CTVotersCount.org

NJ: Questionable practices – Questioning courts and watchdogs

Rigged election or three human errors – we may never know for sure.

Update: All four parts of the series are now complete in one <.pdf>

Significant that the Judge ordered a redo of the election. For the reasons stated, that may not be the best solution when the voters’ intentions are clear.

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Rigged election or three human errors – we may never know for sure. Freedom To Tinker: NJ election cover-up <read>

The Court: The 2011 New Jersey Primary Election was held on June 7, 2011. In District 3 of Fairfield Township, Cumberland County, four individuals ran for two open seats on the Democratic Executive Committee. Following the election, the County Clerk certified the results as Vivian Henry, 34 votes; Mark Henry, 33 votes; Ernest Zirkle, 9 votes; and Cynthia Zirkle, 10 votes…
[Administrator of the Cumberland County Board of Elections] Ms. Hernandez claimed that she has programmed the voting machines in Cumberland County since June of 2008, to avoid the cost of the County of hiring a programmer. She further claimed that she mistakenly placed the position for Vivian and Mark Henry onto the position of Cynthia and Ernest Zirkle, and vice versa. This information was then put into the voting machine cartridge and sent to the warehouse for testing. The voting machine technicians inserted the cartridge into the voting machine and began the necessary testing. Ms. Hernandez then claims that the voting machine technicians did not catch her error in the programming…

On August 17, 2011, an expert retained by the Plaintiffs, Dr. Andrew W. Appel, made an inspection of the voting machine and the laptop, pursuant to the Order following the July 11 hearing. In conducting this inspection, Mr. Appel found certain concerns with the security procedures which the Administrator had put in place.

He also discovered that his ability to examine the Administrator’s WinEDS laptop was seriously compromised by what appeared to be an action that someone performed on the computer on August 16, 2011, which erased a number of files which Dr. Appel wanted to examine…

In response to the August 22, 2011 Order to Show Cause, the Attorney General filed a Certification of Jason W. Cossaboon, Sr., a Computer System Analyst employed by Cumberland County. Mr. Cossaboon, in his Certification, states that on August 16, 2011, he was asked by the Administrator to determine the date the hardening process was applied to the laptop used to program the voting machines. [editor’s note: I’ll explain “hardening” in the sequel article]

He apparently was not able to find a log file for the laptop to indicate the date the hardening was done. However, he states that while working on the laptop, he noticed the computer was running very slowly. As a result, he deleted certain “temporary files.” He also, for some reason, deleted the event view logs…

I do not know and may never know exactly why this election was defective. I have suspicions that something happened here that was improper and I even question whether something happened here that may have been criminal. And I strongly encourage the Attorney General to turn this over to the Attorney General Division of Criminal Justice, so that appropriate criminal investigators can conduct a full and complete investigation of this matter, to assure that criminality did not take place.

Although the Board of Elections and the Administrator maintain that human error was all that was involved here, for me to believe that I have to believe that three independent errors, human errors, occurred here, and that somewhat stretches my belief of common sense and reality, but it’s possible.

Accordingly, I am ordering a new election to be conducted on September 27, 2011.

To be continued. This is part one of four blog posts promised.

Absentee votes in Florida, voters not required to participate

A three part series highlights ongoing, organized, absentee vote fraud in Florida. The [low] highlight is the video and story in the first part, of a disabled former county worker who tried her darnedest to vote but in the end was denied.

Could Mrs. Thompson have forgotten that she received and returned the ballot? She said no numerous times. As a former County worker, she was sharp as a tack mentally. We compared the ballot envelope signature to a fresh signature sample done by Judith at Elections as well as to the signature on her State identification card. The signature on the absentee ballot envelope when compared with Mrs. Thompson’s valid signature wasn’t even close. There were three of us looking at the signatures. The envelope signature was very tight compared to her looser hand and the capital letters were written differently. I asked Elections how they verify absentee ballot signature, they said:

The signatures are verified electronically. If the signature on the certificate requires further review, then the certificate is reviewed manually. – Michelle G. McClain, Assistant Deputy Supervisor, Voter Services

It is interesting to note that when Miami Dade County Clerk Harvey Ruvin reviewed petition signatures he did them ALL manually and had a handwriting expert on hand. Maybe the Elections Department’s program is not working as it allowed Mrs. Thompson to be disenfranchised by a forged signature. I got a few different stories about how signatures are verified at the Election’s Department. I even called the software company that supplies Elections and they were very defensive. I asked them about statistics on accuracy, They never called back. Joe Centorino at the State’s Attorney’s office (now head of County’s Ethics), at my urging, instituted an investigation into Mrs. Thompson’s lost vote. He said it was difficult proving these cases. His biggest complaint was that there is no penalty for people from campaigns picking up absentee ballots from voters even though it is illegal. He needs to have a penalty to impose on the illegal activity in order to make arrests….

