Category: Post-Election Audits

Story in the Hour:   Part-time workers hired by registrar may get pay hike <read>

The argument for a raise seem to make sense:

“We also need to hire part-time staff for the period before the election. We are proposing a rate of $15 per hour for our deputy registers and experienced staff and a rate of $12 for any necessary new or less experienced staff,” wrote Republican Registrar Karen Doyle Lyons and Democratic Registrar Stuart W. Wells in an overview of the proposed pay scale. “This is a little more than we paid in the past but is in line with the pay rate for the temporary workers hired by the Parks Department for giving out beach stickers this summer. It seems to us that it would be discriminatory to have different rates of pay for equivalent office work at City Hall.”

Park workers presumably have a somewhat steadier, longer term job.

Here are the rates in Norwalk for election day officials:

The pay rates for election poll workers, meanwhile, would remain unchanged from 2008: Head moderator ($500); assistant moderator ($400); polling place moderator ($300); alternate moderator ($275); assistant registrar ($200); checker ($175); tabulator tender ($175); ballot clerk ($175); demonstrator ($175); interpreter (additional $75).

Presuming a ballot clerk works 16 hours @$175 that works out to just under $11 per hour, not including training time.  Yet, poll workers have an even less steady job with very very long hours.

Acorn-online, ‘Short and sweet’: Voting results to be audited, <read>

Deputy Secretary of the State Leslie Mara told the Post the goal of the audits is to confirm that the counts registered by the optical scanner voting machines match a hand recount of the ballots.

“We have to make sure these machines are working properly and reliably and counting the votes,” Ms. Mara said.

In the cases where the audit discovers a discrepancy between the machine count and the hand recount, it is not necessarily evidence of fraud. In fact, Ms. Mara said there have been no major cases of that discovered and, generally, there is an innocent explanation for what happened.

“We’ve been fortunate,” Ms. Mara said. “Perhaps we will see a one-vote discrepancy or maybe something like someone forgot to count an envelope of ballots and those are discrepancies that are easily explained. We know that the districts are careful in the first place and are getting accurate counts. Sometimes there is human error despite the best of intentions and these audits get to the bottom of that.”

The process is expected to be a simple one that will be completed rather quickly. Sharon Vecchiola, the town’s Democratic registrar of voters, told the Post on Tuesday that the hand recount will be “short and sweet” and likely will only take an hour to do. Not only was turnout low for the primary, with only 67 votes in District 4, 148 in District 5 and 83 in District 10 needing to be counted, but hand recounts are nothing new.

In fact Ms. Vecchiola said the town has been audited every single year since the optical scan voting machines have been used starting in 2006. The town even had two last year, for the presidential election and the primary for the Democratic nomination for the District 4 congressional race where Cos Cob resident Jim Himes defeated former Greenwich resident Lee Whitnum and went on to win the seat from longtime incumbent Republican Christopher Shays.

We would prefer audits that were intended to do  more than just check the machines, that they also were intend to verify the election results as well.  As stated in the Principles and Best Practices:

Post-election audits must be completed prior to finalizing official election results and must either verify the outcome or, through a 100% recount, correct the outcome.

And by the League of Women Voters Audit Recommendations:

The audit process should begin as soon as possible after the initial tallies recorded by the voting system are reported. The audit should be completed prior to declaration of the final official results, and the audit should confirm the outcome or lead to a recount that determines the outcome.

Not every count has gone well in the past.  As the Coalition Report of the November 2008 Audit stated:

We conclude, based on our observations and analysis of audit reports submitted to the Secretary of the State that the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence…Among our greatest concerns are the discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by several municipalities. In many cases, these discrepancies are not thoroughly and reasonably explained. We believe that the ad-hoc counting procedures used by many municipalities were not sufficient to count ballots accurately and efficiently

Today, three advocates joined the Secretary of the State and her staff in selecting districts for the post-election audit of the September Municipal Primary.

From left to right:  Secretary Bysiewicz reads a selected district, Jack Wentland from CTVotersCount draws a district, while yours truly spins, and Kim Fabrizio from the League of Women Voters prepares to draw. (Thanks to Av Harris, Press Secretary,  for snapping the picture with my camera)

There were 157 districts in the primary, so we drew 10% (16 districts) from the 139 that did not have a recanvass after the primary.

Prior to the press conference we checked the printed business card slips of paper against the list of districts.  There were two extras and two missing and one printed on both sides with valid districts.  We used the two extras and one of my business cards to make a full and correct set.

