CT | CTVotersCount.org

Ignore this post – it is based on facts and reason.

Like Don Quixote, we have spend almost seven years tilting at myths. Unlike Don, we arm our posts with facts and reason. According to a new report, that is a losing strategy.

Note: That report itself is based on facts, reason, and that most untrusted Science, known as statistics. Therefore, it is unlikely that the report will make a significant difference.

Like Don Quixote, we have spend almost seven years tilting at myths. Unlike Don, we arm our posts with facts and reason. According to a new report, that is a losing strategy.

Note: That report itself is based on facts, reason, and that most untrusted Science, known as statistics. Therefore, it is unlikely that the report will make a significant difference. Yet, we remain committed to our best efforts to base our recommendations on facts and reason.

New York Times: When Beliefs and Facts Collide <read>

Do Americans understand the scientific consensus about issues like climate change and evolution?

At least for a substantial portion of the public, it seems like the answer is no. The Pew Research Center, for instance, found that 33 percent of the public believes “Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” and 26 percent think there is not “solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades.” Unsurprisingly, beliefs on both topics are divided along religious and partisan lines. For instance, 46 percent of Republicans said there is not solid evidence of global warming, compared with 11 percent of Democrats.

As a result of surveys like these, scientists and advocates have concluded that many people are not aware of the evidence on these issues and need to be provided with correct information. That’s the impulse behind efforts like the campaign to publicize the fact that 97 percent of climate scientists believe human activities are causing global warming.

In a new study, a Yale Law School professor, Dan Kahan, finds that the divide over belief in evolution between more and less religious people is wider among people who otherwise show familiarity with math and science, which suggests that the problem isn’t a lack of information. When he instead tested whether respondents knew the theory of evolution, omitting mention of belief, there was virtually no difference between more and less religious people with high scientific familiarity. In other words, religious people knew the science; they just weren’t willing to say that they believed in it.

Mr. Kahan’s study suggests that more people know what scientists think about high-profile scientific controversies than polls suggest; they just aren’t willing to endorse the consensus when it contradicts their political or religious views…

The deeper problem is that citizens participate in public life precisely because they believe the issues at stake relate to their values and ideals, especially when political parties and other identity-based groups get involved– an outcome that is inevitable on high – profile issues. Those groups can help to mobilize the public and represent their interests, but they also help to produce the factual divisions that are one of the most toxic byproducts of our polarized era.Unfortunately, knowing what scientists think is ultimately no substitute for actually believing it.

We see such from partisans of all stripes, when we work to disrupt the “common wisdom” on election issues, tilting with facts and reason:

Internet Voting. No matter the theoretical risks of the Internet attested to by Scientists, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and our CT utilities regulatory authority, and actual breeches by the NSA, foreign governments, bank fraudsters, and hackers, objections are met with claims of complete confidence in election officials to provide secure voting systems.
Voter Fraud. There is very little actual fraud by individual voters – the challenge is to get people to vote – very few illegal aliens would risk their deportation to vote. In any case, most cases of fraud or voting in error would not be prevented by voter ID.
Mail-in Voting (Absentee Voting). Here sides change. It is more convenient to vote by mail for many. Yet at what price. There is proven absentee voting fraud after almost every national election. Opening up to more mail-in voting, simply opens up more opportunity and benefit for fraud. Like climate change denial, we have many that deny the fact and opportunity.
Electronic Voting without audits and recounts. Officials and many in the public subscribe to the belief that “If it seems to work and I have noticed no problems, then it must be safe”. Just like nuclear power, DDT, and many other risks, our intuition can be wrong.

Until a year ago many thought that the NSA spying on everyone was a myth. Today, many still believe that “I have nothing to hide, so they can look at all my emails, bank accounts, and health records”. For those with those beliefs, please send me all your passwords (and be sure not to encrypt the email).

An afternoon at the Recount(?)

On June 24th there was a third budget referendum in Colchester, CT. There were separate questions for the town budget and the Board of Education budget, both previously twice voted down. This time the town budget passed by a margin of twelve votes and the BOE squeaked by with a margin of four votes.

This was actually the first time I have attended a recount in Connecticut. In the past I have attended about eight recanvasses. Every time, I have attended a recanvass, either as a member of the public or representing a party or slate, I have learned something. Most often a few good ideas, and new ways not to run a recanvass. This was an exception, I only learned good things. It was a thoroughly effective recount in all regards, and educational for me.

