FAQ: Have they have fixed all the problems with the voting machines?

Lately I have heard several versions of this statement. In July a registrar said something close to the following to me: The company let go of all the bad (convicted felon) programmers and they have fixed all the problems with the machines. Last week a local monthly paper had this to say in an editorial: … Continue reading “FAQ: Have they have fixed all the problems with the voting machines?”

Lately I have heard several versions of this statement. In July a registrar said something close to the following to me:

The company let go of all the bad (convicted felon) programmers and they have fixed all the problems with the machines.

Last week a local monthly paper had this to say in an editorial:

Potential glitches uncovered by the University of Connecticut Voting Technology Research Center in 2006 have been remedied. – Glastonbury Life

The security holes discovered by UConn have not been fixed. We are using the same version,1.96.6, of the software that UConn tested. The state requires that all software versions be certified by the Secretary of the State before they are used in our elections. Thus far 1.96.6 is the only version that has ever been certified in Connecticut. Time is running out for a coordinated update of machines before the November 6th election.

Continue reading “FAQ: Have they have fixed all the problems with the voting machines?”

CT Voting and Audit Stories – NJ Certification Problems

Doubts Cast On Voting Machines. Westport News – An excellent summary of the concerns with the AccuVote-OS in Connecticut.

Cromwell Vote To Be Audited. Middletown Press – “Town officials learned of the audit in a telephone call from a reporter Thursday night.” I wonder what the official plans are to notify registrars that their towns have been chosen and the municipal clerks who will need to randomly select offices for audits?

N.J. To Miss Voting Deadline, Cherry Hill Courier Post – Optical Scan will not be certified to meet Jan 1 deadline: “The New Jersey Institute of Technology conducted its first round of testing this past summer on three of the machines. Although the machines received a ‘good bill of health,’ Milgram said the results did not meet the criteria the office set in the spring.” More details in the NY Times and the blog from Larry Norden of the Brennan Center.

Random Drawing

Updated: 9/14 and 9/16

Yesterday I attended and participated in the public random drawing of districts for audit. Hopefully, in the next day or two CT-N will put up the video. I did manage to catch some of the rerun late last night. (Note: I will keep updating this entry as more information and the video becomes available.)

Read the Good News, The Not So Good News, and What We We Can Learn, below:

Continue reading “Random Drawing”

Primary Audits Insuffient – The Numbers and The Loopholes

CORRECTION: Watching the CT-N rerun Secretary Bysiewicz said 98%-99%

UPDATE: I participated in the random district drawing today at the Secretary of the State’s press conference.

Actual count: 110 districts, 11 to be audited.
Loophole leaves West Haven, part of Bridgport, and other elections exempt from audit.
Secretary claims audits detect errors and fraud 96?-98% of the time, I say at most 2%-4%.
More details and comment tomorrow.

Original post 09/12/07:

We say that the audits mandated by Public Act 07-194 are insufficient. Yesterday twenty-three Connecticut municipalities held primary elections. Here are the numbers, if I have them correctly:

Primary elections: 23

Election districts (approximately): 125

Districts, statewide, to be selected for audit: 13

Minimum number of primaries that will not be audited: 10

Continue reading “Primary Audits Insuffient – The Numbers and The Loopholes”

ConnPost Covers Election Glitches

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said there were only a “very, very small number of issues” with the new machines…
Bysiewicz said that of the 125 Connecticut precincts using the machines Tuesday, only six reported significant problems with their machines.

As a retired software engineer I would say this is not surprising, given the challenges of rolling out a new system with little opportunity to phase the system in one location at a time. Yet, it means we can expect perhaps 30 – 40 “significant” problems in November. Of course it is all context. We would be quite disturbed to learn that trucks going over Avon mountain had a 95% certainty of working brakes or that the state effectively guarded the Social Security numbers for 95% of the taxpayers. But a machine problem is not the same as uncovering a problem with an election – we hope that procedures were followed and that they will prevent these problems from compromising an election.

We can also choose to have blind faith that without adequate audits, without software transparency, and with secret programming, through miracles and trust in human nature our votes were counted accurately, that these six visible problems were not joined by invisible errors and intentional fraud.