Next, 10 municipalities will count the 16 districts, as we understand between the close of business on Sept 29th through Oct 7th.  Here is the original press release with the towns and districts selected.  We understand it is being updated and corrected to reflect the actual audit period:  <read>

Here are the selected districts with the four alternates in the lower left column.

Governor Jodi Rell signed the bill for elections to fill Senate vacancies.  See <CTNewsJunkie>

In an unexpected move, Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed the US Senate vacancy bill which takes away the governor’s power to appoint someone to a vacant US Senate seat.

“Although the current process for filling a Senate vacancy has worked well in our state for many decades, this bill gives directly to the people of Connecticut the decision on who would fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate,” Rell said in a press release. “Since taking office as Governor, I have done everything in my power to make Connecticut a model for all states when it comes to openness, transparency and citizen participation in government.”

Statement of Representative Spallone, Co-Chair of the Government Administration and Elections Commitee:

For IMMEDIATE Release   Contact:  Rose Ryan

June 26, 2009   Office:  (860) 240-8527

Statement of State Representative James Spallone (D-Chester, Deep River, Essex & Haddam) the House Chair of the Government, Administration and Elections Committee regarding Governor M. Jodi Rell’s signing today of Substitute Bill 913 – An Act Concerning United States Senate Vacancies:

“I would like to thank Governor Rell for signing this bill into law today and making Connecticut a leader in fair elections.  Connecticut voters can now choose their Senator when a vacancy arises just as we already do for our congressional representatives, as we did from 1913 to 1945.  This is the democratic way.”

“Through this legislation, my colleagues in the General Assembly and Governor Rell have demonstrated their commitment to making Connecticut a national leader in election reform efforts.”

“Connecticut is now the first and only state in the nation to reform its Senate vacancy process in the wake of the scandal in Illinois and controversy in New York.”

CTVotersCount is pleased that the citizens of Connecticut will elect our senators.  Our senators matter.  It is worth the estimated $6,000,000 cost of such elections, where our senators make decisions involving billions of dollars and thousands of lives.  Such “Special Elections” should not be exempt (as they currently are) from the small cost and huge value of post-election audits.  Such elections are not exempt from the risks of error and fraud.

Today Representative Rush Holt introduced a new and improved Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, H.R. 2894.  CTVotersCount appreciates Representatives John Larson and Jim Himes for signing on as initial co-sponsors.   We  encourage all of our representatives to support and co-sponsor the bill.

Representative Holt has been working for several years to provide the voting integrity missing for our elections and the Help America Vote Act.  This Act improves over bills previously proposed in several areas. <ref> <ref> <ref>   It will require every vote to be on a voter marked paper ballot!  Advocates appreciate changes which make the bill stronger, election officials will appreciate some extended deadlines and other changes making it more palatable.

Connecticut will benefit because H.R. 2894 will:

• Insure that all states conduct audits and use voter marked paper ballots.  This will increase the integrity of all elections. This will help assure that the intentions of Connecticut voters are not thwarted by inadequate procedures and equipment in other states which could compromise the integrity of presidential votes nationwide or the balance in Congress.

• Pay the cost of even year audits in Connecticut. Connecticut has completed several comprehensive post-election audits of our optical scanners. One of the strongest objections by registrars and towns was that audits are unfunded mandates. The 2007 and 2008 audits in Connecticut were reimbursed by HAVA funding. This bill will assure that audits in even years will continue to be funded by Federal funds.

• Insure that Connecticut has Independent Audits.  Connecticut’s audit law falls short of this bill’s standard for independent audits. Independent audits are supported by The League of Women Voters, Common Cause, The Brennan Center for Justice, Verified Voting, Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, and CTVotersCount.

Other key provisions as summarized by Verified Voting <read>

The Press Release:

News from
Representative Rush Holt
12th District, New Jersey
http://www.holt.house.gov

For Immediate Release                  Contact: Zach Goldberg
June 17, 2009
202-225-5801

HOLT REINTRODUCES VOTER CONFIDENCE AND INCREASED ACCESSIBILITY ACT

Bill Would Require Voter-Verified Paper Ballot and Random Audits

(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt today reintroduced the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, legislation that would create a national standard of voting to help ensure that every vote is recorded and counted as intended. The bill would require paper ballot voting systems accompanied by accessible ballot marking devices and require routine random audits of electronic voting tallies. The bill has 75 cosponsors.