We had spent some time at the Miami–Dade County Department of Elections looking at returned absentee ballot envelopes and ballots from the preceding election. What we reviewed were the now empty ballot-filled envelopes which have the voter’s address information and signature. The actual ballots do not have any identifying numbers, names or marks on them. We viewed those separately. We were not allowed to touch or copy the envelopes or ballots. They were held up in front of our faces.

What we saw during our time at Elections amazed us. It actually prepared us for Ms. Thompson’s experience. What we learned through interviews before Ms. Thompson’s trek to Elections was not surprising.

During our time at Elections, we saw ballots that were filled in strangely.

Among the oddities were numerous ballots that had only 2 candidates (the same two) filled in out of the scads of candidates in the November election. There were ballots with pencil circles around the “correct” bubble with dark ink colored in them. It may not sound like much, but when you are sitting there looking at page after page, you soon realize that some things you see are not quite right.

When it came to the ballot certification envelopes, our review offered up many questions and we oftentimes received answers from the department about the absentee process that didn’t make sense.

On the envelopes we noted some strange things like unusual numbers of voters in a certain area missing required printed signatures at the envelope top while other areas had all of the required printing on them. There were envelopes with signatures in the wrong place allowing the envelopes to be opened or closed; there were different hand writing styles on the top, bottom and front of the envelope; there were envelopes with NO signature (they were counted, now I want you to try that at a poll) and other things that just seemed weird.

In some cases we asked to compare the envelope signatures with the one on file and we were denied the opportunity. We asked questions about the envelope review process. The response really didn’t calm our discomfort with what we saw. After this visit, I am still not convinced that the envelopes are truly looked at in a comprehensive matter – having found one vote counted with NO signature…

Miami Herald’s Columnist Fred Grimm said:

“In 1993, after the Hialeah city election was tainted by illicit commerce in absentee votes, a Miami Herald editorial warned, “Florida’s absentee ballot guidelines are among the nation’s most lenient. Indeed, the laws encourage ‘ballot brokers’ who exchange blocs of absentee ballots for money. The Legislature needs to adopt tighter regulations for obtaining absentee ballots. The Florida Senate wisely voted down a bill this year that would have made the code even looser.”

That bit of wisdom did not hold. In 2004, the Legislature relaxed absentee ballot rules. And ballot brokers are still deciding elections. (The Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections mailed out 126,372 absentee ballots for Tuesday’s county mayoral election.) If the rules were any looser, my dog Jasper could vote absentee.”…

A View from an Insider:

There are cases where they would be “using” the absentee ballots mailed to the typical Cuban seniors — those who are handicapped by their physical problems, and many who are not. These people don’t speak English; most live either in nursing homes or in private nursing homes [family homes that take up to 8 seniors], so the people who are the managers at these places are in control of the votes/people.

These seniors don’t know how to vote, so they trust their “handlers” to do this for them. Let’s say that there’s a private home that houses 8 seniors; the person who manages the place will sell their ballots to the people who are gathering votes for the candidates. This manager can collect anywhere from $50 to $100 per ballot. It all depends on how badly the campaigns need the vote and, most all, how much money is available for negotiating.

Why on earth do you think that the costs of running a political campaign in Miami-Dade get higher with every new election? Do you really believe that they need the money for radio and TV?

In the case of the dining rooms [“comedores”], I understand that it is more of a communal process. As the ballots arrive, the “handlers” sit with the seniors and they tell them that they are going to help complete the voting process, so it is easier for them. These seniors have no idea how to vote, and even the presence of a ballot scares them to death.

In the cases of the hundreds of Cuban clinics in Miami-Dade – that are no more than Medicare mills – the owners, or managers, ask the seniors if they want to “negotiate” their ballots, and they offer them money. Naturally, a Medicare mill is there to help the senior make money, one way or the other. And then the seniors request their ballots by phone, and even if they would need a medical excuse, stating that they “can’t go to the polls,” remember who’s helping them to do the transaction, THEIR CLINIC…

Here is a last word from the Miami Herald:

“Still, interviews with at least a half-dozen people involved in Greater Miami elections paint a picture of a flourishing cottage industry in which ballot brokers promise to deliver blocks of absentee votes for a price. To be sure, many strategies for targeting absentee voters are legal, but the practice becomes dubious when voters are pressured with insistent phone calls and home visits. And the efforts can cross the line into fraud, when ballots that are collected under the guise of helping a voter are altered or destroyed.”

