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Missing the point on solving Bridgeport elections problems

All sorts of elections proposals to solve the Bridgeport elections problems from increasing penalties to a minimum of a year in jail to a 17 member committee under the Secretary of the State to take over elections in municipalities.

They are all missing the point. What we need is …

They are all missing the point. What we need is enforcement!

The penalties already are high enough but there all but no enforcement. As allegations rise, not just in Bridgeport, but all over the state, including campaign finance violations by candidates and other political entities the size of the staff for State Elections Enforcement Commission has slowly been eroded over the years. There are all sorts of allegations in Bridgeport. If even each violation were merely fined $5oo (let alone penalties are much higher including jail time) then several criminals would be facing fines of several thousands of dollars. Soon they and their actual and would-be associates would be completely deterred.

The SEEC has five investigators, one pulled back from retirement, with four of them full time on Bridgeport. That is not enough for timely investigations and a deterrent. There are previous cases referred to the U.S. Justice Department awaiting results for years. The chief culprit in Bridgeport is awaiting any action on allegations from 2019.

Nobody seems to be advocating for more staff for the SEEC. In comparison the Attorney General, admittedly with much more responsibility, has 200 attorneys plus investigators. Could it be that the General Assembly is reluctant to see investigations accelerated on campaign finance violations?

Meanwhile, maybe there should be some municipalities where the registrars responsibilities should be taken over by the State. Yet that will be quite a job for a 17 person committee which as about twice the size of the Secretary of the State’s elections staff. Who will fund the take overs? And what good would it do for a Bridgeport when the responsibility for absentee ballots lies mostly with the municipal clerk’s office? And even in Bridgeport the kind of fraud alleged in recent elections is mostly beyond the registrars and clerks control.

Testimony on two small, instructive bills

Last week I submitted testimony on two bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

This is likely the last time I will testify this year. Both of the bills seem minor, yet offered and opportunity to highlight errors and inconsistencies in the law that are overlooked and not addressed.

The first about collecting envelopes from drop boxes. There is no requirement for more than one person to collect the envelopes. There is no requirement that the collection and materials be logged. Who supports that ballots and other materials should be collected and transported by only one person, at any time?

The other making minor changes to the recanvass law, including requiring a training video from the Secretary of the State. I suggested several other changes, such as notifying all candidates, sending the video link along (so that everyone involved know the rules, and that one observer should be allowed per counting team.

When submitting testimony one can specify Support, Oppose, or General Comments. When signing up to speak the choices are Support or Oppose. I often wrestle with this. I know that some look just at how many support or oppose a bill. Here there is much missing, so I choose oppose.

Last week I submitted testimony on two bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

Testimony opposed to six bills on RCV and RLAs

On Monday I testified against five bills on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and one on Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs),

As I said,

I am not opposed to the concepts of Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs) or Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) but I am opposed to all six of these bills as they are insufficiently detailed. They also provide no guarantees of transparency..

Both of these concepts involve detailed technical and computational issues. Neither are as simple as looking at marks on ballots and simply counting votes. Officials, candidates, the public, and the SEEC need to know exactly what is expected of officials, so they can perform as expected and such that all can determine if they are doing what is required, uniformly across the state…

On Monday I testified against five bills on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and one on Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs),

As I said,

Both of these concepts involve detailed technical and computational issues. Neither are as simple as looking at marks on ballots and simply counting votes. Officials, candidates, the public, and the SEEC need to know exactly what is expected of officials, so they can perform as expected and such that all can determine if they are doing what is required, uniformly across the state.

Just like we need paper ballots to avoid trusting voting machines and software, we need transparency to judge all the counting and calculating required for RCV and RLAs.

In both RCV and RLAs the counting rules details are critical. Especially, in close contests, where the result is dependent on the nuances in the rules.

