Electronic Vulnerability | CTVotersCount.org

GMO Danger: CALEA II (Government Modified Operating system)

Last week a group of computer security experts issued a warning about a proposed expansion of government spying know as CALEA II (Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Assistance) being considered for “wire” tap expansion.

The report if anything understates the risks. Further, if you believe that, in general, government can be incompetent, that makes this plan even less effective and more risky.

Abstract: The U.S. government is proposing to expand wiretap design laws broadly to Internet services , including voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services and other peer – to – peer tools that allow communications in real – time directly between individuals. This report explains how mandating wiretap capabilities in endpoints poses serious security risks. Requiring software vendors to build intercept functionality into their products is unwise and will be ineffective, with the result being serious consequences for the economic well – being and national security of the United States

This is serious. The report if anything understates the risks. To me, this crux of the problem is summarized by the dangers to operating system end points:

All networks, software , and communication tools that support “lawful intercept” include features that are designed to breach the confidentiality of communications without detection by any party involved in the communication . When parties communicate using services with such features , there is a n increased likelihood that an unauthorized and/or malicious adversary with the right technical knowledge and access to the system could capture communications contents without detection. The general nature of CALEA – style mandates and the necessarily clandestine nature of intercept mechanisms increase security risks further.

The cleverest and most dangerous cyber – attackers are those who are able to not only compromise a system but also to evade detection. T hat is also precisely the objective of a government surveillance solution: to compromise communications without detection. W e know that communications networks and services are increasingly the subject of exploitation , often because of unintended and not very well – hidden vulnerabilities . Wiretap capabilities can be uniquely dangerous precisely because they are developed to be hidden, both in design and in application. Wiretaps are designed to be kept secret from both the parties involved in the communication and also from anyone else that does not have a “need to know” in order to execute the tap (including employees of the service provider who are on the alert for system compromises) . This requirement for obscurity increases the security risks further because it increases the possibility that a malicious communications intercept could be effectuated with low risk of discovery…

Furthermore, for the many products that are open source, it will be trivial for someone to build and redistribute software without the monitoring capability. This sort of “fork” is not exceptional, but rather common. The nature of Open Source software is that people take it, make small modifications, and redistribute. To provide two especially relevant examples, Iron is a fork of Google Chrome that focuses on improved privacy , and the Tor Project maintains its own version of Firefox that is designed to allow private anonymous communications on the Internet under extremely adversarial conditions, such as dissident users in Iran or China. If U.S. software vendors are forced to introduce wiretap capability , it seems certain that there will be non – U.S. forks of popular7open source communications packages that do not allow such access. Moreover, this likelihood of non – compliant forks being developed is not limited to open source software, but also potentially relevant to proprietary, closed – source products , albeit with more effort by the fork’s developers . For instance, just as it is possible to “jailbreak” proprietary phone operating system software by downloading a program that “tweaks” the software, disabling monitoring capability in wiretap – modified software may be as easy as clicking a link and running a small program that can disable intercept functionality.

It is important to understand that because these systems are built on open standards, modified software without lawful intercept capability will be able to interoperate with systems with the intercept capability and with unmodified systems. To take an extreme example, say that all U.S. – made Web browsers support CALEA II, thus allowing wiretapping of any WebRTC session. Two users who desire unmonitorable communications need only download secure foreign – made versions of one of the major browsers and they can make secure calls using exactly the same infrastructure as those that must use compliant versions . We should expect that any user who is concerned about monitoring — including many potential monitoring targets — would obtain and use a n unmonitorable version of a given product or service . Ironically, then, potential terrorists may easily be able to u se stronger security than the U.S. government, which is less likely to install non – U.S. forks of these programs.