“It is time we stop using elections as beta tests for unreliable electronic voting machines,” Holt said. “The ability to vote is the most important right as it is the right through which citizens secure all other rights. Voters shouldn’t have any doubts about whether their votes count and are counted. Congress should pass a national standard ensuring that all voters can record their votes on paper and requiring that in every election, randomly selected precincts be audited.”

In every federal election that has taken place since the Help America Vote Act was enacted in 2003, citizen watchdog groups have gathered and reported information pertaining to voting machine failures.  In the 2004 election, more than 4,800 voting machine were reported to the Election Incident Reporting System, from all but eight states.   In the 2006 election, a sampling of voting machine problems gathered by election integrity groups and media reports revealed more than 1,000 such incidents from more than 300 counties in all but 14 states.  And in 2008, the Our Vote Live hotline received reports of almost 2,000 voting machine problems in all but 12 states.

While many states and counties have addressed verified voting on their own – jurisdictions serving 10 million voters moved to paper ballot voting systems between 2006 and 2008 alone – in 2008, 19 states (7 complete states, and some number of counties in approximately a dozen other states) conducted completely unauditable elections.

Paperless electronic voting seems more modern and many election officials like it, but it is entirely unverifiable and unauditable. Because voting is secret, only the voter can verify that the vote is recorded properly, and when the only record of the vote is digital the voter cannot do so. Computer scientists say that computers are unreliable without an independent audit mechanism, and without paper ballots there is nothing to audit.

The 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota demonstrated the importance of verified voting. In that race, approximately 3 million voter-marked paper ballots were counted by hand to confirm the result. Of those 3 million ballots, only 14 did not receive a 5-0 unanimous vote of the bipartisan canvassing board. Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie later said that because Minnesota uses a paper ballot voting system, it made it possible to “do the recount quickly, fairly, accurately, and with such a high degree of trust.”

“The clear trend is towards paper ballots.  In fact, every jurisdiction that has chosen to change its voting system since 2006 has chosen to use paper ballots with optical scan counting.  That should be the standard,”
Holt said.

Cosponsors include: Reps. Neil Abercrombie (HI-1), Jason Altmire (PA-4), Robert Andrews (NJ-1), Tammy Baldwin (WI-2), John Barrow (GA-12), Timothy Bishop (NY-1), Earl Blumenauer (OR-3), Corrine Brown (FL-3), Lois Capps (CA-23), Michael Capuano (MA-8), Christopher Carney (PA-10), Kathy Castor (FL-11), William Lacy Clay (MO-1), Steve Cohen (TN-9), Joseph Crowley (NY-7), Peter DeFazio (OR-4), Michael Doyle (PA-14), Donna Edwards (MD-4), Sam Farr (CA-14), Chaka Fattah (PA-2), Bob Filner (CA-51), Barney Frank (MA-4), Al Green (TX-9), Gene Green (TX-29), Alcee Hastings (FL-23), James Himes (CT-4), Maurice Hinchey (NY-22), Michael Honda (CA-15), Jay Inslee (WA-1), Steve Israel (NY-2), Jesse Jackson Jr. (IL-2), Hank Johnson (GA-4), Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Ron Klein (FL-22), Leonard Lance (NJ-7), Rick Larsen (WA-2), John Larson (CT-1), Barbara Lee (CA-9), John Lewis (GA-5), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), David Loebsack (IA-2), Nita Lowey (NY-18), Carolyn Maloney (NY-14), Eric Massa (NY-29), Jim McDermott (WA-7), James McGovern (MA-3), Mike McIntyre (NC-7), Gregory Meeks (NY-6), George Miller (CA-7), James Moran (VA-8), Jerrold Nadler (NY-8), James Oberstar (MN-8), David Obey (WI-7), John Olver (MA-1), Solomon Ortiz (TX-27), Frank Pallone (NJ-6), Donald Payne (NJ-10), Thomas Perriello (VA-5), Chellie Pingree (ME-1), Jared Polis (CO-2), Steven Rothman (NJ-9), Linda Sanchez (CA-39), Janice Schakowsky (IL-9), Adam Schiff (CA-29), Jose Serrano (NY-16), Joe Sestak (PA-7), Albio Sires (NJ-13), Adam Smith (WA-9), Pete Stark (CA-13), John Tierney (MA-6), Timothy Walz (MN-1), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20), Henry Waxman (CA-30), Robert Wexler (FL-19), David Wu (OR-1).

