CTVotersCount.org

The dirty secret(s) of vote counting

In college I followed our nationally ranked hockey team. With ringside seats at an ECAC semi-final game, we struck up a conversation with a referee, who frequently stood just in front of us on the ice. For a long while it was a tie, and we learned from him that refs do no like tie games, with the pressure on every call in a sudden death overtime. Elections can get rougher than hockey, there are more and tougher calls in close contests – calls that can easily expose the little know vulnerabilities of our election system and the flaws in the promise to “count every vote”.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee: Paul Mitchell: The dirty secret of vote counting <read>

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day.

A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work.

But that’s not what’s happening this year.

In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff.

But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.
With the spotlight on and representatives of each campaign lurking over their shoulders, elections officials are engaged in the painstaking process of validating ballots mailed in during the last days of the election or dropped off at polling locations. They are reviewing tens of thousands of provisional ballots used by voters who couldn’t get regular ballots at their polling places.

California doesn’t have the infamous hanging-chad or butterfly ballot, but there are damaged ballots and signatures that don’t match. Ballots are dropped off in the wrong county or mailed in the wrong envelope. Voters show up the day after the election and try to hand in their absentee ballot. Piles of ballots are marked “too late” because the mail arrived after Election Day.

The issue of signatures not matching is becoming an increasingly important wrinkle as more voters cast ballots by mail. Elections officials are reviewing more than 400,000 signatures of the 2 million early absentee voters in the June 3 election who signed registration 25 years ago. Similarly, few new online registrants realize that the signature on their registration form is actually their DMV signature, which could also be decades old. If non-matches can’t be resolved before Election Day, those ballots are invalidated.

All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

We do not routinely check signatures on absentee ballots. Would a court be receptive to a challenge based on checking and verifying signatures? Maybe not, but just the exposure of the lack of actual checking would decrease confidence in a close result.
Unlike several other states we do not require voters to sign in at polling places. That does preclude any checking and embarrassment. Yet, the absence of the signature would leave many questions of error and fraud unanswerable.
Remember that close election for Governor in 2010? Many recall that there were hundreds of ballots not counted yet a citizen recount showed that they tended to confirm the winner. How many recall that the system never recognized those votes, never addressed the question? How many know that the number of voters signed in did not match the number of ballots by large margins in several districts? In a really close election, checking those counts might expose a very soft underbelly – it has happened at least twice since, in other municipalities with little public concern.
We also must point out that most of these problems in California are all related to absentee ballots, in a state with a rising percentage of such ballots. We will have a question on the ballot this November authorizing the General Assembly to provide the same for the Nutmeg State.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 3)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts, covering 2009.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 2nd half of CTVotersCount posts from 2008. Continuing from there:

In CT we count most of the votes for most of the parties and most of their candidates, at most <Jan 2009>

Another month and more incorrect results are found from the CT election four months earlier <Feb 2009>

Voter fraud in CT makes national news <Feb 2009>

The limits of paper: Machine votes for wrong candidates, not noticed by voters who are blind <Apr 2009>

Also a problem if you don’t look at or can’t find the paper <Apr 2009>

No paper no problem – or just don’t look at it <Aug 2009>

Again, move along, you can’t see the ballots <Aug 2009>

Exporting questionable elections? <Oct 2009>

Haddam: Who won in ? Without ballot security, we will always have questions of credibility <Nov 2009>

Don’t count your ballots up in Massachusetts <Nov 2009>

We will leave it here until next time, we have completed 2009.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 2)

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

Here we continue our review of are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, selected from our over 900 posts. Last time we covered the 1st year of CTVotersCount. 2007-2008. Continuing from there:

Book Review: “Witness To A Crime” The result of three years of persistent, detailed investigation of the 2004 election in Ohio. This book proves several times over that the election was stolen. <Jul 2008>

French take back seat to no one, with differences between voters signed in and ballots counted <Jul 2008>

