Skulduggery and Errors | CTVotersCount.org

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

A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen.

Unfortunately, the Times headline is incorrect. This evidence in this article only claims that the exit polls do not prove that Bernie won. There is no proof that the official results are correct. They may be, they may not be. We still need Evidence Based Elections, providing strong evidence that the results are correct.

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen:

All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.

I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.

We can start in 2008, when the exit polls showed a pretty similar bias toward Barack Obama. Or in 2004, when the exit polls showed John Kerry easily winning an election he clearly lost — with both a huge error and systematic bias outside of the “margin of error.” The national exits showed Kerry ahead by three points (and keep in mind the sample size on the national exit is vastly larger than for a state primary exit poll) and leading in states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida — which all went to George W. Bush.

The story was similar in 2000. The early exit polls showed Al Gore winning Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina. Mr. Bush won these states by between six and 15 points. The exit polls showed Mr. Gore winning Florida by six points — leading the networks to call the race before 8 p.m. in the East.

Young Voters Love Exit Polls. Old Voters Do Not.
Younger voters are more likely to complete exit polls than older voters across all interviewer ages.

And the opposing case from Richard Charmin: Response to Nate Cohn of the NY Times <read>

Book Review: Down for the Count

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel. An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote. A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century…

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel. An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote. A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century. This thoroughly revised edition, first published to acclaim and some controversy in 2005 as Steal This Vote, reveals why America is unique among established Western democracies in its inability to run clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates, in crisp, clear, accessible language, how the partisan battles now raging over voter ID, out-of-control campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.
Andrew Gumbel has interviewed Democrats, Republicans, and a range of voting rights activists to offer a multifaceted, deeply researched, and engaging critical assessment of a system whose ostensible commitment to democratic integrity so often falls apart on contact with race, money, and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, there can be no better time to reissue this troubling and revealing book.

Some of the items that stuck out for me:

The problems and rigging of lever machines pp 106-108.
Software is not the only problem with electronic voting machines. Consider microcode.
Before the technical reports of the early 2000’s those suspicious of electronic voting were ‘crazies’ p155. I am not so sure that has changed in many circles.
Money has almost removed people from elections p 205.
“The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know” p 211. Consider when that might apply to you (or to me), as well as the “others”.
The same set of general fixes emerge over and over p 212.

A caveat:

Near the end, the author provides a list of more detailed fixes that he recommends. I strongly disagree with his recommendation of circumventing the Electoral College, rather than replacing it Constitutionally. Actually it requires more than a Constitutional amendment. As always I can understand that many grassroots individuals see the problems with the current system, including the Electoral College. Yet the fixes aren’t always so clear and simple. The devil is in the details, wrapped up in the Constitution, the 12th Amendment, and the Electoral Count Act, along with the state-by-state election system we have. The current system far from a match for a National Popular Vote scheme. They all would need to be changed significantly before we can have a National Popular vote that treats every citizen/voter equally and that can provide a trusted result. For more on this, see past our posts <here>.

I can only suggest that this is an example for considering the book’s statement that “The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know”.

Voter Suppression is not just Southern, Intentional, and Advantageous to those in charge.

Typically the Justice Department goes after Southern states, alleging intentional voter suppression by Republicans against voters who would be expected to vote predominately Democratic. To me, it usually quacks like that duck. Not so in Connecticut, we apparently do it through incompetence at our “legend in its own line”, DMV.

Hartford Courant, Jon Lender: Officials Tense, Tight-Lipped On Feds’ Probe Of State ‘Motor Voter’ Program <read>

The U.S. Department of Justice’s April 15 threat to sue Connecticut over failures in its “motor voter” program — which is supposed to promote voter registration at Department of Motor Vehicles offices — resulted in a closed-door meeting this past Tuesday aimed at resolving the problem out of court…

But, for the moment, perhaps the most interesting thing about the “It shouldn’t take the threat of a federal lawsuit to get the DMV to do its job,” said Cheri Quickmire, executive director of the good-government advocacy group, Common Cause in Connecticut. “I am really disappointed that there’s even cause [to consider] this kind of action. The reality is that DMV has been supposed to do this … for a very long time.”

Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, the top-ranked Republican on the General Assembly committee that oversees voter registration, said Friday that the “motor voter” program falls under DMV and Merrill’s office, and “I would say that both them are really responsible.” Complying with federal law should have been “really simple,” he said, if the DMV had paid more attention and Merrill’s office had “nudged” more.Here’s What CT Legislature Got Right And Wrong This Year

Outside of their remarks, only guarded comments could be elicited from taxpayer-funded communications aides who continually seek to put their bosses in the best light.

