Luther Weeks | CTVotersCount.org

Denise Merrill mostly right on Trump voting witch hunt commission

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill , said,“The rationale for this commission was articulated in a baseless tweet from the president that claimed millions of illegal votes were cast. The facts don’t lie. Voter fraud is extremely rare. Yet time and again, the specter of voter fraud has served as an excuse to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters. I hope that this investigation is not a fig leaf for voter suppression and intimidation. In Connecticut, we will protect every eligible person’s right to vote. I stand by our process and our elections officials.”

This reminds us of the Bush era witch hunt in the Justice Department for voter fraud. Several attorneys were let go because they could not find or refused to continue hunting for all but non-existent fraud.

We do question Secretary Merrill’s statement that “In Connecticut, we will protect every eligible person’s right to vote. I stand by our process and our elections officials.”

Secretary Merrill’s Press Release <read>

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill
, said,“The rationale for this commission was articulated in a baseless tweet from the president that claimed millions of illegal votes were cast. The facts don’t lie. Voter fraud is extremely rare. Yet time and again, the specter of voter fraud has served as an excuse to disenfranchise tens of thousands of eligible voters. I hope that this investigation is not a fig leaf for voter suppression and intimidation. In Connecticut, we will protect every eligible person’s right to vote. I stand by our process and our elections officials.”

This is clearly such a witch hunt because the commission is stacked, with mostly Republicans and mostly those with dubious records. Not only the Secretary from Kansas but also the notorious Ken Blackwell. The only person on the Commission so far that we would trust is William Gardner from New Hampshire.

We do question Secretary Merrill’s statement that “In Connecticut, we will protect every eligible person’s right to vote. I stand by our process and our elections officials.” Perhaps we will protect such rights in the future. But unless the General Assembly acts or the Secretary has a sudden conversion, we will continue to leave “eligible persons” in line at EDR. See <Our testimony earlier this year>

Random drawing issues in the Nutmeg State

Connecticut is known as the “Nutmeg State” based on the legend of Yankee Peddlers selling wooden nutmegs to unsuspecting New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians. True or not, there is little reason to trust anyone here when it comes to random drawings. Recent history leaves us with little trust in officials and random drawings.

The Secretary of the State’s Office has improved the integrity of the post-election audit drawing, yet two problems remain.

As CTVotersCount readers know, Connecticut is known as the “Nutmeg State” based on the legend of Yankee Peddlers selling wooden nutmegs to unsuspecting New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians. True or not, there is little reason to trust anyone here when it comes to random drawings.

Lets start with the Lottery and the Lotto game. You could say it is a glitch in the system that allowed vendors to cheat. You would be correct, yet that is not the whole story. Lotto officials knew about the glitch for some time without disclosing or addressing it. But don’t feel bad for officials who are likely “draw” a healthy pension. <read>

Then there are the publicly funded charter schools led by the miraculous Capitol Prep, led at the time by the self-proclaimed “America’s most TRUSTED Educator”, Steve Perry. It seems the miracle may well be due more to lottery prep than trust in the drawing itself (although we have no reason to trust the drawing itself) <read> Then again you don’t need a phony lottery and any preparation to get ahead in Connecticut education – you can wait and cheat on the tests. To avoid proclaiming yourself, let NPR do it: <read>

Which brings us to elections and the Connecticut random audit drawing. What could possibly go wrong?

Up until this point the Connecticut post-election audit drawing has essentially used a barrel with slips of paper to draw districts for the audit. Unfortunately, it could be that officials use an inaccurate list of districts to make the slips. It has happened Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Inaccurate List of Election Districts <read> Fortunately that problem has been addressed <read> Perhaps they can be eliminated completely if the new Election Night Reporting System is used as a basis for the district list in the future.

Yet two problems remain. First, the drawing list is not publicly verifiable. In the Bysiewicz Administration, advocates were solicited to arrive before the drawing and check that every district listed was actually placed in the barrel. Somehow that was dropped by the Merrill Administration. Second, drawing from a barrel is not all that random – observed by the public it may be completely above board, and yet not be random. It is difficult to shuffle/mix slips of paper such that they are actually random – slips printed together tend to stay together and thus there is a correlation where some, say from the same municipality, tend to be selected or not selected.

