Category: Skulduggery and Errors

Witness To A Crime

I have just completed reading Witness To A Crime, by Richard Hayes Phillips. The result of three years of persistent, detailed investigation of the 2004 election in Ohio. This book proves several times over that the election was stolen.

From the book:

“it is unlikely that 14 voters in one precinct in inner-city Cleveland were wavering between John Kerry and Michael Peroutka, and decided to vote for both candidates, thus spoiling their own ballots. It is also unlikely that 14 voters made identical mistakes on their on their ballots. It is more likely that these 14 ballots were punched in advanced…

“In these fourteen precincts, there were 1780 gay-friendly Bush voters and 360 straight ticket gay-friendly Republicans, or the ballots are not real.”

I choose these samples as they give a flavor of the information covered in the book. There are lot of details, there are a lot of numbers, but there are also two stranger than fiction stories: 1) The story of detailed review of reported statistics which don’t add up to anything but fiction along with details only available because a team of researchers copied and photographed ballots in order as they were stored. 2) The story of election officials giving contradictory explanations, false information, destruction of records by “mistake”, delaying records requests, and otherwise obstructing the investigation.
Continue reading “Witness To A Crime”

Meanwhile In The Real “Wild” West

Update, Another Problem, this time in FL: In the “Wild” South an Audit catches uncounted votes, almost 20% of the total <read>.

When it comes to elections, what happens in any precinct in New Mexico can determine who sits in the Oval Office and the balance in our U.S. Senate and House. What happens in any election district in Connecticut can do the same for National offices and in addition determine our Governor and the balance in the Connecticut House and Senate.

Earlier this year in the Danbury Connecticut public hearing, one member of the Government Elections and Administration Committee compared our election system to the “Wild West”. This was based on the failures to follow procedures along with the lack of consistency in the process from one Connecticut town to the next. Many of these issues were evident in the coalition observation reports and in the recent investigative report showing more ballots cast that voters checked-off in Bridgeport.

It seems that the real west, is still pretty wild with this Sun News story from New Mexico: NM revises recount procedure in close races <read>

Like Connecticut, New Mexico law does not require hand recounts. While Connecticut has recently revised procedures to eliminate hand recounts, New Mexico, faced with a close election and a concerned candidate they are rethinking their procedure:

The secretary of state’s office has revised procedures for recounts in close primary election contests, including a state Senate race in which some ballots are missing in one county.

The change came as one of the candidates in the Senate race voiced objections to the recount plan.

Secretary of State Mary Herrera said earlier this week that the recount would be conducted by having counties recheck the results of voting machines—inserting memory cards into tabulators and printing out the results. A change was announced Thursday.

Now, paper ballots will be fed into the tabulators again for the recount except in two Cibola County precincts where ballots are missing. When necessary, ballots will be counted by hand. Provisional ballots, for example, are handed tallied.

Unfortunately, that is not possible:

[Clemente Sanchez, a Grants Democrat who finished second in the Senate contest] said he remained troubled by the missing ballots in two precincts in Grants. About 180 votes were cast with the missing ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“To this day nobody knows what happened to them. It amazes me,” said Sanchez.

New Mexico implemented its paper ballot voting system in 2006 to try to make voting more secure and restore the public’s confidence in elections.

Ballots are supposed to be removed from a storage bin underneath a tabulator and placed in a separate ballot box, which is to be locked and transferred to the county clerk’s office.

Apparently, the ballots in the two precincts were not locked away in ballot boxes after polls closed. Ballots are supposed to be removed from a storage bin underneath a tabulator and placed in a separate ballot box, which is to be locked and transferred to the county clerk’s office.

As in our situation in Bridgeport, election officials did not find/report the problem.

However, Sanchez said he was unhappy that candidates were not told about the missing ballots by county elections officials and that the issue was not disclosed publicly when the county canvassed its election results. Sanchez learned of the missing ballots from news reports. The missing ballots were first disclosed in a story last week by The Associated Press.

Better late than never, however, the time to revise procedures is before an election. Otherwise there could be ethical questions of bias based on the politics of the Secretary of the State and that of the loser in the initial count.

Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voting Machine Does Not Compute – Story Does Not Compute

The Danbury NewsTimes has the story of problems with a referendum in New Milford <read>. We are always pleased to see election integrity coverage, and we agree with the sentiments of this article, however there is something more to investigate. Apparently New Milford is not following procedures or there is more to the story.

Problems with New Milford’s budget referendum last week are a cause for concern on a much bigger voting process — the presidential election in November.

The new optical scanning machine at the town’s Lanesville district malfunctioned, which necessitated the hand counting of all 426 votes there.

Continue reading “Voting Machine Does Not Compute – Story Does Not Compute”

Reports of Dead Voters Greatly Exaggerated

Echoing Mark Twain, the dead voter issue has been greatly exaggerated – by everyone involved. Of course dead voters sounds more interesting and is easier for everyone to understand, report on, and react to than voting integrity which requires understanding computers, chain of custody, statistics, and auditing. Here is one of the many reports covering the latest status from the Secretary of the State <read>

On vacation these days so just catching up with the news every couple of days, so posts will be a bit delayed and reduced through the end of May.

ROVAC President Addresses Dead Voters – Media Remains Dead To Larger Issues

George Cody, President Registrars Of Voters Association Connecticut, responded to the Dead Voters Issue with a letter to the Hartford Courant <read>

Connecticut and the registrars are stuck between a rock and a hard place — aggressively clean up the database and risk dropping voters incorrectly — or demand clear evidence to drop a person from the rolls to avoid disenfranchisement.

