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USA Today: Electronic voting – The Real Threat

A USAToday Editorial, and an opposing view: Editorial: Electronic voting is the real threat to elections <read>

Imagine how easy voting would be if Americans could cast ballots the same way they buy songs from iTunes or punch in a PIN code to check out at the grocery store: You could click on a candidate from a home computer or use a touch screen device at the local polling place.

It’s not entirely a fantasy. In many states, some voters can already do both. The process is seductively simple, but it’s also shockingly vulnerable to problems from software failure to malicious hacking. While state lawmakers burn enormous energy in a partisan fight over in-person vote fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, they’re largely ignoring far likelier ways votes can be lost, stolen or changed.

How? Sometimes, technology or the humans running it simply fail

The article goes on to list some of the failures of electronic voting, many of which have been covered at CTVotersCount.

Fortunately our Legislature has not wasted time on raising Connecticut’s adequate voter I.D. law to the level of voter suppression. Unfortunately, the Legislature has continued to ignore science, experience, and the Constitutional requirement for preserving the secret vote – this spring they voted for email voting, in a provision inserted in a unrelated bill, without public hearings, Governor vetoes bill with email/fax voting “rat”

The opposing view from Bob Carey, Opposing view: Paper voting system is broken <read>

Carey is not a scientist. For years he has been advocating for more effective military voting, he knows much progress has been made to make paper voting effective for military and overseas voters, and that the military has been negligent in following the law to provide an officer to assist military votes at each base. He should also know how vulnerable even the defense department networks remain. And local control of elections requires using the regular internet for voting, managed by officials, largely no more technical than Mr. Carey.

Electronic Voting Debate Continues – Defying Science and History

Computer Scientists say safe Internet voting is impossible, unless unanticipated theoretical discoveries are made.

The World is not round*, leeches are not medically useful, electronic only voting and Internet voting cannot be made safe for the foreseeable future.

Several articles continue the debate on electronic voting. On one side we have Science and the history of electronic voting problems, Internet voting failures, and the risk of computers and the internet. On the other side those that apparently know little of Science who maintain faith that Scientists can solve any problem the uninformed choose.

From the Wall Street Journal: Decade-Old E-Voting ‘Wars’ Continue into Presidential Election <read>

From the Maryland Reporter: Election voting on the Internet ‘inevitable,’ experts say <read>
We note no computer scientists in the list of ‘experts’. The closest we find are perhaps political “scientists”.

Computer Scientists say safe Internet voting is impossible, unless unanticipated theoretical discoveries are made.

The World is not round*, leeches are not medically useful, electronic only voting and Internet voting cannot be made safe for the foreseeable future.

* Trick answer. It is much closer to round than flat.

2004 not so long ago, does it take a conspiracy? Consider the context, 2012.

A recent conversation and a video bring back memories and posts covering the 2004 election.

We should cautiously consider the context. 2004 was our last close presidential election. We are in the midst of an apparent multi-state, swing-state, open conspiracy to suppress votes via unnecessary voter ID. And the 2012 election may again be close, like those in 2004 and 2000.

A recent conversation and a video bring back memories and posts covering the 2004 election.

The question I asked myself and answered was “Do I believe the 2004 election was stolen by a conspiracy?” The short answer is “Probably not, it was likely was stolen by several small conspiracies and individual actions”. A conspiracy takes just two or more people conspiring to commit a crime. Four years ago we reviewed Witness to a Crime, by Richard Hayes Phillips, the evidence he generated showed a variety of problems with the 2004 results in Ohio. The evidence seems to point to at least several small conspiracies that together added up to enough votes changed to alter the Ohio result, and the election result. As we have said before, to our knowledge none of the accusations in Witness to a Crime have ever been refuted. We also witnessed the voter suppression in Ohio, perhaps the least likely to be a conspiracy was the Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, rejecting voter registrations not submitted on very heavyweight paper.

Less certain is the claim that votes were manipulated on external severs, and the related small airplane death of a potential conspirator.

