Basics you need to know about election integrity in fifteen minutes

Kevin O’Neill, Capitol Thinking, interviews the authors of Broken Ballots – Will Your Vote Count, Prof Doug Jones and Dr. Barbara Simons <podcast> When it comes to elections and verifiability, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons are true experts that everyone can understand.

Kevin O’Neill, Capitol Thinking, interviews the authors of Broken Ballots – Will Your Vote Count, Prof Doug Jones and Dr. Barbara Simons <podcast>

When it comes to elections and verifiability, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons are true experts that everyone can understand.

They discuss the basics of election verification, pre-election testing, election auditing, and internet voting. They also offer graphic examples of what went wrong in recent elections in Iowa and Florida, that were corrected based on paper ballots and post-election audits.

Broken Ballots was released Apr 15, even thought Amazon and Barnes & Noble still list it as available May 15th. Look for a book review here in the near future.

UConn Memory Card Report: Technology 82%-93%, Officials 19%, (Outrage 0%?)

We applaud Dr. Alexander Shvartsman and his team for developing the technology to perform these innovative tests, the diligence to perform the tedious tests, and the fortitude to report the facts.

We do not applaud the lack of cooperation of officials in the audit or the lack of official compliance with memory card procedures. We are left wondering if this is the level of compliance and cooperation when officials know their efforts will be disclosed: “What is their compliance when their actions are unlikely or impossible to scrutinize?” Can you imagine such numbers from any other technology or Government function? Where is the outrage?

The University of Connecticut (UConn) Center for Voting Technology Research posted its memory card report  for the November 2011 election: Technological Audit of Memory Cards for the November 8, 2011 Connecticut Elections <read>

We applaud Dr. Alexander Shvartsman and his team for  developing the technology to perform these innovative tests, the diligence to perform the tedious tests, and the fortitude to report the facts.

We do not applaud the lack of cooperation of officials in the audit or the lack of official compliance with memory card procedures. We are left wondering if this is the level of compliance and cooperation when officials know their efforts will be disclosed: “What is their compliance when their actions are unlikely or impossible to scrutinize?”. Where is the outrage?

Lets start with some good news.

We have had problems for years with bad memory cards which UConn calls “junk data”. Based on the questionable sample of bad cards sent to UConn, the estimate is 7.4% to 17.4% of cards were bad in the Nov 2011 election. This is similar to statistics generated in the Coalition post-election audit survey of officials. The survey showed a huge increase in the number of municipalities reporting bad cards in Nov2011, 90% with the previous high of 56% reported a year earlier <Coalition report page 26-27>.  Anecdotally many towns are hit with an overwhelming percentage of bad cards – we speculate that somehow the programming vendor, LHS Associates, receives batches of returned bad cards, LHS  installs new batteries and the cards tend to stay together, to be used in the next election for many or all of the cards programmed for unlucky municipalities.

The good news is that our memory card nightmare may have a cure in some future election, perhaps 2012 or 2013:

New non-volatile (battery-less) memory card was recently developed by the vendor. Our preliminary analysis of this card confirmed that it is completely compatible with AV-OS systems deployed in Connecticut. It is expected that a pilot deployment of the new cards by the SOTS Offce will occur in the near future. The use of the new card should eliminate the major cause of memory card failures.

No word on State Certification which would presumably be relatively easy, yet required before such cards could be used in an actual election.

At most 30.5% official compliance with pre-election audit requests

For the pre-election audit, the Center received 453 memory cards from 331 districts. Cards were submitted for two reasons per instructions from the SOTS Oce (a) one of the four cards per district was to be selected randomly and submitted directly for the purpose of the audit, and (b) any card was to be submitted if it appeared to be unusable. Given that cards in category (a) were to be randomly selected, while all cards in category (b) were supposed to be submitted, and that the cards were submitted without consistent categorization of the reason, this report considers all unusable cards to fall into category (b).

Among these 453 cards, 223 (49.2%) fall into category (a). 100% these cards were correct. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code on the cards. We note that the adherence to the election procedures by the districts is improving, however the analysis indicates that the established procedures are not always followed; it would be helpful if reasons for these extra-procedural actions were documented and communicated to the SOTS Offce in future elections.

