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P.T. Barnum’s city continues three-ring election circus

By Luther Weeks on August 26, 2011

Ringling Brothers’ city of Sarasota is famous for the 2006 congressional election show, but Bridgeport Connecticut, resting place of P.T. Barnum continues to be the home of the three-ring-circus. Ring 1 and 2 are allegations of money hi-jinks involving the Mayor. Ring 3 is the rejection of petitions for a slate of candidates, lead by a candidate for mayor, ready to challenge the establishment in the primary. Stay tuned, especially if there is a write-in campaign.

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EVT/WOTE: Design a complete voting system, then ask vendors to satisfy needs.

By Luther Weeks on August 25, 2011

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EVT/WOTE: Keynote – How salty is the soup? And why risk limiting audits are insufficeint.

By Luther Weeks on August 22, 2011

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet.

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Letter: Feedback after first meeting of the Election Performance Task Force

By Luther Weeks on August 18, 2011

Having reviewed the video, minutes, and the proposed items to be addressed by the task force, we offer the attached general and specific comments and suggestions in a constructive spirit, to forward your efforts to achieve the democratic goals that we all hold dear.

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Outlining a possible rigirous evaluation of Internet voting. And the ATM Fallacy, once again.

By Luther Weeks on August 16, 2011

The third FVAP UOCAVA workshop ended with a general agreement on a plan to move forward with a substantial project to evaluate the potential and security issues with Internet voting.

As a bonus we also recommend the same author’s recent post on the ATM fallacy

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CLARIFICATION: Official Post-Election Audit Report

By Luther Weeks on August 12, 2011

We were surprised and pleased to open the following letter from Deputy Secretary of the State, James Spallone, clarifying/correcting some of the impressions left by the report. We appreciate the clarification.

We remain concerned when the differences between machine counts and hand counts reported by several registrars of voters. We also continue to be concerned, that such differences are attributed to hand counting errors, without investigation.
ADDENDUM ADDED.

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EVT/WOTE: When is the CT Recanvass law totally inadequate?

By Luther Weeks on August 9, 2011

To be reasonably sure that the correct candidate is officially designated as the winner in a race with a write-in candidate, it would be prudent to assume the possibility of a 25% undercount of write-in votes. Then require a recount of all write-in votes in a race where the write-in candidate received at least 42% of the votes in a two candidate race (or 42% of the votes necessary to win in a more than two candidate race.)

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Heritage Foundation: Military Voting Rights Conference

By Luther Weeks on August 6, 2011

As one might expect a conference sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, introduced by former Attorney General Ed Meese, with keynote by Senator Cornyn, did get political at times. For those interested in Military voting and the risks of Internet voting, overall the conference was quite informative and provided a variety of views, even though it did not include computer scientists or security experts.

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Ballot Skulduggery in Wisconsin? Or Inadvertent Errors?

By Luther Weeks on August 2, 2011

Absentee voting runs the risks of errors and fraud beyond in-person voting. The latest example from Wisconsin: Is it fraud or is it error? For certain it is big money causing disenfranchisement and risking democracy.

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Ohio 2004: Case Not Proven – Smoke yet no fire

By Luther Weeks on July 30, 2011

Distortion obscures the real story and learning available from the 2004 Ohio case. This is a seriously risky and vulnerable system, both from its complex, weak design and outsourcing to partisans. Elections results should be accumulated by computer and human systems that we can trust.

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