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What is lacking in Connecticut’s Post-Election Audits (Part 1)

Some contend that Connecticut has the Nation’s toughest post-election audit law. We contend it has several holes, is not well executed by officials, and if a voting machine were ever to count inaccurately the audit would be unlikely to recognize that. Almost certainly, there will be bills and proposals to weaken and strengthen the audit debated this year. Today, we will focus on:

A Very Critical Vote That will Not Be Audited

From the law:

The offices subject to the audit pursuant to this section shall be, (1) in the case of an election where the office of presidential elector is on the ballot, all offices required to be audited by federal law, plus one additional office selected in a random drawing by the Secretary of the State, but in no case less than three offices, (2) in the case of an election where the office of Governor is on the ballot, all offices required to be audited by federal law, plus one additional office selected in a random drawing by the Secretary of the State, but in no case less than three offices, (3) in the case of a municipal election, three offices or twenty per cent of the number of offices on the ballot, whichever is greater, selected at random by the municipal clerk, and (4) in the case of a primary election, all offices required to be audited by federal law, plus one additional office, if any, but in no event less than twenty per cent of the offices on the ballot, selected in a random drawing by the municipal clerk.

Overall pretty simple, if not clear in detail. Certain offices are randomly selected for audit, so every office is subject to selection. The random selection is designed to catch error fraud, by randomly selecting districts any place there might be an error fraud would be equally likely to be audited, so it seems. And by randomly selecting offices for audit then any vote miscounted by error or fraud would be equally likely to be audited, so it seems.

I am sure you have guess by now, based on my saying “so it seems”, that it is actually not so. Just one of the problems is the word “Offices”. We do not just vote for offices, we also vote on questions on the ballot – a bonding issue, a budget in some towns, a change in a charter, or a change in the State Constitution. None of those are subject to audit and thus if there were an error or fraud anywhere or everywhere in Connecticut on one of those issues, an audit would never catch it.

Town have all sorts of bonding issues, budges, a change in a charter, or as my town and New London have had, a vote to remove or replace public park land. Do we have to point out that people care about those issues, voters, officials, and many insiders in the election process? Should those issues be exempt from the audit? We say no!

In 2008 there was and in 2014 there will be high interest questions on the ballot. In 2008 voters decided if we wanted a Constitutional Convention – a few days before the election polls said the vote would be ‘yes’. There was a campaign by officials to promote ‘No’. No won by a sizable margin. We think that was likely the correct winner based on the actual votes. Yet if it had been a bit closer, because of an error later discovered by activists, the result might have been in question, the error in the initially reported results might have been enough to avoid a recanvass to make sure a close vote was accurate. Should this question have been exempt from the audit? We say no!

In 2014 voters will a see a question to decide if we will give the Legislature the power to decide on early voting, including unlimited absentee voting for Connecticut – both of which are currently prohibited by the Constitution.

November is a long way off. But, in the Legislature and with the public there are strong feelings on both sides of this question. We expect it to generate a lot of op-eds, news stories, letters to the editor and blog posts. What if the vote is close? What if the vote is close, but just over the threshold for a recanvass? Should this question be exempt from the audit? We say no!

Should questions be exempt from the audit? We say no!
They are not exempt from the possibility of error and fraud.

PS: Here is an example of another gap that at minimum threatens credibility, a local election, very hotly contended, run by a single registrar <read>

Testimony: National Popular Vote

Yesterday was the annual public hearing on the National Popular Vote Compact. Yet it was different, the most thorough and thoughtful hearing I have seen in ten years of testifying and observing the Government Elections and Administration Committee. Unfortunately, it was not televised – you really needed to be there.

You can read our testimony here: <read> Here is the summary:

My testimony this year is similar to that in past years. Nothing has changed to make this Compact any safer, nothing to make it less risky to democracy. Yet, events over the last year make the dangers all the more apparent.