According to the report 331 districts sent 453 cards, but at most only 233 of those cards were not bad cards. Thus at most 233 out of 730 districts in the election, registrars sent in a card as requested by “instructions from the SOTS [Secretary of the State] Office”. How many of these cards were in fact “randomly selected”? There is no way for the public to be sure. So we start with a maximum compliance rate of 233/730 or 30.5%.

Without a full sample, without some assurance of random selection, the statistical significance of the report is questionable and there is clearly a formula for a fraudster to avoid the memory card audit.

Considering pre-election testing we are down to at most 18.4% official (registrar) compliance:

UConn reported that 89 of those 233 cards were not set to pre-election mode yielding 134/233 or 61.8% correctly set in election mode. Thus for 134/730 or 18.4% of districts, registrars complied with both the simple procedures of sending in one card per district and testing all cards, leaving them in election mode.

This is only the most predominant of several problems uncovered:

(b) Card Status Summary:

Here status refers to the current state of the memory card, for example, loaded with an election, set for election, running an election, closed election, and others.

134 cards (60.1%) were in Set For Election state. This is the appropriate status for cards intended to be used in the elections. This percentage is an improvement over the 2010 November pre-election audit, where 41.6% of the cards were set for elections.

89 cards (39.9%) were in Not Set for Election state. This status would be appropriate for the cards that either did not undergo pre-election testing or were not prepared for elections, but not for the cards that are fully prepared for an election. This suggests that the corresponding districts sent these cards for the audit without first fi nalizing the preparation for the election. This is not a security concern, but an indication that not all districts submit cards at the right time (that is, after the completion of pre-election testing and preparation of the cards for the elections).

(c) Card & Counter Status:

Here additional details are provided on the status of the counters on the usable cards. The expected state of the cards following the pre-election testing is Set for Elections with Zero Counters.

All of the 134 cards (60.1%) that were found in Set For Election state had Zero Counters. This is the appropriate status for cards intended to be used in the elections.

85 cards (38.1%) were in Not Set for Election state and had Non-Zero Counters. This is not an expected state prior to an election. This suggests that the cards were subjected to pre-election testing, but were not set for elections prior to their selection for the audit. This situation would have been detected and remedied if such cards were to be used on Election Day as the election cannot be conducted without putting the cards into election mode.

4 cards (1.8%) were found to be in Not Set for Elections state with Zero Counters. This is UConn VoTeR Center April 5, 2012, Version 1.1 9 similar to the 85 cards above. This situation would have been similarly detected and remedied if such cards were to be used on the election day.

Taking the above percentages together, it appears that almost all districts (60:1% + 38:1% = 98:2%) performed pre-election testing before submitting the cards for the audit.

(d) Card Duplication:

The only authorized source of the card programming in Connecticut is the external contractor, LHS Associates. The cards are programmed using the GEMS system. Cards duplications are performed using the AV-OS voting tabulator; one can make a copy (duplicate) of a card on any other card by using the tabulator’s duplication function. SOTS polices do not allow the districts to produce their own cards by means of card duplication.

Card duplication is a concern, as there is no guarantee that duplication faithfully reproduces cards, and it masks the problem with card reliability. Additionally, it is impossible to determine with certainty who and why resorted to card duplication.

There were 18 cards involved in duplication. 12 of these cards (66.7%) were master cards used for duplication. 6 cards (33.3%) were copy cards produced by duplication.

We manually examined the audit logs of all duplicated cards and compared the initialization date of the card against the date of the duplication. We established that most of the cards (16 out of 18) were most likely involved in duplication at LHS. 12 out of 16 were involved in duplication either on the day of initialization, or the day after. The remaining 4 cards were involved in duplication within 4 days of initialization, however they were tested and prepared for election at a later date (4 to 7 days after the duplication occurred).

Only two cards out of 18 were most likely involved in duplication at the district, as they were prepared for election within a few minutes after the duplication event was recorded. This is an improvement from prior audits.

Given the SOTS polices, the districts must not be producing their cards locally. If a district finds it necessary to duplicate cards, they need to make records of this activity and bring this to the attention of SOTS Office.

