Our Editorials | CTVotersCount.org

Journal Inquirer Editorial and Our Response

Journal Inquirer Editorial, Monday: ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS VOTING IN CONNECTICUT?

Our letter sent yesterday:

I agree with the sentiment but not the details of your editorial…There is a better solution…The solution is routine, independent, and publicly verifiable audits of all aspects of election administration. With such audits, we would not be in this situation…

Journal Inquirer Editorial, Monday: ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS VOTING IN CONNECTICUT? <read>

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill says they aren’t, but nobody has checked officially even as there is an easy way to find out.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles has issued 28,000 “drive-only” driver’s licenses to people who are living in the state illegally. New Haven has issued thousands of city identification cards to illegal aliens living there. To protect illegal aliens, these databases are kept secret, but the secretary could subpoena them and compare them against the state’s voter rolls, which are public.

Does anyone in authority want to know? Not likely.

Our letter sent yesterday:

To the Editor,

I agree with the sentiment but not the details of your editorial, dated 2/6/2017, “Are Illegal Aliens Voting in Connecticut”. The residents of Connecticut and the Nation deserve evidence to confirm or refute President Trump’s allegations that 3 million illegal aliens voted. The method proposed to compare alien driver’s licenses and registrations in New Haven to voter lists, by the Secretary of the State is inadequate and illegal. Illegal because the Secretary of the State does not have subpoena or even investigative powers. Inadequate because it only covers two segments of aliens – two segments that are taking the risks of identifying themselves. Inadequate because a secret investigation, including one by a government agency, especially of elections, should not be trusted by the public and the press.

There is a better solution which we have recommended to Denise Merrill, Secretary of the State and President of the National Association of Secretaries of State. The solution is routine, independent, and publicly verifiable audits of all aspects of election administration. With such audits, we would not be in this situation of baseless allegations of fraud and counter claims of unquestionable integrity. The science of election auditing could be used to economically provide an answer. It is estimated, that publicly, randomly selecting just 400 voters checked off as voting and determining if they voted legally could confirm with 99.7% certainty that nothing like 3 million voted illegally. That is just 400 nationwide! Publicly, randomly, selecting several hundred in Connecticut would provide more than adequate proof or refutation that our electors were correctly chosen. Note that the real issue is comparing actual voters, not the registration lists, yet those lists could also be audited with similar effort.

Trick n Tweet: The Age of the Unsound Bite

I was going to write a post discussing the allegations of “widespread illegal immigrant voter fraud”. Yet, voter fraud is not the problem; Russian hacking is not the problem; Immigrants are not the problem; How many attended the inauguration is not the issue.

The problem is that, like Three Card Monte, the controversy takes our our attention off the real issues.

I was going to write a post discussing the allegations of “widespread illegal immigrant voter fraud” which have been widely debunked e.g. <here> <here> <here>. (Basically there is no proof, no anecdotal evidence, and every credible investigation has come up empty looking significant outsider fraud, other than absentee voting fraud). And maybe also cover the lack of evidence for Russian hacking of our election <here>.

Yet, voter fraud is not the problem; Russian hacking is not the problem; Immigrants are not the problem; How many attended the inauguration is not the issue.

The problem is that, like Three Card Monte, the controversy takes our our attention off the real issues, takes our attention off actual analysis, and takes our attention off policies actually being implemented. We should be concerned that congress is baring the OMB from analyzing the financial impact of ending or replacing Obamacare; Concerned that education has been altered, science is being suppressed, and will be altered without expertise, analysis, and debate. Concerned that defense spending is out of control, wasteful, ineffective, and unaccounted, no matter ones views on foreign policy. Concerned as Naomi Kline is that we may be heading steadily toward Disaster Capitalism.

The problems for voting are the real risks of our vulnerable voting systems; the risks from insider manipulation; the disaster that is our voter registration systems; the inequality in our state by state voting systems; and the lack of actual evidence that our elections were correctly or incorrectly decided. And ignoring the low costs of actually strengthening our systems and preforming effective audits to demonstrate or refute the reported results.

