CTVotersCount.org

Grand Theft Absentee

“Of the three methods of voting, the one that has always been the most vulnerable, the one where we know fraud has occurred historically … is in the absentee-ballot process,” Fernández Rundle told The Miami Herald on Thursday, referring also to voting early and on Election Day. Absentee voting, she added, “happens in the shadows. It happens in the dark. It’s the least monitored.”

The Miami Herald: Miami-Dade grand jury: Absentee voting fraud clouds confidence in tight election results <read>

A Miami-Dade voter drops her absentee ballot at the ballot box on Tuesday morning, November 6, 2012, at Miami-Dade Elections Department. Florida and Miami-Dade County should tighten rules for voting by mail and make it easier to vote early in order to prevent fraud and plug “gaping holes” in absentee voting, a Miami-Dade grand jury has concluded. To prove their point, grand jurors made an astounding revelation: A county software vendor discovered that a clandestine, untraceable computer program submitted more than 2,500 fraudulent, “phantom” requests for voters who had not applied for absentee ballots in the August primary. The grand jury issued 23 recommendations, from reinstating a state requirement that someone witness an absentee voter sign a ballot — thereby making it easier for law enforcement to investigate potential fraud…

“Of the three methods of voting, the one that has always been the most vulnerable, the one where we know fraud has occurred historically … is in the absentee-ballot process,” Fernández Rundle told The Miami Herald on Thursday, referring also to voting early and on Election Day. Absentee voting, she added, “happens in the shadows. It happens in the dark. It’s the least monitored.”

We have often discussed the risks of absentee voting and warned of the increased risks of unlimited absentee voting, including all-mail voting. It is refreshing to see a grand jury recognizing the risks. We also note a bit of bad news/good news here – the bad news of vote stealing via “clandestine, untraceable computer program” and the good news, in this case, of its detection by insiders – yet, perhaps less blatant or more clever theft would or has gone unnoticed, or worse actually perpetrated by insiders.

As we have said before, our concerns are mainly with the risks, yet beyond that unlimited absentee voting does not increase turn-out, and disenfranchises voters unbeknownst to them, all the added risks are thus in the name of convenience.

“Perfect Citizen” demonstrates risk of Internet for voting

Another government testament to the risks we face with dependency on the Internet for vital systems. We hope in this particular case that the effort is actually increasing the safety of systems we all depend upon.

CNet: Revealed: NSA targeting domestic computer systems in secret test <read>

Newly released files show a secret National Security Agency program is targeting the computerized systems that control utilities to discover security vulnerabilities, which can be used to defend the United States or disrupt the infrastructure of other nations.

The NSA’s so-called Perfect Citizen program conducts “vulnerability exploration and research” against the computerized controllers that control “large-scale” utilities including power grids and natural gas pipelines, the documents show. The program is scheduled to continue through at least September 2014.

The Perfect Citizen files obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and provided to CNET shed more light on how the agency aims to defend — and attack — embedded controllers. The NSA is reported to have developed Stuxnet, which President Obama secretly ordered to be used against Iran’s nuclear program, with the help of Israel.

U.S. officials have warned for years, privately and publicly, about the vulnerability of the electrical grid to cyberattacks. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee in February: “I know what we [the U.S.] can do and therefore I am extraordinarily concerned about the cyber capabilities of other nations.” If a nation gave such software to a fringe group, Dempsey said, “the next thing you know could be into our electrical grid.”

As we have pointed out before, the Internet is vulnerable, states, counties, cities have nowhere near the capabilities of large utilities and the Federal government to protect their networks. Unlike, online banking which is subject to frequent successful attacks, Internet voting attack is harder to detect and correct. Here a story of a voting related Internet breakdown in a state system that was detected, yet authorities remain unable to determine a cause.

For those who are legitimately skeptical of Government security, we point out that Stuxnet was likely developed by our Government and is itself subject to undetected theft, as are any reports of infrastructure vulnerability documented by this “Perfect” program.

Did new elected Representative committ multiple voter fraud?

Elected initially to the Legislature last month, Christina Ayala, has been arrested for a hit-and-run shortly after the election, arrested for a domestic dispute, and then ordered to move to the district before being sworn in, is no under investigation for illegally voting and registering in that district. Also under investigation is her mother, the Registrar of Voters.

