Category: Skulduggery and Errors

Would this, could this happen in Connecticut…we hope so.

Contractor error causes wrong candidate to be declared winner, error discovered, results corrected!

Texas: Private election tabulating firm missed some votes at Ore City and New Diana <read>

Results overturned:

The original unofficial returns released Saturday night for the Ore City election showed Steve Heim leading incumbent Jeannette Orms by four votes, 48 -44, but the complete count showed they received 55 each, Ms. Weir said. Rather than having a recount or special election, either ofwhich would cost the city money, the candidates approved having the flip at a special City Council meeting set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, she said.

The delay also showed that Ore City voters renewed the one-fourth of one percent sales tax for street repairs by a vote of 79 to 26 in unofficial complete returns. The originally-announced count was 65 to 23

What happened?

The tie was discovered after Hart InterCivic, the firm tabulating the votes at the Upshur County Courthouse in Gilmer on Saturday night, originally failed to count the votes from one of the city’s electronic voting machines and some of the votes in the nearby New Diana bond election, Ms. Weir said.

She had discovered that the election returns she was given Saturday night did not match the total number of voters, and said she called the County Clerk’s Office on Monday to report it. A court order from 115th District Judge Lauren Parish was required to finish the count in the elections.

This is actually good news. The way we would expect the system to work!

While many would fault the system: For hiring a contractor in the first place. The contractor for placing a neophyte in charge. The neophyte for the error. But we ask for a pause to consider that the system actually worked the way we w0uld like it to:

  • A mistake or two were made. There are always mistakes. What is important is the system’s reaction to them.
  • The error was quickly discovered by officials
  • It was surfaced and corrected by officials

This is how the system SHOULD react. We should expect the system to find most errors and to surface them, not cover them up.  We rare sure this could happen in Connecticut. But we have seen instances where it has not.

  • We know of a referendum where a human error caused a machine mis-count (That is often the case. No machine mal-function. No fraud. A human error causes the machine to provide an inaccurate count.) Citizens, not officials noticed a discrepancy in the number of ballots counted vs. the number of voters checked-in. Officials recounted. A bit worse than this case in Texas – since officials did not notice the error.
  • Same thing in 2012, an error was discovered by officials in a audit. To their credit they investigated and determined the cause. Good but best would have been if they had checked the check-in counts vs. ballots – fortunately it did not change the winners.
  • But then we have Bridgeport 2010 – the Governor’s race hung in the balance – everyone in the State kneWe w that.  But the system did not work. There were many discrepancies between the check-in counts and ballots counted – if any checked, it was never surfaced by officials. The Secretary of the State was powerless to check or change the result. A newspaper gained access to the ballots and they were recounted with assistance of the Citizen Audit. Fortunately, the initial winner was correct – Fortunately, because the system has yet to officially recognize the correct results. Using that as an instructive example, the errors in Texas could happen in Connecticut, yet might not ever be corrected.

Voter Fraud Non-Existent, Partisanship at Heart of Voter Laws

Study report covered by the Voting News and Houston News: National: Study: Voter Fraud Non-Existent, Partisanship at Heart of Voter Laws.

The Secret Ballot was proposed and passed for partisan reasons – to suppress the vote of illiterate African-Americans who would have trouble reading and correctly filling out their own ballot. An important principle to keep in mind – both good and bad reforms are most often touted based on supposed political gain.

Study report covered by the Voting News and Houston News: National: Study: Voter Fraud Non-Existent, Partisanship at Heart of Voter Laws <read>

This is similar to other recent stories. Much time and effort spent in search of voter fraud with little to show for it. It does exist but it seems to be a very few isolated events. Either a misunderstanding on the part of an illegally registered voter, or perhaps a very politically connected person that seems to have voted once, but in the wrong place, e.g.<here> or <here in our state>.