Amid national election concerns, Connecticut goes the wrong way

CT Mirror Viewpoints

Last week, without public notice, seven Connecticut municipalities conducted electronic “audits” under the guidance of the UConn Center for Voting Technology and the Secretary of the State’s Office, using the Audit Station developed by the Voter Center.
There is a science of election audits. Machine-assisted audits can offer efficiency and ease of use, but any audit process needs to be transparent and provide for independent public verification of the results.

CT Mirror Viewpoints <read>

About half the states, including Connecticut, have both paper ballots and post-election audits. Because our audits were transparent and publicly verifiable, Connecticut Citizen Election Audit observers have been able to reveal multiple flaws in the process and in the official reporting of audit results. Earlier this year, however, the General Assembly unanimously cut Connecticut’s the audits from 10 percent of districts to 5 percent.

Now there is more bad news: our already inadequate audits have been partially replaced by electronic “audits” which are not transparent and not publicly verifiable. Instead, we now have “black box voting” augmented by “black box auditing.” This should satisfy only those with blind trust in computers and blind trust in insiders with access to the “audit” computers.

Last week, without public notice, seven Connecticut municipalities conducted electronic “audits” under the guidance of the UConn Center for Voting Technology and the Secretary of the State’s Office, using the Audit Station developed by the Voter Center.

There is a science of election audits. Machine-assisted audits can offer efficiency and ease of use, but any audit process needs to be transparent and provide for independent public verification of the results. Machine-assisted manual audits in California and Colorado demonstrate how this can be achieved. Public verification begins with publicly rescanning the ballots and providing the public with a computer readable list of how each ballot was counted. Then selecting a small random sample of the ballots and comparing the actual voter verified ballots to the record of how the machine counted them.

It is puzzling that the UConn Voter Center, the General Assembly, and the Secretary of the State have consistently chosen to ignore the peer-reviewed science which would provide an actual audit, appropriately trusted, even faster, and even less work for local officials.

Compare existing election audits to professional audits. Professional audits include examining a sample of original documents such as receipts from vendors or signed checks. Such audits are performed by individuals independent of those accountable for doing the original job. Public verifiability is critical to post-election audits, because they are performed by those responsible for conducting the election itself, protecting the original ballots, evaluating and recommending the election equipment.

The new Connecticut system ? including equipment and procedures ? involves rescanning, with officials reviewing scanned images of every ballot and how it was interpreted by the system. But, scanned images are not photographs: they are as vulnerable as other computer data, subject to machine errors, tampering, and human error. Connecticut’s electronic “audits” do not verify that the ballot images correspond to the ballots. Ballots are the only evidence verified by voters.

Last week local officials reviewed each of the images for approximately one to three seconds. At that speed, it was difficult to verify that even one race of five displayed was accurately interpreted by the system. It would be more efficient, accurate, and trustworthy, to sample the paper ballots as in Colorado and California and compare them to the system interpretations.

The new system is being presented as much more economical for municipalities with less work and stress for local officials. When and if it is working properly, without errors and unhacked, it could be much more accurate than the disorganized, inconsistent hand counting that is frequently performed in Connecticut.

A solution is at hand. The UConn Audit Station is capable of providing the kind of machine-assisted manual audits that would meet the requirements of sound science for election audits. It could provide transparent, publicly verifiable audits that are independent of the software, hardware, and the officials who are responsible for the audit and the election.

Amid national concerns for election integrity and calls for stronger audits nationwide, Connecticut is positioned to be a leader in election auditing. Our manual audits were a good start, with some flaws.

The Secretary of the State and the UConn Voter Center should work with national experts to develop procedures that take full advantage of the Audit Station, to deliver efficient and trustworthy election audits. Until then our manual audits should continue. Voters and the General Assembly should insist upon transparent and publicly verifiable elections.

Luther Weeks is Executive Director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit.

[Election] law is an ass

State and Federal have ruled that Jill Stein does not have standing to call for a recount in Michigan.

Our Opinion: The Michigan law[and or this ruling] is an ass, every single voter in the United States has an interest in the vote in every state, in every municipality, and that the vote of each voter is counted and totaled accurately. Each of those plays a part in selecting our President and the majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.

State and Federal have ruled that Jill Stein does not have standing to call for a recount in Michigan.

