Post-Election Audits | CTVotersCount.org

Voting machine investigation leads to serious issues and cover-up

This is serious stuff. The words that come to mind are: Illegal, unacceptable, unconscionable, ridiculous, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.

Brad Friedman articulated the details last week <read>

Forensic Analysis Finds Venango County, PA, E-Voting System ‘Remotely Accessed’ on ‘Multiple Occasions’ by Unknown Computer

Battle for independent election investigation rages in rural Republican county, pitting renegade Election Board against County Commission, giant E-Vote firm ES&S…

What is wrong in this situation?

Illegal software found on vote accumulation machine
On several occasions the system was accessed remotely, unauthorized
Evidence of an illegal flash drive mounted on the system
The log shows out of sequence events
The Election Board that should be leading the charge to get to the bottom of the problem is fighting to cover-up the evidence and avoid investigation
The vendor, ES&S who should be offering to assist in the investigation is keeping the code secret and suing the investigators to stop, to keep the evidence hidden
There is no paper record of the votes such that investigators and citizens can determine if votes or elections were comprised

This is serious stuff. The words that come to mind are: Illegal, unacceptable, unconscionable, ridiculous, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.

Hats off to the citizens of Pennsylvania who fight for voting integrity, the researchers at Carnegie-Mellon, and the interim Election Board.

According to the Initial Report from a landmark independent forensic audit of the Venango County, PA, touch-screen voting system — the same system used in dozens of counties across the state and country — someone used a computer that was not a part of county’s election network to remotely access the central election tabulator computer, illegally, “on multiple occasions.” Despite the disturbing report, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG and posted in full below, we may never get to learn who did it or why, if Venango’s County Commissioners, a local judge, and the nation’s largest e-voting company have their way. And that’s not all we won’t get to find out about.

The battle for election integrity continues in Venango, with the County Commissioners teaming up with e-voting vendor Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) on one side, and the county’s renegade interim Republican-majority Board of Elections on the other. The Commissioners and ES&S have been working to spike the independent scientific forensic audit of the county’s failed electronic voting machines that was commissioned by the interim Board of Elections. Making matters worse, the Board has now been removed from power by a county judge, a decision they are attempting to appeal as the three-person board and their supporters continue to fight the entrenched establishment for transparency and accountability in the rural Western Pennsylvania county…

Omaha-based ES&S, which had issued no objections prior to the start of the study, but changed its mind quickly after it began (as we detailed in an Exclusive report in late October) has now hardened their position, sending threatening legal letters to both the county and the two computer scientists. The e-voting firm has warned them they are likely to face a lawsuit if they do not agree to complete confidentiality and if results of their analysis are released publicly without their prior review and approval…

There were real, not just theoretical, concerns motivating the investigation in the first place:

As the analysis finally began, Election Integrity advocate Marybeth Kuznik, founder of the non-partisan watchdog organization VotePA.us explained that the Board was calling for the investigation after the county had experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

While reporting on the Venango Board’s efforts to get their analysis under way during one of our regular fill-in stints as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show in late October, we received an unexpected call from Adams to offer more details on why his Board had sought the forensic audit.

“It started with an election in 2008 when the machines were basically showing a large number of undervotes,” he explained. “And then there were candidates for positions in the county and they had zero votes, but there was like 250 or 260 undervotes.”

“Wait a minute, there were people who had zero votes on the ballot? Is that normal?” we interrupted to ask.

“No. No, it is not normal,” he responded directly, describing the anomaly as “a red flag.” When pressed to explain why he believed the the County Commissioners and their legal representatives had been working so hard for months to keep the audit from happening, Adams told us bluntly: “They know there’s something wrong.”

This provides one more reason to scrap unverifiable election systems without a voter verifiable paper record in favor of more economical, auditable optical scan technology. But that is not enough!

Every state, every ballot should be subject to sufficient post-election audits. But that is not enough!
Strong security and chains of custody is needed for ballots.
And a total audit of voting systems and election systems should be required: e.g. Do pollbook counts match ballot counts? Are voters given a fair opportunity to vote? Are absentee ballots properly secured and submitted? Is there any evidence of machine tampering or irregularities?

UPDATED: What is “statistically insignificant”?

There is no agreed upon level of difference that would be considered “statistically insignificant” in Connecticut.