A couple of years ago we were researching the origins of the Secret Ballot and read The Hidden History of the Secret Ballot. One of the essays made the point that, like all election reforms, the Secret Ballot was proposed and passed for partisan reasons – to suppress the vote of illiterate African-Americans who would have trouble reading and correctly filling out their own ballot.  An important principle to keep in mind – both good and bad reforms are most often touted based on supposed political gain.

When it comes to voter fraud which realistically does not exist, Republicans in general, tout it as a reason to pass suppressive voter ID laws. On the other hand when it comes to voting fraud which is quite common via absentee voting, Democrats in general, ignore it while they propose unlimited absentee voting. Similarly Republicans tend to oppose, and Democrats tend to tout, in-person early voting for a variety of questionable reasons.

When it comes to voting laws, we focus on integrity balanced with costs and enfranchisement. In general, we find ourselves agreeing about 50% with Democrats, 50% with Republicans, and 50% with election officials. Partisans tend to favor laws that would tend to increase or decrease votes in their favor, focusing on costs and integrity issues on propositions they oppose. Officials tend to focus on costs only on those issues which cause them more work, tend to ignore costs and integrity when a change would reduce their effort.

Post-Election Audit Finds Error of 1,114 ballots

A state election audit revealed Thursday that Richland County[, South Carolina] officials failed to count 1,114 absentee ballots when finalizing results of the Nov. 5 city and county elections.

We point to two areas where South Carolina seems to do better than Connecticut

South Carolina: 1,114 Richland County ballots not counted <read>

A state election audit revealed Thursday that Richland County officials failed to count 1,114 absentee ballots when finalizing results of the Nov. 5 city and county elections.

 Howard Jackson, county election director, said the electronic ballots came from a single voting machine used by absentee voters at the election office.

This was the first countywide election since Richland County’s botched 2012 general election, considered one of the worst in state history. At that time, precincts across the county did not have enough voting machines, leaving some voters in line for up to seven hours, and hundreds of ballots turned up uncounted days later…

Jackson said votes on a single personal electronic ballot, or PEB, were not counted. Poll workers insert a PEB into a voting machine to open and close it; it stores all the ballots cast on that machine.

“We just missed one of the PEBs,” Jackson said. “I can’t understand how that happened.”

This is similar to one type of human error that happens from time to time in Connecticut – human errors that result in inaccurate results often attributed to electronic voting. We total machines by hand, yet when more that one machine is used in a district, we could forget to include one machine or maybe just read some of the ballots in more than once, like what happened last year, as detected in the process of the post-election audit:   <read>

One municipality discovered a significant error, 151 ballots double counted because write – in votes were read into the scanner a second time . The audit discovered the error which should have be en discovered and corrected as part of the normal election closing and reporting processes.

Yet, we point to  two areas where South Carolina seems to do better than Connecticut:

First, the State found and reported the error within a few days after the election, whereas in Connecticut the State has yet to report the results of the 2012 audit or report any investigation of the other differences identified by the Nov 2012 audit and several earlier audits. From the Coalition Report:

There were many differences between machine counts and hand counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities . – we can find no acceptable all o f these discrepancies either to humans or to the voting machines ] . In many cases, these discrepancies are not reasonably explained. In other cases , the explanations make no sense or contradict the data in municipalities’ reports. Whether these discrepancies are the result of human or voting machine errors is unknown

Connecticut’s latest official report, not including any investigations of differences, covered the November 2011 Election <all CT reports>

Second, South Carolina seems to take such errors quite seriously:

“If it’s possible, Richland County citizens now have even less faith in their elections,” said Eaddy Willard, county Republican chairwoman. “Tonight I am calling on Richland County leaders to finally fix the problems. Take action and do your jobs.”
The S.C. Democratic Party released this statement from chairman Jaime Harrison in response to the announcement that 1,100 absentee ballots from the most recent election in Richland County were not counted:

“Like many Richland County residents, I was shocked and frustrated to hear about the results of the South Carolina Election Commission audit. It is inexcusable and unacceptable. The voters of every county in South Carolina must be able to have full confidence in the electoral process and uphold the promise that every single vote counts. The South Carolina Democratic Party supports any and all efforts to solve these increasingly-frequent problems at the Richland County Election Commission once and for all. Leaders must ensure that voters in South Carolina can finally have confidence that their vote was counted.”