How much safer/riskier is Connecticut? We are not so sure. People here have been prosecuted. We are certain, that our President and the make-up of our Congress is dependent on errors and fraud in Florida and in every other state.

Common Sense: Integrity and Confidence

We often speak of the need for ‘Integrity and Confidence’ in elections, yet the words ‘Integrity’ and ‘Confidence’ are often misunderstood, with their meanings collapsed. We need both confidence and integrity in our elections, neither alone is sufficient.

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

Posting on a recent presentation we realized that we often speak of the need for ‘Integrity and Confidence’ in elections, yet the words ‘Integrity’ and ‘Confidence’ are often misunderstood, with their meanings collapsed. We need both confidence and integrity in our elections, neither alone is sufficient.

Integrity

We find the Wikipedia definition of Integrity close to what we mean when we call for election integrity.

Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy,[1] in that it regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.

In elections, to us, integrity means that the voters’ intentions are realized in the results of each race or contest. That within reason every vote is counted accurately. It means that the entire system of voter registration, ballot access, and election administration functions according to law and common sense expectations of the public. A system where what we expect is what we get, and what we expect is democracy. A system sufficient for the people to control, define, and elect their government.

Confidence

For Confidence we prefer Dictionary.com’s definition:

Confidence. 1.full trust; belief in the powers, trustworthiness, or reliability of a person or thing: We have every confidence in their ability to succeed. 3.certitude; assurance: He described the situation with such confidence that the audience believed him completely.

In elections, to us, confidence means that the vast majority of voters and candidates trust that voters’ intentions are realized in the results of each race or contest. They trust that within reason every vote is counted accurately. It means that they trust the entire system of voter registration, ballot access, and election administration functions according to law and common sense expectations of the public. They believe we have a system that provides that what we expect is what we get, and what we expect is democracy. They trust we have a system sufficient for the people to control, define, and elect their government.

Confidence without Integrity

The Madison Avenue, vigilance free system. A system which the public and candidates trust, which in reality is not one of integrity. Such a system would not be sufficient for democracy because the will of the people would be thwarted through election errors, election skulduggery, voter suppression, or insufficient ballot access. Largely a myth created by weak, fearful, gullible, or duplicitous officials, believed by some of the people some of the time. Symptoms include lack of transparency, defensiveness, and errors attributed to rare, unique and explainable mistakes.

Without Confidence and without Integrity

A system without integrity with weaknesses more transparent to the public, than apparent to officials. This system is more prevalent than systems with confidence and without integrity. We have been admonished by some officials to “Stop doing what you are doing because it will scare the voters away from the polls“. We have news for such officials and politicians: The public has a general lack of confidence in the system already. When we asked voters to sign a petition calling for increased integrity and confidence in elections, most immediately agreed to sign – they recognized the need. The second most prevalent reaction was to laugh and walk away indicating that it was a hopeless quest.

Integrity without Confidence

Yet, a lack of confidence does not necessarily imply a lack of integrity; perhaps power does not always corrupt a weak link; perhaps transparency is not necessary for election integrity; perhaps elections are an exception to what we see when we lift the veil of government secrecy in every other area. Confidence requires a transparent system. In addition confidence requires laws and procedures that are sufficient, enforceable, and enforced. Unless the laws of human nature are suspended for elections, integrity also would require those same things: laws and procedures that are sufficient, enforceable, and enforced. Sufficient laws must go beyond punishing the guilty and correcting the innocent; sufficient procedures must go beyond correcting errors and mistakes so that they will not happen again; the system must assure redress of incorrect results.

CO: Chain-Of-Custody and Confidence broken

Confidence depends on counting everything, the chain-of-custody, and what is discovered. It looks like faults in all three do not inspire confidence and integrity in Saguache County

Update 1/26/2012: Recall election brings new Saguache clerk <read>

County Clerk and Recorder Melinda Myers lost her recall election by more than a 2-1 margin Tuesday night and will be replaced by the candidate she beat in a controversial 2010 election. Voters recalled Myers, 941-453, pushing her from office 14 months after an election that prompted two reviews by the secretary of state and another by a statewide grand jury. Republican Carla Gomez, who lost to Myers in the last election, topped independent Patricia Jenkins, 762-319, according to Tuesday’s final unofficial results.

