Testimony on Early Voting and Absentee Voting Bills

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

That if Absentee Ballots are made FOIable (I thought they were), we should post them to the Internet to save citizens from filing FOI requests and officials from processing them.
That my surveys show that our voting machines are NOT failing at an increased rate, and that this might be the worst time in history to replace them. (Because newer VVSG 2.0 machines will be available soon, making anything we buy today obsoleted soon as well.
Emphasizing that if they General Assembly had listened to me in 2013 then we could have avoided many of the problems, some that still remain with Election Day Registration – and that many of the same issues can occur with Early Voting and Same Day Registration, if they ignore similar suggestions in today’s testimony

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 5 – Choices and Disappointments

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places…
Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days…
Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting…

Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience…

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places

By this we mean, in general, following the request of the ACLU and the provisions of the For the People Act. Perhaps ten days or twenty-five. Likely requiring voting on at least two weekends including the Saturday and Sunday before Election Day. Open in the mornings and evening hours, at least during the week. Uniformity across the State. An early voting place similar to a polling place, i.e. checkin, ballot clerks, machine tenders and scanners – giving the voters who make overvotes the opportunity to spoil a ballot and vote another. Similar to what we see in other states, including CA, CO, GA, etc.

Disappointments:

Registrars and other election officials. In a small town with one polling place today. It will change the number of pollworker days from perhaps 8-10 to about 100! Finding citizens willing to work that many 16 to 17 hour days will be a challenge. Staffing, presumably, with inexperienced pollworkers will add to the challenges. Further it will be more difficult to find voting locations, especially during the week, that are not already used for other things and that have sufficient parking. It will greatly increase the stress and work for registrars as they do the normal work preparing for Election Day – especially tight preparing pollbooks between that last Sunday and Election Day. We expect many will join those that resigned in 2022. As an experienced pollworker, I doubt I could serve more than one or two 16 hour days in addition to Election Day.

Not much different in mid-size towns like mine, with six polling places and central count absentee, about 70 Election Day officials, this would add perhaps another 140 early voting polling place staffing days. That is plenty of novice officials, plenty of work for registrars, and stress. Including problems finding appropriate venues. Even for large cities it will be significant, perhaps doubling staffing.

The Public. Presumably many will want to try out early voting the first day that seems convenient and the last. So, there will likely be lines as we see in every election in Georgia. The public has been promised no more lines in Connecticut – yet there are none today, except for big problems like missing pollbooks, or at Election Day Registration. In fact, every option we discuss may have that same problem. It is especially likely for any option that opens early or closes late. Especially on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Perhaps we should start slowly and if early voting is popular, work up to Option 1. More on that in the next two options, and in our final comment.

Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days

This is a compromise between satisfying the public’s expectations for polling place like voting places, but with fewer and shorter days for officials.

Four days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, and Wednesday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. This would provide the possibility of election officials to do multiple days – a single Moderator (or with an Assistant) might be able to cover all these days and tabulate to votes on election night. Registrars would have more time to prepare pollbooks and otherwise for Election Day. Voters would have an opportunity to vote at any convenient time, weekend, early morning, after work, and at lunch time.

Six days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Monday and Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, Wednesday and Thursday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. A bit more work, but more opportunities for voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting more days and will still see lines.

Election Officials. Who may be somewhat relieved but still face quite a bit of work and other challenges.

Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting

This would be voting very similar to the absentee voting that occurs today when one goes into a municipal clerk’s office, makes an application, votes, and hands in their absentee ballot. Except that any registered voter could do it. Clerks would need to be open on at least one weekend and in many cases open more hours than today, perhaps hiring one or two additional staff.

It would be more and less work for registrars and pollworkers. More checking-off of pollbooks between the end of early voting and election day. Today that happens on Friday and Monday before Election Day. As long as early voting ended before Friday, the only change would be more staffing for absentee checking and counting, with a somewhat smaller polling place staff on Election Day.

Some have suggested going to the registrars’ office and voting via machine for many hours of availability, yet that is really a variation on option 1, perhaps for small towns. It would still require Democrat and Republican Registrars or Deputies be present to correct registration errors, perhaps a checker, ballot clerk and definitely a machine tender all visible to each other and voters – not an option when you expect a volume of voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting that polling place like voting experience, the opportunity to be protected from overvoting, and the opportunity for correcting erroneously not being on the voters registration list – presumably that would require a call to the registrars office, visiting the registrars office when it was open, or requiring the registrars office to be open all the hours of early voting.

Once again, long lines are possible, especially if early morning or evening opportunities are limited and if on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Finally, A Concern – The Experiences of California and Colorado

Many say the ideal for Connecticut should be California and Colorado. I would not emulate everything they do. They have ten or more days of early voting in vote centers, people can vote where they live or where they work, they have absentee voting, in fact they now send ballots to every voter to mail-in or drop off. Pretty close to the final draft of the For the People Act. They did not arrive there overnight. It has been perhaps 20-30 years in the making in each state.

Contrary to what the ACLU and Brennan Center would have us believe, we should not be trying to emulate the likes of Georgia, Florida and many other southern states that have the “Highest Early In Person Voting Rates” (see the map on page 3 of Brennan Center report, and the exclusion of California and Colorado from much of their report.) Those states have high in-person early voting apparently because they try to suppress absentee voting and do not provide enough polling places and voting machines on election day.