Education “Reform” provides lessons for voting integrity

? What is more important to you? Democracy or the Education of our children?

Answer: <click>

? What is more important to you? Democracy or the Education of our children?

Answer: This is a trick question. Without an educated populace, we cannot have Democracy. Without Democracy we won’t have true, objective education.

Connecticut is engaged in “High Stakes Education Reform” at risk is a bit of our treasury and the entire future of our children and our Democracy. At the heart of choosing and succeeding is “High Stakes Testing”. At a minimum, if we cannot trust the tests, cannot trust the new or traditional educators, then all is lost.

A significant analogy for Elections and Education 

  • If we cannot trust election results or cannot trust election officials then all is lost.
  • In Connecticut election integrity is based on Paper Ballots
  • And Education Integrity is based on Paper Tests
  • Change the paper and you have changed the result
  • Both are dependent on the chain-of-custody

Yet,

  • Elections are a safer in Connecticut because of optical scanners – because the voted ballots are scanned in the view of officials from at least two parties, before they are stored.
  • Trust in Elections and Education will not be improved by computer voting or testing

A lesson for Elections from Education

Connecticut is in the midst of an eduction and education testing scandal, as summarized by the Hartford Courant <read>

Things appeared to be looking up at Betances. In 2011, only 19 percent of third-graders at the pre-K-to-3 school achieved the state’s reading goal, but in 2012, the number shot up to 74 percent, by far the most dramatic improvement by any Hartford school. Bonuses of up to $2,500 were awarded to teachers; school Principal Immacula Didier received a $10,000 bonus from the district, The Courant reported.

It wasn’t the jump in the scores that attracted the attention of state officials to this year’s reading test, it was a safeguard put into place because of a test-tampering incident at a Waterbury school in 2011. After that, the State Department of Education began checking the frequency and type of erasures on tests. This year’s survey flagged Betances with an abnormally high number of rubbed out and changed answers on the third-grade reading mastery test. Twenty-seven of 42 test booklets were over the norm for erasures, or about 64 percent. The next highest number in Hartford was 15 percent.

Further analysis found a disproportionately high number of erased answers changed from wrong to right. Investigators from the law firm of Siegel, O’Connor, O’Donnell & Beck, who also investigated the Waterbury case, followed up with interviews with teacher and students. Teachers were “very surprised” to see that certain struggling students were able to change two dozen or more answers, all or nearly all from wrong to right. One test had 31 erasures, nearly half the 64 bubble-answer questions. Some students interviewed said they didn’t believe they had made the changes they were shown in their test booklets.

A sad story for our children. Yet, the somewhat mitigating good news is that there is an effective Audit which detected the problem! We can only hope that the PBS NewsHour will run a prominent retraction of their story touting the miracle of Betances reading program.

Yet, in the additional bad news, are lessos for voting integrity:

The report says that Ms. Didier, Linda Liss-Bronstein, the school’s literacy coach and dean of professional development, and a custodian were the only school employees with keys to the secure storage closet where CMT materials were kept. The janitor said he never went into the closet. Ms. Didier and Ms. Liss-Bronstein had custody of the completed booklets and reviewed them for such things as stray lines or double answers before forwarding them to the central office, the report says. The report does not accuse them of changing answers.

What can we learn? (What will we learn?)

  • The chain-of-custody matters for all critical paper records
  • Perhaps we should guard our childrens’ tests and ballots like we guard our records in a safe deposit box or like a bank guards money
  • At least two people should be required to access critical paper records
  • All accesses should be logged and verified by a third party
  • Let us not rely on trust, let us verify and secure in order to trust
  • Keep valuable records under dual lock and key, in the custody of independent authorities
  • Consider vaults, guards, and 24×7 video surveillance

When it comes to elections we have a long way to go in protecting our ballots as demonstrated by this costly lesson.

