CTVotersCount.org

Final Warning: Don’t say “Who could have imagined?”

Many of our friends are on the other side of this vote. Some say the Legislature will hold hearings and do the right thing – even though they are upset at what the Legislature has done with election financing. I would support secure in-person early voting, but that is not on the ballot and unlikely to be the result of a “Yes” vote.

The Constitutional Amendment will pass with a moderate margin 10%-20%
The Legislature will hold hearings, and no matter what the testimony, they will enact no-excuse early voting, Governor Malloy will sign it into law
To great fanfare it will begin in November 2015.
Although it will slightly decrease turn-out, statics will be presented to say it actually increased turnout, maybe not in 2015, but soon
Sometime down the road, there will additional cases of alleged and proven votING fraud via absentee voting
Some will attribute it to the new law, some of those will say “Who could have imagined?”
In any case, the claim that any voting reform proposed will increase turnout will prevail

Make your choice on Tuesday.

The Perfect Storm meets illegal, disasterous voting

When hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, New Jersey exposed the vote and voters to additional risks.
New report from Rutgers:

The Perfect Storm: Voting In New Jersey In The Wake of Superstorm Sandy

When hurricane Sandy hit the east coast, New Jersey exposed the vote and voters to additional risks.

New report from Rutgers: The Perfect Storm: Voting In New Jersey In The Wake of Superstorm Sandy <read>

CONCLUSION

After Superstorm Sandy, there was no structure in place to make sure that emergency voting directives were followed. There was mass confusion among county officials and voters, alike. Emergency measures such as Internet and fax voting not only violated New Jersey law, but also left votes vulnerable to on-line hacking. Internet voting should never be permitted, especially in emergencies when governmental infrastructure is already compromised.

As the May 2014 National Climate Assessment issued by the U.S. government makes all too clear New Jersey is highly likely to be impacted
negatively by more Superstorm Sandy-like disasters in the near future. This means that it is critical for New Jersey to enact and implement emergency voting procedures that comply with existing election law, and that protect every vote. As such, those emergency measures should
not include Internet and fax voting as an option, under any circumstance.

The report is a quicker read than its size would indicate. It is packed with details that expose the risks of email and fax voting.

Warning #3: Yes, Connecticut, your votING fraud is in the mail

When it comes to mail-in, no-excuse absentee voting we can learn a lot here in Connecticut and New England. You will hear many claim that we need stronger voter ID because of rampant votER fraud and others say there is no problem with expanding absentee voting since there is no votER fraud. They are both wrong, wrong, wrong!

Voters considering the Constitutional Amendment on the ballot this November and legislators considering what to do if it passes, need to pay heed to the facts and experience of early voting in other states. When it comes to mail-in, no-excuse absentee voting we can learn a lot here in Connecticut and New England. You will hear many claim we that we need stronger voter ID because of rampant votER fraud and others say there is no problem with expanding absentee voting since there is no votER fraud. They are both wrong, wrong, wrong.

There actually is very little fraud by individual voters. You are risking a lot to intentionally vote when you are not eligible. Risking a lot going to a polling place and risking detection. Especially if you are an illegal alien who risks deportation for much less.
Actually individual votER fraud is easier and much less risky by absentee ballot. Some say it is frequently done by parents voting for their children away at college. We are not so sure how prevalent that is. It is very hard to prove and detect.
There is another type of fraud, mass votING fraud by insiders and candidate supporters who, without the knowledge of voters in one way or another create, intercept, or destroy absentee votes mailed-in.

We have been covering some of this in our recent blog series “It happens all the time.” All over the place <read> A sampling of our “favorites”:

It is apparently routine in Bridgeport: <read>

In Bridgeport, a hallmark of Democratic Party politics has been the aggressive use of absentee ballots — so aggressive, in fact, that more than a dozen consent decrees have been signed since 1988 with the State Elections Enforcement Commission stemming from allegations of wrongdoing by party operatives.