Post-election, audited districts complied 27.8%

The registrars for districts selected for post-election audit are “asked to submit cards that were used in the election for the post-election technological audit”, 20/73 or 27.8% complied.

For the post-election audit, the Center received 157 cards. Out of these cards only 20 cards were used on Election Day. Given that the small sample of such cards does not allow for a meaningful statistical analysis, we report our nding in abbreviated form. To enable more comprehensive future post-election audits it is important to signi cantly increase the submission of cards that are actually used in the elections.

Cards were submitted to the Center for two reasons per instructions from the SOTS Oce (a) the districts that were involved in the post-election 10% hand-count audit were asked to submit the cards for the post-election technological audit, and (b) the districts were encouraged to submit any cards that appeared to be unusable in the election. Given that cards in category (a) were to be sent from the 10% of randomly selected districts, while all cards in category (b) were supposed to be submitted, and that the cards were submitted without consistent categorization of the reason, the number of unusable cards are disproportionately represented.

Can you imagine such numbers from any other technology or Government function? Where is the outrage?

We all are used to thumb drives, functionally similar technologically, yet much lower cost. What is your experience? Do they fail suddenly 18% of the time, after working correctly for months or years? How about your cell phone or GPS, much more complicated than a memory card?

Recently Connecticut was outraged by 42 state employees charged with illegally obtaining food stamps out of 800 obtaining them. That is a 94.6% compliance rate, quite a bit higher than election official compliance here of 18.4%

Even the UConn Basketball Team does better,  with a quarter of the players graduating.  Milner School, subject to our Governor’s concern, had 23.5% of 3rd graders passing the reading test. But this is not like students failing tests, this is more like Boards of Education overseeing that the curriculum is followed less than 19% of the time.

Let us not forget that the most complex memory cards are not tested:

In addition to the four cards for each district, in mid size to large towns absentee ballots are counted centrally by optical scanners with memory cards that a programmed to count ballots for all districts in such towns. These are not included in the post-election audits required by law, and apparently not included in requests for memory card audits.

Sadly most of this is entirely legal

In Connecticut election procedures are not enforceable so there is no penalty for officials not following procedures. The entire memory card audit is based on procedures, not law.

Also check out some of the audit log analysis in the report

UConn inspected audit (event) logs on the memory cards, discovering several instances of where procedures were not followed and other questionable events.

The rules implemented in the audit log checker do not cover all possible sequences, and the Center continues re ning the rules as we are enriching the set of rules based on our experience with the election audits. For any sequence in the audit log that is not covered by the rules a noti cation is issued, and such audit logs are additionally examined manually. For the cases when the audit log is found to be consistent with a proper usage pattern we add rules to the audit log checker so that such audit logs are not flagged in the future.

Out of the 223 correct 6 cards, 54 (24.2%) cards were flagged because their audit logs did not match our sequence rules.

The audit log analysis produced 106 notifi cations. Note that a single card may yield multiple notifi cation. Also recall that not all noti fications necessarily mean that something went wrong | a notifi cation simply means that the sequence of events in the audit log did not match our (not-all- inclusive) rules.

The Times and Internet Voting they are not a changing

Once again the New York Times ignores science and the evidence. While scientists once again, refute the Times.

Voting, alas, has unique characteristics that make internet implementations all but impossible given current technology. The big problem is that we make two demands of it that cannot be met simultaneously. We want voting to be very, very secure. And we want it to be very, very anonymous.

In late 2010 the New York Times ran an article States Move to Allow Overseas and Military Voters to Cast Ballots by Internet <read> which touted risky Internet voting. I was well refuted by Representative Rush Holt in a letter to the Times. <read>

Here we go again a very small article by Matt Bai Double-Click the Vote <read>

It’s amazing to think that I just renewed my car registration and paid my taxes online, but in November I’ll still have to wait in line to vote. The best argument against Internet voting is that it stacks the system against old and poor people who can’t afford or use computers, but the same could be said about cars. For decades, volunteers have showed up at retirement homes with rented vans. Isn’t it time they came with laptops?

What is amazing is actually that the paper of record prints such things that defy science and all the evidence <CTVoterCount Internet Voting Index>

Tech.pinions refutes Bai’s arguments, yet I suspect will reach much fewer than the flawed Bai piece: Internet Voting Is Years Away, And Maybe Always Will Be <read>

They do a great job of explaining the challenge of anonymity:

…If only it were so simple.

