National | CTVotersCount.org

Efforts to make Internet secure are ineffective

Could Connecticut or any or our 169 municipalities accomplish what the U.S. Government and the Defense Department has not?

“cyber crime and cyber espionage are daily occurrences in the United States and are doing long-term damage to the nation’s economy and global competitiveness. What’s more, they set the stage for cyber attacks. ‘Some of our opponents use cyber criminals as mercenaries,'”

Last week we testified against a bill <page 9> which would have authorized online voting in Connecticut. We have been asking:

Would each of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities be able to afford such systems and accomplish what Washington D.C. has not?
Could Connecticut accomplish centrally what Washington D.C. has not?

An article in Government Security News reminds us to ask:

Could any State or any City accomplish what the U.S. Government and the Defense Department has not?
Could Connecticut or any or our 169 municipalities accomplish what the U.S. Government and the Defense Department has not?

“What we are doing now to secure cyberspace is not working,” a House subcommittee was told March 16 by James Lewis, director and a senior fellow in the Technology and Public Policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC…

Military establishments in some countries have the capability to launch a cyber attack on the United States…

He declared that cyber crime and cyber espionage are daily occurrences in the United States and are doing long-term damage to the nation’s economy and global competitiveness. What’s more, they set the stage for cyber attacks. “Some of our opponents use cyber criminals as mercenaries,” he said.

“Our most advanced opponents in cyber crime and cyber espionage can overpower even the most technologically sophisticated U.S. company,” he maintained.

It might take a lot to attack a highly secure military system, but it only took an accomplished professor and some graduate students a couple of days to attack the Washington D.C. voting system in a public test.

Update: 3/20/2011: For doubters, we learn today of a successful attack on a company that provides Internet encryption technology, RSA Security <read>

Op-Ed: Photo ID’s downsides for voting

Photo ID may be a well-intentioned idea, but it is expensive “security theater” that will disenfranchise far more voters than any fraud it will prevent.

Joyce McCloy of the NC. Coalition for Verified Voting outlines the case against current proposals for Photo ID’s <read>

Requiring voters to present a photo ID at the polls sounds like a good idea – but it is everything we hate about government: a complex and expensive nonsolution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

To implement such a law would cost millions each year, would likely disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters – especially women, the elderly and minorities – and would not prevent fraud that it is designed to stop. Now the issue is coming to a head in North Carolina: The House Elections Committee is scheduled to take public comments on photo ID at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Room 643 of the Legislative Office Building in Raleigh.

At issue is not “voter ID” but rather the matter of imposing photo ID restrictions at the polling place. There’s no problem, in general, with “voter ID,” providing that there are many options for establishing identity, as there are in Alabama and Missouri, where many types of documents suffice.

Currently 18 states require “voter ID,” and eight states require “photo ID.” These eight states, however, do not have a way to verify the ID. Someone determined to commit voter impersonation could simply use a fake ID. Obtaining fake ID cards is easy enough – kits can be bought cheaply. In reality, the most common and difficult to detect voter fraud happens in absentee balloting. Requiring picture IDs on Election Day does nothing to prevent that…

The Brennan Center for Justice cites three basic principles that must be satisfied to avoid a constitutional challenge of any photo ID law:

First, photo IDs sufficient for voting must be available free for all those who do not have them. States cannot limit free IDs to those who swear they are indigent. North Carolina would need to pay the costs of obtaining the supporting documents necessary to obtain photo IDs.

Second, photo IDs must be readily accessible to all voters, without undue burden. To make ID easily accessible, our state might have to expand the number of ID-issuing offices and extend their operating hours.

Third, states must undertake substantial voter outreach and public education efforts to ensure that voters are apprised of the law’s requirements and the procedures for obtaining the IDs they will need to vote…

Photo ID may be a well-intentioned idea, but it is expensive “security theater” that will disenfranchise far more voters than any fraud it will prevent.

NY: Hard lesson in why we need recounts and uniform election laws

Supermajority and candidate doomed by vague election law crafted by his own lawyer.

New York Daily News: Dem Frank Skartados doomed by vague election law crafted by his own lawyer <read>

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s former adviser wrote the state law that may have cost him his powerful, veto-proof, Democratic supermajority.

Democrat Frank Skartados was forced to concede the seat for the 100th Assembly District last week when he was a mere 15 votes behind.

In his heart of hearts, he believes he won.