Bloomberg Businessweek: A Decade Hacking Elections

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…
“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

We note that similar issues have been raised in our current primary season. With charges and verifications that Twitter followers of at least one candidate appear to be largely fake accounts, along with unverified accusations that campaigns and their databases have been infiltrated, web access disrupted at critical times. Given the current state of web security, we see no reason that the same has, is, and will go on in our U.S. Elections.

It is best to be skeptical of anything you read in any media. On the campaign trail assume the video is always on and every keystroke is captured by the opposition, media, and Government. As always authenticity makes life simpler.

From Bloomberg Businessweek: How to Hack an Election: <read>

It was just before midnight when Enrique Peña Nieto declared victory as the newly elected president of Mexico. Peña Nieto was a lawyer and a millionaire, from a family of mayors and governors… Returning the party to power on that night in July 2012, Peña Nieto vowed to tame drug violence, fight corruption, and open a more transparent era in Mexican politics…

When Peña Nieto won, Sepúlveda began destroying evidence. He drilled holes in flash drives, hard drives, and cell phones, fried their circuits in a microwave, then broke them to shards with a hammer. He shredded documents and flushed them down the toilet and erased servers in Russia and Ukraine rented anonymously with Bitcoins. He was dismantling what he says was a secret history of one of the dirtiest Latin American campaigns in recent memory.

For eight years, Sepúlveda, now 31, says he traveled the continent rigging major political campaigns. With a budget of $600,000, the Peña Nieto job was by far his most complex. He led a team of hackers that stole campaign strategies, manipulated social media to create false waves of enthusiasm and derision, and installed spyware in opposition offices, all to help Peña Nieto, a right-of-center candidate, eke out a victory. On that July night, he cracked bottle after bottle of Colón Negra beer in celebration. As usual on election night, he was alone.

Sepúlveda’s career began in 2005, and his first jobs were small—mostly defacing campaign websites and breaking into opponents’ donor databases. Within a few years he was assembling teams that spied, stole, and smeared on behalf of presidential campaigns across Latin America. He wasn’t cheap, but his services were extensive. For $12,000 a month, a customer hired a crew that could hack smartphones, spoof and clone Web pages, and send mass e-mails and texts. The premium package, at $20,000 a month, also included a full range of digital interception, attack, decryption, and defense. The jobs were carefully laundered through layers of middlemen and consultants. Sepúlveda says many of the candidates he helped might not even have known about his role; he says he met only a few…

Rendón, says Sepúlveda, saw that hackers could be completely integrated into a modern political operation, running attack ads, researching the opposition, and finding ways to suppress a foe’s turnout. As for Sepúlveda, his insight was to understand that voters trusted what they thought were spontaneous expressions of real people on social media more than they did experts on television and in newspapers. He knew that accounts could be faked and social media trends fabricated, all relatively cheaply. He wrote a software program, now called Social Media Predator, to manage and direct a virtual army of fake Twitter accounts…

“Having a phone hacked by the opposition is not a novelty. When I work on a campaign, the assumption is that everything I talk about on the phone will be heard by the opponents.”

For doubters:

Sepúlveda provided Bloomberg Businessweek with what he says are e-mails showing conversations between him, Rendón, and Rendón’s consulting firm concerning hacking and the progress of campaign-related cyber attacks. Rendón says the e-mails are fake. An analysis by an independent computer security firm said a sample of the e-mails they examined appeared authentic. Some of Sepúlveda’s descriptions of his actions match published accounts of events during various election campaigns, but other details couldn’t be independently verified. One person working on the campaign in Mexico, who asked not to be identified out of fear for his safety, substantially confirmed Sepúlveda’s accounts of his and Rendón’s roles in that election.

Arizona should not go away.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not. Democracy deserves better than this.

It is typically a high bar to re-run an election, maybe too high. Typically you need to prove that enough voters would have been disenfranchised to change the result. Sometimes as far as proving they would have voted for the looser. Arizona’s Democratic Primary is near that bar. In fact, if we consider the number of votes that would have awarded one more and one less delegate to either campaign its not that high a bar compared to the disenfranchisement.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings. And comments from a Connecticut advocate.

Certainly the officials in Arizona would like the interest in what happened in the primary to wane. It should not. Democracy deserves better than this.