For more details and further outrage see:

Alternet: 7 Election Integrity and Cyber Security Experts Say Stopping Michigan Recount is a Corrupt Exercise of Power <read>

“Americans will never know the truth about what happened.”

Make no mistake, a travesty has occurred. On Wednesday in courtrooms and government boardrooms across the state, a series of legal dominos fell on Stein’s statewide presidential recount. In state legal venues, the linchpin was a three-member appeals court of Republican judges who ordered a state vote canvassing board to shut down the recount. That board then voted to reverse its earlier decision allowing the recount to start. Later Wednesday evening, a federal court judge lifted his prior restraining order preventing Michigan officials from calling off the recount. On Thursday, Michigan counties had suspended the recount. “It’s stopped,” said the receptionist answering the phone at the Wayne County Election Division in Detroit.

What follows are seven statements from election integrity activists and computer security experts who supported the recount.

We would also add that this is just the normal partisan corrupt process of deciding elections in the U.S., since our founding, see: <Ballot Battles>

How Do We Know Without Recounts?

We have all seen many articles and posts on the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We are likely to see many more. For now, here are a few points about the recounts:

I am entirely in favor of thorough post-election audits and recounts.
I am entirely in favor of the recounts initiated by Jill Stein.
Even if there is no change in the state winners, Election Integrity has won already
Yet, maybe we will not win that much in the end
All the objections to the recounts are partisan

We have all seen many articles and posts on the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We are likely to see many more. For now, here are a few points about the recounts:

I am entirely in favor of thorough post-election audits and recounts.

Jill Stein and those who have contributed to her fund are doing a service to democracy and for all voters. We should have routine audits and recounts after every election. Currently only about half of states have post-election audits and routine close-vote recounts. Neither is sufficient alone. An audit finding discrepancies, that if widespread, would change the winning candidate(s) should result in a full recount. Close vote recounts alone are insufficient. Without audits we cannot be sure that the results are not off more than the trigger for recounts. At a minimum audits should be risk-limiting, subject all ballots to audit, check the entire totaling process, and assess ballot security. Audits should also cover the registration and checkin process.

With new techniques such as single ballot auditing and ballot polling audits, post-election audits can be quite economical. With detailed election reporting, auditing the total result can also be accomplished efficiently.

I am entirely in favor of the recounts initiated by Jill Stein.

She and those who have contributed donations and time to the project are doing a service to our Democracy and every voter. Since apparently, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania lack post-election audits the recounts are necessary. At least, in Pennsylvania, the margin is now so close that a close-vote recount and checking of all totals should be automatic.

Even if there is no change in the state winners, Election Integrity has won already

The initiation of the recounts have already highlighted the lack of integrity in the current system. We now know that it is hard to get recounts in these three states; that the recount laws, at least in Wisconsin, are inadequate to cause a “real” adversarial recount as we saw in Minnesota in the Coleman-Frankin recount; in Pennsylvania the law for recounts is ungainly requiring affidavits by three voters in each polling place in a short time; and highlighting the impossibility of really auditing unverifiable DRE, touch-screen, voting machines.

Yet, maybe we will not win that much in the end

Still I am skeptical that the audits will result in real change toward national minimum standards for voter-verified paper ballots along with sufficient audits and recounts. Perhaps if the recounts reverse the result in one state or at least show a significant level of change in the numbers that will be enough to result in enforceable Federal minimum standards, or failing that reform in a number of states.

All the objections to the recounts are partisan

Lets start by conceding that Jill Stein and the Green Party hope to gain from doing this service. What candidate or politician does something without a hoped partisan gain?

The initial complaints against the recounts came apparently from Hillary supporters. To me, it seemed that they blame Jill Stein for Hillary’s loss as well as Bernie supporters. Whenever there is a close election the apparent looser has many individuals and groups to blame, while the apparent winner has many to thank. The closer the election the more small factors can directly contribute to the result.

Now the Trump team is objecting to the recounts, (after campaigning on maybe not accepting the initial result).

Thus has it always been. See our review of Ballot Battles.

