CTVotersCount.org

Basic and Bold Steps To Improve U.S. Elections

As we said for our Connecticut steps, this short list. We would be completely pleased if all of these reforms were addressed in the near term. There are many other possible and useful reforms.

We continue with National steps to complement steps for Connecticut. Basic steps that cost little, should almost be assumed. Bold steps that could transform the system, and transcend knee-jerk half steps.

Mandate Paper Ballot, Optically Scanned Nationwide, paying for the conversion. (BOLD). Paper ballots are easily auditable and recountable. Extend the Help America Vote Act to pay for the conversion. Paper ballots also have advantages in reducing long lines, economical equipment, and by definition provide for a system that works when power or equipment fails.

Mandate Independent Audits and Recounts. (BASIC). We audit almost every other government function independently. Why not the most basic democratic function. We could start with improved version of past “Holt Bills”.

Fix the 12th Amendment and Electoral Count Act. (BASIC) We just do not have a Presidential election system we can trust. We have seen the worst of it in 2000, 2004, our ancestors lived through it in 1876. It is past time to have a uniform, rational, predefined system for determining the President, without games and questions. Such a system would be one prerequisite for a national popular vote.

Pass and Enforce a Federal Right To Vote. (BASIC for any other democracy). Voters should have an equal right to vote from state to state. Who gets to vote should be the same everywhere. There should be reasonable and equitable access to voting. Government should bare some responsibility for a rational voter registration system. The Civil Rights Act has worked well for minorities in formerly discriminatory states – we need something similar for equal rational voting rights.

Prohibit Internet Voting, while Serving Military and Overseas Voters (BASIC) Internet, online, email, and fax voting should be outlawed until the Internet is safe for business, military, and government. The lack of safety is recognized in every other area. We need to assist military and overseas voters with online absentee applications, and ballots returnable in a single envelope. The Military needs to take responsibility to assure every member has the opportunity and support necessary to vote, if they so choose.

As we said for our Connecticut steps, this short list. We would be completely pleased if all of these reforms were addressed in the near term. There are many other possible and useful reforms.

Basic and Bold Steps To Improve Connecticut Elections

We offer the following short list of items for improvement without breaking the bank. Basic steps that cost little, should almost be assumed. Bold steps that could transform the system, and transcend knee-jerk half steps.

As we said last time, “There were many problems! Will we learn anything? Will be do anything? Will we help or aggregate the situation? …Next time it could be different…for better or for worse.” We offer the following short list of items for improvement without breaking the bank. Basic steps that cost little, should almost be assumed. Bold steps that could transform the system, and transcend knee-jerk half steps.

Do for Elections what we have done for Probate. (BOLD) Many of our problems are caused or aggravated by our archaic town by town two+ elected registrars system. Many improvements, reforms. and economy of scale are limited by this system (e.g. early voting, professionalization, and a strong ballot security). We would favor a system of regional civil service professional leaders, perhaps monitored by elected registrars. The starting point would be a blue-ribbon commission reviewing best practices from other states and recommending a comprehensive solution to Connecticut. The goals would be to Regionalize, Professionalize, Economize.

Avoid long lines caused by disasters, human failings, and unexpected turnout. (BASIC) There were three types of disaster that effected polling places this year, at least two in Connecticut, and an impending disaster looming. The causes were 1) unexpected turnout which should be a cause for celebration, but not for for celebrating causing upset voters or to propose knee-jerk solutions 2) Human failure to compute how many lines are needed and how to split them. 3) Storm related requirements to move polling places.What is needed is a standard maximum for the number of voters assigned to single checkin lines for various elections.Collapsing twenty-two polling places into nine is a reasonable thing, but failure to add a few more people to main additional checkin lines is poor economy.

The Presidential Ballot lines managed by Town Clerks, will be replaced by central Election Day Registration (EDR) added to the duties of Registrars. Connecticut’s version of EDR is much more involved than the Presidential Ballot and lightly specified in the law. Registrars and the Secretary of the State need to determine the staffing, equipment, and procedures necessary to serve the law and the public without long lines. The legislature should specify more details in the law (e.g. What exactly is an EDR Ballot? Is the EDR location a Polling Place? Could most EDR voters use a scanner and avoid the costly absentee counting process now required? Are those in line at 8:00 PM entitled to register and vote? What happens when a town does not respond in a timely manner to the legally required “immediate” response from another town?)The current law and model emergency plan provides no guidance in handling EDR when the state registration database or phone lines are unavailable. Contingencies need to be planned in advance and uniform statewide.

