Other Editorials | CTVotersCount.org

Daughters (Sons and Elders) head Jonathan Simon’s advice to his Daughter.

Jonathan Simon, via WhoWhatWhy.org Letter to My Nonvoting Daughter:

“My daughter, 28, recently wrote in an email to me, “I’m so disappointed in how the world is right now, I don’t vote because of it.”

Here is my response to her.

Dear L_____,

A lecture is coming that you’ll probably feel you could live without. Nevertheless, I persist.

Reminiscent of our past post:

THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE YOUR VOTE WON’T COUNT – IS TO NOT VOTE.

Jonathan Simon, via WhoWhatWhy.org Letter to My Nonvoting Daughter:

“My daughter, 28, recently wrote in an email to me, “I’m so disappointed in how the world is right now, I don’t vote because of it.”

Here is my response to her.

Dear L_____,

A lecture is coming that you’ll probably feel you could live without. Nevertheless, I persist.

I don’t blame you for being disappointed, or worse. But when you’re disappointed and frustrated and angry with how the world is, that’s just the time to vote!

Now that may sound strange coming from someone who you know has challenged the honesty of our electoral process for 20 years.

If you wanted to organize a mass boycott of elections (or a mass consumer boycott or general strike, for that matter), perhaps I could support that. But that takes a lot of work. Simply not voting yourself takes no work — in fact, it saves time and energy. Great!

Just recognize, though, that what you’re doing, others like you are also doing — others who are, like you, “disappointed in how the world is.” (By the way, the world has always found ways to be disappointing.) So then who is left to change it?

And yes, one vote (or two or three) seems very tiny, not at all powerful or consequential. If you don’t vote, it won’t be missed — after all, how many elections are ever won by a single vote? Virtually none. And add to that your doubts about the count to boot! You can certainly make a logical case that it’s not worth your time.

But then, do you see, it’s not worth anybody’s time! And that’s the end of democracy…”

Reminiscent of our past post:

THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE YOUR VOTE WON’T COUNT – IS TO NOT VOTE.

Elections Should be Grounded in Evidence, Not Blind Trust

Commentary in Barron’s this week Elections Should be Grounded in Evidence, Not Blind Trust <read>

Even though there is no compelling evidence the 2020 vote was rigged, U.S. elections are insufficiently equipped to counter such claims because of a flaw in American voting. The way we conduct elections does not routinely produce public evidence that outcomes are correct.

Commentary in Barron’s this week Elections Should be Grounded in Evidence, Not Blind Trust <read>

Even though there is no compelling evidence the 2020 vote was rigged, U.S. elections are insufficiently equipped to counter such claims because of a flaw in American voting. The way we conduct elections does not routinely produce public evidence that outcomes are correct.

Furthermore, despite large investments since 2016, voting technology remains vulnerable to hacking, bugs, and human error. A report by the National Academies into the 2016 election process concluded that “there is no realistic mechanism to fully secure vote casting and tabulation computer systems from cyber threats.” The existence of vulnerabilities is not evidence that any particular election outcome is wrong, but the big-picture lesson from 2020 is that ensuring an accurate result is not enough. Elections also have to be able to prove to a skeptical public that the result really was accurate.

We need evidence-based elections: processes that create strong public evidence that the reported winners really won and the reported losers really lost, despite any problems that might have occurred. Every step in election administration—from technology choices to voter eligibility checks, physical security, the canvass, and audits—should flow from that requirement…

Here’s what an evidence-based election would look like:

Voters hand-mark paper ballots to create a trustworthy, durable paper vote record. Voters who cannot hand-mark a ballot independently are provided assistive technologies, such as electronic ballot marking devices. But because these devices are subject to hacking, bugs, and software misconfiguration, the use of such ballot-marking devices should be limited.

Election officials protect the paper ballots to ensure no ballot has been added, removed, or altered. This requires stringent physical security protocols and ballot accounting, among other things.

Election officials count the votes, using technology if they choose. If the technology altered the outcome, that will (with high confidence) be corrected by the steps below.