Here is a video of the 5.5 hours of hearings: https://youtu.be/ESyXvGLMIS0?t=1s So far we are about half-way through. Here is a summary from a Connecticut advocate who prefers to remain anonymous:

POLLWORKER with 18 yrs experience: In the electronic poll book where she was working, when a screen came up for whether the voter was a Dem or R, when she hit Dem, an R ballot was produced. She solved the problem by giving them a Dem ballot any how and noting on the paperwork that the person was a Dem, not R. She said it happened 36 times at their site I believe she said, 21 times in 3 hours of her shift, 18 times where a D input produced an R ballot. I think in the other direction, where it happened from R producing a D ballot, it only happened 3 times. She also commented that in her 18 years of working elections, this was the smallest room for voting polling place she had ever seen.

Somebody else testified that at their polling place, there was no parking because they were repaving the lot! Pure voter suppression.

Somebody else did an overlay of polling places to income levels, and found in wealthy areas the polling places were numerous, but in the poor areas, there were only a handful of polls and many could not be reached by walking.

One person said she used to live in a wealthier part of town, and polling places were within a mile of her house. She moved, and now they were 4 miles from where she lives.

AZ just made “ballot harvesting” a class 6 felony. Angry voters asked, ” If I bring my handicapped husband’s ballot to the polls, I would be a felon. But I want to know: What is the crime for taking away my right to vote?”

One guy had helped register hundreds of students and turned in registrations timely. Then, on election day, they were not in the books. Or course the candidate with the most youth support was affected by this.

One person said that in her polling place there were 9 workers, 6 stations, but only 3 voters voting with three empty stations, even though a long line. There were 2 people at the door controlling the flow to the stations. That right there requires some explanation.

A schoolteacher said she had to apologize to her students, because she always taught them we live in a democracy and they have the right to vote.

SOS office had a chart on website on election day that was designed to show the overall statewide vote. If you pulled it up by county, there was a problem — the counties showed that 100% of the votes were in from early in day onward. AP started calling the race apparently at 1% of the vote. People were deeply disturbed to be standing in line and hearing the vote called so early. They are fixing this chart software now.

Also:

It goes beyond VRA — testimony that somebody entered extremely small polling place, two at door limiting who could enter, 6 polling booths and only 3 people inside.
http://azleg.granicus.com/Mediaplayer.php?publish_id=8

Here is the 18 yr election veteran’s cogent testimony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p-yCMcTm1E

Secretary State admits errors: http://usuncut.com/politics/arizona-election-fraud-primary/

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.

No transparent recount; No public access to ballots; No confidence

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky. Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not.

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Because the City of Bridgeport gave the CT Post access to the ballots, we were able to recount them all and assure the state that the declared Governor was actually the choice of the voters. If Bridgeport had not agreed, we would still be wondering and questioning the legitimacy of Governor Malloy.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky.

Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not, for instance from BradBlog: Questioning the Unverified Computer Results of Kentucky’s Governor’s Race <read>

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

Bev Harris, of BlackBoxVoting.org, who I spoke with earlier today, described the higher vote totals in the down ballot races as a “significant anomaly”. She tells me that, at least until more records are requested and examined, the KY-Gov’s race “has to be looked at as a questionable outcome, particularly because of the discrepancies in the down ballot races. More votes in those races and not at the top…that just doesn’t happen.”

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost…

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost.

We’ve seen this before, of course. Too many times.

Is there a problem in Kentucky? How will we ever know, if the public does not have access to the actual ballots or the public can observe and verify a recount or a sufficient post-election audit? Of course, they cannot.

Without that satisfaction the results will always be in question. And even if the election results are completely accurate, they will always be in question. Democracy will be viewed as lacking credibility and the elected officials will always be viewed with doubt by a significant portion of the public.

We note the subsequent developments, reminiscent of our post from way back 5 days ago, also courtesy of Brad: <read>

A KY newspaper fires their well-respected pollster rather than bothering to find out if the polls were right and the results were wrong; Another reminder of why hand-marked paper ballots like those in KY are swell, but only if you bother to actually count them; We weather a few attacks from progressives who charge us with forwarding conspiracy theories and don’t think we should bother to count ballots;

We are skeptical that the information will be made available or that a sufficient audit or recount will be performed. Yet Kentucky is not Kansas Look at this recent news from Kansas: Kansas: Statistician gets support for suit over voting machine tapes <read>