What the Courant has not learned (or has forgotten)

On the plus side, schools around the state will be moving to computer-based testing over the next two years as the new Common Core curriculum is adopted. That will eliminate at least this kind of malfeasance.

Is this the same newspaper and Editorial Board that:

For more information and tales from Connecticut and around the country on the chain-of-custody, see: <Chain-of-custody index>

? How are ballots secured in your town, after the election? How are tests protected, before and after grading?

Bankrupt city? Running out of common sense?

The worst possible action would be to throw the votes out and certify. That punishes the voters for actions of pollworkers and election supervisors. That would defy common senses and cancel democracy.

The election staff did not completely fill out write-in votes according to instructions, so a panel seems to be taking the least sensible approach, taking it out on the voters: Detroit mayor count in chaos as Wayne County refuses to certify primary results  <read>

A state election panel will have to decide who really won the Detroit mayoral primary after Wayne County election officials on Tuesday refused to certify shocking new election results, which would have invalidated about 20,000 votes and handed the primary win to Benny Napoleon instead of Mike Duggan.

The county board was debating whether to invalidate more than 20,000 write-in votes that were not recorded at polling locations using hash marks, which would cause the result of the Aug. 6 primary to be flipped — with Napoleon, the Wayne County sheriff, receiving more votes than write-in candidate Duggan…

Counters for the Wayne County Board of Canvassers were unsure of what to do with votes that did not use a method known as “hash-marking,” where votes are counted individually on poll books. The 20,000 votes at issue were entered into the books with just the numerical number of votes, instead of hash marks.

The proper way for poll workers to keep track of write-in votes is shown in a manual the state provided county boards of canvassers in July 2010. The manual shows a sample poll book with hash marks corresponding with each vote cast for a declared write-in candidate. The hash marks then are to be added up for each declared write-in candidate and a total is to be recorded in each poll book.

The manual does not give instructions if hash marks are not recorded in the poll books.

It seems to us that there are two logical solutions:

  • Most accurate: Recount the votes in question and record them properly, recalculate, and certify.
  • Likely quite accurate: Accept the totals without hashmarks, unless there is a reason to believe they are incorrect. If so, recount.

The worst possible action would be to throw the votes out and certify. That punishes the voters for actions of pollworkers and election supervisors. Defies common senses and cancels democracy.

Student hijacks election, case highlights internet voting vulnerability

Another challenge for Secretary of the State Denise Merrill and the state Military Department in creating a safe online voting system for Connecticut. We would add that one of the key (pun intended) vulnerabilities in online voting is in the user id’s and passwords required for voting.

A former Cal State student was sentenced to one year in jail for hacking a student election, to gain positions which pay much better than most town council positions in Connecticut. Two excellent articles by Doug Chapin: Cautionary Tale: Student Gets Jail Time for Stealing Online School Election <read> and a follow-up by David Jefferson: <read>

The gist of the story from Chapin:

Technically, this isn’t the kind of election news I usually blog about (because it doesn’t involve a public election) but I thought it was worth sharing … From UTSanDiego:

A former Cal State San Marcos student who rigged a campus election by stealing nearly 750 student passwords to cast votes for himself and friends was sentenced Monday in federal court to a year in prison …Weaver, 22, of Huntington Beach was a third-year business student when he carried out the elaborate plan to win election as president of the school’s student council in March 2012. He pleaded guilty this year to three federal charges, including wire fraud and unauthorized access to a computer …

The plan to steal the election was months in the making.

On Weaver’s computer, authorities found a PowerPoint presentation from early 2012, proposing that he run for campus president and that four of his fraternity brothers run for the four vice president spots in the student government. The presentation noted that the president’s job came with an $8,000 stipend and the vice presidents each got a $7,000 stipend.

