By Luther Weeks on November 6, 2016
! W A R N I N G !
Do not wait till the last minute. Do not wait to the last hour. Get there early if you want to use Election Day Registration!
NOTE: This is also a tale of how elections work in a state with a Secretary of the State with limited powers over underpaid, and occasionally resistant/obstinate local registrars. (The same registrars who are often cited by state officials as the reason we will have no problems in our elections this year. Read here how they handle their joint responsibility.)
Posted in CT, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on November 3, 2016
Lately the news is filled with Donald Trump saying the election is rigged and with election officials and others saying that is impossible. We continue to disagree with both. As we have said:
The truth is that there is no more or less risk to elections this year than in the recent past. The bad news is that the risks of election skullduggery are significant and do not come only from one adversary.
So, lets annotate a recent Op-Ed in the Hartford Courant: Nothing Rigged About American Elections
Posted in National, NonScienceNonsense, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on October 30, 2016
In 2007 the Maryland Legislature mandated a switch to optical scan paper ballots. Just this year they have been implemented. Unfortunately, instead of an audit of the paper they opted for an entirely electronic audit of electronic scanned records, at a cost of about double per citizen than that of Connecticut’s manual paper audit.
I assisted in writing and editing an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun and testimony before the Board of Elections.
The terms “feel good ‘audit'”, “sham ‘audit'” etc. come to mind. We prefer to call it a “Back Box ‘Audit'” .
Posted in Our Editorials, Post-Election Audits
By Luther Weeks on October 25, 2016
One AP story, two different versions in the Connecticut Post and the Hartford Courant.
As we said in our comment on the Connecticut Post article:
Connecticut has this other thing called the Constitution. It is even available at the Secretary’s website. It says: “The right of secret voting shall be preserved.”, which would likely be interpreted as not taking a picture of your ballot such that you could prove how it was voted. Otherwise votes could easily be bought, sold or intimidated. http://www.ct.gov/sots/cwp/view.asp?q=392288
Posted in CT, National, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on October 20, 2016
Obviously it was only incompetence and likely fraud, unless officials are mistaken. Indiana official: Altered voter registrations raise concerns
******Update: Clarified? It could also be a witch hunt
Posted in Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on October 15, 2016
USAToday article: Could the U.S. election be hacked? <read>
We add some annotations: [Bottom-line there is a conspiracy in plan view. A thinly disguised attempt to assure us that elections are not vulnerable and that any attempt to say otherwise is an attack on every pollworker.]
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National
By Luther Weeks on October 9, 2016
Broken Ballots co-author, Doug Jones interview on the vulnerabilities of today’s voting machines, the newer models available, risks of Election Management Systems, and Internet voting: Douglas Jones on Today’s Voting Machines <read>
Fortunately, Connecticut has avoided the problem of corruption of the EMS by using a separate system from programming elections and using a manual reporting system to accumulate the results at the end of the night. That does not mean our systems are safe from errors, hacking, and fraud.
Posted in CT, Electronic Vulnerability, National
By Luther Weeks on October 4, 2016
Dr. Harri Hursti is a respected international expert on electronic security, especially electronic voting. In a recent interview he addressed the risks and chances of correctly attributing the source of attacks, specifically focusing on Russia.
What do you think of the news that a member of Congress says there is “no doubt” that Russia is behind recent attacks on state election systems
The article makes several dangerous assumptions about the security of elections and election systems. Representative Adam Schiff said he doubted (Russians) could falsify a vote tally in a way that effects the election outcome. He also said outdated election systems makes this unlikely, but really, it just makes it easier. The voting machines were designed at a time when security wasn’t considered, included, or part of the specifications at all.
Posted in CT, Internet Security Issues, National
By Luther Weeks on September 29, 2016
Checks on State Voting Machines Do Not Make the Grade
Do Not Provide Confidence in Election System, Says Citizen Audit
From the Press Release:
Audits of the recent presidential primaries are so faulty that exact final vote tallies cannot be verified, says the non-partisan Connecticut Citizen Election Audit. Unless state and local election officials make changes, the same will be true for the November elections.
“State law requires audits to verify the accuracy of optical scanner voting machines as a check for errors and a deterrent to fraud. Local registrars gather officials to manually count paper ballots and compare their totals to the totals found by the scanners”, explains Luther Weeks, Executive Director of Connecticut Citizen Election Audit.
Issues reported by the group were:
- Incomplete or missing official reports of vote counts from town registrars;
- The lack of action on the part of the Secretary of the State’s Office to check that all required reports are submitted and all submitted reports are completed fully;
- Of 169 municipalities required to submit lists of polling places before the election, the Secretary of the State’s Office recorded only 68, with 101 missing;
- Poor security procedures to prohibit ballot tampering;
- Not following procedures intended to ensure “double checking” and “blind counting” rather than having scanner counts as targets while counting manually;
“The public, candidates, and the Secretary of the State should expect local election officials to organize proper audits and produce accurate, complete audit reports. The public and candidates should expect the Secretary of the State’s Office to take the lead in ensuring the audits are complete. Yet, due to a lack of attention to detail and follow-through the audits do not prove or disprove the accuracy of the reported primary results,” Weeks said.
<Press Release .pdf> <Full Report pdf> <Detail data/municipal reports>
Posted in CT, Post-Election Audits, Reports
By Luther Weeks on September 23, 2016
A story about prisons claimed that officials look at a prison as a jug of water. Even with a small pinhole leak, the water will get out. They look for the slightest weakness in the prison, assuming prisoners (with lots of time on their hands, collective wisdom, and little to lose in trying) will find any weakness, no matter how small, difficult, and time consuming.
That is how we should look at voting systems
Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, Post-Election Audits