In another nearby town officials are concerned about the cost of audits.

Update: One of the Greenwich Registrars has commented on the first story below and corrected some misinformation.

by Fred DeCaro III
12:46 pm on Sunday, December 4, 2011

It is a shame that poor “reporting” and the absence of fact-checking led Mr. Weeks to comment on this story.

The “reporter” of this story simply copied from a Greenwich Time story, including mistakes in that story.

First, he places the term “statistically insignificant” in quotes. This is not a quote from me, but a quote from the Greenwich Time news story the “reporter” copied from.

Second, because the “reporter” did not verify anything, and merely copied from Greenwich Time, he copied their erroneous statement that 1,250 ballots were hand counted. There were 2,500 ballots counted by hand, and the discrepancy was .36%, which is under the threshold mentioned by Mr. Weeks, who is a well-respected CT election watchdog.

Most disturbing to me personally is when the “reporter” uses inflammatory language and says “the registrars reportedly decided that since the discrepancy was “statistically insignificant” that they wouldn’t bother to take the time to investigate the error.”

Not only is the phony quote used again, but the word choice of “wouldn’t bother to take the time” makes it seem like we didn’t care about the discrepancy.

Together as Republican and Democrat Registrars we made the decision that spending an additional $240 an hour of taxpayer money (with a minimum of 2-3 more hours necessary) to research this matter would not enhance public confidence in the process. I doubt very many Greenwich taxpayers would disagree with that decision.

Greenwich Patch: Voting Machine Audit Takes Nine Votes From Marzullo <read>

A state-mandated hand recount of votes cast in the Nov. 8 election in two of Greenwich’s polling places to determine the accuracy of the new electronic voting machines on Thursday reportedly revealed that Democratic Selectman Drew Marzullo received a “statistically insignificant” nine fewer votes than were originally tabulated by the machines…

The registrars reportedly decided that since the discrepancy was “statistically insignificant” that they wouldn’t bother to take the time to investigate the error

Revised comments: There is no agreed upon level of difference that would be considered “statistically insignificant” in Connecticut. The nine votes out of 2,500 in this case represents just 0.36% of the votes which is approaching the 0.5% threshold for a recanvass. To me anything over that threshold or anywhere near it is significant. Especially since we do not even consider differences in the audit attributable to scanners’ inability to read voters’ intent. We could benefit by established standards for accepting counts and for triggering further investigations.

In another Fairfield County town, officials are concerned about the cost of audits. The Daily Weston: Weston Officials Blast State’s Election Audit <read>

“Am I happy about this? Of course I am not happy about it. This is ridiculous, it’s an unfunded mandate,” said First Selectman Gayle Weinstein…

The purpose of the audit is to make sure voting machines are working correctly, Merrill said. “With this audit, we now must take the step of checking the machine totals from Nov. 8 to ensure the accuracy of our optical scanners. We are committed to making sure Connecticut voters have continued confidence that their votes were recorded accurately, and that’s why these independent audits are so vital.”

The actual hand counting of the three races, Weinstein said, will happen Saturday at Town Hall. But she said the audit is unfair because the town must pay poll workers to spend the day counting votes. Weinstein estimates the audit could cost taxpayers $2,500.

“We have to sit here and count each ballot by hand. I can’t believe it,” said Laura Smits, the Democratic registrar of voter. “I am hoping we get this finished in one day, but who knows. This is costing us a lot of money.”

We were in Weston to observe the audit. It was very well conducted and efficient. If we had not read the article beforehand, we would have never guessed there was any official in Weston concerned with cost. All seemed concerned with performing the audit as intended.

The audit likely cost a bit less than $2500, perhaps $1,500, which would have been about $0.60 per ballot, or about $0.06 per ballot cast in the election statewide given the 10% audit. Perhaps also around 7% of the costs of the ballots printed for the election statewide or less than 1% of the cost of running the election statewide. See <Election Costs $ – Democracy? Priceless!>

Scanners like ours: Optical scanner counts differ for same ballots

There should be an investigation, however, we suggest that determining the cause is not a complete cure. I could happen again. It could have happened in the past. Maybe in Connecticut.

Brad Friedman reported the story last week <read>

A close race on election night. Rescanned to check but the other candidate won. Then they did a hand count and confirmed the original result. UT like Connecticut is fortunate to have chosen optical scanners with voter completed paper ballots. But we need to verify the accuracy of scanners with audits, recanvasses, and recounts.

