CTVotersCount.org

Little comfort in ‘C’ grade for Connecticut for Integrity

Nor more comfort that the ‘C’ ranks us 3rd in the ‘Class’ of states.

New report from the Center for Public Integrity: How does your state rank for integrity? <read>
With the Connecticut details: Connecticut gets C- grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation <read>

Let me start by applauding the Center for the report and Connecticut reporter Jennifer Frank for her contributions to the report. I will have some suggestions and criticisms of the report, yet having created a report on 169 Connecticut elections websites I know how challenging it is to set the criteria and perform uniform objective evaluations across several entities with multiple elevators.

Nor more comfort that the ‘C’ ranks us 3rd in the ‘Class’ of states.

It is interesting viewing the details for Connecticut, other states, and also to see the criteria and evaluation methods. My comments:

No state got an A or a B.
I do not feel as comfortable as some might think, living in Connecticut, one of only three states getting a ‘C’.
Especially sad that the state with the first FOI law, once the envy of other states and countries gets an ‘F’ on FOI, worse that poor score ranks us 7th in the Nation !
Electoral Oversight is interesting for its criteria which has only a partial relationship with our work in Election Integrity, which I would include in a comprehensive report on State Integrity.The report section on Election Oversight is focused mainly on if the state has an independent oversight entity and how that agency functions.I appreciate our State Elections Enforcement Commission and the staff there, especially when they stick their necks out in politically challenging situations. Yet, I would quibble with some of the criteria or the exact ratings. As the reports states the SEEC is resource constrained – some investigations are completed quickly others have been on the books for years with no resolution, and possibly no substantial investigation to date. (Complaints and actions short of complete investigation are apparently not open to public access)I note that for Connecticut and at least some other states, all the information was compiled by one person per state, and since it is subjective might be limited by that’s person’s understanding of the items rated and their evaluation of what they were provided.I would rather have a category like Election Integrity and a sub-category such as Evidence Based Elections including criteria such as ‘Voter Verified Paper Records/Ballots’, ‘Post-Election Audits’, ‘Recounts’, ‘Election Records Security’, ‘Public Access to Election Records’, ‘Public Observation of Elections’, and ‘Election Officials Protected from Interference’.

There is one sub-category relevant to Election Integrity included under the generally relevant category of Election Oversight: “In practice, statewide election data are accessible to the public in open data format.” In the case of Connecticut it scores the state at 25% on the category which is poor, yet I would agree, reasonable for what Connecticut provides. You can click categories and they list the criteria, and under the criteria you can click and get exactly what they found for the state. E.g. for election data:

EXPLANATION

Election returns and voter turnout from 2014 are available online on the website of the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) office. The state does not release election results by precinct, but by municipality, down to each state House district. Results, which are handwritten by the town clerk, head moderator, or other voting official, include information, town by town, on results for any constitutional amendment questions, and the number of absentee ballots issued by the town clerk, the number of absentee ballots received and the number rejected. These results are available for download in pdf format only.

CRITERIA

A 100 score is earned if election returns and turnout are available online and can be easily accessed, downloaded in bulk, and in a machine readable format. The information must be broken down to the precinct level, with files that track the issuance and return of absentee ballots. A 50 score is earned if such information cannot be easily accessed and/or downloaded in bulk, but it can be downloaded in machine-readable format. A 0 score is earned if such information is not available online or it is but it cannot be downloaded.

SOURCE

Website of the Secretary of the State, (accessed June 10, 2015), LINK?a=3172&q=525432 Interview by phone and email exchange, Av Harris, communications director for the Secretary of the State’s Office, April 7, 2015. Email exchange, Tyler Kleykamp, Connecticut Chief Data Officer, Feb. 16, 2015

No transparent recount; No public access to ballots; No confidence

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky. Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not.

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Because the City of Bridgeport gave the CT Post access to the ballots, we were able to recount them all and assure the state that the declared Governor was actually the choice of the voters. If Bridgeport had not agreed, we would still be wondering and questioning the legitimacy of Governor Malloy.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

Sadly, Dorothy We are still in ~~Kansas~~ Kentucky.