Election officials reconcile and verify the number of ballots and the number of voters, with a complete canvass to ensure that every validly cast ballot is included in the count.

Election officials check whether the paper trail is trustworthy using a transparent “compliance audit,” reviewing chain-of-custody logs and security video, verifying voter eligibility, reconciling numbers of ballots of each style against poll book signatures and other records, and accounting for every ballot that was issued.

Election officials check the results with an audit that has a known, large probability of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes—and no chance of altering correct outcomes. The inventory of paper ballots used in the audit must be complete and the audit must inspect the original hand-marked ballots, not images or copies.

None of these steps stands alone. An unexamined set of paper ballots, no matter how trustworthy, provides no evidence. Conversely, no matter how rigorous, audits and recounts of an untrustworthy paper trail provide no evidence that the reported winners won. Auditing or recounting machine-marked ballots or hand-marked ballots that have not been kept secure can check whether the reported outcome reflects that paper trail, but cannot provide evidence that the reported winners won…

outsourcing audits, as Georgia did after the November vote, may prevent such process improvements. It is the responsibility of election officials (and not a third party) to ensure and demonstrate that the paper trail includes no more and no less than every validly cast ballot, and that the reported result is what those ballots show.

We note that, to us, ‘Outsourcing’ audits is a distinct concept from ‘Independent’ audits. Outsourcing implies turning all responsibly over to a hired vendor or entity dependent on election officials for funding. Independent auditing means assigning responsibility for the audit, or at least assessment and oversight of the audit to an entity independent of election officials.

No, its not the time for more electronics in Connecticut’s voting

An Op-Ed in the CT Mirror: It’s time to modernize the way Connecticut votes.

The main trust is that we should do more electronic automation of the election process in Connecticut such as electronic transmission of results and electronic pollbooks, and alluding to less pens and paper in voting.

Perhaps we can forgive the author for accepting at face value the claims of vendors and their customers that have sunk unnecessary millions into questionable technology. Sometimes it works well and saves time and effort, sometimes it doesn’t!

Lets start with electronic submission of results. That idea has a couple of basic flaws…

Our bottom line: Never change from Voter Marked Paper Ballots unless there is some dramatic technological breakthrough. Avoid connectivity for voting machines. Cautiously consider electronic pollbooks, with mandatory paper backup systems. Keep using our current AccuVoteOS until they really need replacing – perhaps better more economical alternatives will become available, perhaps they will comply with the new Federal standards expected soon.

An Op-Ed in the CT Mirror: It’s time to modernize the way Connecticut votes <read>We disagree.