In the past year, partisans in various states continue to promote voter Id laws, and with the Supreme Court’s effectively eliminating the voting rights act, it has been open season in other states for laws aimed at suppressing the vote. That is the kind of inequality that is contained by the Electoral College.

I understand the theoretical advantages of the national popular vote, yet there are extreme risks in its mismatch with our existing state-by-state voting system.

Many concepts such as Nuclear Power, GMOs, DDT, and Fracking have benefits, but also have unintended, unrecognized, and unappreciated consequences. This Compact is another

What often appears simple is not. The Compact would cobble the national popular vote onto a flawed system designed for the Electoral College. It does not change that system. It heightens the risks.

This is not a partisan issue. It has been opposed by prominent members of both major parties, including:

Susan Bysiewicz (D), former Secretary of the State

Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), former California Governor

Mark Ritchie (D), MN Secretary of State and former President of the National Association of Secretaries of State

Daniel Patrick Moynihan(D), former Wesleyan professor and U.S. Senator

William Cibes (D), former State University System Chancellor

Major concerns include:

The 12^th Amendment and the Electoral Count Act which govern declaring the President have been called a “Ticking Time Bomb” because of strict rules, coupled with ambiguity, causing problems seen in 1876 and 2000. The Compact would exacerbate that risky system.

There is no official national popular vote number compiled in time, such that it could be used to officially and accurately determine the winner in any close election.

Even if there were such a number, it would aggravate the flaws in the system. The Electoral College contains/limits the risk and the damage to a few swing states. With a national popular vote, errors, voter suppression, and fraud in all states would count against the national totals.

There is no national audit or recount available for close elections, to establish an accurate popular vote number. Only in some individual states, if close numbers happened to occur in those states, would there be even a fraction of a national recount. About half of the states have audits or close vote recounts.

With the Compact there is every reason to believe that any close election would be decided by partisian action of the Congress or the Supreme Court.. As in Gore v. Bush, since the founding, close election controversies have all been decided in seemingly partisan decisions by Congress, special commissions, or the Supreme Court.

This Compact will not make every voter equal. The state-by-state variations in the franchise and access to voting will remain intact, enfranchising and disenfranchising different voters in states.

I urge you to consider the risks and chaos made possible if Connecticut were to endorse the National Popular Vote Compact, including reading the attached editorials and arguments.

You can read all the testimony from everyone, present and not, here: <read>

But that is insufficient to get a flavor for the hearings. The transcripts (available sometime soon) may help, but they cover a six and one-half hour hearing, only a small portion of which is represented by the written testimony.

Most of the hearing centered on just the issues I have been raising since 2007. They have never gotten as thorough an airing. It was not just the large number of individuals testifying, prepared to discuss those subjects, it was also the Chairs setting the tone, and members all asking great questions and getting thorough answers.

Rep McGee started by explaining that many of his constituents did not understand how the Electoral College worked, followed by Rep Becker starting the discussion of the difficulties in determining the winner under the National Popular Vote. Most of the rest was those in favor attempting to describe how well the system would work under the Compact. While those of us opposed refuted those arguments with facts, and speculation based on past actions of officials.

Some dismissed that any Secretary of the State anywhere, or Registrar in Connecticut would avoid accurate counting of a critical tally. Dismissing past inaccurate counts in NY, as a poor example, since they did matter in the result – that in a critical situation the counts would have been resolved sooner. Others like me are not so sure given the actions of Catherine Harris in Florida, Ken Blackwell in Ohio, and the history of 1876.

I pointed out an instructive situation close to home. In Bridgeport Connecticut in November 2010, the Secretary of the State stood by helplessly as a very questionable count was recorded, and many questioned the result in a close race for Governor. In the best interests the Secretary and the local Registrars worked out an agreement to audit all the districts to determine accurate counts. Yet, that agreement was nixed by the lawyers for Bridgeport, acting in what I assume was their view of the best interests of Bridgeport. Those inaccurate, questionable results remain on the books today. Nothing has been done to improve the system so that in a future debacle the Secretary or Registrars, no matter how well intending, could end up in a similar bind.