Many are concerned with the accuracy and result of the election for Governor of Kentucky, many are not, for instance from BradBlog: Questioning the Unverified Computer Results of Kentucky’s Governor’s Race <read>

once again — on Election Day yesterday. We see, again, the nightmare scenario I’ve warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That’s exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to ‘Tea Party’ Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) — according to the state’s 100% unverified computer tabulation systems…

Bev Harris, of BlackBoxVoting.org, who I spoke with earlier today, described the higher vote totals in the down ballot races as a “significant anomaly”. She tells me that, at least until more records are requested and examined, the KY-Gov’s race “has to be looked at as a questionable outcome, particularly because of the discrepancies in the down ballot races. More votes in those races and not at the top…that just doesn’t happen.”

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost…

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov’s race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost.

We’ve seen this before, of course. Too many times.

Is there a problem in Kentucky? How will we ever know, if the public does not have access to the actual ballots or the public can observe and verify a recount or a sufficient post-election audit? Of course, they cannot.

Without that satisfaction the results will always be in question. And even if the election results are completely accurate, they will always be in question. Democracy will be viewed as lacking credibility and the elected officials will always be viewed with doubt by a significant portion of the public.

We note the subsequent developments, reminiscent of our post from way back 5 days ago, also courtesy of Brad: <read>

A KY newspaper fires their well-respected pollster rather than bothering to find out if the polls were right and the results were wrong; Another reminder of why hand-marked paper ballots like those in KY are swell, but only if you bother to actually count them; We weather a few attacks from progressives who charge us with forwarding conspiracy theories and don’t think we should bother to count ballots;

We are skeptical that the information will be made available or that a sufficient audit or recount will be performed. Yet Kentucky is not Kansas Look at this recent news from Kansas: Kansas: Statistician gets support for suit over voting machine tapes <read>

A Wichita State University statistician seeking to audit voting machine tapes after finding statistical anomalies in election counts is garnering legal and other support as she pursues her lawsuit. Beth Clarkson had been pursuing the case herself, but now a Wichita lawyer has taken up her cause. Other supporters have helped set up a nonprofit foundation and an online crowdsourcing effort. A Sedgwick County judge is expected to set a trial date and filing deadlines on Monday. Clarkson, chief statistician for the university’s National Institute for Aviation Research, filed the open records lawsuit as part of her personal quest to find the answer to an unexplained pattern that transcends elections and states. She wants the tapes so she can establish a statistical model by checking the error rate on electronic voting machines used at a Sedgwick County voting station during the November 2014 general election. But top election officials for Kansas and Sedgwick County have asked the Sedgwick County District Court to block the release of voting machine tapes.

Clarkson has analyzed election returns in Kansas and elsewhere over several elections and says her findings indicate “a statistically significant” pattern that shows the larger the precinct, the larger the percentage of Republican votes. She says the pattern could indicate election fraud.

“If she is right, it’s horrifying,” her attorney, Randy Rathbun, said Friday. “And so I visited with her and she has convinced me that she is right. So somebody needed to help her out because it kind of seemed like it was bullies pushing somebody around on a schoolyard since she was obviously out of her element in a courtroom.”

What would be good for Kansas and Kentucky would be good for Connecticut. I have just returned from a League of Women Voters panel on Election Fraud. The panelists, Political Scientists and Lawyers, saw no real need for FOIability of voted ballots. As just one example, recall the 2010 Citizen Audit of ballots in Bridgeport.

Unfortunately, the official Connecticut system was not able to recount those votes, and has never recognized or counted the votes of some 1,500 citizens of Bridgeport.

******
Update: An earlier version confused Kentucky and Kansas.

It’s a Conspiracy Theory, until it is not a Theory – Voting Party Edition

Now from Seattle, this video of a “Ballot Box” with a “tamper resistant contraption“, in the hands of practically anyone: King County acknowledges using cardboard boxes to collect ballots

If you have voted Absentee, for the election tomorrow, we ask “Do you know where your ballot is, and where it has been?