Partisan consultant behind election firewall in Ohio. Maybe nothing wrong, but certainly does not provide credibility <July 2008>

Was something being covered up? Election Observer Arrested – Taken Away In Handcuff <Sep 2008>

Palm Beach officials and machines can’t seem to get counts to agree <Sep 2008> <Oct 2008>

We’ve covered this several times since. Crime and Punishment: Election stolen from Popular Governor – he is punished – in fact he is still in jail <Aug 2008>

How could the Social Security Adminstration contribute to reducing voting integrity <Sep 2008>

CT accused of illegally purging voters <Oct 2008>

Another Audit – Another Diebold Error <Dec 2008>

Shelton Snafu <Dec 2008>

Eurekia! Or should we say just another bug <Dec 2008>

More errors in CT results <Dec 2008> As we predicted, even more <Dec 2008>

We will stop here. It seems the 2nd half of 2008 was a good year for uncovering problems, not so good for credibility.

Worse than Hurricane Sandy? As bad as climate denial?

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come <read>

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

We have been saying it over and over. In Connecticut, only the Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill gets it. The Senate and House have passed Internet voting twice, unanimously. Governor Malloy vetoed it the first time because it is risky and unconstitutional, nothing changed, yet he signed it the next time.

Its similar to ‘climate denial’, in that both ignore the risks, ignore the science. In Connecticut its thus proven that science denial is not just for Republicans – here its bipartisan and almost unanimous. We do not want to compare the two exactly. Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day.

The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about “email voting.”

Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says “The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required.”

But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong…

Speaking of around the world, Estonia is the current poster child for electronic voting. Estonians at home and around the world can vote online using a national ID card, a smart card. Clearly a system of digital national IDs has no chance of being adopted in the US, but for all its sophistication, the Estonian system is still vulnerable to tampering according to recent research…

In fact, it’s easy to find research by people who understand computer security pointing out the considerable risks from internet voting. There are other people who would like to increase turnout no matter what and who are happy to declare that all technical problems can be worked out by the experts. Well, the experts have spoken: Internet voting is not and cannot be made secure with current technology.

“It happens all the time.” All over the place (Part 1)

I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

A fellow integrity activist forward this a few days ago: It happens all the time: Interview with the consultant who discovered the Medford miscount <read>

Wow,” I replied. “If I’d discovered such a major error, I’d surely remember it!”

“Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time,” he said. “The details are always different, but there’s an endless number of ways the people who run our elections can botch them up. Every election has something.”

I glanced at my prepared questions and slid them into the wastebasket. Lordamighty, the guy who makes his living working with election records doesn’t even remember what I had considered a jaw-dropping discovery! Fortunately, I didn’t need to come up with new questions; Grebner was eager to talk.

“You want stories? I can tell you lots of stories.” he continued. “Everybody finds different ways not to follow the instructions.”

You read the post for a bunch of stories of election mess-ups recalled by one consultant. We just want to remind our readers and ourselves of some similar error discovered in Connecticut – what worries us are not those that are surfaced in time to correct results, or the ones surfaced eventually that did not change the results – its the ones never discovered or covered up. I wish we could say for sure “It doesn’t happen all the time.” We do not know for sure, its one of those unknowns, but from what we do know of those surfaced, our bet is that it is much more likely “that it happens frequently in Connecticut, say at least once or twice every statewide Election and Primary. More likely than not in our guesstimate”

Here are some of our posts of past errors surfaced in Connecticut and around the country, a selection from our over 900 posts:

Dan Rather Reports, was it really inadvertent hanging chads in FL 2000, a gross error, or intentional? <Aug 2007>

A New Britain Candidate’s company moving voting machines…not a great formula for confidence in our elections <Nov 2007>

A pretty obvious problem in accurate hand counting when no actual planning is involved <Nov 2007> Would we trust these people with petty cash? We trust them with our Democracy!