But in a double whammy of irony, Skartados was seemingly doomed by a vague election law that was crafted by his own lawyer, Kathleen O’Keefe, while she worked as Silver’s chief election counsel. O’Keefe’s strict interpretation of her own law walled off one of Skartados’ last hopes of fighting for the seat…

In New York City, Board of Elections rules automatically require a hand inspection of the paper trail from voting machines in any election where the margin is 0.5% or less.

State election law doesn’t

Lawmakers Seek To Change Presidential Elections [To make them more risky, reduce confidence]

What often appears simple is not. The Compact being proposed would get around the requirement for a constitutional amendment. It would cobble the popular vote onto a system designed for the Electoral College. Such a system has largely unanticipated, but predictable consequences that are overlooked and glossed over by national organizations supporting the proposition – similar to the situations when we focus on the national debt one week and lowering taxes the next.

CTNewsJunkie: Lawmakers Seek To Change Presidential Elections <read>

Once again, Connecticut faces the prospect of the well intended but risky National Popular Vote Compact/Agreement. From the article:

A winner-take-all rule has permitted a candidate to win the presidency without winning the popular vote in four out of 56 elections. Sen. Gary LeBeau, D-East Hartford, wants to stop that trend by implementing something called the National Popular Vote.

If enacted, Electoral College delegates from the state would be mandated to cast their votes for whichever presidential candidate wins the national popular vote.

“It’s simple,” LeBeau said Wednesday, “the person who’s elected president becomes the president.”

The goal is to restore voter confidence in the electoral system, LeBeau said. His own confidence was shaken after the 2000 presidential elections when President George W. Bush won the election despite losing the national popular vote to candidate and former-Vice President Al Gore, he said.

Like Senator LeBeau, most people, Democrats and Republicans, believe that Al Gore would have won in 2000 if we had the national popular vote then.

But we do not know who would have won then, because as the national popular vote supporters claim different voters would be motivated to vote under the national popular vote, so the national total would have been different.in 2000.
Under the current system, the damage due to error, fraud, and voter suppression is limited to the few so called, swing states. Under the national popular vote, errors, fraud, and suppression in every state, by anyone, any party would count toward the totals. Rather than restore confidence enacting the national popular pote on top of our flawed state by state system will start open season on fraud and suppression.
Finally, if Florida had a good, uniform, automatic recount law in 2000, then Al Gore would also have won with the Electoral College. More that anything, it was likely skulduggery in Florida and a partisan Supreme Court that decided the 2000 election.

“One could argue that the total disenfranchisement and repression of African Americans throughout the end of the 19th century was largely enabled by the dysfunction of the Electoral College,” [Fleishman] said.

This is the 21st century. Yet, one could also still argue that legitimately today, that the claim that the national popular vote will result in one person one vote is bogus, since states vary in who is franchised today and the obstacles placed in the way of various groups in registering and voting.

Our comments on the post (edited and combined):

While I understand the good arguments for the national popular vote and would support it, except there are some extreme risks to the Compact which attempts to force fit it onto our inaccurate state by state voting system.

There is no official national popular vote number complied and certified nationally that can be used to officially and accurately determine the winner in any reasonably close election.

There is no national recount available for close elections to establish an accurate number. Only in some individual states with close numbers in those states would there ever be a recount.

Currently the Electoral College limits the damage to states with close votes. With the national nopular vote errors, voter suppression, and fraud in all states would count against the national totals.

With stronger election laws, national uniformity, enforceable and enforced laws in place I would favor the NPV.

For more see: https://www.ctvoterscount.org/the-case-against-the-npv/

For example: The inaccuracies in Bridgeport did not change the winner here in the Governor’s race and would not have been enough to change the Electoral College. If it was closer we would have had a recanvass and presumably those errors corrected. But with the Compact they would all have counted against one candidate toward that national popular vote number reported by the media or any other number calculated nationwide.

We also point to this story we came across today, pointing out just one more example of the normal errors in vote counts that get certified across the country. Human error, not voting machines, skewed Colleton County election results <read>

The Colleton County Board of Elections reported nearly 1,400 extra votes in the November election. The discrepancy came to light after the Election Commission certified the results…

Frank Heindel of Mount Pleasant, who maintains a website documenting problems with electronic voting machines, lined up an independent audit to see if the machines were at fault.

“Why do we have such poorly written software that allows candidates to receive more votes than the number of ballots cast?” Heindel said today. “Poorly written software creates human error.”