Here is a link to my complete testimony, also including a link to extensive comments on the RLA bill <read>

Testimony on Early Voting and Absentee Voting Bills

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

That if Absentee Ballots are made FOIable (I thought they were), we should post them to the Internet to save citizens from filing FOI requests and officials from processing them.
That my surveys show that our voting machines are NOT failing at an increased rate, and that this might be the worst time in history to replace them. (Because newer VVSG 2.0 machines will be available soon, making anything we buy today obsoleted soon as well.
Emphasizing that if they General Assembly had listened to me in 2013 then we could have avoided many of the problems, some that still remain with Election Day Registration – and that many of the same issues can occur with Early Voting and Same Day Registration, if they ignore similar suggestions in today’s testimony

CT Secretary calls for 10 days of early voting starting in 2023

https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Press-Releases/2023-Press-Releases/Secretary-Thomas-Presents-Legislature-with-Recommendations-for-Early-Voting-Program From no ePollbooks currently approved and no early voting in place, this will be a tall order for the two elected registrars in each of our 169 towns. Likely tripling the number of pollworker days in most towns, requiring lots of recruiting and training and loads of novice pollworkers. This will also put a lot of work on the Secretary’s small staff to develop procedures, provide training, and approve all sorts of plans in a short time.

Editorial:..

Editorial:

Meanwhile in addition to likely approving new ePollbooks, the State has also recently acquired a new CVRs to be implemented. And presumably changes to our current Election Night Reporting system or replacing it with a new one in the new CVRS.

Also, quite a challenge for the Legislature to draft, finalize, and pass such a bill by March 31.

If this plan is approved, I can’t imagine anything but chaos.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 5 – Choices and Disappointments

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places…
Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days…
Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting…

Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience…

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places

By this we mean, in general, following the request of the ACLU and the provisions of the For the People Act. Perhaps ten days or twenty-five. Likely requiring voting on at least two weekends including the Saturday and Sunday before Election Day. Open in the mornings and evening hours, at least during the week. Uniformity across the State. An early voting place similar to a polling place, i.e. checkin, ballot clerks, machine tenders and scanners – giving the voters who make overvotes the opportunity to spoil a ballot and vote another. Similar to what we see in other states, including CA, CO, GA, etc.

Disappointments:

Registrars and other election officials. In a small town with one polling place today. It will change the number of pollworker days from perhaps 8-10 to about 100! Finding citizens willing to work that many 16 to 17 hour days will be a challenge. Staffing, presumably, with inexperienced pollworkers will add to the challenges. Further it will be more difficult to find voting locations, especially during the week, that are not already used for other things and that have sufficient parking. It will greatly increase the stress and work for registrars as they do the normal work preparing for Election Day – especially tight preparing pollbooks between that last Sunday and Election Day. We expect many will join those that resigned in 2022. As an experienced pollworker, I doubt I could serve more than one or two 16 hour days in addition to Election Day.

Not much different in mid-size towns like mine, with six polling places and central count absentee, about 70 Election Day officials, this would add perhaps another 140 early voting polling place staffing days. That is plenty of novice officials, plenty of work for registrars, and stress. Including problems finding appropriate venues. Even for large cities it will be significant, perhaps doubling staffing.

The Public. Presumably many will want to try out early voting the first day that seems convenient and the last. So, there will likely be lines as we see in every election in Georgia. The public has been promised no more lines in Connecticut – yet there are none today, except for big problems like missing pollbooks, or at Election Day Registration. In fact, every option we discuss may have that same problem. It is especially likely for any option that opens early or closes late. Especially on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Perhaps we should start slowly and if early voting is popular, work up to Option 1. More on that in the next two options, and in our final comment.

Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days

This is a compromise between satisfying the public’s expectations for polling place like voting places, but with fewer and shorter days for officials.

Four days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, and Wednesday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. This would provide the possibility of election officials to do multiple days – a single Moderator (or with an Assistant) might be able to cover all these days and tabulate to votes on election night. Registrars would have more time to prepare pollbooks and otherwise for Election Day. Voters would have an opportunity to vote at any convenient time, weekend, early morning, after work, and at lunch time.

Six days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Monday and Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, Wednesday and Thursday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. A bit more work, but more opportunities for voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting more days and will still see lines.

Election Officials. Who may be somewhat relieved but still face quite a bit of work and other challenges.

Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting

This would be voting very similar to the absentee voting that occurs today when one goes into a municipal clerk’s office, makes an application, votes, and hands in their absentee ballot. Except that any registered voter could do it. Clerks would need to be open on at least one weekend and in many cases open more hours than today, perhaps hiring one or two additional staff.

It would be more and less work for registrars and pollworkers. More checking-off of pollbooks between the end of early voting and election day. Today that happens on Friday and Monday before Election Day. As long as early voting ended before Friday, the only change would be more staffing for absentee checking and counting, with a somewhat smaller polling place staff on Election Day.

Some have suggested going to the registrars’ office and voting via machine for many hours of availability, yet that is really a variation on option 1, perhaps for small towns. It would still require Democrat and Republican Registrars or Deputies be present to correct registration errors, perhaps a checker, ballot clerk and definitely a machine tender all visible to each other and voters – not an option when you expect a volume of voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting that polling place like voting experience, the opportunity to be protected from overvoting, and the opportunity for correcting erroneously not being on the voters registration list – presumably that would require a call to the registrars office, visiting the registrars office when it was open, or requiring the registrars office to be open all the hours of early voting.

Once again, long lines are possible, especially if early morning or evening opportunities are limited and if on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Finally, A Concern – The Experiences of California and Colorado

Many say the ideal for Connecticut should be California and Colorado. I would not emulate everything they do. They have ten or more days of early voting in vote centers, people can vote where they live or where they work, they have absentee voting, in fact they now send ballots to every voter to mail-in or drop off. Pretty close to the final draft of the For the People Act. They did not arrive there overnight. It has been perhaps 20-30 years in the making in each state.

Contrary to what the ACLU and Brennan Center would have us believe, we should not be trying to emulate the likes of Georgia, Florida and many other southern states that have the “Highest Early In Person Voting Rates” (see the map on page 3 of Brennan Center report, and the exclusion of California and Colorado from much of their report.) Those states have high in-person early voting apparently because they try to suppress absentee voting and do not provide enough polling places and voting machines on election day.

On the other hand, California and Colorado both seem to have the same experience. Until recently, the voters have chosen to use 70% main-in voting, 20% Election Day voting, and just 10% early voting. The latest trends in both states are closer to 90% mail-in voting.

As we have said, early in-person voting is expensive. If we are trending our policies toward California and Colorado, especially if we pass the 2024 constitutional amendment for no-excuse absentee voting in Connecticut. Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks

This is the fourth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Machines>

In this post we will cover Electronic Poolbooks – Why, How, and When we should add electronic pollbooks. Next time we will cover the alternatives for early voting in 2024. Hint: they all have advantages and disadvantages.

Our understanding is that UConn, under the direction of the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) Office is already evaluating electronic pollbooks. Presumably they could be selected by the SOTS sometime in 2023.

Why Electronic Pollbooks (ePollbooks)

The answer here is not as simple and clear as many would suggest. There are two advantages often touted for ePollobooks which are not actually true:

This is the fourth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Machines>

Why Electronic Pollbooks (ePollbooks)

The answer here is not as simple and clear as many would suggest. There are two advantages often touted for ePollobooks which are not actually true:

First, they are often touted as speeding up checkin such that fewer pollworkers are required. Actually, they don’t significantly speed up checkin. Sometimes they speed it up a little, sometimes they slow it down a bit. There are several variables here: The model of electronic pollbooks employed, what the State checkin requirements are, checkers capabilities, checker training, and how the pollbooks are implemented (including are they connected to a central database which may slow down the process). Suffice to say that no matter if 1, 2, 3, 4, or more checkers and lines are required today, likely that number will still suffice and be required.

Most states require voters to sign a pollbook or sign electronically with an electronic pollbook, Connecticut does not. Some print a pass for the correct district for each voter – now Connecticut may need to do that to tell ballot clerks what ballot to give to a voter – especially for early voting. All these things take extra time on the part of checkers – or maybe save time in other states over what they were doing without ePollbooks.