Weaver also had done a bit of research, with computer queries such as “how to rig an election” and “jail time for keylogger.”

A month before the election, Weaver purchased three keyloggers — small electronic devices that secretly record a computer user’s keystrokes [pictured above – ed.].

Authorities said Weaver installed keyloggers on 19 school computers, stole passwords from 745 students and cast ballots from the accounts of more than 630 of those victims.

The plot was discovered, however, when technicians spotted unusual activity on the last day of the election period:

Using remote access, technicians watched the computer user cast vote after vote. They also watched as the user logged into the account of a university official and read an email from a student complaining that the system would not let her vote.Weaver had already cast a ballot from the student’s account, which was why she couldn’t vote.

The techs called campus police, who found Weaver at the school computer. He had keyloggers with him and was arrested.

The student didn’t help himself when he engaged in an elaborate cover-up afterwards

Jefferson adds several cautionary concerns that the hacker could have been a bit smarter and been less likely to be caught or the hack discovered, and that a similar public election hack would have been more difficult to discover, concluding:

In the many debates on the subject of Internet voting it is important not to allow anyone to use this Cal State San Marcos student election experience to argue that online public elections can be made safe because those who would cast phony votes will be caught. Mr. Weaver’s actions were detected because he was voting from computers controlled by the university IT staff, and he was identified and caught because he was not even minimally technically skilled in the techniques that could have distanced him from the crime. In a high stakes public election we will not be so lucky.

What would we add?

We would add that one of the key (pun intended) vulnerabilities in online voting is in the user id’s and passwords required for voting.

What if Matthew Weaver had spent his time getting a job in the computer lab and obtained the list of passwords from a central server and then made some timely changes to alter logs of the ip addresses used for voting?

The now famous D.C. Hack among other things demonstrated that even outsiders have the possibility of gaining a list of voters and their passwords.

One of those pesky details that would confront Connecticut Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill and the Sswtate Military Department when they design a safe online voting system for Connecticut.  If they choose web based voting, how in the age of Bradley Manning access can they insure that military computers and individuals’ computers are safe for internet voting? How can they assure that passwords sent through the mail arrive in time, to the intended recipient, and uncompromised?

Since it is safe to send cash in the mail, why shouldn’t we vote by mail?

Many people despite the evidence keep insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way, unless it was absolutely necessary?

Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’

We are always asked “Since we can bank safely by Internet, why can’t we vote by Internet”. The answer is that banking is safe only because banks save more in operations than the billions they lose each year in online banking. And they are two different applications, there is no receipt for your vote – we are even talking about voting by email – most people otherwise know that  email is not safe.

Many people, despite the evidence keep, insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way unless it was absolutely necessary?

Today an update on the Miami-Dade apparent absentee vote fraud from Brad Friedman: Partial Answers Emerge in FL’s Fraudulent Absentee Ballot Request Cyberhack Mysteries (Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’…) <read>

As we detailed at that time, some 2,500 absentee ballots were fraudulently requested online for three different 2012 primary elections in Miami-Dade, FL. One race involved requests for Democratic absentee ballots in a U.S. House primary, the other two involved requests for Republican ballots in two different Florida State House primary races. All of the fraudulent “phantom” ballot requests are said to have been flagged as such at the Supervisor of Election’s office and, therefore, never fulfilled.

Late last year, a grand jury and federal prosecutors [PDF] were unable to identify the person or persons behind the failed attempts, as well as why they were actually made, since the ballots, had the fraudulent requests not been flagged and prevented, were set to go to the actual addresses of real voters whose online identities had been fraudulently used to make the requests online.

One of the reasons that prosecutors were originally unable to identify those behind the attempted July 2012 cyberhack was because the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used for most of the requests were masked by proxy IP addresses from overseas. It was not until excellent investigative reporting from The Miami-Herald discovered that a number of the requests came from IP addresses located in the Miami-Dade area. For reasons currently chalked up to administrative confusion, the Elections Division never gave those Miami area IP addresses to the grand jury.