(I lead the Citizen Recount of Bridgeport in 2010. We concluded that many votes were not counted and totals inaccurately accounted, yet that the correct Governor was certified. Beyond ballots not being counted , there were in some districts many more ballots than checked-in voters, and in other districts many fewer ballots than checked-in voters. Nobody has or has reason to dispute our results. Yet they are not official and we still have a system we cannot trust to correct itself officially.)

3rd Harford Elected Registrar maybe eliminated by Council

So may the 1st and 2nd Elected Registrars

The Courant has long been opposed to a third and even a second Registrar in Hartford. The Editorial Board would rather see the Council appoint registrars, as authorized in a Charter Revision last year. As we explained at that time, contrary to claims by the Courant, the proposal could result in an untrained, unqualified, politically appointed registrar or registrars.

Now we learn that the Courant and supporters now believe they got something else wrong in explaining the Charter Revision to the public.

So may the 1st and 2nd Elected Registrars

The Courant combines news reporting with an Editorial: Third Registrar Is Nonessential Employee -Third Registrar Is Nonessential Employee <read>

The Courant has long been opposed to a third and even a second Registrar in Hartford. The Editorial Board would rather see the Council appoint registrars, as authorized in a Charter Revision last yea r. As we explained at that time, contrary to claims by the Courant, the proposal could result in an untrained, unqualified, politically appointed registrar or registrars.

Now we learn that the Courant and supporters now believe they got something else wrong in explaining the Charter Revision to the public, when they said:

The charter changes would allow the city to appoint “one or more” trained, nonpartisan registrars. It would require a small change in state law, which hopefully will be forthcoming.

Now we have the news in the Editorial:

Now another twist. It was widely thought that the city would need a change in state law to
implement the charter change. But this month lawyers for the council and the secretary of the
state reviewed the statutes and think the change can be implemented without a statutory change — in other words, a town can choose to appoint rather than elect registrars, as municipalities can do with town clerks. “The statutes seem to contemplate that registrars can be appointed, if allowed by charter,” said Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state.

But not necessarily only one, if they are now correct the partisan Council may need to appoint at least two:

But there caveats. While not crystal clear, the laws appear to require that there be two registrars
and that they be from the major parties. This is because the registrars have duties involving party primaries, and only the major parties are allowed to hold primaries. Nonetheless, if you are paying the bills, two registrars is better than three.

Citizen Study Finds State Audit Flawed From the Start

Crosspost: Coalition Districts in the Random Drawing Study, Nov 2013

Citizen Study Finds State Audit Flawed From the Start

Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Inaccurate List of Election Districts

Based on concerns with the integrity of the random drawing in previous elections, the Coalition initiated a project to thoroughly check the integrity of the list of districts in the drawing for the November 2013 election.

Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks noted, “The credibility of our elections depends on the integrity of the Post-Election Audits. The integrity of the audits in-turn depends on the integrity of the drawing.”

The report found,

Fewer discrepancies in the random drawing list than were found in November 2012 and efforts by the Secretary of the State’s Office to improve the accuracy of the list.
Seventeen (17) voting districts missing from the drawing list or recanvass list. The selection of two (2) fewer districts for audit than required by law.
The audit law calling for the random selection and auditing of 10% of voting districts is not being faithfully executed, leaving the integrity and credibility of the audit and our election system open to question and expose it to the potential of future manipulation.
The law intended to fix past problems is not being followed. — A failure rate of 67
Fully complying with the law is complicated by the loose definition of voting district in the law.

