Luther Weeks

What We Worry? What Could Go Wrong On Election Day?

By Luther Weeks on November 3, 2012

America’s elections are run entirely on the honor system. What could possibly go wrong?

Posted in CT, Electronic Vulnerability, Internet Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting, National, National Popular Vote, Post-Election Audits, Recounts/Recanvasses | Leave a response

Caltech/MIT: What has changed, what hasn’t, & what needs improvement

By Luther Weeks on October 25, 2012

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a thorough, comprehensive, and insightful new report timed to the 2012 election. We find little to quibble with in the report. We agree with all of its recommendations.Several items with which we fully endorse were covered in this report which sometimes are missing from the discussion or often underemphasised.

The report itself is 52 pages, followed by 32 pages of opinions of others, including election officials, advocates, and vendors, some of whom disagree with some aspects of the report. Every page is worth reading. The report is not technical. It covers a wide range of issues, background, and recommendations.

Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, Internet Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting, National, National Popular Vote, Post-Election Audits, Reports | Leave a response

CTVotersCount flip flops from “Trust but Verify” to “Verify to Trust”

By Luther Weeks on October 20, 2012

There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.

Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family.

Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, National | Leave a response

A Tale in two Courant Editorials

By Luther Weeks on October 15, 2012

Where we disagree with the Courant, is that we believe ballots deserve the same level of protection as money and supplies, that the need for verification applies equally to private employees, public employees, and public officials. We are not so sure of trust part of ‘trust but verify’, we would ‘verify sufficiently to deter and trust’.

Posted in Chain of Custody, CT, CT Law | 2 Responses

Multiple votER fraud, multiple votes, multiple elections, multiple lessons

By Luther Weeks on October 12, 2012

Individual votER fraud does not happen often, when it does it seldom, if ever, amounts to enough to change a result. But here is a Rhode Island size story from Texas that provides several lessons for those concerned with votER fraud, votING fraud, and the limits of voter ID:

Posted in Mail/Absentee Voting, National, Skulduggery and Errors | Leave a response

Big Bird and Charlie Rose know what the CT Legislature does not!

By Luther Weeks on October 6, 2012

See Charlie Rose interview Dr. Barbara Simons, co-auther of Broken Ballots. <view >

Big Bird and Charlie Rose now know that Internet voting, email voting, Virgina elections, and inadequately audited elections – do not merit our trust.

Posted in Electronic Vulnerability, Internet Voting, Legislature2012, National | Leave a response

Registrars trade complaints, official and unofficial

By Luther Weeks on October 4, 2012

Is it voter suppression? Laziness? or Trumped up conflict? In any case, it does not serve voters and democracy.

It is hard to argue for the current system when these conflicts breakout, even harder to argue for the election of a single partisan registrar in each municipality.

Posted in CT, Skulduggery and Errors | 1 Response

Roundup – VotER fraud vs. VotING fraud

By Luther Weeks on October 2, 2012

Several states continue to argue about voter ID laws allegedly intended to prevent fraud by individual voters, in the face of little evidence of such fraud. Meanwhile the documented fraud which occurs regularly around the country is multiple vote absentee vote fraud. And now evidence of massive voter registration fraud.

Posted in Mail/Absentee Voting, Skulduggery and Errors | Leave a response

Issues with NPV vs. a strategy of overwhelm

By Luther Weeks on September 27, 2012

Around this time in the presidential election cycle we see a variety of articles touting benefits of the National Popular Vote Agreement vs. the Electoral College for determining the president. One of the latest is a piece in the Stamford Patch pointing to Rep Fox’s support of the Agreement, largely quoting Ryan O’Donnell, a lobbyist for NationalPopularVote.org.

I suggest you read the Patch article along with the comments to get a taste of NPV.org’s arguments, relevant, irrelevant, and questionable and their apparent strategy of overwhelm. Often when one of these articles appears, I post a comment to articulate what they are not telling you, the risk of the National Popular Vote Agreement. Much like DDT the issue is not the touted benefits, even if overblown. The issue is the potential harmful consequences.

Posted in CT, National | Leave a response

USA Today: Electronic voting – The Real Threat

By Luther Weeks on September 22, 2012

Fortunately our Legislature has not wasted time on raising Connecticut’s adequate voter I.D. law to the level of voter suppression. Unfortunately, the Legislature has continued to ignore science, experience, and the Constitutional requirement for preserving the secret vote.

Posted in CT, Internet Voting, National, Other Editorials | Leave a response