Military Justice, the NSA, and Independent Election Audits

Recently there were highly publicized hearings in Washington, D.C. on the subject of rape of sexual harassment in the U.S. Military and the military’s failure to make progress in reducing incidents and induce individuals to actually report crimes. One aspect of that is the fact that commanding officers have the responsibility/authority to reduce charges or even pardon the alleged or convicted perpetrators.

The senior officers were concerned for discipline if an independent authority were made responsible for cases involving rape or sexual harassment. They also said that if a soldier had a very good record of valor, that should be taken into account. Let me explain why an independent authority would be a good idea. The basic reason is that an authority that is not independent can often let self interest get in the way of justice.

I learned that lesson vividly when I was in the Army, serving in Korea during the Vietnam War. As Company Clerk I was seldom directly involved in military justice. A couple of times I helped draft some charges in minor instances and once helped transcribe interrogations as part of an investigation. But in many cases I was privy to the operation of the system on the surface and scuttlebutt behind the scenes. For the most part the system worked reasonably. Sometimes it resulted in trumped-up charges, while in other cases significant crimes or errors were completely overlooked. Why? One reason was that enlisted members often knew of errors and transgressions, including sexual exploits, of others including senior officers. Without any stated threats it seemed that nobody was interested in disciplining those that knew too much, only in helping them avoid problems. Perhaps some of those who avoid discipline today is less for valor than knowledge.

That is why we need independent post-election audits, not overseen by the registrars and Secretary of the State responsible for conducting elections. That is why we need transparency and public verification of elections. Everyone makes mistakes from time to time in executing their responsibilities. Most are innocuous, some result in vulnerabilities, and others are intentional transgressions or fraud – from stealing elections, impeding or assisting candidates in ballot access, to lucrative contracts, to cutting corners. In reality, most employees know of some of their bosses and colleagues skeletons and vice-verse, in the military, in business, and government. Whistle blowers can help but transparency and independence are much reliable.

Lets add the same applies for the NSA revelations of Edward Snowdon. We cannot be sure how extensive the problem of access to information actually is. But there are huge limits on the “trust me” model that says there are limits on how the information is used. Human nature tells that if someone can get at the data it will be used for whatever purpose the person desires, to whatever benefit that person desires, at least in some cases. Say what one will about the low level education or rank of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowdon, they had access to huge amounts of information – they and many others have that access. It does not take that much expertise if you are given the keys to the information vault – we and the Congress are in no position to know what the actual access is.

Sometimes what sounds convincing and workable, is not. We need independent military justice, independent transparent election verification, and independent transparent information security.

Gov Malloy signs bill similar to one he said was risky and unconstitutional last year

Last year in 2012, after several weeks of consideration, Governor Malloy vetoed H.B. 5556 writing in his veto message:

Upon close examination, however, I find that some portions of this bill likely violate the United States Constitution…I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems…First, as a matter of policy, I do not support any mechanism of voting that would require an individual to waive his or her constitutional rights in order to cast a timely, secret ballot, even if such waiver is voluntary. Second, as the Secretary of the State has pointed out, allowing an individual to email or fax an absentee ballot has not been proven to be secure. In 2011, the United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, issued a report on remote electronic voting. The report concluded that remote electronic voting is fraught with problems associated with software bugs and potential attacks through malicious software, difficulties with voter authentication, and lack of protocol for ballot accountability. None of these issues are addressed in this bill.

Last year in 2012, after several weeks of consideration, Governor Malloy vetoed H.B. 5556 (see Pages 51-55) writing in his veto message:

Upon close examination, however, I find that some portions of this bill likely violate the United States Constitution…I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems…
HB 5556 also contains a provision allowing deployed service members to return an absentee ballot by email or fax if the service member waives his or her constitutional right to a secret ballot. I agree with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill that this provision raises a number of serious concerns. First, as a matter of policy, I do not support any mechanism of voting that would require an individual to waive his or her constitutional rights in order to cast a timely, secret ballot, even if such waiver is voluntary. Second, as the Secretary of the State has pointed out, allowing an individual to email or fax an absentee ballot has not been proven to be secure. In 2011, the United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, issued a report on remote electronic voting. The report concluded that remote electronic voting is fraught with problems associated with software bugs and potential attacks through malicious software, difficulties with voter authentication, and lack of protocol for ballot accountability. None of these issues are addressed in this bill. To be clear, I am not opposed to the use of technology to make the voting process easier and more accessible to our citizens. However, I believe that these legitimate problems have to be carefully studied and considered before enacting such a provision.

Last year the fax and email voting provisions were a glaring ‘rat’ stuffed into an unrelated emergency bill. Some said the Governor was against the underlying bill, but wanted more cover for the veto. We hoped, that even if that were the case, the accurate analysis of that ‘rat’ would still prevail this year. Apparently not.

There is a distinction without a difference in this year’s bill, S.B. 647, with regard to the elements of the veto message. Last year’s bill specified email or fax return of ballots. This year’s bill requires the Secretary of the State and the CT Military Department to determine a safe method of Internet voting. But all known methods have the same security risks and they all violate the Connecticut and U.S. Constitutions.

We could argue that this year’s bill is worse in at least three regards, requiring two impossible feats by the Secretary of the State, although she will have the help of the CT Military Department the three feats. One which the U.S. Defense Department has found impossible:

Develop a secure electronic voting system which does not violate the Constitutions.
Have that system transmit results immediately to the appropriate town hall.
Develop , implement, and operate such a system at no cost to the state and towns.

Summary Of The Problems With The Bill

This bill is a threat to the security, accuracy, and secrecy of the votes of our military members and their dependents, and thus to the certified outcomes of our elections.
It is unconstitutional since it violates the Connecticut Constitution, which states: “The right of secret voting shall be preserved.”
It requires the Secretary of the State and the Connecticut Military Department to develop a system for secure and private online voting by October 1^st. A task that security experts, computer scientists, and experts at Homeland Security, and NIST (The National Institutes of Standards and Technology) believe is technically impossible.
It is further complicated by provisions for voting by deployed military dependents. It also is not restricted to deployed military, not even restricted to military actually on duty.
It sets a requirement for guaranteed receipt immediately in each voter’s municipality. This cannot be accomplished by either fax or email return.
While online voting through a web page might be developed to meet the guaranteed return requirement, it is also insecure, risks the secret vote, and would be very expensive.
All known methods of Internet voting would likely violate Connecticut’s Voter Verified Paper Records law established in 2005.