CT Post: Elections commission investigates Christina Ayala and her mom <read>

According to the registrar’s office, Christina lives at 604 Noble Ave. in the 128th District. Because of her address, she was allowed to vote there in the November 2011 general election and in this year’s Aug. 14 primary, the city’s special September election for school board, and in November’s general election.
However, when Ayala and her boyfriend were arrested for a domestic squabble two weeks ago, the police report stated they lived at 49 Hillside Ave in the 129th district. And when Ayala filed for a protective order, she told the court she lived at Hillside.
The same Hillside address was listed on a police report when Ayala was arrested the night after winning her August primary and charged with evading responsibility, failure to obey a traffic signal and failure to renew her vehicle’s registration.

Risk Limiting Audits: Why and How

A recent, paper by the Risk Limiting Audit Working Group, endorsed by The American Statistical Association, articulates and outlines various types of post-election audits, their requirements, and relative advantages.

We cannot help but think that our Coalition audit reports contributed to statements in the section entitled: Trustworthy audits: the virtue lies in the details:

A recent, paper by the Risk Limiting Audit Working Group, endorsed by The American Statistical Association, articulates and outlines various types of post-election audits, their requirements, and relative advantages. <read>

The paper compares and describes three types of risk limiting audits. One table summarizes and simplifies the amount of work required for each type of audit:

We say the table simplifies the comparison, because there are a lot of details behind accomplishing a ballot level comparison audit, which would be the obvious choice all other things being equal.

CTVotersCount strongly supports advances in electronic auditing which provide the opportunity for states to exploit the advantages of ballot level auditing, perhaps combined with our current selection of 10% of districts statewide after each election, that would likely provide Connecticut with a much more comprehensive, accurate audit than the one we have today…provided it is enacted and accomplished to meet appropriate standards of ballot security and public verifiability.

We will have more to say on this in future posts. The technology is maturing, with several states providing public tests of machine auditing. We can expect bills in the CT Legislature this year authorizing electronic auditing. We will work to see that they are sufficient to provide public confidence.

In addition to discussing the statistical requirements for risk limiting audits, the paper describes additional requirements and issues in areas such as ballot security, results reporting, public confidence, and vote confidentiality. Connecticut has a long way to go in several of these areas. We cannot help but think that our Coalition audit reports contributed to the following statements, in the section entitled Trustworthy audits: the virtue lies in the details:

No matter how attractive the inherent properties of an audit trail [such as paper ballots], it is only as reliable as it is secure. Past elections have been tainted by allegations – and even strong evidence – of ballot box “stuffing” after the election; anecdotes abound of ballots gone lost. Auditing or recounting an untrustworthy audit trail yields untrustworthy results. Moreover, it is highly desirable not only to assert that the audit trail has been secured, but to be able to demonstrate that it has. Some analysts speak of a compliance audit to verify that the preconditions for a risk-limiting audit have been satisfied…

Risk-limiting audits are easy to define, and in broad outline they are fairly easy to implement: Draw a sample, look at the ballots in the sample, do some math to see if more counting is required. However, some implementation details need careful attention.

Public observation and transparency

Risk-limiting audits provide one means for citizens to monitor how well election systems are functioning. Audits provide valuable information to election officials, but crucially, they inform the public and provide evidence as to whether reported election outcomes are correct. The Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits state the case…

These principles impose important responsibilities both on election officials and on public observers. When all parties take these responsibilities seriously – but not grimly – audit observation builds positive relationships between election officials and the citizens they serve.

Good audits are confidence-building exercises; not-so-good audits are more like sullen skirmishes. In the past, some audit observers and would-be observers have reported events like these: never receiving advance notice of audits despite statutory or regulatory requirements; being confined in one corner of a room with no meaningful opportunity to observe; receiving no information about the procedures to be used; having no opportunity to ask basic questions; witnessing unambiguous violations of written procedures but being unable to persuade officials to refer to, or conform with, those procedures. Contrariwise, many other observers have reported interacting cordially with election officials and workers, in some cases politely making suggestions that were immediately adopted, and generally forming a favorable opinion of the audit and other election processes. Clear written procedures, made available in advance of the audit, help observers and other interested citizens understand how the audit evinces the integrity of the results…

Some states provide for partisan observers in certain election audit processes. We recommend that audits be explicitly open to non-partisan observers as well. All interested individuals and groups should be permitted to observe the audit process to the greatest possible extent. Effective audit observation can increase public confidence in the audit and in the integrity of elections, by making the process more transparent and providing an independent verification of the results.

