Skulduggery and Errors | CTVotersCount.org

Lottery better pay-off than witch hunt

Iowa spent a lot of time, money and rhetoric on a witch hunt for illegal immigrant voting.

If I were an illegal immigrant, my goal would be to stay under the radar. I would avoid speeding, drunk driving, and doing anything that might get me caught.

Iowa spent a lot of time, money and rhetoric on a witch hunt for illegal immigrant voting. As summarized by VerifiedVoting <read>

Former Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s two-year, $250,000 witch hunt ended ignobly Friday. Schultz’s successor, Republican Paul Pate, dropped his office’s Iowa Supreme Court appeal of a lower court ruling that held Schultz overstepped his authority in a crackdown on immigrant voters. Schultz had broad-based GOP support as a candidate condemning what he suggested was widespread voter fraud, particularly by documented immigrants who were not citizens. Schultz’s exhaustive investigation compared voter registration lists with federal and state immigration lists, including the federal database used to verify entitlement benefits. So instead of targeting the behavior based on evidence of unlawful voting, Schultz went hunting for voters he suspected might be immigrants.

The Iowa ACLU and League of Latin American Citizens filed suit, claiming the targeted enforcement was discriminatory and beyond Schultz’s authority. Schultz lost his first round in court and appealed. On Friday, his successor withdrew the challenge.

So how effective was Schultz’s obsession?

His own report disclosed evidence suggesting 117 illegally cast votes. Considering that 1.6 million Iowans voted in 2012 general election, Schultz’s success rate was no better than .0073 percent. The investigation led to six criminal convictions, or .00037 percent. Lottery players would seem to have better luck.

I guess you could say there is votER fraud, yet it does not hold a candle to votING fraud via absentee voting or insider manipulation. If I were an illegal immigrant, my goal would be to stay under the radar. I would avoid speeding, drunk driving, and doing anything that might get me caught.

UConn Researchers: Turnout goes down as corruption goes up.

To increase turnout, lets avoid the gimmicks with integrity risks or unproven claims. Lets start with the hard work of rooting out corruption. There is a worse alternative, we could avoid looking. Maybe the public would be more likely to vote if corruption were ignored.

As we have mentioned before, turnout is the “Holy Grail” of elections. Any election reform is touted as a means of increasing turnout. From touch screens to early voting that is one of the justifications, yet in actuality touch screens create annoying lines and early voting actually DECREASES turnout. Here is a post from today, showing 5 Ways To Fix America’s Dismal Turnout Problem: <read> Some of these might help, especially “Get people excited about politics between elections””. Of course, it might depend on what type of excitement:

We also have this recent report from three researchers, two from the University of Connecticut: Bribes and ballots: The impact of corruption on voter turnout in democracies <full report>

Abstract
While officials involved in graft, bribery, extortion, nepotism, or patronage typically like keeping their deeds private, the fact that corruption can have serious effects in democracies is no secret. Numerous scholars have brought to light the impact of corruption on a range of economic and political outcomes. One outcome that has received less attention, however, is voter turnout. Do high levels of corruption push electorates to avoid the polls or to turn out in larger numbers? Though of great consequence to the corruption and voter-turnout literature, few scholars in either area have tackled this question and none has done so in a broad sample of democracies. This article engages in this endeavor through an analysis of the broadest possible sample of democratic states. Through instrumental variable regression we find that as corruption increases the percentage of voters who go to the polls decreases.

Who could have imagined! This might just be an area needing attention in Connecticut. In recent years,

One Governor jailed for taking favors
One Mayor convicted of taking favors, one jailed for taking bribes, and another for sex acts with youth in his office
A State Senator jailed for taking bribes
A road built with missing drain pipes, despite contracted inspections
New Uconn buildings on two campuses with faulty construction
Secretary of the State used state resources to make a mailing list for campaign purposes

In the last year, mostly since the last election,

Three registrars may be removed from office for multiple failures around election day
That same former Governor indicted for campaign fraud violations in a U.S. House Race, along with the candidate and her husband
That same State Senator out of jail, ran again, under investigation for multiple campaign finance violations
Two of three candidates in a three-way Senate primary have not paid their municipal taxes
The current Secretary of the State used a mailing list for a “newsletter” for campaign purposes, and under suspicion of renewing a questionable Notary appointment for political reasons

Most residents could add to the list!