Voting, alas, has unique characteristics that make internet implementations all but impossible given current technology. The big problem is that we make two demands of it that cannot be met simultaneously. We want voting to be very, very secure. And we want it to be very, very anonymous.

Internet security is difficult under the best of conditions. But voting has the additional complication that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to remedy a breach. Most of the time, all that is at stake is money, and we know how to fix that. Identity theft is more complex but still there are remedies. A stolen vote is gone forever.

Anonymity complicated the problem immensely. The usual way to secure an internet transaction to to make certain that both the server and the person at the other end and who or what they claim to be. To cast a ballot at a poling place or vote an absentee ballot, you have to produce identification or, at a minimum, a signature that matches one on file. It’s not perfect. but it’s generally better than we can do on the internet. Then you are given a ballot or a card that activates an electronic voting machine, but there is no link between the ballot and your identity, guaranteeing anonymity. This is really, really hard to simulate online. The more that is done to assure your identity, the harder it is to separate that identity from the vote that is cast…

We will see more trials in this year’s voting. But widespread internet voting is still waiting for a day that may never come.

 

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Bonus: Alex Haldeman <video>

Could It Happen Here? Too wide to scan, would we count or copy?

Brad Blog reports ballots too wide to scan in Wisconsin. The official solution – count by hand? NO. They copied the ballots and scanned. We agree with Brad that this is unacceptable. But what would happen in Connecticut – would one of our warnings come true?

Brad Blog reports ballots too wide to scan in Wisconsin. The official solution – count by hand? NO. They copied the ballots and scanned:  Voted Ballots ‘Remade’ by Election Workers in WI After Being Printed Too Wide for Optical-Scanners <read>

During yesterday’s Wisconsin primary election, a number of paper ballots were sent out in several counties that were reportedly too wide to be tabulated by the computerized optical-scan systems used to tally ballots in the state. The same exact thing happened just two weeks ago during the Illinois primary sending election officials into a panic and causing delays for some voters..

one way in which the failure was dealt with in both Illinois and Wisconsin continues to be extremely troubling and, frankly, offense: the practice of election workers manually “remaking” the ballots of voters after the election, in ostensible secret, and before they are tabulated…

It has become standard practice across the country for election workers to actually create new ballots, by hand, out of ballots that cannot be read by optical-scan tallying computers. The workers either “remake” those ballots correctly or incorrectly. Who knows?

We agree with Brad that this is unacceptable.  How accurately are they copied? Is there a law supporting this? Is there an audit to check, is there a numbering of original and copied ballots such that individual ballots can be verified? Our choice would be counting as that would be easier to check, audit, or recount and recover from. Simpler to prove or restore integrity and confidence. Probably less effort in the first place.

What would happen in Connecticut? Last year we cautioned that the Secretary of the State’s and Legislature’s  “solution” to the Bridgeport fiasco was insufficient. It would prevent the Bridgeport problem by printing more ballots and call for a town by town contingency plan. We warned that there were other events that count trigger a similar problem and more was needed.

Here we may have prevented just one of those triggering events. Triple the expected number of ballots could be ordered, but that would not prevent a problem if they could not be read by the scanners, ‘What Would Bridgeport Do?’, ‘What Would West Hartford Do?’ or ‘What Would Mansfield Do?’

A contingency plan might help if it anticipated a wide range of circumstances and was actually used in an emergency. But we are skeptical – What would there be that would cause Bridgeport or any other town to count accurately by hand in those circumstances, another time? What would there be to insure copying ballots was done faithfully? And that the copying was done onto readable ballots? Once again there is no law allowing any authority to step in, supervise, help, or mandate solutions or reviews. Maybe a court could be convinced to intervene?

Finally, we point out that a law requiring a contingency plan without a deadline, is even less useful than a contingency plan gathering dust on the shelf. Thus far there is no required municipal plan in place in Connecticut. Required first is a regulation containing a model plan from the Secretary of the State. Perhaps that model plan will be a pleasant surprise. Perhaps it will lead to adoption of effective plans across the state. Perhaps the plans will not stay on the shelves and will help avoid integrity and confidence problems.