Fix the Post-Election Audits to actually provide confidence (BASIC). The audits can be improved without significant expense. Less or equal counting could be done, with better statistical confidence, and more comprehensive coverage. No ballots should be exempt from the audit, originally hand counted and centrally counted absentee ballots should be subject to audit. Standards should be set for determining when to investigate differences between audit and election counts. There is a need for better, standard procedures, and training in performing the audit, along with timely, independent reporting of results and oversight.

Automate Responsively, not Expensively.(Medium BOLD) We have the expensive Help America Vote Act, which was costly and only partially effective. We must avoid knee-jerk reaction. (e.g. calls for expensive Early Voting(*) to cure ling lines, which can be cured by a simple, economical incremental increase in checkin lines, while Florida and Ohio dramatically demonstrate that Early Voting is not guaranteed to be a cure.) We offer the following items:

Electronic Checkin connected via the internet to the voter registration database. This would improve the accuracy of checkin accounting, provide for faster cross-district transfers, and should have been a prerequisite to EDR, and provide for full polling place EDR. We caution that it will have initial and onging costs for equipment, registration system, and connections. There has to be enough equipment to cover the necessary lines as it does not speedup checking, along with paper backup for emergencies.

Electronic Results Returns and district Moderators Returns. The Secretary of the State has prototyped a system. It is a good start, yet Registrars logistical concerns need to be addressed. It should be made mandatory by law. It is not costly, but could greatly contribute to accuracy and transparency.

Automate Post-Election Audits. The technology is emerging as practical. It would provide much stronger audits, without the hassles for officials with hand counting. Costs need to be determined. It must be done in a way that provides public transparency and confidence. One more item that would be facilitated if the 169-town system went the way of the green-eye-shade.

This is a short list. We would be completely pleased if all of these reforms were addressed in the near term. Yet, we could and often do suggest many other reforms, some can be accomplished by the Secretary of the State, others by the Legislature. Here we have emphasized economical and strategic steps mostly in the hands of the Legislature.

(*) We do not oppose Early Voting. It can be done well and securely, and poorly. We do believe that to do it well and fairly in Connecticut would be very difficult in Connecticut while we have the 169-town independent election system. In any case, it is not economical.

Looking forward to the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly in election reform?

There were many problems! Will we learn anything? Will be do anything? Will we help or aggravate the situation? As they say some you win, some you lose, and some are rained out. (At least Sandy did not rain this one out, but it could have been different. Next time it could be different…for better or for worse.)

Many years ago at a college hockey tournament my roommates, friends, and I had rink side seats. We talked to one of the refs several times as he stood on the ice directly in front of us. His worst fear was a tie, to be followed by sudden death overtime – the outcome would depend on every call. Candidates, supporters, and everyone can be pretty sure that Obama won both the Electoral College and the popular vote, neither were very close. What us worry? – but only for this election.

Problems

Pre-election there were charges and law suits over suppression and illegal registration activities: Voter ID laws, registration database purges, along with reduction and selective reduction in early voting.

Hurricane Sandy left many challenged to vote, with NJ allowing risky email and fax voting, along with a lack of planning, notice and guidance to officials, with lack of information for voters.

There were long lines around the country for early voting on election day. Many of these were caused by the shortened hours, and higher volume for for touch screen voting machines. Even optical scan areas had problems largely due to slow check-in lines, and at least in Florida, due to long complex ballots: My sister in Sarasota had a nine-page ballot, while Miami had a twenty-four page ballot! How long would it take you to read and fill out a twenty-four page ballot with many complex resolutions? How long would it take you to feed in that ballot? How many privacy booths would be necessary? How would you like to be ballot clerk responsible for voiding a full ballot or just spoiling and reissuing single pages? How long would it take on a touch screen?

Here in Connecticut we had long lines in several towns. As far as we know, all were caused by slow check-in – not enough lines provided – and for the Presidential ballot offered in town halls to voters who register on election day.

It took Florida several days to count enough to declare a winner. As of this writing at least Washington State and Arizona still have hundreds of thousands of regular votes to count. Presumably there are many states with provisional ballots awaiting adjudication.

An Opportunity for Things to Change
(Yes, Mr. O’Reilly many of us want things! Like election integrity.)