We could highlight more recent allegations in Bridgeport, but lets consider Hartford and a State Rep fined for absentee vote fraud – not the kind of oversight we expect from the legislature: <read>

The Connecticut Appellate Court on Tuesday ruled against state Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, in an absentee ballot case in which she was fined by the State Elections Enforcement Commission. The commission imposed a $4,500 civil penalty on Gonzalez for four counts of election-law violations, concluding she was “knowingly present” while four voters filled out absentee ballots in the town clerk’s office in Hartford City Hall in the fall of 2006.

Who said” that sort of thing just isn’t done in Massachusetts?” East Long Meadow, MA: <read>

The Boston Globe is reporting, that a Republican candidate [Jack Villamaino] decided to try and win a primary by sending in hundreds of absentee ballots on behalf of hundreds of voters. State election officials were tipped off to the potential voter fraud when a suspiciously large number of residents of the Springfield suburb of East Longmeadow suddenly changed party registration from Democrat to independent, making them eligible to vote in the upcoming Republican primary.

At least they were caught, not so in Florida, in a similar fraud, likely by insiders, followed by a cover-up: <read>

As we detailed at that time, some 2,500 absentee ballots were fraudulently requested online for three different 2012 primary elections in Miami-Dade, FL. One race involved requests for Democratic absentee ballots in a U.S. House primary, the other two involved requests for Republican ballots in two different Florida State House primary races. All of the fraudulent “phantom” ballot requests are said to have been flagged as such at the Supervisor of Election’s office and, therefore, never fulfilled… It was not until excellent investigative reporting from The Miami-Herald discovered that a number of the requests came from IP addresses located in the Miami-Dade area. For reasons currently chalked up to administrative confusion, the Elections Division never gave those Miami area IP addresses to the grand jury.

We really disagree with the prosecutor in the above case: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’ – it is votING fraud, no voters required!

How can we vote on Internet that is unsafe for banks, Canada, and alarms the President?

Recent articles highlight the folly and blind faith in technology leading many to trust voting on the Internet.

As Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” seems to apply here.

There are real cyber risks, we need to protect or digital assets. Yet it does not help to jump to the conclusion that every breech is the work of our biggest enemy of the moment.

Like building new civic centers, baseball stadiums, and bankrolling fishing and hunting retailers there is plenty of real world evidence that Internet voting does not work well, yet we persist despite the evidence. Apparently the technology that actually works to protect Democracy, a technology actually under assault in Connecticut, is Freedom of Information.

Recent articles highlight the folly and blind faith in technology leading many to trust voting on the Internet

From the NYTimes: Obama Had Security Fears on JPMorgan Data Breach <read>

President Obama and his top national security advisers began receiving periodic briefings on the huge cyberattack at JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions this summer, part of a new effort to keep security officials as up dated on major cyberattacks as they are on Russian incursions into Ukraine or attacks by the Islamic State.

But in the JPMorgan case, according to administration officials familiar with the briefings, who would not speak on the record about intelligence matters, no one could tell the president what he most wanted to know: What was the motive of the attack? “The question kept coming back, ‘Is this plain old theft, or is Putin retaliating?’ ” one senior official said, referring to the American led sanctions on Russia. “And the answer was: ‘We don’t know for sure.’ ”

More than three months after the first attacks were discovered, the source is still unclear and
there is no evidence any money was taken from any institution.

As Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” seems to apply here. There are real cyber risks, we need to protect or digital assets. Yet it does not help to jump to the conclusion that every breech is the work of our biggest enemy of the moment (e.g. China last year, Putin here, and ISIS last week) when we apparently don’t have a clue.

Just as irrational is the fear in then Connecticut Legislature, (and perhaps in the statehouse) where many voted for Internet voting under the threat of being deemed “unpatriotic”.

Of course, Internet voting is not banking. Internet voting is more vulnerable, and more critical to our Democracy. As highlighted by this recent report:

From GMA News: Online voting not ready for worldwide roll-out, study concludes <read>

The research, produced by the Atlantic Council think tank and the online protection firm McAfee, concluded that “security will need to be vastly improved” before it becomes feasible to adopt Internet voting on a large scale.