DHS Expert: Internet voting not secure

I had a front row seat last Thursday in Santa Fe, to hear Bruce McConnell from the Department of Homeland Security discuss Internet Voting.

Some people think online voting is bound to happen, though, once the kinks are worked out. But as McConnell’s comments show, those who worry a lot about cybersecurity believe that time is a long way away.

I had a front row seat last Thursday in Santa Fe, to hear Bruce McConnell from the Department of Homeland Security discuss Internet Voting. From NPR: Online Voting ‘Premature,’ Warns Government Cybersecurity Expert <read>

He ended his talk with a light lesson in Government-Speak reading several snippets warning of risks or inadequate technology which use nuanced words understating reality, hence the description of internet voting technology as ‘Premature’.

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.

Some, particularly Bob Carey, say it is a trade-off between security and convenience.

Some election officials say it’s a trade-off between security and convenience.

Bob Carey, director of FVAP, told a group of bloggers in October that there are risks to online voting, but also “inherent security risks with the current system,” such as people not getting their ballots on time and losing the opportunity to vote.

Carey added that “there’s not going to be any electronic voting system that’s ever going to be 100 percent secure, but also the current paper-based system is not 100 percent reliable either.”…

Some people think online voting is bound to happen, though, once the kinks are worked out. But as McConnell’s comments show, those who worry a lot about cybersecurity believe that time is a long way away.

We do not have to trade risk for convenience. States that follow the MOVE Act and provide express return of ballots and absentee ballot applications in a single envelope have shown that military and overseas voters can be served effectively, and much more economically than risky, costly internet voting schemes.

For more, see: <CTVC Internet Voting Index>

Online voting vendor, Scytl’s system worries experts in Canada

Vendor touted in CT and on NPR by West Virginia Secretary of the State comes under fire after Canadian election disrupted by hackers.

Last October, former University mascot and news reporter, West Virginia Secretary of State, Virginia Tennant came to Connecticut to tout her pilot online voting project, yet to be endorsed by her state for further use. Later we saw her endorse that system on NPR along with a vendor executive from Scytl. Her wild west claims of being ambushed in Connecticut and down home wild west getup shown on NPR had resonance with some.

Cutting through the chaff and technical jargon. Online voting is not safe according to experts and experience. Now we have a new problem for online voting, simple denial of service attacks (DOS) experienced in a Canadian election.

From the Halifax Herold: NDP vote disruption worries experts – E-voting found to be open to problems <read>

Although many people are attached at the hip to their laptops, few are conversant in software coding and even fewer are familiar with heavy encryption.

Combine computers with the intricacies of elections, and that leaves only a handful of specialists worldwide who can claim to understand online voting.

Questions about e-voting were raised after the NDP leadership convention was disrupted by a cyber attack.

Not all of them have been answered satisfactorily, say software experts, despite reassurances from Scytl, the software company that handled the NDP election process, and from Halifax Regional Municipality, which has committed to use the company’s services in October’s municipal election.

“Multibillion-dollar (software developers) like Windows, you know, Microsoft . . . can’t have their software bug-free. So I don’t think Scytl is able to do that,” said Daniel Sokolov, a Halifax information technology expert.

Sokolov has examined several European elections that used e-voting and found at least three with troubling results.

One problem with online voting software is its complexity, he said, explaining no municipality could hope to vet hundreds of thousands of lines of computer code.

“It’s a farce. It’s a joke,” said Sokolov. “You need a big team of people to do that, and it’ll take years.”

Other problems include the challenge of auditing votes and vote tallies after the fact, the risk posed by cyber attacks and — perhaps the biggest issue — the difficulty of ensuring secret ballots, said Sokolov and other computer experts who spoke to The Chronicle Herald.

The vendor and Government provides a defense:

Some of these concerns have been tackled by Halifax Regional Municipality more thoroughly than critics imagine, said municipal clerk Cathy Mellett, who noted that 25 per cent of voters chose to vote electronically in the 2008 municipal election.

Mellett said the city will use a third-party auditor, most likely Ernst &Young, which will hire software experts to look over Scytl’s code.