On the other hand, California and Colorado both seem to have the same experience. Until recently, the voters have chosen to use 70% main-in voting, 20% Election Day voting, and just 10% early voting. The latest trends in both states are closer to 90% mail-in voting.

As we have said, early in-person voting is expensive. If we are trending our policies toward California and Colorado, especially if we pass the 2024 constitutional amendment for no-excuse absentee voting in Connecticut. Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 3 – New Voting Machines

This is the third in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 2 – Implementing Change> See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover New Voting Machines – Why, How, and When we should implement new voting systems.

Why New Voting Machines

The simple answer is for two reasons..

Stay tuned, we plan at least one more post before we get to the choices for implementing in-person Early Voting.

This is the third in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 2 – Implementing Change> See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover New Voting Machines – Why, How, and When we should implement new voting systems.

Why New Voting Machines

The simple answer is for two reasons:

First, Connecticut’s voting machines are ageing, aging both in technology and physically. For the most part they were acquired in 2007, two machines for each polling location and for central count absentee locations. A couple of years ago SOTS Denise Merrill acquired a stash of extras to have on hand to replace any that were beyond repair – they are also available for a song, used. A recent article articulates the view of many registrars, mostly through the eyes of a novice registrar. Her views contrast in several ways to ours: CT’s voting machines are ‘past their useful life’ and in need of replacing <read>. Let us annotate some of the statements in that article.

On Election Day this year, there were reports from several towns of malfunctioning tabulators.

That has been true for every election and primary since 2007. As far as we know, there are no official or unofficial statistics for the rate of failure and the causes, except those of CTElectionAudit.org which has random sample reports going back to 2007. (I am also Executive Director of the Citizen Audit.)

Here is a brief history of AccuVoteOS scanner problems in Connecticut:

Shortly after the scanners were deployed there were extensive problems with the memory cards used on each machine to hold the program and totals for each ballot for each machine. The state wisely had ordered two machines for each polling place, along with four memory cards. Most errors were found as each machine and all four memory cards were tested before the election, others immediately on election day, quickly replaced by the backup scanner or one of the extra cards. Several years later the State purchased a compatible more modern memory card. Since that purchase there have been very very few hardware problems with memory cards – there have been problems with incorrect programming or incompatible ballot printing, once again, usually discovered in pre-election testing.

According to the CTElectionAudit reports about 4-5 years ago there were growing problems with scanners failing, mostly due to wearing out of rollers which grab and move ballots through the scanners. The root cause was poor routine maintenance by the distributor, LHS Associates. LHS Associates is contracted by the State to program the memory cards and to perform scanner maintenance. Soon the problem went away and the CTElectionAudit statistics for roller and scanner problems went back to normal.

Preliminary CTElectionAudit results from the November 2022 election show that scanner roller problems remain at the normal level, with no significant additional scanner problems reported.

In Norwalk, for example, the sole tabulator at Brookside Elementary School was broken for about a half an hour, Democratic Registrar of Voters Stuart Wells said that day.

That is interesting, experienced registrar Stuart Wells and his staff were able to fix the scanner in half an hour. That is about what it takes to fire up a backup scanner or replace a memory card with a backup. A more interesting question is why that polling location did not have a backup scanner at the ready, since the State purchased more than enough to provide two to each polling place? And the number of polling places keeps shrinking with each redistricting. (I once worked for the Dean of Connecticut Registrars, the late Judy Boudreau. She made us fire up two scanners before the polls opened, such that a failing scanner could be replaced by the ready and waiting backup. Sounds like a good plan to me if registrars are concerned – the cost is an extra ballot box to hold the waiting backup scanner.)

Cara Gately, the Republican registrar in Darien, said “every town had some impact.”

During the primary in August, a rubber roller that pulls the paper ballot into the tabulator started to melt in the summer heat, Gately said, a problem she said people have called “melting tabulators.”

Those things are rubber and so in the heat in August they started to get gummy,” she said. “The texture changed, and there was residue on the ballot, which then gums things up and then they just stopped working.”

Every town is a large exaggeration! That was August. Many towns had problems like that. Many did not. The cause was simple, heat above the stated temperature maximum for operation of the scanners. Apparently, the failing machines were well maintained in time for November. I expect they cooked many pollworkers as well. Polling places should be air-conditioned and heated, machine specifications should be followed!

In order to fix broken tabulators, parts must be cannibalized from old ones from nearby states that have already replaced theirs.

We are not sure exactly which states those are. According to the Verified Voting Verifier they are still in use in about six states including New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

This is Gately’s first year as a registrar of voters, but she was told that “the current tabulators that the state has was the year that model got decommissioned.”

Not sure what that means or who was the authority that told Gately that. The AccuVoteOS is no longer manufactured due to no demand, however, it still meets the 2002 Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG). Those standards are still in effect for purchasing new voting machines today. However, they will be superseded by a recent major upgrade effective November 2023 to VVSG 2.0 standards. More on that later.

[SOTS Chief of Staff] Rosenberg said the process has begun to replace them, but that “it has to be done in a transparent way.”

“We’ll take requests for proposals and take a lot of public input,” he said.