Lets start with electronic submission of results. That idea has a couple of basic flaws.
- First its risky. No voting system should ever be connected to the Internet, have wireless connectivity, or be connected to phone lines. All that risks hacking of the voting machine itself. Experts have cautioned election officials against any such capabilities. The leading voting system vendor, ES&S has been caught lying to officials, a government agency, and the public trying to hide that they had that capability. CT helped develop and uses a data collection system where tapes of results from machines are data entered into a system not connected to our voting machines – it may seem like a lot of work to Head Moderator’s like the author. Yet overall its not that big a deal e.g. it my town it takes a few hours work by two officials, not that much in comparison to the 60 or so that work 17+ hours on election day.
- Second, many CT votes are not counted electronically. Votes on hand counted ballots and write-in votes are not counted by machines but the data must in any case be entered and reported. In other states some of this data is counted electronically by copying unscannable ballots onto other ballots for scanning – this is a labor intensive, slow, and error-prone process.
On to electronic poll books. Once again, risky, expensive and not all they are claimed to be.
- The University of Connecticut tested them and found all those offered by vendors to be lacking in security. The analysis is confidential due to (unfortunate, undemocratic) agreements with the vendors that allowed the testing.
- They are not as fast as and they are as error prone as manual lookup and voter checkoff on paper lists.
- Many tout the advantages of not having to print all that paper, yet every expert warns that a paper backup is necessary to keep voting going in the face of power outages, Internet outages, and software or hardware failures.
- Like everything connected to the Internet they are vulnerable to hacking. In 2016 there was a huge failure in an entire county in NC. There is no evidence of hacking, yet that is only because there was no credible investigation of a trail that my well have lead to Russia.
- Once again, a little time on the part of election officials doing data entry saves millions in hardware and software acquisition and maintenance – and could provide jobs to Connecticut residents.
Several years ago the Secretary of the State got bonding of $6,000,000 to buy electronic pollbooks and a scheme for wireless transmission of results. She wisely turned it back to the State.
When it comes less paper and pens, we agree with the author that our current system is secure and accurate. The alternative, pictured with the Op-Ed seems to be and electronic Ballot Marking Devise (BMD). They are risky and expensive.
- Life time costs for acquisition and programming are at least double, perhaps triple that of optically scanners and paper ballots. One of our current scanners handles the volume of ballots in all but a couple of polling places in the State. A couple handle most central count absentee ballot locations. We originally bought two per polling place, with consolidation there are a number of extras around, they can be purchased very reasonably used online. In fact, the Secretary of the State purchase a number of spares a couple of years ago.
- BMDs cost lots more because you need many more per polling place. Each must be acquired initially, maintained, programmed, and tested for each election.
- BMDs and their more risky predecessor technology, DREs, are the cause of lines and polling places. Not scanners in Connecticut and in most jurisdictions.
- BMDs are subject to hardware and power failures. To continue in spite of power failures there needs to be a sufficient supply of paper ballots in every polling place (that would presumably need to be counted by hand).
- Finally, BMDs are risky. Research shows that voters do not and cannot reliably check the paper “ballot” they produce, and have a hard time convincing officials the BMD made errors, not the voter.
We agree that our scanners are old.
- Unlike the author, the CTEletionAudit.org surveys of registrars after every election have not indicated any rise in scanner failures.
- Newer technology scanners available today are marginally better then the AccuVoteOS scanners we have now. The create ballot images and files containing Cast Vote Records, both of which support more comprehensive, less expensive audits.
- Yet, the new systems are each more expensive and slower. Many more polling places would need multiple machines to process the volumes of votes we have in Connecticut. They are just as vulnerable to hacking and thus should never be connected to the Internet, phone lines, or wireless for electronic communication of results. And still those hand counted and write-in votes need to be reported manually.
- Many more will be required for more central count absentee locations. ES&S provides high speed scanners. Two count all the absentee ballots in Rhode Island. But Rhode Island is not Connecticut. They count all there absentees centrally and also program and warehouse all their scanners centrally in one place in Providence. We count and manage everything in each of 169 towns. Those high-speed scanners are too expensive to deploy for local AB counting.

Verified Voting’s Policy on DREs and BMDs

This week Verified Voting released a Policy on DREs and BMDs. It is consistent with our views.

But it’s not enough for a voting system to “check the box” on paper – to print paper records that voters may not even notice or examine. To be trustworthy, elections need to be based on voter-marked paper ballots. Whether these ballots are marked by hand or by device, for them to be considered voter-marked, voters should know what they say!

As they say: “We have had some long and sometimes difficult conversations about these topics, and we look forward to more.”

This week Verified Voting released a Policy on DREs and BMDs <read>. It is consistent with our views <The Case Against Trusting Democracy to BMDs>

From the summary:

But it’s not enough for a voting system to “check the box” on paper – to print paper records that voters may not even notice or examine. To be trustworthy, elections need to be based on voter-marked paper ballots. Whether these ballots are marked by hand or by device, for them to be considered voter-marked, voters should know what they say!

For Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs), that means the systems, and the procedures around them, should demonstrably support voter verification. They should ensure that voters deliberately and intentionally check their printed ballots carefully enough to detect, correct, and report any errors. It also means that pollworkers should be trained to follow specific protocols if BMDs are not recording voters’ intent accurately during voting.