There are better ways of selecting districts in a more transparent way. Last year the Citizen Audit suggested solutions to the Secretary of the State’s Office based on a request by former Deputy Secretary, James Spallone:

Post-Election Audit Drawing Transparency and Randomness

We have concerns with the transparency and the randomness of the random drawing. There is a single effective solution that would improve the credibility of the drawing, the audit, and our elections.

Concerns – Transparency: We don’t mean to suggest a lack of integrity in the drawing or of any person, yet there is now a hole in the transparency of the drawing which precludes public verification. When the drawing was initiated in 2007 and for several years thereafter, observers were invited to come early and check each and every ticket placed in the raffle barrel to make sure the tickets in the barrel matched those on a list of districts provided. Once the drawing changed from business cards to strips of paper, that part of the process was also dropped.

Concerns – Randomness: Statisticians have concerns with the actual randomness of drawings from a raffle barrel. Strips of paper representing districts for the same town tend to stay together, thus increasing or decreasing their odds of being selected. From past drawings that the variation in the number of districts in towns selected in each drawing it seems from experience may have been way out of proportion (high or low) than would have been likely the case with a truly random selection.

A Single Solution: Change to a random selection, by numbering districts sequentially on a list from 0 to the number of districts (about 730). Then select the districts for audit by throwing three 10-sided dice, or a system similar to the CT Lottery drawing. A 5% audit would entail about 50 casts of the three dice, given that there is about a 70% probability that each cast would provide a useable unique selection. An example of doing this method is from the San Francisco Department of Elections, in the following videos:
Side view video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdWL8Unz5kM
Overhead view video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sufb7ykByWA

How easy would it be to rig the next election? Very Easy

Article at Think Progress: How easy would it be to rig the next election?

In the popular imagination, this is what election hacking looks like?—?dramatic, national-scale interference that manually rewrites tallies and hands the victory to the outlier. Certainly these attacks may occur. However, they’re only one of a variety of electoral hacks possible against the United States, at a time when hacking attacks are becoming more accessible to threat-actors and nation-state-sponsored attackers are growing more brazen. Yes, hackers may attempt to change the vote totals for American elections?—?but they can also de-register voters, delete critical data, trip up voting systems to cause long lines at polling stations, and otherwise cultivate deep distrust in the legitimacy of election results. If hackers wish to rig a national election, they can do it by changing only small numbers on a state level.

Article at Think Progress: How easy would it be to rig the next election? <read>

In the popular imagination, this is what election hacking looks like?—?dramatic, national-scale interference that manually rewrites tallies and hands the victory to the outlier. Certainly these attacks may occur. However, they’re only one of a variety of electoral hacks possible against the United States, at a time when hacking attacks are becoming more accessible to threat-actors and nation-state-sponsored attackers are growing more brazen. Yes, hackers may attempt to change the vote totals for American elections?—?but they can also de-register voters, delete critical data, trip up voting systems to cause long lines at polling stations, and otherwise cultivate deep distrust in the legitimacy of election results. If hackers wish to rig a national election, they can do it by changing only small numbers on a state level.

Not just hackers! Insiders. Not just election officials. Contractors, ISPs, voting system vendors, municipal staffers…

One thing all voting machines seem to have in common is that whenever they have been subjected to aggressive testing by hackers, they have fallen apart.

Insecure voting systems are the norm, not the exception
“These machines are just so poorly engineered, the only real way to secure them is to destroy them and start over,” said the University of Michigan’s Matt Bernhard…

Voting technology provides a false sense of security?—?and opens up new vulnerabilities
As a result of the work of investigators affiliated with the TTBR and EVEREST, as well as more recent investigations by researchers like Haldeman at the University of Michigan (who installed Pac-Man on a Sequoia DRE in 2010) or Edward Felton and Andrew Appel at Princeton, paperless DRE machines have become less popular. In 2016, their use had declined more than 15 percent since the last presidential election.

But in many ways, the remaining uneasily patched DREs have been cast as the bogeyman of voting machines?—?while the other systems’ remarkable vulnerabilities have been ignored.

Meanwhile officials remain complacent <read>

What can we learn from a jurisdiction in NY that hand-counts every vote?

I recently attended a presentation by Columbia County, NY, Election Commissioner Vivian Martin on the post-election audit/recount performed after every election. It should be of interest to every citizen concerned with trust in elections and every election official: “You Can’t Count Paper Ballots” Want to bet?

After every election (using optical scanners) they count every ballot a second time by hand. What can we learn in Connecticut, “The Land of Steady Habits?