We are hopeful that it will be transparent with a lot of public input!

[Gately] said she hopes that the tabulators will be replaced before the 2024 presidential election, or shortly thereafter. One year, she said, is doable, but five years “would make me nervous.

We will address timing later in this post.

Secondly, the second half of 2023 will be an ideal time to begin evaluating new scanners. That is because in 2020 the Election Assistance Commission approved VVSG 2.0 the first update to the 2002 VVSG standards which are in effect today. However, those will be effective in November 2023. That means that after that no one can purchase new jurisdiction wide machines that do not meet the new standards (Old machines may be purchased to add to existing machines in use.) So, during the second half of 2023 the three vendors will likely all be submitting machines to testing and then offering machines that meet the 2.0 standards.

We have been arguing for years that newer and better machines will become available and that Connecticut should, if possible, wait for then to purchase products that will be new rather than old out of the box. Now it is clearer when that will be possible.

How to Update Voting Machines

As we said in Part 1: In 2005 the SOTS Office initiated evaluation of voting systems for Connecticut with UConn testing, followed by public demonstrations of machines in four locations around the State, also with focus groups of registrars, those with disabilities, and technologists providing feedback on the machines. In late 2005 machines were selected. Then in November 2006 those machines were used in 25 municipalities in the even-year State election. Procedures were developed in 2006, refined in 2007 followed by registrar, pollworker, and public education, then implemented statewide in the September 2007 municipal primary. Still various problems, concerns, and complaints were found in the November 2007 elections.

That is the kind of process we favor. Note machines were evaluated starting as early as 2004, with the evaluation taking most of 2005. Then a few were used in November 2006 after some planning. Even more planning, procedure creation, training, and voter education occurred in 2007. Pretty much three full years.

There is probably less need for voter education this time as we are already use paper ballots. Perhaps a little less planning and official training, yet from the standpoint of officials the machines will be different, plans and training must cover new and changed features. On the other hand, there may be more need for thorough evaluation, testing, and research, since last time Connecticut was a little late to the game and many other states had already evaluated, purchased, and deployed systems meeting the 2002 standard. We might be one of a few acquiring them out of the gate this time.

We do have some inside information from other states regarding the current systems available from the three vendors, presumably the 2023 machines will have some of the same advantages and concerns. The machines are significantly slower, dependent on the length of ballots, ballot sides to be voted on, and on the number of bubbles on each side. That is partially because, unlike our current scanners, they make an image of each ballot side and then interpret that image, creating a Cast Vote Record (CVR) of the votes on each ballot. Otherwise, that is a benefit facilitating certain kinds of audits and recounts, along with making Ranked Choice Voting feasible. Yet, for those benefits we will need an extra one or two scanners in many polling places. For instance, in my town, Glastonbury, we have six polling places where in a tight presidential election we can expect 3,500 to 4,000 voters. It’s doubtful one scanner can handle that. However, perhaps firing up and using two, and having a backup delivered if one of them fails would be sufficient. Some towns, like Greenwich have huge ballots for municipal Representative Town Meeting elections, may need more machines to handle those elections.

Beyond that some central count absentee ballot locations may benefit from high-speed scanners. They are expensive and may not be necessary if enough regular speed scanners are purchased.

Finally, we are aware of one brand where the rejection of over voted ballots may not work as our current scanners work – in a much less acceptable way. That needs to be evaluated and perhaps a fix negotiated with the vendor(s). Maybe there will be other issues uncovered. The sooner they are uncovered the better. We do not want to find them in an election after a huge long-term purchase!

Perhaps obviously, the State needs to pay for the acquisition, maintenance, procedure development, and training for the new machines as they did last time.

A couple of years ago, SOTS Denise Merrill estimated $20 Million for new machines. I estimated $12 Million. We could both be right, just estimating different things such as including long term maintenance. On the other hand, I had available information that exposed the actual selling price of the equipment available then, much lower than the list prices.

When to Implement New Machines

As we discussed in Part 2, change should be limited to one big thing at a time, if possible, done in part first, and avoiding a big change in even year elections.

Last time it took about three years from the beginning of the evaluation to the final implementation. Maybe two years or so will be enough this time. Since machines to test may not be available until mid-2023 it seems the natural time to implement new machines would be the 2025 municipal elections – starting with the September 2025 municipal primaries, giving a short time to tweak things for a full roll-out in November 2025.

Changing a machine will also likely require changes in how the machines are programmed. Right now, our Election Night Reporting System is completely separate from the voting machines. If that stays the same, then there will be less change at once!

What about 2024 or 2023? Both are too soon for a thoughtful evaluation, procedure development, and training. In 2023 VVSG 2.0 machines may not even be available to evaluate until after the election. Also 2024 is the worst possible time since it is a presidential election, and also likely to have the first running of in-person Early Voting.

Stay tuned, we plan at least one more post before we get to the choices for implementing in-person Early Voting.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 1 – Expectations

Having passed the Early Voting Constitutional Amendments in November, everyone expects the General Assembly will pass implementing legislation in 2023 and give some time for officials to implement it, i.e. the Secretary of the State’s Office to detail procedures and registrars to implement them.

We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.