Second, they save paper because paper pollbooks do not have to be printed. In fact, they still need to be printed as a backup for when electronic pollbooks fail. They fail for many reasons: software glitches, download glitches, power failures, hardware failures etc. So not only are paper backups required, the checkers must be ready to immediately fallback on paper pollbooks.

There are advantages:

Any voter can go to any line as ePollbooks are usually connected within a polling place and coordinate a master checklist between them. That can speed the process a bit and also allow for easily reducing the number of checkers in slow periods and similarly facilitate adding checkin lines.

A more comprehensive voter search may be available. Easily finding and restoring voters moved off the rolls for not voting recently, finding voters added supplementally, and finding which polling place to which a voters is assigned.

All checkers can handlevoters in multiple districts in a polling place (especially early voting places).

Especially for early voting places, if connected to the Central Voter Registration System (CVRS), then more than one polling place can handle voters in a municipality. Also, even when not connected a single polling place, they speed the setup for Election Day voter lists. They can simply be uploaded to the CVRS to then update pollbooks for Election Day.

Finally, they can save registrars a lot of time updating the CVRS with who voted after the election. Today it is a time-consuming manual process, to data enter who voted from the paper checklists.

How to Add Electronic Pollbooks

Most important in evaluating them is testing them with actual typical pollworkers and people acting like a range of average voters. How fast can the average pollworker type in the addresses and select voters? How fast can they do searches when the voter is not initially found? What does it take to setup the systems in a typical polling place? What additional time does it take to provide voters with receipts for which district they are in?

ePollbooks should be tested for compatibility, ease of use, and performance in downloads, uploads, and connectivity to the CVRS. And what happens during Election Day or early voting when connection is lost? Our assumption though is that especially on Election Day many, if not most, polling places will not be connected centrally, since many polling places do not have internet and may also be in poor cell communications territory.

And like new scanners, ePollbooks should be purchased and maintained by the State. Each polling place should have one station (likely a laptop) for the maximum number of checkers in that polling place, plus one or two extras. That is perhaps $500-1000 per station, plus annual maintenance.

Like implementing new machines and early voting it takes procedure development, planning, training of registrars and pollworkers.

But unlike some other changes ePollbooks can be implemented in stages: Start with a few polling places using them in parallel with paper pollbooks or just using them officially, verifying their effectiveness and improving procedures before a full rollout. Like other changes, they can best be implemented in lower volume elections or primaries.

When to Add Electronic Pollbooks

As we discussed in Part 2, change should be limited to one big thing at a time, if possible, done in part first, and avoiding a big change in even year elections.

There is good news for electronic pollbooks here. It would be possible to do a small test either in the September 2023 Municipal Primaries, the November 2023 Municipal Elections, or both. Then expended and made universal across the State in the 2024 Presidential Primaries or the August Primaries, so every municipality and checker could be experienced in time for the November 2024 election with some of their benefits available for early voting.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 1 – Expectations

Having passed the Early Voting Constitutional Amendments in November, everyone expects the General Assembly will pass implementing legislation in 2023 and give some time for officials to implement it, i.e. the Secretary of the State’s Office to detail procedures and registrars to implement them.

We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.

Voters

We can only speculate what voters expect, certainly they are not a homogeneous group. They have read and seen in the news that Connecticut is one of only four states that do not support some form of early voting (in-person early voting and/or no-excuse mail-in voting). They likely understand that this amendment only authorizes in-person early voting…

We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.

This is the first in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 2 – Implementing Change>

Voters

From the news leading up to the November vote they may have learned that early voting will eliminate lines at polling places in Connecticut and significantly increase turn-out. (As we will discuss in a later installment, they will likely be disappointed on both counts).

They may be thinking that once Connecticut also passes the no-excuse mail-in voting Constitutional Amendment in 2026, that shortly after we will be just like California and Colorado which have both forms of early voting and mail ballots to each voter before an election so they can just send them in. All we can say is mostly, but not so fast.

They may also be thinking of Georgia which has many days of early voting yet with notorious long lines during early voting. How can that be if early voting is supposed to eliminate lines? Stay tuned.