Be careful what you wish for. With opportunity for improvement comes at least an equal opportunity to make things worse.

We should recognize the great danger of another round of knee-jerk reactions and solutions. 911 was used to justify the hastily passed Patriot Act that had reforms that many in law enforcement had wanted for years – some of those may well be good things but others not so good. Same with HAVA which may also have been hijacked by vendor and partisan interests. The trick is some kind of balance between haste and reasonable, deliberate action as the end result.

As an IT Manager, I occasionally got a lot of attention to problems and solutions when there were crises that caused higher levels to ask “How can we prevent this from happening again, and recover faster”. Those were useful opportunities, but they can be misused.

Next Time It Could Be Worse

If it were a bit closer election we could be waiting for several states to finish counting, other states dependent on provisional ballots with information available on how critical those votes might be. We could have screams from a region, like the Northeast, about the disenfranchisement of an new natural disaster. Legitimate and illegitimate charges of fraud, miscounting, and suppression.

Imagine this election as a National Popular Vote Agreement election. Then lots more people would be worried about NJ, both pushing for more to vote by any means possible, charging officials with not complying, and others charging all sorts of irregularities. The Voter-ID and early voting changes would not be limited to the swing states. Today we would be facing arguments over fraud and suppression everywhere, some legitimate. Partisan state officials would be pressured not to accept results from other states based on such charges.

Some Possible National Solutions

Even the winner noticed the problems, referring to elections, in his acceptance speech, President Obama said “we need to fix that,”

The New York Times has a Room for Debate covering possible changes with eight opinions: A Better Way to Vote <read>

Like most political debates this is not much of a debate, with single short statements, little financial analysis, and high-level statements without much detail. Not blaming the authors or the Times, yet it is hardly a start. For now, let me provide some comments to extend the “debate”:

Richard Hasen makes the case for nationalizing our elections with nonpartisan administration like other successful democracies along with a national voter ID. I generally agree. Both centralized and decentralized elections can be done well or poorly. The equality, uniformity, and potential improvement are worth moving it that direction. I am skeptical of his suggesting a 75% confirmation is possible. For those, like CTVotersCount, that would like to see a national popular vote, but realize it as too risky under the current system, this would be a good first step in that direction.

R. Doug Lewis makes the case for local control. Actually he does not make the case. He references the Founders. Claims voters love their current systems – ask those in line in Florida, others with unverifiable votes, others purged, and many just barely escaping draconian ID requirements. There is a case that decentralized administration can protect a process, but it is not a single “the process” as Doug states. We could have a uniform process, with decentralized administration, with both centralized and decentralized oversight.

Cleta Mitchell asks to stop the name calling and work on improving the system now, while there is no election imminent. At a high level we agree with her suggestions to cleanup the voter rolls, protect the secret ballot, and enforce election laws. But her details and arguments coincide almost uniformly with the claims and biases of her party. She is correct when she says “Four years pass quickly. We should get busy”.

Larry Norden reviews many of the self caused problems of real or de facto suppression in the recent election. His point is that our system should be “free, fair, and accessible”. He points to the critical problem of voter registration and on-gong problems with voting machines. One simple step he recommends is actually using and appointing directors to the Election Assistance Commission to produce election best practices. The EAC should be ractivated, yet we are skeptical how much it alone can accomplish.

Basil Smikle also argues for “national uniformity in voting and registration with technologies and systems w use in our everyday lives.” He supports online and same day registration, :ATM (touch screen) voting, compulsory voting, and national voter registration databases. Nobody has made a case or a touch screen that is convincingly safe and they are expensive and lead to long lines. Compulsory voting does not sound like a good idea. But maybe it is time to consider a national ID and database – he makes a good point that lots of information is available on each of us already.

Esther Fuchs makes the case for more information available to voters. Not just where to vote but information about candidates to help make voters aware of what and who they are voting for. She gives the example from New York of WhosOnTheBallot.org “users find polling place information, a sample ballot tailored to their district…For each candidate at every level of government,the site provides links to nonpartisan information and the candidate’s Web site and social media” Good idea, maybe the candidate information would be best left to multiple “nonpartisan” sources rather than the government.