It is far from clear that any currently available BMD meets a high standard of voter verification in practice. Published research is scanty, but it suggests that many voters may barely look at their ballots – let alone look closely enough to notice any changes. This is a usability defect that threatens election integrity. If voters are unable to use voting systems and election procedures safely, the systems and procedures must change to protect our elections. Now is the time to revisit those procedures and adapt them to optimize the use of new technology…

Given present knowledge, we think the best approach has some basic elements:

- Select BMDs that are easiest for voters to verify. Avoid BMDs with radical flaws such as being able to add, change, or destroy votes on ballots after voters cast them.
- Allow in-person voters to choose between hand-marking ballots and using BMDs. When a polling place has one or two BMDs, a variety of voters should be encouraged to use them.
- Make sure contingency plans are in place for everything that could go wrong with BMDs, from isolated malfunctions through massive subversion. Such plans include having emergency paper ballots on hand in precincts that use BMDs for all voters.
- Systematically study best system designs and procedures to ensure that votes are verified and protected. Support continuous improvement in systems and procedures.

As they say: “We have had some long and sometimes difficult conversations about these topics, and we look forward to more.”

The constitutional case against partisan gerrymandering

The Chicago Tribune, via Verified Voting: The constitutional case against partisan gerrymandering

The case against partisan gerrymandering is not hard to make. It frustrates democracy by preventing voters from evicting those in power. It penalizes voters of one party or the other by deliberately diluting their electoral strength. It renders the consent of the governed largely moot.

The Chicago Tribune, via Verified Voting: The constitutional case against partisan gerrymandering <read>

The case against partisan gerrymandering is not hard to make. It frustrates democracy by preventing voters from evicting those in power. It penalizes voters of one party or the other by deliberately diluting their electoral strength. It renders the consent of the governed largely moot.

The System That Won’t Prove It Is Accurate

Jonathan Simon says it so well at Truthout: Between Trump and a Hard Place: The Truth About “Rigged” Elections

It should be rather obvious that the unidentified insiders charged with the programming, and anyone working through them, enjoy an even greater level of access to the counting process than do foreign hackers targeting our systems from the outside. It should be obvious that this is a colossally stupid risk for our nation to take. And it should be obvious that there is something wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee wrong when those upon whom the public relies for information refuse to seriously address and come clean about that risk…Only a public, observable counting process (i.e., hand-counted paper ballots or uniform public audits with gleaming teeth) can rebuild our shattered faith in the fidelity of our electoral process.

I chose the post title deliberately. “The System” is not computers or pollworkers, but the whole voting system created by people we have put in charge. That system could be changed moderately to provide proof of its accuracy. It is that the system of people won’t recognize and address the problem.

Jonathan Simon says it so well at Truthout: Between Trump and a Hard Place: The Truth About “Rigged” Elections <read>

The truth Trump is inadvertently pointing to is not that elections in the United States are rigged, but that our privatized, electronic vote counting system is unobservable and incapable of proving that it is not rigged. This is a true crisis for American democracy…

Lost, though, in the bipartisan condemnation of Trump and passionate renditions of America the Beautiful is an undeniable reality. Our computerized, unobservable vote counting system actually cannot prove or demonstrate that it is fraud-free. It simply cannot answer a challenge to its fidelity from Trump or anyone else, whether the challenge is justified or baseless, sincere or cynical…

It is true that our electronic voting machines are vulnerable to both hacking by outsiders and rigging by insiders. And it is not true that the experts have proclaimed our voting system “sound.” In fact, the experts — from Princeton to NYU’s Brennan Center to the US Government Accountability Office — have concluded that vote counting computers in wide use across the US can easily and undetectably be programmed to miscount votes and swing elections…

Sold on speed and convenience as our democratic priority rather than integrity, our nation has privatized, outsourced, and computerized our vote counting process. It should be rather obvious that the unidentified insiders charged with the programming, and anyone working through them, enjoy an even greater level of access to the counting process than do foreign hackers targeting our systems from the outside. It should be obvious that this is a colossally stupid risk for our nation to take. And it should be obvious that there is something wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee wrong when those upon whom the public relies for information refuse to seriously address and come clean about that risk…

Instead of chanting mantras about the security and fidelity of our elections, we need to respond to the truth that has been revealed by fast-tracking transparency reforms embodied in such proposed legislation as the Electoral Integrity Act, which now has more than 70 sponsors in Congress.