Mellett said the city is committed to Scytl, after it successfully completed a 60-day testing window earlier this month.

Mellett also listed two other safeguards designed to ensure Scytl’s soundness.

First, although it does not open its coding to the public, citing trade secrets, it has opened it a few times to clients for advanced examination, said Mellett.

Unfortunately, no auditor, not matter how prestigious can audit a system without records showing how voters actually voted on their own computer screens.  And as was clear in the Connecticut Symposium Scytl has never agreed to let experts evaluate and publicly report on their code.

This problem (and solution) would never happen in Connecticut

We use manual addition and transcription to add results. Our audits would not catch errors made outside of polling place scanners.

Palm Beach Post  Vendor: software ‘shortcoming’ led to Wellington election fiasco  <read>

The short version:

  • Polling place machines counted races and votes correctly
  • Mismatched counters on machines used to accumulate results caused two races to be switched and the wrong candidates the apparent winners
  • The problem was discovered and corrected based on a post-election audit
  • The problem went undetected in pre-election testing as the only test is the polling place machines

Hats off to Wellington and their post-election audits. This problem (and solution) would never happen in Connecticut:

  • We leave all our totaling and transcription errors to a two and three level process of manual accounting, so we make our errors the old fashioned way.
  • Our post-election audits only compare the machine tapes to the ballot totals, not to the results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site (they don’t have enough details even if we wanted to)

Help is on the way as the Secretary of the State is about to pilot a better accumulation system. Perhaps it will include sufficient detail to check for errors in the subset of ballots we audit, and the law will be changed to audit using those numbers rather than the machine tapes.

A Tale Of Two Laws

This year we noticed quite a difference between hearings for bills that Legislators really understand and others covering subjects with which they are not intimately familiar. We see a similar bent in the Connecticut Constitution.

This year we noticed quite a difference between hearings for bills that Legislators really understand and others covering subjects with which they are not intimately familiar. When it comes to ethics and elections they really pay detailed attention to bills that effect them, such as disclosure of conflicts of interest and campaign finance rules — they write detailed laws with everything spelled out. The disparity in attention to detail shows up in the extent and insight in their questions during hearings, as well as in the text of proposed laws. When it comes to laws they seem to not understand so well, they do not, and perhaps cannot be expected to, pay attention to the details.

Compare the changes to and details in the campaign finance law, H.B. 5228, 117 pages, 3700 lines, with the single bill H.B. 5024, with 15 pages, 415 lines. 314 of those lines dedicated to a major change providing for Election Day Registration and 101 lines to the moderate change providing for Online Registration.

The Legislature is correct to specify in law the many critical details associated with campaign spending. As we have said before, Election Day Registration deserves a lot more of those critical details spelled out to protect the rights of all voters (and candidates).

We see a similar bent in the Connecticut Constitution having 31 amendments, with, by our count, 7 addressing the composition or redistricting of the Legislature. Typically those amendments are much longer and more detailed than the others.

Present, Past, and Future of Absentee Fraud in Connecticut

Absentee fraud may have changed the apparent winner in New Haven. The solution is not more absentee or mail-in voting.

While the Legislature is considering no-excuse absentee voting, we have a story of current likely and past documented fraud, with the Secretary of the State recommending even more risky main-in voting.

New Haven Independent story:  Voters Charge Absentee Fraud, Intimidation <read>

When college sophomore Shavalsia Sabb cast her first-ever ballot, she had no idea she would land in the middle of New Haven’s latest voting controversy.

Sabb, a Southern Connecticut State University student from Norwalk, said she voted for Audrey Tyson and Tom Ficklin in a Democratic ward co-chair election two weeks ago. She had never heard of them before. She voted by absentee ballot, even though she had no plans to be out of town and no reason to believe she couldn’t make it to the polls on election day.

Then she un-did her ballot. And decided this voting business wasn’t worth all the trouble.

“I didn’t really feel comfortable voting anymore the way it happened,” Sabb said in a conversation this week. The 20-year-old first-time voter said she felt misled and pressured by both sides in the election.

Sabb is among at least 10 Ward 29 voters—students and seniors—who either un-did votes or have filed affidavits with the State Election Enforcement Commission complaining of hanky-panky in the way that the Tyson campaign collected absentee ballots for the March 6 primary for two Democratic Town Committee ward co-chair seats.