Some Coverage:

Robert Koehler via Common Dreams: Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus <read>

In other words, the American president is essentially determined every four years by a sort of quick-draw consensus of corporate media conglomerates, not by a cautiously precise hand count of the votes that have been cast

There is evidence already for suspicion in Pennsylvania: Walter Mebane Jr. via the Washington Post: New evidence finds anomalies in Wisconsin vote, but no conclusive evidence of fraud <read>

Walter Mebane has a unique way of analyzing elections for suspicious results. He analyses the digits in the numbers reported at a low level. The lowest digits should fall into a certain, non-random pattern in most elections. If there is wide manipulation of data it is very difficult to mimic those expected patterns. His analysis points to suspicion in Wisconsin. Yet, for now its a bit less than “where there is smoke, there is fire.”

An article in Time supports better election night reporting data: How the Wisconsin Recount Could Help Fix American Elections <read>

And this on the importance of election security by David Dill via Scientific American: Election Security Is a Matter of National Security <read>

It is not good enough to say, “We can’t prove fraud.” In every election we need evidence that vote counts are accurate

What Do YOU [still] Want? Eight+ Years and Not Counting.

In the summer of 2008 I was on a panel in Fairfield, CT. I opened with remarks on “What Do You Want”. I said voters want five things and what Connecticut could do about them in the short run (three steps over two years). The two years passed and little changed, so in 2010 I repeated the post as What Do YOU [still] Want? Here we are in late 2016 and little has changed for the better:

In the summer of 2008 I was on a panel in Fairfield, CT. I opened with remarks on “What Do You Want”. I said voters want five things and what Connecticut could do about them in the short run (three steps over two years). The two years passed and little changed, so in 2010 I repeated the post as What Do YOU [still] Want? Here we are in late 2016 and little has changed for the better:

We have a different Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill.
In the last eight years, the science of auditing has progressed such that we could have much better audits at lower cost.
Only about half the states have post-election audits of any type. Experts debate if even one or two have effective, sufficient audits.
Connecticut’s post-election audits remain insufficient, unreliable and ineffective.
Earlier this year, the General Assembly has cut those insufficient audits in half. The only state we know that has actually cut back on post-election audits.

What I said in 2008 remains true today

My topic for the next few minutes is simple. It is: “What Do You Want”.

Let us begin with a quote from Colorado’s Secretary of State, Mike Coffman whose words inspired this talk and a quote from our own Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz.

Secretary Bysiewicz sent a letter in March to voters like you, who signed our petition last year. She said, in part: “We still have a lot of work to do and we need concerned citizens like you to stay involved…I share your belief that we should make our audit law the strongest in the nation and that its size and scope is adequate to achieve its goals…”

In June, Colorado’s Mike Coffman gave his view, of activists like CTVotersCount, “I think they have a fundamental belief that anything electronic, as it relates to voting, is evil and undermines our political system,”…”They believe in a world of conspiracy theories and are highly motivated. No matter what I do, so long as it leaves some form of electronic voting intact, it will be wrong by their standards.”

I agree with both of them. With Secretary Bysiewicz that we still “have a lot of work to do”; With Secretary Coffman, that voting advocates are “highly motivated”.

However, I do not believe that “anything electronic” is “evil” nor do I have a goal of eliminating “anything electronic” from voting.

So, What Should You Want?

Most fundamentally, five things:

That the ballot is secret, votes cannot be bought, coerced, added, lost, or modified

That your vote is counted, counted accurately, and counted exactly once

That everyone’s vote is counted accurately and reflected in the election results

That everyone has confidence that everyone’s vote is counted accurately

That, failing any of the above, appropriate corrective action will be taken

You deserve no more and no less. Democracy requires no less. Do you want anything less? Do you believe democracy can exist and flourish with less?

I’m open to any solution that will ensure Democracy. Whatever we can implement that ensures Democracy and is most efficient for officials and most convenient for the voters, I will support it.

So, Where Do We Go From Here?

We do not have a blank slate. We have just spent millions of dollars on purchasing the most cost effective, most voter verifiable, and auditable type of electronic voting system available, that meet Federally mandated requirements.

