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Skeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

A couple of weeks ago, based on claims that exit polls showed that the primary was stolen from Bernie Sanders, I said: “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen.

Unfortunately, the Times headline is incorrect. This evidence in this article only claims that the exit polls do not prove that Bernie won. There is no proof that the official results are correct. They may be, they may not be. We still need Evidence Based Elections, providing strong evidence that the results are correct.

Now we have the reverse situation from the NYTimes: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders <read>

I seems like a pretty good case that the exit polls do not prove the election was stolen:

All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.

I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that they’re not great.

We can start in 2008, when the exit polls showed a pretty similar bias toward Barack Obama. Or in 2004, when the exit polls showed John Kerry easily winning an election he clearly lost — with both a huge error and systematic bias outside of the “margin of error.” The national exits showed Kerry ahead by three points (and keep in mind the sample size on the national exit is vastly larger than for a state primary exit poll) and leading in states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida — which all went to George W. Bush.

The story was similar in 2000. The early exit polls showed Al Gore winning Alabama, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina. Mr. Bush won these states by between six and 15 points. The exit polls showed Mr. Gore winning Florida by six points — leading the networks to call the race before 8 p.m. in the East.

Young Voters Love Exit Polls. Old Voters Do Not.
Younger voters are more likely to complete exit polls than older voters across all interviewer ages.

And the opposing case from Richard Charmin: Response to Nate Cohn of the NY Times <read>

Book Review: Down for the Count

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel. An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote. A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century…

Down for the Count: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America
by Andrew Gumbel. An updated version of Gumbel’s earlier Steal This Vote. A lot has happened in 12 years!

I highly recommend, for an overview of the history of voting issues in the United States.. I can add a small caveat the to the description on Amazon:

Down for the Count explores the tawdry history of elections in the United States—a chronicle of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated up to the U.S. Supreme Court—and uses it to explain why we are now experiencing the biggest backslide in voting rights in more than a century. This thoroughly revised edition, first published to acclaim and some controversy in 2005 as Steal This Vote, reveals why America is unique among established Western democracies in its inability to run clean, transparent elections. And it demonstrates, in crisp, clear, accessible language, how the partisan battles now raging over voter ID, out-of-control campaign spending, and minority voting rights fit into a long, largely unspoken tradition of hostility to the very notion of representative democracy.
Andrew Gumbel has interviewed Democrats, Republicans, and a range of voting rights activists to offer a multifaceted, deeply researched, and engaging critical assessment of a system whose ostensible commitment to democratic integrity so often falls apart on contact with race, money, and power. In an age of high-stakes electoral combat, billionaire-backed candidacies, and bottom-of-the-barrel campaigning, there can be no better time to reissue this troubling and revealing book.

Some of the items that stuck out for me:

The problems and rigging of lever machines pp 106-108.
Software is not the only problem with electronic voting machines. Consider microcode.
Before the technical reports of the early 2000’s those suspicious of electronic voting were ‘crazies’ p155. I am not so sure that has changed in many circles.
Money has almost removed people from elections p 205.
“The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know” p 211. Consider when that might apply to you (or to me), as well as the “others”.
The same set of general fixes emerge over and over p 212.

A caveat:

Near the end, the author provides a list of more detailed fixes that he recommends. I strongly disagree with his recommendation of circumventing the Electoral College, rather than replacing it Constitutionally. Actually it requires more than a Constitutional amendment. As always I can understand that many grassroots individuals see the problems with the current system, including the Electoral College. Yet the fixes aren’t always so clear and simple. The devil is in the details, wrapped up in the Constitution, the 12th Amendment, and the Electoral Count Act, along with the state-by-state election system we have. The current system far from a match for a National Popular Vote scheme. They all would need to be changed significantly before we can have a National Popular vote that treats every citizen/voter equally and that can provide a trusted result. For more on this, see past our posts <here>.

I can only suggest that this is an example for considering the book’s statement that “The less grassroots activists know, the more they think they know”.

The web: Hardly ready for Internet voting.

So many articles this week demonstrating that the web is not safe for voting. Especially when in the hands of under-resourced government agencies and political parties. (It is also unsafe in the hands of fully-resourced governments and cyber-experts.)

Singapore plans to take its Government offline.
Then we have an above average size government agency that cannot create a safe voter registration system.
Meanwhile the party that allows overseas voters to participate in its primaries via Internet voting has its own problems.