How many days and hours of early voting do they expect, its likely undefined and all over the lot. They probably expect to vote on weekends, before work, lunch time, or in the early evening. Some may expect early voting at their usual polling place, while that is done rarely or at all in other states.

Like others they expect early voting will be very similar to voting on election day. Checking in, getting a ballot, submitting it to a voting machine. A chance to get registration issues resolved, spoiling a ballot and getting another one if necessary, etc.

Like the Good Government Groups most voters expect that early voting will start soon, likely nobody will expect to wait beyond the 2024 presidential election.

Good Government Groups

Many may expect something along the lines of a recent article which highlights the ACLU’s expectations (and those of the Secretary of the State and others.) How Long Should Connecticut Voters Get For Early Voting? <read>

Others may be expecting early voting along the lines of the latest version of H.R.1, S.1, and The For the People Act that was not passed by the last congress. That bill specified a minimum of 15 contiguous days of early voting, all at least 10 hours a day and the same hours each day of early voting.

That bill also specified counting of votes to begin by 14 days before the election, the same voting experience as a polling place on election day, and that votes could not be totaled until the polls closed on election day. It said that early voting was not necessary with sufficient no-excuse mail-in voting.

Election Officials

Election officials are under a lot of pressure in Connecticut. Some of the frivolous and redundant Freedom of Information requests seen in other states, public suspicion, and increasing work requirements, coupled with budgets controlled by each municipal government which my not be sympathetic to the workload, especially in small towns. Over 40% of registrars quit between November 2021 and July 2022 with others not running for re-election in November 2022. Many are tired and perhaps one-half low on experience, with few willing to take a job with low pay and many demands.

Registrars look at early voting requirements as significant. They are correct. A small town may have eight officials at one polling place on election day for a total of 17 hours. 15 days of early voting would require 120 pollworker days for officials, opening for 10 hours of voting would mean 12 hour days for officials. Few would be willing to work more than one or two days like that for each election. Even in my town with 6 polling places with about 70 election day pollworkers, including absentee counting, adding 120 pollworker days would be quite a challenge.

It is a lot more than recruiting and training all the novice pollworkers. It is also supporting them from the registrars’ offices during early voting, while most of those offices are already on overtime (paid or not) doing everything to prepare for election day. Early voting would add greatly to those demands. It includes finding an early voting location(s) that could be dedicated for all those days with enough parking. Most towns close and use schools for election day, they cannot close them for even a few additional days – they could be used on weekends but not during the week.

With budget problems the registrars (and municipalities) expect reimbursement from the State. Depending on many variables it could cost $1,500 to $2,500 per day per location for early voting plus a few thousand overhead to plan for it initially. Four days of early voting could total about $1,500,000 for each election and primary. 14 days might total over $3,500,000. In presidential years, including primaries over $10,500,000.

Election Integrity Advocates

Actually, we only have a few requirements that hopefully will not be too costly and paid for by the State. A one-time charge for additional memory cards and beefed up security under $500,000.

Like the For the People Act, we would like to see early voting be like voting on election day; requiring that votes will not be totaled until after the polls close on election day, i.e. similar to absentee ballot counting, early voting moderators would supervise the hand counting of a few ballots and write-ins late in the day on election day and then after 8:00pm close early voting machines and print the tapes. This should not be a surprise as today absentee ballots cannot be totaled until 8:00pm. The reason is to avoid the leaking of results that can cause voters, candidates, and parties to try to increase the vote knowing they are close to losing or on the other hand to simply give up.

The early voting ballots must be subject to post-election audit. Either each early voting district must be added to the drawing or each day of early voting must be added to the drawing. Subjecting each day to an audit will require ballots and machine counts be segregated by day (a good idea in any case), add more batches to be audited, yet reduce the number of ballots that need to be counted.