We are not necessarily convinced that we need to go as far as Columbia County. Yet, Connecticut needs a much stronger, more comprehensive, transparent audit; we need a stronger more transparent chain-of-custody; a more uniform, higher quality recanvass. There is no reason, other than “we have always done it this way”, for our current post-election schedule. We could perform rigorous automatic recounts rather than recanvasses; we need more to declare and perform recounts/recanvasses. We could emulate other states and perform audits shortly after the election, delaying rigorous/adversarial recounts to later and providing weeks for their completion.

After every election (using optical scanners) they count every ballot a second time by hand. Here are some of the high points:

They do more than just count the ballots and votes. They day after the election they review the paperwork and checkin lists.
In the next week or so they count every vote and adjudicate voters’ intent. They do this before certification, so that they can certify the actual results with voters’ intent.
They have a simple, yet strong chain-of-custody. Two people transport the ballots. There are two locks with opposing officials holding the keys. Every step is well documented.
They recruit citizens to participate in the process, who learn about elections and enjoy the process and pay.
It costs a “whooping” 1% of their budget. In our opinion, a small price to pay for insuring democracy.
They demonstrate that they can count accurately with the rigorous 4-person hashmark methods they use. (Very similar to the methods used in Connecticut for the Bridgeport Citizen Recount)
They are careful that any questions posed by counters are heard by leaders of both parties simultaneously and answers are determined jointly.
They do not count uncontested races. Other races where they see lopsided, expected results, the losing party official gets consent from their party or candidate not to count a race.

What can we learn in Connecticut, “The Land of Steady Habits?”.

Most of all we can learn that what we do and think in Connecticut is not the only way possible. (It is human nature to assume that the way we have always done it is the only way; human nature to point to other state practices to justify what we want to change, yet ignore them when we don’t.)
No municipality could do this counting, exactly the same way legally in Connecticut. It is questionable that it would be legal to open and count ballots by the choice of election officials at any time. Right after the election we have the potential for a recanvass. It would likely be questioned if similar methods were used for recanvasses, rather than the Secretary of the State procedures for rescanning.
We could use these methods for performing manual audits. Where they have been used, the Citizen Audit has shown that accuracy has been much better than when the more common, in Connecticut, ad-hoc and two-person teams have been used..
Perhaps, if Connecticut officials used better methods and learned from Columbia County, they would stop believing and arguing that “People cannot count votes accurately”.
For a low cost, Connecticut could have a credible and trustworthy chain-of-custody.
We could actually verifiably check our checkins and ballot counts.

Rep. Matt Lesser exploring run for Secretary of the State

The Middletown Press and a Facebook video by Lesser indicate he is exploring a run for Secretary of the State.

To our knowledge Lesser is the 1st candidate officially filing.

The Middletown Press and a Facebook video by Lesser indicate he is exploring a run for Secretary of the State.

To our knowledge Lesser is the 1st candidate officially filing.

Public Voting Machine Hackathon: Challenge or Sham

The worlds largest democracy has offered the public a chance to hack its unverifiable voting machines. The details are skimpy, history does not provide confidence, and while it may be a step in the right direction it is ultimately insufficient. See the article by George Washington University Professor Poorvi Vora: Hacking EVMs: The EC has issued a challenge. It must first accept the challenge it faces

Let’s not forget that such a so-called challenge was also given in 2009. The examination of EVMs should be treated as an opportunity to make the process more transparent and open. In 2009, however, when the Election Commission allowed the public to examine EVMs, the examination was hugely circumscribed so as to prevent anyone from carrying out any substantive – albeit practical – attack.

If this offer of EVM examination is simply a cosmetic offer as in 2009, and not intended to allow for a complete analysis, the trust deficit between the Indian public and Indian elections will continue to grow.

The Election Commission should demonstrate that their claims of EVM security do not rest on the very fragile assumption that all insiders with access to the EVM can be trusted. To understand what an insider with access can achieve if they try to tamper with the systems, they should provide the experts with design documents and details of the tests used to verify the design and security properties. The Election Commission’s approach so far, of keeping design details secret, is termed “security through obscurity” by computer security experts, and was debunked as far back as the late 1800s by Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs…

In addition to the transparency provided by public testing of EVMs before elections, there is a role for transparency after the election as well. Even if one were to believe that EVMs are tamper proof, every election outcome must be checked to ensure that the unexpected did not happen, that “mock drill data” (votes due to key presses during testing) was erased as it is supposed to be, and did not contribute to the count, that errors did not affect the outcome, that the EVMs were correctly calibrated, that somebody did not try to change the outcome and succeed, and so on.