Bob Fitrakis of the FreePress reminds us how “Conspiracy Theories” are used and abused:
Bob Bites Back: A history of computer voting “conspiracies” <read>

When you are lazy, ignorant and not willing to do research – accuse your more-informed opponents of being “conspiracy theorists.” A recent Columbus Dispatch editorial utilized this technique in its defense of Ohio’s antiquated and easily hacked voting apparatus.

The Dispatch, with few facts or statistics, stated that, “Secretary of State Jon Husted claims ‘…Ohio’s current voting equipment should be in fine shape through the 2016 election.’” In a subhead, the Big D also claimed “Transparent bipartisan approach should head off conspiracy theorists.”…

We live in a world where hackers can get into the Pentagon, CIA and major corporations, but we’re to believe they are stymied by antiquated, vulnerable computer voting machines programmed with secret proprietary software. If I’m a conspiracy theorist saying our voting machines are hackable and democracy is at risk – then I’m in good company with most of the major academic computer scientists in the country.

If course, that is Ohio. We on the other hand, are worried about other crazy theories, like parties after Church, at work, and the Union hall or at military installations where “We will get some candidate and issue information and then all vote our absentee votes together”. Like the concerns in Colorado from 2010.

Many Coloradans fear union hall voting brunches as much as church congregations` voting breakfasts during the two-week run-up to Election Day. The potential for voter intimidation is much greater with mailed ballots than at the polls. And while voting at the kitchen table is convenient, the secrecy of the ballot can be compromised in ways that do not exist at the polls.

I have to agree with officials that this ballot box and method does make me more interested in elections.

If you have voted Absentee, for the election tomorrow, we ask “Do you know where your ballot is, and where it has been?

As we have said: Making it harder to vote, not a good idea

New report: California: Ranked-choice voting linked to lower voter turnout <read>

The headline only articulates part of the problem:

The analysis revealed a significant relationship between RCV and decreased turnout among black and white voters, younger voters and voters who lacked a high school education… Studies have also found high rates of disqualified ballots due to voter errors. In addition, some minority groups were particularly disadvantaged by the RCV process

New report: California: Ranked-choice voting linked to lower voter turnout <read>

The headline only articulates part of the problem:

The analysis revealed a significant relationship between RCV and decreased turnout among black and white voters, younger voters and voters who lacked a high school education. RCV did not have a significant impact on more experienced voters, who had the highest levels of education and interest in the political process…

Previous studies have shown that ranked-choice ballots tend to increase incorrectly marked ballots (called overvotes) but decrease incompletely marked ballots (called undervotes). Studies have also found high rates of disqualified ballots due to voter errors. In addition, some minority groups were particularly disadvantaged by the RCV process, with correlations between overvotes and both foreign-born voters and those with a primary language other than English.

We have often warned of the problems with Instant Runoff Voting, another name for Ranked Choice Voting. In fact, complexity is one of the three issues we have with IRV <read>

Now we can add two natural consequences of that complexity, lower turnout and the effect of discrimination.

How Do We Know? Two cases tell the tale

Bradblog has an instructive post bringing home the limitations and possibilities of optical scan paper ballot elections: Caught on Tape: Election Officials Behaving Badly

Bradblog has an instructive post bringing home the limitations and possibilities of optical scan paper ballot elections: Caught on Tape: Election Officials Behaving Badly <read>

As we have often said in Myth 9:

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

Reality

The law limits when the paper can be counted.

Brad brings an example from Ohio, where complying with a reasonable request could put legitimate concerns to rest:

Beiersdorfer is a geology professor, fracking expert and supporter of the ProtectYoungstown.org anti-fracking initiative. As you’ll here, at the meeting of the Elections Board, he politely asked for a hand-count of paper ballots regarding the ballot initiative, after a post-election poll appeared to offer contradictory results to those reported by the unverified computer optical-scan tabulation systems used in the county. (An electronic tabulation system, I’ll note, which has failed in election after election elsewhere.) In response, Betras freaks out and charges that Beiersdorfer has accused him of “rigging an election”.