Observability includes not only direct public observation of audits, but clear reporting of the audit findings. Election officials should systematically report audit results, identifying any differences between the audit and voting system counts, and explaining them if possible. These reports need not be long in order to be informative and reassuring.31 The audit results should be forwarded to state election officials, who in turn should compile a summary statewide report – perhaps within 30 days of completion of the audit. Among other things, this report should integrate results from local officials in a consistent, comprehensible, searchable format. Such a report may enable state officials to detect patterns of error they otherwise may have missed, or simply to document how well voting systems performed.

Connecticut law provides for public notification, and today, procedures provide for sufficient public observation. Yet, the public notification provisions are inadequate. The open observation process has led to documentation that the process is profoundly inadequate to provide confidence in our elections and election officials. Observations have also demonstrated the far from adequate ballot security as well. Official reporting of election results and audit results falls short of requirements and rigor

We reiterate that we favor automated auditing for Connecticut. Yet we continue to caution that our support is conditional on the details of any proposed solution and law. We must always “be careful what we ask for”, recognizing the devil is in the details.

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

We have signed a second letter to President Obama addressing and recommending solutions to the concerns he shares, with the problems this past November.

We agree wholeheartedly with your call to eliminate long lines in voting. Citizens should not have to choose between waiting for hours to exercise their right to vote or being disenfranchised. However, our nation was lucky. The Presidential election results could have been much closer, and there could have been disputes about who rightfully won. Since many swing states still use computerized directrecording electronic voting machines (DREs – typically touch screens) that produce results that cannot be independently verified, recounts would have been impossible. Well-designed voting systems allow verification of the results without reliance on software.

The use of paper ballots counted by optical scan machines has proven to be effective at avoiding the problems that resulted in long lines in many states. If a voter is required to mark his or her entire ballot on a DRE, and if there is an insufficient number of DREs, long lines such as those that occurred in the recent election are inevitable…

Internet voting (the return of voted ballots over the Internet including fax and e-mail) has been proposed as a solution to long lines at the polls. But since it is vulnerable to attacks from anyone/anywhere, Internet voting must not be allowed at this time. In addition to security and accuracy risks, Internet voting threatens the secret ballot, which is key to avoiding voter coercion and vote buying and selling. The secret ballot was originally instituted not as a right that an individual can waive, but rather as an obligation of the government to protect all citizens from coercion and intimidation as they cast their votes. Because of multiple intrinsic risks, Internet voting should be forbidden unless and until proposed systems have undergone extensive, independent public review and open testing to ensure that they have solved the fundamental problems of security, privacy, authentication, and verification.

For more, we suggest reading Doug Chapin’s excellent summary You’ve Got Mail, Mr. President: Two New Letters Weigh In on Voting Technology Issues <read>

Others Weigh In On Election Reforms

Last week Secretary of the State Denise Merrill weighed in at her press conference on, as the Courant headlines, how “Reforms Could Boost Voter Participation”. Also weighing in was Melissa J. Russell, President of ROVAC (Registrars Of Voters Association, Connecticut).

Last week Secretary of the State Denise Merrill weighed in at her press conference on as the Courant headlines, how Reforms Could Boost Voter Participation <read> <press release>.

Merrill noted that four of the states with better voter turnout than Connecticut last month — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Maine — all allow voters to register on election day. Beginning in Nov., 2013, Connecticut voters will be able to do so as well.

Early voting, voting by mail and no-excuse absentee voting would also boost turnout as well as reducing wait times at polling places on election day, Merrill said.

By our references Connecticut ranked 16th and 17th in voter turnout in 2008 and 2010. This year we ranked 7th – much more than respectable in gains and in absolute rank, especially considering Hurricane Sandy! In fact, Connecticut ranked ahead of many states with early voting and long lines such as Ohio and Florida, not to mention 7 of eleven states with Election Day Registration. We reiterate several themes we have discussed previously:

According to statistical analysis and a summary by Doug Chapin at the Secretary’s Election Performance Task Force, which she attended: Early voting, by mail or in-person tends to decrease turnout. In other states, Election Day Registration has increased turnout and mitigated the negative effects of early voting on turnout.
Early voting in person can increase convenience, but would be costly to implement, especailly in Connecticut with our independent 169 town voting system. Seven days of early voting would increase election day costs for such towns by close to a factor of 7.
Early voting in person can have high integrity, if we are willing to pay for extra security when elections are closed each day.
There are better solutions than early voting for long lines on election day. Our scanners can handle thousands of ballots, yet problems this year were caused by a shortage of checkin lines. Each additional line requires one extra official and perhaps a few more privacy booths – much more economical than in person early voting. And it works! Early voting is no panacea – see FL and OH – and during the last two elections storms hit during the likely early voting period, lessening its probable value.
Increase mail in voting increases the risk of documented fraud. Mail-in or absentee voting seems to be the source of the easiest and most frequent fraud in U.S. Elections.
We support Election Day Registration, but point out that the method chosen for Connecticut is not like the successful methods of other states which increased turnout, and is likely to lead to long lines.

