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.

Hartford Courant: Agenda: For The Legislature – The state budget isn’t the only thing needing fixing <read>

Among other things it covers elections and voting:

Elections reforms. Let’s not let embarrassing memories of the Bridgeport vote-counting fiasco dim before taking corrective action in a number of election-related areas: campaign financing, voter turnout and election procedures.

The legislature should consider:

•Ending the Citizens’ Election Program’s subsidy of public money to candidates in uncontested races for the legislature and statewide offices. Giving money to candidates with no opponents is a bad use of public funds when the state faces a projected budget deficit of at least $3.5 billion.

•Taking steps to increase voter turnout — pitifully low during the 2010 primaries — by authorizing no-excuse absentee balloting (a form of early voting) and Election Day registration, once a statewide voter registry is complete. Other forms of early voting, such as by mail, should also be considered.

•Vesting the state with more power to run elections. At the very least — in light of Bridgeport’s unthinkable mistake in failing to buy enough ballots for the November election — the secretary of the state should be formally tasked with making certain that municipalities have enough ballots on hand. State law should decree that towns order an ample number — say, enough for 50 to 75 percent of registered voters — with the state paying for them.

•Ensuring that elections are run competently by requiring that local registrars are trained and certified, like town clerks. One nonpartisan certified registrar in each municipality might be the ideal. Certainly there is no need for one registrar per political party.

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. For example the well intended Help America Vote Act (HAVA) hastily passed to solve the problems of Florida in 2000, it brought some good reforms where states chose optical scan voting, along with huge costs and risks for those that chose touch screen voting. Some of the problems we are dealing with are because HAVA insufficiently researched and safe voting technology and the methods required to go with it.

Election reform should be based on solid research and experience, rather than myth. We point out that the latest research refutes the Courant’s claim that no-excuse absentee voting increases turn-out, yet in every election we learn of organized absentee vote fraud. <read> We do support election day registration because that same research demonstrates it does increase turn-out and it has not led to fraud.

We agree that the Secretary of the State should have more power to oversee elections and ballots should be ordered. But we would prefer a rigid minimum formula for ballot orders based on past turn-out in similar elections, with local officials required to follow the formula and allowed to increase the order based on local knowledge. Ordering 50% across the board would be woefully inadequate in many towns who regularly win the Democracy Cup for much higher turn-out, even 75% would not be enough in some. But either would be huge overkill in many referendums and primaries, especially in large cities.

The Courant’s idea of centralized ballot ordering would add considerable work to the Secretary of the State’s Office and should be carefully considered, planned and budgeted before it is implemented, perhaps it may even require Constitutional Amendments to accomplish. Currently ballots are ordered by towns that determine and specify the candidates and hold drawings for candidate positions on the ballot. Since ballots often differ district by district in 800 plus districts spread across 169 towns it would be quite a task for the Secretary of the State to create all orders centrally and anticipate local conditions to estimate ballot counts in a primary in Bridgeport or a referendum in New London.

We would also order caution in changing to a single elected registrar in every town. The courant has been in favor of this idea for some time. <read> Connecticut has little experience in electing non-partisan elected officials. One example is the Probate Court which most agree did not work out. The solution there was a combination of regionalization and increasing qualifications. That might work for elections as well. We note that in this same editorial, the Courant would go further for the Probate Court and make it an appointed office.

More probate reform. Connecticut should also move on to Phase 2 of its bold reform of the ancient probate court system by requiring the appointment, rather than election, of judges of probate. They should be chosen on a merit basis.

Appointment, supported by such respected figures as Hartford Judge of Probate Robert Killian, would remove a huge conflict of interest inherent in the election of judges: campaign contributions from attorneys and others with business in the probate court.

The system has been consolidated and modernized. Now it’s time to protect judges from undue influences.

We should tread carefully, but consider a comprehensive solution for elections that might well include regionalization, higher training, higher qualifications, and civil service election management. We note that probate has noting to do with politics so that electing election officials may be, if anything, more risky that electing probate judges.

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.

The reason we need paper ballots, audits and recounts is to verify that citizens’ votes are counted accurately. 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.