As CTVotersCount readers know, Internet voting should not be compared to a normal application. Its not like the risk of copying some public information, information that should be public, stealing a few million from a bank. Its about billions in government spending, changing election results and covering that up.

Singapore plans to take its Government offline (that is all employees to use a closed network). Der Spiegal <read if you know German>. The short version is they do secret banking like Switzerland and they do not believe they can protect their tax avoiding customers. On the other hand it might keep the public from finding out what they are doing in other government activities. I for one, would not bet on this working. There are a lot of holes and vulnerabilities in any system, especially when big $ are involved.

Then we have an above average size government agency that cannot create a safe voter registration system, i.e. Washington D.C. Washington Post: Glitch believed to be based in mobile app erases some D.C. voters’ party affiliation <read> D.C. is pretty good size, compared to the average of the 169 towns in Connecticut that would have been charged with implementing and protecting Internet voting if the General Assembly had had its way. P.S. Even with help, D.C. had its own problems with Internet voting <read>

Meanwhile the party that allows overseas voters to participate in its primaries via Internet voting has its own problems. Wired: Russia’s Breach of the DNC Is About More Than Trump’s Dirt <read>

Common Sense: The Skeptics Guide to Election Integrity and Fraud

Two events in the last week or so prompt this post. First, last Saturday I was at the Reason Rally at the Lincoln Memorial. One speaker said “Be skeptical of everything”. A later speaker assured us, among other things, that two things I believe to be true were actually conspiracy theories.

Second, a recent series of posts by Richard Charmin, essentially claiming that in many states the primary was stolen.

So, where do I come out? I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” and the speaker at the Reason Rally who said to “be skeptical of everything”. Here we have competing extraordinary claims:

By Richard Charmin: That, in a large number of states the election results were manipulated in favor of a single candidate.
Implicitly by complacence: “Move on, nothing to see here, exit polls are always wrong in the U.S. Don’t be concerned that every time someone brings this up, they are always wrong in favor of one candidate or party”

Note: This is then twelfth post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <previous> [just an interesting coincidence the last Common Sense post was exactly one year ago!] <next>

Second, a recent series of posts by Richard Charmin, essentially claiming that in many states the primary was stolen, based on, among other things, a pretty consistent difference between raw exit polls and the results, almost always favoring one candidate. Looking at the details, we see that Connecticut is one of those states.

So, where do I come out? I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” and the speaker at the Reason Rally who said to be skeptical of everything. Here we have competing extraordinary claims:

By Richard Charmin: That, in a large number of states the election results were manipulated in favor of a single candidate.
Implicitly by complacence: “Move on, nothing to see here, exit polls are always wrong in the U.S. Don’t be concerned that every time someone brings this up, they are always wrong in favor of one candidate or party”

It is clear that both of these are extraordinary claims. We are disappointed in the lack of others providing factual evidence and solid arguments refuting or confirming either of these extra ordinary claims.

Democracy requires solid answers. Voters and Candidates deserve solid answers. What is required is Evidence Based Elections, elections that provide strong evidence that the outcome reflects the votes of the voters.

At this point we do not have that evidence in Connecticut. One approach would be a strong post-election audit showing that votes were counted accurately, that ballot counts matched the voters checked in, and that polling place and central count absentee counts were accurately accumulated.

In Connecticut, there are gaps in the post-election audit, transparency lacking in the totaling process, and challenges in verifying all the data. We are at work on developing answers which might provide reasonably convincing evidence for Connecticut.

Update: Skeptics Guide Part 2: Absence of Evidence is Not Evidence of Absence

Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy

An article by David Dill, founder of Verified Voting, from Stanford University: Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy

How could we be fooled?

Suppose masses of emails get sent out to naive users saying the voting website has been changed and, after you submit your ballot and your credentials to the fake website, it helpfully votes for you, but changes some of the votes. You also have bots where millions of individual machines are controlled by a single person who uses them to send out spam…

How bad could it be?…

An article by David Dill, founder of Verified Voting, from Stanford University: Why Online Voting is a Danger to Democracy <read>

How could we be fooled?

Suppose masses of emails get sent out to naive users saying the voting website has been changed and, after you submit your ballot and your credentials to the fake website, it helpfully votes for you, but changes some of the votes. You also have bots where millions of individual machines are controlled by a single person who uses them to send out spam…

How bad could it be?

