CTVotersCount.org

Let us act deliberatly to actually improve elections

We are amazed by the number of election integrity issues raised by this election and the flurry of suggestions for improvement, led by the Hartford Courant. Yet in all the excitement and rush to judgement and improvement, among the good intentions and good ideas, there is also a misunderstanding of the system, ideas that are not feasible, uninformed, and that would make a worse system.

In fact, its too early to rush to judgement with knee-jerk reactions, without deliberate, complete plans for reform. Yet, we have attempted to counter errors and support good directions in letters to the editor and blog comments. Here we archive some of those articles, editorials, and some of our (edited) comments.

On Sunday the Courant had an article, an investigative report, an opinion piece, and an editorial mostly focused on Hartford’s mess-up, and the allegation that our votes are reported slower than the rest of the nation. The article and the investigative report are a true service, the best of factual journalism. Not so much the editorial and opinion piece<read>

Our response was a letter to the editor of the Courant, addressing the editorial and opinion piece, withing the limits of the 200 words allowed by the Courant, now published online:

Vote Count Accuracy More Important Than Speed

I agree in part with the editorial “Where Were The Results?” [Nov. 9]. Our current system of local registrars is antiquated. We should do for elections what we have done for probate: regionalize, professionalize and economize. Yet, change should not include blind pursuit of speed over accuracy or risk tampering with elections.

Beyond tampering with results, connecting scanners or memory cards to the Internet risks that the scanners can be infected to compromise future elections. Recognized computer scientists and security experts agree. Based on UConn’s recommendations, the external ports on our voting machines are required to be sealed.

Contrary to the opinion piece by Brandon Finnigan, “Learning Who Won Takes Too Long” [Nov. 9, Opinion], some states are more organized and careful than Connecticut in reporting reasonably complete results. Los Angeles County is the nation’s largest election jurisdiction, managed by a professional election administrator, Dean Logan. California has about 50 percent its votes cast by mail. As the Los Angeles County website states, mail ballots received by Election Day and some others are counted over a 28-day period after election night.

Let’s regionalize. Let’s improve the system. And let’s lighten up on getting results, any results, without regard to their accuracy.

Luther Weeks, Glastonbury

The writer is executive director of CTVotersCount.org, an election issues advocacy site.
Copyright © 2014, Hartford Courant

What follows are some of my comments online on those articles and opinions, edited for grammar and completeness.

Two of the articles complained that results were too slow, including an “Expert” from Southern California who wrote the opinion piece. I said:

California counts absentee ballots for up to 28 days after the election. In 2008 Minnesota took at least a couple of months to determine the winner of the Frankin-Coleman race for the Senate. Connecticut would rush to complete our recanvass in eight days…

Connecticut accepts no absentee votes after 8:00pm on election night. In CA, where about half the vote is mail-in they continue counting them for days and weeks after the election. They are not required to be done for 28 days – I know that LA county, the largest jurisdiction in the U.S. goes quite a while. The only thing we count later (if we do) is the provisional ballots.

Connecticut is far from the slowest. Take Alaska’s election counting, please:

Alaska will begin counting more than 53,000 absentee and questioned ballots on Tuesday[Nov 11] in an effort to resolve the state’s unsettled contests for the Senate and for governor. Democratic Sen. Mark Begich trailed Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by about 8,100 votes after Election Night…The race for Alaska governor is actually closer than the Senate contest. Independent candidate Bill Walker, aided when the winner of the Democratic primary bowed out of the race to run as Walker’s lieutenant governor, led incumbent Republican Gov. Sean Parnell by about 3,000 votes.