“You just basically accused this board of elections of election fraud!,” Betras, a Democratic, snaps in outraged response, as caught on tape. “I find it highly offensive you’d accuse me of a crime!” His fellow election commissioner, Munroe, a Republican, takes similar offense.

All of that, simply because a voter wished to oversee the results of an election to confirm that computer-reported results were accurate — in a town with a history of election problems and where some of the same election officials reportedly spent some $30,000 of tax-payer money in a failed effort to keep the initiative off the ballot in the first place (before being overruled by the state Supreme Court.)

Instead of satisfaction and confidence in government, Ohioans are left with suspicion and doubt. Suspicion and doubt fueled by contradictory evidence, and the appearance of cover-up.

On the plus side, Brad points to a county in New York that demonstrates and alternative that provides confidence:

[Virginia]Martin, the Democratic co-chair of the Columbia County, NY Board of Elections — one of the few counties in the nation to publicly hand-count every paper ballot before certifying any election (my recent interview with Martin and her Republican co-chair on that specific topic is here) — explains on today’s show: “We election officials often find ourselves in the crosshairs. There’s always somebody in the public who’s not happy about something that’s transpired at the Board of Elections. There’s a winner and there’s a loser, so we often are in a position of having to defend ourselves. I can understand why they would be very sensitive.”

But, she adds, that type of concern simply doesn’t come up in her county, given that the public is invited to oversee the hand-count of paper ballots for every election. As an election official, she insists on hand-counts, she says, because: “I wasn’t comfortable with trusting what the computer said, because I know computers can make mistakes. I know that computers can be programmed incorrectly — inadvertently. I also know they can be manipulated, they can be tampered with. I personally can’t know how a computer counts anything, because I don’t get to see that. So how am I going to know that the result is correct?”

We do not insist on counting all paper ballots by hand after every election, yet it does automatically contribute to confidence. We recommend sufficient post-election audits, close-vote recounts, and economical means for the public to access all paper ballots or cause selective publicly verifiable manual recounts.

For further details and links to videos and related posts, see the Bradblog post. <read>

How Do We Know?

It used to be “Do you know where your children are tonight?” Now we must ask “Do you know which laws and regulations were violated yesterday?”

Laws and regulations are insufficient to protect us from individual, organized, and corporate skulduggery. The reality is thoroughly articulated by Truth-Out: Capitalism and Its Regulation Delusion: Lessons From the Volkswagen Debacle

It used to be “Do you know where your children are tonight?” Now we must ask “Do you know which laws and regulations were violated yesterday?”

VW’s massive evasion was hardly the only socially destructive mockery of regulation. Ford and other auto companies had earlier done the same as Volkswagen, gotten caught and paid fines. Other auto companies have not yet been caught, but similar evidence has surfaced about diesel vehicles produced by Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Mazda and Mitsubishi. Exposures and punishments, if and when they occur, clearly fall far short of dissuading major capitalists from evading regulations. Thus, we now know that General Motors and Toyota did not follow regulations recently requiring notification of government agencies after crashes, injuries and deaths associated with ignitions and airbags, respectively.

As products using computer devices increase, they spread opportunities for similar evasions of regulations. New mechanisms have enabled electrical appliance makers to falsify regulated energy-use tests. Capitalist competition and profit were motivators in these and many other regulation evasions too. The problem is endemic, for example, in the food and drink industry. Since 2008’s global capitalist crash, the world has learned of parallel failures of financial regulation with horrific social consequences. Nor is the failed relationship of capitalism and regulation only a US problem; it is global.

Paraphrasing, we could say “As voting and voting support using computer devices increase, they spread opportunities for similar evasions of regulations, changing results, and voter suppression. New mechanisms could enable elections officials, vendors, and hackers to falsify pre-election testing, audits, and recounts. Capitalist competition and profit are included in the motivators for these and many other regulation evasions too.”