Several of these actions, conspiracies, and suspicions were covered yesterday on DemocracyNow!, interviewing Craig Unger on his new book about Karl Rove, Boss Rove.

The video also reviews the sad story of the unfortunate, strategic prosecution/persecution of Gov Don Siegelman. That is half the story. The other half is his stolen re-election.

We should cautiously consider the context. 2004 was our last close presidential election. We are in the midst of an apparent multi-state, swing-state, open conspiracy to suppress votes via unnecessary voter ID. The 2012 election may again be close, like those in 2004 and 2000.

Canadian election disrupted in broad daylight

Canadian Broadcasting story: NDP gives up: convention cyber attacker remains a mystery <read>

The source of the cyber attack that disrupted voting at the NDP’s leadership convention in March remains a mystery, and further investigation to find out who was responsible has been dropped.

The NDP was the victim of what’s known as a distributed denial of service attack when thousands of members were trying to vote online throughout the day on March 24. These kinds of attacks result in websites crashing or slowing down because the server is flooded with bogus requests for access.

Legitimate voters couldn’t access the NDP’s website to vote and organizers ended up extending the time allotted for each voting round, delaying the final result until hours after it was expected. Thomas Mulcair was finally declared the winner at about 9 p.m.

Scytl Canada, the company contracted to run the voting, quickly detected what was going on soon after voting began that day and reacted accordingly. They were able to keep the voting going by increasing the system’s capacity and by blocking some of the bogus IP addresses.

Scytl, an international company based in Spain, conducted a forensic analysis after the convention but came up dry when trying to pinpoint exactly who was behind the co-ordinated campaign.

Several points worth noting and much to be learned from this story:

A denial of service attack is about as simple as it gets. No insider knowledge required, no understanding of the details of the target application, no new technology to invent.
Denial of service has its limitations. No votes are stolen, although many can be suppressed. The attack is obvious and will be detected.
This was a highly professional system by a leading vendor. That was not enough to prevent the attack, yet expertise and preparation may have been a factor in limiting the disruption.
In this case the disruption was moderately successful, in a relatively small election. A strong denial of service attacks have shut down highly regarded systems for longer periods, hours and days.

What value is an attack that everyone sees? That depends. Courts have been reluctant to grant re-votes, for good reasons. Results of a vote can depend strongly on the other races and issues on a ballot, get out the vote efforts, and even the weather. An apparently semi-successful attack like this one could be successful if it biased the results toward those who could be expected to have the time, opportunity, and inclination to keep trying, or those expected to vote at particular times of the day, or those expected to vote online if it is an alternative to in-person voting. Perhaps there is suppression in just one area with voters strongly favoring one party or ballot proposition, or there is a local contest that would be expected to have a different result it re-voted separately from a national or state-wide election. There is also the possibility of braking news just before or after the election that would change the result on a later vote.

The hunt for actual votER fraud continues

I find it hard to imagine an immigrant or felon taking the time and the risks to vote illegally, especially when so many registered voters don’t take the time to vote, and so many eligible voters don’t bother to register. Those who imagine the nightmare, cannot find significant actual votER fraud.

Here is a short post from Mother Jones articulating that hunt and the examples supplied by one of the most prominent votER fraud imaginers, Hans von Spakovsky: Repeat After Me: In-Person, In-Person, In-Person <read>

There are plenty of other types of voter fraud, of course. There’s registration fraud, where you send in forms for Mary Poppins and James Bond. There’s insider fraud, where election officials report incorrect tallies. There’s absentee ballot fraud, where you fill in someone else’s absentee ballot and mail it in. But a voter ID law does nothing to stop those kinds of fraud. Even in theory, the only kind of fraud it stops is in-person voter fraud…

Hasen[Author of The Voting Wars] provides what few examples he can. Hans von Spakovsky, a Bush-era Justice Department appointee, claimed to have found an occurrence of impersonation fraud in a 1984 case in Brooklyn. But when Hasen finally managed to get a copy of the DA’s report (von Spakovsky refused to share it), it turned out that the fraud consisted almost entirely of insiders manipulating registration books and cards. What little impersonation fraud they found was possible only thanks to collusion with corrupt election officials. Von Spakovsky also brought up a 1997 case in Miami, but that turned out to be absentee ballot fraud. In a later op-ed, he pointed to a case in Kansas, but a court ruled that, in fact, no illegal votes had been cast.