Voters

We can only speculate what voters expect, certainly they are not a homogeneous group. They have read and seen in the news that Connecticut is one of only four states that do not support some form of early voting (in-person early voting and/or no-excuse mail-in voting). They likely understand that this amendment only authorizes in-person early voting…

We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.

This is the first in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 2 – Implementing Change>

Voters

From the news leading up to the November vote they may have learned that early voting will eliminate lines at polling places in Connecticut and significantly increase turn-out. (As we will discuss in a later installment, they will likely be disappointed on both counts).

They may be thinking that once Connecticut also passes the no-excuse mail-in voting Constitutional Amendment in 2026, that shortly after we will be just like California and Colorado which have both forms of early voting and mail ballots to each voter before an election so they can just send them in. All we can say is mostly, but not so fast.

They may also be thinking of Georgia which has many days of early voting yet with notorious long lines during early voting. How can that be if early voting is supposed to eliminate lines? Stay tuned.

How many days and hours of early voting do they expect, its likely undefined and all over the lot. They probably expect to vote on weekends, before work, lunch time, or in the early evening. Some may expect early voting at their usual polling place, while that is done rarely or at all in other states.

Like others they expect early voting will be very similar to voting on election day. Checking in, getting a ballot, submitting it to a voting machine. A chance to get registration issues resolved, spoiling a ballot and getting another one if necessary, etc.

Like the Good Government Groups most voters expect that early voting will start soon, likely nobody will expect to wait beyond the 2024 presidential election.

Good Government Groups

Many may expect something along the lines of a recent article which highlights the ACLU’s expectations (and those of the Secretary of the State and others.) How Long Should Connecticut Voters Get For Early Voting? <read>

Others may be expecting early voting along the lines of the latest version of H.R.1, S.1, and The For the People Act that was not passed by the last congress. That bill specified a minimum of 15 contiguous days of early voting, all at least 10 hours a day and the same hours each day of early voting.

That bill also specified counting of votes to begin by 14 days before the election, the same voting experience as a polling place on election day, and that votes could not be totaled until the polls closed on election day. It said that early voting was not necessary with sufficient no-excuse mail-in voting.

Election Officials

Election officials are under a lot of pressure in Connecticut. Some of the frivolous and redundant Freedom of Information requests seen in other states, public suspicion, and increasing work requirements, coupled with budgets controlled by each municipal government which my not be sympathetic to the workload, especially in small towns. Over 40% of registrars quit between November 2021 and July 2022 with others not running for re-election in November 2022. Many are tired and perhaps one-half low on experience, with few willing to take a job with low pay and many demands.

Registrars look at early voting requirements as significant. They are correct. A small town may have eight officials at one polling place on election day for a total of 17 hours. 15 days of early voting would require 120 pollworker days for officials, opening for 10 hours of voting would mean 12 hour days for officials. Few would be willing to work more than one or two days like that for each election. Even in my town with 6 polling places with about 70 election day pollworkers, including absentee counting, adding 120 pollworker days would be quite a challenge.

It is a lot more than recruiting and training all the novice pollworkers. It is also supporting them from the registrars’ offices during early voting, while most of those offices are already on overtime (paid or not) doing everything to prepare for election day. Early voting would add greatly to those demands. It includes finding an early voting location(s) that could be dedicated for all those days with enough parking. Most towns close and use schools for election day, they cannot close them for even a few additional days – they could be used on weekends but not during the week.

With budget problems the registrars (and municipalities) expect reimbursement from the State. Depending on many variables it could cost $1,500 to $2,500 per day per location for early voting plus a few thousand overhead to plan for it initially. Four days of early voting could total about $1,500,000 for each election and primary. 14 days might total over $3,500,000. In presidential years, including primaries over $10,500,000.

Election Integrity Advocates

Actually, we only have a few requirements that hopefully will not be too costly and paid for by the State. A one-time charge for additional memory cards and beefed up security under $500,000.

Like the For the People Act, we would like to see early voting be like voting on election day; requiring that votes will not be totaled until after the polls close on election day, i.e. similar to absentee ballot counting, early voting moderators would supervise the hand counting of a few ballots and write-ins late in the day on election day and then after 8:00pm close early voting machines and print the tapes. This should not be a surprise as today absentee ballots cannot be totaled until 8:00pm. The reason is to avoid the leaking of results that can cause voters, candidates, and parties to try to increase the vote knowing they are close to losing or on the other hand to simply give up.

The early voting ballots must be subject to post-election audit. Either each early voting district must be added to the drawing or each day of early voting must be added to the drawing. Subjecting each day to an audit will require ballots and machine counts be segregated by day (a good idea in any case), add more batches to be audited, yet reduce the number of ballots that need to be counted.

In addition, Connecticut needs new and enhanced security of voted ballots, voting machines, and memory cards between when early voting starts and the end of election day. Right now, in most municipalities, we have insufficient security, with ballots held in storage where multiple single individuals can gain access to voted ballots and machines undetected for hours. (Those ballot bags and plastic boxes and tabulators with seals are a good idea, yet insufficient to protect ballots or machines.) At minimum each day’s ballots and machines should be held in very secure storage with at least two padlocks with separate keys for each registrar and their deputy. Better still that plus secured by the municipal clerk allowing and recording all access by both registrars to the ballots and machines. Similar to a recent Secretary of the State’s directive to Fairfield: Access To Voting Tabulators In Fairfield Required State Intervention <read>

Summary

Not everyone will have their expectations met. Perhaps most will be partially or mostly disappointed.