Crosspost: Coalition Districts in the Random Drawing Study, Nov 2013

Citizen Study Finds State Audit Flawed From the Start

Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Inaccurate List of Election Districts

The report found,

Fewer discrepancies in the random drawing list than were found in November 2012 and efforts by the Secretary of the State’s Office to improve the accuracy of the list.
Seventeen (17) voting districts missing from the drawing list or recanvass list. The selection of two (2) fewer districts for audit than required by law.
The audit law calling for the random selection and auditing of 10% of voting districts is not being faithfully executed, leaving the integrity and credibility of the audit and our election system open to question and expose it to the potential of future manipulation.
The law intended to fix past problems is not being followed. — A failure rate of 67
Fully complying with the law is complicated by the loose definition of voting district in the law.

Time to ignore Voter Id, Voting Rights Act, and other attempts to game the system.

Yesterday, the Government Elections and Administration Committee voted to take up the National Popular Vote Agreement/Compact. Today we have a CTMirror story on the efforts of highly funded national lobbyists working with Democrats and Republicans to tout the bill. Reading the article, one would get the impression that only Republicans are against the bill

In the last year, not much has changed. Except that the risks should be more obvious given the activity in some states to suppress votes, especially after the Supreme Court effectively ended the Voting Rights Act.

Yesterday, the Government Elections and Administration Committee voted to take up the National Popular Vote Agreement/Compact. Today we have a CTMirror story on the efforts of highly funded national lobbyists working with Democrats and Republicans to tout the bill: Presidential popular vote advocates lobbying CT GOP <read>

Reading the article, one would get the impression that only Republicans are against the bill. We posted this comment:

As well as Republicans in favor, there are Democrats opposed. Some of those on record as opposed include Bill Cibes, Susan Bysiewicz, the Late Dainel Patrick Moynihan, and Mark Ritchie SOS of Minnesota. Most see that the flaws in our system exposed by the 2000 election would be exacerbated by this compact. One issue would be the wide open contest to increase and decrease votes by all sides.Cognitive dissonance or lack of rational thought are needed to explain how a person can support this and simultaneously be disturbed by the voter suppression efforts launched after the Supreme Court ended the Voting Rights Act, and have been underway before that.

For the reasons to oppose the Compact, and for details on the objections by well respected democrats, you can review our testimony from last year: <read> And these Op-Eds from last year <here> and <here>

Early Voting, the good, the not-so-good, and the ugly

For Connecticut, we favor in-person early voting, if we are willing to pay for the convenience. We oppose no-excuse absentee voting for security reasons.

Yet another study confirms previous studies that Early Voting Reduces Turnout: Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform <read>

From the abstract:

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout . The impact s of these reforms va y in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections . The results show that election day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout while the most popular reform – early voting – is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself . We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.

Instead of reading the paper, we suggest the authors’ article summarizing their findings: The Case Against Early Voting <read>

The authors actually contend more reasons for concern than a bit of reduced turnout:

As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration notes in its new report, “no excuse” early voting — meaning it is open even to those who don’t qualify for an absentee ballot — has grown rapidly in recent decades in what the commission called a “quiet revolution.” In the 2012 election, almost one-third of ballots were cast early — more than double those cast in 2000 — and 32 states now permit the practice, allowing citizens to vote an average of 19 days before Election Day.

The commission rightly notes that early voting has its advantages for individual voters — not just avoiding long lines, but in many cases also getting to vote on weekends without having to miss work or school. But early voting run amok is bad for democracy. The costs to collective self-governance — which the report refers to only in passing, in a single sentence — substantially outweigh the benefits. Instead of expanding the practice, we should use this moment as an opportunity to establish clear limits on it before it becomes the norm.

Why? For all its conveniences, early voting threatens the basic nature of citizen choice in democratic, republican government. In elections, candidates make competing appeals to the people and provide them with the information necessary to be able to make a choice. Citizens also engage with one another, debating and deliberating about the best options for the country. Especially in an age of so many nonpolitical distractions, it is important to preserve the space of a general election campaign — from the early kickoff rallies to the last debates in October — to allow voters to think through, together, the serious issues that face the nation.