I could talk of the long term, realistically six to ten years off. But Democracy cannot wait. There are real risks now. There are actions we can take over the next two years to ensure Democracy in Connecticut – to lead the way for the Nation. Yes, I said two years, if we start now, taking decisive action, with the equipment we have.

The Short List

Let me finish with the short list of what we need to do now, over the next two years. The three items I think of when Secretary Bysiewicz says “We still have a lot of work to do”:

First, an element of prevention. Each of our elections is programmed in Massachusetts by contractors; Contractors over which we have little, if any, oversight. UConn has developed an outstanding program to independently test the memory cards to detect many potential errors or fraud. 100% of our memory cards need to be tested independently in Connecticut with that program; before the cards are shipped to election officials; before the cards are used in any election.

Second, an element of detection and confidence: We need strong post-election audits to detect errors and fraud. Our current audits are insufficient, unreliable and ineffective. Our audits should be based on the current science of election auditing and recognized post-election audit principles.

Third, a solid chain-of-custody to make credible elections and audits possible. We need to protect and account for ballots before, during, and after the election. Ballots, memory cards, and optical scanners must be protected from illegal modification or covert access whenever they could be compromised.

Would you trust chain-of-custody standards less than those we require for evidence in criminal cases?

In Summary

You are committed to the proposition that Democracy survive and flourish. We have serious work to do. It can happen in Connecticut. Voting Integrity, like the Constitution, can start here in the Constitution State and spread to the Nation.

CTVotersCount is dedicated to pursuing “What You Want”. As a great teacher said “Anything worth doing is worth failing at, and failing at, and failing at…until you succeed”

Maryland My Maryland: The only problem is the $275,000 “audit” won’t work.

In 2007 the Maryland Legislature mandated a switch to optical scan paper ballots. Just this year they have been implemented. Unfortunately, instead of an audit of the paper they opted for an entirely electronic audit of electronic scanned records, at a cost of about double per citizen than that of Connecticut’s manual paper audit.

I assisted in writing and editing an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun and testimony before the Board of Elections.

The terms “feel good ‘audit'”, “sham ‘audit'” etc. come to mind. We prefer to call it a “Back Box ‘Audit'” .

I assisted in writing and editing an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun and testimony before the Board of Elections:

Op-Ed, Baltimore Sun: Maryland Voting Audit Falls Short <read>

Testimony delivered by Poorvi L. Vora <read>

The terms “feel good ‘audit'”, “sham ‘audit'” etc. come to mind. We prefer to call it a “Back Box ‘Audit'” emphasizing it is similar to “Black Box Voting” where the election results are all in the hands of a non-transparent voting machine or person behind a curtain. Having paper and not using it is hardly different.

From the Op-Ed:

At the Board of Public Works Oct. 19th meeting, members passed without discussion a proposal by the State Board of Elections to pay Clear Ballot Group Inc. $275,000 for an “independent and automated solution to verify [the] accuracy” of the state’s election results.

Seems reasonable, right? Especially now that the term “rigged” frequently precedes “election” in this year’s campaign rhetoric. The only problem is it won’t work.

We have some experience to back this judgment: Between us, we have helped audit about 20 contests in several states and designed auditable voting systems. Methods developed by one of us are in laws in two states.

It’s great that Maryland voters get to vote on paper ballots this year; paper ballots that voters can check are the best evidence of “the will of the people.” Maryland’s ballots will be scanned and then counted electronically. As required by hard-won state legislation passed in 2007, the paper ballots will be stored securely as durable evidence of what voters wanted.

The next step in ensuring that the electronic count shows who really won is to manually review some of the paper ballots through an audit. But the recently proposed post-election “audit” falls short; it will not look at the marked paper ballots. Instead, Clear Ballots’ “ClearAudit” software assumes the state’s voting system scanned every ballot perfectly, and uses that information in its review. But no system is perfect; mistakes happen, equipment malfunctions. And some people want to make it look like the rightful winner lost.

There’s no good reason not to use the actual ballots in the audit. Other states review the paper ballots to ensure that any tabulation errors didn’t change the outcome of an election. And modern audits can be highly efficient; they review only a small random sample of ballots.