This was actually the first time I have attended a recount in Connecticut. In the past I have attended about eight recanvasses. Every time, I have attended a recanvass, either as a member of the public or representing a party or slate, I have learned something. Most often a few good ideas, and new ways not to run a recanvass. This was an exception, I only learned good things. It was a thoroughly effective recount in all regards, and educational for me.

The first thing I learned was the Connecticut law actually has a recount, yet unlike a recanvass it is essentially undefined! As far as I can tell, there is no definition, no requirements, no rules, no limits or restrictions on how it is conducted. A search of CT Statutes for recount shows it can be ordered by a judge in most elections and primaries, yet like most Connecticut statutes, leaving referendum rules all to each municipality.

In primaries and elections we have a close vote recanvass – when the margin is close there is a recanvass, a weak version of the recounts we have seen in Minnesota and Florida, with less rights to slates, parties, and opposing interests to closely observe the counting, with no rights to object. But at least in the case of Colchester, there is a provision for a close vote recount of a referendum in the town charter, if votes petition for the recount. <Colchester Charter>

Recount of Annual Budget Referendum or special referendums.
Should the vote cast at either the Annual Budget Referendum or a special referendum be decided by a
margin of less than 2.0% of those electors who cast votes, the vote shall be subject to recount upon the
petition of any of the Town voters. During the pendency of such recount, the Town may not take any
action whatsoever in reliance upon the outcome of the initial vote count.

It seems we need to be careful what we ask for, unless it is well defined! A recount could apparently be anything from that ideal we imagine, to perhaps just reading some tapes and forms again. I am not a lawyer, yet it seems one could argue for days in court what a recount should entail.

I was invited by individuals petitioning for the recount, those representing the ‘no’ position on the referendum. I am completely agnostic on this referendum – I am not a voter in Colchester, I have no knowledge of the issues and arguments for or against the budgets. I do enjoy attending and representing some faction in a recanvass (or a recount). especially if the faction needs help in understanding the process and their rights (so far, almost all do). Normally, I will represent any side that will have me, except where I have taken sides in the contest or would have the appearance of bias. Yet, my preference would be to represent apparent losers and outsiders – those not represented by the elected registrars and other election officials. That was the yesterday.

Representing a side means that I will give them my best advice, work to have a fair and observable recanvass/recount, yet at the same time not intentionally act to aid another faction. Usually, the apparent loser is still the actual loser after the recount/recanvass. To me, it is still a win if the recanvass/recount is fair, transparent, and results in the actual loser accepting the result of the recanvass/recount. That was the case today – I likely played a small part in that, but the credit goes to the ‘no’ faction, and the officials. It was an interesting, fair, and transparent process. (Not everyone has this same prospective. In my experience, it seems that many party lawyers scrutinize recanvasses jist enough to find errors, so that if they believe it would be beneficial, they could later challenge the result it court. I am all for such a challenge if it is justified, yet I would prefer an accurate, trustworthy result from the recanvass/recount as well.)

The two registrars assisting the Head Moderator, who led the recount. went will beyond the requirements of a recanvass, to provide a transparent, effective process, open to questions and objections. I wish it was always that way! Too often, some questions are not welcomed, most objections are unwelcome, objections cut-off, transparency to observe ballots limited, and the process not even meeting the inadequate recanvass procedures. Often factions are unaware of their rights, when they should be at least asking for even more. When I represent a faction, I insist on following the procedures, and at least ask for more.

Credit goes to the ‘no’ faction for thoroughly going through all the absentee ballot lists and questioning some items we did not understand – they were well explained by the registrars and town clerk, who was also present. They also closely scrutinized the absentee ballot applications – they found two that were apparently defective – I cannot say that officials officially agreed they were defective – a judge would likely have to finally rule on that.

There was considerable concern about absentee ballots. In the 1st two referendums there were 21 and 19 absentee votes. This time 90. According to the petitioners there was a strong campaign by advocates for ‘yes’ to get out the absentee vote. According to the registrars a major factor was that the third referendum was the 1st week of summer vacation, with many parents (likely ‘yes’ voters) on vacation. I noted that the absentee ballots were all half-sheet paper forms. Talking to the registrars it was motivated by saving money, since the minimum order of ballots is 100, and in the previous referendums, so few were needed. They were counted quite efficiently in four stacks, of yes-yes, no-no, no-yes, and yes-no, there were no partial votes. ‘no’ had won the polling place voting. ‘yes’ had carried the absentee votes.