So,

The bad guys and all of us good guys can easily find ways of defeating the risk of compromise.
But how many of us can be sure those safe versions actually are safe? They could block the government and open up our communications to others instead. Or maybe its just another trick version from the U.S.
But the government and perhaps most businesses regulated by business would likely be required to not protective actions
This would be a great tool for interfering with the electric grid, nuclear power plants, the communications grid, etc.
How about insider trading? A great tool for learning all sorts of information which will effect interest rates, stock, or commodity prices.

If you believe that, in general, government can be incompetent, that makes this plan even less effective and more risky.

Testimony against six bills and for one

All of these bills are well intended. In fact, I would support most of the concepts, yet in only a single case could I support one of these bills , based on huge gaps between the good intent and the actual details present and missing in those bills.

Let me echo again, Paul Krugmann:

Three decades ago, when I went off for my year in the United States government, an old hand explained to me the nature of the job: it was mostly about fighting bad ideas. And these bad ideas, he went on to explain, were like cockroaches: no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they keep coming back.
– Paul Krugman

Oppose:

S.B. 901 – all but eliminate our post-election audits
H.B. 6428 – Town by town electronic check-in
S.B. 775 and S.B. 777 – Town by town, pollworker by pollworker check-in and polling-place lookup
S.B. 779 and H.B. 6429 – Make cross-endorsed voting easier on officials, more work for voters

Favor:

S.B. 1058 – Minor change to destruction of blank absentee ballots – lots more we should address beyond this minor change

Each of the .PDFs has a link to the associated bill(s)

What We Worry? What Could Go Wrong On Election Day?

America’s elections are run entirely on the honor system. What could possibly go wrong?

Detroit News op-ed: BenDor and Stanislevic: What could go wrong on Election Day? <read>

We worry that the nation will end up with no confidence in the election results, regardless of who wins.

That’s because we have no systematic way to detect malfunctions in the voting machines or tabulators on Election Day…

We worry that there could be widespread fraud in the sending of voted military and overseas ballots by fax, email or other vulnerable internet methods…

We fear that close elections will go to the courts without any prospect of credible numbers. This is because of two widespread conditions that preclude complete, meaningful recounts: no paper ballots and no manual counts….In states that do allow a hand recount, like Michigan, the burden is often on the apparent losing candidate, not only to pay for the recount, but also to bear the stigma of “poor loser.” The voting public has no say.

We lose sleep over the prospect of the ultimate disenfranchisement of thousands of voters…

America’s elections are run entirely on the honor system. What could possibly go wrong?

And from the New York Times some “bad news/it could be worse news” if we had the risky National Popular Vote Agreement: Disruption From Storm May Be Felt at the Polls <read>

Some New Jersey voters may find their hurricane-damaged polling sites replaced by military trucks, with — in the words of the state’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno — “a well-situated national guardsman and a big sign saying, ‘Vote Here.’ ” Half of the polling sites in Nassau County on Long Island still lacked power on Friday. And New York City was planning to build temporary polling sites in tents in some of its worst-hit neighborhoods.

Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Conn., with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill at the Longfellow School, a closed polling place.

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is threatening to create Election Day chaos in some storm-racked sections of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — and some effects may also be felt in other states, including Pennsylvania, where some polling sites still lacked power on Friday morning.

Disrupted postal delivery will probably slow the return of absentee ballots. And with some polling sites likely to be moved, elections officials were bracing for a big influx of provisional paper ballots — which could delay the vote count in places.

Weary local elections officials vowed that the vote would go on. “Come hell or high water — we had both — we’re voting on Tuesday,” William T. Biamonte, the Democratic commissioner at the Nassau County Board of Elections, said in an interview…

With turnout projected to be down in all these states, Mr. Obama could see his share of the national popular vote reduced.

Caltech/MIT: What has changed, what hasn’t, & what needs improvement

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a thorough, comprehensive, and insightful new report timed to the 2012 election. We find little to quibble with in the report. We agree with all of its recommendations.Several items with which we fully endorse were covered in this report which sometimes are missing from the discussion or often underemphasised.