Armed with the new information offered by the Miami-Dade IP addresses, it now appears that prosecutors are closing in on suspects believed to be behind at least one of those sets of cyberhacks — the ones involving the Democratic U.S. House primary. Over the weekend the investigation led to the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Democratic Congressman who eventually won the primary in question, as well as last November’s general election…

The Congressman says his Chief of Staff took responsibility for the plot after the homes of two other staffers — Communications Director Giancarlo Sopo and Campaign Manager John Estes — were raided by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office in search of computers and other electronic devices thought to have been used in the phantom ballot requests. None of the three men, Chief of Staff Garcia, Sopo or Estes, have offered public comment yet.

Miami Herald reports that “466 of 472 phantom requests in Congressional District 26 targeted Democrats. In House District 103, 864 of 871 requests targeted Republicans, as did 1,184 of 1,191 requests in House District 112.”…

So, it is Democrats for sure, but also likely Republicans. And what about the possible insider collusion or coverup by the elections office?

The “winning” Candidate provides about as lame an excuse or questionable explanation as could possibly be imagined:

At a press conference on Saturday, an “angry” Rep. Garcia described the plot as “ill-conceived”, but added: “I think it was a well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout.”

Of course, many will likely claim despite the evidence that “Miami-Dade is so far away noting like this would happen in New England and especially here in the Constitution State, maybe just in places like Florida and California.

Nov 2012 Post-Election Audit Report – Flawed From The Start

Coalition Finds Continuing Problems with Election Audit and A New Flaw

Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Highly Inaccurate List
of Election Districts

The report concluded, the official audit results do not inspire confidence because of the:

  • Lack of integrity in the random district selection.
  • Lack of consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit.
  • Discrepancies between machine counts and hand counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities and the lack of standards for determining need for further investigation of discrepancies.
  • Weaknesses in the ballot chain-of-custody.

Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks noted, “We found significant, unexplained errors, for municipalities across the state, in the list of districts in the random drawing. This random audit was highly flawed from the start because the drawing was highly flawed.”

Cheryl Dunson, President, League of Women Voters of Connecticut, stated,, “Two years ago, the Legislature passed a law, at the Secretary of the State’s request, which was intended to fix inaccuracies in the drawing. For whatever reason, errors in the drawing have dramatically increased.

Weeks added, “Some officials follow the audit procedures and do effective work. This year one town investigated discrepancies and found errors to correct in their election procedures – that is one value of performing the audits as intended.”

Without adherence to procedures, accurate random drawings, a reliable chain-of-custody, and transparent public follow-up, when discrepancies are reported, if there was ever a significant fraud or error it would not be recognized and corrected.
<More Details>

<More Details>

Coalition Finds Continuing Problems with Election Audit and A New Flaw

Post-Election Audit Flawed from the Start by Highly Inaccurate List
of Election Districts

 The report concluded, the official audit results do not inspire confidence because of the:

  • Lack of integrity in the random district selection.
  • Lack of consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit.
  • Discrepancies between machine counts and hand counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities and the lack of standards for determining need for further investigation of discrepancies.
  • Weaknesses in the ballot chain-of-custody.

Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks noted, “We found significant, unexplained errors, for municipalities across the state, in the list of districts in the random drawing. This random audit was highly flawed from the start because the drawing was highly flawed.”

Cheryl Dunson, President, League of Women Voters of Connecticut, stated,, “Two years ago, the Legislature passed a law, at the Secretary of the State’s request, which was intended to fix inaccuracies in the drawing. For whatever reason, errors in the drawing have dramatically increased.

Weeks added, “Some officials follow the audit procedures and do effective work. This year one town investigated discrepancies and found errors to correct in their election procedures – that is one value of performing the audits as intended.”

