Absentee Ballot Fraud In Ohio

Another election, followed, as usual, by reports of absentee vote fraud. This time from Ohio. The good news is that under Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, it was not the Ohio of 2004. It is an Ohio where problems are detected, investigated, and hopefully corrected, prevented, and prosecuted.

Coalition Report: Bridgeport Recount and Recommendations

Votes were miscounted and miscalculated adding votes to each candidate, but not changing winner in the race for governor

Each candidate for the governor’s race gained votes in the recount when compared to the officially reported results, as follows: Foley (+174), Malloy (+761), and Marsh (+19). These differences parallel candidate shares in the initially reported results. Counting of all ballots in the governor’s race resulted in differences in many counts, totaling 1,520 votes miscounted, of these 1,236 were initially under reported and 284 were initially over reported.

Simply printing more ballots only reduces the chance of the specific problem that occurred in Bridgeport. There are other causes that could result in a municipality having to scramble to photocopy ballots or perform hand counting such as a massive power failure or ballots lost in a fire, flood, or accident shortly before or during Election Day.

Bridgeport Registrar offers fix, Secretary responds

[Republican Registrar of Voters] Borges also said that the Bridgeport registrar’s office is stretched too thin.
[Bysiewicz] feels the Bridgeport office is well-staffed — it spends $551,466 annually, most of that in salaries for two registrars

Courant: Legislative Agenda for Voting

We agree that the legislature should give attention to election reform, but should consider carefully the reforms they choose. The history of voting is knee-jerk reactions to problems which bring more of the same. We should tread carefully, but consider a comprehensive solution for elections that might well include regionalization, higher training, qualifications, and civil service election management.

Why We Need Audits and Recounts: AccuVote Missed 0.4% of Ballots in Aspen Elections

How do we know that our Dieblod/Premier/Dominion AccuVote-OS voting machines count ballots and votes accurately in each election, in each polling place? Maybe sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.

Vote-by-mail cheaper, but advocates have concerns

CTVotersCount is opposed to expansion of main-in-voting including no-excuse absentee voting, primarily for reasons of security and secondarily because it does not deliver on its promise of increased participation. Today we highlight a comprehensive article covering why it tends to be popular and pleasing to election officials in California, but tends to reduce turnout and raises a variety of concerns from advocates.

Rep Spallone named Deputy Secretary of the State

Reports over the weekend said that Rep Spall0ne had been offered the job. Now it is official.

NY Judiciary: Answers more important that Accurate Answers

“New York’s audit laws require a further hand count of paper ballots, accepting the machine results and declaring a winner outweigh the public’s right to know who really won the election”

Sadly, after three years and six major elections Connecticut has none of the three voting integrity items Bo recommends for New York.

CT Post: Recount shows widespread miscalculations

Given the circumstances I am not surprised that the Coalition found such differences. However, understanding how it happened does not justify complacency, it calls for appropriate action. Connecticut voters deserve a more accurate and resilient system. Democracy requires it.

CTVotersCount – Brief Hiatus

I will be taking a brief hiatus from posting at CTVotersCount. We will be very busy counting some ballots in Bridgeport