In Aspen, Colorado they did not, missing 11 ballots out of 2544. Premier AccuVote Machines Missed 0.4% of Ballots in Aspen Elections <read>

On May 5th 2009, Aspen (CO) held municipal elections for mayor, two city council seats and a ballot measure. Pitkin County’s Premier (formerly Diebold) AccuVote optical scan voting machines failed to register 11 (0.4%) of 2,544 ballots, which was discovered due to the ballots also being counted on Election Day at a central location with a separate system. Premier is one of the three largest providers of voting equipment in the United State…

To underscore the importance of the missing 11 ballots, it is not uncommon for manual recounts of optical scan elections to find new valid votes that were discounted by the optical scan voting machine, either because the machine detected a stray pen mark as an over-vote (voting for more candidates than allowed), or because a voter marked a choice too lightly or outside the designated spot on the ballot, such that the machine detected an under-vote, or skipped race. Such “found” votes are common in manual recounts where humans can recognize a voter’s intent that the optical scan machine could not. In the recent Aspen election, the independent scanning of ballots did indeed allow election officials to find at least one such valid vote missed by the AccuVote voting machines.

However, this problem is unrelated to the discovery that nearly a half percent of ballots – 11 ballot cards in all – went entirely unrecorded by the AccuVote machines. According to Aspen City Clerk Kathryn Koch, both the poll book record of the number of voters who voted and the TrueBallot record of ballots processed agree that there were 2,544 ballots. The AccuVote machines, however only recorded 2,533 ballots

Unfortunately, differences in counts between humans and AccuVote-OS optical scanners in Connecticut audit reports are routinely dismissed as human error rather than potential scanner errors to be investigated. See the Coalition Audit Reports.

This is also why CTVotersCount stands for stronger audits and actual recounts in very close elections in Connecticut. We also are strongly support auditing by machine in Connecticut, with systems like the one used in Aspen by TrueBallot, and others by ClearBallot, and TEVSystems – provided Connecticut implements such systems in ways that are transparent, provide for public verification, and confidence.

Sadly these same ballots are being withheld from public scrutiny to verify this result.

Guest Post: Discrepancies in vote counts

The SOTS [Secretary of the State’s] reporting of election results appears to have improved since 2008. That year, many votes on the Working Families Party line went unreported or were lumped in with the counts on the Democratic line…

However, the SOTS or the town officials seem to have overlooked some votes for Independent gubernatorial candidate Tom Marsh: in Bozrah and Shelton, the SOTS reports 0 votes while the Hartford Courant reports 27 and 198 respectively.

[CTVotersCount applauds David Bedell for his extensive efforts in checking results and encourage officials to correct the vote counts reported as official by the Secretary of the State and for his posting his report here. It is important that all votes be accurately reported for third parties because that is the basis for ballot access in future elections.]

This year, after some initial confusion over some towns (e.g., East Windsor), the WFP results are now on the SOTS website; at least, there are no zeros in the WFP column. However, the SOTS or the town officials seem to have overlooked some votes for Independent gubernatorial candidate Tom Marsh: in Bozrah and Shelton, the SOTS reports 0 votes while the Hartford Courant reports 27 and 198 respectively.

[Some examples sent David sent earlier – Editor]

Shelton Votes For Governor

There appears to be an error in the election results for Governor published by the SOTS. For the town of Shelton, SOTS reports 0 votes for Tom Marsh (Independent). But the Shelton Town Clerk reports 198 votes for Marsh (see email pasted below):

—————————————-
> From: m.domorod@cityofshelton.org
> To: dbedellgreen@hotmail.com
> Subject: RE: omitted election results for Shelton
> Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:22:53 -0500
>
>
>
> Mr. Bedell,
>
> Tom Marsh received the following votes in the City of Shelton:
>
> Districts 1 & 2 = 59 votes; Districts 3,4,5 & 6= 139 votes ; total of 198
> votes
>
>
> Margaret Domorod
> City/Town Clerk

Darien Votes for Comptroller

There appears to be an error in the election results for Comptroller published by the SOTS. For the town of Darien, SOTS reports 0 votes for Joshua Katz (Libertarian) and 0 votes for Hugh Dolan (Independent). But the Darien Town Clerk reports 66 votes for Joshua Katz and 70 votes for Hugh Dolan (see email pasted below):

—————————————-
> From: DRajczewski@darienct.gov
> To: dbedellgreen@hotmail.com
> Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:50:48 -0500
> Subject: RE: omitted election results for Darien
>
> Mr. Katz received 66 votes and Mr. Dolan received 70 votes.

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.

Reports over the weekend said that Rep Spall0ne had been offered the job. Now it is official. Via the Middletown Press <read>

“Jamie and I have formed a strong partnership over the many years we have worked together to pass numerous laws to strengthen the integrity of our elections and open up our democratic process. I’m thrilled to be able to continue this partnership, and I no doubt will be relying on Jamie’s intellect and experience as we set out to reform our election laws and improve services for the businesses who register with our state,” said Secretary-elect Merrill at a news conference at the Legislative Office Building to introduce Spallone as Deputy Secretary of the State.