The report itself is 52 pages, followed by 32 pages of opinions of others, including election officials, advocates, and vendors, some of whom disagree with some aspects of the report. Every page is worth reading. The report is not technical. It covers a wide range of issues, background, and recommendations.

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a thorough, comprehensive, and insightful new report timed to the 2012 election: VOTING: What has changed, what hasn’t, & what needs improvement <read>

We find little to quibble with in the report. We agree with all of its recommendations although we might place different emphasis in particular areas:

As we have studied the areas where progress has been made since 2001, and where progress has stalled, we have developed the following recommendations. All have been discussed earlier in our report, and we summarize them here. They are not in priority order. First, regarding voting technology, we recommend:

Legislation mandating effective election auditing, which at a minimum would require post-election auditing of all voting technologies used in an election.

Continued strong support for voting systems security research, emphasizing auditing and the verifiability of election outcomes.

A movement toward mandating statistically meaningful post-election audits, rather than setting security standards for election equipment, as the primary way to safeguard the integrity of the vote.

A new business model led by states and localities, with harmonized standards and requirements.

Second, regarding voter registration, we recommend: » Streamlining the provisional balloting process in many states and the creation of common best practices and voluntary standards across states.

The development of voter verification systems in which states bear the cost of stringent voter ID regimes, in those states that desire to increase ID requirements for in-person voting.

Continued standardization of voter registration databases, so that they can be polled across states.

Third, with respect to polling places and pollworkers, we recommend:

Continued improvement of pollworker training and more reliance on network technologies to facilitate pollworker training.

Development of applications deployed on mobile devices that bring more information to pollworkers, and transmit real-time data about Election Day workloads back to the central voting office and the public at large.

Increased functionality of electronic pollbooks and their wider adoption.

Development of applications that gauge how long voters are waiting in line to vote, so that wait times can be better managed and reported to the public.

Fourth, regarding absentee and early voting our first two recommendations repeat those we issued a decade ago; the third is new:

Discourage the continued rise of no-excuse absentee balloting and resist pressures to expand all-mail elections. Similarly, discourage the use of Internet voting until the time when auditability can be ensured and the substantial risks entailed by voting over the Internet can be sufficiently mitigated.

Require that states publish election returns in such a way that allows the calculation of the residual vote rate by voting mode.

Continue research into new methods to get usable ballots to military and overseas civilian voters securely, accurately, and rapidly and to ensure their secure return in time to be counted.

And, finally, regarding the infrastructure and science of elections: » Continued development of the science of elections.

Continued, and expanded, support for the research functions of the Election Assistance Commission.

Development of an Electoral Extension Service, headquartered in each state’s land-grant colleges, to disseminate new ideas about managing elections in the United States.

Several items with which we fully endorse were covered in this report which sometimes are missing from the discussion or often underemphasised:

The Risks of Mail-in and No-Excuse Absentee Voting

The report thoroughly covers the disenfranchisement risks of mail voting which are about double polling place voting. Such voting does not increase turnout significantly, except in local elections. We would have liked to seen more coverage of the organized fraud, vote buying, and coercion frequently occurring via such voting. These are not just theoretical risks. New to us was the surveys showing that the public at some level recognizes the risks and show less confidence in elections with expanded absentee or mail-in voting.

The Emphasis on Election Auditing over Machine Testing and Certification

It is theoretically impossible to develop or test a completely safe voting technology. Extreme testing and slow certification requirements stifle innovation, add costs, delay improvements and are ultimately ineffective. High confidence, efficient statistical audits, paper ballots, combined with a strong chain-of-custody are a necessary solution that eclipse the elusive pursuit of technical perfection.

The Need and Value of Quality Voter Registration Combined with Online Voter Check-in

The report points to the fallacy of votER fraud. Yet there are efficiencies and enhanced enfranchisement available from better, more accurage voter registration databases. There are solutions with online check-in that also provide voter-id without the disenfranchising aspects of the currently proposed voter-id laws.