So there you have it. Hasen apparently doesn’t know of any confirmed cases of in-person voter fraud, and the folks who have tried their best to find some have failed…

UPDATE: Rick Hasen emails to say that he recently came across a case that might be genuine in-person voter fraud. The allegation is something stupid (a mother taking her teenage son to vote in her husband’s place), not something corrupt, but still. It’s a case! [Which we suspect could have been identified just by the checkers doing a bit of age guessing]

Everything you wanted to know about voter ID, including Connecticut

REMINDER: Most voters do not need a voter ID in Connecticut.(but it is easier if you bring one) Some 1st time registrants do under the Help America Vote Act.

ProPublica article on voter id: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws <read>

Starting with the heart of the matter:

Why are these voter ID laws so strongly opposed?

Voting law advocates contend these laws disproportionately affect elderly, minority and low-income groups that tend to vote Democratic. Obtaining photo ID can be costly and burdensome, with even free state ID requiring documents like a birth certificate that can cost up to $25 in some places. According to a study from NYU’s Brennan Center, 11 percent of voting-age citizens lack necessary photo ID while many people in rural areas have trouble accessing ID offices. During closing arguments in a recent case over Texas’s voter ID law, a lawyer for the state brushed aside these obstacles as the “reality to life of choosing to live in that part of Texas.”

Attorney General Eric Holder and others have compared the laws to a poll tax, in which Southern states during the Jim Crow era imposed voting fees, which discouraged the working class and poor, many of whom were minorities, from voting.

Given the sometimes costly steps required to obtain needed documents today, legal scholars argue that photo ID laws create a new “financial barrier to the ballot box.”

Just how well-founded are fears of voter fraud?

There have been only a small number of fraud cases resulting in a conviction. A New York Times analysis from 2007 identified 120 cases filed by the Justice Department over five years. These cases, many of which stemmed from mistakenly filled registration forms or misunderstanding over voter eligibility, resulted in 86 convictions.

There are “very few documented cases,” said UC-Irvine professor and election law specialist Rick Hasen. “When you do see election fraud, it invariably involves election officials taking steps to change election results or it involves absentee ballots which voter ID laws can’t prevent,” he said.

One of the most vocal supporters of strict voter ID laws, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, told the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that his office has prosecuted about 50 cases of voter fraud in recent years. “I know for a fact that voter fraud is real, that it must be stopped, and that voter id is one way to prevent cheating at the ballot box and ensure integrity in the electoral system,” he told the paper. Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

There are several other details covered in the ProPublica article. Pennsylvania’s law is perhaps coming under the most fire as the strictest and most burdensome. As this article points out, absentee voting essentially requires no id, so a voter intent on voting for someone else or registering fraudulently has a much easier method available: New Pa. voter ID law criticized as inconsistent <read>

Pennsylvanians who vote by absentee ballot in November will need only to provide proof on their applications that they have Social Security cards, state Rep. Dan Frankel said Monday night.

All voters who show up in person on Election Day, however, must have state-approved photo identification, the Squirrel Hill Democrat said.

“If the last four digits [of a Social Security number] are good enough for absentee ballots, they should be good enough for voting at the polls,” he said during a discussion of the state’s new voter ID law.

In Connecticut we have a moderate voter Id requirement that does not have the barriers that are so controversial in other states, still stricter that those for voting by absentee ballot. From the Moderators Handbook:

b. VOTER I.D. AND VOTING

The elector announces their street number, address and name in a loud voice to the checkers. Each elector must present one of the following forms of identification to the checkers:

Their social security card, or

any pre-printed form of identification which shows their name and address, or

any pre-printed form of identification which shows their name and signature, or

any pre-printed form of identification which shows their name and photograph, or

sign a statement under penalty of false statement on Form ED-681 entitled, “Signatures of Electors Who Did Not Present ID”, provided by the Secretary of the State (see Form 3 in this Handbook) that the elector whose name appears on the official check list is the elector signing the form. (§9-261)

As in all states there are also special HAVA requirements for some 1st time voters:

d. HAVA IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS

NOTE: INDIVIDUAL VOTERS SUBJECT TO THE ADDITIONAL HAVA IDENTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS WILL HAVE AN ASTERISK (*) NEXT TO THEIR NAME ON THE OFFICIAL VOTER LIST.