The first “recount” of Provo’s Municipal Council District 1 ballots — carried out on the same op-scan systems that tallied them in the first place — was held yesterday, only to be abruptly called off when the results were found to be “extremely in favor of the opposite candidate.”…

“The numbers were varying too much,” Utah County Chief Deputy Clerk/Auditor Scott Hogensen tells the Deseret News about the District 1 race. “It became obvious the machines weren’t counting things correctly.”

But whether the Diebold op-scanners tallied the ballots inaccurately on Election Day or during the so-called “recount” remains unknown at the moment.

According to Deseret News, “Morrow said she asked for the recount to be done by hand in the first place but the request was denied.”…

two hand-counts on Wednesday have now confirmed the accuracy of the original optical-scan count giving the election victory to Gary Winterton after all. The “recount” on the same op-scan systems seem to have been inaccurate, while the original count was accurate. We still don’t know why, of course.

It was not a small, trivial difference, we are talking over 700 votes!

No word yet on why the second scanner might have miscounted. There should be an investigation, however, we suggest that determining the cause is not a complete cure. No matter the cause:

It could happen again in Utah or Connecticut
Another time it might be the original scanner, not the second one, and/or election day officials making the error
It might be far enough off that there is no automatic recount or recanvass
It might not be the machine, it might be procedures, yet exonerating the machine does not provide comfort, whatever the cause it can happen again in Utah or Connecticut
Perhaps it has happened before – maybe last year in Connecticut one or more of the differences between hand counts and machine counts might not have been human errors as assumed by the Secretary of the State’s office. <read>

We leave with this further item from Brad illustrating the tendency for officials to leap to unfounded, yet assuring conclusions based on assumptions:

Amusingly, and for reasons unknown, [Utah County Chief Deputy Clerk/Auditor Scott] Hogensen told Deseret News that, according to the paper, he “does not believe machine malfunctions affect the outcome of any other races in the county.”

This has happened a couple of times before with other scanners. <one example><another>

73 Districts in 44 Municipalites selected for November Post-Election Audit

UPDATED: Today we assisted the Secretary of the State in randomly selecting 10% of the districts in the November election for the post-election audit.

Today we assisted the Secretary of the State in randomly selecting 10% of the districts in the November election for the post-election audit. The districts are listed in the Secretary’s Press Release <read> <CT-N Video>

Read the press release closely, and you will find only 72 districts selected along with 15 alternates. To make up for the miscounting, the 1st alternate will be included.

Update: We originally posted that 54 municipalities were selected. The correct number is 44 municipalities. We regret the error.

Governor Extends Voter Registration Deadline via Executive Order

If the governor has such powers, perhaps in election emergencies, the governor could be called upon or even expected to do what the Secretary of the State cannot do – order polls to stay open late in an emergency, choose extra voting districts for audit, or order discrepancy recanvasses in districts with questionable results!

Example coverage from The Day <read>

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has issued an executive order extending voter registration until noon on Monday, Nov. 7.

The original deadline was tonight at 8, but the change was made to accommodate voters who would have trouble getting to municipal offices because of the power outages and damage from the weekend storm, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

Residents can obtain voter registration forms at www.sots.ct.gov or by visiting town offices or the Division of Motor Vehicles.

Executive Order #12

Bridgeport Post-Election Audit Drawing

Yesterday three districts were drawn for the post-election audit of the Bridgeport Primary. Due to a court order delaying the primary, following the law required a separate drawing of 10% of the districts in Bridgeport. Since there were twenty-three districts in the election three districts plus an alternate district were randomly selected for audit.

Each district was represented by a slip of paper placed in a bowl. Each of four individuals present selected one of the districts. The Secretary of the State’s Press Release: <read>

Caltech/MIT: Election Integrity – Past, Present & Future

On Saturday October 1st, I was pleased to be a part of the The Future panel at the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project event, Election Integrity – Past, Present & Future. The event was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a conference on voting integrity held in 1986.

On Saturday October 1st, I was pleased to be a part of the The Future panel at the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project event, Election Integrity – Past, Present & Future. The event was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a conference on voting integrity held in 1986. Perhaps I was invited to join the Future panel because I have only been involved for a bit over seven of those twenty-five years. Like most panelists on all three panels , I addressed a bit of the Past, Present and Future.