A Wichita State University statistician seeking to audit voting machine tapes after finding statistical anomalies in election counts is garnering legal and other support as she pursues her lawsuit. Beth Clarkson had been pursuing the case herself, but now a Wichita lawyer has taken up her cause. Other supporters have helped set up a nonprofit foundation and an online crowdsourcing effort. A Sedgwick County judge is expected to set a trial date and filing deadlines on Monday. Clarkson, chief statistician for the university’s National Institute for Aviation Research, filed the open records lawsuit as part of her personal quest to find the answer to an unexplained pattern that transcends elections and states. She wants the tapes so she can establish a statistical model by checking the error rate on electronic voting machines used at a Sedgwick County voting station during the November 2014 general election. But top election officials for Kansas and Sedgwick County have asked the Sedgwick County District Court to block the release of voting machine tapes.

Clarkson has analyzed election returns in Kansas and elsewhere over several elections and says her findings indicate “a statistically significant” pattern that shows the larger the precinct, the larger the percentage of Republican votes. She says the pattern could indicate election fraud.

“If she is right, it’s horrifying,” her attorney, Randy Rathbun, said Friday. “And so I visited with her and she has convinced me that she is right. So somebody needed to help her out because it kind of seemed like it was bullies pushing somebody around on a schoolyard since she was obviously out of her element in a courtroom.”

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. I have just returned from a League of Women Voters panel on Election Fraud. The panelists, Political Scientists and Lawyers, saw no real need for FOIability of voted ballots. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

******
Update: An earlier version confused Kentucky and Kansas.

Marks questions marks: Colorado democracy black and blue

“Where their is smoke there is fire”. We say, “Where there is black and blue there is a victim” and “When it quacks like a cover up, suspicion is justified”. In this case we have ballots filled-in in black and blue with cross-outs. We suspect Colorado democracy is the victim.

Once again, a blow to those who claim there is no voting fraud. A further justification of counting votes by scanner in public in polling places, limiting mail-in voting, and limiting central scanning, while arguing for requiring adversarial election officials in every operation.

Colorado elections watchers who have been following the zig-zagging, on-again, off-again case of the 2012 Republican Primary Chaffee County ballots completed half in blue and half in black ink may get an answer soon whether or not state officials believe the ballots are evidence of election fraud.

Or they may get no answer at all…

According to the secretary of state’s office, 3,235 ballots were cast in the county election. Of those, 140 were marked partly in blue and partly in black ink, and another 43 were marked in varying ways — fully blackened squares side by side with dashed-off Xs, or neatly filled-in boxes alongside boxes scribbled over with messy scrawls — the kind of markings that show inconsistency and can raise suspicion that more than one person filled out a ballot.

In the fall of 2012 Marilyn Marks, a high-profile election integrity activist and proud thorn-in-the-side to election administrators, filed an open records request for ballots from several counties. She was concerned with the rules giving the public access to voted ballots and whether ballots could be traced to individual voters, in effect undermining the right to cast a secret ballot.

Chaffee County delivered color images of its ballots to Marks. And the images shocked her.

“They were so weird,” she said. “Here was one that was completed half in blue and then half in black. Well that’s odd, I think and move on. Then there’s another one. Then another one. What is going on here? I’m sure I said it out loud to myself.”

Marks showed the images to her lawyer and to fellow election activists, who agreed they were weird, and then she filed a complaint with the secretary of state

I agree that this is highly suspicious. I’ll go beyond that, based on my experience, this seems to be almost guaranteed fraud, likely by insiders after the fact.

I have personally reviewed thousands of ballots, perhaps 30,000, and been in the room while perhaps 100,000 have been reviewed by others in exactly 100 post-election audit counting sessions, about 10 recanvasses, as central-count Absentee Moderator, and leading the recount of 25,000 ballots in Bridgeport. I have seen a number of strange marks on ballots – they are usually brought to the attention of others in the room as they are so interesting and need adjudication to determine voters intent. I have no statistics on strange marks, yet 43/3,235 seems possible, yet high. Yet, I do not recall a single ballot in two colors or pen and pencil. So, 140/3,235 all in blue and black is way out of line with experience.

It seems there is some official agreement that this is more than suspicious:

A few weeks later, in the middle of October, secretary of state’s office investigator Michael Hagihara found himself visiting the Chaffee County clerk’s office, where he conducted a two-day investigation. He talked to the elections staff, studied voted ballots, sealed up elections office ballpoints with the ballots and reviewed video of the elections staffers tallying the votes.