Paul Gronke makes the case for uniformity in early voting and reform of the election calendar. We agree that early voting periods should be relatively short and close to uniform nationwide. He correctly identifies the higher risks of mail-in/absentee voting including a higher risk of fraud and disenfranchisement. We believe that early voting can be safe, fair, and convenient, if we are willing to pay for it.

Joseph Lorenzo Hall makes the case for paper based voting as safer, more reliable, and economical. When scanners fail the paper ballots are ready. For touch screens there should be paper backup, but that is seldom the case and such redundancy adds to costs. Touch screens are expensive and lead to long lines when machines fail or we have a very popular elections. He also argues for government support of systems using a multisteakholder design process – sounds good, yet we need to see the resulting system, multiple evaluations of it, and who is and is not at the table.

We add the words of presidential election law expert Edwin B. Foley quoting President Obama for the title “By the way, we have to fix that”<read>

Are we looking forward to the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly in election reform? At this point we cannot tell. The most likely scenario is more of the same, little change, or expensive half steps forward or back. Lets hope and work for better than that.

Soon we will continue the “debate” with our top suggestions nationwide and for Connecticut.

Were you a pollworker? – Please complete this survey

Welcome to the 2012 Election Workers Survey!

Sponsored by the Verified Voting Foundation and the Election Administration Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley

Welcome to the 2012 Election Workers Survey!

Sponsored by the Verified Voting Foundation and the Election Administration Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley

Thank you for taking a few minutes to share your experiences as an election worker by completing our 2012 Election Workers Survey.

If you are already familiar with this survey, its structure, and its goals, you can just click on the “Next” button at the bottom of this page to proceed.

How This Survey Is Structured.In order to get responses from as many election workers as possible, this survey is organized into three Sections:
– Core Questions (32 questions on 12 screen pages);
– Optional Training Detail Questions (12 questions on 4 screen pages);
– Optional Problem Detail Questions (24 questions on 12 screen pages);
We hope everyone can complete the 12 screen Core Section — which takes about ten minutes. The completion bar at the bottom of each page shows how many pages you have completed (out of a total of 37 core, optional, and skip logic pages).

Easy Exit and Return. You can use the “Exit this survey” link to the right of the title on every page at any time without losing any responses you have entered. You can return at any time to continue or change responses (so long as you use the same computer). For more details and other tips on how to take this survey, please see this page (also from 2008 but still applies!) <survey>

Goodbye Sandy, Goodbye Science, Goodbye Secret Voting

Like other disruptive events, storm Sandy is being used to justify very questionable emergency voting changes in New Jersey. The Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey has announced virtually unlimited fax and email voting – some would say this is the camel’s nose in the elections tent – I would say it is more like the other end of camel.

The Patriot Act was justified and passed quickly after 911. It contained many legally questionable items that law enforcement had wanted for years. Crises are used for that. Fortunately we have avoided mercenaries securing the Northeast, like BlackWater securied New Orleans after Katrina. Hopefully our schools will not be transformed like those in New Orleans.

Andrew Appel has written a post describing some of the problems with this: NJ Lt. Governor invites voters to submit invalid ballots <read>

We see already one problem: The loss of the secret ballot. At many times in the 20th century, NJ political machines put such intense pressure on voters that the secret ballot was an important protection. In 2012 it’s in the news that some corporations are pressuring their employees to vote in certain ways. The secret ballot is still critical to the functioning of democracy.

But there’s a much bigger problem with the Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno’s directive: If voters and county clerks follow her instructions, their votes will be invalid.

Her directive reads, “Any voter who has been displaced…is hereby designated an `overseas voter’ for the purposes of the Overseas Residents Absentee Voting Law, N.J.S.A. 19:59-1 et seq.” But the New Jersey Statute (at 19:59-15.4) requires an additional step that Lt. Gov. Guadagno omitted from her directive:

“N.J.S.A. 19:59-15.4(a): Immediately after a copy of the voted overseas ballot or federal write-in absentee ballot has been transmitted by electronic means to the appropriate county board of elections, as permitted pursuant to section 3 of P.L.1995, c.195 (C.19:59-14), the overseas voter shall place the original voted ballot in a secure envelope, together with a certificate substantially the same as provided for in section 9 of P.L.1976, c.23 (C.19:59-9), and send the documents by air mail to the appropriate county board of elections.“

According to the update at the bottom of the post, that the directive may be corrected or clarified so that the paper ballot is required to be submitted, possibly disenfranchising voters who do not learn of the added requirement in time. Yet at least several problems remain:

Are voting officials really able to comply with the directive and handle the volume and votes properly?
The security of Internet voting is highly questionable, with email and fax voting among the most questionable methods.
The secret ballot should not be waived by individual voters, or its purpose will be lost.