He said the independent auditors were still waiting for the files to finish their work.

Whitmire’s explanation differs from Colleton County Elections Director Eric Campbell’s guess at what happened. Campbell had said he suspected some votes got counted twice when he held the memory cards from six smaller precincts in the machine too long while tabulating the votes. That raised questions whether the computer software was at fault. Whitmire said there’s no indication the mistake had anything to do with the machine reading the memory cards.

“It wasn’t a problem with the machines, and it wasn’t something mysterious,” Whitmire said. “Whenever there are humans involved, there is always going to be the chance of error.”

We also point out that apparently this error came to light only through citizen expense and diligence. Instructively, like Bridgeport and Connecticut, the original inaccurate results still stand.

Update: Another post from the Norwich Bulletin. <read> Be sure and read the comments on this and the ones on the article at CTNewsJunkie above.

CO Chain-of-Custody: Rest assured, we would never see this in Connecticut

Once again we can rest assured that Connecticut, “The Provisions State”, has provided little provision in our statutes for discovering problems like those surfaced in Colorado

Colorado Springs Conservative Examiner: Secret count preceded Saguache election ‘retabulation’ <read>

What a great idea for election and chain-of-custody transparency:

Examination of election videotapes reveal that the Saguache County Clerk’s office and two judges conducted a secret vote count Nov. 4 from 2 p.m. to about 7:12 p.m. prior to the Nov. 5 “retabulation.”

The video recording copies were obtained through a Colorado Open Records Act request Nov. 16. The county clerk’s office is required by law to keep continuous recordings of all election areas and activities, beginning two months before the election, up to and including any recounts, for two years

They were caught ballot handed. Activist Marlyn Marks summarizes what happened and what is wrong. From the article:

“Reports of a significant private hand count on the afternoon of Nov. 4 appear to validate just how severely the election process and citizen oversight had degraded by Nov. 5, the date of the so-called ‘re-tabulation.’ Reports indicate that ballots were pulled from storage bins and hand-counted by three individuals without notification to candidates, special districts, press, canvass board, or poll watchers. Parties, candidates, special districts, and the press all have statutory rights to have authorized watchers present during every step of the election process. The fact that the count was done in secret and results never disclosed, nor interested parties informed are all serious breaches of trust by the clerk.

“The timing of this alleged hand count one day in advance of a scheduled machine “re-tabulation” raises even more questions as to the purpose of that private count, and the goals of the “re-tabulation.” Why was such a close-door count necessary? Furthermore, the initial machine tabulation and the “re-tabulation,” were not legitimate and not allowed by Colorado election law due to the security incidents prior to election day. The law prohibits the machine from being used to tabulate the election on Nov. 2 and required hand counts instead. That law was ignored by the clerk. We should remember that a Nov. 5 “re-tabulation,” does not legitimize using a faulty, prohibited machine on Nov. 2 or 5, when a hand count was required all along.

“In summary, the machine tabulation was illegitimate, the private count on Nov. 4 was illegitimate, and the “re-tabulation” Nov. 5 was illegitimate, all worsened by a lack of proper security. There is nothing on which to base reasonable conclusions as to the outcome of the close races in this election.”

The Colorado State Attorney General’s Office, Criminal Investigations Division is reviewing complaints made by a growing number of local residents and other Coloradans, including Marks, concerning the conduct of the election.

This was not a very independent recount: Saguache County: A test case in Colorado election integrity <read>

When a county clerk in a poor, rural county in south-central Colorado reversed the results of the Nov. 2 election three days later and declared herself the winner, many of the residents there cried foul. Not only did Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers go from loser to winner during what many consider to be an improper retabulation, so did the incumbent county commissioner of the same party affiliation. A slew of bipartisan complaints to the secretary of state have fallen on deaf ears…

A trail of private e-mails and public documents shows that even though the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office acknowledges a number of problems with the election, the agency has failed to do much about it. Worse, the secretary of state’s lead officials may have even made untrue claims in their attempts to make the matter go away.