One item in the article gives one pause in considering the integrity of such mitigating procedures:

While at Thomas Hooker School, about 75 ballots could not be immediately counted due to problems with the paper, because of the humidity. The paper ballots were too damp and the voting machine could not process them. The ballots were taken to the Town Clerk’s Office to be counted. It wasn’t immediately known when the count would take place.

Read the full story.

Sign “The Petition To Enhance Confidence In Connecticut Elections”

 Note:  Petition now closed to additional signers, Thank You.

ANNOUNCEMENT: CTVotersCount is initiating a “Petition To Enhance Confidence In Connecticut Elections By November 2008”. Addressed to Connecticut Secretary of the State (SOTS), Susan Bysiewicz, and the Government Administration and Elections Committee (GAE).

It is now the time to begin creating support for changing the law in the short legislative session next year, if we are to have elections of integrity and confidence in Connecticut for the November 2008 elections. Elections which include President, 5 U. S. House races, along with the complete Connecticut House and Senate. The time to start, for citizens is NOW!

Continue reading “Sign “The Petition To Enhance Confidence In Connecticut Elections””

Three Issues After Monroe, CT 2006 Audits

Previously I covered my concerns with audit differences in the audit of the 2006 election. Today I will cover my observation of the Monroe, CT audit.

On November 27, 2006 I was able to witness the audit that was taking place in Monroe, CT. Monroe has four voting precincts and two of them were selected for full hand recounts.

There were three issues associated with the audits and several problems with the election process.

Read the details:

Continue reading “Three Issues After Monroe, CT 2006 Audits”

Campaign of GAE’s Co-Chair Charges Election Procedure Violations

Representative Christopher Caruso is Co-Chair of the Government Administration and Elections Committee (GAE) which writes Connecticut election law including the current Audit Law PA 07-194. He has entered the primary for Mayor of Bridgeport. I have been appreciative of Representative Caruso’s efforts in support of the campaign finance law and voter verified paper ballots. However, as readers of this site are aware, I am critical of the inadequacy of PA 07-194 written primarily by the Secretary of the State’s Office and the leadership of the GAE.

The Representative’s campaign clearly agrees that procedures are regularly violated in Connecticut.

Citing a history of poorly-run elections conducted under the shadow of taint, and a range of current violations of Connecticut Election Law by the Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala, Bridgeport Mayoral candidate Chris Caruso’s campaign manager wrote to Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz today asking her to monitor Tuesday’s election and to consider intervening…

“I hope that you will direct your staff to keenly monitor the conduct of this important election to help guarantee that the process is fair, and that you will even consider taking a more active role in the conduct of the primary in Bridgeport,” wrote Grossman.

John Kantrowitz highlighted this on MyLeftNutmeg as part of the coverage of their mayoral debate.

Voting Vendor and Yale Professor – Suggest Changes To Election Procedures

Dori Smith aired the second segment of a four part series on voting integrity, yesterday at 5:00 PM on WHUS. Once again, I highly recommend listening to the audio and reading the transcript while also marking your calendar for next week. Also review segment one.

This segment has further interviews with John Silvestro, President of LHS, our voting machine vendor and Professor Michael Fisher of Yale University and President of TrueVoteCT.

Mr. Silvestro suggests that the problem of ignored or violated procedures, like the one in the 2nd District in November, 2006, can be handled by auditing fully the machines involved:

Then automatically in my mind that precinct should come into the post election audit OK? And that you know although you are going to select 10% that one precinct may end up being, and it should, end up being one of the automatic entries into that 10% post election audit. And that’s the beauty of post election audits is that you can take situations that arise on election day and say OK. We want to do 10% of 793 with whatever that comes to, 79 or let’s call it 80 precincts. But we had problems in precinct you know A, B, C and D or E and F and whatever. Eight precincts? Those eight are already included and the other 72 are going to be randomly withdrawn. And that’s how I believe you would do this. – John Silvestro

I agree that Mr. Silvestro has a basically good idea, yet I also have three concerns:

Continue reading “Voting Vendor and Yale Professor – Suggest Changes To Election Procedures”

FAQ: Should We Vote All Paper?

Many voting advocates take a strong position that we should vote only on paper and then count the paper. Registrars and long term election officials resist the paper.

Many voting advocates take a strong position that we should vote only on paper and then count the paper.

Registrars and long term election officials resist the paper.

Continue reading “FAQ: Should We Vote All Paper?”