If the VVPAT record is verified by the voter to be a faithful reproduction of the vote, is stored securely separate from the EVMs, and is publicly audited after the election, it provides strong independent confirmation that the outcome is correct.

It is not sufficient to simply print VVPAT records, nor is it sufficient for voters to carefully check them. A correctly printed VVPAT record indicates merely that the machine correctly understood the vote. It does not indicate that the vote was correctly recorded or counted. A public audit needs to be performed to determine that the VVPAT records are consistent with the declared election outcome.

There is a lot more in the article.

Surprising statements by Denise Merrill and Neil Jenkins

Denise Merrill, Secretary of the State and President of the National Association of Secretaries of State and Neil Jenkins from Homeland Security spoke on NPR on election integrity. <listen>

We disagree with both their similar statements:

.”Because our system is highly decentralized there’s no way to disrupt the voting process in any large-scale meaningful way through cyber attacks because there’s no national system to attack,” [Merrill] said Tuesday at a hearing before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on the impact of the critical infrastructure designation.

Jenkins was quoted as saying “having thousands of elections offices each with their own systems making hacking elections nearly impossible”

Denise Merrill, Secretary of the State and President of the National Association of Secretaries of State and Neil Jenkins from Homeland Security spoke on NPR on election integrity. <listen>

We disagree with both their similar statements:

.”Because our system is highly decentralized there’s no way to disrupt the voting process in any large-scale meaningful way through cyber attacks because there’s no national system to attack,” [Merrill] said Tuesday at a hearing before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on the impact of the critical infrastructure designation.

Jenkins was quoted as saying “having thousands of elections offices each with their own systems making hacking elections nearly impossible”

Others may wish to believe differently, but based on science, recent history, and common sense, we point out:

Secretary/President Merrill is almost correct when she says “Because our system is highly decentralized there’s no way to disrupt the voting process in any large-scale meaningful way through cyber attacks because there’s no national system to attack,” However, it is possible to attack Federal elections in a “meaningful’ way, especially a non-cyber way, in that a few thousand votes could sway a state’s electoral votes, senator, or representatives. That may or not be large-scale, but it is meaningful. Put a few of states together and it could change the apparent President and the balance in the Senate and House. In 2016 attacks in three states, PA, MI, and WI, could have done the job. In 2000, FL, and 2004, OH, just one state could have changed the result.
Elections are not as decentralized as the Secretary and Jenkins imply. It is inaccurate to say that thousands of jurisdictions have their own systems: I.e. all of Connecticut’s scanners are programmed and maintained by a single out-of-state vendor. That same vendor does the same for most of New England. Nationwide some jurisdictions are very large in many states such as LA County in CA, Cuyahoga County OH, or several FL counties. Some cities are rather large. In this past election there were major errors in Detroit. Philadelphia all votes are “counted” on unauditable touch screen machines.
A single entity is now responsible for the non-random auditing of all of Connecticut’s memory cards, reporting on our post-election election audits, and programming and supervising the software dependent machines now doing our electronic post-election “audit”.
Connecticut’s new voting machines for those with disabilities are programmed by another single entity, not tested in a meaningful end-to-end way, and are now used in most municipalities to test the optical scanners in a way that reduces the value of the pre-election tests. (Rather than an actual test of the interface, a canned set of ballots is printed by the machine. Those ballots produce huge black squares rather than filled in bubbles. When they are used to test the scanners it does not test that the scanners actually detect bubbles at the correct coordinates.)

These do not meet my definition of decentralized (or independent). I am not necessarily arguing for more centralization. I am arguing for more skepticism, more vigilance, more awareness, more transparency, and less obfuscation.

We and officials cannot prove negatives, that there were no cyber-attacks; that there were no conventional attacks; that there were no significant errors in the results reported.

Officials have not proven that the election results were accurate enough to support the . With paper ballots uniformly required, with effective post-election audits, and process audits they would be able to prove it.

*****Update 4/15/2017

Alex Halderman agrees <read>

Halderman said that most people think that the United States’ voting machines are secure because they are different in each county and they aren’t connected to the Internet. “In fact, many of these things break down,” said Halderman.