As I commented on the Appel post:

The Secret Ballot was implemented to avoid selling votes and coercion of votes. It should be a right for all voters that no vote can be sold or coerced. A single voter cannot in reality waive all the other voters’ rights that every ballot be secret or the purpose is lost.

And as Barbara Simons commented:

I agree that these ballots might end up in court, especially if the election is close. Since not everyone has equal access to the Internet, and people without power won’t have any, Bush v. Gore might be used to challenge the results. In addition, it’s not clear that the Lieutenant Governor has the authority to create a new class of voters by designating displaced voters to be in effect overseas voters. Finally, it will be impossible to recount votes cast over the Internet unless the Lieutenant Gov. acts on the recommendations in this article. And even then, as Andrew has noted, the situation will be murky.

FEMA needs to create contingency plans so that when emergencies occur before or during an election, there are securely stored backup paper ballots and provisions for producing new ones as needed.

Barbara Simons, co-author “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”

We have many posts covering the risks of Internet voting, but now we can also refer to an excellent peer reviewed article by Barbara Simons and Doug Jones: Internet Voting in the U.S. <read>

The assertion that Internet voting is the wave of the future has become commonplace. We frequently are asked, “If I can bank online, why can’t I vote online?” The question assumes that online banking is safe and secure. However, banks routinely and quietly replenish funds lost to online fraud in order to maintain public confidence.

We are told Internet voting would help citizens living abroad or in the military who currently have difficulty voting. Recent federal legislation to improve the voting process for overseas citizens is a response to that problem. The legislation, which has eliminated most delays, requires states to provide downloadable blank ballots but does not require the insecure return of voted ballots.

Yet another claim is that email voting is safer than Web-based voting, but no email program in widespread use today provides direct support for encrypted email. As a result, attachments are generally sent in the clear, and email ballots are easy to intercept and inspect, violating voters’ right to a secret ballot. Intercepted ballots may be modified or discarded without forwarding. Moreover, the ease with which a From header can be forged means it is relatively simple to produce large numbers of forged ballots. These special risks faced by email ballots are in addition to the general risks posed by all Internet-based voting schemes.

Many advocates also maintain that Internet voting will increase voter participation, save money, and is safe. We find the safety argument surprising in light of frequent government warnings of cybersecurity threats and news of powerful government-developed viruses. We see little benefit in measures that might improve voter turnout while casting doubt on the integrity of the results.

Almost all the arguments on behalf of Internet voting ignore a critical risk Internet-based voting shares with all computerized voting—wholesale theft…

The cost of Internet voting, especially up-front charges, can be steep. For example, 2009 cost estimates from Internet voting vendor Everyone Counts were so large that a legislative proposal in Washington state to allow Internet voting for military and civilian voters was killed in committee. The estimated costs, obtained by John Gideon of VotersUnite, included proposed up-front costs ranging from $2.5 million to $4.44 million. After that, each county would have been hit with an annual license fee of $20,000-$120,000, plus $2-$7 per overseas voter…

Internet voting does not necessarily increase turnout. Everyone Counts ran an Internet-based election in Swindon, U.K., in 2007 and a local election in Honolulu, HI, in 2009 where votes were cast only by Internet or telephone. The Electoral Commission, established by the U.K. Parliament, determined that Internet voting in Swindon had a negligible effect on turnout; meanwhile, in Honolulu there was an 83% drop in turnout compared to a similar election in 2007. We know of no rigorous study of the impact of Internet voting on turnout; conducting such a study would be difficult, since turnout can vary enormously from election to election. But even if Internet voting could increase turnout, the increase would be irrelevant if the election results were at risk of corruption by insecure Internet use.

Still not convinced? We suggest reading the entire article, we have highlighted just a few points.

What We Worry? What Could Go Wrong On Election Day?

America’s elections are run entirely on the honor system. What could possibly go wrong?

Detroit News op-ed: BenDor and Stanislevic: What could go wrong on Election Day? <read>

We worry that the nation will end up with no confidence in the election results, regardless of who wins.