My presentation was titled: A Watchdog Activist Lobbyist Plods and Plots the Future of Election Integrity <PowerPoint.pdf>

Once a video of the event and other presentations are available, I will provide links.

Update 10/30/2011 Videos available <watch>

Post-Election Audit Drawing: 12 Districts in 5 Municipalities

UPDATED: Yesterday, members of the Coalition assisted in the drawing of districts for the Post-Election Audit of the September 13th Primary. New Haven, on average, expect to have 3-4 districts selected each time and Hartford 2-3 districts. However, since the law exempts districts from the selection that have recanvasses or contested races, the expected average is higher than 10% in each particular post-election audit. As random selection from a single collection of districts goes, the average seldom occurs. This time New Haven will audit 6 and Hartford 1. Over a long period selections should average out with all towns approaching a average number of audited districts equal to 10% of the districts time the number of elections and primaries in which they participate – with slight expected variations because some towns are more likely to have recanvasses more frequently (*)

The Bridgeport Primary held Tuesday is a different Primary and will be subject to a separate drawing. Bridgeport normally would expect to average 2-3 districts selected each time. Ironically, after last November’s chaotic election 0 for 24(**) were selected. This time the number should be exactly three.

* This is for several reasons. Some towns have close to equal numbers of voters for both major parties in elections or highly competitive candidates from factions of the same party in primaries. Other towns have large numbers of positions or candidates in vote for multiple races which increases the chances of two candidates votes being close. Other towns are have fewer offices or are far from competitive.

** There were 25 districts in the Nov 2010 election in Bridgeport, but due to ongoing failures of election officials in Hartford and Bridgeport to produce accurate lists of districts for the drawings.

Here is the press release with the list of districts:

Denise Merrill
Secretary of the State
Connecticut
For Immediate Release: For more information:
September 28, 2011 Av Harris: (860) 509-6255
Cell: (860) 463-5939
– Press Release –
Precincts From September Municipal Primaries Selected For Post-Election Audit
Deputy Secretary of the State, Election Advocates Select 10% of Voting precincts in 21 Connecticut Communities to Hold Municipal Primaries September 13th; Ballots to be Hand-Counted and Matched Against Machine Totals to Ensure Integrity of Voting

Hartford: Deputy Secretary of the State James Spallone today joined Connecticut voting rights advocates from CT Voters Count and Common Cause for a public drawing to randomly select 12 precincts that will have election results audited following the September 13, 2011 municipal primaries that took place in 21 Connecticut communities. A complete list of the precincts selected is below. Precincts from Bridgeport, where municipal primaries were held on September 27th, will be drawn at random for a post election audit at a later date.

“On September 13th voters went to the polls across Connecticut to choose nominees to run in November’s general election to fill very important roles in local government,” said Deputy Secretary of the State James Spallone. “Our audit law exists to hold our election process accountable and reassure the public to have continued confidence that all votes were recorded accurately. We will repeat this process again in the near future for the city of Bridgeport, whose primary was held two weeks after other cities and towns.”

Voters went to the polls for municipal primaries in the following 21 Connecticut cities and towns on Tuesday September 13, 2011: Brookfield, Cromwell, East Hartford, Farmington, Guilford, Hartford, Lebanon, Lisbon, Killingworth, Middlebury, Middletown, New Haven, New Britain, New London, North Stonington, Norwalk, Oxford, Stratford, Scotland, Trumbull, and West Haven. The General Election for municipal candidates will be held on Tuesday November 8, 2011.

As required by Public Act 07-194, An Act Concerning the Integrity and Security of the Voting Process, 10% percent of the polling precincts used in the election are subject to an audit. Secretary Merrill directed that a pool of 114 precincts from the communities that held municipal primaries September 13th, not counting precincts that required a recount. To comply with the law, 12 precincts were chosen to have their election results audited. In addition, five alternate precincts were chosen, they will only face an audit if one of the selected precincts cannot perform an audit. The audits must be complete by October 21, 2011.