We said “could” because we do not know and ask “How Do We Know? How Could We Know?” that election fraud has not happened in in a particular election and will not happen? Actually we know that it has happened, but we have no estimate of how widespread and successful election fraud has been. The question is “How do we prevent and detect election manipulation?”

We recommend reading the entire article. Some of it applies more to corporations and their main business activities, yet the delusion of regulation/laws generalizes to elections:

Regulation thus represents an enduring delusion (much like taxes on profits that show parallel histories of corporate opposition and evasion). Whether it be “self-regulation,” performed by capitalist enterprises or industry organizations, or regulation by government, both amount to applying bandages when the problem is a grave internal illness. Regulations do not successfully correct or repair

As we blog forward, we will be asking those questions of our election system “How Do We Know?, “How Can We know.

Editorial: No Crisis in CT, unless we make one

There will be a time to change deliberately, once better systems are available and proven.

Last month the Brennan Center released a report: America’s Voting Technology Crisis <article> <report>

Launching several articles like this one in the Washington Post: America’s voting machines are in need of a serious upgrade <read>

It is true that many states have risky DRE (touch screen) voting machines that should never have been purchased and should have been replaced long ago. Not just because they are old and old technology, but because the were never a safe option for voting.
It is true that we only keep our smart phones for a couple of years, yet we keep our telephones, our routers, our printers, and fax machines for much longer. Even our autos are highly computerized and, as flawed as they may be, we expect them to keep going for us and others for a couple of decades.
It is true that there are better voting machines available today than those purchased years ago, yet many are relatively old technology. None have been federally certified for years, based on out-of-date standards. The newly reactivated Elections Assistance Commission is working to create new standards, while restarting and improving Federal certification.
It is also true that LA County and Travis County, TX have significant projects aimed a creating much better, and much more economical systems. None have been completed, independently evaluated, or available for purchase. Here is the fine print from the Brennan article:

Currently, [LA County chief election official, Dean] Logan is working with the design consulting firm IDEO to develop the specifications for an electronic-ballot marking device and associated components of a comprehensive, modernized voting system. Next, the county will move forward with a contract to manufacture the device. On the software side, Logan envisions the system relying on open-source software, which will be maintained in-house at the registrar’s office. Fortunately, Logan’s office has a robust IT department that maintains the county’s existing vote tabulation system, and will maintain the county’s next system.

Logan believes the project has the potential to change the voting equipment marketplace for the better. “The design approach we are taking should result in lower-cost voting systems and market expansion,” he said. “I think it has the ability to move the regulatory environment and the market to a more competitive landscape that could allow jurisdictions to replace systems at a lower cost than in the past.”

Logan plans to begin implementing the system in 2017, and achieve a complete turnover of equipment by the 2020 election cycle. Elections officials across the country told us they are watching this project closely, and are excited to see what Logan and his team develop.

The bottom line is that dramatically more capable, safe, and less expensive voting systems will become available over the next five to ten years. We could waste a lot of money and opportunity by purchasing and implementing “new” systems today, unless absolutely necessary.

Connecticut has older technology optical scan voting machines. At a huge cost we could purchase newer systems, which are incrementally improved. Meanwhile our systems seem to be functioning pretty much as well as when they were originally deployed, in 2007. (There is some anecdotal evidence that they may need more effective maintenance attention, yet the failure rate is low, and every polling place has a backup machine.) As we have said many times, Connecticut has the best type of system legally available – paper ballots, scanned under observation in the polls, followed by post-election audits and recanvasses. Even in those rare cases where a machine fails (perhaps a handful of machines in about 750 polling places in each election), voting can continue while the backup machine is fired up.

For Connecticut this is a time for our legendary “Land of Stead Habits”. A real crisis would be a knee-jerk reaction to claims of a crisis. It would be the National reaction to 2000 and the Help America Vote Act all over again – in that case Connecticut had a relatively deliberate process, that in the end made the right choice – a year earlier it would likely have resulted in DREs and years of the bad situations highlighted by Brennan.