Halderman said an attacker can select the machines that are the most vulnerable or attack the third-party vendors that provide the memory cards for each machine. By using this method, an attacker could have altered the votes in 75 percent of Michigan counties, according to Halderman. He said that although he thinks that no states carried out sufficient forensics to determine whether their voting machines were hacked, he does not believe that those votes were manipulated.

NPV Forum in Greenwich

Tuesday I participated in a forum/debate on the National Popular Vote Compact. Greenwich Time has a vary fair article on the event <read>

In one of the photos I am holding a 1118 page book that is free. Instead, I recommend two books that are shorter, that are worth reading, and worth much more than you will pay for them!

I also have some comments on the uniqueness of an event where individuals claim that Connecticut voters would appreciate more money in politics.

Tuesday I participated in a forum/debate on the National Popular Vote Compact. Greenwich Time has a vary fair article on the event <read>

Nearly 150 people were curious enough about plans to change how presidential election votes are counted to devote nearly two hours Tuesday night to the discussion…

“Frankly this is something that makes sense for all the states,” said Pam Wilmot, a member of Common Cause, who had pushed for Massachusetts to be a part of the compact.

“It particularly makes sense for states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, Texas, Idaho and Oklahoma because they are all part of the three-fourths of states that are ignored in the current system. The current system doesn’t help small states. It doesn’t help big states. It helps battleground states.”

Countered Luther Weeks of the grassroots Ctvoterscount.org, which describes itself as dedicated to election fairness and integrity: “I understand the theoretical advantages of the popular vote, but there is a mismatch with the electoral college system and one the compact does not change. There are things like nuclear power and DDT and fracking that all sound good but have unintended consequences that might not be apparent at the beginning.”

The compact, crafted more than a decade ago, has been picking up political backing since November’s election of President Donald Trump. Despite losing the popular election by more than 3 million votes, Trump won the electoral college and the presidency.

Its bipartisan support includes former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, who famously lost the 2000 race despite winning the popular vote; former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former Republican Congressman and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr.

Actually opposition is bi-partisan as well. I noted this list from my recent testimony:

Susan Bysiewicz (D), former Connecticut Secretary of the State
Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), former California Governor
Mark Ritchie (D), Minnesota Secretary of State and former President of the National Association of Secretaries of State
Daniel Patrick Moynihan(D), former Wesleyan professor and U.S. Senator
William Cibes (D), former State University System Chancellor

In one of the photos I am holding a 1118 page book that is free. Instead, I recommend two books that are shorter, that are worth reading, and worth much more than you will pay for them!

The book Every Vote Equal is a tiresome read and quite redundant. Reading it is like being locked in a room with an infomercial blaring away 24×7. It claims to refute my claim that “There is no official national popular vote number available in time for states to choose their electors”. They leave out the “in time” and point to the Certificates of Ascertainment which are submitted to the National Archivist. That claim was repeated in the debate. Fortunately, I brought along and held up the two forms from 2016 that were signed and submitted on the date the electors vote (a week after they must be selected) and the two certificates that were signed the day after. For more see my recent testimony, page 3.

Instead I recommend Ballot Battles which articulates the partisan nature of battles over close election results. It is clear to me that it portends the battles that would ensue if the Compact were enacted. I also recommend Broken Ballots which details the risks inherent in our voting methods.

I also got in some comments on the uniqueness of an event where individuals claim that Connecticut voters would appreciate more money in politics. I did not say everything in the debate but here is what I have said:

There are valid reasons for a National Popular Vote and against the Compact, yet more money in Connecticut Politics is not one of them. I do not agree with the argument that increasing political spending in Connecticut is a benefit of the Compact:

Most Connecticut voters and several sponsors of this event want less money in Connecticut Politics, not more.
Connecticut voters do not need more calls, robo-calls, and 30 second attack ads to choose how they will vote.
I don’t think Trump’s visit to Connecticut last year, nor any other candidate in person, sways many voters who can see the same talking points on the news, almost every night.
The money raised here from Drug companies, Insurance Companies and Traders mostly would not be spent here anyway.
In any case, the money spent for adds and robo-calls would largely go to out of state political consultants, vendors, and media moguls.