The law requires a hand audit 10% of all polling places in all elections and primaries. (Polling precincts which are already part of a recount are exempt from audits by statute). The provisions in the law, developed in close cooperation with the computer science department at the University of Connecticut, give Connecticut one of the strictest audit statutes in the country. Connecticut is the first state in New England to require a comprehensive audit of election results.
Public Act 07-194 states that local Registrars of Voters, “… shall conduct a manual audit of the votes recorded in not less than ten per cent of the voting districts in the state, district or municipality, whichever is applicable. Such manual audit shall be noticed in advance and be open to public observation.” The results of audits will be analyzed by the University of Connecticut and then presented to the Secretary of the State’s Office and the State Elections Enforcement Commission, and ultimately made available to the public.

The law contains a detailed description of the audit process:

“The manual audit… shall consist of the manual tabulation of the paper ballots cast and counted by each voting machine subject to such audit. Once complete, the vote totals established pursuant to the manual tabulation shall be compared to the results reported by the voting machine on the day of the election or primary. The results of the manual tabulation shall be reported on a form prescribed by the Secretary of the State which shall include the total number of ballots counted, the total votes received by each candidate in question, the total votes received by each candidate in question on ballots that were properly completed by each voter and the total votes received by each candidate in question on ballots that were not properly completed by each voter. Such report shall be filed with the Secretary of the State who shall immediately forward such report to The University of Connecticut for analysis. The University of Connecticut shall file a written report with the Secretary of the State regarding such analysis that describes any discrepancies identified. After receipt of such report, the Secretary of the State shall file such report with the State Elections Enforcement Commission.”

List of Precincts chosen for the post-election audit:

Municipality

Precinct

East Hartford

Goodwin School

Hartford

Annie Fisher School

Middletown

Macdonough School-District 1

New Britain

Roosevelt Middle School District 3

New Britain

Welte Hall District 9

New Britain

Stanley Holmes School District 14

New Haven

Troup School Ward 2

New Haven

Truman School Ward 4

New Haven

Cross Formerly East Rock Ward 9

New Haven

Wilbur Cross High School Ward 10

New Haven

Firehouse Lombard Ward 15

New Haven

West Hills/Micro Society School Ward 30-02

Alternate Precincts

Hartford

The Community Room

Middletown

Moody School Gym District 4

New Britain

Vance School District 1

New Haven

Hall Of Records Ward 7

New Haven

Clarence Rogers School Ward 30-1

-30-

Av Harris
Director of Communications
Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill
(860) 509-6255 ofc
(860) 463-5939 cell
av.harris@ct.gov

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

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

Editor’s Note: August 8th and 9th, we attended the EVT/WOTE (Electronic Voting Technology / Workshop On Trustworthy Elections) in San Francisco. Over time, we are highlighting several papers and talks from the conference.

The keynote speaker was Professor Philip Stark, Department of Statistics, U.C. Berkeley. He is the leading researcher and advocate for single ballot auditing, which would make post election audits much more efficient, while also provides the basis for efficient auditing by machine. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet. I recommend reviewing the slides from the talk, with one caveat: The slides are a large download, but well worth the wait. <slides – large download> <video> <listen>

His talk is titled: Risk Limiting Audits: Soup to Nuts, and Beyond.

Soup refers to the analogy he frequently uses to describe the statistical basis of risk limiting audits. Pollsters know that the accuracy of polling depends on the number of voters polled, not the size of the population eligible to vote in a particular contest. Thus the accuracy of an audit depends on the number of ballots checked, not the number of ballots in the election. It is just like tasting soup (or an ocean):

To know whether the soup is too salty, don’t need to eat all of it.

Enough to taste a teaspoon, if soup is stirred well.

Doesn’t matter how big the pot is: a teaspoon is enough.

Nuts refers to the limits on the purpose of an audit, according to Professor Stark:

The purpose of elections is to convince the losers that they lost.
(D. Wallach)
The purpose of election audits is to convince everybody who isn’t
nuts that the losers lost. (Y. T.)…

What’s a nut?

Somebody whose biggest fear is different enough from yours.

Somebody who shares your biggest fear is sane (and smart!).

Somebody whose biggest fear is close to yours has an interesting perspective.

Eccentric ! preoccupied ! irrationally fixated ! nuts.

The “Wayne’s World” test.

Unfortunately, who is a nut is in the eye of the beholder. Some have blind trust in election machines and blind trust in security procedures, Officials with high levels of trust question the need for post-election audits of any type. They would classify anyone questioning the possibility of election errors or fraud as nuts. Others would never be convinced of election integrity, distrusting whatever evidence is presented by officials and judged sufficient by independent observers.

