By Luther Weeks on January 25, 2019
The Committee on Contested Elections had its 1st day of testimony yesterday. Two registrars, a moderator, and a deputy registrar and then a bombshell.
The registrars spent lots of time in their testimony explaining how they emphasized in training that eight of the ten polling places had two districts and that every pack of ballots should be checked by the ballot clerks that it was in the right district. The Moderator emphasized that he trained all the ballot clerks in the morning before the polling place opened. They also highlighted that they are two of the ten trainers for the state, responsible for delivering Moderator Certification classes.
Starratt said he had never been in a polling place before that day, presumably never even voting? He was recruited two days before and had no pre-election training. That is a clear violation of state law which requires that every polling place official receive such training before every election. Even late recruits are often brought in for an hour or two of one-on-one training to fulfill that requirement.
Posted in CT, CT Law
By Luther Weeks on January 20, 2019
On Friday the Committee on Contested Elections met to determine who they would hear on the election contested. The election was decided by some 16 votes while some 76 voters were given the wrong ballot and thus were disenfranchised in the election. I was there. Listening to the Committee members and their lack of knowledge of election administration was painful/disappointing for me:
- They did not seem to know how many moderators there are in a polling place, and if one of them was the head moderator. (Generally there is one moderator and if the town has more than one polling place, as Stratford does, there is one head moderator in headquarters that is responsible of the election and the results.)…
Posted in CT Law, Legislature 2019
By Luther Weeks on January 11, 2019
[The vendors] control the code in devices they sell. That means that technology we buy for one purpose can be reprogrammed without our consent or even our knowledge.
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National
By Luther Weeks on January 3, 2019
WhoWhatWhy: Will Georgia Double Down on Non-Transparent, Vulnerable Election Machines?
Georgia’s newly elected secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger (R), hopes to replace them not with hand-marked paper ballots and scanners (as virtually all independent cybersecurity election experts recommend), but rather with touchscreen ballot-marking devices,..In addition to security concerns, all touchscreen systems tend to cause long lines…The ExpressVote system also would cost taxpayers more than three times as much as hand-marked paper ballots and scanners:? an estimated $100 million as opposed to $30 million.
A system only greedy vendors and fraudsters would love.
******Update: Verified Voting Statement to Georgia
Posted in Costs, Electronic Vulnerability, National
By Luther Weeks on December 21, 2018
Story in Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlines what keeps election integrity awake all night: Georgia prepares to move from electronic to paper ballots .
State lawmakers broadly agree that it’s time to replace Georgia’s 27,000 direct-recording electronic voting machines with a system that leaves a verifiable paper trail.
With a paper ballot, recounts and audits could verify the accuracy of electronic tabulations.
But there’s disagreement about what kind of paper-based voting system Georgia should use and how much taxpayer money to spend on it…
It would be a sad shame if state and Federal money is spent to buy such risky equipment at triple the cost of voter marked paper ballots.
Posted in National, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on December 11, 2018
New study The study What Voters are Asked to Verify Affects Ballot Verification: A Quantitative Analysis of Voters’ Memories of Their Ballots
As a practical matter, do voters verify their BMD-printed ballot cards, and are they even capable of it? Until now, there hasn’t been much scientific research on that question…
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In a real polling place, half the voters don’t inspect their ballot cards, and the other half inspect for an average of 3.9 seconds (for a ballot with 18 contests!).
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When asked, immediately after depositing their ballot, to review an unvoted copy of the ballot they just voted on, most won’t detect that the wrong contests are presented, or that some are missing.
Posted in National, Reports
By Luther Weeks on December 5, 2018
Blockchain has been wildly mis-sold, but underneath it is a database with performance and scalability issues and a lot of baggage. Any claim made for blockchain could be made for databases, or simply publishing contractual or transactional data gathered in another form.
Posted in Blockchain, NonScienceNonsense
By Luther Weeks on December 2, 2018
Rep. Philip Young, D-Stratford, won re-election to a second term on Nov. 6, defeating Republican Jim Feehan by 13 votes in the 120th District. But Feehan says as many as 76 voters at Bunnell High School were given ballots for the 122nd District, which uses the same polling place.
Ruling from the bench, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismissed Feehan’s request for a new election, agreeing with the attorney general’s office that she had no jurisdiction to do so under the Connecticut Constitution, lawyers for Feehan and Young said.
“That power has been committed exclusively to the House of Representatives, and this Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to grant the relief that Feehan requests,” the attorney general’s office said in a brief filed Thursday.
Posted in CT, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on November 15, 2018
On Sunday the Hartford Courant lead Editorial proposed fixes to its perceived problems with Connecticut’s election system: 5 Fixes For State’s Broken Election System. Note that all the statewide races were decided by 8:00am on Wednesday morning after the election.
To the Courant’s credit, for the second time in a row, they published a letter of mine criticizing an editorial.
Proposed Fixes Could Make Problems Worse
The editorial “Five Fixes for State’s Broken Election System” misses the mark on at least three of its five proposals
Posted in Costs, CT, CT Law, Mail/Absentee Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on November 11, 2018
There were long lines for Election Day Registration (EDR) and it took a whole 10 hours to count enough votes to determine the Governor in Connecticut. Our EDR is a problem, but waiting ten hours for result is just a concern hyped up by a overly impatient press and used as a opportunity by advocates to promote early voting as a solution.
As of this time the states of California, Colorado, Florida, and Georgia are still counting votes. They all have mail-in early voting. California has a Friday deadline to receive mail-in ballots postmarked by election day and counts them for weeks after election day. As of Friday all those other states were still counting.
There real are problems and there are reasonable solutions.
Posted in Costs, CT Law, Legislature 2019, Mail/Absentee Voting, NonScienceNonsense