So, to increase turnout, lets avoid the gimmicks with integrity risks or unproven claims. Lets start with the hard work of rooting out corruption.

There is a worse alternative, we could avoid looking. Maybe the public would be more likely to vote if corruption were ignored.

Hartford Election Report: Sad, yet an easy recommended read.

As they and we often say, “Diagnosis before cure”. Lest the cure be ineffective or worse than the disease.

The Hartford Common Council empowered a Committee of Inquiry to gather facts on the widely reported late opening of polls on election day, the long known disfunction in the Registrars Office, and the less reported inaccurate, yet to be corrected reports of election results. We recommend reading the whole report. It is an easy read, yet sad, disappointing, and as some have said outrageous

The Hartford Common Council empowered a Committee of Inquiry to gather facts on the widely reported late opening of polls on election day, the long known disfunction in the Registrars Office, and the less reported inaccurate, yet to be corrected reports of election results. Here is the summary. We recommend reading the whole report. It is an easy read, yet sad, disappointing, and as some have said outrageous. <full report>

The Committee’s investigation confirmed that several Hartford polling places did not allow voting to commence at 6:00 a.m., as required by law. In addition, the investigation revealed additional irregularities. The Head Moderator failed to account for all of the absentee ballots received, failed to correctly tally and report the vote count, and failed to submit a timely Amended Head Moderator’s Return. The Hartford Registrars:

failed to provide the Secretary of the State (“SOTS”) with information about the polling place moderators ;

failed to file the final registry books with the Town Clerk by October 29

failed to timely prepare and deliver the final registry books by 8:00 p.m. on November 3, and thereafter failed to develop or implement a plan for delivering the books to the polling places before the polls opened at 6:00 a.m. on November 4;

failed to adequately prepare and open several polling places;

failed to maintain adequate communications among key election day personnel;

failed to provide the Head Moderator with the proper form to submit his Head Moderator’s Return in advance of the election;

failed to attend a statutorily required meeting to correct errors in the Head Moderator’s Return; and

failed to identify and correct discrepancies in the vote tallies reported by the Head Moderator, with the result that the final vote tally remains unclear, and no Hartford election official can explain what happened to approximately 70 absentee ballots reported as having been received

In short, multiple, serious errors plagued the administration of the 2014 General Election in Hartford. These errors appear to have resulted in the disenfranchisement of Hartford voters and, even several months later, a lack of an accurate vote count.

The Committee has determined that many of the Election Day problems are attributable to errors or omissions by certain Hartford election officials (as described in detail below); a dysfunctional working relationship among all election officials; a lack of leadership and accountability; and the absence of a clear, legally prescribed chain of command.

Once again, I recommend reading the entire report. It really brings home the points made in the summary.

I add some additional thoughts:

Nobody seems interested in actually determining what happened to the “missing” ballots, or determining the actual vote count — a team could easily get all the numbers from the tape and at least determine votes for governor from the machines, which are very very likely to be less than the number of ballots counted by the machines — this report demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that people should not count anything alone, but should work together to verify addition and transcription. Double checking by “two eyes” works.
Some authority could also actually count all the ballots and votes by hand. I will guarantee the number of votes per race will not exceed the number of ballots. (If the count is accurate)
Someone authority could actually count the number of envelopes for ABs. Then count then number of ABs checked-off, then count the number returned on the Clerk’s log…then if there is a discrepancy, match the envelopes to the voter names on both those lists to help uncover the source of any differences.
How many other towns have check-in lists, or ballot counts that are way off from vote counts? Does anybody check…or has this only surfaced because of the visible problems on election day? (We know some towns and moderators check and that others have at least sometimes not)
The official system has yet to a) recognize the actual counts in Bridgeport for Governor in 2010. b) never audited the other towns in 2010 with many copied, hand counted ballots c) Never checked other towns since then that that have had huge numbers of hand counted votes on copied ballots – even those that have chosen deliberately to forgo scanners in some elections. d) Never checked the discrepancies between voters checked-in in Bridgeport vs. ballots in 2010, or checked for such errors anywhere else!!!
And, in Hartford, how about checking the reported counts that weren’t for Governor?