Also weighing in was Melissa J. Russell, President of ROVAC (Registrars Of Voters Association, Connecticut), where she “looks forward to working closely with the Board and the Committee chairs to improve the professionalization of ROVAC” Op-Ed: Registrars are continually working to improve elections system <read>

We would hope that the ROVAC President, Board, and Committee chairs will not only strive to become more professional, but also to work cooperatively with the Secretary of the State, her office, legislatures, and advocates in improving our election system.

The word “archaic” has been bandied about, along with censure of the long lines voters faced in West Hartford, Hartford and Manchester. In many of these stories, the registrars of voters across the state are taking the brunt of this criticism.

It is unfortunate that the “other side” of the story is not being told. In the vast majority of polling places in the vast majority of towns, the election went smoothly, with fast moving lines, cheerful service to the voters on the part of the poll workers, and swift reporting of results at the end of the night. Large cities such as Bridgeport, Stamford and Norwalk handled the large turnout of voters with no major problems.

Here we agree that by and large most voters, in most towns, voters were well served. Registrars deserve credit along with courteous dedicated poll workers and the Secretary of the State. We can be proud of selecting economical, paper based optical scanners for our elections, and the push from the Secretary to purchase enough ballots to avoid another Bridgeport. Perhaps the shortage of checkin lines and enough staffing for Election Day Registration will be solved to avoid repeated problems of polling place lines, and now problems similar to those experienced for Presidential balloting.

We applaud ROVAC’s endorsement of electronic checkin also championed by many beyond ROVAC. We wonder if they will endorse and lobby their municipalities to pay for it along with the associated internet connectivity required to reach its full potential. We have often heard registrars complain of tight and reduced budges, unable to cover small obviously needed supplies, such as laptops to calculate audit results, a far cry from the requirements of automated checkin.

It is also unfortunate that the “archaic” system is being blamed on the registrars and their poll workers. The Registrars of Voters Association of Connecticut (ROVAC) educates registrars all over the state, both at statewide conferences held twice a year, and in county meetings held three to four times a year. Consider some of the improvements that registrars are currently using and developing in their towns: the use of Skype to communicate with various polling places in the cities, leaving phone lines open for the public; the use and development of electronic check-in books, where a voter is checked in not on a paper list of many pages, but with several clicks of a mouse on a laptop, or the scanning of a barcode next to a voter’s name; and a post-election audit system that uses high-speed scanners rather than teams of people hand inspecting and counting ballots.

ROVAC also supports the use of technology that is already available for our current tabulator system to report results: using either the ports on the back of our tabulators to send results to the secretary of the state’s office instantly, or placing the memory cards that each tabulator houses into an “ender machine” that will read the information on the card and send it electronically to the secretary of the state.

Such use of this technology, which is used in other states without problems, would speed up the reporting of the election results tremendously, while virtually eliminating the mistakes that come from bleary-eyed election workers attempting to read and accurately record numbers by hand onto a Head Moderator’s Return, which then gets faxed to the secretary of the state’s office.

Here we have a couple problems. First, opening the ports is one of the more dangerous options for our election equipment, endorsed by UConn and eliminated by the previous Secretary of the State. Moving the card to an ender machine, would still expose the card and data to security risks. And this will not do the job. Those bleary eyed workers still need to submit the additional information by hand, such as hand counted regular ballots, write-in votes, and various special ballots that cannot be scanned.

We do support auditing by appropriate independent machines, with proven processes that are combined with transparent procedures that can verify the results to the public. We are concerned that instead, we will end up replacing one black-box with another black-box system that is insufficient, and completely voids the potential value at considerable cost. We would hope that ROVAC, the Secretary of the State, CTVotersCount, and other advocates get the opportunity to work together to propose legislation, test, and implement a system that provides better audits, while finding ways to pay for the valuable provided.