The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election, as some states allow. A lot can happen in those 46 days. Early voters are, in essence, asked a different set of questions from later ones; they are voting with a different set of facts. They may cast their ballots without the knowledge that comes from later candidate debates

In reality, the authors apparently are not against all early voting, just long early voting periods:

Moreover, there are other ways of achieving some of the benefits of early voting, such as old-fashioned absentee ballots or setting up more polling places. Even a limited few-days-early voting period could convey most of the advantages of the practice while limiting the most severe democratic costs.

Early voting is a matter of degree: Even Election “Day” lets people cast ballots at different times. But at the moment, there is no upper bound at all on the growing practice, and the president’s commission made no mention of such an option. With the group’s report opening a new round of discussion over voting policy, now is the time to consider whether the “quiet revolution” of early voting has gone too far.

For an alternative view, we have a critique from Doug Chapin: So Yesterday: “The (Rather Outdated) Case Against Early Voting” <read>

There are, to be sure, evidence-based arguments that early voting isn’t the turnout machine it’s often sold to be – indeed, Barry Burden and three colleagues have a provocative new paper that suggests that early voting actually DECREASES turnout in the absence of opportunities for same-day registration. There is also a growing realization of the need to do cost-benefit analyses of lengthy voting periods and identify the best time to open the process when significant numbers of voters are ready to take advantage of early voting.

But the argument that early voting deprives voters of an opportunity to cast ballots in a simultaneous expression of public opinion “at a particular moment” is rather outdated given the current state of the field. That sense is amplified by the authors’ recommendations for fixing the problem via “old-fashioned absentee ballots or setting up more polling places” – options which are unattractive or unavailable to many election officials.

For Connecticut, we favor in-person early voting, if we are willing to pay for the convenience. We oppose no-excuse absentee voting for security reasons.

For many of the reasons pointed out by the authors of the Politico article, we favor a relatively short period of early voting, perhaps a week or ten day period, not necessarily every day, with a variety of convenient times during the day, evenings, early morning and weekends.
In Connecticut, with local election management, such early voting could be expensive, especially for small towns that have a single polling place on election day. There are some compromises and and alternatives: Provide for in-person absentee-like voting, which would has the security benefits of in-person early voting and some of the disenfranchising aspects of absentee voting; bite the bullet and do for voting what we have done for probate: Regionalize, Professionalize, Economize.
We are opposed to no-excuse absentee voting because of the known and proven fraud issues. We point out that its long period does not reduce the concerns with a long in-person early voting period.

Why do we ignore science and facts?

We have often been perplexed when the public and the Legislature ignore science and simple facts. No more so than when it comes to Internet voting where there is overwhelming recognition of the risks by scientists AND overwhelming evidence that individual, business, and government computers have been repeatedly compromised.

New research provides some clues why.

A recent article and a recent book hint that it might be human nature.

The Hartford Courant’s Science Columnist, Robert Thorson, looking at climate change and a new Yale study says: When Politicians Fight, Facts Take Beating <read>

The study attributes the problem to political conflict:

Psychologist Dan M. Kahan and his colleagues proved that political fighting diminishes our ability to think about evidence-based science.

Think climate change, which was well understood 20 years ago, yet conflict persists. Ditto for gun control, for which the data are compelling. Think nuclear power, genetically modified foods, national health care, commercial drones or any politically contentious topic that could be easily solved with evidence-based reasoning.

Congress is not alone. All of us are vulnerable to bias, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and tunnel vision. In short, seeing what we want to see, rather than what actually is.

This study’s technical name for this phenomenon is the “Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis” or ICT. It says cultural conflict disables the faculties we use to make sense of science that would better inform decisions. The key word here is “disabling.” When there’s no conflict, we’re fine. When there is, we’re disabled.