The Requirements of the Bill*
[Our comments in brackets]

On or before October 1, 2013, the Secretary of the State, in consultation with the Military Department, shall select a method for use in any election or primary held after September 1, 2014 [After the August 2014 Primary]
may be used by any elector or applicant for admission as an elector who is a member of the armed forces and expects to be living or traveling outside the several states of the United States and the District of Columbia before and on election day, [Any travel or living change would apply, duty related or not. A National Guard member not deployed but on vacation or a business trip could presumably vote under this act]
or such member’s spouse or dependent if living where such member is stationed, [It includes spouses and dependents but not those on vacation, at college, or on business trips]
gives due consideration to the interests of maintaining the security of such ballot and the privacy of information contained on such ballot, [due consideration’ should include assuring the Constitutional requirement of a secret vote be strictly maintained. It should include evaluation by computer security experts, and effective security testing]
and…ensures receipt, prior to the closing of the polls on the day of the election or primary, of such ballot by the municipality in which the member or member’s spouse or dependent is enrolled or has applied for admission as an elector, if such method is properly utilized by such member or such member’s spouse or dependent prior to the closing of the polls on the day of the election or primary. [Thus, it must be guaranteed to be received by some official, inbox, or machine in the appropriate municipality by 8:00pm EST, if voted by 8:00pm EST (i.e. this is immediately). And 8:00pm EST could be almost any hour of the 24 hours in a day, depending on the deployment, business, or vacation location(*)]
Not later than January 1, 2014, the Secretary of the State shall submit a report, in accordance with section 11-4a of the general statutes, to the joint standing committees of the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to elections and veterans’ and military affairs describing such method and any legislative changes necessary for its implementation. [But necessary legislation enacted or not, implementation is required by this bill]

* After the bill was passed by the CT House and Senate we sent a letter to Governor Malloy asking for a veto, reminding him of his veto last year. We made one mistake in that letter – using an older version of the bill, we misinterpreted the time requirement, stating that the bill did not require ‘immediate’ transmittal, but transmittal in four hours, by the close of election day, not the close of the polls. The actual bill creates a tougher, much more difficult barrier to implementation. This post updates portions of the details in that letter to conform to our corrected interpretation.

Analysis of the three known options: Email, Fax, and Online Voting

Email is (1) of course, not secure with the NSA listening in, interceptable by bad external actors, and directly accessible by insiders such as email vendors, insiders at data centers all along the way from personal computers or military computers, state computers, local town computers, and every stop along the way. (2) Email cannot meet the mandated fimmediate delivery requirement – often emails take much longer to traverse the Internet, presumably especially from remote locations the military must protect (3) Email frequently is not delivered at all. Several times a year we become aware of emails sent to us that never arrive. (4) Email schemes we are aware of, in other states, all require that an individual in an elections office or town hall receive and print the “ballot” for counting – a clear violation of the secret vote. (5) Email would have to cover personal computers for spouses and dependents, not military computers. And the military member might be on vacation or business in an area where no military computer access is available.
Fax, (1) like email is subject to interception in transmission (2) and like mail is subject to individuals in town hall or state government viewing the fax as it is received. (3) Subject to viewing and potential viewing by multiple members of the military as it is passed up the chain-of-command and to the Voting Assistance Officer, as articulated by Representative Alexander. (4) We cannot expect the chain-of-command to pass votes and wake Voting Assistance Officers to pass votes along at all hours and within four hours, nor to provide services to dependents – Note the deployed military chain-of-command also has a war to fight and enemies that might not avoid attacking during that critical four-hour period.
Online Voting – By online voting we mean some interactive means of voting on a web page or sending a .pdf ballot under the control of a webpage, not via email. (1) Online voting can be more secure that email or fax voting, yet is still not secure as confirmed by NIST and Homeland Security. And no online voting system has proven secure by sufficient evaluation and testing – in fact, the only system subject to some public testing quickly failed spectacularly and another was broken by an average citizen, while vendors refuse to open their systems to scrutiny. (2) Online voting may be difficult to administer and use, when the system is too hard to use vendors often blame the voters. (3) Online voting is expensive! Will the state and local officials making home-grown solutions, do better than highly funded vendors or turn to the vendors expensive, ineffective solutions? Such a system would have cost just Edmonton, Alberta $400,000. (4) Online systems entail emailing or paper mailing IDs to the voters – email can be compromised, and avoiding especially slow and unreliable outgoing mail to deployed military is a major motivation for this bill. (5) Once again, online voting cannot be restricted to military computers and serve dependents or serve soldiers away from home, not on Military business.

Another Miracle for the Secretary, Military Department, and Local Officials

The Legislature requires that the report, voting implemented, and run at no cost! It was passed with a note from the Office of Fiscal Analysis stating: “NO FISCAL IMPACT”. Note: A similar, yet less challenging task for the Secretary of the State to evaluate in another proposed bill this year, was estimated at $150,000. (See the Fiscal Note for S.B. 777).

Additional Documentation

Bruce McConnell Expert from the Department of Homeland Security
NPR: Online Voting ‘Premature,’ Warns Government Cybersecurity Expert
http://tinyurl.com/BMDHSNPR

Warnings about the dangers of Internet voting have been growing as the 2012 election nears, and an especially noteworthy one came Thursday from a top cybersecurity official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Bruce McConnell told a group of election officials, academics and advocacy groups meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., that he believes “it’s premature to deploy Internet voting in real elections at this time.”

McConnell said voting systems are vulnerable and, “when you connect them to the Internet, that vulnerability increases.” He called security around Internet voting “immature and underresourced.”

McConnell’s comments echo those of a number of computer scientists who say there’s no way to protect votes cast over the Internet from outside manipulation.

NIST: Internet Voting Not Yet Feasible http://tinyurl.com/NISTeVote

Internet voting is not yet feasible, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology have concluded. ”Malware on voters’ personal computers poses a serious threat that could compromise the secrecy or integrity of voters’ ballots,” said Belinda Collins, senior advisor for voting standards within NIST’s information technology laboratory, in an May 18 statement. ”And, the United States currently lacks an infrastructure for secure electronic voter authentication,” she added. Collins released the statement in response to an inquiry from Common Cause, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit active in campaign finance and election reform.