If vote counting continues to be unobservable, with the process outsourced to a few corporations, mere assurances will not be enough to restore trust in our elections. Only a public, observable counting process (i.e., hand-counted paper ballots or uniform public audits with gleaming teeth) can rebuild our shattered faith in the fidelity of our electoral process.

Digital Democracy Good – for Voting Bad Bad Bad!

Our friends across the pond are thinking of Internet Voting. Tech unsavvy elders apparently want to entice young voters. Hopefully, the young are savvy enough to understand the security risks and are too smart to trust democracy to smart phones.

Editorial in ComputerWorldUK highlighted at TheVotingNews: Digital Democracy? – Yes, Please; but Not Online Voting

Editorial in ComputerWorldUK highlighted at TheVotingNews: Digital Democracy? – Yes, Please; but Not Online Voting <read>

Enabling people to vote online would indeed draw in many young people who otherwise wouldn’t vote, and that’s hugely important. So why am I against the idea? Well, the report quotes a good encapsulation of the key issues here by the Open Rights Group:

Voting is a uniquely difficult question for computer science: the system must verify your eligibility to vote; know whether you have already voted; and allow for audits and recounts. Yet it must always preserve your anonymity and privacy. Currently, there are no practical solutions to this highly complex problem and existing systems are unacceptably flawed.

Another warning [.pdf] comes from a formidable trio of security researchers in their submission to the Digital Democracy Commission:

In our view, the adoption of online voting technology would present extremely grave challenges to the integrity of UK elections, and risk disadvantaging significant sections of the population, which would present a real danger of undermining public confidence in democracy rather than strengthening it as the Commission rightly seeks to do.

Finally, people who oppose the use of new technology for well-established activities are sometimes accused of being Luddites and of letting their ignorance stand in the way of perfectly acceptable change. In the case of e-voting, we believe that the more familiar people are with the technology, the more they understand the very substantial risks that it poses to the democratic process. It is ignorance that leads people to suppose that e-voting is risk-free and desirable; and it is technical experts such as us (and our colleagues whose carefully-argued papers we have cited) who are cautioning against embracing e-voting for the foreseeable future.

Not everything you want, is a solution to every problem

In Wednesday’s print edition of the Courant, one in a series of editorials setting an agenda for the State, Agenda Toward A More Open Government. There is much to like and agree with in the editorial: Stronger investigative subpoena for state prosecutors; closing the cash spigot for campaign finance; and strengthening the watchdog agencies.

While we are skeptical of the benefits of open primaries, their potential, and ultimately the value of “more moderate nominees”, we are particularly in disagreement with one section, Do-Over for Early Voting.

Its been said that when you only have a hammer, you see that as a cure to every problem.

In Wednesday’s print edition of the Hartford Courant, one in a series of editorials setting an agenda for the State, Agenda Toward A More Open Government,<read>. There is much to like and agree with in the editorial: Stronger investigative subpoena for state prosecutors; closing the cash spigot for campaign finance; and strengthening the watchdog agencies.

It’s a shame that voters turned down a ballot question that would have removed rigid language in the state constitution that restricts voting to just one day and the voter to one polling place. Lawmakers should put the question on the ballot again.

The measure would have permitted the General Assembly to authorize early voting, no-excuse absentee voting and voting by mail — reforms that make voting more convenient for busy people and increase turnout.

Thirty-four states have early voting, which means the polls are open longer hours or for days before Election Day. Any of these reforms would have been an antidote to the kind of official incompetence that shortened voting hours in Hartford on Nov. 4.

As we have covered in several posts before the election, <here here here here> we have several concerns with no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting. While we support in-person early voting, we doubt that the Connecticut Legislature is ready to pay for the expenses and call for the reorganization necessary to support in-person early voting.