We will have lots more to say in subsequent posts. We will suggest the tough choices before the General Assembly, discuss some of the arguments we have heard, and finally some recommendations. We will also address at some point the other changes expected in the next few years, such as new voting machines, mail-in voting, and electronic pollbooks and why we cannot expect do everything at once, successfully.

For several reasons we will recommend starting cautiously. Today, we have just scratched the surface.

Ranked-Choice Voting, Ned Lamont, and Connecticut

Last week, in return for an endorsement, Ned Lamont endorsed Ranked-Choice Voting Minor party endorses Lamont after a pledge for election reform

Monte Frank got one thing right that we have not seen recognized by anyone before:…

As I said in my testimony summary:

I am open to the benefits of IRV. Yet, I have several reservations about the use of IRV in Connecticut and other states. I support a comprehensive study of all IRV, RCV, and related options along with the challenges of implementing them in Connecticut.

I remain skeptical of all the touted benefits and if Connecticut voters are ready for the associated complexity, costs, and delays. For more see my testimony.

Last week, in return for an endorsement, Ned Lamont endorsed Ranked-Choice Voting Minor party endorses Lamont after a pledge for election reform <read>

Monte Frank got one thing right that we have not seen recognized by anyone before:

If reelected, Lamont pledged to propose legislation next year that would authorize ranked-choice voting for federal races and give municipalities the option in local elections.

A state constitutional amendment would be required to allow ranked-choice voting in elections for state offices, Frank said.

We have said it over and over, ranked-choice voting would require significant changes in the Election Calendar to support the extra days and weeks required to perform the initial counting and the recanvassing of ranked-choices, days to perform multiple runoff counts and then more days to recanvass critical rounds of reunoffs.(Some runoff rounds that are close, based on the outcome, change the eventual winner.)

For state elections our constitution severely limits all such counting to seven days after election day. There are also changes necessary such as changing the dates that some local office holders take office based on this extra needed time.

The article gets one thing wrong, when it says:

Ranked-choice voting is considered an instant runoff.

Ranked-choice voting is considered an instant runoff.

Ranked-Choice voting describes how the voters vote, choosing 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. While Instant Runoff is just one of several ways of counting ranked-choice votes. As I have pointed out in my testimony that is one of several errors in recent proposed bills.

As I said in my testimony summary:

I am open to the benefits of IRV. Yet, I have several reservations about the use of IRV in Connecticut and other states. I support a comprehensive study of all IRV, RCV, and related options along with the challenges of implementing them in Connecticut.

I remain skeptical of all the touted benefits and if Connecticut voters are ready for the associated complexity, costs, and delays. For more see that testimony <here>

A flawed new version of Risk Limiting Audit bill moves forward in the General Assembly

Last month I wrote about S.B.472 for Risk Limiting Audits, despite all but unanimous testimony that the bill was highly flawed, a flawed substitute was passed shortly thereafter by the General Administration and Elections Committee. Last week that revised bill became available on the web, allowing public scrutiny. There is a Word version and a .pdf version, the .pdf version has a fiscal note and an Office of Legislative (OLR) analysis.

It is revised from the original with some improvements, yet remains ambiguous and confusing, although now it may be closer to an actual Risk Limiting Audit. I question if the person(s) who wrote this updated bill had or took advantage of review by anyone familiar with the science of Risk Limiting Audits. Considering the fiscal note and the OLR Analysis, it seems to me that the description in some cases reads things into the bill that do not seem to be reflected in the bill. In particular, it assumes costs and roles for UConn that are not clear in the bill. Costs and roles that would be consistent with the prototype last year, but not obvious in the bill that would become law.

There are some welcome changes:

This version delays a full RLA until 2024 rather than 2022. This will allow time for planning, especially important since we will have a new Secretary of the State (SOTS) in January 2023. This also provides time for future revisions to the law prior to Nov 2024.
This version makes a complete new section for RLAs from the existing and continuing 5% audit which still applies to all primaries and odd-year elections. This makes the bill easier to read and perhaps contributes to its improvements, clarity and perhaps facilitating clarity in future improvements. Yet it copies text that is appropriate to the existing audits but not for RLAs.
It seems to have better, if imperfect, definitions of RLAs, closer torecognized standard definitions.
It arguably requires that manifest creation be open to the public.

Yet, in my reading, there remain new and old problems:

It continues the lack of specific notice requirements. In every very case where something is open to the public, there should a clear notice requirement specifying how far in advance each event should be notices (e.g. 48 hours) and where the notice will appear (e.g. a specific place on the SOTS Web.)
Like the original it has no requirements for close public observation, software independence, and public access to information critical to verifying the audit. It should clearly require standard, recognized statistical evidence, the review of samples of actual paper ballots, and public access to algorithms and data necessary to independently verify the results of the audit.
It continues the ambiguous requirements that UConn report on the audit, send the report to the SOTS and the SOTS file it with the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). The weakness is that the current law and this bill provide no deadline for such filing. Many reports of audits since 2008 have yet to be published by UConn, published by the SOTS, or filed with the SEEC. Also in practice these are not independent reports. The UConn Voter Center is dependent on the SOTS for its budget and in practice draft reports are reviewed by the SOTS Office and revised by UConn before they are accepted.
It continues the ambiguous language that candidates can use evidence from the audit to challenge an election in court until seven days after the audit is complete, yet provides no definition of completion of the audit. It would seem that an audit is not complete until a report is filled and published by the SEEC. If so, given history, candidates could challenge an election for years after. See Sec. 4 Section 9-323 (page 11) and Sec. 5. Section 9-324 (page 13) and Sec. 6. Section 9-328 (page 15) or Sec. 7. Subsection (a) of section 9-29a (page 16).
It requires that presidential electors, all statewide offices including one U.S. Senator, a randomly chosen Congressional race, and 5% of General Assembly offices be audited in even years. Precluding audits of any other offices in even years, such as Judge of Probate and Registrar of voters from any audit.
It continues the current flaw in the law that exempts questions from audit. I wonder if anyone would have any concerns if the Early Voting or No-Excuse Absentee Voting questions were to pass or fail by small margins? Would those be concerns be magnified realizing they were exempt from the audit?
Recanvassed races (CT’s hand and machine recounts) are included in the RLAs. General Assembly races that have been recanvassed are automatically included in the 5% that are subject to RLA. I wonder if they realize that such races, since they are close, will often end in a complete hand recount? If the intent is to hand-recount all such races, why not do the hand recount instead of the recanvass?
The timing of ballot manifest creation seems to be part of the process of the initial close of the polls on election night and is specified as open to the public – an improvement over the original bill. However, other laws allow counting to be interrupted and completed within 48 hours, without any public notice requirements for the date, time and location of where counting will resume.
While the non-binding Fiscal Note and OLR Analysis added below the bill seems to indicate that UConn will be part of conducting the audit, the bill mirrors the requirements of the existing 5% audit, where the SOTS creates the procedures for the RLA, the Registrars conduct the RLA submitting results to UConn, who submits a report to the SOTS.
- It is hard to imagine the Registrars (two independent D and R election officials in each of 169 towns) coordinating a state wide RLA, including escalation, and results without some body coordinating the state wide calculations, decision making, and declaring the final result.
- It seems the Registrars determine if the audit meets the risk limit or not and then based on that the SOTS shall order a manual recount. See Section 1 (e).

Perhaps some of these concerns can be cured/overridden by procedures issued by the SOTS. See Section 1 (d). However one should question if the SOTS can write binding procedures, opinions, or declarations which contradict the text of state law.

Why doesn’t anyone know what a voting machine costs?

We recently hosted a discussion on the Price of Voting Machines. Now an article in Politico gives the background story.

Politico: One Man’s Quest to Break Open the Secretive World of American Voting Machines

It began to dawn on Caulfield, slowly at first, that the amount the public didn’t know about these companies was vast. Quarterly profits, regional market share, R&D budgets, even the number of employees—often, there was simply nothing. “Basic, basic data—the basic layout of the industry—was just not out there,” Caulfield recalls. “Eventually, we realized that it didn’t exist.”…

Caulfield’s work points toward something more radical than perhaps even its author intended: a new reason to question the marriage of election administration and private industry. “What kinds of machines would we make if we declared this a public good, and had it produced in public laboratories?” Bollinger asked …

We recently hosted a discussion on the Price of Voting Machines. Now an article in Politico gives the background story.

Politico: One Man’s Quest to Break Open the Secretive World of American Voting Machines <read>

It began to dawn on Caulfield, slowly at first, that the amount the public didn’t know about these companies was vast. Quarterly profits, regional market share, R&D budgets, even the number of employees—often, there was simply nothing. “Basic, basic data—the basic layout of the industry—was just not out there,” Caulfield recalls. “Eventually, we realized that it didn’t exist.”…

But by far, Caulfield’s most significant discovery was to put a figure on the total size of the industry. He estimated the entire revenue footprint of all the companies in the United States was $350 million. That meant the entire elections industry in the world’s richest democracy was about the peak size of the R&D department of the camera company GoPro. The private voting sector wasn’t like a secretive and well-heeled defense contractor. It was more like the manufacturers of arcade machines or jukeboxes, grasping for market share with a product they could sell at best once a decade.

Mark Lindeman, a longtime voting expert who leads Verified Voting, explained the difficulty this poses for election clerks whenever they attempt to buy a new fleet of voting machines. “Election officials have no way of knowing what a fair market price could possibly be,” Lindeman said. He compared it to a recent experience he had buying his car, a Chevy Volt. At the dealership, “My wife and I got run in circles, while we waited for the dealer to give a price that was sensible,” he said. “How did we know it was sensible? Well, we went to the Consumer Reports website and got an idea of what a fair market value would be.” He added, “Election officials have no way to do that.”…

In the data, Caulfield discovered clerks who were buying the same voting machines from the same company, but seeing significantly different discounts than their peers—sometimes in the same state. In California, Mono County and Placer County both purchased orders of Dominion equipment, including the ImageCast Evolution, a voting machine priced at $7,200. But Mono received a 5 percent discount off of its bottom-line order, while Placer, 128 miles away, saw a mark-off of nearly 25 percent. Volume didn’t necessarily matter, either: Dodge County, Wis. purchased the same ES&S machines that Polk County, Fla. did. Even though Polk County bought substantially more machines and equipment, Dodge got a discount seven times larger than Polk’s—a mismatch Caulfield spotted in other states, including Texas and Virginia…