The ICT thesis is true. We maintain our allegiances by skewing our thinking. Kahan’s clever experiment yielded results so robust that no political partisan could explain them away…

The results are compelling. Both conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats did far worse on tests of evidence-based thinking when the scenario was politically contentious than when it was not. The more political things became, the more the subject’s mental biases kicked in to disable their reasoning skills. And the more scientifically inclined an issue was, the worse they did, perhaps because they were more facile at manipulating the numbers to match their versions of reality. Importantly, self-identified liberals were no more open-minded than conservatives, even though that’s how they’re defined.

Scientists like me have long tried to explain bad policy decisions on a dearth of scientific data or the lack of voter science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Others fault an excess of highly paid lobbyists. Kahan’s study tags the ICT as a major culprit, advocating that governments must “adopt measures that effectively shield decision-relevant science from the influences that generate this reason-disabling state.”

That might explain some of the problems we see in some election integrity issues. Democrats and Republicans are generally on opposite sides for:

Voter Id where Republicans ignore the facts of very very little votER fraud.
Absentee voting or mail-in voting, where Democrats ignore the facts of frequent cases of organized votING fraud, and the obvious opportunities.
National Popular Vote where both sides ignore the technical risks.

Internet voting seems different in character, where the parties are aligned, not divided, and in many cases, like Connecticut, the entire Legislature ignores all the risks and unanimously passes Internet voting two years in a row. Even the Governor, knowing the risks and unconstitutionality as articulated in his veto message, signs the bill the second time it hits his desk. By and large, the public goes along with favoring Internet voting, especially for the Military, saying “If we can bank online, why can’t we vote online?”, completely ignoring science, the frequently documented hacks, and NSA disclosures.

A perfect storm: a harder to verify application than banking, a less technically competent/financed election function expected to provide security, and high apparent motivations for insider manipulation of election results. Yet, in the face of all this legislative and public support for Military Internet Voting. Why?

One clue may come from the the Trolley Problem as covered in the book Moral Tribes recently reviewed here. As we said in the review:

How do we make moral decisions and cooperate or not? It is the result of two systems, thinking fast and slow – a fast intuitive system and a slower logical system. Much of the book and the interesting aspects center around how these systems work, studying the brain, often by experiments in ‘trolleyology‘ – we can save five people who will be killed a trolley by sacrificing one, either by throwing a switch, throwing a fat man onto the tracks, or by other variations. Why do we make different choices based on the method of sacrifice? Research reviewed in the book provides an answer, and demonstrates the two modes of moral choice, their flaws, and their limits – limits we are challenged to transcend.

From the book:

(p. 111) Turning the trolley away from five and onto one…makes utilitarian sense and doesn’t trigger much of an opposing emotional response, causing most people to approve. Pushing the man off the footbridge…likewise makes utilitarian sense, but it also it also triggers a significant negative emotional response, causing most people to disapprove.

(p. 129)Thus, we see dual-process brain design not just in moral judgement but in the choices we make about food, money, and the attitudes we’d like to change. For most things that we do, our brains have automatic settings that tell us how to proceed. But we can also override those automatic settings, provided we are aware of the opportunity to do so and motivated to take it.

I speculate:

Providing for online voting by the military evokes a strong emotional response along the lines of “Solders in remote battlefields and other isolated locations obviously have challenges in voting. They are voluntarily sacrificing for us. My experience tells me that online voting would be a convenient way for them to vote. We must to do anything and everything for them to make up for our lack of sacrifice…”.
The risks of online voting are a secondary, rational risk, no matter how great or small, our emotional brain does not see that risk. It only sees the sacrificing soldiers.
The alternative facts are only available to the rational brain:
- That all forms of Internet voting, online, email, and fax, face documented obvious, yet not intuitive threats;
- That online voting is more risky than online banking; That online banking has proven vulnerable to the tune of several billion dollars in losses each year, yet those losses are not seen by individuals;
- That other states have had great success with providing blank ballot download, effective help, and effective web information following the MOVE Act;
- That states such as RI, touted as successful with Internet voting have on a small percentage of votes returned by fax, and the similarly “successful” WV pilot did not convince their legislature to move forward.
Legislators are additionally at risk of being emotionally persuaded that voters will interpret any vote against soldiers and being weak on the military, security, and defense.