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CO: Citizens challenge SOS plan, discover ballot irregularities <read>

Confidence depends on counting everything, the chain-of-custody, and what is discovered. It looks like faults in all three do not inspire confidence and integrity in Saguache County:

The group peppered Secretary of State’s Office (SOS) staff with questions about how the review should be conducted and what should be reviewed. They protested that the votes cast in Prec. 5 (Crestone) have been in question since the election and since they were largely mail-in, should be counted as a precinct in order to decide if the Nov. 5 “retabulation” of these votes following the discovery of the error was accurate…

The SOS assigned teams to citizen volunteers Monday and began sorting out the ballots. Citizens asked the counting activities be delayed until their questions could be answered but Munster and communications officer Andrew Cole simply stated that the directives issued for the review by the SOS last week must be followed…

In opening the ballot boxes, volunteers discovered that only two of the three boxes had the necessary seals attached. None of the seal logs were where they were supposed to be, watchers observed. Counting judge Duboe and another individual, while possibly trying to trying to locate unvoted ballot stock, opened the ballot boxes March 30.

One of the four teams counting ballots discovered more signatures than ballots. Another team found several ballots with white out covering votes, different inks used on the same ballot and marks that appeared to be made by felt tip markers which had bled through to the other side of the ballot.

Another team found what seemed to be an entire batch of provisional ballots that had not been opened or reviewed. Some 10 ballots were discovered that had votes made only for Joseph and Myers and no other candidates. The SOS said that these votes were valid, although they did disqualify one vote cast for Linda Joseph found by another team that was unverifiable.

Some ballots apparently were missing and there was confusion concerning a set of odd provisional ballots, all blank, cast in Precincts 7, 8 and 9. One voter signature had been cut from a provisional ballot out of another pollbook and taped over a signature of the same person into a different pollbook. “We have no idea what happened there,” Marks said.

See earlier coverage <here>

Bridgeport: Judge rules for primary challenge, delays primary two weeks

We agree that the Judge made the correct decision in this case. However we caution, this ruling should not be taken as a general precedent that candidates and election officials can make unlimited errors, without consequences. This is a case where the will of the petition signers is clear; the campaign complied with the law to the extent humanly possible; the campaign was not responsible for any failure to comply with the letter of the law; no harm to the public occurs from this decision and significant harm if the primary were denied. There will always a be need for common sense.

CTPost Article: Judge orders Mary-Jane Foster on Bridgeport mayoral primary ballot <read>

Some of the highlights from the article:

[Judge] Bellis found that the interplay of state and city statutes that Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala had relied on to deny Foster a ballot spot was confusing and ambiguous and that the Foster campaign had made every reasonable effort to follow the law…

“Given the facts of the present case it appears that the interests and the constitutional rights of the voters, candidates and political parties outweigh any interest the Legislature has in enacting laws which are meant to make the election process fair and orderly,” the judge wrote. “Denying candidates a place on the ballot for a primary after they have demonstrated that the required amount of electors were willing to sign a petition to endorse their candidacy does not further the expressed intent of the legislature and it risks violating the rights of political parties and candidates and disenfranchising voters in this case.”…

Bellis noted in her ruling that the confusion engendered by the state takeover had made the laws governing the nominating petition process even more confusing. And she said the record showed the Foster campaign had, on numerous occasions, sought clarity from Ayala’s office and from the state, only to be rebuffed or ignored.

The case pitted Foster’s campaign, represented by Alan Neigher, who urged the judge to ignore technicalities and listen to the will of the people. The registrar’s office was represented by Deputy City Attorney Arthur Laske III, who stuck by his interpretation of the law and the City Charter…

In a statement issued after the decision, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said she was pleased with the judge’s decision. Merrill’s office had suggested to Ayala that her reading of the applicable statutes was correct.

“Democracy works best when voters have choices,” she said. “Those of us who administer elections at the local and state level must always remember that while each of us has statutory obligations, our most important goal is to make sure that voters can express themselves freely through the ballot. I am therefore pleased that Judge Bellis’ decision will provide Democratic voters in Bridgeport with a legitimate choice — even if it is two weeks later than other municipalities in Connecticut cast primary ballots.”

Opinion:

Yet to be decided, perhaps months or years in the future, the State Elections Enforcement Commission complaint against Democratic Registrar of Voters Santa Ayala.