Make no mistake. We applaud the investigation as far as it went. It provides plenty to consider and change.

Yet the Hartford Courant is dissatisfied with the report, apparently believes the investigation was unnecessary. Reflection and deliberation, based on effective gathering of facts, in their opinion, seems a waste of time. The Editorial Board would also apparently place the prime responsibility for choosing actions solely on the Mayor over the entire Council.

Thumbs down on lack of city plan to fix registrar mess-ups

Thumbs still down on Hartford’s handling of the registrar of voters mess. Mayor Pedro Segarra and city council president Shawn Wooden formed a council committee to investigate the registrars’ election day screw-ups. The committee reported Friday what everyone already knew — the registrars bungled things so badly that some polls were unable to open on time. The Friday announcement is full of indignant language — but not a peep about what the mayor plans to do about the situation. “That is being determined,” a spokesperson said. Lame.

As they and we often say, “Diagnosis before cure”. Lest the cure be ineffective or worse than the disease.

Connecticut not alone in election adminstration challenges

Since the election on November 4th we have had all sorts of complaints about Connecticut election administration. Claims that we are the slowest, with the most clueless election officials. And all sorts of cures proposed including more mail-in votes, electronic calculation of results, and reorganization of election administration.

We agree with that their are many problems. We agree with the general outlines of some of the cures. Yet, we caution against knee-jerk reaction, and change without planning and analysis.

We suggest looking at the best practices from other states. Yet, we can also learn from the mistakes and foibles of other states. Often those employing some of those very cures proposed for Connecticut.

We agree with that their are many problems. We agree with the general outlines of some of the cures. Yet, we caution against knee-jerk reaction, and change without planning and analysis.

Lets look at the recent news:

11/17 NJ not so quick in reporting results Using equipment from the same vendor as Connecticut, NJ has problems, delays, and investigations of slow accumulation/reporting of results electronically. Then again, some other states below reported fast, with much less accuracy than Connecticut or New Jersey.

1/25 Mail voting: Not so fast, not so easy, not so simple Take Oregon and their all-mail voting, please. A highly charged ballot question is yet to be decided. In fact they have just counted enough votes to realize they need a recount. Here is the issue, some 13,000 votes were not counted because of possible signature mismatches. So advocates contacted voters after the election to see if they actually voted and requested they come in and sign their ballot or show their signature changed.. We have some of our own issues with all this:

Just how good is their signature matching? Has anyone evaluated their methods. What are the odds they missed more questionable signatures? How many of those 13,000 should not have been questioned?
Does the result depend on which side got more voters to come in and sign (demographics can indicate how a voter might have tended to vote)
And we complain that some results in Connecticut were not available until Nov 5th?
PS: This problem will never happen in Connecticut as we never match signatures. (See no evil…)

11/25 MN lowest turn out since 1986 Many claim, anecdotally and incorrectly, that no-excuse absentee voting is a panacea for increasing turnout. Apparently, anecdotally, it has not helped Minnesota all that much.

11/25 The Maine question: Will 21 mystery ballots change looser into winner? Connecticut has problems with ballot counts not matching check-in list counts, and a greater problem with some officials not checking that those numbers match. At least in Maine there is a recognition that this might be a problem, especially if extra ballots are found after the initial count.

1/26 Electronic result totals not alwasy even close to accurate Here we go again with that electronic tallying of votes. They only missed about one-third of the votes. Fortunately, a news outlet found the error. They say the problem has been fixed, yet sounds more like the error has been corrected in the results of this one election. They are not counting accurately in Kansas any more.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 6)

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered CTVotersCount posts from the 1st half of 2011.