Without being paranoid, there are reasons to believe that people would want to affect the outcome of elections. Right now, they spend billions of dollars trying to do it through campaign contributions and advertising and political consultants and all of that…What is the value of controlling the U.S. presidency? …

Professor Dill ends by explaining the current necessity of paper ballots:

We’ve had a long time to work out the procedures with paper ballots and need to think twice before we try to throw a new technology at the problem. People take paper ballots for granted and don’t understand how carefully thought through they are.

We would add that even paper is vulnerable. We like the public counting of the paper by optical scanners, followed by strong ballot security, meaningful post-election audits, and close vote recounts.

Another example of a transparent, evidence-based vote

Last week I spent a morning in New London’s historic Town Hall observing a post-election audit. I noticed this interesting device. Can you explain it, without reading further?

While you are thinking, here is a panorama of the Council Chambers. Two plaques on the wall list the Mayors starting in 1646 and note New London was founded by John Winthrop, the Younger.

Now back to the device above. It is actually a mechanism for requesting and publicly displaying voters. Those are ping-pong balls with the names of council members. The Clerk calls off a member’s name and then places the ball in the yea or nay track. In the end the longest track wins.

Unlike votes in our elections, the council does not have to deal with a secret ballot. Like votes in the General Assembly where they are recorded on a big board, or when we raise our hands in a public meeting the whole process is transparent and easily validated by everyone present.

In a town council or legislature it is a good idea since the members should be accountable to the public. When we vote by secret ballot it is to prevent any voter from being bribed, coerced, or otherwise beholden to anyone but ourselves for our vote.

If they fear Internet privacy and security, why would they vote that way?

A new government survey highlights the consequences of Internet insecurity. From the Washington Post: Why a staggering number of Americans have stopped using the Internet the way they used to <read>

Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday…

The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities…

Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday.

This chilling effect, pulled out of a survey of 41,000 U.S. households who use the Internet, show the insecurity of the Web is beginning to have consequences that stretch beyond the direct fall-out of an individual losing personal data in breach. The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities…

The survey showed that nearly 20 percent of the survey’s respondents had personally experienced some form of identity theft, an online security breach, or another similar problem over the year before the survey was taken last July. Overall, 45 percent said their concerns about online privacy and security stopped them from using the Web in very practical ways…

“NTIA’s initial analysis only scratches the surface of this important area, but it is clear that policymakers need to develop a better understanding of mistrust in the privacy and security of the Internet and the resulting chilling effects,” wrote Goldberg, the NTIA analyst. “In addition to being a problem of great concern to many Americans, privacy and security issues may reduce economic activity and hamper the free exchange of ideas online.”

Voter Suppression is not just Southern, Intentional, and Advantageous to those in charge.

Typically the Justice Department goes after Southern states, alleging intentional voter suppression by Republicans against voters who would be expected to vote predominately Democratic. To me, it usually quacks like that duck. Not so in Connecticut, we apparently do it through incompetence at our “legend in its own line”, DMV.

Hartford Courant, Jon Lender: Officials Tense, Tight-Lipped On Feds’ Probe Of State ‘Motor Voter’ Program <read>

The U.S. Department of Justice’s April 15 threat to sue Connecticut over failures in its “motor voter” program — which is supposed to promote voter registration at Department of Motor Vehicles offices — resulted in a closed-door meeting this past Tuesday aimed at resolving the problem out of court…

But, for the moment, perhaps the most interesting thing about the “It shouldn’t take the threat of a federal lawsuit to get the DMV to do its job,” said Cheri Quickmire, executive director of the good-government advocacy group, Common Cause in Connecticut. “I am really disappointed that there’s even cause [to consider] this kind of action. The reality is that DMV has been supposed to do this … for a very long time.”

Sen. Michael McLachlan, R-Danbury, the top-ranked Republican on the General Assembly committee that oversees voter registration, said Friday that the “motor voter” program falls under DMV and Merrill’s office, and “I would say that both them are really responsible.” Complying with federal law should have been “really simple,” he said, if the DMV had paid more attention and Merrill’s office had “nudged” more.Here’s What CT Legislature Got Right And Wrong This Year

Outside of their remarks, only guarded comments could be elicited from taxpayer-funded communications aides who continually seek to put their bosses in the best light.

How not to audit, Chicago style vs. Connecticut style

This video has gone viral over the last week. It is a hearing of a public comment at the Chicago Board of Elections.