According to the study, online voting faces more complex obstacles than electronic commerce, where a customer can be reimbursed in the case of fraud or theft.

“Online voting poses a much tougher problem” than e-commerce, the report said.

“Lost votes are unacceptable… and unlike paper ballots, electronic votes cannot be ‘rolled back’ or easily recounted.”

The report said hackers could paralyze an online voting system or, even worse, change the results without being detected.

A major problem of online voting is that any system must verify the identity of the voter, and at the same time guarantee anonymity in the process.

Some experts believe it could be decades before online voting becomes mainstream.
Joseph Hall of the Center for Democracy and Technology said that many security experts believe “the timeline will be 30 to 40 years” before the technological hurdles to online voting are overcome.

One of the problems is the “uncontrolled platform,” in which voting software or computers can be infected, Hall said at a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Jordi Puiggali of the online voting technology firm Scytl said that while Internet balloting has not been perfect, “we have to consider the risks of voting channels that already exist,” citing practices such as stuffed ballot boxes.

The researchers cited a study released earlier this year by University of Michigan scientists on online voting in Estonia, the first country to hold national elections on the Internet.

That study, which is to be published in a scientific journal next month, revealed vulnerabilities in Estonia’s online voting system.

“Attackers could target the election servers or voters’ clients to alter election results or undermine the legitimacy of the system,” the study said.

Estonian officials have maintained that the system is secure.

Wednesday’s report said that online voting has enormous potential if security can be improved.

“For the digital generation, unsupervised polling via mobile devices may be the ‘killer app’ of e-voting,” the report said, adding that biometric and other security features may need to be perfected.

“Broad adoption of most new technologies generally takes longer than technology optimists hope, but it will happen,” the report added.

“Online voting’s potential benefits in terms of reach, access and participation have the potential to revolutionize the democratic process around the world.”

Count us among the skeptics that Internet voting will be safe in 30-40 years. We say it is a good bet that 20 years from now it it will still be 30-40 years off, and maybe that will be the last we will hear of it. On the other hand it might be possible with a radical redesign of the underlying Internet. (Geeks like myself will remember IP 6, which we were all supposed to be using by about 10 years ago. Great news its up to 4% now.)

From Aljazera: Latest Internet voting reports show failures across the board <read>

Internet voting, a technology often cited as a solution to the United States’ problematic voting machines, received failing security and accessibility grades in the latest in-depth audit conducted by the City of Toronto. Two of the three vendors audited by the city currently have contracts with over a dozen U.S. jurisdictions for similar technologies.

The accessibility report, prepared by researchers at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, and the security report, prepared by researchers at Concordia and Western universities, were obtained by Al Jazeera America through a Freedom of Information Act

request.

Proponents of Internet voting, largely disabilities groups and advocates for military voters overseas, point to the apparent ease-of-use of other Internet-based activities, such as banking, and claim the technology would lead to higher turnout rates.

The reports highlight the difficulty in creating a voting system that isn’t more susceptible to corruption than existing voting technology and that is easy enough to use for voters with a variety of personal computer setups, including those with disabilities who often use alternatives to traditional mice, keyboards and screens.

Got that? Susceptible to corruption. And does not provide expected benefits. Sounds a lot like those civic center, sports stadium, and fishy retail projects! Meanwhile the U.S. Government continues to stonewall:

A nonprofit watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sued FVAP last month to force them to disclose their own audits of Internet voting conducted three years ago. In 2012 the program told Congress it would release the records to the public by the middle of 2013.

Op-Ed: End Exemptions To Post-Election Audits

[I]t doesn’t make sense that the Connecticut’s post-election audit law exempts all votes on questions, election day registration, originally hand-counted ballots and absentee ballots from our post-election audit. Election integrity and public confidence demand that all ballots be subject to random selection for audit. Exempt ballots already determine many elections, while the number and percentage of exempt ballots is growing.