Please note, that in addition to the above procedures, those first time voters who register by mail after January 1, 2003, and vote for the first time in a federal election after January 1, 2004 are subject to the following additional requirements under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA):

The voter must present identification with their mail-in registration or at the polls;

If the voter is required to present identification at the polls pursuant to HAVA, the acceptable forms of identification under HAVA are:

a. A copy of a current and valid photo identification;

A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck or government document that shows the name and address of the voter;

EXCEPTION: If the voter provides:

A valid Connecticut motor vehicle operator’s license number; or

The last four digits of the individual’s Social Security number.

AND

The Registrars of Voters are able to verify that information prior to the election, the remaining HAVA identification provisions will not apply to the voter. However, normal Connecticut identification procedures will still apply.

NOTE: Members of the armed forces and persons entitled to use the federal post card application under section 9-153a of the general statutes, as amended by this act, are not required to provide identification when registering by mail.

If the voter is required to present identification at the poll pursuant to HAVA, the applicant is NOT allowed to sign a statement under penalty of false statement on Form ED-681 entitled “Signatures of Electors Who Did Not Present ID”, prescribed by the Secretary of the State that the elector whose name appears on the official check list is the elector signing. (§9-261) (See Form 3)

If the voter is required to provide identification at the poll pursuant to HAVA and does NOT provide identification as outlined in section d(2), the applicant will be entitled to a provisional ballot. See section entitled “Provisional Ballot” for information.

Our opinion

In Connecticut we are lucky to avoid the controversy this year. Lucky because we have moderate requirements that should satisfy those with reasonable concerns, yet not keep voters from voting because of costly and time consuming requirements. With no evidence of anything beyond the possibility of very very isolated cases of voter fraud in polling place voting there is no reason to add to our Id requirements. The ball is in the court of those with concerns to demonstrate the need.

We maintain our position that unlimited absentee voting or mail-in voting represent a real and much greater risk and concern. With absentee voting, individual voter fraud represents a minor part of our concern; where untended disenfranchising voter error represent a greater concern; and where documented and potential organized voting fraud by insiders and outsiders represents the greatest risk.

Book Review: With Liberty and Justice for Some

We can have access to complete information from a free and robust media, have the cleanest elections possible, yet without the rule of law, we do not have democracy. Without the rule of law, journalists and whistle-blowers will not be protected, and election integrity would be unlikely.

Editor’s Note: Prefacing a book review, two years ago we said: “There are many issues demanding citizens’ attention to improve our world, government, and democracy in the direction of the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The two most basic issues upon which all others depend are media reform and election integrity. If I could waive a wand and magically choose just one, it would be media reform – with media reform election integrity would be possible and likely, without it election integrity is of little consequence. I spend my time on election integrity because the problems and workable solutions come naturally to me based on my knowledge, education, and experience.” Today, I would add a third basic issue upon which all others depend, the rule of law and not of people [or corporations])

I highly recommend reading With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by Glenn Greenwald.

I have two complaints and a compliment:

First it is DEPRESSING. But like getting a diagnosis from your doctor, knowing the problem can help lead to rational action. While reading, and since, I keep noticing the sad lack of accountability and its consequences everywhere in the news.

Second its title is MISLEADING. It is too generous suggesting justice for some. It is not justice when the rich, politicians, and insiders get away with significant crime at almost everyone’s expense on the planet. Yes, retail murderers and their victims’ survivors often get justice, but even then many are wrongly convicted or escape justice.