Mr. President: You recognize the problems. Please take the lead in fixing them.

Last week a group of 29 “computer scientists, lawyers, activists, academics and election officials working together to educate the public and seek the elimination of unverifiable voting systems” sent a letter to President Obama, acknowledging his recognition of problems in the recent election, and recommending solutions he could champion to address those problems.

The letter outlines the election verification problems with the current system, proposes Federal reforms/remedies basic to fixing the problems, and warns against Internet voting.

We signed the letter, completely agreeing with the diagnosis and the proposals.

There is more that could and should be done, more problems to address, yet, taken together, these proposals would be a significant improvement, and represent a significant accomplishment for Congress and the President.

Dear President Obama:

Congratulations on your re-election. We write to you as the nation’s leading experts in election verification regarding a topic central to the integrity of our representative democracy: the reliability, security and auditability of the voting technology used to administer our federal elections.

We applaud your Election Night recognition of the need to fix the problem of voters waiting in long lines for hours to cast a ballot. Citizens should not have to choose between carrying out their family and work obligations and exercising their fundamental voting rights.

Unequal access to voting rights in the U.S. is a longstanding problem that has marred too many elections. We deeply appreciate your commitment to address this fundamental flaw of our electoral process. For some voters, unequal access results from the lack of adequate time, opportunity and resources to vote. For others, it means having their ballots subjected to an insecure, unverifiable voting system.

We are computer scientists, lawyers, activists, academics and election officials working together to educate the public and seek the elimination of unverifiable voting systems. We have focused on a state-by-state basis with considerable success to implement improved voting systems and procedures. Now leadership is required at the federal level to achieve equal protection for all voters.

Although many states have eliminated paperless electronic voting machines (also known as direct record electronic, or DRE machines), a substantial number of jurisdictions continue to use them. Approximately 25 percent of voters nationwide must still cast ballots on this type of equipment, which has been widely discredited because of fundamental usability, security, accessibility, reliability and auditability issues.

It is not possible to do audits or recounts of elections conducted with paperless, electronic voting machines because they provide no independent record of how voters intended to vote. Such unverifiable systems do not belong in U.S. elections. By contrast, paper-based optical scan voting systems are far preferable. In addition to producing fast, accurate results, optical scan systems also:

are much more “low tech” than DREs: they don’t limit voting in polling places to the number of machines available or require electricity, equipment or a even a voting booth, thus reducing the potential for bottlenecks and long wait times;

create a durable paper record that the voter has directly marked;

require much less technical expertise on the part of pollworkers; and

most importantly, produce a vote count that can be meaningfully recounted and publicly and independently audited and verified.

We urge you to take steps at the federal level to eliminate the use of nonverifiable voting equipment in the U.S. as rapidly as possible. We suggest these steps include:

Reviving and re-invigorating the U.S. Election Assistance Commission with new leadership to provide better support and accountability to voters nationwide.

Supporting changes in federal law to require post-election audits of federal election results so that the hardware and software used to count ballots is routinely and independently verified everywhere. Currently, only half of the states conduct any kind of post-election audit of vote counts (meaning hand counts of voted ballots compared against corresponding electronic tallies in order to verify accuracy).

Strengthening the federal voting system testing program and expanding the role of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to provide permanent, ongoing technical support and standards development for voting systems.

Providing federal funding to states in order to retire aging and unverifiable equipment and replace it with transparent, resilient systems. Replacement systems should be resilient enough to ensure that even if software or hardware fails, it will still be available to voters, avoiding long lines – and it will be possible to determine the will of the electorate without re-running the election.

Opposing the suggestion by some that Internet voting is the “solution” to voting technology issues and overburdened polling locations. Internet voting is vulnerable to remote attacks by cyber criminals or rival nations from anywhere in the world, not auditable, and not ready for use in U.S. elections.

An Internet voting system would, like paperless DREs, also produce results that cannot be verified. In addition, the fundamental computer security problem of securely casting votes online while retaining strong ballot secrecy remains unsolved. Banks and merchants that allow online transactions accept a certain degree of fraud as part of their business expense, but we cannot accept a similar degree of fraud in the voting process. The Internet can help with voter registration, ballot delivery and voter education but it should not be used at this time to cast votes.