That’s because we have no systematic way to detect malfunctions in the voting machines or tabulators on Election Day…

We worry that there could be widespread fraud in the sending of voted military and overseas ballots by fax, email or other vulnerable internet methods…

We fear that close elections will go to the courts without any prospect of credible numbers. This is because of two widespread conditions that preclude complete, meaningful recounts: no paper ballots and no manual counts….In states that do allow a hand recount, like Michigan, the burden is often on the apparent losing candidate, not only to pay for the recount, but also to bear the stigma of “poor loser.” The voting public has no say.

We lose sleep over the prospect of the ultimate disenfranchisement of thousands of voters…

America’s elections are run entirely on the honor system. What could possibly go wrong?

And from the New York Times some “bad news/it could be worse news” if we had the risky National Popular Vote Agreement: Disruption From Storm May Be Felt at the Polls <read>

Some New Jersey voters may find their hurricane-damaged polling sites replaced by military trucks, with — in the words of the state’s lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno — “a well-situated national guardsman and a big sign saying, ‘Vote Here.’ ” Half of the polling sites in Nassau County on Long Island still lacked power on Friday. And New York City was planning to build temporary polling sites in tents in some of its worst-hit neighborhoods.

Mayor Bill Finch of Bridgeport, Conn., with Secretary of the State Denise Merrill at the Longfellow School, a closed polling place.

The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy is threatening to create Election Day chaos in some storm-racked sections of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — and some effects may also be felt in other states, including Pennsylvania, where some polling sites still lacked power on Friday morning.

Disrupted postal delivery will probably slow the return of absentee ballots. And with some polling sites likely to be moved, elections officials were bracing for a big influx of provisional paper ballots — which could delay the vote count in places.

Weary local elections officials vowed that the vote would go on. “Come hell or high water — we had both — we’re voting on Tuesday,” William T. Biamonte, the Democratic commissioner at the Nassau County Board of Elections, said in an interview…

With turnout projected to be down in all these states, Mr. Obama could see his share of the national popular vote reduced.

Caltech/MIT: What has changed, what hasn’t, & what needs improvement

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a thorough, comprehensive, and insightful new report timed to the 2012 election. We find little to quibble with in the report. We agree with all of its recommendations.Several items with which we fully endorse were covered in this report which sometimes are missing from the discussion or often underemphasised.

The report itself is 52 pages, followed by 32 pages of opinions of others, including election officials, advocates, and vendors, some of whom disagree with some aspects of the report. Every page is worth reading. The report is not technical. It covers a wide range of issues, background, and recommendations.

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a thorough, comprehensive, and insightful new report timed to the 2012 election: VOTING: What has changed, what hasn’t, & what needs improvement <read>

We find little to quibble with in the report. We agree with all of its recommendations although we might place different emphasis in particular areas:

As we have studied the areas where progress has been made since 2001, and where progress has stalled, we have developed the following recommendations. All have been discussed earlier in our report, and we summarize them here. They are not in priority order. First, regarding voting technology, we recommend:

Legislation mandating effective election auditing, which at a minimum would require post-election auditing of all voting technologies used in an election.

Continued strong support for voting systems security research, emphasizing auditing and the verifiability of election outcomes.

A movement toward mandating statistically meaningful post-election audits, rather than setting security standards for election equipment, as the primary way to safeguard the integrity of the vote.

A new business model led by states and localities, with harmonized standards and requirements.

Second, regarding voter registration, we recommend: » Streamlining the provisional balloting process in many states and the creation of common best practices and voluntary standards across states.

The development of voter verification systems in which states bear the cost of stringent voter ID regimes, in those states that desire to increase ID requirements for in-person voting.

Continued standardization of voter registration databases, so that they can be polled across states.

Third, with respect to polling places and pollworkers, we recommend:

Continued improvement of pollworker training and more reliance on network technologies to facilitate pollworker training.

Development of applications deployed on mobile devices that bring more information to pollworkers, and transmit real-time data about Election Day workloads back to the central voting office and the public at large.

Increased functionality of electronic pollbooks and their wider adoption.

Development of applications that gauge how long voters are waiting in line to vote, so that wait times can be better managed and reported to the public.

Fourth, regarding absentee and early voting our first two recommendations repeat those we issued a decade ago; the third is new:

Discourage the continued rise of no-excuse absentee balloting and resist pressures to expand all-mail elections. Similarly, discourage the use of Internet voting until the time when auditability can be ensured and the substantial risks entailed by voting over the Internet can be sufficiently mitigated.