Finally it is refreshingly SHORT. Glenn packs a lot into less than a couple hundred pages. It is a simple concept yet the book is packed with examples that drive the point home. We must be a nation of laws, or all is lost.

We are in the words of John Adams, “a nation of laws, not men.” For Adams, either the law is supreme in all cases, or the arbitrary will of rulers is. Adams and the other founders viewed the preeminence of law or individuals — all individuals — as the only protection against the tyranny that American colonists had launched…Alexander Hamilton did not often see eye to eye with Paine, but on this he heartily agreed. “The instruments by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE.” he wrote in 1794 “If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is and end to liberty!”…

To Paine, a system of legally enforced inequality would enable the elite to exploit the law to entrench unearned prerogatives or shield ill-gotten gains.

This week and in recent weeks we see examples of this potentially happening. Perhaps each of these examples unfolds we will see the extent to which we actually have a rule of law or of the elite:

The LIBOR scandal where Barkleys Bank was fined about .5 Billion for cheating on the rate which underlies all loans. A crime against us all, possibly reaching in the Trillions of dollars. Nobody charged yet with a crime. Now most big banks are under investigation, perhaps even the U.S. Treasury Secretary. Will there be an investigation, criminal trials, jail time?
The F.D.A. caught spying on whistle-blowing employees, spying on Congress, and creating an enemies list. In CT a medial doctor was convicted last week of spying on his ex and paid a tort of 2 Million. Will the F.D.A perpetrators be brought to Justice? If not will Representatives and staffers consider civil court?
We note the prosecution of an Army Private, with cruel and hopefully unusual punishment prior to conviction, along with pronouncements of guilt before trial, accompanied by no actions against crimes exposed by the whistle-blowing itself.
A presidential candidate held a campaign strategy session, inviting super PAC leaders, who are barred from colluding with the campaign. Will there be any investigation? Will there be any sanction that hurts the chances of the candidate, if they violated the law. If the law was not violated, what would actually constitute collusion?

In Greenwald’s words:

Over the past several decades we have witnessed numerous examples of serious lawbreaking on the part of our most powerful political and financial leaders with no consequences of any kind. It is no exaggeration to state that the current consensus among journalists and politicians is that except in the most blatant and sensationalistic cases (typically ones in which powerful factions are aggrieved — a Bernie Madoff, here a Rob Blagojevich there), criminal prosecutions are simply not appropriate for the country’s elites. Courtrooms, indictments, and prisons are there for ordinary Americans, not for the ruling classes, and virtually never for our highest political leaders.

Update:

Another example of justice denied. This tax scandal and election scandal would pay for itself in tax revenue.

What can the F.D.A. teach us about Officials, Internet voting, and Computer voting?

Vast, easy spying capabilities. No technical expertise required. The possibilities are endless. Votes, voters, spouses, lawyers, business opponents, employees, bosses, officials, candidates, campaigns, investigators, and auditors can be monitored by practically anyone. Will the perpetrators be brought to justice?

A sickening (no pun intended) piece in the New York Times about the Food and Drug Administration: In Vast Effort, F.D.A. Spied on E-Mails of Its Own Scientists <read>

Summary: F.D.A. put off the shelf spy software on work and home computers of employees suspected of whistle-blowing. The software captured emails, keystrokes, chats, and screens of the employees, sending alerts based on specific words. Also thus spying on journalists and congressional staff which may have been ‘conspiring’ to hold the F.D.A. to account.

A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.

What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency?s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.

Moving to quell what one memorandum called the “collaboration” of the F.D.A.?s opponents, the surveillance operation identified 21 agency employees, Congressional officials, outside medical researchers and journalists thought to be working together to put out negative and “defamatory” information about the agency.

F.D.A. officials defended the surveillance operation, saying that the computer monitoring was limited to the five scientists suspected of leaking confidential information about the safety and design of medical devices.

While they acknowledged that the surveillance tracked the communications that the scientists had with Congressional officials, journalists and others, they said it was never intended to impede those communications, but only to determine whether information was being improperly shared.

The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.