So, we had an original four vote margin. With two defective absentee applications, that likely would bring the provable margin down to two. If the recount margin were two or less, one way or the other, then a judge would likely call for a re-vote, as the will of the legal voters could then not be determined.

As I suspected there were very few votes that could not be accurately read by the scanner, actually none where there was an issue of voter intent that would have been different for the scanner scanner count. Several bubbles were partially filled in and several ballots that the scanner refused to read, were hand counted. The final margin for the town budget remained at twelve. The final margin for the BOE budget was three – just one vote from a likely successful legal challenge.

Important lessons.

The recount was conducted so well, the relations between officials, ‘no’ faction, and ‘yes’ faction were so cordial that nobody for a moment, as far as I can tell, considered that the final count might be incorrect.
Opposition can work hard, yet remain cordial.
An effective, open process is worthwhile for everyone.
Every detail matters. It is important that every absentee ballot application be scrutinized by official to make sure that it is properly filled out, so that votes and whole elections are later not called into question.
It is important for concerned candidates and citizens to check such details.

What price convenience? Another confirmation that the Holy Grail of voting is not found in conventional wisdom

When you vote in November, consider: What price convenience? What cost convenience? What individual effort is Democracy worth?

To listen to elected officials and many activists, the Holy Grail of Elections, would seem to be Turnout. Given the emphasis you would think that almost nothing else matters: Integrity, candidate access, campaign finance, media bias, or costs – when focusing on turnout, it seems everything else is forgotten. A report from Ohio, confirms earlier studies that early voting does not increase turnout,

We posted a news item from Ohio, earlier in the week from the the Columbus Dispatch: Early voting hasn’t boosted Ohio turnout <read>

Early voting has not led to more voting in Ohio, at least not in terms of total votes cast.
A Dispatch analysis of the vote totals from the past three presidential elections in the state shows that overall turnout in the 2012 race, when Ohioans arguably had the most opportunities in state history to vote early, was lower than in the 2004 election, when there was virtually no early voting in Ohio.
Turnout in 2008, the first presidential race in which Ohioans had no-fault absentee voting and also the first time an African-American was on the ballot, was about 1 percent higher than in 2004.
“People who vote early are people who are typically going to vote anyway,” said Paul Beck, a political science professor at Ohio State University. “So, early voting hasn’t really succeeded in turning out more people to vote. We’ve made it a lot easier to vote, but on the other hand, some people are very discouraged about politics and might not care how easy it is to vote.”

This November voters in Connecticut will vote on a Constitutional Amendment to let the General Assembly to chose early voting methods, if any, for Connecticut. Conventional wisdom is that early voting will significantly increase turnout, wrong! That ignores the evidence. Proponents will tell us that there is almost no absentee voting fraud, wrong! that ignores the evidence.

We posted the evidence almost years ago: Researchers: Early Voting alone DECREASES turnout <read>

States have aggressively expanded the use of early voting, allowing people to submit their ballots before Election Day in person, by mail and in voting centers set up in shopping malls and other public places. More than 30 percent of votes cast in the 2008 presidential race arrived before Election Day itself, double the amount in 2000. In 10 states, more than half of all votes were cast early, with some coming in more than a month before the election. Election Day as we know it is quickly becoming an endangered species…

But a thorough look at the data shows that the opposite is true: early voting depresses turnout by several percentage points…Controlling for all of the other factors thought to shape voter participation, our model showed that the availability of early voting reduced turnout in the typical county by three percentage points…

Even with all of the added convenience and easier opportunities to cast ballots, turnout not only doesn’t increase with early voting, it actually falls. How can this be? The answer lies in the nature of voter registration laws, and the impact of early voting on mobilization efforts conducted by parties and other groups on Election Day.

That was just one, will conducted study. Here in Connecticut, Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill created an Election Performance Task Force. Election administration expert Doug Chapin summarized his review of available studies, covered here: Elections Performance Task Force: Technology Fair and Doug Chapin <read>

Early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and voting centers are strong trends. They can provide voter convenience. They can save money or add to costs. Data does not support significant changes in participation.
Once you start early voting, taking it away can have an impact, once people are accustomed to it. (As taking away local polling place voting may also have a similar impact)
Survey voters to determine their levels of satisfaction and confidence in the process.
Do not expect increases in participation based on changes or reforms in election administration. Satisfaction and convenience can be increased but not participation.

Thus the Ohio research tends to confirm the other studies. (We say “tends to confirm”. It is not as thorough a study as the early ones, since it covers whole statewide elections and is not a thorough comparison between matched districts in states with and without early voting – there are a lot of factors which affect turnout, so just comparing elections in a single state cannot attribute differences to any one factor.