Require that states publish election returns in such a way that allows the calculation of the residual vote rate by voting mode.

Continue research into new methods to get usable ballots to military and overseas civilian voters securely, accurately, and rapidly and to ensure their secure return in time to be counted.

And, finally, regarding the infrastructure and science of elections: » Continued development of the science of elections.

Continued, and expanded, support for the research functions of the Election Assistance Commission.

Development of an Electoral Extension Service, headquartered in each state’s land-grant colleges, to disseminate new ideas about managing elections in the United States.

Several items with which we fully endorse were covered in this report which sometimes are missing from the discussion or often underemphasised:

The Risks of Mail-in and No-Excuse Absentee Voting

The report thoroughly covers the disenfranchisement risks of mail voting which are about double polling place voting. Such voting does not increase turnout significantly, except in local elections. We would have liked to seen more coverage of the organized fraud, vote buying, and coercion frequently occurring via such voting. These are not just theoretical risks. New to us was the surveys showing that the public at some level recognizes the risks and show less confidence in elections with expanded absentee or mail-in voting.

The Emphasis on Election Auditing over Machine Testing and Certification

It is theoretically impossible to develop or test a completely safe voting technology. Extreme testing and slow certification requirements stifle innovation, add costs, delay improvements and are ultimately ineffective. High confidence, efficient statistical audits, paper ballots, combined with a strong chain-of-custody are a necessary solution that eclipse the elusive pursuit of technical perfection.

The Need and Value of Quality Voter Registration Combined with Online Voter Check-in

The report points to the fallacy of votER fraud. Yet there are efficiencies and enhanced enfranchisement available from better, more accurage voter registration databases. There are solutions with online check-in that also provide voter-id without the disenfranchising aspects of the currently proposed voter-id laws.

The Challenges of the Election Technology Industry

My years of experience in the software industry always lead me to the conclusion that the election technology industry is a losing business proposition. While I am not enamored with any of the current voting technology vendors, there is little incentive for them or new players to enter the field. The closest analogy is the defense industry. That industry is not fragmented, has essentially one customer, which designs products and pays for research and development. The voting technology industry is fragmented and has a fragmented customer base, with varying demands, coupled with a very difficult sales environment.

Recognition of One of the Risks of the National Popular Vote Agreement

The proposed National Popular Vote (NPV) may have negative security implications, since the opportunity to perform proper post-election audits appears to be considerably diminished.

CTVotersCount readers know that we would go farther and cover the risks of a national popular vote in our current state-by-state fragmented system, not designed to provide an accurate national popular total. Alleged popular totals cannot be audited, cannot be recounted, and electors must be chosen before an official count is available. The National Popular Vote agreement does nothing to address the existing risk issues with the Electoral College and, in fact, adds to the risks.

CTVotersCount flip flops from “Trust but Verify” to “Verify to Trust”

There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.

Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family.

Like other voting integrity advocates, we often quote President Ronald Reagan, “Trust but Verify”. We have come to realize that we were wrong, so we are flip flopping from that to “Verify to Trust”. Going forward we will refrain from quoting the 40th President.

There is absolutely no need to “trust” anyone if there is sufficient verification. There is also little evidence to trust our democracy to anyone. As they say power corrupts.

Sadly there is no reason to trust our elections, simply because we do not verify them.

Bad enough that our 2004 election was in the hands of a person who promised to deliver Ohio to George Bush– maybe that person was as honest as the day is long, but he lost all trust because the election was not verified.

Now we learn that many of our votes are being counted by machines under the influence of one of the candidates and his family: Does the Romney Family Now Own Your e-Vote? <read> Once again, we have no reason to question Mitt’s integrity, but if he should win, there will always be a question, since we do not, and in some cases cannot verify our elections.

Maybe some things are too important, too valuable to leave to the hands of business. We have reported on this before: <The Outsourced State> <Vendors are Undermining the Structure of U.S. Elections>

As we have said before we favor flip flopping in some cases. We spend much of our time lobbying politicians to change their positions. Former Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz’s finest hour was in late 2005 when she scrapped her selection of a touch screen voting machine and began the process anew to select an optical scan system.