The extraordinary surveillance effort grew out of a bitter dispute lasting years between the scientists and their bosses at the F.D.A. over the scientists? claims that faulty review procedures at the agency had led to the approval of medical imaging devices for mammograms and colonoscopies that exposed patients to dangerous levels of radiation…

With the documents from the surveillance cataloged in 66 huge directories, many Congressional staff members regarded as sympathetic to the scientists each got their own files containing all their e-mails to or from the whistle-blowers. Drafts and final copies of letters the scientists sent to Mr. Obama about their safety concerns were also included.

Last year, the scientists found that a few dozen of their e-mails had been intercepted by the agency. They filed a lawsuit over the issue in September, after four of the scientists had been let go…

Mr. Van Hollen said on Friday after learning of his status on the list that “it is absolutely unacceptable for the F.D.A. to be spying on employees who reach out to members of Congress to expose abuses or wrongdoing in government agencies.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican whose former staff member?s e-mails were cataloged in the surveillance database, said that “the F.D.A. is discouraging whistle-blowers.” He added that agency officials “have absolutely no business reading the private e-mails of their employees. They think they can be the Gestapo and do anything they want.”…

The software used to track the F.D.A. scientists, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., costs as little as $99.95 for individual use, or $2,875 to place the program on 25 computers. It is marketed mainly to employers to monitor their workers and to parents to keep tabs on their children?s computer activities.

“Monitor everything they do,” says SpectorSoft?s Web site. “Catch them red-handed by receiving instant alerts when keywords or phrases are typed or are contained in an mail, chat, instant message or Web site.”…

What can we learn:

Any form of Internet voting is completely vulnerable to the loss of the secret ballot, including email voting. Military commanders could monitor voting by soldiers, business owners monitor employee voting, union leaders monitor members voting, bishops monitor voting of the flock and employees of their enterprises etc.
Similarly, votes made on software used to complete ballots for mail-in voting could be monitored.
Technicians know that it is hardly a leap to go from monitoring screens and keystrokes to being able to change votes undetected by the user.
All it takes is access and commercial software sold to the general public, no technical expertise.
Officials and public agencies are not exempt for ethics lapses and the ability to do practically anything. It is “parents ‘play'”. (Voting officials included)
The possibilities are endless. Spouses, dates, officials, candidates, campaigns, votes, voters, and auditors can be monitored by practically anyone.

What remains to be seen:

Will the perpetrators be brought to justice? Could they have information that they could use as a bribe to stop investigations and prosecutions? Will prosecutions be stopped for “national security” reasons? More on this topic coming soon…

*********

Democracy Now covers this same story <video>

There are really three aspects of the story:

Ignoring science, the F.D.A. approved dangerous medical equipment in diametric opposition to its mission
The F.D.A. targeted and fired whistle-blowers trying to prevent this
They spied on employees, protected communication, and Congress, creating an enemies list

As we were saying, stealing elections the easy way: Insider absentee fraud.

And now to add even more evidence to past experience, a timely story from the Los Angeles Times, to emphasize the existence of voting fraud, via absentee voting, executed by insiders, otherwise known as election officials.

It seems like just early this week that we were saying:

for all intents and purposes voter fraud is very rare, while voting fraud does regularly occur. Common sense tells us that very few voters would risk intentionally voting illegally for the purpose of casting a single fraudulent vote, given the effort, huge risk, miniscule value. Common sense also tells us that there is likely several times the instances of voter fraud and voting fraud than are successfully uncovered and successfully prosecuted. Yet, voter fraud would still be rare and generally ineffective. Not so with voting fraud, especially that committed by insiders.

And only a couple of days ago that we were saying:

Vote absentee, only if you have to! The risk of fraud is primarily a risk of campaigners, insiders, or others working to fraudulently vote for others or to trash votes somewhere between the voter, in the mail, or in town hall.

And now to add even more evidence to past experience, a timely story from the Los Angeles Times to emphasize the existence of voting fraud, via absentee voting, executed by insiders, otherwise known as election officials.: Feds: Cudahy officials threw away ballots, manipulated two elections <read>

Cudahy officials at the city’s highest levels tampered with and manipulated the results of at least two city elections, according to federal documents released Thursday.

