Category: Post-Election Audits

The Times, they are a Learning

A new editorial on the New York Times lays out the case for election integrity and credibility in: A Tale of Three (Electronic Voting) Elections <read>

Electronic voting has made great strides in reliability, but it has a long way to go. When reformers push for greater safeguards, they often argue that future elections could produce the wrong result because of a computer glitch or be stolen through malicious software. That’s being too nice.

There have already been elections in which it is impossible to be certain that the right candidate was declared the winner. Here are three such races. It is not just remarkable that these elections were run so badly, but also that the flaws are still common — and could easily create havoc in this fall’s voting.

They provide three examples and three lessons. The first and third of which we have not learned well enough in Connecticut

Lesson: Electronic voting makes large-scale vote theft easy. A patch slipped onto voting machines or centralized vote tabulators can change an election’s outcome. Every piece of software must be scrutinized by neutral experts. If there is not enough time, election officials need a backup plan, such as conducting voting entirely on paper ballots…

Lesson: Electronic voting machines must produce a voter-verifiable paper trail for each vote so voters can see that their choices register properly. In a disputed election, the paper, not the machine tallies, should decide who wins…

Lesson: Paper ballots alone are not enough. There must be strong audit laws that mandate comprehensive hand recounts when an election is close.

After the 2000 election debacle, Americans demanded a better system of voting. What we have gotten is new technology with different flaws. If the presidential race is close, this year’s “hanging chad” could be a questionable result on electronic voting machines that cannot be adequately investigated.

Feinstein to Voters: Waste $, jeopardize Democracy.

Update: Take Action: E-Mail our Senators to oppose S. 3212 <read and send> This is especially important because Senator Dodd is on the committee and the hearing is this week!

The well intentioned but flawed 2002 Help America Vote Act launched the large scale move to electronic voting. Many states have paperless DREs (Touch Screens), some have paper trails of questionable value, and others like Connecticut have true paper ballots with inadequate chain-of-custody and inadequate post-election audits. What could possibly make things worse? The answer is the latest bill from the U.S. Senate, the folks who brought us HAVA. The bill, S. 3212, would add costs and subtract safety

As we stated when the bill was outlined by Senators Feinstein and Bennett, the primary minor benefit of the bill would be to unite voting integrity advocates in opposition. Our friends at Verified Voting have produced an analysis of the bill <read>

A number of troubling provisions require us to urge opposition to S. 3212:

1. S.3212 allows “independent” vote records that would exist only in computer memory to be used to verify electronic vote totals.

2. The non-paper verification methods allowed by S. 3212 would increase the costs and burdens of conducting elections without the benefit of increased confidence and auditability.

3. Language in the bill would exempt from any verification requirement those paperless voting systems purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA’s accessibility requirements. This would leave millions of voters (particularly those with disabilities) dependent on insecure paperless electronic machines for the foreseeable future.
Continue reading “Feinstein to Voters: Waste $, jeopardize Democracy.”

FAQ: Why Bother Auditing Referendums & Questions?

The Connecticut post-election audit exempts, among other things, all referendums and questions. This is a mistake.

Referendums and questions may be the most vulnerable election items open to human attack via programming – often all the elected officials of both parties want the referendums passed – they may go through multiple, failed, low turn-out, budget referendums and say to themselves “if the majority of the voters turned out it would pass” and be tempted to make sure it passes. Or one tax-averse ballot programmer, a high asset individual, or even a single election official may want to make sure a new or higher tax does not pass.

Now we have an example from Puma County, AZ of a potentially corrupt election, possibly changed by the actions of a single individual ordered by an election official. Via BradBlog since the underlying link to the original article seems broken <read>

According to Osmolski’s affidavit :

During that conversation Bryan Crane told me he “fixed” the RTA, or Regional Transportation Authority election on the instructions of his bosses and he did what he was told to do. Mr. Crane expressed his concern about being indicted and said he would like to talk but couldn’t trust anyone.

The affidavit is the latest in a series of red flags concerning the RTA election. Other red flags include: (1) This was a sales tax increase, the type of vote that usually fails, and it looked like it was going down in the days prior to the election; (2) The database on the vote counting computer was erased and replaced a day into the early ballot scanning; (3) Unauthorized vote total summary reports were printed during the counting; (4) A tape of the original ballot layout stored with the Secretary of State — which could have indicated if the vote was flipped — was sent back to the County, which lost it; (5) An investigation into the election completed by the Attorney General’s office was cursory and inconclusive.

I’ll hold judgement on the merits of this particular case at least until the votes are counted, the chain-of-custody broken, or the ballots destroyed, whichever comes first.

Panel In Fairfield – What Do You Want?