“This statement should serve as a blunt warning that we just aren’t ready yet and proves that we can’t trust the empty promises of ‘secure Internet voting’ from the for-profit vendors,” said Susannah Goodman, head of Common Cause’s Voting Integrity Project. ”We urge election officials and state and federal lawmakers to heed NIST’s warning and step back, support further research and STOP online voting programs until they can be made secure,” Goodman added…

Secretary of the State’s Symposium on Online Voting

An exceptional panel of experts on voting technology and the challenges of overseas voting. Credit is due to the panelists, the Secretary, and those who contributed behind the scenes in making this event possible. John Dankowski, of Connecticut Public Broadcasting did an exemplary job of moderating a very civil, thorough debate. Video: http://tinyurl.com/SOTSOVS

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s testimony on S.B. 283, 2/22/2013:

Now, Senate Bill 283 concerning — AN ACT CONCERNING ON-LINE VOTING FOR MILITARY PERSONNEL SERVING OUT OF STATE. Again, I think everyone in this room supports the ability of our brave men and women in uniform, especially those serving overseas in places like Afghanistan, to vote and have their ballot counted.

I still have two, major concerns with this bill that prevent me from supporting it at this time. I mean, first, it talks about on-line voting. There — you should be aware, there’s a lot of different versions of what that actually means. So I’m presuming here it would mean developing an on-line application where the Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Airwoman or Marine can, again, have a secure log-in and — and actually select their ballot choices on the computer through a web-based application, which is different than some other proposals that have been made with electronic transmission.

This system, again, would be very costly, very expensive; and I’m talking millions of dollars to develop. My main objection to this, besides the cost which is significant — and, again, I’d like to make sure we have a problem before we spend that kind of money — but my main objection is that we simply — I don’t think we have the technology to guarantee the security, integrity of that ballot and prevent tampering or hacking these votes that are submitted on-line. It’s the same objection we have to any ballot submitted on-line at this time.

We had a — we convened a public forum on this topic with foremost experts in this field, last year at CCSU. The forum was televised; we have it on our web site; you can see what was said by these people. We asked one of the top computer science experts in the country what it would take to make on-line voting secure, and he said, Let me put it this way, saying you can have secure on-line voting is like saying you can have safe smoking.

Many people say, well, we can do bank on — banking on-line; why can’t we vote on-line? Again, I posed that exact question to the experts at that forum, and the answer was that the banking industry builds into their revenue forecast a two-to-three percent loss of funds every year due to fraud and hacking through on-line banking. I don’t think we can afford to have that kind of leeway, shall we say, in our election system. I don’t think we can adopt that kind of a model. And I, certainly, would never be able to accept the loss of a number of votes due to fraudulent hacking, just in the name of convenience. So I just don’t think we’re ready to go there.

Who knows; in the future, this may change. But I would just need to be assured before we came up with any system like that for any voter, that no one could tamper with the ballots. And I think right now, as you all know, if you have an e-mail system, yourself, I’m sure every one of us have had our e-mails hacked in some way or another or gotten or not received mail because it went into the wrong folder or whatever. It would be very difficult to design that kind of a system, so I’d be able to — I’d be — want to be able to look every Connecticut military person and their family in the eye and tell them that the vote is secure. And I don’t feel I can do that at this time.

From Representative Alexander’s Statement in Veterans Affairs Committee Hearing 2/19/2013:

REP. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’ll be real quick. I appreciate the Clerk’s position in trying to make it easier to have servicemen and women vote any where deployed or — or in a unit wherever, and have a Voting Assistance Officer. I really took that to heart myself. But did you ever think of possible fraud when it comes to allowing military men and women to fax in their ballot, where, you know, as someone who — who was an Adjutant and ran an S1 in a battalion, the — the way usually squadrons and battalions work, you know, you’d have a Lance Corporal, a 19 or 20-year-old, fine, outstanding young man or woman who wanted to vote fill out the ballot, and then bring that piece of paper to the S1 office to be faxed. He or she doesn’t fax it themselves. Another clerk does.

ANTOINETTE SPINELLI: Oh, is that right?

REP. ALEXANDER: That — that would probably be the very common way this is implemented in most units, at the unit level, where you have a 19-year-old individual, a 20-year-old person, a Lance Corporal wants to vote — good on him for wanting to do that — brings that to their Platoon Sergeant up the chain. That Platoon Sergeant maybe, or a Squad Leader, facilitates the Lance Corporal to go to the S1 office. He submits that, and that will get faxed with a whole stack of other faxes that are going to go out in the office. And as someone that was an Adjutant, I was running an office like this day in and day out. And as an Adjutant, I would worry, as being sort of the person who is managing this type of office, that I would have a fellow maybe Lance Corporal faxing this information, where you might have someone that, being 19 or 20 years old, didn’t realize that, oh, changing it from, you know, Senator McCain, to President Obama is not a serious felony offense, which it is, and because of that chain of custody in — in reality, and — and the way maybe the military works in — in professional office spaces, I would just worry that during this handover to the fax, that you’re opening the door for potential fraud.

But the individual’s not, themselves, faxing it. Most likely, and most of the times in squadrons, you’re going to have a third party doing it, usually a 20, 21, 22-year-old Corporal or Lance Corporal doing that. And as an Adjutant running an S1, I’d be very concerned about this, and — and monitoring this very carefully, but — but that is something that would really concern me, and — and trouble me. Have the clerks thought of it from — from that angle at all? Where you could have potential voter fraud coming out of this?

A Positive Note: There is much we can do to improve elections

Looking over our recent posts, they are focused on warnings about risky ideas proposed in the Connecticut Legislature and risks to our elections nationwide from cyber attack and actual absentee ballot fraud, often from insiders. We want to remind readers of the many positive improvements that can be made in elections in Connecticut and nationwide.

As the General Assembly was heading for the season of considering bills by the Senate and House we made our recommendations on a raft of election bills, several of which we recommend be passed:

Committee Approves 39 Bills In Last Meeting

Bills Approved Earlier by the GAE Committe

Then responding to President Obama’s suggestion that “we can fix that” we suggested several suggestions for national voting integrity, Connecticut voting integrity, and for improving elections beyond integrity:

Basic and Bold Steps To Improve Connecticut Elections

Basic and Bold Steps To Improve U.S. Elections

Bold Steps Beyond Integrity To Improve U.S. Elections

With other advocates, we helped create and signed on to two letters to the President taking him up on his challenge.