With regards to this specific editorial, we point out that:

We do not get a link between the problems in Hartford in 2014 and an obvious cure in early voting or no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting. One view is that absentee check-off and list printing was too much work to get done in time for election day opening – increasing early voting would only add to that. Another view is that it was some combination of incompetence and arrogance that caused the problems – more early voting would not solve such problems.

Its been said that when you only have a hammer, you see that as a cure to every problem.

In the past it was argued that the problems of Hurricane Sandy would have been solved by early voting – that also is hard to understand unless voters appropriately predict a storm and voted early, while officials were able to expand early voting to cover an unanticipated volume. Or conversely the storm hit during early voting and the post-office managed to still get the votes in, while officials were able to increase capacity on election day to make up for unexpected lower early voting.

Also early voting in none of its forms increases turnout, in actually DECREASES turnout. Once again, we have covered this in several posts over the years <e.g. here>. As we pointed out last time, the Courant does not listen to computer science and security professionals when it comes to connecting our voting machines to the Internet. Here they should be listening to political scientists who show that early voting decreases turnout.

Ambitious agenda should be reasoned and well-planned

In today’s print edition of the Courant, one in a series of editorials setting an agenda for the State, Agenda 2015: Ambitious Goals For The State, one portion focuses on elections,

We diverge from the Courant in our opinion. We continue to point out that the most comprehensive system of election administration reform would be to regionalize elections, obtaining some of the same benefits obtained by regionalizing probate.

Also, Professionalization does not include ignoring science. There is a reason we do not connect our scanners to the internet to report results.

In today’s print edition of the Hartford Courant, one in a series of editorials setting an agenda for the State, Agenda 2015: Ambitious Goals For The State, one portion focuses on elections:

Elections

Isn’t it time Connecticut’s registrars came into the 21st century? Hartford was so unprepared for Election Day that President Obama had to beg voters who had given up waiting to vote to try again.

State law should be changed to let towns and cities appoint a single trained nonpartisan registrar. The current system under which two registrars (or more) are elected for each town is expensive, wasteful, inefficient. Connecticut needs to professionalize these offices or have municipal clerks take over the job. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy is right to call for reforming the state’s entire election system in 2015.

The state must professionalize voting too. Machines here could transmit results electronically, as in Massachusetts, but they aren’t allowed to. Instead, pages of results are hand-transcribed and faxed to the state the next day. What is this, 1992?

And can the legislature silence those irritating, intrusive political robocalls that invade households at election time? Though most unsolicited pitches are against the law, political robocalls are legal. Some states ban or restrict them. So should Connecticut.

We really have two basic problems with election administration. One predominantly in small towns and another in large towns. In smaller towns there is often a lack of sufficient funds and time for very part time registrars to keep up with the laws, requirements, and technology, and to have staff members to gain such experience to be possible replacements. In large towns there are sufficient funds and staff, yet in some there is a a lack of professional actions – apparently replaced by some incompetence and excuse making. Patronage and selecting candidates by party loyalty often contributes to the problem. Some of these same problems exist in mid-sized towns as well. It would be unfair and highly inaccurate to paint all registrars with this same brush. Most are of individuals of integrity, some in large towns are very competent or employ competent staff, many in small towns expend the efforts necessary despite low pay.

No system is perfect. There are states with effective county administrators, elected or appointed. Yet there are areas with incompetent and obviously unfairly partisan officials appointed, and elected.

Its hard to believe that registrars appointed by the Hartford or Bridgeport Council’s (or any towns) would reduce partisan action/pressure. It might work sometimes, and not work other times. That is no improvement. Registrars make important decisions effecting who is on the ballot, who runs polling places, and when to recanvass a suspicious result. In 2010 the Secretary of the State’s Office reached an agreement with the registrars in Bridgeport to audit every district after the election day debacle – the agreement was nixed by the Mayor and city attorneys. As for saving money, its the council’s that set the salaries for registrars and deputies today.