See our earlier coverage <here> and <here>

Addendum: The court ruling

Elections Performance Task Force: Technology Fair and Doug Chapin

You can have little to no impact on your turn-out bottom line with election laws. Turnout tends to be driven by what’s on the ballot rather than when, where, or how it is available. – Doug Chapin

Elections Performance Task Force Coverage <prev>

Yesterday was the 2nd meeting of the Elections Performance Task Force. It was a technology fair along with a talk plus Q&A with Doug Chapin. <ct-n video>

The technology fair was well attended with perhaps two to three times as many people as the Task Force members. Several vendors demonstrated electronic poll books, with single vendors demonstrating on-demand printing, high speed scanners, the AutoMark for persons with disabilities, and the PCC Technology Group, Connecticut’s voter registration database vendor. I was pleased to hear about a new version of our voter registration system in use in four towns that should provide a solution to past performance problems. It also has a capability for updating election results from polling places on election night via iPad or SmartPhone – hopefully that capability will be implemented by the State to provide more detailed election results, downloadable by the public, as we have been calling for. Also we noted that a pilot test of one vendor’s electronic poll book system will be conducted in the city of Torrington.

Doug Chapin, Director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, provided insights to the Task Force covering issues related to technology and election administration, followed by a Q&A. His talk centered on the value and price of changing election administration, technology, and election laws. Some of his main points to the Task Force:

Extensive data is needed to determine the value of, and direction of election administration changes.
In this era of tight budgets, assume you will not get increases for election administration.
Measuring Return On Investment (ROI) is important. Understand both the value and cost of changes.
A trend in the near term is attention on voter registration, including accuracy and online registration. Most states that do online registration accomplish it in cooperation with another state agency, such as motor vehicles.
Early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and voting centers are strong trends. They can provide voter convenience. They can save money or add to costs. Data does not support significant changes in participation.
Once you start early voting, taking it away can have an impact, once people are accustomed to it. (As taking away local polling place voting may also have a similar impact)
Survey voters to determine their levels of satisfaction and confidence in the process.
Do not expect increases in participation based on changes or reforms in election administration. Satisfaction and convenience can be increased but not participation.

Chapin did not cover integrity, security, and the potential for errors and fraud. I found his remarks on the limits of election administration to effect participation particularly valuable. Certainly election administration can impact participation, yet likely only marginally. More data is needed to assess the value of early voting, voting centers, and election day registration to support his contention in each case. Surveying voters is useful to improve convenience and service, yet has its limitations when it comes to confidence in our elections. In the near term we will have more to say on the relationship between integrity and confidence, along with why we need both for democracy to flourish <see here>.

You can have little to no impact on your turn-out bottom line with election laws. Turnout tends to be driven by what’s on the ballot rather than when, where, or how it is available. – Doug Chapin

I was particularly interested in the demonstrations of electronic poll books and their potential in Connecticut. To me, they represent a huge step forward in accuracy, providing value to voters, poll workers, election officials, and campaigns. However, I do not see significant savings to match the investment, maintenance, and operational costs. There are some savings, especially in the phone intensive coordination of registration transfers between polling places, involving multiple phone calls between headquarters and polling places. It will be interesting if the Torrington pilot demonstrates savings such that towns will be willing to foot the bill for the local hardware and software, while offering to pay their share to the state for interfacing our voter registration system to electronic poll books – I doubt it. Overall, I would favor a solid plan for electronic poll books, yet justified as a moderate cost investment based on the value of accuracy and convenience.

We do need better equipment, accommodations, and access for persons with disabilities – much better than our current costly, problematic, inconvenient IVS system. That deserves its own Task Force with election officials and representatives of persons with disabilities, along with extensive testing and cost benefit analysis.

The issue of ballots, ordering, costs, and on demand printing is complex. The Secretary mentioned that we do not have a good handle on ballot printing costs today. Costs vary from town to town and are based on the size and pages of ballots required. It is also based on the number of ballot styles and voters per ballot style. On-demand printing provides another option, yet the devil is in the details. How would on-demand be deployed? How many printers? Costs for programming ballot styles? Transportation costs, presuming printers are not in each polling place? Contingency plans for power failures, traffic accidents etc. The only valid analysis would be to compare complete proposed systems comparing all costs and benefits. Our estimate is that there is a potential to save a little, provide additional value, yet also a potential to spend a lot with little benefit. We should proceed with caution and skepticism.

The next meeting is scheduled for September 19th, 1:00pm – 3:00pm. The Task Force will hear from one of its members, Heather Gerken, Yale University School of Law.

Update: For another take, read this CTNewsJunkie.org article. Best of all watch the video yourself: <ct-n video>

Bridgeport waits for justice, while watchdogs shrink

While the citizens of Bridgeport wait, the merged watchdog agencies must make do with smaller staffs. No word from the Governor on the reasons for the watchdog cuts, consolidations, and the message he is actually sending to the watchdogs.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) is not not know for speed. As covered last week, it will rule on the rejection of petitions for a slate in Bridgeport, well after the election. If the past is any indication it will also be a long time before we hear if financial complaints against the mayor are valid. The public and the mayor deserve answers on all these issues in time to make a difference in the candidates they can vote for and to have guidance on the integrity of the candidates they are choosing among.