A business model in which repair and maintenance costs are the most stable source of revenue might not, to put it delicately, create optimal incentives for designing hassle-free technology. In fact, as Caulfield and Coopersmith suggested, it might not be financially wise to regularly roll out new models at all…

Caulfield’s work points toward something more radical than perhaps even its author intended: a new reason to question the marriage of election administration and private industry. “What kinds of machines would we make if we declared this a public good, and had it produced in public laboratories?” Bollinger asked when I called him this spring, just before Caulfield’s report went public. He drew an analogy to the life sciences and human biology, sectors where the U.S. government has made hundreds of billions of dollars in public research investment. “We have public funding for all kinds of development of things. But we leave this—.” Bollinger cut himself off and laughed. “We leave this essential object and thing, which is so critical, to the free market?”…

Study: The Price of Voting (Machines) – Valuable, Timely, and Facinating

Last week, I moderated a discussion featuring the authors of The Price of Voting, a study of what jurisdictions actually pay for voting machines.

The study is a great contribution to jurisdictions, including states like Connecticut, that are considering evaluating voting machines.

Five quick conclusions that I find relevant to Connecticut:

If you are not getting about a 20% discount, you are paying too much…

Last week, I moderated a discussion featuring the authors of The Price of Voting, a study of what jurisdictions actually pay for voting machines.

Five quick conclusions that I find relevant to Connecticut:

If you are not getting about a 20% discount, you are paying too much.
Most voting machines cost about the same, so you might be able to pick the most suited if all bids are actually competitive.
Connecticut should plan on about $12,000,000 for the initial purchase and about 10% of that per year for maintenance.
There are also costs beyond the initial purchase and subsequent maintenance.
Plus Connecticut may spend an additional $5,000,000 for initial purchase of a machines intended for those with disabilities, and perhaps $3,000,000 for initial purchases of ePollbooks.

Valuable, timely, and fascinating.

It seems that most jurisdiction pay about 20% off. What about those that paid more, far more? Did officials get too enamored of one solution? Did vendor sales staff get too close to the officials making the decisions? Were too many officials former vendor employees?

Beyond equipment maintenance the ongoing costs are: payments to vendors for expensive proprietary ballot paper based on claims that other papers will not do; ballot printing; ballot programming; and other services provided by the vendor(s) in managing the election which are outsourced from officials.

State Audit Working Group comments on H.R.1

This week the State Audit Working Group published a letter sent to Rep Sarbanes regarding the collective concerns with the bill.

Here are the details from the cover letter to Rep Sarbanes:

We write to request critical changes to H.R.1, along with suggested improvements. Without a few key changes, we believe the bill might degrade election integrity and miss opportunities for improvement, rather than meet its well-intended, laudable goals. Our comments are restricted to election administration and integrity issues pp78-407 of the bill.

Attached to this letter is a list of detailed comments. Here we summarize the most critical items:

Requirements for grants should be stronger, to help ensure effective Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs)…

This week the State Audit Working Group published a letter sent to Rep Sarbanes regarding the collective concerns with the bill <read>

Here are the details from the cover letter to Rep Sarbanes:

We write to request critical changes to H.R.1, along with suggested improvements. Without a few key changes, we believe the bill might degrade election integrity and miss opportunities for improvement, rather than meet its well-intended, laudable goals. Our comments are restricted to election administration and integrity issues pp78-407 of the bill.

Attached to this letter is a list of detailed comments. Here we summarize the most critical items:

>Requirements for grants should be stronger, to help ensure effective Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs). We suggest specific improvements to the HR1 grant requirements. Grants should be available to audit compliance and eligibility which are crucial for valid RLAs.

Poll books should be part of the Federal certification program, as proposed. So should other systems used to determine the eligibility of voters or ballot packets. They however, should be tested and certified separately from the voting system. Competition will be stifled if pollbooks are only tested as part of an entire voting system. Election officials will end up with fewer and less innovative purchase choices.

Ballots cast by an in-person voter by hand marked paper ballots may be rejected later under the current text. When a voter appears in person they must be offered an opportunity to be authenticated and, upon authentication, vote on a hand marked paper ballot without further eligibility checks.

Voter Privacy / Ballot Secrecy. Ballots should never be associated with voters, thus compromising ballot secrecy There should be no unique identification numbers on some ballots for voters with disabilities. Voters should not be able to waive their ballot secrecy, a collective right.

Voting over the internet is not secure and does not protect the secrecy of the ballot. For security and integrity, votes should not be transmitted over the internet or by other electronic means such as email or fax.

Last week we posted a three-part series on our concerns with H.R.1. There concerns were largely based on the effects for states like Connecticut.

PS: I am the Moderator of the State Audit Working Group. Members spent hours over a couple of weeks under tight deadlines to publish our concerns.