James Spallone was first elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 2000, and has been re-elected five times. He represents the 36th House District, comprising the towns of Chester, Deep River, Essex and Haddam. Since 2009, Spallone has served as co-chair of the legislature’s Committee on Government Administration and Elections (GAE), overseeing all issues related to elections, campaign finance reform, ethics, freedom of information and government contracting.

“I am very happy to be joining our new Secretary of the State and honored that she has chosen me to fill this key position in her administration,” said Representative Spallone. “Clearly, the 2010 election showed us that we have more work to do to improve the way our elections are run in Connecticut. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the General Assembly and local election officials throughout the state to reform our election process. As someone who has operated my own law practice and represented small businesses, I also look forward to helping entrepreneurs in Connecticut and working with the Malloy administration to improve the business climate in our state.”

I expect he will also continue to work with, and look forward to working with election integrity advocates as well.

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.

Last week the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition completed the recount of all ballots in Bridgeport in conjunction with the Connecticut Post Newspaper, with the cooperation of the City of Bridgeport and its election officials.

Here are links to the CTPost’s coverage today, followed by my summary opinion:

Lead story: Recount shows widespread miscalculations <read>

If you cast a photocopied ballot in last month’s gubernatorial election in Bridgeport, there’s a 1 in 4 chance your vote was miscounted.

How we counted: How the recount was conducted <read>

How election day went: Diaries tell of election chaos <read>

Results in more detail: Bridgeport election recount – The totals <read>

Columnist Opinion: Time for Bridgeport’s Democratic registrar of voters to go <read>

An editorial: Voting process in need of reform <read>

Officials in Bridgeport and in Hartford need to take a look at the process. For one thing, the secretary of the state should have the authority to intervene in the case of, say, a municipality that has ordered an obviously inadequate number of ballots.

Wading through the bags of ballots and talking with the officials involved also hammered home the point that an election is a human endeavor, a relatively complex exercise run by people who are well-intentioned but just as susceptible to error, fatigue, frustration and anger as any of the rest of us.

In an ideal world, an election being the cornerstone of our way of doing things, it should be carried out with a nonpartisan professional at the helm and not left the sole responsibility of party loyalists like registrars of voters.

My Summary Opinion

I add my thanks to everyone involved: The Connecticut Post for its leadership, initiative, and support of the recount; the City of Bridgeport, especially the election officials for their open and friendly cooperation; the other Coalition members: The Connecticut League of Women Voters, Connecticut Common Cause, and The Connecticut Citizens Action Group; and most of all the fifty-six (56) citizens committed to democracy who volunteered over 115 full days to the project, on short notice, many taking 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 full days and more to contribute to this effort.

Time for Bridgeport’s Democratic registrar of voters to go

CTVotersCount – Brief Hiatus

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

I will be taking a brief hiatus from posting at CTVotersCount. We will be very busy counting some ballots in Bridgeport, see the CTPost article: City agrees to unseal ballots for recount by Post, citizen groups <read>

BRIDGEPORT — City officials have agreed to unseal ballots cast in the governor’s race and make them available for a recount beginning Monday by the Connecticut Post and three nonpartisan citizen groups…

A recount “will answer the questions that a lot of people are asking,” said Luther Weeks, executive director of CTVotersCount.org and the CT Citizen Election Audit Coalition. “It will resolve those questions.”

Representatives from Hearst Connecticut Media, which owns the Connecticut Post, Weeks and Cheryl Dunson from the League of Women Voters of Connecticut will meet with city officials Tuesday to work out the logistics of the ballot recount.

Bysiewicz: Secretary of the State powerless to enforce election laws, count ballots

We agree with Secretary Bysiewicz that we cannot look to her to deliver on voting integrity. We also cannot rely on each and every one of the 339 elected registrars for voting integrity.

We caution agains patchwork solutions. The problem goes well beyond the number of ballots printed; voting integrity and confidence call for a much broader study and action than proposed by the current Secretary

Hartford Courant op-ed by Susan Bysiewicz, Secretary of the State: Getting Vote Right Takes Time, Money <read>

In Connecticut, our Constitution and subsequent laws dictate that elections are the province of local government. So, the legal responsibility for carrying out elections falls squarely on the shoulders of our 169 municipalities. From large cities to tiny towns, all bear the same legal responsibility to plan for and execute our elections.