The Challenges of the Election Technology Industry

My years of experience in the software industry always lead me to the conclusion that the election technology industry is a losing business proposition. While I am not enamored with any of the current voting technology vendors, there is little incentive for them or new players to enter the field. The closest analogy is the defense industry. That industry is not fragmented, has essentially one customer, which designs products and pays for research and development. The voting technology industry is fragmented and has a fragmented customer base, with varying demands, coupled with a very difficult sales environment.

Recognition of One of the Risks of the National Popular Vote Agreement

The proposed National Popular Vote (NPV) may have negative security implications, since the opportunity to perform proper post-election audits appears to be considerably diminished.

CTVotersCount readers know that we would go farther and cover the risks of a national popular vote in our current state-by-state fragmented system, not designed to provide an accurate national popular total. Alleged popular totals cannot be audited, cannot be recounted, and electors must be chosen before an official count is available. The National Popular Vote agreement does nothing to address the existing risk issues with the Electoral College and, in fact, adds to the risks.

CTVotersCount flip flops from “Trust but Verify” to “Verify to Trust”

There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.

Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family.

Like other voting integrity advocates, we often quote President Ronald Reagan, “Trust but Verify”. We have come to realize that we were wrong, so we are flip flopping from that to “Verify to Trust”. Going forward we will refrain from quoting the 40th President.

There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.

Sadly there is no reason to trust our elections, simply because we do not verify them.

Bad enough that our 2004 election was in the hands of a person who promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush– maybe that person was as honest as the day is long, but he lost all trust because the election was not verified.

Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family: Does the Romney Family Now Own Your e-Vote? <read> Once again, we have no reason to question Mitt’s integrity, but if he should win, there will always be a question, since we do not, and in some cases cannot verify our elections.

Maybe some things are too important, too valuable to leave to the hands of business. We have reported on this before: <The Outsourced State> <Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections>

As we have said before we favor flip flopping in some cases. We spend much of our time lobbying politicians to change their positions. Former Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz’s finest hour was in late 2005 when she scrapped her selection of a touch screen voting machine and began the process anew to select an optical scan system.

Big Bird and Charlie Rose know what the CT Legislature does not!

See Charlie Rose interview Dr. Barbara Simons, co-auther of Broken Ballots. <view >

Big Bird and Charlie Rose now know that Internet voting, email voting, Virgina elections, and inadequately audited elections – do not merit our trust.

See Charlie Rose interview Dr. Barbara Simons, co-auther of Broken Ballots. <view >

Big Bird and Charlie Rose now know that Internet voting, email voting, Virgina elections, and inadequately audited elections – do not merit our trust.

Unfortunately the Connecticut Legislature completely trusts the internet with our votes.

In 2011 the Legislature was about to pass online voting despite the science, ignoring our testimony. Fortunately, they stopped, but only after the Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill convinced them to only require a report on online voting, resulting in a symposium with nationally know computer scientists and a former sports reporter and team mascot Secretary of State from West Virginia.

In 2012, we could have told them that email voting over the internet was even more dangerous, but there were not public hearings – they stuffed email voting into a campaign finance reform bill. Passed by both Houses, we warned the Governor about email voting and the unconstitutional provisions of the bill, claiming voters could waive our right to a secret vote. The Governor vetoed the bill, partially because of email voting.

Perhaps our Legislature will understand this clip from Charlie Rose,

What can the F.D.A. teach us about Officials, Internet voting, and Computer voting?

Vast, easy spying capabilities. No technical expertise required. The possibilities are endless. Votes, voters, spouses, lawyers, business opponents, employees, bosses, officials, candidates, campaigns, investigators, and auditors can be monitored by practically anyone. Will the perpetrators be brought to justice?