Without adherence to procedures, accurate random drawings, a reliable chain-of-custody, and transparent public follow-up, when discrepancies are reported, if there was ever a significant fraud or error it would not be recognized and corrected.
<More Details>

Dummies’ Guide to Rigging a Colorado Election

Not everything that Marilyn recommends would work quite the same or as well in Connecticut. A strategy for Connecticut insider election thieves would be to rig memory cards and then provide incomplete post-election audit reports, or to claim that any discrepancy in such reports between machine and hand counts is human error.

Thanks to Marilyn Marks we have this guide: Steal This Election!–Dummies’ Guide to Rigging a Colorado Election <read>

This guide is for novices to Colorado politics and elections. Colorado has recently gained a reputation as a lawless Wild West state where candidates and parties can rig an election with impunity. Given that most officials appear to have little interest in election reform, it’s only fair to level the playing field for all the would-be players.

Connecticut election administration has also been called the Wild West.

Not everything that Marilyn recommends would work quite the same or as well in Connecticut. For now, we do not have unlimited absentee voting or automatic mail-in voting. However, that might change in the future. Yet we have little reason to take comfort. We do little checking of absentee ballot signatures. We also have a history of fraud by absentee ballot. Similar to many other states, many Connecticut voters would never question the integrity of even one of our registrars (especially those in our own town), and for the most part those registrars share absolute trust in each of their staff members and poll workers. Unfortunately, this is one of the 15 attributes of “Security Theater” from security expert Roger Johnston: “Strong emotion, over confidence, arrogance, ego, and/or pride related to security”.

A strategy for Connecticut insider election thieves would be to rig memory cards and then  provide incomplete post-election audit reports, or to claim that any discrepancy in such reports between machine and hand counts is human error.

Grand Theft Absentee

“Of the three methods of voting, the one that has always been the most vulnerable, the one where we know fraud has occurred historically … is in the absentee-ballot process,” Fernández Rundle told The Miami Herald on Thursday, referring also to voting early and on Election Day. Absentee voting, she added, “happens in the shadows. It happens in the dark. It’s the least monitored.”

The Miami Herald: Miami-Dade grand jury: Absentee voting fraud clouds confidence in tight election results <read>

A Miami-Dade voter drops her absentee ballot at the ballot box on Tuesday morning, November 6, 2012, at Miami-Dade Elections Department. Florida and Miami-Dade County should tighten rules for voting by mail and make it easier to vote early in order to prevent fraud and plug “gaping holes” in absentee voting, a Miami-Dade grand jury has concluded. To prove their point, grand jurors made an astounding revelation: A county software vendor discovered that a clandestine, untraceable computer program submitted more than 2,500 fraudulent, “phantom” requests for voters who had not applied for absentee ballots in the August primary. The grand jury issued 23 recommendations, from reinstating a state requirement that someone witness an absentee voter sign a ballot — thereby making it easier for law enforcement to investigate potential fraud…

“Of the three methods of voting, the one that has always been the most vulnerable, the one where we know fraud has occurred historically … is in the absentee-ballot process,” Fernández Rundle told The Miami Herald on Thursday, referring also to voting early and on Election Day. Absentee voting, she added, “happens in the shadows. It happens in the dark. It’s the least monitored.”

We have often discussed the risks of absentee voting and warned of the increased risks of unlimited absentee voting, including all-mail voting. It is refreshing to see a grand jury recognizing the risks. We also note a bit of bad news/good news here – the bad news of vote stealing via “clandestine, untraceable computer program” and the good news, in this case, of its detection by insiders – yet, perhaps less blatant or more clever theft would or has gone unnoticed, or worse actually perpetrated by insiders.

As we have said before, our concerns are mainly with the risks, yet beyond that unlimited absentee voting does not increase turn-out, and disenfranchises voters unbeknownst to them, all the added risks are thus in the name of convenience.