It is good that the board plans to review all votes, races and counties. The proposed auditing technology can detect many types of errors. But relying on the scans — which are as vulnerable as any other computer data — limits the kinds of problems the reviews can detect. The scans aren’t like photographs; they can differ due to machine error, tampering or human error (for instance leaving out a batch of ballots or scanning the same batch twice).

A robust statistical audit of the electronic results against the paper ballots can produce strong evidence that election outcomes are correct; it can also correct incorrect outcomes. In this contentious election, it is extremely important to Maryland and the nation to audit election results against the actual paper ballots. It is not too late to plan and conduct a real audit. We would be happy to help.

Common Sense: The Skeptics Guide to Election Integrity and Fraud

Two events in the last week or so prompt this post. First, last Saturday I was at the Reason Rally at the Lincoln Memorial. One speaker said “Be skeptical of everything”. A later speaker assured us, among other things, that two things I believe to be true were actually conspiracy theories.

Second, a recent series of posts by Richard Charmin, essentially claiming that in many states the primary was stolen.

So, where do I come out? I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” and the speaker at the Reason Rally who said to “be skeptical of everything”. Here we have competing extraordinary claims:

By Richard Charmin: That, in a large number of states the election results were manipulated in favor of a single candidate.
Implicitly by complacence: “Move on, nothing to see here, exit polls are always wrong in the U.S. Don’t be concerned that every time someone brings this up, they are always wrong in favor of one candidate or party”

Note: This is then twelfth post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <previous> [just an interesting coincidence the last Common Sense post was exactly one year ago!] <next>

Second, a recent series of posts by Richard Charmin, essentially claiming that in many states the primary was stolen, based on, among other things, a pretty consistent difference between raw exit polls and the results, almost always favoring one candidate. Looking at the details, we see that Connecticut is one of those states.

So, where do I come out? I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” and the speaker at the Reason Rally who said to be skeptical of everything. Here we have competing extraordinary claims:

By Richard Charmin: That, in a large number of states the election results were manipulated in favor of a single candidate.
Implicitly by complacence: “Move on, nothing to see here, exit polls are always wrong in the U.S. Don’t be concerned that every time someone brings this up, they are always wrong in favor of one candidate or party”

It is clear that both of these are extraordinary claims. We are disappointed in the lack of others providing factual evidence and solid arguments refuting or confirming either of these extra ordinary claims.

Democracy requires solid answers. Voters and Candidates deserve solid answers. What is required is Evidence Based Elections, elections that provide strong evidence that the outcome reflects the votes of the voters.

At this point we do not have that evidence in Connecticut. One approach would be a strong post-election audit showing that votes were counted accurately, that ballot counts matched the voters checked in, and that polling place and central count absentee counts were accurately accumulated.

In Connecticut, there are gaps in the post-election audit, transparency lacking in the totaling process, and challenges in verifying all the data. We are at work on developing answers which might provide reasonably convincing evidence for Connecticut.

Update: Skeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

EDITORIAL: General Assembly heading the wrong way on post-election audits

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

The Connecticut Senate has passed S.B. 252. If the House passes and the Governor signs the bill it will be another national embarrassment for Connecticut, doing the wrong thing at precisely the worst time.

We have voter-verified paper ballots. To be valuable and provide confidence they must be used for strong, publicly verified, post-election audits. You can help. Tell your legislators that you want stronger audits, not weaker audits. Tell them to oppose S.B. 252. Then consider volunteering one day after each election and primary to observe with the Citizen Audit.

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

S.B. 252 would cut our post-election audits from 10% of voting districts to 5%. S.B. 252 was originally intended to strengthen the audits, while providing savings for municipalities. The current version eliminates all the features in the original bill that would make the audits stronger. The current version saves, at most, just $15,000 more annually statewide over the original bill.

Those paying attention to the news in this primary season have heard many charges of potential election fraud, along with calls for post-election audits in Arizona, New York, and elsewhere. There is an embarrassing video of a faulty presidential primary post-election audit in Chicago, where the public was barred from observing the votes as they were being tallied by officials. Worse the counters had the original numbers in front of them. When their counts did not match by a wide margin, they added counts to one candidate and deleted counts from the other, so that the manual counts would exactly match the machine counts. Over the years there have been similar problems with the audits in Connecticut.