So, we have quite a challenge in personally and collectively making the rational decision. Not just for online vetoing, but for other issues that get highly emotional, either from political polarization for emotional blockage

Denise Merrill does the right thing – by all voters and the CT Constitution

AP Story: Conn. official recommends out-of-state military voters download ballot but still mail in vote <read> <update – the report>

Last year the CT Legislature, ignoring the technical impossibility of secure, secret Internet Voting, ordered the Secretary of the State and the Military Department to provide secure Internet voting for Military and their dependents. This was in spite of testimony and reports from Computer Scientists, experts from Homeland Security, experts from the National Institute of Standards, and Department of Defense reports that Internet voting could not be made secure. She was also to report back this year with any legislation required.

Merrill has remained steadfast in her commitment to protect us from the risks of Internet voting. She is recommending a system to aid the Military in downloading blank ballots and mailing them in quicker. A system that has proven successful in other states. She also reminds the Legislature that Internet voting (including Fax and Email return) would be unconstitutional in Connecticut, requiring a Constitutional Amendment to remove the right to a “secret vote”. (Some argue it is a right that can be waived by a voter. We contend it is every voter’s right that no other voter’s vote can be document, such that it can be sold or intimidated).

Meanwhile, the bill’s proponent, Senator Gayle Slossberg, plans to continue efforts to defy Science and the Constitution.

There is a dispute in the facts between Secretary Merrill, the Election Assistance Commission, and Senator Gayle Slossberg on the current rate of Military vote return (61% vs. 94%). In any case if Senator Slossberg is correct, and we adopted the Rhode Island system she recommends, it is only used there for 3.2% of the military votes returned after being in place for years, thus we would have a whooping 64% return rate. The 94% sounds really good, they rate right up there with the return of domestic AB votes, and up there with other states that already use the system recommended by Secretary Merrill.

We would encourage the Secretary and the Legislature to provide the same system to all overseas voters, including those beyond the Military that serve us, such as State Department employees, Military Contractors, Peace Corps, NGO staff, and business personel.

See all our posts on Internet voting, and its history in Connecticut <here>

Election Day [School] Holiday

Reports that the Secretary of the State is asking for uniform school calendars for election day school holidays.
There are several good reasons to close schools on election day. Yet, not for primaries.

Reports that the Secretary of the State is asking for uniform school calendars for election day school holidays. Register Citizen: Merrill: Close Connecticut schools on Election Day <read>

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill is encouraging Connecticut schools to close on Election Day.

Merrill appeared Monday before a task force that’s developing guidelines for regional educational service centers to use in creating uniform regional school calendars.

Merrill said more than 100 schools where polling places are located are already closed on Election Day for mostly student security reasons. In many of those districts, the teachers use that day for professional development. She said she’s recommending that other districts follow suit.

Merrill said schools make great polling places. They’re centrally located and have adequate parking.

She urged the task force to consider that state law requires primary elections to be held in the same polling place as the general election.

There are several good reasons to close schools on election day:

They make great polling places.
Security may be an issue in some places, yet parking is likely an issue almost everywhere.
There is a great program for using High School students as poll workers. It is highly neglected in towns, even those with school holidays. It should be encouraged and expanded.

We would caution against closing for primary elections. The law should be changed to allow registrars to agree and reduce the number of polling places for primaries, when turn-out is relatively low. Making primaries school holidays would also be quite a challenge for a school calendar, since municipal primaries are not held uniformly – some in April, some in September, and most towns in most years do not have municipal primaries. Probably not good policy unless both days were holidays, since otherwise candidates would be under pressure to primary or not based on causing or avoiding a school holiday.