A sickening (no pun intended) piece in the New York Times about the Food and Drug Administration: In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists <read>

Summary: F.D.A. put off the shelf spy software on work and home computers of employees suspected of whistle-blowing. The software captured emails, keystrokes, chats, and screens of the employees, sending alerts based on specific words. Also thus spying on journalists and congressional staff which may have been ‘conspiring’ to hold the F.D.A. to account.

A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.

What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency?s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.

Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.?s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and “defamatory” information about the agency.

F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.

While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.

The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.

The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists? claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation…

With the documents from the surveillance cataloged in 66 huge directories, many Congressional staff members regarded as sympathetic to the scientists each got their own files containing all their e-mails to or from the whistle-blowers. Drafts and final copies of letters the scientists sent to Mr. Obama about their safety concerns were also included.

Last year, the scientists found that a few dozen of their e-mails had been intercepted by the agency. They filed a lawsuit over the issue in September, after four of the scientists had been let go…

Mr. Van Hollen said on Friday after learning of his status on the list that “it is absolutely unacceptable for the F.D.A. to be spying on employees who reach out to members of Congress to expose abuses or wrongdoing in government agencies.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican whose former staff member?s e-mails were cataloged in the surveillance database, said that “the F.D.A. is discouraging whistle-blowers.” He added that agency officials “have absolutely no business reading the private e-mails of their employees. They think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want.”…

The software used to track the F.D.A. scientists, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., costs as little as $99.95 for individual use, or $2,875 to place the program on 25 computers. It is marketed mainly to employers to monitor their workers and to parents to keep tabs on their children?s computer activities.

“Monitor everything they do,” says SpectorSoft?s Web site. “Catch them red-handed by receiving instant alerts when keywords or phrases are typed or are contained in an mail, chat, instant message or Web site.”…

What can we learn:

Any form of Internet voting is completely vulnerable to the loss of the secret ballot, including email voting. Military commanders could monitor voting by soldiers, business owners monitor employee voting, union leaders monitor members voting, bishops monitor voting of the flock and employees of their enterprises etc.
Similarly, votes made on software used to complete ballots for mail-in voting could be monitored.
Technicians know that it is hardly a leap to go from monitoring screens and keystrokes to being able to change votes undetected by the user.
All it takes is access and commercial software sold to the general public, no technical expertise.
Officials and public agencies are not exempt for ethics lapses and the ability to do practically anything. It is “parents ‘play'”. (Voting officials included)
The possibilities are endless. Spouses, dates, officials, candidates, campaigns, votes, voters, and auditors can be monitored by practically anyone.

What remains to be seen:

Will the perpetrators be brought to justice? Could they have information that they could use as a bribe to stop investigations and prosecutions? Will prosecutions be stopped for “national security” reasons? More on this topic coming soon…

*********

Democracy Now covers this same story <video>

There are really three aspects of the story:

Ignoring science, the F.D.A. approved dangerous medical equipment in diametric opposition to its mission
The F.D.A. targeted and fired whistle-blowers trying to prevent this
They spied on employees, protected communication, and Congress, creating an enemies list

UConn paper warns of limitations of cryptography

Use of good tools must go hand-in-hand with good use of tools

We have just become aware of an excellent paper from the University of Connecticut (UConn): Integrity of Electronic Voting Systems: Fallacious Use of Cryptogrphy <read>

The report describes the limits of cryptography to protect the integrity of election equipment, our votes, and ultimately our democracy. They also provide a memorable phrase widely applicable beyond cryptography and elections:

Use of good tools must go hand-in-hand with good use of tools. In particular, severe security deficiencies have been reported in electronic voting terminals despite the use of cryptography. In this way, superficial uses of cryptography can lead to a false sense of security. Worse, cryptography can prevent meaningful independent technological audits of voting equipment when encryption obfuscates the auditable data. A vendor may provide its own test and audit tools, but relying on the self-test and self-audit features is problematic as one should never trust self-auditing software (cf. relying on a corporate entity to perform self-audit).