In an October 24, 2012, memo, Hagihara reported on the investigation for Secretary of State Scott Gessler, Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert and Director of Elections Judd Choate. Hagihara did not believe the county elections administration staff was to blame for any irregularities — but he did find irregularities. He determined that 140 ballots out of roughly 3,235 were filled out partly with blue and partly with black ink. He said those ballots “created serious questions as to the legitimacy of the votes cast.”

Read the entire article. The questions now are if anything is being investigated and if anything will be officially resolved.

“Who Could Have Imagined” System rigged to make tests look good.

Over the years, we an others have pointed out that voting systems cannot be tested to assure performance before an election. Not the system itself before it is setup/programmed for a particular election. Not a setup and programmed system either. Not even if a system is completely secured and is somehow proven to run approved/certified software.

Here is some proof, not from a voting system – from a crime by an automaker. In this case it only puts the environment and lives in danger, rather than Democracy.

Here is some proof, not from a voting system – from a crime by an automaker. In this case it only puts the environment and lives in danger, rather than Democracy. Jeremy Epstein explains the analogy at Freedom To Tinker: <read>

In particular, computer scientists have noted that clever (that is, malicious) software in a voting machine could behave “correctly” when it detects that L&A testing is occurring, and revert to its improper behavior when L&A testing is complete. Such software could be introduced anywhere along the supply chain – by the vendor of the voting system, by someone in an elections office, or by an intruder who installs malware in voting systems without the knowledge of the vendor or elections office. It really doesn’t matter who installs it – just that the capability is possible.

It’s not all that hard to write software that detects whether a given use is for L&A or a real election. L&A testing frequently follows patterns, such as its use on dates other than the first Tuesday in November, or by patterns such as three Democratic votes, followed by two Republican votes, followed by one write-in vote, followed by closing the election. And the malicious software doesn’t need to decide a priori if a given series of votes is L&A or a real election – it can make the decision when the election is closed down, and erase any evidence of the real votes.

Such concerns have generally been dismissed in the debate about voting system security.

Read the entire post for more of the convincing details.

Of course voting machines are not autos. Unfortunately, voting machines are more vulnerable; Voting machines are not subject independent testing by trained professionals; Voting machines are not under lock and key by those who are hurt in general by pollution. Voting machines are not under lock and key by those likely to be impacted by declining value in their now illegal or poor performing vehicles. Voting machines are certified by those in the employ of the vendors, tested before election days by amateurs, responsible for their safekeeping. Some of those amateurs may actually have the motive and opportunity to fix results and cover up errors.

The solution when it comes to elections is voter verified paper ballots, sufficient ballot security, sufficient independent audits, and recounts (aka Evidence Based Elections).

The Selfie Threat To Democracy

What could be more patriotic in our narcissistic social-media age than posting a picture of yourself on Facebook with your marked ballot for president? Show off your support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) or former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Last week, a federal court in New Hampshire struck down that state’s ban on ballot selfies as a violation of the First Amendment right of free-speech expression.

That might seem like a victory for the American Way. But the judge made a huge mistake because without the ballot-selfie ban, we could see the reemergence of the buying and selling of votes — and even potential coercion from employers, union bosses and others…

From Reuters, by Richard L. Hansen Why the selfie is a threat to democracy <read>

What could be more patriotic in our narcissistic social-media age than posting a picture of yourself on Facebook with your marked ballot for president? Show off your support for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) or former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Last week, a federal court in New Hampshire struck down that state’s ban on ballot selfies as a violation of the First Amendment right of free-speech expression.

That might seem like a victory for the American Way. But the judge made a huge mistake because without the ballot-selfie ban, we could see the reemergence of the buying and selling of votes — and even potential coercion from employers, union bosses and others…

In his 42-page opinion, Federal District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro offered an erudite and thoughtful discussion of the history of vote buying in the United States. You would think his analysis would have led him to uphold the ban. But it didn’t. Instead, his analysis fell apart in its legal reasoning…

Barbadoro also said the law was not narrowly tailored, given that nothing would stop someone from posting on Facebook, or elsewhere, information about how he or she voted. What this analysis misses is that a picture of a valid voted ballot, unlike a simple expression of how someone voted, is unique in being able to prove how someone voted…

The social-media age gives people plenty of tools for political self-expression. New Hampshire’s law is a modest way to make sure that this patriotic expression does not give anyone the tools to corrupt the voting process.

We agree 1000%. See our earlier post: Common Sense: The good, bad, and ugly secret ballot

***** Update 8/25/2015
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