Voting as safe as the big banks. Hypocrisy to go around.

Another installment in our observations of Cognitive Dissonance in Connecticut, especially the Legislature. The latest dissonance/hypocrisy involves the breech of personal information by state contractor JP Morgan Chase.
All we are left with is that Internet Voting is no more safe than Internet banking. Actually less so because vote fraud, without double entry bookkeeping is harder to detect and prove.

Another installment in our observations of Cognitive Dissonance in Connecticut, especially the Legislature. The latest dissonance/hypocrisy involves the breech of personal information by state contractor JP Morgan Chase. From the Courant: Tax Refund, Other Debit Card Data Exposed In Computer Breach <read>

When the state suddenly ended its longstanding practice of sending paper checks for tax refunds nearly two years ago, some taxpayers criticized the decision to provide refunds via debit cards.

Now, the state is scrambling as some data on those tax-refund cards may have been exposed to potential identity theft.

State Treasurer Denise Nappier announced Thursday that the personal information on some prepaid debit cards was exposed during an attack on the computer servers of JP Morgan Chase, the international banking giant that oversees the debit card program for Connecticut.

The computer breach covers multiple states, and 14,335 accounts were exposed in Connecticut, Nappier said. Nearly 7,000 of those accounts involved taxpayers seeking refunds, and the remainder covered items like unemployment benefits and child-support payments that are now issued on debit cards. Those included more than 4,400 accounts at the state Department of Social Services, nearly 3,000 accounts at the Department of Labor, and seven at the Department of Children and Families.

Actually sounds like pretty standard stuff these days. Company servers are breached or somebody steals a State laptop with data that should or should not be there etc. The public effected will be offered a number of months or years of free credit monitoring. But this is an election year and politicians are running for Governor.

Last year Senate Republican leader John McKinney of Fairfield raised concerns when his constituents complained about the switchover on tax refunds, saying the decision had been made unilaterally without notifying the state legislature beforehand.

When told Thursday about the security breach, McKinney said, “You gotta be kidding me!”

McKinney, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, immediately called for a public hearing to obtain a full explanation of the details of the breach. He had sought a similar hearing nearly two years ago to answer questions about security and why JP Morgan Chase was

chosen for the job. The Democratic-controlled legislature, however, rejected the idea of a hearing and said the switch was a decision by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration.

“We were told this was a perfect solution,” McKinney said in an interview Thursday. “We were told this was foolproof and secure, and obviously the administration was wrong.”

State tax Commissioner Kevin B. Sullivan, a former lawmaker who served in the state Senate with McKinney for nearly six years, started laughing when he heard that McKinney was calling for a new hearing.

“Sen. McKinney wants to have a hearing on everything, and I appreciate that his gubernatorial campaign needs” publicity, Sullivan said. “His response to everything is to have a hearing.”

Sullivan said that no hearing is necessary and that state officials are working with the bank to resolve the issue.

So where is the hypocrisy?

CTVotersCount.org readers will recall that the Legislature did have hearings on Internet Voting this year, and clearly received information that the Internet voting was unsafe for voting. We provided testimony and documentation that computer and security experts, including Federal Government experts agree the Internet is unsafe for voting.

Where was Rep McKinney on that? He voted for it, as did every other Representative and Senator, democrat and republican.

In 2012 Internet voting was put into an unrelated campaign finance disclosure bill by parties unknown. Such a provision, without hearings, is known as a “rat’. The bill itself had no hearings either and passed both houses, only stopped from becoming a law by the Governor’s veto.

There is no shortage of hypocrisy to spread around since the Governor signed this year’s bill despite his veto message from last year.

All we are left with is more proof that Internet Voting is no more safe than Internet banking. Actually less so because vote fraud, without double entry bookkeeping is harder to detect and prove. We also have, yet another, lesson on human nature, driven to believe what we would want.