For the first couple of years in the Connecticut audits, some local officials barred the public from observing the ballots as they were counted, some made it very difficult for the public to determine the time and place of the audits. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz fixed those problems in procedures, which officials have since followed, for the most part. Other problems have not been effectively addressed.

The Citizen Audit’s observations of Connecticut’s audits have shown that many are conducted well, yet many are not. Many are, at best, only marginally better than the one in the video from Chicago. Connecticut election officials often do not double check counts; they are often aware of the original totals as they count, and work to match machine counts rather than accurately count the paper ballot votes. Frequently officials use confusing, ad-hoc, non-transparent methods for combining totals from multiple ballot stacks and teams of counters. Local officials in their reports and the Secretary of the State’s Office in statewide reports attribute all differences in counts to “Human Error”. The last official statewide report released by the Secretary of the State was for the November 2011 election. Five years is too long to wait for reports on a critical aspect of democracy.

S.B. 252 is still entitled “An Act Concerning Post-Election Audit Integrity and Efficiency”. The original proposed bill was the result of a long negotiated compromise which would have strengthened our audits in return for a reduction in the audit of polling place optical scanners, a change long sought by the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC). Among other reforms to strengthen the audits, the bill would have subjected centrally counted absentee ballots to audit, subjected originally hand counted ballots to audit when there were large numbers of them, mandated investigations of significant discrepancies in counts, required stronger ballot security, and timely reporting of results by the State. Municipalities would have saved 40% of their current costs, reducing relatively low annual statewide audits costs from at most $150,000 annually to less than $90,000. The revised, one-sided, bill provides none of the benefits while providing just $15,000 more in annual savings across all municipalities in the State.

Editorial: We didn’t “Fix this” or was it Fixed? We all lose anyway.

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. Four years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones.

We say:

Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States. Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others. We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.

After the long lines in some states in 2012, President Obama said “We Have To Fix That“. our years and a Presidential Commission later, it seems, at least Arizona is going the wrong way.. E.g. from the Washington Post: Arizona’s voting rights fire bell <read>

In a move rationalized as an attempt to save money, officials of Maricopa County, the state’s most populous, cut the number of polling places by 70 percent, from 200 in the last presidential election to 60 this time around. Maricopa includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city, which happens to have a non-white majority and is a Democratic island in an otherwise Republican county. What did the cutbacks mean? As the Arizona Republic reported, the county’s move left one polling place for every 21,000 voters — compared with one polling place for every 2,500 voters in the rest of the state.

The results, entirely predictable, were endless lines akin to those that await the release of new iPhones. It’s an analogy worth thinking about, as there is no right to own an iPhone but there is a right to vote[*]. Many people had to wait hours to cast a ballot, and some polling stations had to stay open long after the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time to accommodate those who had been waiting — and waiting.

* There should be a right to vote. Yet, there is none in the Constitution. In recent years attempts by representatives to amend the Constitution to assure a right to vote have repeatedly gone nowhere.

In addition we have heard many claims of voter registration changes in party not made or reversed and ballot shortages, potentially disenfranchising additional voters. We agree with the calls for investigation of all the charges to determine the facts:

Why were the polling places actually reduced and under staffed? Were there memos, emails and reports justifying the changes. Did they even consider parking?
Were there massive changes in voter registrations not made? Were there changes dropped from the databases? Any reasonable system with logs and backups should have some evidence.
Absence of evidence should raise questions as well.
Were there significant ballot shortages? Why?
Did all the problems target particular populations, sub-populations, or benefit/harm particular candidates?

Our Editorial:

If anything was done to effectively disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there is a huge problem.
If anything was done intentionally to disenfranchise voters or harm candidates there should be prosecutions AND something done to address the distorted results.
Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in Arizona. Their vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others.
Any disenfranchisement, disenfranchises every voter in the United States. Our vote and democracy is distorted by the disenfranchisement of others. We could have a different President and different party in power next January based on a distorted result.
Even if there was no disenfranchisement, (unlikely from what we see at this point), our democracy suffers from the lack of credibility unless the issues are investigated and effectively fully resolved.