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered CTVotersCount posts from the 1st half of 2011. Continuing from there:

Smoke, no fire seen. Once again see no problems <Jul 2011>

O Me O My O – Errors in Jersey and Fraud in Ohio <Jul 2011>

Colorado election issues, extreme, yet considered normal, reported in 2011 <July 2011>

State causes confusion in Bridgeport process for ballot access <July 2011>

P.T. Barnum’s city continues three-ring election circus <Aug 2011>

Ballot Skulduggery in Wisconsin? Or Inadvertent Errors? <Aug 2011>

No need to see the ballots, they are “sacred” – Faith based elections <Aug 2011>

Another election in Bridgeport…more absentee ballot allegations <Sept 2011> <Sept 2011>

Organized vote fraud in Florida (Sunshine anyone?) <Sept 2011>

CO: Chain-Of-Custody and Confidence broken <Sept 2011>

Rigged election or three human errors – we may never know for sure. <Sept 2011>

See no problems. Hear no problems. Keep observers out of polling places <Sept 2011>

Bridgeport…a dozen decrees in absentee fraud since 1988 <Oct 2011>

See no problems. Hear no problems. Stop the audit <Oct 2011>

Scanners count same ballots with different results <Nov 2011>

Its an error. No its a typo. Wrong person elected <Nov 2011>

Voting machine investigation leads to serious issues and cover-up <Dec 2011>

Secretary of State removed for vote fraud <Dec 2011>

That brings through the end of 2011. Till next time.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 4)

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts.

Here we continue our review o some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 2nd half of CTVotersCount posts from 2009. Continuing from there:

Detroit: Chain-of-Custody violations put recount in question <Jan 2010>

CT Registrar alleged to have fudged petitions for herself and relatives <Feb 2010>

KY longstanding fraud by polling place officials <Feb 2010>

AB Vote “Harvesters” in Dallas <Apr 2010>

False testimony in vote caging, leads to appointment to Federal Elections Commission <Apr 2010>

What’s the matter in Tennessee? <Sep 2010>

Perhaps the most significant Internet voting hack <Oct 2010>

The cause of the specific problem in Bridgeport <Nov 2010> <more>

SOTS powerless in Bridgeport <Nov 2010>
PS: They still are.

Bridgeport wrap-ups <Dec 2010> <Jan 2011>

CT still overlooking vote counts <Dec 2010>

That completes 2010. We will continue another time.

The dirty secret(s) of vote counting

In college I followed our nationally ranked hockey team. With ringside seats at an ECAC semi-final game, we struck up a conversation with a referee, who frequently stood just in front of us on the ice. For a long while it was a tie, and we learned from him that refs do no like tie games, with the pressure on every call in a sudden death overtime. Elections can get rougher than hockey, there are more and tougher calls in close contests – calls that can easily expose the little know vulnerabilities of our election system and the flaws in the promise to “count every vote”.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee: Paul Mitchell: The dirty secret of vote counting <read>

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day.

A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work.

But that’s not what’s happening this year.

In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff.

But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.
With the spotlight on and representatives of each campaign lurking over their shoulders, elections officials are engaged in the painstaking process of validating ballots mailed in during the last days of the election or dropped off at polling locations. They are reviewing tens of thousands of provisional ballots used by voters who couldn’t get regular ballots at their polling places.

California doesn’t have the infamous hanging-chad or butterfly ballot, but there are damaged ballots and signatures that don’t match. Ballots are dropped off in the wrong county or mailed in the wrong envelope. Voters show up the day after the election and try to hand in their absentee ballot. Piles of ballots are marked “too late” because the mail arrived after Election Day.

The issue of signatures not matching is becoming an increasingly important wrinkle as more voters cast ballots by mail. Elections officials are reviewing more than 400,000 signatures of the 2 million early absentee voters in the June 3 election who signed registration 25 years ago. Similarly, few new online registrants realize that the signature on their registration form is actually their DMV signature, which could also be decades old. If non-matches can’t be resolved before Election Day, those ballots are invalidated.

All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

We do not routinely check signatures on absentee ballots. Would a court be receptive to a challenge based on checking and verifying signatures? Maybe not, but just the exposure of the lack of actual checking would decrease confidence in a close result.
Unlike several other states we do not require voters to sign in at polling places. That does preclude any checking and embarrassment. Yet, the absence of the signature would leave many questions of error and fraud unanswerable.
Remember that close election for Governor in 2010? Many recall that there were hundreds of ballots not counted yet a citizen recount showed that they tended to confirm the winner. How many recall that the system never recognized those votes, never addressed the question? How many know that the number of voters signed in did not match the number of ballots by large margins in several districts? In a really close election, checking those counts might expose a very soft underbelly – it has happened at least twice since, in other municipalities with little public concern.
We also must point out that most of these problems in California are all related to absentee ballots, in a state with a rising percentage of such ballots. We will have a question on the ballot this November authorizing the General Assembly to provide the same for the Nutmeg State.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 3)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts, covering 2009.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 2nd half of CTVotersCount posts from 2008. Continuing from there:

In CT we count most of the votes for most of the parties and most of their candidates, at most <Jan 2009>

Another month and more incorrect results are found from the CT election four months earlier <Feb 2009>

Voter fraud in CT makes national news <Feb 2009>

The limits of paper: Machine votes for wrong candidates, not noticed by voters who are blind <Apr 2009>

Also a problem if you don’t look at or can’t find the paper <Apr 2009>

No paper no problem – or just don’t look at it <Aug 2009>

Again, move along, you can’t see the ballots <Aug 2009>

Exporting questionable elections? <Oct 2009>

Haddam: Who won in ? Without ballot security, we will always have questions of credibility <Nov 2009>

Don’t count your ballots up in Massachusetts <Nov 2009>

We will leave it here until next time, we have completed 2009.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 2)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

Book Review: “Witness To A Crime” 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. <Jul 2008>

French take back seat to no one, with differences between voters signed in and ballots counted <Jul 2008>

Partisan consultant behind election firewall in Ohio. Maybe nothing wrong, but certainly does not provide credibility <July 2008>

Was something being covered up? Election Observer Arrested – Taken Away In Handcuff <Sep 2008>

Palm Beach officials and machines can’t seem to get counts to agree <Sep 2008> <Oct 2008>

We’ve covered this several times since. Crime and Punishment: Election stolen from Popular Governor – he is punished – in fact he is still in jail <Aug 2008>

How could the Social Security Adminstration contribute to reducing voting integrity <Sep 2008>

CT accused of illegally purging voters <Oct 2008>

Another Audit – Another Diebold Error <Dec 2008>

Shelton Snafu <Dec 2008>

Eurekia! Or should we say just another bug <Dec 2008>

More errors in CT results <Dec 2008> As we predicted, even more <Dec 2008>

We will stop here. It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 1)

I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

A fellow integrity activist forward this a few days ago: It happens all the time: Interview with the consultant who discovered the Medford miscount <read>

Wow,” I replied. “If I’d discovered such a major error, I’d surely remember it!”

“Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time,” he said. “The details are always different, but there’s an endless number of ways the people who run our elections can botch them up. Every election has something.”

I glanced at my prepared questions and slid them into the wastebasket. Lordamighty, the guy who makes his living working with election records doesn’t even remember what I had considered a jaw-dropping discovery! Fortunately, I didn’t need to come up with new questions; Grebner was eager to talk.

“You want stories? I can tell you lots of stories.” he continued. “Everybody finds different ways not to follow the instructions.”

You read the post for a bunch of stories of election mess-ups recalled by one consultant. We just want to remind our readers and ourselves of some similar error discovered in Connecticut – what worries us are not those that are surfaced in time to correct results, or the ones surfaced eventually that did not change the results – its the ones never discovered or covered up. I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

Here are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, a selection from our over 900 posts:

Dan Rather Reports, was it really inadvertent hanging chads in FL 2000, a gross error, or intentional? <Aug 2007>

A New Britain Candidate’s company moving voting machines…not a great formula for confidence in our elections <Nov 2007>

A pretty obvious problem in accurate hand counting when no actual planning is involved <Nov 2007> Would we trust these people with petty cash? We trust them with our Democracy!

Half of Registrars Follow Last Minute Procedures <Jan 2008>

We won’t find many problems where there is a Blind Faith In our Scanners <Feb 2008>

Paper ballots useful, only if you don’t lose them <Jun 2008>

Gov loses election by fraud. Nice to know, but a lot better if the loser was not jailed <Apr 2008> He is still in jail. Pardon our upset and the Governor.

New Milford did not compute <Jun 2008>

It also helps confidence and integrity if the number of voters and votes is close (a Bridgeport preview of 2010?) <Jun 2008>

We will stop here, covering the 1st year of CTVotersCount. Perhaps we will continue this review soon.