While insufficient voting equipment was not the only cause for long wait times, it no doubt contributed to the problems we saw on Election Day. The need to improve our voting systems is urgent. Much of the voting equipment in use today is nearing the end of its life cycle, making equipment attrition and obsolescence a serious and growing threat. Letter to President Obama regarding election reform and verification

Security problems of electronic voting systems, including both vulnerabilities specific to certain machines and vulnerabilities intrinsic to computer technology, are well established. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s recent warning of the country’s vulnerability to catastrophic cyber attacks against critical infrastructure applies at least as much to voting technology as to any other type of computer system.

We are ready to assist you however we can. If you choose to appoint a commission to review the election process we strongly urge you to include members who have technical, administrative, and policy expertise in election technology, cyber security and verification issues. We would be pleased to suggest such persons and to work with you and your staff to further the goals outlined above.

We wish you success and look forward to working with you toward our shared goal of an electoral process that inspires participation and merits the highest confidence of the American people.

Respectfully,

Kim Alexander, President & Founder, California Voter Foundation, kimalex@calvoter.org

David L Dill, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University

Ronald L. Rivest, Viterbi Professor of Computer Science, MIT

Peter McLennon, Researcher and Policy Analyst, Cook County Clerk’s Office, IL

Robert Adams, former Deputy County Clerk, Bernalillo County, NM & Member of the Election Verification Network Coordinating Committee

Peter G. Neumann, Principal Scientist, SRI International Computer Science Lab & Moderator of the Association for Computer Machinery’s “Risks” Forum

David Jefferson, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, CA

David Wagner, Professor of Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley

Joseph Lorenzo Hall, Senior Staff Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology, Washington, DC

Philip B. Stark, Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley

Pamela Smith, President, Verified Voting

Gregory Miller, J.D., Chief Development Officer, Open Source Digital Voting Foundation / TrustTheVote Project, Palo Alto, CA

Walter Mebane, Professor of Political Science and Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan

Earl Katz, President, Public Interest Pictures, Los Angeles, CA

Penny M. Venetis, Clinical Professor of Law, Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise Scholar & Co- Director, Constitutional Litigation Clinic, Rutgers School of Law, Newark, NJ

Candice Hoke, Election Law Professor, Cleveland State University

Jeremy Epstein, Senior Computer Scientist, SRI International

Holly Jacobson, Director, Voter Action, Seattle, WA

Paul Stokes, United Voters of New Mexico

Luther Weeks, Executive Director, CTVotersCount, Glastonbury, CT

Dan McCrea, President and Co-Founder, Florida Voters Foundation

Irene Etkin Goldman, Board Chair, Coalition for Peace Action, Princeton, NJ

John McCarthy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Computer Scientist (retired), Berkeley, CA

Michelle Mulder, Consultant to Verified Voting Foundation, Princeton, NJ

Barbara Simons, Research Staff Member, IBM Research (retired) & Member, EAC Board of Advisors

Noel Howard Runyan, President, Personal Data Systems, Campbell, CA

Collin Lynch, Ph.D. Candidate, Intelligent Systems Program, University of Pittsburgh

Harvie Branscomb, Trustee, Colorado Voter Group

Sean Flaherty, Co-Chair, Iowans for Voting Integrity

* Institutional affiliations are listed for identification purposes only; please contact Kim Alexander, kimalex@calvoter.org or 916-441-2494 for additional contact information.

Bold Steps Beyond Integrity To Improve U.S. Elections

We complete our post-election series with some steps to improve elections beyond election administration and integrity: Campaign finance reform, media reform, and restoring the rule of law.

We complete our post-election series with some steps to improve elections beyond election administration and integrity, to complement our previous posts on steps for Connecticut, and steps for the U.S.

Campaign Finance Reform. Campaign finance has long been a detriment to the fairness of U.S. Elections, along with its close relative, high finance, high access lobbying. We have just seen the tip of the iceberg brought on by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. Worse is yet to come, with candidate and corporate learning from each election cycle, with ever deeper penetration into state and local elections.

The current environment has a least three bad effects: Well financed candidates have a huge edge, almost a monopoly on getting on the ballot; they campaign and vote in alignment with their wealthy and corporate backers, rather then the majority of their constituents; officials spend an inappropriate amount of time on financing their campaigns, to the detriment of their duties.

The complete solution would seem to require a Constitutional Amendment not only addressing citizenship of Corporations, but also explicitly authorizing the regulation and limitation of campaign finance. Yet, there is more that needs to be done, and can be done now: The FEC should enforce the law prohibiting coordinating with campaigns; Congress should enact stronger disclosure provisions; the IRS should tax religious organizations that cross the line in endorsing candidates; Congress can enact public financing with laws such as the Fair Elections Now Act.