Mr. President: Improve voting, shorten lines with optical scanning. Avoid the risks of Internet Voting

We recognize that things move slowly in Washington and in Connecticut. But they move, not always in the best direction. So we will be back encouraging the General Assembly in the direction of positive reform next year. And in the meantime watching and reporting on election integrity here in Connecticut.

If elections can be protected at no cost, what about the electric grid?

Tongue in cheek, we note that this may be a major redundancy in effort and expense by utility regulators, since the Legislature has mandated that the Secretary of the State and the Military Department come up with a plan to provide secure electronic voting to the military by October 1st. The Secretary is also mandated in that bill to not only come up with the plan but to implement it without any expenditure!

When we see everybody from the CIA to Lockheed Martin and the Bank of America being hacked, along with concerns for our grid from our utility regulators, it’s pure hubris to think that our elections could not be compromised.

An article in the Courant last week highlights the risks to our electric grid and the plans slowly moving forward to enhance its security: State Plan For Cyber Threats To Electric Grid Taking Shape – Utilities Cooperating With Regulators On Plan <read>

Dan Esty, the state’s energy commissioner, sat across a conference table from Art House, Connecticut’s head utility regulator, in the bunker of the State Armory in Hartford last July for a drill that simulated a statewide response to a major hurricane.

Esty, with other state officials and utility executives nearby, asked whether House remembered exercises like these from his days doing intelligence work for the federal government.

“There are two kinds of drills I’ve done in Washington,” House said. There’s the predictable type of emergency, like hurricanes and ice storms, that the state needs to be ready for. And then there’s the unpredictable.

“I worry more about unforeseen type, like a cyber attack,” he said.

That conversation, the two officials said, seeded a quickening and serious discussion of the state’s liability to hackers that would aim to control or damage critical facilities, like the electric grid. House, chairman of the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, is drafting a plan with utilities on how to prepare for, address and respond to cyber attacks.

“Cyber probes are a fact of life,” House said in an interview this week. “Connecticut needs to look at it in terms of defense. Are we doing everything we can?”…

Federal security officials warn that electronic attacks on these critical facilities could create “the potential for large-scale power outages or man-made environmental disasters” and cause “physical damage, loss of life and other cascading effects that could disrupt services,” the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy inspector general, Charles Edwards, said in a congressional testimony last month…

In Connecticut, House plans for a rough draft of the state’s cybersecurity plan to be finished by Labor Day, with a final version completed by January 2014. It will examine how state utilities could build up their electronic defenses against cyber attacks as well as how private and municipal emergency managers should be prepared in the event of such an attack.

A major piece of the state’s cybersecurity efforts will lean on the federal intelligence and security resources that track and investigate cyber attacks, said House, adding that his previous work for the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will aid in the state’s efforts. “Cyber defense is not a matter of geography. It’s a matter of national defense. It goes across state line and across industries.”

Joel Gordes, president of West Hartford energy consultancy Environmental Energy Solutions, has long called for attention to the cyber security issue. He cites testimonies attached to names like Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Former CIA Director Leon Panetta that raised concerns about the issue, concluding that it’s about time Connecticut takes a clear-eyed look at cyber security.

“When we see everybody from the CIA to Lockheed Martin and the Bank of America being hacked, it’s pure hubris to think that our electric grid could not be compromised,” he said…

Data sharing was one of inspector general Edwards’ concerns. He said that the Department of Homeland Security’s cyber security office needs to consolidate its information sharing efforts with other agencies and the private sector to “ensure that these stakeholders are provided with potential [industrial control systems] threats.”

A group of energy companies and public and private groups expressed concerns about the timeliness of federal assessments on cyber threats, specifically noting that they feel that “a great deal of time might elapse until stakeholders were made aware of the same of similar incident that could affect their systems.”

For the utilities “A major piece of the state’s cybersecurity efforts will lean on the federal intelligence and security resources that track and investigate cyber attacks”, however, we doubt that support would do much good since experts at Homeland Security and NIST claim that Internet voting cannot be made save.

For more details on the feats to be accomplished by the Secretary of the State and Military department, see our recent post: Governor Malloy: Please Veto Internet Voting Bill

To paraphrase Mr.House,

When we see everybody from the CIA to Lockheed Martin and the Bank of America being hacked, along with concerns for our grid from our utility regulators, it’s pure hubris to think that our elections could not be compromised.

Governor Malloy: Please Veto Internet Voting BIll

Earlier this week we sent a letter to Governor Malloy requesting that he veto Senate Bill 647, now Public Act 13-185. It is now up to the Governor to protect voting integrity, uphold the Connecticut Constitution, and remain steadfast to the principles articulated to his veto message last year for a similar bill.

Here is the summary from the letter articulating why a veto is appropriate:

This bill is a threat to the security, accuracy, and secrecy of the votes of our military members and their dependents, and thus to the certified outcomes of our elections.
It is unconstitutional since it violates the Connecticut Constitution, which states: “The right of secret voting shall be preserved.”
It requires the Secretary of the State and the Connecticut Military Department to develop a system for secure and private online voting by October 1^st. A task that security experts, computer scientists, and experts at Homeland Security, and NIST (The National Institutes of Standards and Technology) believe is technically impossible.
It is further complicated by provisions for voting by deployed military dependents. It also is not restricted to deployed military, not even restricted to military actually on duty.
It sets a requirement for guaranteed receipt within four hours in each voter’s municipality. This cannot be accomplished by either fax or email return.
While online voting through a web page might be developed to meet the guaranteed return requirement, it is also insecure, risks the secret vote, and would be very expensive.
All known methods of Internet voting would likely violate Connecticut’s Voter Verified Paper Records law established in 2005.

U.S. says it will not export tools to interfere in politics

Even the cicadas must know by now that the U.S. is engaged in massive collection of data on phone calls, emails, web access, and banking transactions. Those who a week ago were criticized as ‘conspiracy theorists’ for claiming the Government had such massive secret spying programs will now be criticized as ‘naive’ for not knowing this was going on all along. What more can we say? What can we add that has relevance to elections and election integrity?