The administration ordered 128 layoffs earlier this summer for non-union personnel. About half of them were connected with agency consolidations approved by the legislature in June. The remainder were linked to efforts to cut costs when it appeared union concessions wouldn’t be forthcoming.

“We haven’t finalized our decision-making on these” jobs, Barnes said. “But we’ve invited each department to submit a plan” to try to reclaim those jobs it deems are most crucial.

This position already has sparked criticism from the state’s three chief watchdog agencies, which were rolled on July 1 — along with six others — into a new, unified Office of Governmental Accountability.

The heads of the Freedom of Information Commission, the Office of State Ethics and the State Elections Enforcement Commission, have said they shouldn’t have to ask the governor to restore positions in their budget. Malloy laid off three non-union watchdog jobs and to date has not allowed these agencies–now divisions within the OGA- to fill newly vacant posts.

That’s because at the height of the scandal that drove former Gov. John G. Rowland from office in 2004, state lawmakers legally insulated the freedom of information, ethics and elections enforcement agencies with a measure sparing them from any emergency cuts after the budget had been adopted, arguing this was essential to keep government open and honest.

The watchdog agencies say Malloy is violating at least the spirit, and possibly the letter of that law, by laying off their staff and using the governor’s control over state hiring rules to prevent them from using their approved budgets to fill the positions.

P.T. Barnum’s city continues three-ring election circus

Ringling Brothers’ city of Sarasota is famous for the 2006 congressional election show, but Bridgeport Connecticut, resting place of P.T. Barnum continues to be the home of the three-ring-circus. Ring 1 and 2 are allegations of money hi-jinks involving the Mayor. Ring 3 is the rejection of petitions for a slate of candidates, lead by a candidate for mayor, ready to challenge the establishment in the primary. Stay tuned, especially if there is a write-in campaign.

Ringling Brothers’ city of Sarasota is famous for the 2006 congressional election show, but Bridgeport Connecticut, resting place of P.T. Barnum continues to be the home of the three-ring-circus. Ring 1 and 2 are allegations of money hi-jinks involving the Mayor. Ring 3 is the rejection of petitions for a slate of candidates, led by a candidate for mayor, ready to challenge the establishment in the primary.

They had more than enough signatures validated with many left over available to check; the problem is they had one too many candidates on the petition; yet the petitions were drawn up by the same Registrar of Voters who rejected them. Whose fault is this? Should the slate be allowed on the ballot? Is this a violation by the official or not? From the Connecticut Post the story of three complaints to the State Elections Enforcement Commission <read>

A state watchdog commission has begun an investigation into a political action committee that gave thousands of dollars to Mayor Bill Finch and his chief of staff, as well as a separate complaint regarding the city Democratic registrar’s rejection of Democrat Mary-Jane Foster’s mayoral nomination petitions.

The State Elections Enforcement Commission on Wednesday voted to act on a trio of complaints filed by Foster, whose hopes of challenging Finch in a Sept. 13 primary appeared crushed Monday after Registrar Santa Ayala ruled Foster’s nominating petition was invalid.

Among the issues to be probed by the SEEC is the relationship among the “People for Excellence in Government” political action committee, Finch and William P. Beccaro, a legal consultant who was paid $91,000 last year by the city.

Note that the extra candidate was for the Board of Education, recently taken over by the state. Nobody is sure there needs to be an election for BOE, and it would be meaningless, unless a court overturns the state take over. (Same circus, different tent?)

The most interesting details are in the SEEC complaint concerning the nominating petition. It is an easy read: <.pdf>

Unfortunately, the SEEC will not rule until well after the primary election. Perhaps the slate will seek redress in the courts.

Details of the investigations will be withheld until a hearing officer’s report is put on a future commission agenda. Probes usually take months, and it’s unlikely that Foster’s request to set aside Ayala’s ruling could be reviewed before the next regular commission meeting set for Sept. 21, eight days after the Democratic mayoral primary vote had been scheduled.

A subsequent article in the Post suggests the candidate for Mayor may try the write-in route. And raises questions concerning the responsibility of a Registrar of Voters. <read>

However long it took Bridgeport to count all the ballots in last year’s gubernatorial race, it may take longer — way l-o-n-g-e-r — to tally all the mayoral votes in this year’s election. That’s because of the possibility of a write-in.