We would never see this sort of thing in Connecticut

Yesterday, we covered the flawed chain-of-custody and court actions in New Jersey. We pointed out how such problems would be unlikely to be surfaced in Connecticut. Once again we can rest assured that the “Provisions State” has provided little provision in our statutes for discovering problems like those surfaced in Colorado:

We have no law or chain-of-custody requirement similar to the video requirement in Colorado. We have no standards for the facilities where ballots are stored. In most Connecticut municipalities it is easy for one official, to obtain and use a single key, to access ballots alone, undetected, for hours at a time. Ballots are stored in hallways, schools, closets, under desks, and abandoned classrooms. [If you think they are protected by seals, read yesterday’s post]
We are unaware of any Connecticut election law that prohibits machine counting due to “security incidents prior to election day”, but we would certainly expect better than this incident in Colorado – we would expect that any security incidents would be corrected or compensated for unless discovered at too late a date. Even in very close elections we count ballots a second time in recanvasses using the same type of machine and duplicate memory cards.

Update 3/15/2011: Denver Post: Secretary of state, clerks battle over Saguache ballots

Update 3/25/2011: Center Post Dispatch: Secretary of State sues clerk to review ballots

Update 4/6/2011: The ballot access debate continues, between the Secretary of the State and local officials:

The Chieftain: State official lacks review authority, Saguache clerk says <read>

Myers’ response, filed Thursday in Saguache County District Court, said the state constitution required her not to disclose how an elector voted and the proposed review of voted ballots may violate that duty.

The Denver Post: Saguache clerk tells court ballots should be kept secret, even from state <read>

The Colorado County Clerks Association says they shouldn’t. The association’s president, Larimer County Clerk and Recorder Scott Doyle, has said ballots are “sacred” and keeping them private is essential to democracy. Allowing the secretary of state to review Saguache County ballots would set a dangerous precedent, he has said.

A group of Saguache County residents and election integrity activists argue that because ballots are anonymous, inspecting them should not reveal how anyone voted. While voting should occur in private, voted ballots should be publicly interpreted and counted, they say.

They point to previous instances in which the secretary of state has inspected voted ballots and to notable examples in other states — namely the 2000 presidential election in Florida in which a group of newspapers reviewed every discounted ballot after the election was certified.

Update 8/11/2011: ES&S facing contempt charges <read>

Absentee Ballot Fraud In Ohio

Another election, followed, as usual, by reports of absentee vote fraud. This time from Ohio. The good news is that under Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, it was not the Ohio of 2004. It is an Ohio where problems are detected, investigated, and hopefully corrected, prevented, and prosecuted.

Ironton Tribune: Absentee ballot report sent to Husted <read>

About a month before the November general election Lawrence County Board of Election workers noticed a number of applications for absentee ballots going to one of two post office box numbers. When voters apply for an absentee ballot, they are allowed to have the ballot sent to an address other than their home location.

However when election board workers noticed the same post office boxes appearing repeatedly, they did a random check to see where the voters wanted their ballots sent. On most of the calls, the workers found the phones listed on the applications were disconnected. However, those they did get in touch with said they wanted their ballot sent to their home address.

When Brunner learned of that situation, she ordered a special investigation, sending Columbus attorney Andrew Baker on Oct. 20 to the county courthouse to review those applications.

As we have said before, the risks of mail-in voting including no-excuse absentee voting are to great. Such voting should be limited to cases where it is absolutely necessary, as it is now in Connecticut. It also requires strong laws, procedures, and vigilance.

Vote-by-mail cheaper, but advocates have concerns

CTVotersCount is opposed to expansion of main-in-voting including no-excuse absentee voting, primarily for reasons of security and secondarily because it does not deliver on its promise of increased participation. Today we highlight a comprehensive article covering why it tends to be popular and pleasing to election officials in California, but tends to reduce turnout and raises a variety of concerns from advocates.

Today we highlight a comprehensive article covering why vote-by-mail tends to be popular and pleasing to election officials in California, but tends to reduce turnout and raises a variety of concerns from advocates: Cheaper, popular mail-in ballots worry critics <read>

Here are some of the highlights of the article, for those who support expanded mail-in voting for Connecticut, I suggest reading the entire article and considering all the implications:

The increasing shift to vote-by-mail ballots is a positive sign for many election officials. They say it increases voter turnout and is considerably cheaper than the cost counties pay for regular voters. But critics argue the true cost of the system may be higher than reported by its boosters. They also say election officials need to take a closer look at the social costs, such as how the mail-in system affects homeless voter…

Kim Alexander, founder of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit based in Sacramento that encourages voter participation, said that despite its popularity, not enough is known about the effectiveness of mail-in voting. “How many ballots are going out, how many are coming back, how much extra work are they creating for election officials?” Alexander asked.