Op-Ed for Connecticut Citizen Election Audit published today at CTNewsJunkie

Op-Ed for Connecticut Citizen Election Audit published today at CTNewsJunkie: <read>

OP-ED | End Exemptions To Post-Election Audits

by Luther Weeks | Oct 15, 2014

When auditing town expense accounts, would it make sense to exempt some departments? When inspecting trucks, would it make sense to exempt school buses? When inspecting restaurants, would it make sense to exempt diners? Any exemption is an opening for errors to go undetected and an opportunity for fraud.

Equally it doesn’t make sense that the Connecticut’s post-election audit law exempts all votes on questions, election day registration, originally hand-counted ballots and absentee ballots from our post-election audit. Election integrity and public confidence demand that all ballots be subject to random selection for audit. Exempt ballots already determine many elections, while the number and percentage of exempt ballots is growing.

Currently about 9 percent of ballots are absentee ballots, many elections and primaries are decided by much lower margins than 9 percent. If the State enacts early voting, following other states those numbers will almost certainly rise to over 30 percent within a few years. Compare that to the race for governor in 2010, which was officially decided by about 0.6 percent—more than triple the 2000 vote margin necessary for a recanvass. Since Connecticut recently initiated Election Day registration, we can anticipate those votes to reach 10 percent of votes in a few years, which will further add to the totals exempt from the audit.

In 2010, the audit counted over 23,000 ballots from Bridgeport for the governor’s race. We found many counting and accounting errors, especially with emergency paper ballots that were counted by hand on election night. Less known is that a handful of other towns also had similar numbers of emergency hand-counted ballots in 2010. There are hand-counted ballots in every election – all of these are currently exempt from the post-election audits.

Officials in many states hand-count votes accurately in audits, using uniform, proven and effective counting methods. In Connecticut, many municipalities use ad hoc, inadequate methods to manually count ballots. Even under the ideal planned conditions of audits, many officials argue that they cannot count ballots accurately by hand and attribute almost all differences large and small, to their own errors. Many towns manually count large numbers of ballots at the end of a demanding seventeen-hour-plus election day, when there is no expectation, planning, staff, or training to count large numbers of ballots by hand on election night. How many voters are aware that many towns now avoid scanners and hand-count all votes in some primaries? Yet, we have no audit to assess how accurate these manual-counts are.

In November 2012 officials in one town investigated a difference and determined that polling place officials mistakenly read 151 ballots into a scanner a second time. Despite checks that could have caught the error before certification, the discrepancy was not detected until the audit. In another town, a similar error was made in the central count of absentee votes. It was discovered by citizens reviewing election records and resulted in reversing the official result on a highly charged question. How common are such errors? We will never know until we stop exempting absentee ballots and questions from the audit.

The good news is that we do not have to spend more to increase confidence in our elections. Connecticut is one of twenty states with hand-count audits. Our existing audit, at 10 percent of polling places, seems among the strongest. A small state needs to audit more to achieve the same confidence as a large state. This is because the statistical confidence of an audit, just like the confidence of a poll, is more dependent on the number of units counted than on the percent of the votes or voters in the election. We can reduce that 10 percent, even counting fewer total ballots, and gain confidence by subjecting all ballots to audit, while using efficient, proven counting methods.

Luther Weeks is executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit.

Warning #2: Defying Common Sense, early voting DECREASES turnout

Did you know early voting of all types (polling place, no-excuse absentee, and mail-in) actually reduces turn-out?

We have said it before, based on the best studies available. Early voting DECREASES turn-out. The only exception is that early voting coupled with election day registration does not decrease the turn-out generated by election day registration. (But in Connecticut we have a more time consuming, more effort election day registration than those states that have found it increases turn-out. Our bet is that election day registration done our way will have little impact on turn-out. We also warn that measuring its effect will be quite a challenge)

Unfortunately advocates and legislators rely on common sense, rather than the best research, e.g.: <read>

Rep. Livvy Floren of Greenwich, a former member of the Government Administration and Elections Committee who worked on the bill, was one of the two Republicans to vote for the proposal.