The secretary of the state’s office provides legal advice and guidance to cities and towns on how to interpret federal and state election mandates, and how those laws should be implemented. Ultimately, however, it is the democratically-elected, local registrars of voters who are empowered to make decisions about how elections are run. The secretary of the state has no legal authority to compel each town to follow the law, and the power to enforce election laws resides with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

We agree with Secretary Bysiewicz that we cannot look to her to deliver on voting integrity. Unfortunately what happened in Bridgeport, incidents across Connecticut, and the Coalition Audit Reports demonstrate that we also cannot rely on each and every one of the 339 elected registrars for voting integrity. Our best hope for integrity and confidence is the people and the media utilizing the Freedom Of Information Act, followed by future leadership by the next Secretary of the State and and action by the next Legislature.

We caution against patchwork solutions. The problem goes well beyond the number of ballots printed; voting integrity and confidence call for a much broader study and action than proposed by the current Secretary in this op-ed:

We must make sure that what happened in Bridgeport never happens again. I urge the General Assembly to pass and Governor-elect Malloy to sign a measure ensuring that a sufficient number of ballots are provided for every registered voter in Connecticut.

There are several problems associated with our election system, not the least of which is the city by city, town by town, variations in following unenforceable regulations and procedures promulgated by the Secretary along with unreliable election accounting. Reactive, patchwork thinking, lack of transparency, and resistance to change is what got us here in the first place. As we said in our recent editorial: Understand all the Symptoms, Explore the Options, Then Act

Update: CTPost article presents history of Connecticut law and how we got here and how other states determine the number of ballots to print: Bridgeport voting mess puts focus on local control of elections <read>

Bridgeport hearing expose issues beyond ballot shortages

“Training was not evident. Professionalism was not evident,”

Update: OnlyInBridgeport video of former GAE Chair, Rep Chris Caruso. Articulates the problems, possible solutions, and obstacles, including impeachment

Hartford Courant, AP coverage <read>

when she arrived at her polling place around 1:15 p.m., she found poll workers yelling at one another. She said she was handed a ballot that looked like a photocopy without any explanation.

“It made me feel very uneasy. Training was not evident. Professionalism was not evident,” she said.

Representative Chris Caruso, former Chair of the Government Administration and Elections Committee once characterized our voting system as the “Wild West” was there:

State Rep. Chris Caruso, D-Bridgeport, was among those who called for the resignation of Sandi Ayala, the city’s Democratic registrar of voters…

Caruso said he believes many voters were disenfranchised on Election Day, discouraged from voting because they had to wait two or three hours for a ballot. He called on the U.S. Attorney to investigate what happened in Bridgeport and whether any criminal activity took place. A similar request was made by the state Republicans.

Some residents said they were embarrassed by the election fiasco, saying it’s the latest black eye for the city that has been besieged over the years by budget problems and a former mayor who went to prison on corruption charges.

Yet others spoke up for the registrars, saying they were overworked on Election Day, didn’t have enough help and face difficulty finding competent people to work at the polls once a year.

Update: More reporting from CTNewsJunkie <read>

Update: OnlyInBridgeport video of former GAE Chair, Rep Chris Caruso. Articulates the problems, possible solutions, and obstacles, including impeachment <view>

74 Districts in 55 towns chosen for audit. And the surprises just keep coming.

At the drawing the Secretary announced an agreement with the Bridgeport Registrars that the 12 districts with the copied, hand counted, ballots would be voluntarily audited with all the ballots for the race for Governor counted. Surprise Surprise! It seems that not everyone in Bridgeport government agreed to the agreement

Yesterday, the Secretary of the State with the assistance of members of the Connecticut Citizen Audit Coalition chose 74 districts. This is the 1st drawing I have not attended since they started in August 2007, but the Coalition including CTVotersCount was well represented.

We had understood from Deputy Secretary Mara that the registrars would have until 12/1 to complete the audits, so we were surprised when the press release said they had to be complete by next Monday 11/22. The law says they must be complete two days before certification which is next Wednesday, although we recall past audits that went beyond. In any case, we and the registrars are all scrambling, especially since the drawing was four or five days later than usual. Hard for us to fault the registrars for not complying with the Secretary of the State’s procedures which require a three day public notice before the audits occur.

The surprises just keep coming!

Bridgeport rejects ballot recount

HARTFORD — Bridgeport officials, citing a lack of authority for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, have rejected a request to recount ballots in the 12 city voting precincts that were kept open an extra two hours on Election Day.

Bysiewicz’s office said Arthur C. Laske III, deputy city attorney, called Monday afternoon to announce that the city would not be redoing the count that they originally performed in the days after the Nov. 2 election.

Laske’s call occurred hours after a Bysiewicz news conference announcing that Bridgeport’s voting registrars agreed to perform an additional review of the ballots as part of a routine statewide recount of totals in 74 polling precincts.

We would like to say more, but we have audit observers to schedule.