Keep in mind that write-ins can prove victorious. Waterbury Mayor Michael Jarjura ran and won as a write-in candidate. And so did Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski against a tea party candidate backed by Sarah Palin. Imagine how much more time-consuming tabulating the turnout’s gonna be with all the voters scribbling in mayoral hopeful Mary-Jane Foster’s name on their ballots. Once those ballots go through the city’s high-tech voting scanners, they’ll likely have to be sorted (by the name of each write-in candidate) and counted by hand…

With Ayala it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with. After reading her comments about the latest uproar — that she knew the nominating petition she was handing the Foster forces was flawed — I’m convinced she’s plenty smart, politically adroit and diabolical. A real triple-threat. She knows election law. She can probably recite the Bridgeport City Charter by heart. Even if registrars of voters have no legal duty (operative words here: RIGHT NOW) to advise a candidate of a problem with their paperwork, don’t they have an ethical obligation? It’s telling that the president of the Registrar of Voters Association of Connecticut, Anthony Esposito, Hamden’s Republican registrar, says he probably would say something about the defect to the candidate “in the interest of fair play.”

A registrar of voters is more than an election administrator ensuring that voter lists are up to date and people are properly registered to cast ballots. They’re supposed to empower citizens to exercise a fundamental American right: political speech.

Stay tuned, especially if there is a write-in campaign. We added our comments on the second article at the CT Post:

The latest research adds one more challenge. Many write-in votes, under the standard of voters intent, are not recognized by the scanners as write-ins. Recanvass (recount) laws do not take this into account. If a write-in candidate gets more than about 42% of the vote, then they may well win if they can convince the courts to authorize a recount. For the details see: <CTVotersCount post on the latest research>

Update: As someone has pointed out to me, there is a complaint and it is being heard Monday.

Update: Agency examining Ayala’s ruling has been tough on previous registrars <read>

Update: Day 1 of court hearings on slate petition <read>

EVT/WOTE: Design a complete voting system, then ask vendors to satisfy needs.

Editor’s Note: August 8th and 9th, we attended the EVT/WOTE (Electronic Voting Technology / Workshop On Trustworthy Elections) in San Francisco. Over time, we are highlighting several papers and talks from the conference.

Monday’s keynote by Dana Debeauvoir, County Clerk, Travis County, Texas, was a call to design a new voting system to meet the needs of voters, election officials, and integrity advocates, then provide the specifications to vendors to compete to satisfy those needs. Debeauvoir pointed out that HAVA worked the opposite way: Officials with little notice, and little computer expertise were forced to comply with HAVA on short notice. They had to choose from what was made available by vendors.

Debeauvoir presented a possible draft design for a complete system, to start the conversation.
Keynote talk: <.pdf> <video> Full diagram with notes: <diagram>

This is just one draft on one possible design

Debeauvoir emphasized that this is just one start at a design. It provides thoughtful ideas that highlight the benefits and challenges in designing, building, and implementing a comprehensive design. It would take a lot of cool heads, research, contemplation, and redesign to get the job done well.

Perhaps most intriguing and controversial is the idea of a ballot marking device for all in-person voters. There are several advantages: The elimination of incomplete in-person votes; write-in accuracy for in-person votes; perhaps easily integrated to serve those with disabilities; savings in paper. There are potential disadvantages: Requires a backup plan (paper ballots available?) in case of power failures, software errors, equipment failures etc. – a backup plan may or may not offset savings. Would the value of more accurate votes be worth the purchase, maintenance, programming, testing, and operational costs?

A good design would likely be a system with components that integrate, yet are not all required, or can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The Debeauvoir draft would work fine without the ballot marking device, ballot marking devices only in voting centers, or ballot marking devices optional in polling places intended mainly for use by persons with disabilities.

The value of careful design and planning with everyone at the table:

The way to waste time and money, while creating more problems than those solved is to go forward without a comprehensive review, without a comprehensive design, grabbing at solutions without looking at the big picture. This can continue through time, retrofitting one solution after another onto an inadequate system solving one problem while ignoring other problems and creating unintended consequences.

Sometimes buying add-on or standalone systems works and sometimes it does not. It usually depends on the level of integration and implementation costs, for example:

Relatively easy: It would seem relatively easy for Connecticut to use independent scanners to assist in post-election audits. Such a systems do not require integration with our current optical scanners. We would need a moderate number of scanners, easily updated software, and off the shelf equipment.
Extremely costly and difficult: If we were to purchase ballot marking devices as described in Debeauvoir draft design, without acquiring new scanners, it would be very complex, far from optimum, and severely limit options by requiring ballots that would work with our existing optical scanners. Considering the expense we would be stuck with the system for a long time, or huge sunk costs for a short term gain.
In the middle: It we were to purchase electronic check-off (poll books) devices, they should communicate effectively with a new or redesigned central voter registration system. They would not need to integrate with our existing scanners. We would need several per polling place, yet considerably less than the number of ballot marking devices.