They the describe the challenges and limitations of using cryptography in general, the general vulnerabilities in the Diebold-Premier-Dominion AccuVote-TSx, and demonstrating two specific attacks:

we designed and tested two attacks against the AV-TSx terminal. In the first, the attacker wishes to swap votes received by two candidates. The attacker can be successful provided that the sizes of the two files that define the candidate representation in the digital slate are identical. We found that is not a rare occurrence and in fact our test election contained such pairs of candidates. The swapping was applied to the name definitions of the two candidates and included the integrity check. In the second attack, the attacker simply wishes to make one of the candidates disappear from the slate. This can be achieved though a modification of the file that defines the layout of the candidate’s name.

All our findings are based on straightforward experimentation with the voting terminal; we had no access to internal or proprietary information about the terminal or access to source code.

They point that systems are vulnerable because of their complexity:

Two observations are critical in this respect: (i) The safety and correctness of a large system is only as good as its weakest link. Additionally, a single failure — whether benign or malicious — can ripple through and affect the entire system. (ii) Procedural counter-measures can be used to mitigate the weaknesses of the system, however, in a large system relying on many distributed procedural elements, the probability of a procedure failure can be extremely high, even if each individual procedure fails with small probability.

They also provide examples of other measures which provide vulnerability

Cryptographic techniques can mitigate the risks of attacks against removable media cards. The level of protection depends upon the strength of the cryptographic techniques, upon the safekeeping of the digital keys used to protect the cards, but also upon the safe-keeping of the voting terminal themselves. Indeed, the firmware of the voting terminal necessarily holds a copy of the digital keys used to protect the removable media. A successful attack against the terminal compromises those keys that an attacker can use to produce forged, compromised removable media cards. This situation is analogous to one where a person always hides a physical key under the doormat – knowing where the key is hidden defeats the purpose of having a lock. The trust in the whole system depends on the vendor diligence in…

Once a card is programmed on EMS, it is shipped to the election officials to be inserted into the voting terminal where it stays for the duration of the election before being shipped back for aggregating the results (where central tabulation is used). The integrity of the card during the entire process is critical to the integrity of the election.

If the card can be tampered with while in transit to the precinct election officials, the entire system can be compromised. The election description can be made inconsistent with the paper ballot leading to an incorrect interpretation of the votes and therefore incorrect tallying.

Implications for Connecticut

Although we use the AccuVote-OS and this report is on the AccuVote-TSx many similar risks apply, even if the AccuVote-OS makes less use of cryptography. As the UConn report points out:

in 2005 H. Hursti released his findings on the Diebold OpticalScan system (the so-called “Hursti Hack”). This was an early design that used only a superficial password protection to secure the system. Newer designs normally incorporate some cryptographic tools; however, the application of the tools remains haphazard.

That is the same system in use today, everywhere in Connecticut.

Newspapers join CTVotersCount, ACLU, and CBIA in objections to H.B. 5556

CTVotersCount opposes H.B. 5556 and has urged Governor Malloy to veto the bill because it contains a provision for risky, unconstitutional email and fax voting.

CTVotersCount also opposes H.B. 5556 and has urged Governor Malloy to veto the bill because it contains a provision for risky, unconstitutional email and fax voting.

The underdefined provisions for military and overseas voters were added to an otherwise unrelated bill at the last minute by Senator Gayle Slossberg. Email and fax voting were never the subject of public hearings this year or ever by the General Assembly.

Not only are those voting mechanisms risky, we believe they are unconstitutional. They require individual voters to sign away their right to a secret vote, since email and fax votes cannot be made secret. However, we believe the secret vote guaranteed by the Connecticut Constitution is every voter’s right that no individual voter’s vote can be associated with the individual, such that their vote could be coerced or intimidated. So an individual voter cannot sign away that right for all other voters.