Today, there are two articles, an op-ed, and an engaging cartoon in the New York Times:

U.S. Helps Allies Trying To Battle Iranian Hackers <read>
How The U.S. Delved Deeper Via Technology <read>
Your Smartphone is Watching You <read>
The Strip: Secret Agent Smartphone <read>

Restating the Obvious

Internet voting is unsafe and not guaranteed to be secret. Our voting is most vulnerable to insiders.

Iranian, Chinese, or Al Qaeda hackers attempting to compromize a U.S. election have a more difficult job changing votes.
Foreign and outsider efforts are likely to be detected if they change votes or disrupt a Federal election – detected and reversed or mitigated.
I really don’t care if foreign governments or terrorists know who I voted for, not sure they care, few would be intimidated by their potential to find out.
But insiders are are another matter. They have an easier job. Their legitimate access and sanctioned unconstitutional or illegal access is less likely to be detected or prosecuted.

We can only suggest that anyone who trusts politicians and other insiders to never use every tool available, or trusts that Internet voting is somehow immune from compromise has a serious case of cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, when it comes to Internet voting that virus has infected our entire state Legislature. While we are pleased that Connecticut’s entire Congressional Delegation have expressed concerns with the NSA spying, we doubt that they are convinced that Internet voting is unsafe.

Thanks For Small Assurances

In the 1st article, we learn:

Officials pledge that computer hardware and software eventually provided to allied nations will be evaluated to avoid providing the type of defensive systems that also can be used for domestic surveillance or to punish political opponents.

We find nothing particularly surprising in this statement. Yet, for ‘naive’ readers, let me regain the skeptical mantle of ‘conspiracy theorist’ by pointing out:

This assurance is presumably given by some of those same “officials” who until a few days ago claimed that the U.S. does not have these secret spying programs, that now claim that they are not a big deal, yet hid their existence and still hide the questionable legal justifications.
I’d love to see how systems that allow foreign surveillance can be released that cannot be used for domestic surveillance. For the technically challenged, consider that Saudi Arabia could ‘rendition’ its domestic spying or political manipulation to Japan or South Korea in return for a bit of oil.
Are we saving the software that allows domestic surveillance and punishing opponents for our own domestic use?
Since it is not mentioned, are we exporting software that could manipulate election results?
Would a country that would work to overthrow foreign leaders through a coup, and openly work to change election results, hesitate to punish foreign politicians, or manipulate foreign election results? (Hint e.g.: Google “Chavez Coup CIA”)
Would insiders from top leaders, to individuals with the keys to the kingdom, hesitate to manipulate U.S. elections?

Once again, those who would call this farfetched have little knowledge of U.S. History and the fallibility of human nature. Our Democracy was designed to defeat human nature with checks and balances, with the bill of rights, including transparency, individual privacy, and a subsidized free press.

What Can They Know And How Can They Use It?

The op-ed provides a chilling summary, including:

It is at least possible to participate in online culture while limiting this horizontal, peer – to – peer exposure. But it is practically impossible to protect your privacy vertically — from the service providers and social media networks and now security agencies that have access to your every click and text and e – mail. Even the powerful can’t cover their tracks, as David Petraeus discovered. In the surveillance state, everybody know s you’re a dog.

And every looming technological breakthrough, from Google Glass to driverless cars, promises to make our every move and download a little easier to track. Already, Silicon Valley big shots tend to talk about privacy in roughly the same paternalist language favored by government spokesmen. “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,” Google’s Eric Schmidt told an interviewer in 2009, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

The problem is that we have only one ma jor point of reference when we debate what these trends might mean: the 20th – century totalitarian police state, whose every intrusion on privacy was in the service of tyrannical one – party rule. That model is useful for teasing out how authoritarian regimes will try to harness the Internet’s surveillance capabilities, but America isn’t about to turn into East Germany with Facebook pages.

For us, the age of surveillance is more likely to drift toward what Alexis de Tocqueville described as “soft despotism” o r what the Forbes columnist James Poulos has dubbed “the pink police state.” Our government will enjoy extraordinary, potentially tyrannical powers, but most citizens will be monitored without feeling persecuted or coerced.

So instead of a climate of pervasive fear, there will be a chilling effect at the margins of political discourse, mostly affecting groups and opinions considered disreputable already. Instead of a top – down program of political repression, there will be a more haphazard pattern of politically motivated, Big Data – enabled abuses. (Think of the recent I.R.S. scandals, but with damaging personal information being leaked instead of donor lists.) In this atmosphere, radicalism and protest will seem riskier..

The second article some chilling details:

Accompanying that explosive growth has been rapid progress in the ability to sift through the information. When separate streams of data are integrated into large databases — matching, for example, time and location data from cellphones with credit card purchases or E – ZPass use — intelligence analysts are given a mosaic of a person’s life that would never be available from simply listening to their conversations. Just four data points about the location and time of a mobile phone call, a study published in Nature found, make it possible to identify the caller 95 percent of the time…

Industry experts say that intelligence and law enforcement agencies also use a new technology, known as trilaterization, that allows tracking of an individual’s location, moment to moment. The data, obtained from cellphone towers, can track the altitude of a person, down to the specific floor in a building. There is even software that exploits the cellphone data seeking to predict a person’s most likely route. “It is extreme Big Brother,” said Alex Fielding, an expert in networking and data centers…

So,

They can find every candidate we have contributed to. Every email we have sent. Pretty much every event, protest, or meeting we have attended.
Every ‘conspiracy theory’ we have believed or investigated along with ‘naive’ views we have held, every contradictory statement, and link us to others with all sorts of views we may or may not agree with.
Every donation, medical condition, every mistake, or misstatement we have ever made.
Bad enough that they will know every Facebook post and every (sort of) public statement, but also anything written or said candidly, casually, or unthinkingly.
Are we sure that potential employers or potential friends or allies will not find this information or be given that information to harm us or them?

Since it is safe to send cash in the mail, why shouldn’t we vote by mail?

Many people despite the evidence keep insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way, unless it was absolutely necessary?

Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’

We are always asked “Since we can bank safely by Internet, why can’t we vote by Internet”. The answer is that banking is safe only because banks save more in operations than the billions they lose each year in online banking. And they are two different applications, there is no receipt for your vote – we are even talking about voting by email – most people otherwise know that email is not safe.

Many people, despite the evidence keep, insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way unless it was absolutely necessary?

Today an update on the Miami-Dade apparent absentee vote fraud from Brad Friedman: Partial Answers Emerge in FL’s Fraudulent Absentee Ballot Request Cyberhack Mysteries (Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’…) <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.