The solution is taking time and including everyone at the table in some way: Election officials, voters, technologists, integrity advocates, and vendors. Taking time to consider what could work and what might not, taking in the perspective of the variety of needs across Connecticut and the experience of jurisdictions across the country.

At some point in the future we will need to replace our optical scanners. Assuming that is in the five to ten year timeframe, this would be a good time to participate in understanding and contributing to an integrated design. The alternative is scrambling later, risking expensive, less than optimum solutions.

A pleasantly surprising answer

In the Q&A after the talk, I suggested the audit portion of the design needed transparency, so that the public could have confidence in the result. The the whole system should take transparency into account.

I was pleasantly surprised by Debeauvoir’s’ answer. She agreed that transparency is important. It was overlooked in the diagram as they assume and provide for transparency in their operations.

EVT/WOTE: Keynote – How salty is the soup? And why risk limiting audits are insufficeint.

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet.

The keynote speaker was Professor Philip Stark, Department of Statistics, U.C. Berkeley. He is the leading researcher and advocate for single ballot auditing, which would make post election audits much more efficient, while also provides the basis for efficient auditing by machine. The talk is serious and lite covering election integrity from 10,000 feet. I recommend reviewing the slides from the talk, with one caveat: The slides are a large download, but well worth the wait. <slides – large download> <video> <listen>

His talk is titled: Risk Limiting Audits: Soup to Nuts, and Beyond.

Soup refers to the analogy he frequently uses to describe the statistical basis of risk limiting audits. Pollsters know that the accuracy of polling depends on the number of voters polled, not the size of the population eligible to vote in a particular contest. Thus the accuracy of an audit depends on the number of ballots checked, not the number of ballots in the election. It is just like tasting soup (or an ocean):

To know whether the soup is too salty, don’t need to eat all of it.

Enough to taste a teaspoon, if soup is stirred well.

Doesn’t matter how big the pot is: a teaspoon is enough.

Nuts refers to the limits on the purpose of an audit, according to Professor Stark:

The purpose of elections is to convince the losers that they lost.
(D. Wallach)
The purpose of election audits is to convince everybody who isn’t
nuts that the losers lost. (Y. T.)…

What’s a nut?

Somebody whose biggest fear is different enough from yours.

Somebody who shares your biggest fear is sane (and smart!).

Somebody whose biggest fear is close to yours has an interesting perspective.

Eccentric ! preoccupied ! irrationally fixated ! nuts.

The “Wayne’s World” test.

Unfortunately, who is a nut is in the eye of the beholder. Some have blind trust in election machines and blind trust in security procedures, Officials with high levels of trust question the need for post-election audits of any type. They would classify anyone questioning the possibility of election errors or fraud as nuts. Others would never be convinced of election integrity, distrusting whatever evidence is presented by officials and judged sufficient by independent observers.

Professor Stark’s talk is centered on three big ideas which would produce audits sufficient to convince most of us that the losers lost:

Strongly Software-Independent Voting System
A voting system is strongly software-independent if an undetectable error or change to its software cannot produce an undetected change in the outcome, and we can find the correct outcome without rerunning the election.

Risk-limiting Audit
Large, known chance of a full hand count if the outcome is wrong, thereby correcting the outcome.

Risk is maximum chance of failing to correct an apparent outcome that is wrong, no matter what caused the outcome to be wrong.

Resilient Canvass Framework
Known minimum chance that the overall system (human, hardware, software, procedures) gives the correct election outcome—when it gives an outcome.

Combine a strongly software-independent voting system with a compliance audit and a risk-limiting audit.

Ingredients for resilient canvass framework

Voters create complete, durable, accurate audit trail.
Strongly software independent voting system.

LEO curates the audit trail properly.
Proper use of seals, surveillance, secure chain of custody, . . .

Compliance audit to ensure that the audit trail is adequately
intact before the risk-limiting audit starts. If not, need a re-vote.
“No smoking gun” is not affirmative evidence.

Timely reporting of all-but-final results for auditable batches.
Smaller batches are better.

Count votes by hand until there’s strong evidence that counting

the rest won’t change the outcome–risk-limiting audit
“Explaining” or “resolving” errors isn’t enough.
Might need to count all votes by hand if margin is small or audit finds enough error.

A compliance audit is what we mean when we say that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and that the chain of custody in Connecticut is insufficient to proved confidence in our post-election audits.

Take the time to download the slides for a non-technical introduction to post-election audits, single ballot audits, their purpose, and what is needed to provide justified confidence in elections.