Plus we highlight many instances of votING fraud after almost every election via absentee voting, in Connecticut and across the country <here>

Here is the bottom line:

Early Voting (unlimited absentee voting or in-person early voting) does not increase turn out. Alone it decreases turnout.
Election Day Registration increases turnout (Except perhaps in Connecticut, where we have implemented in a much less convenient way than in states where it has proven effective)
When Early Voting is combined with Election Day Registrati0n (maybe not in Connecticut) turnout is not harmed or helped by Early Voting.
In-person Early Voting would be expensive or impossible in Connecticut, given our New England style town by town election administration and jurisdictions. It might be done expensively, and in a way biased against some populations.
Fraud has been demonstrated in absentee voting. In Connecticut with excuse absentee voting, it occurs frequently.
It does increase convenience.

When you vote in November, consider: What price convenience? What cost convenience? What individual effort is Democracy worth?

The dirty secret(s) of vote counting

In college I followed our nationally ranked hockey team. With ringside seats at an ECAC semi-final game, we struck up a conversation with a referee, who frequently stood just in front of us on the ice. For a long while it was a tie, and we learned from him that refs do no like tie games, with the pressure on every call in a sudden death overtime. Elections can get rougher than hockey, there are more and tougher calls in close contests – calls that can easily expose the little know vulnerabilities of our election system and the flaws in the promise to “count every vote”.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee: Paul Mitchell: The dirty secret of vote counting <read>

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day.

A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work.

But that’s not what’s happening this year.

In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff.

But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.
With the spotlight on and representatives of each campaign lurking over their shoulders, elections officials are engaged in the painstaking process of validating ballots mailed in during the last days of the election or dropped off at polling locations. They are reviewing tens of thousands of provisional ballots used by voters who couldn’t get regular ballots at their polling places.

California doesn’t have the infamous hanging-chad or butterfly ballot, but there are damaged ballots and signatures that don’t match. Ballots are dropped off in the wrong county or mailed in the wrong envelope. Voters show up the day after the election and try to hand in their absentee ballot. Piles of ballots are marked “too late” because the mail arrived after Election Day.

The issue of signatures not matching is becoming an increasingly important wrinkle as more voters cast ballots by mail. Elections officials are reviewing more than 400,000 signatures of the 2 million early absentee voters in the June 3 election who signed registration 25 years ago. Similarly, few new online registrants realize that the signature on their registration form is actually their DMV signature, which could also be decades old. If non-matches can’t be resolved before Election Day, those ballots are invalidated.

All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

We do not routinely check signatures on absentee ballots. Would a court be receptive to a challenge based on checking and verifying signatures? Maybe not, but just the exposure of the lack of actual checking would decrease confidence in a close result.
Unlike several other states we do not require voters to sign in at polling places. That does preclude any checking and embarrassment. Yet, the absence of the signature would leave many questions of error and fraud unanswerable.
Remember that close election for Governor in 2010? Many recall that there were hundreds of ballots not counted yet a citizen recount showed that they tended to confirm the winner. How many recall that the system never recognized those votes, never addressed the question? How many know that the number of voters signed in did not match the number of ballots by large margins in several districts? In a really close election, checking those counts might expose a very soft underbelly – it has happened at least twice since, in other municipalities with little public concern.
We also must point out that most of these problems in California are all related to absentee ballots, in a state with a rising percentage of such ballots. We will have a question on the ballot this November authorizing the General Assembly to provide the same for the Nutmeg State.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 3)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts, covering 2009.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 2nd half of CTVotersCount posts from 2008. Continuing from there:

In CT we count most of the votes for most of the parties and most of their candidates, at most <Jan 2009>

Another month and more incorrect results are found from the CT election four months earlier <Feb 2009>

Voter fraud in CT makes national news <Feb 2009>

The limits of paper: Machine votes for wrong candidates, not noticed by voters who are blind <Apr 2009>

Also a problem if you don’t look at or can’t find the paper <Apr 2009>

No paper no problem – or just don’t look at it <Aug 2009>

Again, move along, you can’t see the ballots <Aug 2009>

Exporting questionable elections? <Oct 2009>

Haddam: Who won in ? Without ballot security, we will always have questions of credibility <Nov 2009>

Don’t count your ballots up in Massachusetts <Nov 2009>

We will leave it here until next time, we have completed 2009.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 2)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