Late last year, a grand jury and federal prosecutors [PDF] were unable to identify the person or persons behind the failed attempts, as well as why they were actually made, since the ballots, had the fraudulent requests not been flagged and prevented, were set to go to the actual addresses of real voters whose online identities had been fraudulently used to make the requests online.

One of the reasons that prosecutors were originally unable to identify those behind the attempted July 2012 cyberhack was because the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used for most of the requests were masked by proxy IP addresses from overseas. 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.

Armed with the new information offered by the Miami-Dade IP addresses, it now appears that prosecutors are closing in on suspects believed to be behind at least one of those sets of cyberhacks — the ones involving the Democratic U.S. House primary. Over the weekend the investigation led to the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Democratic Congressman who eventually won the primary in question, as well as last November’s general election…

The Congressman says his Chief of Staff took responsibility for the plot after the homes of two other staffers — Communications Director Giancarlo Sopo and Campaign Manager John Estes — were raided by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office in search of computers and other electronic devices thought to have been used in the phantom ballot requests. None of the three men, Chief of Staff Garcia, Sopo or Estes, have offered public comment yet.

Miami Herald reports that “466 of 472 phantom requests in Congressional District 26 targeted Democrats. In House District 103, 864 of 871 requests targeted Republicans, as did 1,184 of 1,191 requests in House District 112.”…

So, it is Democrats for sure, but also likely Republicans. And what about the possible insider collusion or coverup by the elections office?

The “winning” Candidate provides about as lame an excuse or questionable explanation as could possibly be imagined:

At a press conference on Saturday, an “angry” Rep. Garcia described the plot as “ill-conceived”, but added: “I think it was a well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout.”

Of course, many will likely claim despite the evidence that “Miami-Dade is so far away noting like this would happen in New England and especially here in the Constitution State, maybe just in places like Florida and California.

Political Disclosure: Sausage making is clearer and cleaner

This year the disclosure bill was back with full public hearings and some of the objections mitigated, heading for a legitimate debate and vote. Yet, it has been marred again with at least three additional concepts added. At minimum these concepts/bills deserve individual debate and up and down votes. The only concept that should be adopted is a good disclosure bill.

Last year the political disclosure bill was marred by the last minute inclusion of email and fax voting and provisions crafted behind closed doors in an “emergency bill”. Drawing the Governor’s veto based partially on the risks of the Internet and the unconstitutionality of an individual waiving the secret vote <read> As we pointed out earlier this week, this year there is an even stranger Internet voting bill.

This year the disclosure bill was back with full public hearings and some of the objections mitigated, heading for a legitimate debate and vote <read>

But once again that bill is apparently being stuffed with other, unrelated, and additional controversial items. A grab-bag of items only insider politicians would love, CTNewsJunkie: Despite Latest Evidence of Corruption, Lawmakers Consider Giving More Money to Parties, PACs <read>

Behind closed-doors Tuesday, lawmakers were crafting legislation that would help them funnel more money to political party committees, legislative leadership committees, and political action committees.

According to Rep. Ed Jutila, who co-chairs the General Administration and Elections Committee, the “essence” of the bill is an attempt to address the Citizens’ United decision that allowed unlimited amounts of money to be spent by Super PACs either for or against candidates — even if those candidates participated in the public campaign finance system. Close to $700,000 in independent expenditures from Super PACs was spent in the 2012 election cycle.

“It’s one way to try and even the playing field,” Jutila said Tuesday.

Jutila said the amount of money individuals can give to the candidates participating in the Citizens’ Election Program will not change under the omnibus campaign finance bill, but the amount of money individuals can give to the two major parties, leadership PACs, and town committees will increase under the proposal.

The proposal comes just one week after a federal corruption trial demonstrated exactly how much sway money has over Connecticut politics and policymaking. During that trial, a cooperating witness detailed how he was able to use the donations to former House Speaker Chris Donovan’s failed congressional campaign and three Republican leadership PACs controlled by House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero in an effort to kill legislation detrimental to the interests of smoke shop owners…

The bill is an aggregation of a number of the concepts from four pieces of legislation introduced earlier this year by the General Administration and Elections Committee.

One of those bills would increase the amount of money an individual could donate to a State Central Committee from $5,000 to $10,000. The amount a town committee or leadership committee could receive from an individual would go from $1,000 to $2,000, and all other PAC limits would increase from $750 to $1,000.

It would also allow State Central Committees for the Democratic and Republican Parties to sell ad books as another way to raise money. The ability to sell advertising space in booklets handed out at public events was removed from the parties in 2005 when the Citizens’ Election Program was created.

Another bill, which has been lumped into the campaign finance package, would lift a ban on donations from state contractors and would allow them to give up to $1,000 to their local town committee. The 2005 law prohibited anyone doing business with the state from donating money.

In addition, the bill would include Sen. President Donald Williams’ ban on cross-endorsements by third parties. It would also prohibit the use of certain words such as “Independent” from the names of political parties in the state.

So a bill designed to counter some of the effects Citizens United will actually increase the money flowing from state contractors into elections. Worse it would end cross-endorsements and make the name of an existing political party illegal. The cross-endorsement bill was the subject of almost uniform opposing testimony and statements from Committee members who then voted for that bill.

At minimum these concepts/bills deserve individual debate and up and down votes. The only concept that should be adopted is a good disclosure bill.

CT Senate’s Magical Mystery Military Voting Tour

In summary the bill requires the Secretary of the State, Military Department, and Local Officials to defy science and economics, performing at least two miracles!

Just in time for Memorial Day, the Connecticut Senate has passed unanimously, an amended version of S.B. 647, An Act Concerning Voting By Members Of The Military Serving Overseas – To permit voters who are members of the armed forces and serving overseas to return ballots by electronic means

In summary the bill requires the Secretary of the State, Military Department, and Local Officials to defy science and economics, performing at least two miracles!

The previous version directed that the Secretary and the Military department develop a method for safe electronic voting and produce a report outlining needed changes in the law by next January. This bill requires them to develop that method by October 1st this year and that it be implemented in 2014, apparently regardless of their success in developing such a method and their success in passing such legislation.

