely to have changed the result.)
Submit both the applications and inner envelopes to professional handwriting analysis. Do signatures match? Do they match those on file? Do they show that most of the ballots or applications were signed by one or a few individuals?
When were the applications submitted? E. G. were they submitted on the same day?
Contact all the voters involved. Did they submit their applications and ballots? When? Where? Did they have any help? In general, does their recall of who they voted for correspond to their ballots?

All that should give a pretty good idea if there was skulduggery or error. If skulduggery may well find the culprit and motivation.

For All Voters:

If at all possible, deposit your applications and ballots in the drop-boxes rather than the mail.
If you don’t receive your ballot by late October (Oct 20th?) call your Town Clerk or vote in-person.
Voting in-person is safer for your vote, with your ballot 2% to about 5% more likely to be counted (without fraud).
Yet in the age of COVID, voting by mail is safer for your health, choose carefully.

Chickens come home to roost for Stratford Registrar

Last year there were hearings on a close election debacle in Stratford. It looked from the hearings that the registrars and moderator messed up and tried to look good before the General Assembly. In the end the General Assembly deadlocked and apparently there were no consequences for the Registrars. (See Deadlocked Committee on Contested Elections passes ball to whole House) The House never considered or acted on the deadlocked Committee’s recommendations.

Yet now we learn that the Democratic Town Committee did not endorse the incumbent registrar. (See: CTPost Article which did not mention this past history):

The Demoratic (sic) Town Committee snubbed the party’s incumbent registrar of voters during an endorsement meeting Wednesday, lining up a possible primary in the race.

Yet now we learn that the Democratic Town Committee did not endorse the incumbent registrar. (See: CTPost Article which did not mention this past history):

The Demoratic (sic) Town Committee snubbed the party’s incumbent registrar of voters during an endorsement meeting Wednesday, lining up a possible primary in the race.

Three-time incumbent Rick Marcone, himself a former chair of the Democratic Town Committee, was not even nominated during Wednesday’s meeting…

Marcone said Thursday he was gathering signatures for a primary which would coincide with the presidential primary scheduled for Aug. 11.

Marcone said he wasn’t surprised by Wednesday’s vote.

“I had somebody lined up to endorse me but then they backed out,” he said. “I saw the writing on the wall.”

“I’m going to be moving forward with primary petitions and we’ll see what happens from there,” Marcone said.

The loser of a primary for the race could also petition for a spot on the ballot in November. The town charter says that the two top vote-getters from different parties are elected as registrars.

Kim Zetter investigates NC pollbook for Russian hack — And additional FL incidents!

From Politico: How Close Did Russia Really Come to Hacking the 2016 Election?

Why does what happened to a small Florida company and a few electronic poll books in a single North Carolina county matter to the integrity of the national election? The story of Election Day in Durham—and what we still don’t know about it—is a window into the complex, and often fragile, infrastructure that governs American voting…

The fact that so many significant questions about VR Systems remain unanswered three years after the 2016 election undermines the government’s assertions that it’s committed to providing election officials with all of the timely information they need to secure their systems in 2020. It also raises concerns that the public may never really know what occurred in 2016.

From Politico: How Close Did Russia Really Come to Hacking the 2016 Election? <read>

Why does what happened to a small Florida company and a few electronic poll books in a single North Carolina county matter to the integrity of the national election? The story of Election Day in Durham—and what we still don’t know about it—is a window into the complex, and often fragile, infrastructure that governs American voting…The infrastructures around voting itself—from the voter registration databases and electronic poll books that serve as gatekeepers for determining who gets to cast a ballot to the back-end county systems that tally and communicate election results—are provided by a patchwork of firms selling proprietary systems, many of them small private companies like VR Systems. But there are no federal laws, and in most cases no state laws either, requiring these companies to be transparent or publicly accountable about their security measures or to report when they’ve been breached. They’re not even required to conduct a forensic investigation when they’ve experienced anomalies that suggest they might have been breached or targeted in an attack.

And yet a successful hack of any of these companies—even a small firm—could have far-flung implications.

But VR Systems doesn’t just make poll book software. It also makes voter-registration software, which, in addition to processing and managing new and existing voter records, helps direct voters to their proper precinct and do other tasks. And it hosts websites for counties to post their election results. VR Systems software is so instrumental to elections in some counties that a former Florida election official said that 90 percent of what his staff did on a daily basis to manage voters and voter data was done through VR Systems software…

The company’s expansive reach into so many aspects of election administration and into so many states—and its use of remote access to gain entry into customer computers for troubleshooting—raises a number of troubling questions about the potential for damage if the Russians (or any other hackers) got into VR Systems’ network The company’s expansive reach into so many aspects of election administration and into so many states—and its use of remote access to gain entry into customer computers for troubleshooting—raises a number of troubling questions about the potential for damage if the Russians (or any other hackers) got into VR Systems’ network —either in 2016, or at any other time. Could they, for example, alter the company’s poll book software to cause the devices to malfunction and create long delays at the polls? Or tamper with the voter records downloaded to poll books to make it difficult for voters to cast ballots—by erroneously indicating, for example, that a voter had already cast a ballot, as voters in Durham experienced? Could they change results posted to county websites to cause the media to miscall election outcomes and create confusion? Cybersecurity experts say yes. In the case of the latter scenario, Russian hackers proved their ability to do precisely this in Ukraine’s results system in 2014.

Apparently NC is not the only suspicious incident related to VR Systems, and perfect for one Russian M.O.:

An incident in Florida in 2016 shows what this kind of Election Day confusion might look like in the U.S. During the Florida state primary in August 2016—just six days after the Russians targeted VR Systems in their phishing operation—the results webpage VR Systems hosted for Broward County, a Democratic stronghold, began displaying election results a half hour before the polls closed, in violation of state law. This triggered a cascade of problems that prevented several other Florida counties from displaying their results in a timely manner once the election ended…

If an attacker is inside VR Systems’ network or otherwise obtains the VPN credentials for a VR Systems employee, he can potentially remotely connect to customer systems just as if he were a VR Systems employee. When it comes to Russian hacking, this threat is not theoretical: It is precisely how Russian state hackers tunneled into Ukrainian electric distribution plants in 2015 to cause a power outage to more than 200,000 customers in the middle of winter.

VR systems was likely successfully hacked:

The Mueller report goes a step further. It says that not only did Russian hackers send phishing emails in August 2016 to employees of “a voting technology company that developed software used by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls,” but the hackers succeeded in installing malware on the unidentified company’s network. The Mueller investigators write: “We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled the GRU [Russia’s military intelligence service] to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government.”… Since the Mueller report was published earlier this year, it has been confirmed that two Florida counties were hacked by the Russians after receiving phishing emails…

It is possible that the reports from Mueller and the NSA are wrong, and that their authors—with no firsthand knowledge of events and with limited details about what occurred—mistakenly concluded that the phishing campaign against VR Systems was successful…

The fact that so many significant questions about VR Systems remain unanswered three years after the 2016 election undermines the government’s assertions that it’s committed to providing election officials with all of the timely information they need to secure their systems in 2020. It also raises concerns that the public may never really know what occurred in 2016.

Its a long article, well worth reading. There are many details supporting and going beyond what we have highlighted here.

*****Update from Kim Zetter 1/02/2020 Election probe finds security flaws in key North Carolina county but no signs of Russian hacking <read>

“Absence of evidence shouldn’t be mistaken for evidence of absence,” said Susan Greenhalgh, vice president of policy and programs for National Election Defense Coalition. “I would hope the lesson learned here is that we need to be vigilant about irregularities from their onset … and promptly initiate investigations to rule out malicious cyber events.”