The documents were part of the plea agreements of two Cudahy city officials who agreed to plead guilty Thursday to bribery and extortion.

But the documents also shed light on a culture of corruption within City Hall, with examples of widespread bribery and developer payoffs to voter fraud…

The documents show that a city official identified only as G.P. asked Perales and others to make non-residents register to vote in elections. They used an address that belonged to a Cudahy city employee. In exchange, that employee was rewarded with promotions and other favorable treatment, the documents say…

The documents show that a city official identified only as G.P. asked Perales and others to make non-residents register to vote in elections. They used an address that belonged to a Cudahy city employee. In exchange, that employee was rewarded with promotions and other favorable treatment, the documents say.

The fraud went beyond the fake registrants (Do you know where your absentee ballots are kept and how they are handled in city hall?):

In addition, the city officials tossed out ballots that did not favor incumbents.

Perales said that when absentee ballots were delivered to City Hall, he and G.P. determined through “trial and error” the best way to open the sealed envelopes without defacing them. “Routinely and systematically,” they opened the ballots. If they contained votes in favor of incumbents, they were resealed and counted. Ballots for non-incumbents were discarded.

And apparently it changed the result:

It was the first contested council race in nearly a decade, and they lost by a few dozen votes.

We point out that requiring a voter ID at polling places would do nothing to prevent absentee ballot fraud by officials. Perhaps long jail terms for those that are caught and convicted would. Perhaps that will happen here.

Vote absentee, only if you have to!

The already registered voter must request the ballot; the administrator must receive and process the request; the administrator must in a timely manner send the ballot to the voter; the voter must receive the ballot; the voter must vote correctly, on time and provide the proper verifications (such as the voter’s own signature and/or that of a witness); the administrator must receive the ballot on time; and the administrator must count the ballot.

CTVotersCount readers know that we oppose expanded mail-in voting including no-excuse absentee voting. There are two major reasons: the risk of voting fraud and the risk of error or delays resulting in your vote not being counted. The risk of fraud is primarily a risk of campaigners, insiders, or others working to fraudulently vote for others or to trash votes somewhere between the voter, in the mail, or in town hall. The risk to voters is that they will make an innocent mistake or their ballot innocently lost along the way.

The Daily News articulates the risks, compounded by the dramatic increase in vote by mail: Meet the hanging chad of 2012 <read>

the silent, creeping revolution in the timing and method of voting presents bigger opportunities for trouble. In recent years, absentee and mail-in ballots have been steadily rising as a share of total ballots cast. The majority of states now allow “no-excuse absentee” voting, meaning anyone can ask to cast a ballot by mail. You don’t need the political equivalent of a doctor’s note, as was true previously.

According to the Census Bureau, more than 18% of voters in the 2010 election voted by mail. Another 8% voted early but “in person” at a polling place or vote center (a recent innovation that enables out-of-precinct voting). As a result, more than a quarter of voters ended up voting early or absentee — roughly double the rate in the 2000 election.

In general, misfeasance — meaning, plain old mistake-making — is a bigger threat to voting than is corruption or malfeasance, and absentee ballots are no exception. Many interactions between the voter and the election authority must work without a hitch for the voter’s absentee ballot to be cast successfully:

The already registered voter must request the ballot; the administrator must receive and process the request; the administrator must in a timely manner send the ballot to the voter; the voter must receive the ballot; the voter must vote correctly, on time and provide the proper verifications (such as the voter’s own signature and/or that of a witness); the administrator must receive the ballot on time; and the administrator must count the ballot.

So, even though absentee balloting is not brain surgery, the opportunities for error are considerable. Consider that in the recount involving the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, one out of 25 absentee ballots was disqualified for one reason or another. And this in a state where, the saying goes, all of the voters (and election administrators) are above average.

We pretty much agree with everything they have said, yet disagree that fraud is less of a risk. Fraud tends to have value, with a higher incentive, in very close elections, especially local elections, where moving a few dozen votes can often change the result.