So, Connecticut is “among the last in the nation to get election results”, yet days, maybe weeks ahead of Alaska, California, and Colorado:

It’s a week after Election Day and they’re still counting votes in Colorado, where some are blaming a new state law that replaced polling booths with mandatory mail-in ballots. Top-ticket races have been decided—Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper was re-elected and Republican Cory Gardner unseated Democratic Sen. Mark Udall—but the vote totals in a dozen state House and Senate races remain unknown

To the suggestion that we should connect our scanners to the Internet because Massachusettts has found no problems, I said:

Massachusetts has never had an election audit until this year. So there is no evidence of the reliability of their processes. In fact, half the states have no audit at all and there is very little to go on to know if there ever was or will be errors or fraud in those states. It could always be that paper ballots and audits actually deter fraud and reduce error. NY did find errors a couple of years ago in their audit, as we have in Connecticut. Respected computer scientists like Professor Shvartsman at Uconn agree there are risks, that is why he advised the state to seal the ports on our scanners. Finally, even though we counted all the ballots in Bridgeport in 2010, the system was never able to recognize the actual results there or to investigate the difference between voters signed in and the number of ballots there.

At CTNewsJunkie: Problems at the Polls Highlight Limitations of Locally Operated Election System <read>.

The main point was that the the new election night reporting system by the Secretary’s office will solve many of the problems – it may solve some, but certainly not all. I commented:

I hope the new reporting system works and is workable. The previous system prototyped twice required too much data entry by each moderator, many after a 17-24 hour day. An improved system will get the data earlier and more accurately, provided time is still taken to double check it in each town before entry and if the system allows the efficient entry of data by refreshed people and their entry is also double checked.

Anyone who pronounces such a system as ready for general use by moderator’s should be required to use it to enter central absentee results after a long long day.

There is much to improve in the whole system especially by regionalization. Yet, there is much that could be done in the name of speed and modernization that could make things worse rather than better.

Human nature being what it is, we tend to believe that any change we are in favor or against will or would have prevented this problem. e.g. see “911 Patriot Act”. Several commenters indicated that if we had kept lever machines or went to touch screens, we would not have all this problems counting absentee votes. I commented:

As an experienced central count absentee moderator I would like to point out a few things:
1) Our absentee procedures are no more complex than other states. Actually simpler than those that require that signatures be matched with those on file.
2) When we had lever machines, and if we changed polling place technology, we would still need paper absentee ballots.
3) The only difference with absentee ballots now is that we have scanners to help count them faster and more accurately. Much more quickly than by hand counting.
4) Absentee ballot counting can start at 10:00am, when 95+% are available. In a well organized operation, all there is to do at 8:00pm is to process a few that came in at the end of the day, print machine tapes, and complete paperwork. That should not take more than a couple of hours.
5) You can pretty well predict the number of absentee ballots based on those that are requested, so you can staff accordingly to get the job done.
Finally, there are good reasons we have voter verified paper ballots in polling places as well as for absentees- they provide a much more secure and auditable vote, over all its a much less costly technology, its less likely to cause long lines (check-in is a separate issue), and paper ballots can be used despite machine and power failures etc.

Ironically, some who complain about the results of the knee-jerk, partially helpful, Help America Vote Act, also propose knee-jerk action this time.

Bottom Line for now:

There were many problems highlighted by this election
There is a lot to fix, things that voters should not put up with
But like some hurricanes, we missed the big one – by Wed we knew who the winners were, a few voters and votes were lost, and the media had a field day complaining about their not getting results fast enough.
Deliberate action based on a bit of experience, facts, and research can lead to positive improvement. Lets do that, not forget the problems and not forget do the work.

Election Wrap-Up: Got one right, one wrong, and “Who Could Have Imagined”

1. Can Hartford registrars do more than complain?

2. Don’t rely on all of our predictions.

3. We are not wrong all of the time

We Got It Right On Election Day Registration, “Who could have imagined?” We did. And we were not alone.

Can Hartford registrars do more than complain?

We have read several articles on the Hartford problem this year, here is an example: Official: Hartford Mixup A Failure Of ‘Election 101’ <read> To us its also a failure of leadership 101 and customer service 101.

When I am part of a system that makes an error, I apologize to the customers (voters). If I am part of the problem, I vow to fix the problem so it won’t happen again. In fact, I did both on election day when I lead Election Day Registration in my town. We served the voters but unnecessarily slowly, the system required them to use EDR when they did every thing right to be registered earlier.