Half of Registrars Follow Last Minute Procedures <Jan 2008>

We won’t find many problems where there is a Blind Faith In our Scanners <Feb 2008>

Paper ballots useful, only if you don’t lose them <Jun 2008>

Gov loses election by fraud. Nice to know, but a lot better if the loser was not jailed <Apr 2008> He is still in jail. Pardon our upset and the Governor.

New Milford did not compute <Jun 2008>

It also helps confidence and integrity if the number of voters and votes is close (a Bridgeport preview of 2010?) <Jun 2008>

We will stop here, covering the 1st year of CTVotersCount. Perhaps we will continue this review soon.

Would this, could this happen in Connecticut…we hope so.

Contractor error causes wrong candidate to be declared winner, error discovered, results corrected!

Texas: Private election tabulating firm missed some votes at Ore City and New Diana <read>

Results overturned:

The original unofficial returns released Saturday night for the Ore City election showed Steve Heim leading incumbent Jeannette Orms by four votes, 48 -44, but the complete count showed they received 55 each, Ms. Weir said. Rather than having a recount or special election, either ofwhich would cost the city money, the candidates approved having the flip at a special City Council meeting set for 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, she said.

The delay also showed that Ore City voters renewed the one-fourth of one percent sales tax for street repairs by a vote of 79 to 26 in unofficial complete returns. The originally-announced count was 65 to 23

What happened?

The tie was discovered after Hart InterCivic, the firm tabulating the votes at the Upshur County Courthouse in Gilmer on Saturday night, originally failed to count the votes from one of the city’s electronic voting machines and some of the votes in the nearby New Diana bond election, Ms. Weir said.

She had discovered that the election returns she was given Saturday night did not match the total number of voters, and said she called the County Clerk’s Office on Monday to report it. A court order from 115th District Judge Lauren Parish was required to finish the count in the elections.

This is actually good news. The way we would expect the system to work!

While many would fault the system: For hiring a contractor in the first place. The contractor for placing a neophyte in charge. The neophyte for the error. But we ask for a pause to consider that the system actually worked the way we w0uld like it to:

A mistake or two were made. There are always mistakes. What is important is the system’s reaction to them.
The error was quickly discovered by officials
It was surfaced and corrected by officials

This is how the system SHOULD react. We should expect the system to find most errors and to surface them, not cover them up. We rare sure this could happen in Connecticut. But we have seen instances where it has not.

We know of a referendum where a human error caused a machine mis-count (That is often the case. No machine mal-function. No fraud. A human error causes the machine to provide an inaccurate count.) Citizens, not officials noticed a discrepancy in the number of ballots counted vs. the number of voters checked-in. Officials recounted. A bit worse than this case in Texas – since officials did not notice the error.
Same thing in 2012, an error was discovered by officials in a audit. To their credit they investigated and determined the cause. Good but best would have been if they had checked the check-in counts vs. ballots – fortunately it did not change the winners.
But then we have Bridgeport 2010 – the Governor’s race hung in the balance – everyone in the State kneWe w that. But the system did not work. There were many discrepancies between the check-in counts and ballots counted – if any checked, it was never surfaced by officials. The Secretary of the State was powerless to check or change the result. A newspaper gained access to the ballots and they were recounted with assistance of the Citizen Audit. Fortunately, the initial winner was correct – Fortunately, because the system has yet to officially recognize the correct results. Using that as an instructive example, the errors in Texas could happen in Connecticut, yet might not ever be corrected.

Estonia defends I-voting system, critics respond

Two days ago we posted the video and referenced the web by security experts showing the hacking of and their concerns with the Internet voting system used in national elections by Estonia. Yesterday there were further developments, responses, and rebuttals:

A story in the Guardian which was a summary of the information from the video and press conference <read>

The results showed that “although the Estonian system contains a number of security safeguards, these are insufficient to protect against the attacks we tried”, said Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, who was an e-voting election observer in Estonia in 2013.