Holt’s legislation is supported by a wide range of organizations, including the American Council of the Blind, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University, Common Cause, Credo Mobile/Working Assets Democracy Unlimited, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, True Majority, Verified Voting, Voter Action, Arizona Citizens for Fair Elections, Berks County (PA) Democratic Committee, Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota, Clarion County League of Women Voters (PA), Coalition for Peace Action – New Jersey Concerned Voters of Centre County (PA), Connecticut Voters Count Enduring Vote Montana, Florida Voters Coalition, Gathering to Save our Democracy – Tennessee, Georgians for Verified Voting, Green Party of Pennsylvania, Iowans for Voting Integrity, New Era for Virginia, New Yorkers for Verified Voting, Pennsylvania Verified Voting, Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections (SAFE), SAVE Our Votes Maryland, Southern Coalition for Secure Voting State College (PA) Peace Center, The Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP), VoteAllegheny (PA), VotePA, Voting Matters – Oregon.

Update: New York Times Endorses Holt Bill <read>

Mr. Holt’s bill would require paper ballots to be used for every vote cast in November 2010…

The bill would also require the states to conduct random hand recounts of paper ballots in 3 percent of the precincts in federal elections, and more in very close races. These routine audits are an important check on the accuracy of the computer count.

The bill has several provisions designed to ease the transition for cash-strapped local governments…

The House leadership should make passing Mr. Holt’s bill a priority. Few issues matter as much as ensuring that election results can be trusted.

This time we agree with the Secretary of the State on the post-election audit results in Naugatuck.  Both people and machines can count very accurately.    That is what we should always expect of election officials. (Our comments after the article)

Article from:?????? Secretary of the State’s Electronic Newsletter
Issue 39 June 4, 2009:

POST-ELECTION AUDIT OF TWO NAUGATUCK PRECINCTS SHOWS
ACCURATE MACHINE COUNT ON MAY 4th MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

The results of the latest hand count audits of election results in Connecticut are in: once again, our machine counts were extremely accurate. Post-election audits conducted at two polling places in Naugatuck showed extremely accurate machine counts during the Municipal Elections held May 4, 2009. Polling places located at Central Avenue and Oak Terrace in Naugatuck were chosen at random on May 8th to undergo hand count audits of the machine totals for the May Municipal Elections, representing 10% of all voting precincts in Connecticut for that election. 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. Deputy Secretary Lesley Mara directed that the audit precincts be chosen from a pool of 13 precincts in the six towns that held municipal elections May 4th. This pool did not count precincts that required a recount. A review of the audit results has been completed by the Office of the Secretary of State and showed that there was no discrepancy in the counts at the Oak Terrace precinct, while there was only a discrepancy of one vote at the Central Avenue precinct in the race for City Treasurer out of nearly 800 cast. In the majority of cases, small discrepancies between machine totals and hand-counts are due to human error in the auditing process. Once again, these hand count audits have reinforced the integrity of our elections and show that our optical scan voting system is secure and extremely accurate. No matter the size of the election, Connecticut’s post-election audit procedures are the toughest in the nation and they exist to ensure that the will of the voters expressed by the paper ballots is reflected in the machine counts on Election Day. Connecticut voters can be confident in the integrity of our elections and that their votes are counted correctly.

We  agree that “In the majority of cases, small discrepancies between machine totals and hand-counts are due to human error in the auditing process”.  However, that the majority of discrepancies are manual count inaccuracies is insufficient.  We raise the concern that when differences are found, at a minimum, recounts should be performed by local officials until two counts agree – either the machine and a manual count or two manual counts.

We observed the audit in Naugatuck.  The first count of ballots for each district were each off by one ballot, the officials recounted and found where the initial manual count was incorrect.  When vote counts were off they  recounted until they were convinced that their manual counts were accurate.  That should be the standard met by all audits, in every municipality, in every election.  The  Coalition reports show significant discrepancies in municipal counts in previous audits, while recounts of the manual counts by the Secretary of the State’s Office show that people  can count inaccurately and that people can also count accurately <read>

We appreciate the Secretary of the State’s Office, Deput Mara, and Naugatuck election officials for conducting the audit and the Secretary of the State for reaffirming the value of audits.  No election and no vote is exempt from the risk of error and fraud.  There is more work to do, more gaps to close <read>