There will be a time to change deliberately, once better systems are available and proven.

September Primary Post-Election Audit Drawing

Yesterday, Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill, conducted a random drawing of 15 districts for post-election audit of the September 2015 primary. There were 143 districts in the primary, yielding 15 as 10%. Several of the districts were exempt from selection (but not from determining the 10%) based on close vote recanvasses.

Here is the press release

To all media:

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill today randomly chose 15 voting precincts from the September 16, 2015 primary to have their machine totals audited. There were also five alternate precincts chosen in case the chosen precincts cannot be audited for any reason. State law mandates that 10% of all voting precincts have their machine totals audited following any election or primary. There were a total of 143 voting precincts where primaries were held on Wednesday September 16, 2015.

The following voting precincts were chosen for a post primary election audit (in alphabetical order):

Municipality Polling Precinct
Bethel Stony Hill Fire House 2
Durham Korn School 2
East Windsor Town Hall
Ellington Ellington High School
Middletown Middletown High School District 6
Middletown Snow School Gym District 8
Naugatuck Cross Street School
New Britain Stanley Holmes School District 11
New Haven Bella Vista 11-01
New Haven Clarence Rogers School Ward 30-1
Portland Portland Senior Center
Stamford Salvation Army District 2
West Haven Ann V. Molloy School Voting District 7
West Haven John Prete Senior Housing Voting District 5
West Haven Surfside Senior Housing Voting District 2

Alternate Polling Precincts Chosen (in the order chosen):

Municipality Polling Precinct
Bethel Frank A. Berry School 3
Naugatuck Old Terrace
Hartford Liberty Christian Center Voting District 1
New Britain Chamberlain School District 9
New Haven Atwater Senior Center Ward 14

Av Harris
Director of Communications
Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill
(860) 509-6255 ofc
(860) 463-5939 cell

Marks questions marks: Colorado democracy black and blue

“Where their is smoke there is fire”. We say, “Where there is black and blue there is a victim” and “When it quacks like a cover up, suspicion is justified”. In this case we have ballots filled-in in black and blue with cross-outs. We suspect Colorado democracy is the victim.

Once again, a blow to those who claim there is no voting fraud. A further justification of counting votes by scanner in public in polling places, limiting mail-in voting, and limiting central scanning, while arguing for requiring adversarial election officials in every operation.

Colorado elections watchers who have been following the zig-zagging, on-again, off-again case of the 2012 Republican Primary Chaffee County ballots completed half in blue and half in black ink may get an answer soon whether or not state officials believe the ballots are evidence of election fraud.

Or they may get no answer at all…

According to the secretary of state’s office, 3,235 ballots were cast in the county election. Of those, 140 were marked partly in blue and partly in black ink, and another 43 were marked in varying ways — fully blackened squares side by side with dashed-off Xs, or neatly filled-in boxes alongside boxes scribbled over with messy scrawls — the kind of markings that show inconsistency and can raise suspicion that more than one person filled out a ballot.

In the fall of 2012 Marilyn Marks, a high-profile election integrity activist and proud thorn-in-the-side to election administrators, filed an open records request for ballots from several counties. She was concerned with the rules giving the public access to voted ballots and whether ballots could be traced to individual voters, in effect undermining the right to cast a secret ballot.

Chaffee County delivered color images of its ballots to Marks. And the images shocked her.

“They were so weird,” she said. “Here was one that was completed half in blue and then half in black. Well that’s odd, I think and move on. Then there’s another one. Then another one. What is going on here? I’m sure I said it out loud to myself.”

Marks showed the images to her lawyer and to fellow election activists, who agreed they were weird, and then she filed a complaint with the secretary of state

I agree that this is highly suspicious. I’ll go beyond that, based on my experience, this seems to be almost guaranteed fraud, likely by insiders after the fact.