“I’m in favor of anything that increases voter participation,” she said. Floren said she received no pressure from her party to vote the other way.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 6)

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered CTVotersCount posts from the 1st half of 2011.

Here we continue our review of some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered CTVotersCount posts from the 1st half of 2011. Continuing from there:

Smoke, no fire seen. Once again see no problems <Jul 2011>

O Me O My O – Errors in Jersey and Fraud in Ohio <Jul 2011>

Colorado election issues, extreme, yet considered normal, reported in 2011 <July 2011>

State causes confusion in Bridgeport process for ballot access <July 2011>

P.T. Barnum’s city continues three-ring election circus <Aug 2011>

Ballot Skulduggery in Wisconsin? Or Inadvertent Errors? <Aug 2011>

No need to see the ballots, they are “sacred” – Faith based elections <Aug 2011>

Another election in Bridgeport…more absentee ballot allegations <Sept 2011> <Sept 2011>

Organized vote fraud in Florida (Sunshine anyone?) <Sept 2011>

CO: Chain-Of-Custody and Confidence broken <Sept 2011>

Rigged election or three human errors – we may never know for sure. <Sept 2011>

See no problems. Hear no problems. Keep observers out of polling places <Sept 2011>

Bridgeport…a dozen decrees in absentee fraud since 1988 <Oct 2011>

See no problems. Hear no problems. Stop the audit <Oct 2011>

Scanners count same ballots with different results <Nov 2011>

Its an error. No its a typo. Wrong person elected <Nov 2011>

Voting machine investigation leads to serious issues and cover-up <Dec 2011>

Secretary of State removed for vote fraud <Dec 2011>

That brings through the end of 2011. Till next time.

Warning #1: Your absentee or mail-in vote might not count

Did you know that when you vote absentee or mail-in, you might be disenfranchised at a much higher rate than if you voted at the polls?

There are three major reasons that we are aware of:

Your ballot might not be received in time to be counted. It might be delayed or actually lost in the mail. In Connecticut such votes must be received by 8:00pm to be counted.
You might have made a mistake in the somewhat complicated process of placing your ballot inside outer and inner envelopes, or forgetting to properly fill out the envelopes. The law requires that ballots with certain errors be rejected.
You might have overvoted i.e. voted for more candidates than allowed. This can happen when you make an inadvertent mark in a bubble or if you miscount the number of votes in a vote for multiple race. Such errors are caught for you when you vote in a polling, where the error is explained and you are offered a chance to vote again on a new ballot.

Here is a recent article on a study covering some of those problems, in California where mail-in voting is an increasing factor in elections California: Mail-in-ballot rejections analyzed in study | <read>

Voting by mail surpassed 50 percent of votes cast in a general election in California for the first time in 2012. A new study shows that nearly 69,000 mailed ballots, or about 1 percent, were not counted, and why they were rejected. The top three reasons mail-in ballots were rejected: not arriving on time, not being signed or because signatures could not be verified…

Romero said. “People have taken the time to study the issues, fill out the ballot and mail or deliver it. They trust it is going to be counted.”

Faith in Internet voting? Prepare for “ShellShock”!

Continuing with facts to put in front of those with blind faith in the Interned, a disease that attacks those with little knowledge of computers, data communications, and software.

Shellshock can be used to take over the entire machine. And Heartbleed went unnoticed for two years and affected an estimated 500,000 machines, but Shellshock was not discovered for 22 years.

New York Times: Security Experts Expect ‘Shellshock’ Software Bug in Bash to Be Significant <read>

Continuing with facts to put in front of those with blind faith in the Interned, a disease that attacks those with little knowledge of computers, data communications, and software.