Moving elections to the clerks would be close to moving deck chairs on the Titanic. It would not solve the time and money problems for small towns. For large towns it would not change the risks of political pressure or in itself save money.

We do need more professionalism in election administration. Less partisan, more professional administration. That requires some form of education and certification, plus a career path so individuals can learn the job and make elections a career. That is why we recommend rationalization with appointed officials.

Also, Professionalization does not include ignoring science. There is a reason we do not connect our scanners to the internet to report results. The Professionals at Uconn agree with other computer scientists and security experts that connecting voting machines to the Internet or phone systems is unsafe. That is why we do not to it. In fact, Connecticut is much earlier than many other states in reporting election results. Where we need professionalism is in taking a bit more time to report more accurate, more complete results.

Let us act deliberatly to actually improve elections

We are amazed by the number of election integrity issues raised by this election and the flurry of suggestions for improvement, led by the Hartford Courant. Yet in all the excitement and rush to judgement and improvement, among the good intentions and good ideas, there is also a misunderstanding of the system, ideas that are not feasible, uninformed, and that would make a worse system.

In fact, its too early to rush to judgement with knee-jerk reactions, without deliberate, complete plans for reform. Yet, we have attempted to counter errors and support good directions in letters to the editor and blog comments. Here we archive some of those articles, editorials, and some of our (edited) comments.

On Sunday the Courant had an article, an investigative report, an opinion piece, and an editorial mostly focused on Hartford’s mess-up, and the allegation that our votes are reported slower than the rest of the nation. The article and the investigative report are a true service, the best of factual journalism. Not so much the editorial and opinion piece<read>

Our response was a letter to the editor of the Courant, addressing the editorial and opinion piece, withing the limits of the 200 words allowed by the Courant, now published online:

Vote Count Accuracy More Important Than Speed

I agree in part with the editorial “Where Were The Results?” [Nov. 9]. Our current system of local registrars is antiquated. We should do for elections what we have done for probate: regionalize, professionalize and economize. Yet, change should not include blind pursuit of speed over accuracy or risk tampering with elections.

Beyond tampering with results, connecting scanners or memory cards to the Internet risks that the scanners can be infected to compromise future elections. Recognized computer scientists and security experts agree. Based on UConn’s recommendations, the external ports on our voting machines are required to be sealed.

Contrary to the opinion piece by Brandon Finnigan, “Learning Who Won Takes Too Long” [Nov. 9, Opinion], some states are more organized and careful than Connecticut in reporting reasonably complete results. Los Angeles County is the nation’s largest election jurisdiction, managed by a professional election administrator, Dean Logan. California has about 50 percent its votes cast by mail. As the Los Angeles County website states, mail ballots received by Election Day and some others are counted over a 28-day period after election night.

Let’s regionalize. Let’s improve the system. And let’s lighten up on getting results, any results, without regard to their accuracy.

Luther Weeks, Glastonbury

The writer is executive director of CTVotersCount.org, an election issues advocacy site.
Copyright © 2014, Hartford Courant

What follows are some of my comments online on those articles and opinions, edited for grammar and completeness.

Two of the articles complained that results were too slow, including an “Expert” from Southern California who wrote the opinion piece. I said:

California counts absentee ballots for up to 28 days after the election. In 2008 Minnesota took at least a couple of months to determine the winner of the Frankin-Coleman race for the Senate. Connecticut would rush to complete our recanvass in eight days…

Connecticut accepts no absentee votes after 8:00pm on election night. In CA, where about half the vote is mail-in they continue counting them for days and weeks after the election. They are not required to be done for 28 days – I know that LA county, the largest jurisdiction in the U.S. goes quite a while. The only thing we count later (if we do) is the provisional ballots.