Book Review: “Witness To A Crime” The result of three years of persistent, detailed investigation of the 2004 election in Ohio. This book proves several times over that the election was stolen. <Jul 2008>

French take back seat to no one, with differences between voters signed in and ballots counted <Jul 2008>

Partisan consultant behind election firewall in Ohio. Maybe nothing wrong, but certainly does not provide credibility <July 2008>

Was something being covered up? Election Observer Arrested – Taken Away In Handcuff <Sep 2008>

Palm Beach officials and machines can’t seem to get counts to agree <Sep 2008> <Oct 2008>

We’ve covered this several times since. Crime and Punishment: Election stolen from Popular Governor – he is punished – in fact he is still in jail <Aug 2008>

How could the Social Security Adminstration contribute to reducing voting integrity <Sep 2008>

CT accused of illegally purging voters <Oct 2008>

Another Audit – Another Diebold Error <Dec 2008>

Shelton Snafu <Dec 2008>

Eurekia! Or should we say just another bug <Dec 2008>

More errors in CT results <Dec 2008> As we predicted, even more <Dec 2008>

We will stop here. It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

Worse than Hurricane Sandy? As bad as climate denial?

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come <read>

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

We have been saying it over and over. In Connecticut, only the Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill gets it. The Senate and House have passed Internet voting twice, unanimously. Governor Malloy vetoed it the first time because it is risky and unconstitutional, nothing changed, yet he signed it the next time.

Its similar to ‘climate denial’, in that both ignore the risks, ignore the science. In Connecticut its thus proven that science denial is not just for Republicans – here its bipartisan and almost unanimous. We do not want to compare the two exactly. Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day.

The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about “email voting.”

Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says “The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required.”

But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong…

Speaking of around the world, Estonia is the current poster child for electronic voting. Estonians at home and around the world can vote online using a national ID card, a smart card. Clearly a system of digital national IDs has no chance of being adopted in the US, but for all its sophistication, the Estonian system is still vulnerable to tampering according to recent research…

In fact, it’s easy to find research by people who understand computer security pointing out the considerable risks from internet voting. There are other people who would like to increase turnout no matter what and who are happy to declare that all technical problems can be worked out by the experts. Well, the experts have spoken: Internet voting is not and cannot be made secure with current technology.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 1)

I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

A fellow integrity activist forward this a few days ago: It happens all the time: Interview with the consultant who discovered the Medford miscount <read>

Wow,” I replied. “If I’d discovered such a major error, I’d surely remember it!”

“Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time,” he said. “The details are always different, but there’s an endless number of ways the people who run our elections can botch them up. Every election has something.”

I glanced at my prepared questions and slid them into the wastebasket. Lordamighty, the guy who makes his living working with election records doesn’t even remember what I had considered a jaw-dropping discovery! Fortunately, I didn’t need to come up with new questions; Grebner was eager to talk.

“You want stories? I can tell you lots of stories.” he continued. “Everybody finds different ways not to follow the instructions.”

You read the post for a bunch of stories of election mess-ups recalled by one consultant. We just want to remind our readers and ourselves of some similar error discovered in Connecticut – what worries us are not those that are surfaced in time to correct results, or the ones surfaced eventually that did not change the results – its the ones never discovered or covered up. I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

Here are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, a selection from our over 900 posts:

Dan Rather Reports, was it really inadvertent hanging chads in FL 2000, a gross error, or intentional? <Aug 2007>

A New Britain Candidate’s company moving voting machines…not a great formula for confidence in our elections <Nov 2007>

A pretty obvious problem in accurate hand counting when no actual planning is involved <Nov 2007> Would we trust these people with petty cash? We trust them with our Democracy!

Half of Registrars Follow Last Minute Procedures <Jan 2008>

We won’t find many problems where there is a Blind Faith In our Scanners <Feb 2008>

Paper ballots useful, only if you don’t lose them <Jun 2008>

Gov loses election by fraud. Nice to know, but a lot better if the loser was not jailed <Apr 2008> He is still in jail. Pardon our upset and the Governor.

New Milford did not compute <Jun 2008>

It also helps confidence and integrity if the number of voters and votes is close (a Bridgeport preview of 2010?) <Jun 2008>

We will stop here, covering the 1st year of CTVotersCount. Perhaps we will continue this review soon.