From the article:

On Thursday, security experts warned that Bash contained a particularly alarming software bug that could be used to take control of hundreds of millions of machines around the world, potentially including Macintosh computers and smartphones that use the Android operating system.

The bug, named “Shellshock,” drew comparisons to the Heartbleed bug that was discovered in a crucial piece of software last spring.

But Shellshock could be a bigger threat. While Heartbleed could be used to do things like steal passwords from a server, Shellshock can be used to take over the entire machine. And Heartbleed went unnoticed for two years and affected an estimated 500,000 machines, but Shellshock was not discovered for 22 years.

That a flawed piece of code could go unnoticed for more than two decades could be surprising to many. But not to programmers.

A bit of good news, followed by more bad news:

Working with Mr. Ramey and people who work on open-source security, Mr. Chazelas had a patch within hours. Then they contacted major software makers while trying to avoid tipping off hackers.

An official alert from the National Institute of Standards and Technology warned that the vulnerability was a 10 out of 10, in terms of its severity, impact and exploitability, but low in terms of its complexity, meaning that it could be easily used by hackers.

Security researchers say that as soon as the bug was reported they detected widespread Internet scanning by so-called white hat hackers — most likely security researchers — as well as people thought to be cybercriminals. The worry is that it is only a matter of time before somebody writes a program that will use Shellshock to take them over.

That a flawed piece of code could go unnoticed for more than two decades could be surprising to many. But not to programmers…

“I don’t think this is an open-source problem,” Mr. Zemlin said. “Software is eating the world. The bad news is software is hard and complex.”

So to those who trust software, without knowledge, and lots of faith, please don’t apply your blind faith to elections effecting our democracy.

Two Reminders: Transparency and the Limits of All Paper Elections

This week we have had two demonstrations of themes we have discussed in theory at CTVotersCount.
From Connecticut, the importance of transparency.
From abroad the limits of paper only elections.

This week we have had two demonstrations of themes we have discussed in theory at CTVotersCount.

First from Connecticut, amid the sad tale of our past Governor, heading once again for food and shelter at the expense of the public: Jury Finds Rowland Guilty On All 7 Counts; Attorney Vows Appeal <read>

A reminder from the prosecutor:

Prosecutors called the verdict a victory for transparency and the electoral process. The jury agreed that Rowland conspired to do work on two Republican congressional campaigns and had pitched a scheme to keep his pay hidden from federal election regulators.

“It ought to be — no it has to be — that voters know that what they see is what they get. In this case, the defendant and others didn’t want that to happen,” Michael J. Gustafson, Criminal Division Chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, told reporters.

We would add that transparency is insufficient. Somebody, like the public, has to use the transparency. And occasionally the system needs to assist in assuring transparency. As we have pointed out in theory: <Vote Audit Observe> <Public Transparency and Observability>

Second a reminder from Scotland, pointing to some of the same risks and the insufficiency of paper only counting. As we have discussed in theory:
Common Sense: Paper Ballots are Insufficient for Voting Integrity <read>

Take a look at this video alleging irregularities in the Scottish Independence vote:

We cannot vouch for the accuracy and know the actual implications of the allegations in the video. Perhaps some of the footage is rigged. Perhaps the incorrectly classified ballots and stacks were double checked and corrected. Yet the video reminds us of several theoretical questions and issues with paper only counting and elections:

It would be much more credible and provide higher confidence to have a machine publicly count and print results then followed by solid ballot custody and an audit or recount. To accomplish fraud or cover error then would be much harder, since the numbers have to at least come close to matching when machines are rigged ahead of time, and ballots must be changed in a corresponding way.
Paper counting demands double checking by multiple individuals, observed by opposing interests.
In addition, central counting of paper ballots requires strong ballot security from the polling place ballot box to the counting place.

In Connecticut we are fortunate to have paper ballots, recanvasses, and post-election audits. Unfortunately, we also have very weak, vulnerable ballot security, and a post-election audit that is weal in many regards, and far from adequately executed.