Connecticut is far from the slowest. Take Alaska’s election counting, please:

Alaska will begin counting more than 53,000 absentee and questioned ballots on Tuesday[Nov 11] in an effort to resolve the state’s unsettled contests for the Senate and for governor. Democratic Sen. Mark Begich trailed Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by about 8,100 votes after Election Night…The race for Alaska governor is actually closer than the Senate contest. Independent candidate Bill Walker, aided when the winner of the Democratic primary bowed out of the race to run as Walker’s lieutenant governor, led incumbent Republican Gov. Sean Parnell by about 3,000 votes.

So, Connecticut is “among the last in the nation to get election results”, yet days, maybe weeks ahead of Alaska, California, and Colorado:

It’s a week after Election Day and they’re still counting votes in Colorado, where some are blaming a new state law that replaced polling booths with mandatory mail-in ballots. Top-ticket races have been decided—Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper was re-elected and Republican Cory Gardner unseated Democratic Sen. Mark Udall—but the vote totals in a dozen state House and Senate races remain unknown

To the suggestion that we should connect our scanners to the Internet because Massachusettts has found no problems, I said:

Massachusetts has never had an election audit until this year. So there is no evidence of the reliability of their processes. In fact, half the states have no audit at all and there is very little to go on to know if there ever was or will be errors or fraud in those states. It could always be that paper ballots and audits actually deter fraud and reduce error. NY did find errors a couple of years ago in their audit, as we have in Connecticut. Respected computer scientists like Professor Shvartsman at Uconn agree there are risks, that is why he advised the state to seal the ports on our scanners. Finally, even though we counted all the ballots in Bridgeport in 2010, the system was never able to recognize the actual results there or to investigate the difference between voters signed in and the number of ballots there.

At CTNewsJunkie: Problems at the Polls Highlight Limitations of Locally Operated Election System <read>.

The main point was that the the new election night reporting system by the Secretary’s office will solve many of the problems – it may solve some, but certainly not all. I commented:

I hope the new reporting system works and is workable. The previous system prototyped twice required too much data entry by each moderator, many after a 17-24 hour day. An improved system will get the data earlier and more accurately, provided time is still taken to double check it in each town before entry and if the system allows the efficient entry of data by refreshed people and their entry is also double checked.

Anyone who pronounces such a system as ready for general use by moderator’s should be required to use it to enter central absentee results after a long long day.

There is much to improve in the whole system especially by regionalization. Yet, there is much that could be done in the name of speed and modernization that could make things worse rather than better.

Human nature being what it is, we tend to believe that any change we are in favor or against will or would have prevented this problem. e.g. see “911 Patriot Act”. Several commenters indicated that if we had kept lever machines or went to touch screens, we would not have all this problems counting absentee votes. I commented:

As an experienced central count absentee moderator I would like to point out a few things:
1) Our absentee procedures are no more complex than other states. Actually simpler than those that require that signatures be matched with those on file.
2) When we had lever machines, and if we changed polling place technology, we would still need paper absentee ballots.
3) The only difference with absentee ballots now is that we have scanners to help count them faster and more accurately. Much more quickly than by hand counting.
4) Absentee ballot counting can start at 10:00am, when 95+% are available. In a well organized operation, all there is to do at 8:00pm is to process a few that came in at the end of the day, print machine tapes, and complete paperwork. That should not take more than a couple of hours.
5) You can pretty well predict the number of absentee ballots based on those that are requested, so you can staff accordingly to get the job done.
Finally, there are good reasons we have voter verified paper ballots in polling places as well as for absentees- they provide a much more secure and auditable vote, over all its a much less costly technology, its less likely to cause long lines (check-in is a separate issue), and paper ballots can be used despite machine and power failures etc.

Ironically, some who complain about the results of the knee-jerk, partially helpful, Help America Vote Act, also propose knee-jerk action this time.

Bottom Line for now:

There were many problems highlighted by this election
There is a lot to fix, things that voters should not put up with
But like some hurricanes, we missed the big one – by Wed we knew who the winners were, a few voters and votes were lost, and the media had a field day complaining about their not getting results fast enough.
Deliberate action based on a bit of experience, facts, and research can lead to positive improvement. Lets do that, not forget the problems and not forget do the work.