Update from CTNewsJunkie <read>

In a joint statement Bridgeport Attorney Mark Anastasi and Deputy City Attorney Arthur Laske said Anastasi spoke with an attorney in the elections division of Bysiewicz’s office Monday afternoon to tell them “no one in the city had agreed to such a recount.“

Bysiewicz’s office has no legal authority to force them to do a recount, but those polling places were left out of the random drawing for the statewide audit of 74 polling places.

“It seems the Secretary was mistaken both as to whom her office spoke with from the City of Bridgeport and what was said on Monday,” Anastasi and Laske said. “The Bridgeport Registrars of Voters had preliminary discussions with Deputy Secretary of the State Leslie Mara about this subject, but neither Registrar agreed to the proposal or received a promised follow-up call about the proposal.”

While a voluntary audit may ensure confidence in the results of the governor’s race, Anatasi and Laske said “The City can find no legal authority which either requires or even allows the State or the City to conduct such a recount.”

“We believe that the Secretary of the State is equally aware of this absence of legal authority,” the two attorney’s said.

Courant Editorial: “State Must Review Ballot Blunders” – We agree and disagree

We note that there are two registrars in Bridgeport, elected to use their two eyes and two brains to represent opposing interests toward voting integrity and access. Today, would the Courant maintain or reconsider its past editorial position proposing a single registrar per town, not in the interest of integrity, but in the interest of saving money?

Courant Editorial: State Must Review Ballot Blunders <read>

There are areas where we agree and disagree with the Courant:

Hartford Courant: “By all means, Gov. M. Jodi Rell should assemble a bipartisan panel to review Bridgeport’s ballot blunders — with an eye to preventing mistakes, not to casting suspicion on the outcome of the Nov. 2 governor’s election, the closest in 56 years.

Legislative leaders ought to have a say in the panel’s makeup, since they’ll have a say in the remedies.”

We agree with appointing a group to study our current election system and recommend solutions. The Legislature obviously should be involved. We are less confident that the lame duck Governor should appoint the panel. There should be a strong emphasis on addressing the whole system of election administration in Connecticut. As we said two days ago, Editorial: Understand all the Symptoms, “Explore the Options, Then Act”

CTVotersCount: “Editorials and legislators are already reacting and taking sides to solve the “ballot printing” problem. It is critical to understand the entire scope of issues and inadequacies in all aspects of the election process; then review all the options, look for local best practices in Connecticut and explore what other states do well; then and only then develop a comprehensive cure. This is the common sense way to proceed, unfortunately it is hard work from start to implementation. Otherwise we are destined to react to one problem at a time, with one expensive, disruptive band-aid after another.

In its last paragraph, the Courant hits the nail on the head:

Hartford Courant: “State leaders have to do better at ensuring competently run elections in towns and cities at risk of being overwhelmed by the task.”

And the Courant is correct in recommending a second set of eyes:

Hartford Courant: “Somewhere in the process, probably in the secretary of the state’s office, a second set of eyes should check the number of ballots ordered, at the least.”

We would go further with a recommendation that almost everything to do with election management requires a second set of eyes, usually with opposing interests: Ordering ballots, reviewing petitions, voter registrations, ballot observation and transport, when ballots are counted by hand, and every step of the way in accumulating vote totals across the state.

We note that there are two registrars in Bridgeport, elected to use their two eyes and two brains to represent opposing interests toward voting integrity and access. Today, would the Courant maintain or reconsider its past editorial position proposing a single registrar per town, not in the interest of integrity, but in the interest of saving money? See our post: Downsizing Newspaper Recommends Downsizing Registrars. As we said then:

CTVotersCount: “Most of us would agree that Central Connecticut needs more than one daily newspaper. If there was any doubt it certainly was erased this week. On Monday the “New” Hartford Courant came out with its latest and most drastic downsizing. On Tuesday an editorial suggesting among other things that we should have a single elected registrar per municipality. However, downsizing to a single registrar will serve democracy no better than the continuous downsizing of the Courant…

For a city the size of Hartford there should be no problem having three registrars and the costs should be minimal. Each city sets the budget, salary, hours, benefits, and staffing of their Registrars Of Voters Office. Hartford could simply cut staffing and perhaps cut registrars’ hours or salary when three are elected to do the job of two. Just cutting a full time staff position would go a long way toward reducing most of the $200,000…

In Connecticut, perhaps electing two official registrars paid a small stipend to provide a check and balance over a professional civil service chief election official would provide the best of both worlds and would work for large cities. This would not work for small towns – a single chief election official and staff would need to serve several small towns – a change that would not easily be accepted in New England.

What clearly won’t work is half baked solutions.”