The Requirements of the Bill
[Our comments in brackets]

On or before October 1, 2013, the Secretary of the State, in consultation with the Military Department, shall select a method for use in any election or primary held after September 1, 2014 [After the August 2014 Primary]
may be used by any elector or applicant for ad ission as an elector who is a member of the armed forces and expects to be living or traveling outside the several states of the United States and the District of Columbia before and on election day, [So any travel or living change applies, duty related or not, so, a National Guard member not deployed but on vacation or a business trip could presumably vote under this act]
or such member’s spouse or dependent if living where such member is stationed, [It includes spouses and dependents but not those on vacation, at college, or on business trips]
due consideration to the interests of maintaining the security of such ballot and the privacy of information contained on such ballot, [We assume ‘due consideration’ should include assuring the Constitutional requirement of a secret vote be strictly maintained]
and…ensures receipt, prior to the closing of the polls on the day of the election or primary, of such ballot by the municipality in which the member or member’s spouse or dependent is enrolled or has applied for admission as an elector, if such method is properly utilized by such member or such member’s spouse or dependent prior to the closing of the polls on the day of the election or primary. [So, within 4 hours of voting by 8:00pm EST, it must be guaranteed to be received by some official, inbox, or machine in the appropriate municipality. 8:00pm EST could be almost any hour of the 24 hours in a day, depending on the deployment, business, or vacation location]
Not later than January 1, 2014, the Secretary of the State shall submit a report, in accordance with section 11-4a of the general statutes, to the joint standing committees of the General Assembly having cognizance of matters relating to elections and veterans’ and military affairs describing such method and any legislative changes necessary for its implementation.

Lets look at the three known options: Email, Fax, and Online Voting

Email is (1) of course, not secure with the NSA listening in, interceptable by bad external actors, and directly accessible by insiders such as email vendors, insiders at data centers all along the way from personal computers or military computers, state computers, local town computers, and every stop along the way. (2) Email cannot meet the mandated four hour delivery requirement – often emails take much longer to traverse the Internet, presumably especially from remote locations the military must protect (3) Email frequently is not delivered at all. Several times a year I become aware of emails sent to me that never arrived. (4) Email schemes we have seen all require that an individual along the way receive and print the “ballot” for counting – a clear violation of the secret vote. (5) Email would have to cover personal computers for spouses and dependents, not military computers. And the military member might be on vacation or business in an area where no military computer access is available.
Fax, (1) like email is subject to interception in transmission (2) and like mail is subject to an individuals in town hall or state government viewing the fax as it is received. (3) subject to viewing and potential viewing by multiple members of the military as it is passed up the chain-of-command and to the Voting Assistance Officer as articulated by Rep Alexander. (4) We cannot expect the chain-of-command to pass votes and wake Voting Assistance Officers to pass votes along at all hours and within four hours, nor to provide services to dependents – did we mention they also have a war to fight and enemies that might not avoid attacks during that critical four hour period.
Online Voting – By online voting we mean some interactive means of voting on a web page or sending a .pdf ballot under the control of a webpage, not via email. (1) Online voting can be more secure that email or fax voting, yet is still not secure as confirmed by NIST and Homeland Security. And no online voting system has proven secure by sufficient evaluation and testing – in fact, the only system subject to some public testing failed spectacularly and another was broken by an average citizen, while vendors refuse to open their systems to scrutiny. (2) Online voting may be difficult to administer and use, when the system is too hard to use they blame the voters. (3) Online voting is expensive! Will the state and local officials do better than highly funded vendors or turn to their ineffective solutions? It would have cost just Edmonton Alberta $400,000. (4) Online systems entail emailing or paper mailing IDs to the voters – email can be compromised, and avoiding especially outgoing mail is the whole motivation for this bill. Which brings us to an additional miracle. (5) Once again, it cannot be restricted to military computers.

Another Miracle for the Secretary, Military Department, and Local Officials

The Legislature requires that the the report, voting implemented, and run at no cost! It was passed with a note from the Office of Fiscal Analysis: “NO FISCAL IMPACT”. Or as articulated in more detailed note for the committee approved bill:

State Impact: None

Municipal Impact: None

Explanation

The bill, which requires the Secretary of the State to develop and report on a method for returning the ballot of a military member stationed overseas, has no fiscal impact.

The Out Years

State Impact: None

Municipal Impact: None

We doubt anything close to claiming some level of security or privacy can be done at no cost. An online system would be in the hundreds of thousands, a credible study and report on fax and email would require extensive expertise and time.

An interesting comparison is with a somewhat similar but much easier and feasible requirement in another bill passed by the same committee this year, and also analyses with a note from the Office Fiscal Analysis. The bill allows municipalities to use, at their option, electronic check-in. It requires, probably in response to our testimony, that the Secretary provide a list of acceptable electronic check-in equipment, much less a task:

State Impact:

Agency Affected Fund-Effect FY 14 $ FY 15 $

Secretary of the State GF – Cost 150,000 10,000

Municipal Impact:

Municipalities Effect FY 14 $ FY 15 $

Various Municipalities Potential Cost Less than 20,000 Less than 20,000

Explanation

The bill would allow registrars of voters to use electronic systems that are approved by the Secretary of the State (SOTS) to check in voters. The bill would also require SOTS to create and maintain a list of electronic devices that municipalities may use for electronic checking in of voters.

The SOTS is anticipated to incur a cost of $150,000 in FY 14 to review, approve, and create a list of approved electronic devices for use in the voter check in process. The SOTS is anticipated to incur on-going costs of $10,000 per year beginning in FY 15 to maintain and update the list of approved electronic devices. Given the technical nature of device approval it is expected that the costs identified for SOTS will support a contracted consultant.

To the extent that municipalities decide to utilize electronic resources to check in voters, there is a potential cost to municipalities arising from their purchase of such devices. The cost potentially incurred by municipalities is dependent upon the type of equipment utilized and number of polling stations in a municipality. Such costs are not anticipated to exceed $20,000 for municipalities that decide to utilize this type of equipment.

The Out Years

The annualized ongoing fiscal impact for SOTS identified above would continue into the future subject to inflation. Municipal costs in the out years would be dependent upon the lifecycle of the equipment utilized.

What is Secretary Merrill to Do?
(If this bill passes the House and is not vetoed again by the Governor)

We presume the Secretary is expected to obey the law, and that Secretary Merrill maintains her past opposition to electronic voting as expressed in her testimony on this bill and on S.B 283, stated by experts in her Online Voting Symposium, and confirmed by the Governor’s veto last year.