In addition, Connecticut needs new and enhanced security of voted ballots, voting machines, and memory cards between when early voting starts and the end of election day. Right now, in most municipalities, we have insufficient security, with ballots held in storage where multiple single individuals can gain access to voted ballots and machines undetected for hours. (Those ballot bags and plastic boxes and tabulators with seals are a good idea, yet insufficient to protect ballots or machines.) At minimum each day’s ballots and machines should be held in very secure storage with at least two padlocks with separate keys for each registrar and their deputy. Better still that plus secured by the municipal clerk allowing and recording all access by both registrars to the ballots and machines. Similar to a recent Secretary of the State’s directive to Fairfield: Access To Voting Tabulators In Fairfield Required State Intervention <read>

Summary

Not everyone will have their expectations met. Perhaps most will be partially or mostly disappointed.

We will have lots more to say in subsequent posts. We will suggest the tough choices before the General Assembly, discuss some of the arguments we have heard, and finally some recommendations. We will also address at some point the other changes expected in the next few years, such as new voting machines, mail-in voting, and electronic pollbooks and why we cannot expect do everything at once, successfully.

For several reasons we will recommend starting cautiously. Today, we have just scratched the surface.

Ranked-Choice Voting, Ned Lamont, and Connecticut

Last week, in return for an endorsement, Ned Lamont endorsed Ranked-Choice Voting Minor party endorses Lamont after a pledge for election reform

Monte Frank got one thing right that we have not seen recognized by anyone before:…

As I said in my testimony summary:

I am open to the benefits of IRV. Yet, I have several reservations about the use of IRV in Connecticut and other states. I support a comprehensive study of all IRV, RCV, and related options along with the challenges of implementing them in Connecticut.

I remain skeptical of all the touted benefits and if Connecticut voters are ready for the associated complexity, costs, and delays. For more see my testimony.

Last week, in return for an endorsement, Ned Lamont endorsed Ranked-Choice Voting Minor party endorses Lamont after a pledge for election reform <read>

Monte Frank got one thing right that we have not seen recognized by anyone before:

If reelected, Lamont pledged to propose legislation next year that would authorize ranked-choice voting for federal races and give municipalities the option in local elections.

A state constitutional amendment would be required to allow ranked-choice voting in elections for state offices, Frank said.

We have said it over and over, ranked-choice voting would require significant changes in the Election Calendar to support the extra days and weeks required to perform the initial counting and the recanvassing of ranked-choices, days to perform multiple runoff counts and then more days to recanvass critical rounds of reunoffs.(Some runoff rounds that are close, based on the outcome, change the eventual winner.)

For state elections our constitution severely limits all such counting to seven days after election day. There are also changes necessary such as changing the dates that some local office holders take office based on this extra needed time.

The article gets one thing wrong, when it says:

Ranked-choice voting is considered an instant runoff.

Ranked-choice voting is considered an instant runoff.

Ranked-Choice voting describes how the voters vote, choosing 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. While Instant Runoff is just one of several ways of counting ranked-choice votes. As I have pointed out in my testimony that is one of several errors in recent proposed bills.

As I said in my testimony summary:

I am open to the benefits of IRV. Yet, I have several reservations about the use of IRV in Connecticut and other states. I support a comprehensive study of all IRV, RCV, and related options along with the challenges of implementing them in Connecticut.

I remain skeptical of all the touted benefits and if Connecticut voters are ready for the associated complexity, costs, and delays. For more see that testimony <here>

A flawed new version of Risk Limiting Audit bill moves forward in the General Assembly

Last month I wrote about S.B.472 for Risk Limiting Audits, despite all but unanimous testimony that the bill was highly flawed, a flawed substitute was passed shortly thereafter by the General Administration and Elections Committee. Last week that revised bill became available on the web, allowing public scrutiny. There is a Word version and a .pdf version, the .pdf version has a fiscal note and an Office of Legislative (OLR) analysis.

It is revised from the original with some improvements, yet remains ambiguous and confusing, although now it may be closer to an actual Risk Limiting Audit. I question if the person(s) who wrote this updated bill had or took advantage of review by anyone familiar with the science of Risk Limiting Audits. Considering the fiscal note and the OLR Analysis, it seems to me that the description in some cases reads things into the bill that do not seem to be reflected in the bill. In particular, it assumes costs and roles for UConn that are not clear in the bill. Costs and roles that would be consistent with the prototype last year, but not obvious in the bill that would become law.