The vote-by-mail system is supposed to make it easier on election departments by allowing voters to turn in their ballots before Election Day, but a large number of vote-by-mail voters turn in their ballots at the last minute.

In San Francisco, 87,747 ballots were returned before Election Day, and 56,881 were returned on Election Day. In Alameda County, 150,000 vote-by-mail ballots were returned before Election Day and 90,000 on Election Day, according to election officials.

“It takes more time for us to process the ones that come in on Election Day – that just adds to our workload,” said Dave Macdonald, registrar of Alameda County, where the vote-by-mail turnout was more than twice as high as at the polls. “We had a lot of staff after Election Day to process all the vote-by-mail ballots.”…

In a 2005 survey by the California Voter Foundation, 44 percent of non-voters said they were registered to vote – but not at their current address. About one in four said they were eligible but unregistered because they moved around so much that it was difficult to stay registered.

And a report [PDF] published by the Colorado secretary of state found that minorities, young people, singles and divorced people move at significantly above-average rates. Twenty-one percent of people with incomes under $25,000 change residences within one year, compared to 12 percent of people over $100,000. Renters are three times more likely to move.

(UPDATE: A study of vote-by-mail in three California counties found that turnout decreases in presidential and gubernatorial elections but increases in local special elections.)

A Pew Center on the States study [PDF] found that mandatory vote-by-mail systems decrease the odds of someone voting by 13.2 percent, with negative effects on the turnout of urban and minority populations…

“We’re a junk mail society,” he said. “A large percentage of voters don’t realize when it first comes that it’s actually the ballot – especially when every campaign makes it look like the mailers are their official ballots.”

In addition to those hundreds of ballots failing to connect with voters, there’s the issue of vote-by-mail voters – mostly college students in the case of Yolo County – picking up their vote-by-mail ballot from their former residence in a different county and trying to drop it off in Yolo County, where they now live and go to school. Those ballots will not be counted, Stanionis said. And in the Nov. 2 election in his county, there were 58 of those.

Other issues include ballots arriving after Election Day. Out of the 30,000 vote-by-mail ballots in this past Nov. 2 election, the majority were dropped off before Election Day and 4,000 were dropped off on Election Day. But about 1,000 arrived too late.

“Most of those that arrived late are people who put them in a mailbox on Election Day, thinking it was the postmark date,” said Stanionis…

In Riverside County during the June primary, as many as 12,500 ballots arrived too late and were not counted because of communication problems between election officials and the post office, according to news reports. In San Francisco in the June election, a private company that the city’s election department contracted to send out the ballots mailed out thousands of duplicate ballots and ballots with the wrong names.

A current example in Georgia of some absentee ballot fraud allegations: Voting Irregularities Lead To Ten Arrests In South Georgia <read>

Ten people have been arrested in South Georgia following a 5-month investigation into voter fraud. They’re accused of illegally helping people vote by absentee ballot…Those arrested face felony charges for illegally possessing ballots and violating voting procedure. GBI officials say more arrests could be made and more charges filed.

NY Judiciary: Answers more important that Accurate Answers

“New York’s audit laws require a further hand count of paper ballots, accepting the machine results and declaring a winner outweigh the public’s right to know who really won the election”

Sadly, after three years and six major elections Connecticut has none of the three voting integrity items Bo recommends for New York.

Bo Lipari summarizes the situation in New York in his blog post: Count The Paper <read>

In the first test case of how we verify election results using New York’s new paper ballots, the State Judiciary is in the process of setting an egregious precedent – Judges are free to nullify audits and recounts in the interests of having a quick decision. In Nassau County’s contested 7th Senate District (SD7) race, two State Courts that have heard the case to date have made very bad decisions. Ruling that even if New York’s audit laws require a further hand count of paper ballots, accepting the machine results and declaring a winner outweigh the public’s right to know who really won the election…

This demonstrates something I’ve been saying for a long time – getting new systems and paper ballots was only the first step towards verifiable elections. Now that we have the paper ballots, we’ve got to work on using them correctly. And that means knowing when we need to count them. In New York State, that means we citizens will have to push for changes to New York’s election law that allow recounts when warranted, making them more specific and subsequently less subject to judicial fiat. Here’s three changes we New Yorkers could make to the law that would get us a lot closer to where we need to be: [Risk-limiting audits, audits can escalate to change the result, and recounts on close elections]

Sadly, after three years and six major elections Connecticut has none of the three voting integrity items Bo recommends for New York. We do have a recanvass which is useful in moderately close elections, but insufficient in really close ones. As we have said in our Ten Myths:

Myth #9 – If there is ever a concern we can always count the paper.