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost:

Strongly Software-Independent Voting System
A voting system is strongly software-independent if an undetectable error or change to its software cannot produce an undetected change in the outcome, and we can find the correct outcome without rerunning the election.

Risk-limiting Audit
Large, known chance of a full hand count if the outcome is wrong, thereby correcting the outcome.

Risk is maximum chance of failing to correct an apparent outcome that is wrong, no matter what caused the outcome to be wrong.

Resilient Canvass Framework
Known minimum chance that the overall system (human, hardware, software, procedures) gives the correct election outcome—when it gives an outcome.

Combine a strongly software-independent voting system with a compliance audit and a risk-limiting audit.

Ingredients for resilient canvass framework

Voters create complete, durable, accurate audit trail.
Strongly software independent voting system.

LEO curates the audit trail properly.
Proper use of seals, surveillance, secure chain of custody, . . .

Compliance audit to ensure that the audit trail is adequately
intact before the risk-limiting audit starts. If not, need a re-vote.
“No smoking gun” is not affirmative evidence.

Timely reporting of all-but-final results for auditable batches.
Smaller batches are better.

Count votes by hand until there’s strong evidence that counting

the rest won’t change the outcome–risk-limiting audit
“Explaining” or “resolving” errors isn’t enough.
Might need to count all votes by hand if margin is small or audit finds enough error.

A compliance audit is what we mean when we say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that the chain of custody in Connecticut is insufficient to proved confidence in our post-election audits.

Take the time to download the slides for a non-technical introduction to post-election audits, single ballot audits, their purpose, and what is needed to provide justified confidence in elections.

CLARIFICATION: Official Post-Election Audit Report

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

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

Editor’s Note: CTVotersCount welcomes responsible contrary opinions. Even more so, we appreciate factual corrections to information published here.

Last month we posted and criticized the Official Post-Election Audit Report for the November 2010 election, created by the University of Connecticut. We said the audit was “Flawed by lack of transparency, incomplete data, and assumed accuracy”. Upon returning from California we were surprised and pleased to open the following letter from Deputy Secretary of the State, James Spallone, clarifying/correcting some of the impressions left by the report.

Based on the clarifications we now understand that we were under the misimpression that the Secretary of the State’s Office had conduced unannounced, non-transparent recounts of some of the data originally reported by registrars of voters. According to Mr. Spallone such counts did not occur. Secret counts would not be illegal, yet would tend to reduce public confidence in the integrity of the audits and in our democracy. On the other hand, not conducting investigations of significant differences does not inspire confidence or lead to integrity.

We remain concerned with the differences between machine counts and hand counts reported by several registrars of voters. We also continue to be concerned, that such differences are attributed to hand counting errors, without investigation. As we have said in the past “if all differences are attributed to hand counting errors, then if there ever were a machine error or fraud it would not be recognized by the audit”.

We appreciate the clarification and will continue to encourage the investigation of significant differences, announced, and subject to public observation, along with improved auditing procedures, training of officials, and improvements in the audit law without increasing costs.

The audit remains, in our opinion, “Flawed by lack of investigation, incomplete data, and assumed accuracy”.

Addendum:

Perhaps a small yet critical point, we interpret the situation differently. The Deputy Secretary says: “Information gathering and follow-up, however, is not part of the official audit process.” It may not be part of the unenforceable ‘process’ developed by the Secretary of the State’s Office, but we interpret it legally as part of the Audit. The audit law requires the report from UConn, so anything that contributes to the report would, in our opinion, be part of the audit. For instance, past investigations included in the report, and in this case discussions between the SOTS Office and registrars or UConn leading to the dropping of some data from the report etc.

Susan Bysiewicz, former Secretary of the State, claimed that the audit was ‘Independent’ because UConn completed the audit report, rather than her office. We agree with her that the report (and obviously therefore anything included in it) is part of the audit. We disagree that UConn is ‘independent’ legally since their budget for elections depends on the Secretary of the State, and is not ‘independent’ in practice since the Secretary’s Office reviews and contributes interpretations to the report.

Once again, the law does not require investigations to be public – the issue is that transparency would be one of the requirements for credibility of the report and trust in democracy.