Names are removed from the active rolls upon positive evidence of a change in status or residency. Proof positive is required to make changes in status. Registrars use several methods to seek out information. When notified of a voters death, they make every effort to verify the information through obituaries, death certificate records in the town clerk’s office or through local probate records. There is often a time gap in this information and, as the article points out, registrars do not have regular access to state and federal records. The time required to match and verify the information might lead to a delay in a voter’s final removal from the rolls, but the status of these voters is changed to inactive during the verification process.

When voters move out of state or town, their former town of residence is not necessarily notified, resulting in only anecdotal information…

The subsequent follow-up done by the students appears to have found clerical problems, rather than any evidence of potential fraud. Connecticut citizens can also rest assured that all voters are asked to present identification at all elections or to sign a statement about eligibility prior to voting. The Courant’s reporter has been kind enough to supply a list of the questionable names. This list will be disseminated to the towns for follow-up. We only wish we had this list earlier to make corrections and provide input to the study other than post-study comments.

Clerical problems do occur. When voters move out of town without notifying their former town, the chain of information is broken. They will often remain listed as active voters until we receive corrective information. If that move is out of state, notification is at best infrequent. Mistakes based on duplicate or similar names or incorrect post-election entry of who voted is another source of confusion.

We look forward to working with the list provided to further clean our lists. The centralized voter database has contributed to addressing in-state moves, but the real solution is with the voters and their families. If there is a change in any voter’s address or status, notify your registrar so corrective action can be taken.

We would like better data, but we are sympathetic to the registrars’ challenges on this issue. We are also interested in the Media’s and the Secretary of the State’s aggressive response to this issue in contrast to the much more significant issue of post-election audit integrity.

With the dead voter issue we are talking about 300 possible errors between 1994 and 2007. In just the last post-election audit we are talking about chain of custody lapses in several towns and 304 ballots missing in just one municipality in just one election. Perhaps it has to do with the media response to the two issues. While there has been a flurry of articles in the Connecticut press on the dead voters report, to our knowledge the mainstream media has yet to publish a single word on the results of the post-election audits of the November Election and the February Primary. Also missing is media concern with significant quality control issues in programming and testing elections also uncovered by researchers at the the University of Connecticut.

Voter Rolls: No Grave Concern

Update: Secretary of the State’s <press release>

A UConn study reported in the Hartford Courant demonstrates that the ultimate disability is not a barrier to voting in Connecticut: Dead Voters? Probe Finds Errors In Records, <read>. The deceased continue on the voter rolls and occasionally vote.

a list of more than 300 people across Connecticut who appear to have voted from the grave in elections dating to 1994, a two-month investigation of voting records by journalism students at the University of Connecticut has found.

The mysterious voters were identified by matching a statewide database of 2 million registered voters and their voting histories with two separate computer lists of dead people maintained by the state Department of Public Health and the federal Social Security Administration.

Following up on the matches, UConn students examined the records of nearly 100 of the suspect voters at 10 town and city halls among those with the most cases. Guilford led the state with 39, followed by West Hartford (17), Enfield (15), Stonington (13) and Norwalk (11).

Some people appeared to have voted frequently after death, the research found. In Hebron, for example, records show one man voted 17 times after he died in 1992.

The investigation also identified more than 8,500 people listed as dead who are still registered to vote in Connecticut, most long after their deaths. In Hamden, one woman remained a registered voter although she died in 1979…

All but nine of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities listed dead people on active voter rolls. At least 100 cases were identified in each of 28 cities and towns. In New Haven alone, 370 dead people were still registered; in Enfield there were 321; in West Haven, 310; in Hartford, 298; and in Bridgeport, 293.

While there are serious problems with Connecticut’s online voter registration system, concerns with deceased voters center around the antiquated clerical systems and local election administration:

Continue reading “Voter Rolls: No Grave Concern”

Will The Voter Registration System Be Fixed In Time?

Stamford Advocate: State fixing voter system after primary glitches, <read>

Will the pressure on the Secretary of the State’s Office and the Department of Information Technology be sufficient such that the system will actually be fixed to function when it is most needed?

For background, see our our earlier coverage of the Norwich Public Hearings. Let us hope that the “fix” by April 24th includes some realistic stress testing of the system.

From the Advocate:

Continue reading “Will The Voter Registration System Be Fixed In Time?”

Voter Registration System – Lots Of Finger Pointing

Stamford Advocate article has Registrars, Secretary of the State, and the Department of Information Technology statements about the unreliable voter registration system <read>

A few years ago, registrars of voters in Stamford and Norwalk faced off with the state over their reluctance to join the new centralized voter registration system.

The registrars unsuccessfully argued the technology, which is meant to prevent registration and voting duplication, was unreliable. Norwalk’s two registrars were fined by the state for noncompliance.But it turns out they were right.

Citing “tremendous difficulties” in the week before Connecticut’s Feb. 5 presidential primary, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz has asked the governor and the state Department of Information Technology to prioritize an upgrade of the voter system before November…

Bysiewicz’s letter to Gov. M. Jodi Rell, which said efforts to improve the system this spring have “stalled,” prompted a scathing response from Diane Wallace, the state’s chief information officer.

Wallace said her office will continue to work with Bysiewicz to resolve the issues. But she also accused Bysiewicz of finger-pointing.

“Your letter minimizes your office’s involvement and responsibility, casts blame where it is not deserved, and seriously undermines the mutual trust that we have worked as an IT service provider to develop,” Wallace wrote Bysiewicz. “As you know, the application was developed by private consultants, hired by the secretary of the state’s office. . . . The system has a well-known history of sub-par performance and requires more than the seasonal and sporadic attention afforded to it by your office.”

Bysciewicz replied that she is not trying to blame the information technology department but wants assurance her office’s needs are prioritized.