Controlling Voting Algorithms is Critical

A short op-ed in the Courant from Bloomberg View, by Cathy O’Neil describes the risks of artificial intelligence algorithms used by the likes of Facebook and Google: Controlling A Pervasive Use Of Algorithms Critical

We should have concerns with algorithms beyond Artificial Intelligence. The same concerns apply to any algorithm (computer code/manual process), such as voting machines. We have no access to the code in our AccuVoteOS optical scanners. Yet we know from studies such as the California Top-To-Bottom-Review, Hacking Democracy’s Hursti Hack, and studies by UConn that the system is vulnerable to attack. We do not know and cannot know for sure if the software running on a particular AccuVoteOS and its memory card is correct and accurate.

Humans are gradually coming to recognize the vast influence that artificial intelligence will have on society. What we need to think about more, though, is how to hold it accountable to the people whose lives it will change…

In short, people are being kept in the dark about how widely artificial intelligence is used, the extent to which it actually affects them and the ways in which it may be flawed. That’s unacceptable. At the very least, some basic information should be made publicly available:

Scale: Whose data is collected, how, and why? How reliable are those data? What are the known flaws and omissions?

Impact: How does the algorithm process the data? How are the results of its decisions used?

Accuracy: How often does the algorithm make mistakes — say, by wrongly identifying people as criminals or failing to identify them as criminals? What is the breakdown of errors by race and gender?

Such accountability is particularly important for government entities that have the power to restrict our liberty. If their processes are opaque and unaccountable, we risk handing our rights to a flawed machine.

The best defense is a comprehensive, sufficient Post Election Audit.

Yet now Connecticut audits with the UConn Audit Station with undisclosed software. Even if we knew the software and tested it, there still would be no assurance that we missed something in our tests, there was a hardware error, or the software was compromised. As we wrote in a recent op-ed in the CTMirror and as covered in the most recent Citizen Audit Report the only defense is a manual audit of that Audit Station, every time it is used.

Covering the items in the Courant Op-Ed:

Scale: Whose data is collected, how, and why? How reliable are those data? What are the known flaws and omissions?
Our voting data is collected. It is only as reliable as the optical scanner as deployed. The system is vulnerable to attack in a variety of ways.

Impact: How does the algorithm process the data? How are the results of its decisions used?
It is supposed to be a straight-forward interpretation of marks to vote counts, provided the scanner is properly configured and programmed. The results are used to determine who leads our democracy AND if our votes actually determine that.

Accuracy: How often does the algorithm make mistakes — say, by wrongly identifying people as criminals or failing to identify them as criminals? What is the breakdown of errors by race and gender?
Here this is, how often does in inaccurately count votes? Did it count them accurately enough in this election? If we had trustworthy audits of the voting machines and the Audit Station we could answer these questions.

Report: Presidential Election Audit: Suffers Two Blows to Credibility

Citizen Audit: Two Blows to Connecticut Election Audits
Leave Them Weaker, Less Credible

From the Press Release:

In spite of growing national concerns about election integrity, election credibility in Connecticut has suffered two devastating blows:

The Connecticut General Assembly cut post-election audits in half from 10% to 5% of voting districts, and failed to fix glaring weaknesses in the state’s audit law.

Shockingly, Connecticut has become the first state to replace verifiable hand-count audits with unverifiable electronic audits. Now the public can’t verify audit results.

“It need not be this way. Electronic audits can be manually verified without sacrificing efficiency,” said Luther Weeks, Executive Director of Connecticut Citizen Election Audit. “Because audits are conducted by the same officials responsible for conducting elections, audits must be transparent and publicly verifiable,” he said.

The Citizen Election Audit also found continuing problems with how municipalities conducted audits. “The Secretary’s Office should take the lead in ensuring that audits are complete, credible, and publicly verifiable,” Weeks said. “The public, candidates, and Secretary Merrill should expect local election officials to organize audits that produce accurate audit reports,” he said.

Citizen Audit: Two Blows to Connecticut Election Audits
Leave Them Weaker, Less Credible

From the Press Release:

In spite of growing national concerns about election integrity, election credibility in Connecticut has suffered two devastating blows:

The Connecticut General Assembly cut post-election audits in half from 10% to 5% of voting districts, and failed to fix glaring weaknesses in the state’s audit law.

Shockingly, Connecticut has become the first state to replace verifiable hand-count audits with unverifiable electronic audits. Now the public can’t verify audit results.

Electronic audits were conducted for six municipalities, while 22 towns conducted manual audits. Post-election audits are required by law.