Absentee ballots made the difference in that race. Tyson and Ficklin lost to their opponents when polling place votes were tallied on the voting machines. When absentee ballots were counted, they became the winners—Ficklin by one vote. A full 116 out of Tyson’s 256 votes came by absentee.

And at least some of the voters claim that her campaign tricked them into filling out absentees they either weren’t supposed to use, or else pressured them into voting for her against their intentions or wishes. State law requires that someone file absentee ballots only if planning to be out of town or otherwise physically unable to come to the polls; or because of military of poll-working duty or religious prohibition.

Two things to note here:

  • This may well have made the difference in the apparent winner of the election.
  • If we have no-excuse absentee balloting this would still be illegal voter intimidation, but likely more difficult to prove that there was in fact intimidation, while in this case it is clear that the voters were convinced to illegally apply for such ballots.

Sadly this is not the first time for New Haven (and Connecticut):

Aggressive collection of absentee ballots is an art form among New Haven Democrats. Charges of fraud and mishandling of ballots have sprung up regularly over the years. One City Hall supporter, Angelo Reyes, was found guilty of stealing absentee ballots in a 2002 town committee race, for instance. But usually evidence or accusations of fraud—including former Newhallville Alderman Charlie Blango’s admission last fall that his staff improperly collected them in a hotly contested aldermanic race—are met with shrugs and no follow-up, although officials did disqualify 15 ballots in that race. (Click here to read about that.) The concern is that with absentees, unlike at a polling station, campaigns can pressure people into voting for their candidate whether or not they want it.

Secretary Merrill and Senator Looney weigh in:

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (pictured) said she has a couple of ideas of how to tackle absentee ballot fraud and get more people voting in the process. One step is to eliminate absentees altogether and let everyone cast votes by mail in advance of an election, no questions asked. There would still be polling places, but fewer people would use them….

Merrill supports a bill currently before the legislature to amend the state constitution to allow no-fault absentee, or mail-in, voting. Other states, like Oregon, allow people weeks to bring in ballots in person or mail them in; 80 percent of voters do so, she said.

She cited the controversy over SCSU absentee ballots in new Haven’s Ward 29 as a reason to make the change.

“This is what we’ve got to stop. We’re making liars out of people. A lot of people are thinking: ‘I may be out of town. …’ We have no way of knowing” if people filled out ballots truthfully, Merrill said.

State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney said he’s “not convinced” about the no-fault mail-in ballot.

“You have a danger of losing the integrity of the ballot boxes,” he said. The process opens the door even wider to the possibility of employers or campaigns pressuring people to vote for candidates. “We fought 100 years ago for the secret ballot,” said Looney, who represents New Haven in the legislature.

“I would dispute that,” Merrill responded. “The fraud we’ve seen in elections is all absentee ballot fraud, people ‘helping’ [seniors and the disabled] fill out their ballots. That pool of people is already at risk.” She is supporting a separate measure to increase penalties for bribery, intimidation and other “real election fraud” to match the penalties for impersonating people at the polls.

Here we agree with Senator Loony. The point Secretary Merrill makes about all mail-in vs. Absentee voting fraud is a distinction without a difference. All mail-in would expose all mailed ballots to being voted by intimidation or mail box theft on the days they are all expected.  As we see from the two instances above it is not all filling out ballots for seniors.

Why we need paper ballots

Tuesday night, poll workers resorted to the old fashioned way of counting by hand.

Paper ballots and hand counting save the day in Mobile election <read>

Tuesday night, poll workers resorted to the old fashioned way of counting by hand.

Election officials said around 5,000 ballots were rejected by the voting machines, and early Wednesday morning officials found the culprit.

They said a tiny white dot that was accidentally printed on the bar code of some of the ballots.

Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis, “Because of that little error there, the machines rejected these ballots.”

Davis said the ballots are printed by a local company, and this was a simple printing mistake.

Of course you could say this problem was also caused by paper ballots. But the lesson is that whatever the cause, having voter verified paper ballots means that we do not have to rely only on technology. Next time it could be a lose wire or some dust on a circuit in a paperless touch screen.