A Tale in two Courant Editorials

Where we disagree with the Courant, is that we believe ballots deserve the same level of protection as money and supplies, that the need for verification applies equally to private employees, public employees, and public officials. We are not so sure of trust part of ‘trust but verify’, we would ‘verify sufficiently to deter and trust’.

Two editorials dated Friday, one published on Sunday and one on Monday show the different appreciation some have for money and democracy, the different level of trust some hold for private employees vs. public officials.

Sunday, the Courant provides advice to the Hartford Charter Revision Commission on their trust in public officials, saving public money, and the value of elections: What’s Good, Bad In Hartford Charter Proposals <read>

•Registrars of Voters. Making this office more professional cannot happen soon enough, although it is not clear if it can be done by charter or if a change in state law is necessary.

The city’s first problem is that it has too many registrars, due to a quirk in state law. The law says the candidates for registrar of voters who garner the highest and second-highest number of votes win the posts. But if a major-party candidate — Democrat or Republican — is not among the top two finishers, that candidate must also be named a registrar.

That happened in Hartford in 2008, when the Working Families Party candidate outpolled the Republican. So both of them and the Democrat all became registrars. Registrars make $80,000; with staff and benefits each costs the city about $200,000 a year.

Now guess what. The registrars say they don’t have enough money to run the fall election and need another $115,000.

This is why people get frustrated with government. In the computer age, towns get by with one nonpartisan registrar; Hartford certainly doesn’t need three.

One way around it might be to make the job appointive, or make it a civil service job in the town clerk’s office, perhaps with part-time registrars from the political parties. The charter commission needs to pick a solution and put it forward.

We are surprised that the Courant does not clearly understand that changing a state law mandating the number of, and election of registrars would require a change in state law. At least they are recognizing that more and more as a possibility as they continue a long string of editorials recommending reform. We are even more surprised that given the many scandals in Connecticut by elected and appointed officials that they would prefer to have elections run by a single politically appointed official. As we have said before, the better solution is to “Do for Elections what we have done for Probate”, regionalize, professionalize, economize. Others have made the case as well.

The editorial run today is about embezzlement in private agency, the Waterbury YMCA. We generally agree with this editorial, especially its final paragraphs: Boys & Girls Club Theft A New Height Of Lowness <read>

The case should stand as a warning to anyone involved with a nonprofit organization. Here, as is often the case when a theft is discovered, the culprit is a trusted longtime employee. Mr. Generali had been associated with the club for more than 30 years. Last year, Donna Gregor, the bookkeeper at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, was sent to prison for 42 months for embezzling more than $1 million from the museum over eight years, a theft that could have put one of the state’s leading cultural institutions out of business.

The lesson is, in the words of Ronald Reagan in another context, trust but verify. Most embezzlements involve a perpetrator with incentive and without conscience, plus a lack of adequate internal controls, which creates the opportunity to steal.

To avoid it, say accountants who work in this area, have at least two people watching the money in every accounting cycle.

Multiple votER fraud, multiple votes, multiple elections, multiple lessons

Individual votER fraud does not happen often, when it does it seldom, if ever, amounts to enough to change a result. But here is a Rhode Island size story from Texas that provides several lessons for those concerned with votER fraud, votING fraud, and the limits of voter ID:

Story in Houston Chronicle: Candidate voted twice in same elections, records show <read>

A Republican precinct chairman running for a seat on the Fort Bend County Commissioner’s Court has cast ballots in both Texas and Pennsylvania in the last three federal elections, official records in both states show.

Bruce J. Fleming, a Sugar Land resident running for Precinct 1 commissioner, voted in person in Sugar Land in 2006, 2008 and 2010 and by mail in each of those years in Yardley, Pa., according to election records in both states.

Fleming, who owns a home in Yardley, voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary in Texas. His wife, Nancy Fleming, who is listed as a resident of Yardley, voted by mail in both places in the 2010 general election, records show.

The lessons:

Absentee balloting is the easiest fraud to accomplish. Expanding mail-in and absentee voting leads to increased opportunity for organized and individual fraud.
Voter ID in Texas or Pennsylvania would not have prevented this fraud. They live in Texas, presumably have IDs, while no ID is required for absentee voting.
Preventing this type of fraud would be more possible with better quality voter registration databases, more cross checking, or possibly a national voter registration database or universal registration.
In this case the voters were caught. How many would risk the criminal penalties? How many would risk the embarrassment and career limiting aspects even if not convicted? All for a very slight chance of changing an election result.