The Courant and I disagree on how to fix the problems in Hartford. Letting the Town Council select registrars is not a cure. However, three people each fully charged with responsibility should not have missed this one.

At once it is less than and worse than Bridgeport in 2010. This had less impact on the election, less extended concern However, Bridgeport in 2010 was less of a leadership 101 failure. Bridgeport was caused by an initial miss-estimate of ballot orders, followed by a string of inadequate reactions that cascaded into a challenging, ineffectively handled situation.

Eating Some Tasty Crow. We got one wrong!

We predicted the Constitutional Amendment would pass “The Constitutional Amendment will pass with a moderate margin 10%-20%”. There are stories all over about why it did not for good and not so good reasons. We suspect that “Trust the Legislature to do the right thing” was not a winning argument. Yet also, many voters did not vote on the question. We suggest that is just another indication of the poor design of our lever-like paper ballots. Other states have much more readable ballots, making it easier to understand, and avoid missing questions.

Of course, that prediction was way back at the beginning of this month, two days before the election, but here is an old one:

We Got It Right On Election Day Registration, “Who could have imagined?” We did.

We long opposed the bill because it was a hokey, unproven way, of doing Election Day Registration, much more difficult and less likely to be successful that that implemented for years in other states. In fact, we opposed in it way back in 2010: Inadequate Election Day Registration Pilot Nixed we said:

We are conditionally for * Election Day Registration and opposed this inadequate bill in our testimony earlier this year. Our opposition was based on authorizing a pilot program with inadequate evaluation provisions, piloting an inadequate, disenfranchising voting method

We were not alone, others said at that time:

“What a nightmare it is for them, logistically, to implement this,” Sen. Daniel Debicella of Shelton, the ranking Republican senator on the Democrat-controlled Appropriations Committee, said.

Primaries are meant to allow political parties to resolve their respective nominations for offices, said Rep. Deborah Heinrich, D-Madison, adding she fears the bill would lead to a mass of last-minute registrations from voters interested only in casting a primary ballot, and not in remaining with their new party. “I don’t see that exactly as the system working,” she said.

Further we strongly opposed the Secretary of the State’s interpretation of the law, that does not allow those in line at 8:00pm to register and vote. With others, I lobbied unsuccessfully in the background that everyone in line at 8:00pm should be able to register and vote. I argued and got agreement from prominent civil right lawyers that it is a civil rights violation, just waiting to happen.

And it did happen. <read>

The registrar’s office was not staffed enough to handle the crowd of new voters, and the line was cut off at 8 p.m. at the Clerk’s office and anyone who was inside could continue registering and voting.

Not sure that they followed the Secretary’s directive that the whole process be complete for the citizen to be able to vote.

Citizens were denied the opportunity to vote, based on inadequate preparations by officials, unpredicted volumes of citizens wishing to legally participate in democracy, and by the 8:00pm cutoff.

******************
Update: 2/20/2015 Who Could Have Imagined…not even CTVotersCount

As noted above we imagined the problem in New Haven that would disenfranchise voters on election night 2015. Yet, we could not imagine the result would be praise and self-congratulations. The New Haven Register reports the press conference: State Praises New Haven’t same-day voter registration <read>

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill swung by City Hall Friday to deliver a citation honoring the fact that New Haven accommodated the most Election Day voter registrations out of any Connecticut municipality, totaling more than 600.

“Election Day registration is designed to increase voter participation and the last election was the state’s first big one,” Merrill said as she stood alongside Mayor Toni Harp, City Clerk Michael Smart and staffers from the registrar’s office. “More than 14,000 were able to vote who wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, because they had not been on the list for whatever reason, and chose to recognize their right to vote on Election Day.”

Merrill said New Haven’s final tally for same-day registrations was 616 but acknowledged that many were turned away once the 8 p.m. deadline hit. She said several proposals have been introduced in the state legislature that are aimed at speeding up the same-day registration process.

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.”