Last night I was on a panel in Fairfield with Deputy Secretary of the State Lesley Mara, Dr. Alex Shvartsman from the UConn VoTeR Center, and Michael Kozik of the Secretary of the State’s Office. The event was video taped by the sponsors. If possible I will make the video availabe here. For now, here are my opening remarks, my topic was “What Do You Want”:

Fairfield Panel

Introduction

Thanks to Jody Eiseman for creating this event and to the Fairfield Democratic Town Committee for hosting it. Thanks to everyone of you in the audience for coming tonight.

I want to thank Dr. Shvartsman, Mike Kozik, and Deputy Mara for being here tonight. A bit over three years ago I was on a panel with the previous Deputy Secretary of the State. That panel directly precipitated actions that were instrumental in the passage of the paper ballot bill in 2005 and the eventual rejection of Touch Screen (DRE) voting equipment in early 2007.

CTVotersCount is committed to voting integrity and that our democracy flourishes.

Lest we forget, democracy is dependent on the voting integrity of every district in your town; dependent on the voting integrity of every district in the state; and indeed every district in the nation.

My Topic Tonight
Continue reading “Panel In Fairfield – What Do You Want?”

CT Irony #2: The Closest Races Will Never Be Audited

Nor will they ever be hand-counted. Nor will contested races.

Connecticut’s “strongest in the country” post-election audit law exempts races that are recounted or races that are contested from post-election audits. The law does not require that recounts be manual hand-to-eye counts and the Secretary of the State after some hesitation has lifted her requirement that recounts be manual.

Worse. If one race in a district is contested or subject to recount, the district is entirely exempt from the post-election audit.

  • Example #1: (Actual) When Representative Caruso contested the mayoral primary in Bridgeport, it exempted his race and all the races and districts in Bridgeport from the post-election audit entirely.
  • Example #2: (Theoretical) A state-wide race, such as Governor, Senator, or Attorney General could be close and cause a recount resulting in no post-election audit in the entire state.
  • Example #3: (Theoretical) Candidate A is the apparent winner of a fraudulently stolen race for the Connecticut House that would likely be detected by a post-election audit. But candidate B who lost the Connecticut Senate race in a senate district including the House district can conspire to block the audit of A’s race by contesting the Senate election.

Further Irony: We randomly select races to audit with no exceptions. We will audit/count races where candidates are unopposed, leaving other races unaudited.

Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up

Summary: This article and the Bridgeport Primary expose the problems with a “system” that ignores and excuses discrepancies that are discovered. As we have often pointed out in post-election audit reports, ignoring and excusing away discrepancies means that if there is ever an error or a fraud it will not be recognized. In this case we will never know who actually won the Bridgeport Primary. We may have some penalties assessed by Elections Enforcement. All we know for sure is that this was not a reliable election, that voting integrity in Connecticut is far from assured and does not exist in Bridgeport.

ConnPost article by Bill Cummings: Voting Numbers Do Not Add Up <read>

In the midst of a heated court battle over last fall’s Democratic mayoral primary, state Rep. Christopher Caruso’s legal team asserted there were more votes than voters.

City officials and their lawyers scoffed at Caruso’s contention, calling it untrue and irresponsible.

However, a Connecticut Post examination of election records from the Sept. 11, 2007, primary shows there were more votes than voters — 105 more.

Continue reading “Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up”

CT Irony #1: The Hand-Count Irony

In our most recent Presidential Primary there were many towns in Connecticut that ran out of optical scan ballots and a huge percentage (30-40% ?) of the vote in those towns was then un-scannable hand counted copied ballots. These were counted late at night by unprepared election officials after a fifteen hour day.

Ironically the only votes audited (because that is the law) were those counted by machine.

(This is particularly ironic because many discrepancies in past audits were attributed by election officials to hand counting errors during the audits – resulting in claims by election officials that it is impossible to count accurately by hand.)

Of course reality is that it is possible to count accurately by hand, but it takes checks and balances. One check is to count more than once. Another check and balance is to count by machine as well. Or by machine followed by sufficient random hand count audits.

The post-election audit should audit by random selection all types of ballots no matter where or how they were cast, no matter where or how they were originally counted. Currently we only audit ballots cast in polling places that were originally counted by machine. We exempt all hand counted ballots, all absentee ballots counted centrally by machine, and provisional ballots.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates

Another effort in a long history of knee-jerk reactions to address public concern with voting by throwing expensive, inadequate, unproven, and unnecessary technology at the problem. The better solution is a stronger “Holt” bill banning DRE’s, mandating paper ballots, and strong, effective audits.

Senators Feinstein and Bennett issued a press release purporting to enhance voting integrity by a bill to be offered (text not yet available) <read>. Unfortunately, this bill as described in their press releases is wholly flawed.

For the last couple of years voting advocates have been split on bills by Representative Rush Holt proposing federally mandated paper ballots followed by audits. While supported by many advocates as useful improvements, others have opposed these bills for not going far enough.