I have personally reviewed thousands of ballots, perhaps 30,000, and been in the room while perhaps 100,000 have been reviewed by others in exactly 100 post-election audit counting sessions, about 10 recanvasses, as central-count Absentee Moderator, and leading the recount of 25,000 ballots in Bridgeport. I have seen a number of strange marks on ballots – they are usually brought to the attention of others in the room as they are so interesting and need adjudication to determine voters intent. I have no statistics on strange marks, yet 43/3,235 seems possible, yet high. Yet, I do not recall a single ballot in two colors or pen and pencil. So, 140/3,235 all in blue and black is way out of line with experience.

It seems there is some official agreement that this is more than suspicious:

A few weeks later, in the middle of October, secretary of state’s office investigator Michael Hagihara found himself visiting the Chaffee County clerk’s office, where he conducted a two-day investigation. He talked to the elections staff, studied voted ballots, sealed up elections office ballpoints with the ballots and reviewed video of the elections staffers tallying the votes.

In an October 24, 2012, memo, Hagihara reported on the investigation for Secretary of State Scott Gessler, Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert and Director of Elections Judd Choate. Hagihara did not believe the county elections administration staff was to blame for any irregularities — but he did find irregularities. He determined that 140 ballots out of roughly 3,235 were filled out partly with blue and partly with black ink. He said those ballots “created serious questions as to the legitimacy of the votes cast.”

Read the entire article. The questions now are if anything is being investigated and if anything will be officially resolved.

VW demonstrates the Myths of Conspiracy Theories

Myth: Conspiracies don’t exist

Truth: Conspiracies exist. People, corporations, and governments are frequently discovered to have committed conspiracies, often charged, and even convicted of Conspiracy to Commit [some crime]. The recent Libor financial scandal comes to mind, the Tobacco companies covering up studies linking tobacco to cancer, the recent disclosure that Exxon hid studies predicting global warming for decades, the NSA cover ups exposed by Snowden, and the FBI conspiring with Whitey Bolger, to name a few.

Myth: If Conspiracy X were true, too many people would know and it would have come out by now.

Truth: There are may conspiracies that remain unknown or not well-known for years or decades. Some may never be known. Many actually take only a few individuals who are highly motivated by fear of consequences, real intimidation, or perceived intimidation. Many suspected conspiracies are not investigated, even some where participants come forward publicly or surface their concerns through channels.

Several years ago a Connecticut Secretary of the State publicly referred to election integrity activists as “Conspiracy Theorists” which was followed by an apology after one of us objected. Actually I am a conspiracy theorist, as many people are, in regard to one thing or another. Calling someone “Conspiracy Theorist” is almost as derogatory, and similarly often as misleading, as calling someone a “Terrorist” or “Communist”.

Myth: Conspiracies don’t exist

Myth: If Conspiracy X were true, too many people would know and it would have come out by now.

Case in point, the VW emissions conspiracy, which just became widely know in the last few days. Now we learn from two articles in the New York Times that there were suspicions going back to 2007.

As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1, Ambitions Fueled a Scandal <read>

Volkswagen’s unbridled ambition is suddenly central to what is shaping up as one of the great corporate scandals of the age. On Tuesday, Volkswagen said it had installed software in 11 million diesel cars that cheated on emissions tests, allowing the vehicles to spew far more deadly pollutants than regulations allowed…

Disabling the emissions controls brought major advantages, including much better mileage — a big selling point in Volkswagen’s push to dominate in America…

Volkswagen’s current crisis has its roots in decisions made almost a decade ago. In 2007, it abandoned a pollution-control technology developed by Mercedes-Benz and Bosch and instead used internal technology.

At the same time, the determination by Mr. Winterkorn, the company’s hard-charging chief executive, to surpass Toyota put enormous strain on his managers to deliver growth in America…

Cheating on emissions tests solved several issues at once. Not only were drivers rewarded with better mileage and performance, but the automaker also avoided more expensive and cumbersome pollution-control systems.