Testimony on Early Voting/Absentee Voting Constitutional Amendments

On Monday, the Government Administration and Elections Committee will hear testimony on bills to modify Connecticut’s Constitution for Early Voting and No-Excuse Voting. Meanwhile another Constitutional Amendment or change is advisable to pave the way for related and unrelated voting changes which Connecticut may desire or may be forced upon Connecticut by H.R.1. My testimony is below and <here in .pdf>

H.J.58, H.J.59 – Needed – A Further Critical Change to the CT Constitution

Chairs, members of the Committee, and Connecticut voters, my name is Luther Weeks, Executive Director of CTVotersCount, a computer scientist, and a Certified Moderator since 2008. I also lead one national group and participate in another that discuss, evaluate, and regularly propose changes to state and Federal election laws.

As you are contemplating amendments to the Connecticut Constitution for elections, we need to go just a bit farther than the changes now in H.J.59. Just a few more words would make a great difference going forward. The additional changes would remove deadlines for reporting state contest results that are now baked into our Constitution. These same deadlines would remain in effect, in law, yet easier to change in short order should that become necessary.

Why are these changes critical?

There are at least four reasons why these deadlines may need to change quickly in the near future. Not removing them as soon as possible in our Constitution would cause significant problems and limitations, while waiting for another years-long amendment process to change them…<more>

Portions in bold are those that I intend for my oral testimony:

H.J.58, H.J.59 – Needed – A Further Critical Change to the CT Constitution

Why are these changes critical?

Reason #1: The U.S. Congress is contemplating H.R.1[1] which if passed in its current form, would mandate no-excuse absentee voting for Federal contests, including allowing ballots post-marked by election day to be counted, if received, within a minimum of 10 days after election day. And subject to “curing”[2] for a minimum of 10 ten days after that.

If H.R.1 or a similar Federal law were to pass, it would only apply and override our Constitution for Federal races, then in even-year elections Connecticut would be faced with two election deadlines, one for Federal elections, and another for state elections, likely requiring two ballot designs per district. Ballots would have to be segregated, with some counted and declared within the currently mandated 10 days and others accepted, cured, and added in 20 days later, with the possibility of two sets of recanvass deadlines etc. To do what we do now within 10 days after an election, under H.R.1 would take at least 30 days! Not something that could be completed before early December.

Reason #2: If our Constitution is amended to provide for no-excuse absentee voting, presumably there will be calls for the same things in H.R.1, i.e. accepting ballots post-marked by election day, followed by curing.That would be impossible for state offices until and unless the Connecticut Constitution were to be amended as recommended here.

Reasons #3 and #4 are Ranked Choice Voting and Risk Limiting Audits. If either were to be implemented in Connecticut, they would require days and sometimes weeks longer than the current limit of 10 days – even longer if they were combined with H.R.1:

Reason #3: If Connecticut were to institute Ranked Choice Voting, in some cases it could take days to a few weeks to determine initial results, followed by days or weeks of recanvassing. Those time requirements would be impossible for State offices without this change to the Constitution.

Reason #4: If Connecticut were to institute Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs), by definition RLAs, must be coordinated statewide, completed before certification, may take several rounds, and can sometimes take several days for the last round, as they did in Georgia this past November. That would be impossible without these changes.

The changes I suggest are based on those already in H.J.59, plus the ones in bold and larger type below:

Section 9 of article third of the Constitution is amended to read as follows:

Sec. 9. At all elections for members of the general assembly the presiding officers in the several towns shall [receive the votes of the electors, and] count and declare [them] the votes of the electors in open meeting. The presiding officers shall make and certify duplicate lists of the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each. One list shall be delivered [within three days to the town clerk,] and [within ten days after such meeting,] the other shall be delivered [under seal] to the secretary of the state.

Section 4 of article fourth of the Constitution is amended to read as follows:

Sec. 4. [At the meetings of the electors in the respective towns held quadrennially as herein provided for the election of state officers, the presiding officers shall receive the votes and shall count and declare the same in the presence of the electors] The votes at the election of state officers shall be counted and declared in open meeting by the presiding officers in the several towns. The presiding officers shall make and certify duplicate lists of the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each. One list shall be delivered [within three days] to the town clerk, and [within ten days after such meeting,] the other shall be delivered [under seal] to the secretary of the state. The votes so delivered shall be counted, canvassed and declared by the treasurer, secretary, and comptroller[, within the month of November]… that currently even without being limited by our Constitution, all contests in Connecticut are similarly limited by law. The clauses in the Constitution above only apply to State Contests.

At this time, H.J.59 cannot be changed. There are two courses going forward 1) Place the additional changes in H.J.58 or 2) Create an additional amendment with only these changes. I recommend placing the additional changes in H.J.58, rather than as a separate amendment which would likely confuse voters.

Please consider the urgency of making these critical changes in Connecticut’s Constitution.

Thank you

[1] U.S. House Resolution 1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1/text

A bill that would mandate many changes for Federal elections nationwide by 11/2022 with some by 1/2020, including accepting absentee ballots for 10 days after election day if post-marked by election day followed by 10 subsequent days for “curing” them. It would also mandate at least 15 contiguous days of in-person early voting including on election day.
For more analysis of H.R.1, see: https://ctvoterscount.org/whats-the-matter-with-h-r-1-part-1/

[2] Curing – Processes by which voters are notified of errors in mail-in ballots in signatures, envelope protocols etc. and provided a period for correcting such errors.