We confidently predict that the new Feinstein/Bennett bill will unite all voting integrity advocates against their flawed assumptions and inadequacy.

Continue reading “Senators Feinstein and Bennett Plan To Unite Voting Integrity Advocates”

Revised November Audit Report – Suffers From Legendary Computing Problem

Earlier this week Dr. Alex Shvartsman of UConn sent us a revised, Version 2, of the Statistical Analysis of the Post Election Audit Data, November 2007 Elections <read>

This report is based on the added investigations of the discrepancies reported in the initial audit data reported in the Observation Coalition Report <read> followed by the original UConn Report.

While I have no reason to question the revised data or results, overall I see little reason to change the earlier Coalition conclusion that:

The audit statistics and observations leave us without the information necessary to vouch for the accuracy of many of the hand-counting results, whether those results indicated discrepancies or agreement with the counts obtained by the optical scanners.

I find no obvious flaws in UConn’s portion of the work. Nor do I question the integrity of the Secretary of the State’s Office. However, the report suffers from the legendary computing problem of “garbage in, garbage out”:

1. Since the discrepancy review, as I understand it, was conducted by a single person, no matter how trustworthy and reliable, it lacks the necessary transparency that would support credibility.

2. Since the review was conducted with ballots no longer under seal, such a count could use ballots that could be easily altered by insiders after the fact. Of course, modification is unlikely to occur in cases where the count was simply done inaccurately. However, modification after unsealing would be a very important part of covering up a programming error or fraud.

(Connecticut law is unclear if ballots need to be sealed after 14 days, while post election audits cannot begin until 15 days after the election. In addition to chain of custody concerns before and during the post election audits, most municipalities did not maintain ballots under seal after the initial audit count was conducted)

3. Our understanding is that many of the explanations reported in the review were not based on a review of actual ballots but a review of numbers reported looking for reasons that would provide differences that would approximate the difference between the machine and the hand counts, and attributing any such errors to inaccurate hand counting.

While hand counting errors might often be the actual case, if there were machine errors they could easily go undetected: Many such errors in programming could be expected to be approximately the same size as those attributed to human counting errors, since in both cases discrepancies would likely be caused by the same errors made consistently.

4. An investigation and report concluded some five months after an election falls far short of time-frames necessary for serious action based on significant reported discrepancies that might indicate errors, fraud, or the possibility incorrect election results. (As we have indicated occasionally, the motivation and paradigm of the current Connecticut audit law seems to be based on finding general flaws in voting machines, rather than anticipating, reacting to and correcting individual race results)

Warning: This Elecition Will Not Be Audited

The following report about a recent election in Plainfield raises several issues:

  • The Help America Vote Act does not require electronic voting. All paper balloting for federal elections is OK. But according to this article not in Connecticut.
  • In general we have no problems with all paper ballot elections, although there is attraction to the security of counting by machine followed by a sufficient audit involving a strong chain-of-custody (since errors or fraud would be harder to accomplish, requiring multiple independent mistakes, or coordinated machine and paper fraud.
  • But we do raise a concern with any vote “election”, “primary”, “special election”, “question”, or “referendum” that is not audited. Like every “question”, “special election”, or “referendum” in Connecticut, this one will go entirely unaudited.
  • We have an especial concern with paper ballots that are not audited. We have gone through two major post-election audits and several public hearings where election officials in towns and at the state level have consistently claimed that election officials in Connecticut are unable to reliably count paper ballots.
  • While we believe that paper ballots can be counted accurately by Connecticut election officials, unless the officials believe it is possible and take the appropriate precautions it is very risky. (Actually it should be easier to count during audits rather than on election night with possibly tired election officials who have had a long long day.)
  • In the February Presidential Primary several towns had a shortage of ballots, necessitating hand counting of copy machine ballots — they were never audited. This is a very big vulnerability and loophole in our election laws.

PS: I personally observed the February Presidential Primary Post-Election Audit in Plainfield. Of the twelve audits I haved observed it was one of the most transparent and reliable counts I have seen. So I have no reason to doubt the result in this case.

Plainfield budget clarification: Paper ballot use was OK <original>

By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Norwich Bulletin
Posted May 20, 2008 @ 05:02 PM
Plainfield, Conn. –

The Board of Selectmen’s decision to not use the electronic voting machine at Monday’s referendum on the $44.4 million budget was not in violation of Connecticut state statues, a spokesman from the Secretary of State’s office said.

It was unclear Monday night whether or not the move, which First Selectman Paul Sweet said was to save money, was in accordance with the statutes.

Adam Joseph, spokesman for Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, said towns must use the new voting machines for elections, but for referenda they may be used at the town’s discretion.

Both the education and general government budgets failed Monday.