Media Reform. We find this the most important basic and bold requirement for many reforms. Perhaps if we had effective media reform, the people would have the information to elect better candidates despite financing. Perhaps elected officials would act more in the public interest when the public and officials had access to more robust and complete information on domestic issues and international affairs. Media reform would likely lead to election reform in all dimensions.

Media reform is a tough nut to crack, when the media establishment is itself part of the corporate establishment benefiting form the current system as do all corporate interests, plus benefiting directly from campaign advertising and corporate advertising. But media need not be limited to the media establishment, it does not have to be limited and choked by the corporate media model. For what is possible, what our Founders intended, and how to restore the media necessary for democracy, we suggest John Nichols’ book, The Death and Life of American Journalism.

Restore the Rule of Law. When laws are not enforced, selectively, or unequally enforced we lose the basis of democracy. We have mentioned campaign finance laws for the separation of “independent” groups from campaigns, and taxing the mixing of religion and endorsement, yet election laws need to be enforced. If laws are too complex to follow then we risk selective prosecution. With financial interests bankrolling campaigns is it any wonder that Wall Street has not been prosecuted? It should be. Laws should be enforced, especially those that are blatantly ignored, with disastrous results. We reference Glen Greenwald’s With Liberty and Justice for Some.

PS: Just yesterday, Greenwald provided another example of selective prosecution, which also impacts media freedom.

Aug 2012 Primary Audit Observation Report

Coalition finds 31% of Official Audit Reports Lack Critical Data

Municipalities failed to report data critical to audit evaluation. Increasing numbers choose paper only elections, avoiding scanners and audits.

The report highlighted concerns with two increasing trends:

An increase in missing and incomplete official reports. There are 16 of 52 (31%) reports with errors making it impossible to determine if machines had functioned properly. What basis is there to trust audits, with this significant level of error in reporting?
Up up to 19 towns avoided optical scanners and audits by conducting paper only elections. Such voting is not audited, not transparent, and error prone based on past observations of hand counts.

We conclude, based on our observations and analysis of official audit reports submitted to the Secretary of the State, that the August post-election audits still do not inspire confidence.
<Full Report (.pdf)> <Press Release> <Review detail data and municipal reports >

Coalition finds 31% of Official Audit Reports Lack Critical Data

Municipalities failed to report data critical to audit evaluation. Increasing numbers choose paper only elections, avoiding scanners and audits.

The report highlighted concerns with two increasing trends:

An increase in missing and incomplete official reports. There are 16 of 52 (31%) reports with errors making it impossible to determine if machines had functioned properly. What basis is there to trust audits, with this significant level of error in reporting?
Up up to 19 towns avoided optical scanners and audits by conducting paper only elections. Such voting is not audited, not transparent, and error prone based on past observations of hand counts.

Lack of integrity in the random district selection and race selection processes.
Lack of consistency, reliability, and accuracy in the conduct of the audit.
Weaknesses in the ballot chain-of-custody.
Missing or incomplete reports, lacking critical information.

Cheryl Dunson, League of Women Voters of Connecticut’s President, stated, “When officials submit reports missing basic data such as the number of votes counted by hand or by optical scanner, it defeats the purpose of the audits – on what basis can we determine the accuracy of optical scanners without such information?”

Luther Weeks, Coalition Executive Director, stated, “In the past, many officials argued that their staffs cannot accurately count ballots by hand in the ideal conditions afforded by audits, yet now an increasing number choose to forgo optical scanning and report results based on unaudited hand counts performed in the more trying conditions of election night”.

The report found little change from past observations and conclusions and little progress by officials in improving post-election audit integrity. Because of ongoing shortcomings in the performance of post-election audits, the Coalition continues to urge our state election officials to offer more guidance to local personnel and to require more consistency in the conduct of the audit.

Weeks noted, “Once again as a public service we are providing online images of the official audit reports from local registrars, along with our digitized data so that anyone can audit our work.”

75 Districts randomly selected for Nov post-election audit

Selected Districts

On Monday the Secretary of the state randomly selected 75 districts for post-election audit. I assisted by actually selecting the districts from slips of paper in a raffle barrel. You might find the Secretary’s list easier to read in the press release. <Press Release>

Selected Districts