Those attacks included taking over voters’ PCs to cast fake votes, and hacking into the vote-counting servers to install software that would alter the final count.

Estonian voters use a combination of smartcards, with built-in chips, and smartphone verification to confirm their votes. Even so, the researchers said it was vulnerable; and Kitcat warned that e-voting might be an area which could never be guaranteed safe from hacking.

A defense by Estonia’s National Electoral Committee was quickly releases<read>

The results showed that “although the Estonian system contains a number of security safeguards, these are insufficient to protect against the attacks we tried”, said Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, who was an e-voting election observer in Estonia in 2013.

Those attacks included taking over voters’ PCs to cast fake votes, and hacking into the vote-counting servers to install software that would alter the final count.

Estonian voters use a combination of smartcards, with built-in chips, and smartphone verification to confirm their votes. Even so, the researchers said it was vulnerable; and Kitcat warned that e-voting might be an area which could never be guaranteed safe from hacking…

And quickly followed by a rebuttal by the security experts <read>

Here we provide the full rebuttal, which repeats and responds to the issues raised by the Estonia Committee

The National Election Committee of Estonia have published a response to an article by The Guardian which reported the findings we have published on the Estonian e-voting system.

Here is our response to the claims of the Election Committee:

“The system has been used in six elections (municipal, national and European) without a single incident which have influenced the outcome.”

Our research argues that a well resourced attacker, such as a nation-state like Russia, would be able to undetectably steal votes in an election using the Estonian e-voting system. We maintain that the Election Committee cannot, by virtue of the failings in the systems used, irrefutably prove that the six elections thus far conducted were never influenced nor could they prove that for elections using the system in the future based on the current design.

This is one of the fundamental problems with Estonia’s design, which depends on complex software to report on votes stored invisibly within the `black boxes’ of servers. A key benefit of paper-based elections is that post-election audit and verification using proven techniques can provide a very high level of confidence in the integrity of the results.

“Estonia has conducted its online balloting in a unique spirit of transparency: every aspect of online balloting procedures is fully documented, these procedures are rigorously audited, and video documenting all conducted procedures is posted online.”

We have warmly welcomed these moves to transparency but they have not been sufficient. Video demonstrably does not cover all critical procedures conducted.
Even when a procedure has been taped, only portions of the activities were captured because there was one camera but two computer screens in use at the same time.

“In addition to opening every aspect of our balloting to observers, we have posted the source code of our voting software online.”

As confirmed at our meeting with Mr Martens and his colleagues from the Election Committee on 13th May 2014, the source code for both the voting clients and log server software has never been released. The committee never intend to release the code to those elements despite them being, by the Committee’s own admission, fundamental to its operations and security protections. Thus the claim that the source is posted online is a very partial claim. Furthermore source code availabilty, while an important basic requirement for transparency in such a system, is not in any way sufficient to ensure its security and accuracy.

“We believe that online balloting allows us to achieve a level of security greater than what is possible with paper ballots. “

The Election Committee have failed to demonstrate or prove this very significant claim. Our independent and detailed analysis of their system’s procedures, design and available source code suggests that the system provides security far below that of a well-run paper-based election.

“1. The researchers have not discovered any new attack vectors that had not already been accounted for in the design of our system as a whole.”

We disagree. The Committee are mis-portraying the client-side attack we have identified as using a ‘keylogger’ when this is not the case.

“2. It is not feasible to effectively conduct the described attacks to alter the results of the voting.”

We are surprised the Election Committee feel able to make such a strong claim given that in the same statement they also complain that they say, “At this point, we can give only preliminary answers to allegations published in the Guardian, as the researchers have not shared the full results of their work with us.” We don’t believe it is reasonable for the Committee to have such certainty in refuting our research when they acknowledge they don’t have the full details.