Normally, we presume Connecticut has a government of men (and women), of a Constitution, and not of miracles! We do not believe the Constitution requires that any official perform miracles. If it did then it would be easy to command the Governor to solve all our budget, tax, and funding problems in a similar manner.

While her response is up to the Secretary, we would suggest she insist that the report include:

Even experts at Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology agree with the vast majority of computer scientists and security experts that the Internet is not safe and cannot be made safe for voting.
That while we have a dedicated state Military Department and legendary state and local Information Technology Departments, it is unlikely that they can defy science to do better than the U.S. Military, and large financial institutions which are regularly hacked.
That she and the Military Department cannot meet the requirements of the law that secrecy and security be protected.
That any requirements not include directives to the U.S. Military, which has shown a lack of enthusiasm and compliance with directives regarding military voting from the U.S. Congress.
At minimum the Constitution would need to be amended to eliminate or adjust the requirement of a secret vote, and this law amended to eliminate the requirement for ‘due consideration’ of security and privacy.
That the Office of Fiscal Analysis incorrectly stated the costs of study, implementation, and operation.
Any system should be subject to extensive independent, contracted security evaluation and testing along with well notified extensive public testing, and public comment, to guarantee its security and secrecy. Such testing should include random unannounced testing using typical equipment in the typical environments to be used by the military members and their dependents. Our voters and our military are worth this and deserve it!

Rational reasons against the National Popular Vote

Jason Paul joins a group of distinguished, prominent, and thoughtful democrats who have warned of the risks of the Compact: Former Wesleyan Professor and U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, Former State University Chancellor William Cibes, and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

CTNewsJunkie hosted dueling op-eds for and against the National Popular Vote Compact: Procedural Problems Plague National Popular Vote Compact Bill <Jason Paul against> <Andrea Levien against>

Jason echoes some of the same concerns we have expressed in our earlier op-ed at CTNewsJunkie and our testimony to the General Assembly.

Unfortunately, too much of the discussion and debate has revolved around the normative question: Would it be better to have a national popular vote or an Electoral College process? This is an interesting discussion and I am honestly quite torn on the question. From a normative perspective, I would probably pick the National Popular Vote.

Too many people are answering the normative question, however, and then ending the inquiry. When it comes to this bill that simply cannot be where the discussion stops. The practicalities and the details of running elections matter immensely. Shortcuts are problematic.

Under the current system, the Presidential election is decided based on the outcomes in 56 districts (50 states, plus D.C. and five congressional districts in two states that give a vote to the winner of their Congressional districts). These are all separate election contests, administered by 51 different state bodies (the 50 states, plus D.C.] Each of these 51 bodies has different rules, different guidelines, and different standards. This is fine because each body’s rules only affect the result in its own state or district. Federal laws cover the most egregious potential voting abuses; beyond that, states administer their own elections. That would change if we adopted a National Popular Vote Compact. Instead of giving them control of their own territory, these 51 different bodies would have a degree of control over the entire election system. This poses serious problems.

Here’s one example. A national recount could be a nightmare under any system. Consider that for the 2012 election, revised vote totals were still coming in all the way into February 2013, with new votes in the tens of thousands and the margin of victory changing by the thousands. The margins were large enough that each state was able to declare a winner in time for the electoral college. The late tallies didn’t matter to the outcome — this time. Under the National Popular Vote Compact, the problems would be even worse, and potentially unresolvable.

Currently, in case of a very close election in a state, there is a well-established procedure for conducting a recount according to that state’s rules. Under the compact, because there is no national system, there is no mechanism for conducting a nationwide recount. What is worse, there is no way to force states to participate in a national recount. Because the compact need only be among states with a total of more than 270 electoral votes and not all states, there will be some states that will quite rightfully take the position that they are still in the old system of 51 differing bodies. They will feel no obligation to even consider the impact of the new system. The compact-participating states won’t be able to do anything about it. States can’t force each other to do things. This would make it incredibly difficult to even have a nationwide recount.

If we are going to go from one system (sum of state outcomes) to another, (national popular vote), we need to have an understanding of how the procedural problems will be worked out. Otherwise, it is easy to conceive of a nearly endless number of problems, which would mean lots of trips to court. I would contend it is bad for elections to be decided in court. It might be possible to work out these problems under a compact system, but right now, I do not think they are even reasonably addressed. Until it is possible to answer basic questions — such as how to conduct a national recount — the idea is too flawed to implement. We should not chose the normative value over practical considerations, because it puts the credibility of our electoral system at risk. The proponents need to work out the bugs.

Paul provides a very articulate description of the problems. In the 1st comment on the op-ed we have extended his concerns with a summary our op-ed and testimony.

Andrea Levien is a “Researh Fellow at FairVote”, one of the well-financed national groups working toward the National Popular Vote agreement. Her arguments seem to have more to do with money than voting integrity. While these are among many considerations, to us, they do not stack up against the added risks of a national popular vote without a uniform trusted national election system.

I have lived and voted in three cities since I turned 18: New Haven, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

While I have been extremely proud to call each of these unique cities my home, they all have one big disadvantage for a young voter who cares about presidential politics: none of these cities are located in swing states, the only states that ever receive any attention in presidential elections.

Barack Obama and Mitt Romney spent 99.6 percent of their television advertising money in the general election targeting voters in just 10 states, including the usual focus on Ohio and Florida. Neither candidate held a single campaign event outside those 10 states after the party conventions. The 2008 election wasn’t much different, with only a few more states receiving any attention at all.

I am not so sure that any Connecticut voter would be more informed by a candidate rally or visit to Bridgeport than a similar rally reported from Philadelphia. It would be great for the media moguls out of state who would get the bulk of profits from advertising in the Courant or on Comcast.

Levien also points to a study by a Ph.D. candidate which demonstrates that Presidential administrations distribute grants based on political considerations <read>. We certainly do not dispute that. Yet, the national popular vote would be a deck chair move in return for a ticket on the Titanic. It would change the distribution criteria based on alternative political considerations from swing states to areas that would be considered ripe for raising or decreasing votes for and against candidates.

Agency Affected	Fund-Effect	FY 14 $	FY 15 $
Secretary of the State	GF – Cost	150,000	10,000

Municipalities	Effect	FY 14 $	FY 15 $
Various Municipalities	Potential Cost	Less than 20,000	Less than 20,000