There are some welcome changes:

This version delays a full RLA until 2024 rather than 2022. This will allow time for planning, especially important since we will have a new Secretary of the State (SOTS) in January 2023. This also provides time for future revisions to the law prior to Nov 2024.
This version makes a complete new section for RLAs from the existing and continuing 5% audit which still applies to all primaries and odd-year elections. This makes the bill easier to read and perhaps contributes to its improvements, clarity and perhaps facilitating clarity in future improvements. Yet it copies text that is appropriate to the existing audits but not for RLAs.
It seems to have better, if imperfect, definitions of RLAs, closer torecognized standard definitions.
It arguably requires that manifest creation be open to the public.

Yet, in my reading, there remain new and old problems:

It continues the lack of specific notice requirements. In every very case where something is open to the public, there should a clear notice requirement specifying how far in advance each event should be notices (e.g. 48 hours) and where the notice will appear (e.g. a specific place on the SOTS Web.)
Like the original it has no requirements for close public observation, software independence, and public access to information critical to verifying the audit. It should clearly require standard, recognized statistical evidence, the review of samples of actual paper ballots, and public access to algorithms and data necessary to independently verify the results of the audit.
It continues the ambiguous requirements that UConn report on the audit, send the report to the SOTS and the SOTS file it with the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). The weakness is that the current law and this bill provide no deadline for such filing. Many reports of audits since 2008 have yet to be published by UConn, published by the SOTS, or filed with the SEEC. Also in practice these are not independent reports. The UConn Voter Center is dependent on the SOTS for its budget and in practice draft reports are reviewed by the SOTS Office and revised by UConn before they are accepted.
It continues the ambiguous language that candidates can use evidence from the audit to challenge an election in court until seven days after the audit is complete, yet provides no definition of completion of the audit. It would seem that an audit is not complete until a report is filled and published by the SEEC. If so, given history, candidates could challenge an election for years after. See Sec. 4 Section 9-323 (page 11) and Sec. 5. Section 9-324 (page 13) and Sec. 6. Section 9-328 (page 15) or Sec. 7. Subsection (a) of section 9-29a (page 16).
It requires that presidential electors, all statewide offices including one U.S. Senator, a randomly chosen Congressional race, and 5% of General Assembly offices be audited in even years. Precluding audits of any other offices in even years, such as Judge of Probate and Registrar of voters from any audit.
It continues the current flaw in the law that exempts questions from audit. I wonder if anyone would have any concerns if the Early Voting or No-Excuse Absentee Voting questions were to pass or fail by small margins? Would those be concerns be magnified realizing they were exempt from the audit?
Recanvassed races (CT’s hand and machine recounts) are included in the RLAs. General Assembly races that have been recanvassed are automatically included in the 5% that are subject to RLA. I wonder if they realize that such races, since they are close, will often end in a complete hand recount? If the intent is to hand-recount all such races, why not do the hand recount instead of the recanvass?
The timing of ballot manifest creation seems to be part of the process of the initial close of the polls on election night and is specified as open to the public – an improvement over the original bill. However, other laws allow counting to be interrupted and completed within 48 hours, without any public notice requirements for the date, time and location of where counting will resume.
While the non-binding Fiscal Note and OLR Analysis added below the bill seems to indicate that UConn will be part of conducting the audit, the bill mirrors the requirements of the existing 5% audit, where the SOTS creates the procedures for the RLA, the Registrars conduct the RLA submitting results to UConn, who submits a report to the SOTS.
- It is hard to imagine the Registrars (two independent D and R election officials in each of 169 towns) coordinating a state wide RLA, including escalation, and results without some body coordinating the state wide calculations, decision making, and declaring the final result.
- It seems the Registrars determine if the audit meets the risk limit or not and then based on that the SOTS shall order a manual recount. See Section 1 (e).

Perhaps some of these concerns can be cured/overridden by procedures issued by the SOTS. See Section 1 (d). However one should question if the SOTS can write binding procedures, opinions, or declarations which contradict the text of state law.