We regret that we have not been able to publish as much detail as we would have liked, as quickly as we would have liked. This has been a significant project which we have undertaken independently and without contact with any parties or groups in Estonia to ensure full independence. As soon as our research identified the seriousness of the vulnerabilities we prepared to explain the situation to Estonia as quickly as possible. To ensure our impartiality we wanted to make sure that nobody in Estonia had advance and unfair notice of our findings. We also felt ethically duty-bound to inform Estonia of the issues before the system was used again for the binding European Parliamentary elections later this month.

On Tuesday 13th May 2014 we privately met members of the Estonian Electronic Voting Committee to disclose technical details of our findings. We have been working hard to publish appropriate technical information in public.

“3. The electoral committee has numerous safeguards and failsafe mechanisms to detect attacks against the elections or manipulated results.”

It is unclear how meaningful or effective these claimed measures might be as the Election Committee will not disclose any details as to the type of safeguards in place. If the Committee was truly confident in the measures they would explain them to us and the citizens they are serving.

The attacks we describe are the result of architectural weaknesses in the Estonian system, and they could be virtually impossible to detect if carried out by a sophisticated state-level attacker.

“4. The website put up by the security researchers (estoniaevoting.org) contains numerous factual and detail errors, and does not provide technical details on the alleged vulnerabilities in our system.”

We are happy to correct any errors or misunderstandings but unfortunately the Election Committee have chosen not to identify what they might be referring to on our website. We remain open to hearing any corrections.

“Nevertheless, their last minute claims, published two days before the beginning of online balloting for elections to the European Parliament, give us no reason to suspend online balloting.”

We first published information late on Sunday 11th May 2014 and sent email notifications on Saturday 10th May 2014. Electronic voting in Estonia opens on Thursday 15th May 2014. Thus we dispute the claim by the Committee of ‘two days’ warning.

We look forward to the continuing debate around e-voting.
[Updated 14th May 2014 to clarify that we had privately met the Electronic Voting Committee to disclose technical information.]

Ethical Hackers 2, Internet Voting 0

Two days ago an international team of investigators demonstrated attacks and articulated weaknesses in the Estonian voting system used by 20% to 25% of voters in their national elections.

In the fall of 2010 Washington D.C. ran a brief open test of the Internet voting system it was proposing for use in that year’s November election. It was quickly hacked by a team of graduate students from the University of Michigan, lead by Professor Alex Halderman. <summary and video>

Two days ago an international team of investigators including Professor Halderman and graduate students demonstrated attacks and articulated weaknesses in the Estonian voting system used by 20% to 25% of voters in their national elections. Information is all available at https://estoniaevoting.org/

The video summary is a great way to understand what they did.

What we found alarmed us. There were staggering gaps in procedural and operational security, and the architecture of the system leaves it open to cyberattacks from foreign powers that could alter votes or leave election outcomes in dispute. We have confirmed these attacks in our lab — they are real threats. We are urgently recommending that Estonia discontinue use of the system.

They easily demonstrated attacks on the election servers and on personal computers used for voting. They found additional means of attack that they could have demonstrated. While they applauded Estonia’s efforts at transparency, they found it both insufficient and that it exposed server passwords on the Internet during the voting period.

Legislative Wrap-Up: One recommended bill passes – Electronic Check-in

It is often tricky to navigate the course of bills stuffed into other bills. At this point, as far as we can tell none of the bills we supported or opposed passed individually. We have scanned the 314 page ‘implementer bill’ checking each section and found only one bill that passed, one that we recommended – Electronic Check-in.

Every year many good bills passed by Committees never pass the General Assembly, the majority are never even brought up for debate. This year is an exception, only in that even less bills were debated than is normal for a ‘short session’. On the other hand we can usually celebrate several well-intended, but risky election bills that do not pass. Often risky bills are intentionally not debated, so that Senators and Representatives do not have to go on record for or against. Either way we celebrate when sanity prevails or insanity goes the way we find best for democracy.