If we can bank by ATM, why not vote by the Internet?

The usual explanation of why its not a good idea to vote by Internet, even thought we bank by ATM is that they are different applications. However, banking is not all that safe. Today in Connecticut we have a report of the vulnerabilities of credit cards and ATM transactions in the Hartford Courant.

The usual explanation of why its not a good idea to vote by Internet, even thought we bank by ATM is that they are different applications. It we got money from ATMs like we vote then:

We would not get a receipt
The bank would send us a monthly statement saying we had transactions, but no record of amounts or distinction between deposits and withdrawals (updated)
And the bank would only do single entry bookkeeping – showing only transactions to their accounts, without the customer name or account identified

We would probably call that faith based banking and quickly revert to cash and mattresses.

However, banking is not all that safe. Today in Connecticut we have a report of the vulnerabilities of credit cards and ATM transactions in the Hartford Courant <read>

Thieves installed “‘fake'” card readers at the cash registers, Det. Dane Semper of the West Hartford Police Department wrote in an e-mail. The devices allowed thieves to capture bank card data, authorization codes and PIN numbers…

Last week, a Romanian citizen, Ion Preda, 22, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport. Preda admitted that he and others installed skimming devices and pinhole cameras at ATMs in several states, including a People’s United Bank ATM in Madison. With the account information and PIN numbers they obtained, those involved used the information to create counterfeit bank cards. The combined loss to all the banks victimized was more than $200,000, authorities said.

In a similar vein criminals could place phony voting kiosks or attack individual personal computers. Worse still is the danger of insider fraud attacking Internet routers or servers. In fact, the fraud in the Courant article could most easily be accomplished by credit card equipment or ATM service technicians or retail employees and managers.

Then again we could vote the way we gambol with slot machines.

HAVA Scary Halloween: Ten years older and deeper in debt, yet far from credible elections

Two years ago we posted a Halloween preview:”eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future.” Lets look at where we are this year, and then we will calibrate (not celebrate) how far we have come.

The good news is that there are a slew of articles and reports in the mainstream media covering election integrity 10 years after the 2000 debacle. Just in time for the 2010 mid-term elections and just in time for Halloween. For adults wishing for that old-fashioned Halloween scare these articles should do the trick.

Two years ago we posted a Halloween preview: eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future. Lets look at where we are this year, and then we will calibrate (not celebrate) how far we have come, with the help of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Need To Know covers the risk of paperless electronic voting with excellent demonstrations and explanations direct from Princeton: Ballot boxing: The problem with electronic voting machines <video>

While USA Today provides an editorial: A decade after Florida fiasco, voting remains a hodgepodge <read> Especially equipped with a Board of Elections’ Prayer for those interested in “Faith Based Voting”:

Let the weather be clear, let the turnout be heavy and let everyone who wins, win big.

And if you are not scared yet, take a dose of expert warnings about Internet voting in an article from CSO Secrity & Risk, quoting Doug Jones and David Jefferson: E-voting: How secure is it? <read>

More than half of all states in the U.S. will allow some kind of internet voting this year. But security experts say it’s a mistake and puts the nation at risk…On-site electronic voting machines also risky

Back To The Future – Revisiting: eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future.

The Ghost Of Presidential Elections Future:
It seems the problems all stemmed from what happened in the 2008 election and its aftermath. Its a little hazy but the ghost warned of three possible outcomes:

The polls are said to be very very wrong:
The people chose one candidate for President, but manipulations of the data, voter suppression, or Supreme Court action made the other candidate the winner. The media covers every reason but the obvious one that goes unreported. The really scary part was that the voters docilely accepted it – instead of hitting the streets, we all ended up on the streets over time.

The polls are only off a “little”: The predicted candidate won the Presidency by a small margin. Instead of the predicted 58-60 Democrats in the Senate and 20 more in the House, there were 54-55 in the Senate and 5 more in the House. Activists continued to object and present a wealth of facts. They are dismissed by the media as “conspiracy theorists”.

Grade: Incomplete.