While Volkswagen cheated behind the scenes, it publicly espoused virtue…

It is not Volkswagen’s first run-in with regulators over emissions. When the United States began regulating tailpipe pollutants in the 1970s, Volkswagen was one of the first companies caught cheating. It was fined $120,000 in 1973 for installing what became known as a “defeat device,” technology to shut down a vehicle’s pollution control systems…

Over the last year, when confronted with evidence that its system was not performing as promised, Volkswagen aggressively pushed back, saying that regulators were not doing the testing properly…

The same year Mr. Winterkorn made his speech in Chattanooga [four years ago], officials from California’s environmental regulator began hearing about a problem from their European Union counterparts:

They were finding discrepancies between the emissions of diesels in the lab and on the road across the industry…

In 2013, a nonprofit group, the International Council on Clean Transportation, proposed testing on-road diesel emissions from cars in the United States — something never done before…

The transportation council, staffed by a number of former E.P.A. officials, did not expect to catch Volkswagen, or anyone else, cheating. In fact, it assumed that American diesel cars would run much cleaner than their European counterparts…

“If you’re idling in traffic for three hours in L.A. traffic, we know a car is not in its sweet spot for good emissions results,” said Arvind Thiruvengadam, a research professor at West Virginia University, which was hired to conduct the tests. “But when you’re going at highway speed at 70 miles an hour, everything should really work properly. The emissions should come down. But the Volkswagens’ didn’t come down.”

It was difficult to know what was going on: When the two Volkswagens were placed on a “car treadmill” known as a dynamometer, they performed flawlessly.
“It just didn’t make sense,” Mr. German said. “That was the real red flag.”

The normal response is blame the testers or the conspiracy theorists:

Volkswagen fired back. “They tried to poke holes in our study and its methods, saying we didn’t know what we were doing,” Mr. Thiruvengadam said. “They were very aggressive.”

The company offered many explanations: Weather conditions. Driving styles. Technicalities that it claimed the researchers and regulators did not
understand. “There was always some story, some reason they’d come up with each time,” Mr. Young said. “Meeting after meeting, they would try to explain it away, and we’d go back to the lab and try again. But we’d get the same results.”

The back-and-forth lasted for months. Finally, in April, Volkswagen made an offer: It would conduct a voluntary recall, or service campaign, to fix the problem in certain model year 2010 to 2014 diesel vehicles.

Regulators got the software update for their test vehicles and returned to the lab. The results were not good. “It didn’t solve the problem,” Mr. Young said.
Confronted again, Volkswagen continued to maintain that there was a problem with the testers, not the vehicles…

“It was the repeated answers that did not add up that really led to the discovery of the problem in the first place,” Mr. Young said. “They were kind of hoisted on their own petard.”

The revelations were so stunning that some executives at Volkswagen Group of America were kept in the dark about the pending E.P.A. violation until just before it was announced, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another article outlines the risks and difficulties of protecting the complex software running vehicles. Even so, we are aware of “Conspiracy Theories” claiming that surprising, untimely plane, and more to the point here, car accidents, that could have been caused by the rigging of car computers. Even in the face of individuals with obvious motivation. Without investigation, we cannot prove the rigging of software, even without such proof after an investigation its difficult to be certain, since you cannot prove a negative. Yet, without an investigation, we are left with the old adage, “Where there is smoke there is fire” now, “When their is no transparent investigation, there is suspicion.

Complex Car Software Becomes the Weak Spot Under the Hood <read>

And for those skeptical of a cover-up and a partially known problem: From the Hartford Courant News Briefing this morning:

VW was told of fake emissions years ago

BERLIN — German media reported Sunday that Volkswagen was warned years ago about the use of illegal tricks to defeat emissions tests.

German weekly Bild am Sonntag reported that VW’s internal investigation found a 2007 letter from parts supplier Bosch warning Volkswagen not to use the software during regular operation. Separately, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported that a VW technician raised concerns about illegal practices in 2011.

For a summary of the analogy and application of similar risks to voting, see this post by Barbara Simons at the Verified Voting Blog <read>

And from Bruce Schneier <read>

My worry is that some corporate executives won’t interpret the VW story as a cautionary tale involving just punishments for a bad mistake but will see it instead as a demonstration that you can get away with something like that for six years.