It is often tricky to navigate the course of bills stuffed into other bills. At this point, as far as we can tell none of the bills we supported or opposed <here>, <here>, and <here> passed individually. We have scanned the 314 page ‘implementer bill‘ checking each section and found only one bill (Starting with Sec 23 on page 21) that passed, one that we recommended. As we said earlier:

Electronic Check-In

This bill allows for electronic check-in of voters. Once again this is a concept that we support, yet testified against the original which had many problems that went well beyond electronic check-in <testimony>

We are pleased to report that our objections have been addressed in a substitute bill approved by the Committee. So, we can fully support it going forward. <written testimony>

Common Sense: The good, bad, and ugly secret ballot

We often take for granted the idea of the secret ballot. One alternative to the secret vote is the public vote. Sometimes we would prefer a public vote, sometimes it is necessary,

Note: This is then ninth post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <next> <previous>

We often take for granted the idea of the secret ballot. We see elections in other countries with people putting a folded ballot into a ballot box. We go into a voting booth and want our privacy. Some want to conceal their vote from relatives, friends, employers, fellow union members, or church members. Yet there are alternatives and sometimes we want them, sometimes they are necessary.

Researching the history of the secret ballot, in The Hidden History of the Secret Ballot, a couple of years ago, I was surprised to learn:

It was implemented in the U.S. generally after the Civil War
It was implemented for partisan reasons – to suppress the black vote, under the assumption it would hamper the illiterate from voting.
There is also the tradition of the New England Town Meeting with voters standing or raising their hands to vote.

This year we have fought hard to protect the secret vote in Connecticut, yet not for partisan reasons. It has several benefits:

It keeps votes from being bought, sold, or intimidated – prior to the Civil War votes were regularly bought and voters under peer and other pressures to vote in particular ways.
It helps the losers accept the election result as the actual will of the people.

One alternative to the secret vote is the public vote. Sometimes we would prefer a public vote, sometimes it is necessary:

Our representatives in the Legislature, Congress, and most public bodies vote in public. Not so long ago, committees in Congress voted in secret. Members could tell both sides of the public and lobbyists that they agreed with them and it was ‘others’ who voted the wrong way, blocked, fixed, or promoted legislation. Without a public vote we would have no idea how our elected officials actually voted. No way to hold them individually to account.
Where votes are proportional, they need to be recorded and verified by ownership. Examples include stockholder votes or condo associations where some votes are based on ownership proportions.
A public vote is much easier to verify. After every close election we hear charges by the losing side or their supporters than a particular vote was incorrectly counted – by a candidate or party in Connecticut – or a government official unhappy with the declared winner in another country. Sometimes those charges may be true. In every case it reduces the trust in the process and in democracy.
On the other hand, a public vote can also lead to charges of payments or intimidation deciding the election.

The Connecticut Constitution gives us the right to the secret vote. In considering the Constitutional Amendment this year, we note that it represents a third alternative: A semi-secret vote, if anything a worse alternative than either a secret vote or a public vote with the disadvantages of each. It would allow a special, very vulnerable class of voters, deployed military, to waive their right that their vote be secret – a right we claim is not theirs, but every voters’ right that everyone’s vote be secret. It would have none of the advantages of a public vote, since nobody knows if the soldiers votes are known, only perhaps, a few insiders may know. There would be no public verification, even for the soldier.

One final example. Last year we had a petition circulated in our condo complex to ask the Board to rescind a vote to remove part of a border fence. It became very hot issue. Over two-thirds of the residents signed the petition. The contingent in favor of removing the fence charged that many people were intimidated in signing the petition, others mislead, and others did not know what they were signing. There probably were some cases where each of those concerns were justified. We have had similar changes in every public vote. There are two issues: 1) What would be the actual free choice of the majority? 2) How can the losers accept the result? The answer is to actually conduct a secret vote – yet it must be in a way that everyone trusts the process.