Legislative Wrap-Up: One recommended bill passes – Electronic Check-in

It is often tricky to navigate the course of bills stuffed into other bills. At this point, as far as we can tell none of the bills we supported or opposed passed individually. We have scanned the 314 page ‘implementer bill’ checking each section and found only one bill that passed, one that we recommended – Electronic Check-in.

Every year many good bills passed by Committees never pass the General Assembly, the majority are never even brought up for debate. This year is an exception, only in that even less bills were debated than is normal for a ‘short session’. On the other hand we can usually celebrate several well-intended, but risky election bills that do not pass. Often risky bills are intentionally not debated, so that Senators and Representatives do not have to go on record for or against. Either way we celebrate when sanity prevails or insanity goes the way we find best for democracy.

It is often tricky to navigate the course of bills stuffed into other bills. At this point, as far as we can tell none of the bills we supported or opposed <here>, <here>, and <here> passed individually. We have scanned the 314 page ‘implementer bill‘ checking each section and found only one bill (Starting with Sec 23 on page 21) that passed, one that we recommended. As we said earlier:

Electronic Check-In

This bill allows for electronic check-in of voters. Once again this is a concept that we support, yet testified against the original which had many problems that went well beyond electronic check-in <testimony>

We are pleased to report that our objections have been addressed in a substitute bill approved by the Committee. So, we can fully support it going forward. <written testimony>

Common Sense: The good, bad, and ugly secret ballot

We often take for granted the idea of the secret ballot. One alternative to the secret vote is the public vote. Sometimes we would prefer a public vote, sometimes it is necessary,

Note: This is then ninth post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <next> <previous>

We often take for granted the idea of the secret ballot. We see elections in other countries with people putting a folded ballot into a ballot box. We go into a voting booth and want our privacy. Some want to conceal their vote from relatives, friends, employers, fellow union members, or church members. Yet there are alternatives and sometimes we want them, sometimes they are necessary.

Researching the history of the secret ballot, in The Hidden History of the Secret Ballot, a couple of years ago, I was surprised to learn:

It was implemented in the U.S. generally after the Civil War
It was implemented for partisan reasons – to suppress the black vote, under the assumption it would hamper the illiterate from voting.
There is also the tradition of the New England Town Meeting with voters standing or raising their hands to vote.

This year we have fought hard to protect the secret vote in Connecticut, yet not for partisan reasons. It has several benefits:

It keeps votes from being bought, sold, or intimidated – prior to the Civil War votes were regularly bought and voters under peer and other pressures to vote in particular ways.
It helps the losers accept the election result as the actual will of the people.

One alternative to the secret vote is the public vote. Sometimes we would prefer a public vote, sometimes it is necessary:

Our representatives in the Legislature, Congress, and most public bodies vote in public. Not so long ago, committees in Congress voted in secret. Members could tell both sides of the public and lobbyists that they agreed with them and it was ‘others’ who voted the wrong way, blocked, fixed, or promoted legislation. Without a public vote we would have no idea how our elected officials actually voted. No way to hold them individually to account.
Where votes are proportional, they need to be recorded and verified by ownership. Examples include stockholder votes or condo associations where some votes are based on ownership proportions.
A public vote is much easier to verify. After every close election we hear charges by the losing side or their supporters than a particular vote was incorrectly counted – by a candidate or party in Connecticut – or a government official unhappy with the declared winner in another country. Sometimes those charges may be true. In every case it reduces the trust in the process and in democracy.
On the other hand, a public vote can also lead to charges of payments or intimidation deciding the election.

The Connecticut Constitution gives us the right to the secret vote. In considering the Constitutional Amendment this year, we note that it represents a third alternative: A semi-secret vote, if anything a worse alternative than either a secret vote or a public vote with the disadvantages of each. It would allow a special, very vulnerable class of voters, deployed military, to waive their right that their vote be secret – a right we claim is not theirs, but every voters’ right that everyone’s vote be secret. It would have none of the advantages of a public vote, since nobody knows if the soldiers votes are known, only perhaps, a few insiders may know. There would be no public verification, even for the soldier.

One final example. Last year we had a petition circulated in our condo complex to ask the Board to rescind a vote to remove part of a border fence. It became very hot issue. Over two-thirds of the residents signed the petition. The contingent in favor of removing the fence charged that many people were intimidated in signing the petition, others mislead, and others did not know what they were signing. There probably were some cases where each of those concerns were justified. We have had similar changes in every public vote. There are two issues: 1) What would be the actual free choice of the majority? 2) How can the losers accept the result? The answer is to actually conduct a secret vote – yet it must be in a way that everyone trusts the process.