The newspaper, ACLU, and CBIA have other concerns and constitutional objections. Here is an article from the Hartford Courant discussing those concerns: Newspapers Ask Malloy To Veto Bill <read>

Under the interpretation of the bill by the Connecticut Daily Newspapers Association, newspapers that sponsor a political debate would be required to calculate “the value of the debate — i.e., set-up, airtime, advertising, etc. — coupled with the broadcasting of such debate” as an “independent expenditure” that would need to be reported publicly under the recently approved campaign finance bill.

In addition, the newspaper association board would need to approve those expenses, and the board “would then be required to disclose the votes of individual board members and ‘pertinent information’ that took place during the discussion of the expenditure,” according to a letter to Malloy by Chris Van DeHoef, the association’s executive director.

“If CDNA should partner with a local television station to host and televise a debate and CDNA placed ads in its members’ papers, would those ads constitute an independent expenditure?” Van DeHoef asked in his letter. “Would the airtime be an independent expenditure?”

Could It Happen Here? Too wide to scan, would we count or copy?

Brad Blog reports ballots too wide to scan in Wisconsin. The official solution – count by hand? NO. They copied the ballots and scanned. We agree with Brad that this is unacceptable. But what would happen in Connecticut – would one of our warnings come true?

Brad Blog reports ballots too wide to scan in Wisconsin. The official solution – count by hand? NO. They copied the ballots and scanned: Voted Ballots ‘Remade’ by Election Workers in WI After Being Printed Too Wide for Optical-Scanners <read>

During yesterday’s Wisconsin primary election, a number of paper ballots were sent out in several counties that were reportedly too wide to be tabulated by the computerized optical-scan systems used to tally ballots in the state. The same exact thing happened just two weeks ago during the Illinois primary sending election officials into a panic and causing delays for some voters..

one way in which the failure was dealt with in both Illinois and Wisconsin continues to be extremely troubling and, frankly, offense: the practice of election workers manually “remaking” the ballots of voters after the election, in ostensible secret, and before they are tabulated…

It has become standard practice across the country for election workers to actually create new ballots, by hand, out of ballots that cannot be read by optical-scan tallying computers. The workers either “remake” those ballots correctly or incorrectly. Who knows?

We agree with Brad that this is unacceptable. How accurately are they copied? Is there a law supporting this? Is there an audit to check, is there a numbering of original and copied ballots such that individual ballots can be verified? Our choice would be counting as that would be easier to check, audit, or recount and recover from. Simpler to prove or restore integrity and confidence. Probably less effort in the first place.

What would happen in Connecticut? Last year we cautioned that the Secretary of the State’s and Legislature’s “solution” to the Bridgeport fiasco was insufficient. It would prevent the Bridgeport problem by printing more ballots and call for a town by town contingency plan. We warned that there were other events that count trigger a similar problem and more was needed.

Here we may have prevented just one of those triggering events. Triple the expected number of ballots could be ordered, but that would not prevent a problem if they could not be read by the scanners, ‘What Would Bridgeport Do?’, ‘What Would West Hartford Do?’ or ‘What Would Mansfield Do?’

A contingency plan might help if it anticipated a wide range of circumstances and was actually used in an emergency. But we are skeptical – What would there be that would cause Bridgeport or any other town to count accurately by hand in those circumstances, another time? What would there be to insure copying ballots was done faithfully? And that the copying was done onto readable ballots? Once again there is no law allowing any authority to step in, supervise, help, or mandate solutions or reviews. Maybe a court could be convinced to intervene?

Finally, we point out that a law requiring a contingency plan without a deadline, is even less useful than a contingency plan gathering dust on the shelf. Thus far there is no required municipal plan in place in Connecticut. Required first is a regulation containing a model plan from the Secretary of the State. Perhaps that model plan will be a pleasant surprise. Perhaps it will lead to adoption of effective plans across the state. Perhaps the plans will not stay on the shelves and will help avoid integrity and confidence problems.