This would not normally, exactly, happen in Connecticut

This video has gone viral over the last week. It is a hearing of a public comment at the Chicago Board of Elections.

In summary:

The audit consisted of counting paper records.
The public was not permitted to observe the paper records, to confirm that they were counted correctly.
At the end of the count, the counters compared the result to the machine tape result.
It showed that the counts were way off.
The officials simply erased enough marks from one candidate and added enough to the other to make the audit count equal to the machine count.
And the Election Board apparently saw no reason for concern with the audit or with the election results.

This would not normally, exactly, happen in Connecticut

We do have procedures that require that observers be able to be close enough to see ballot marks etc.
In some audits when counts do not match, officials recount until everyone is confident in the result.
In some cases officials work to make the counts match in ways that are hard to follow, and provide little confidence in the reported results.
Some audits result in high differences between the scanner counts and audit counts reported on official forms to the Secretary of the State, most, with no confirmation, attribute the differences to “Human Error”.
Others reported without indicating “Human Error” result in the Secretary’s Office calling local officials to ask if they agree that the cause was “Human Error”.
We do not have an Elections Board that officially reviews and accepts the audit result.
We have a mandated audit report after each audit, with no specified deadline for its completion. The last such report released was for the November 2011 election.

EDITORIAL: General Assembly heading the wrong way on post-election audits

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

The Connecticut Senate has passed S.B. 252. If the House passes and the Governor signs the bill it will be another national embarrassment for Connecticut, doing the wrong thing at precisely the worst time.

We have voter-verified paper ballots. To be valuable and provide confidence they must be used for strong, publicly verified, post-election audits. You can help. Tell your legislators that you want stronger audits, not weaker audits. Tell them to oppose S.B. 252. Then consider volunteering one day after each election and primary to observe with the Citizen Audit.

UPDATE: The bill passed the House unanimously, including several who responded to your emails with promises they would not vote to cut the audits.

S.B. 252 would cut our post-election audits from 10% of voting districts to 5%. S.B. 252 was originally intended to strengthen the audits, while providing savings for municipalities. The current version eliminates all the features in the original bill that would make the audits stronger. The current version saves, at most, just $15,000 more annually statewide over the original bill.

Those paying attention to the news in this primary season have heard many charges of potential election fraud, along with calls for post-election audits in Arizona, New York, and elsewhere. There is an embarrassing video of a faulty presidential primary post-election audit in Chicago, where the public was barred from observing the votes as they were being tallied by officials. Worse the counters had the original numbers in front of them. When their counts did not match by a wide margin, they added counts to one candidate and deleted counts from the other, so that the manual counts would exactly match the machine counts. Over the years there have been similar problems with the audits in Connecticut.

For the first couple of years in the Connecticut audits, some local officials barred the public from observing the ballots as they were counted, some made it very difficult for the public to determine the time and place of the audits. Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz fixed those problems in procedures, which officials have since followed, for the most part. Other problems have not been effectively addressed.

The Citizen Audit’s observations of Connecticut’s audits have shown that many are conducted well, yet many are not. Many are, at best, only marginally better than the one in the video from Chicago. Connecticut election officials often do not double check counts; they are often aware of the original totals as they count, and work to match machine counts rather than accurately count the paper ballot votes. Frequently officials use confusing, ad-hoc, non-transparent methods for combining totals from multiple ballot stacks and teams of counters. Local officials in their reports and the Secretary of the State’s Office in statewide reports attribute all differences in counts to “Human Error”. The last official statewide report released by the Secretary of the State was for the November 2011 election. Five years is too long to wait for reports on a critical aspect of democracy.

S.B. 252 is still entitled “An Act Concerning Post-Election Audit Integrity and Efficiency”. The original proposed bill was the result of a long negotiated compromise which would have strengthened our audits in return for a reduction in the audit of polling place optical scanners, a change long sought by the Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC). Among other reforms to strengthen the audits, the bill would have subjected centrally counted absentee ballots to audit, subjected originally hand counted ballots to audit when there were large numbers of them, mandated investigations of significant discrepancies in counts, required stronger ballot security, and timely reporting of results by the State. Municipalities would have saved 40% of their current costs, reducing relatively low annual statewide audits costs from at most $150,000 annually to less than $90,000. The revised, one-sided, bill provides none of the benefits while providing just $15,000 more in annual savings across all municipalities in the State.