Can we get away with saying “On the way to Halloween the Obama landslide ate our homework”?. All we can do is hope things don’t go wrong before there is a change in voting integrity. If Harry Reid wins by 15% or Christine O’Donnell pulls an upset then the pollsters or the election officials will have a lot more than missing homework to explain.

To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, “Nothing has changed, but your votes are not there”. The nightmare continued:

Beltway Lugosi Appears, The D.C. Goblin:
How could this have happened? Surely by 2012 or by 2016 we would have had election integrity.

Rep. Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2009: The caucus says “what’s the rush Rush, come back later its too soon – we have important issues to deal with, there is plenty of time before the next Presidential Election”.

A persistent Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2010: – House Leadership says “its too much, work on it and come back next year”.

Rush Holt proposes weakened bill in 2011 – Everyone says “Its too late, the election officials can’t get it done in a rush Rush, come back after the next election when there will be plenty of time”.

Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2009 and it passes the House – The Feinstein/Bennett bill is immediately resurrected in the Senate and passes – it is all put into a joint committee – the result is the “Star Wars” of voting with spending as far as the eye can see and even less voting integrity than 2008.

Grade: CTVotersCount: A-, Congress: F-

We can’t be sure of all the details, but it sure looks a lot like we got #1, #2 and #3 pretty close. But we bet on some congressional action and #4 did not happen. We are just too optimistic by nature. We can always hope for 2016 or 2020. Lets work and hope for a good tipping point, before a bad one gets our democracy.

At least in Connecticut, we can rest assured that our votes will count, with our nickname, “The Constitution State”. Even if the voters approve the ballot question in 2008 to have a Constitutional Convention, surely we can rely on our other nickname, “The Land of Steady Habits” to carry the day and eventually, some day, protect our votes. The nightmare continued:

The Devil Is Truly In The details:

Connecticut earns its nickname, “The Nutmeg State“. When it comes to post-election audit law, the “Devil” is truly in the details.

The Shays/Himes Congressional race is close, less than .5% There is a recanvass(recount). Since recounts are by machine, if Himes(D) loses, Secretary Bysiewicz(D) cannot call for a manual recount without being charged with being political. If Shays(R) loses, she would be under great pressure to reverse her decision to recount by machine.

The Constitution question is close, less than .5%, and there is a recanvass(recount).
Since recounts are by machine, if “No” loses, Secretary of the State Bysiewicz, a strong supporter of “No”, could not call for a manual recount without being charged with making a political decision. If “Yes” loses, she would be under great pressure to reverse her decision to recount by machine.Worse, a single statewide recount, by law, eliminates all post-election audits, even if the Shays/Himes Congressional race is close but over .5%.

The Constitution question is close but over .5%:
It will not be audited – questions are exempt from post-election audits in Connecticut

The Shays/Himes Congressional race is close but over .5% and is not randomly selected for audit: We randomly select three offices for audit statewide. Instead of auditing close races for the U.S. Congress or the State Legislature we may waste resources excessively counting races with huge margins, or those with unopposed candidates, such as most races for Registrar of voters.

Grade: Course Not Offered. Maybe it will be available this November?

None of the races were that close. Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz chose to audit all five races and avoided any risk of biased selection.

This time, November 2010, the option of auditing all the races would be viewed as prohibitively to expensive to mandate. We will encourage the Secretary of the State to go beyond the law and to randomly select the three races to be audited in public (Its not required in the law, districts must be randomly selected publicly but not races). Let say there is a close race for Governor, Secretary of the State, or Congress. Choosing races for audit that avoid close races were the Secretary’s party won, or choosing those that the Secretary’s party lost can generate suspicion even when its done transparently in public.

Then again we could take the alternate course of a statewide recanvass – a nightmare in its own right!

I am awake now. With hard work and some luck, the voters choices may be confirmed in the election results and the voters could awake after the election to stay eternally vigilant. Some may say that this is just a dream, but it is preferable to the alternative nightmare.

eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future

The polls were accurate: The election results were as predicted. The predicted candidate won the Presidency. There were 58-60 Democrats in the Senate and about 20 more in the House. A few hard core activists remained, were completely ignored by the media, yet continued the fight for election integrity. The potential of election theft remained, while the potential for election integrity all but vanished.

Grade A–

From all the mainstream media stories about the Washington D.C. Internet voting test and the recent coverage of electronic voting, it seems that the media is waking up a bit. But we boldly predict, little, if any mainstream media coverage after, say, mid November.