Secretaries of State on MOVE Act and Online Voting

We believe Connecticut can do better at supporting Military and Overseas Voting. We should be following and improving on the success of states like Minnesota and New York. We should avoid risky, expensive, insufficient solutions like the West Virgina prototype.

Mark Ritchie is Minnesota Secretary of the State and also the most recent past President of the National Association of Secretaries of State. He spoke at the Overseas Vote Foundation conference earlier this year: <video>

Mark Ritchie covers:

  • The success of implementing MOVE in Minnesota without Internet voting
  • The risk of Internet voting – Minnesota has been hacked
  • Understanding the difference between using electronics to send ballots vs. receiving them via the Internet
  • Why just supporting Military Voters is insufficient – there are many other overseas voters
  • The importance of the move of primaries from September to August

Secretary Ritchie’s talk is followed on YouTube (on the right) by talks by others on the panel and a Q&A. These are all very interesting and contribute to understanding the challenges faced by military and overseas voters.

  • Ultimately a low percentage of military voters apply for absentee ballots and a disappointing percentage of those are actually returned. We should not expect a military voting rate equal to the general public, but most of those motivated to request ballots should find it convenient enough to vote.
  • New York and Washington make a good case for why overseas voters should be served as well as military voters
  • New York was also quite successful with voters choosing to obtain materials from the web, working in conjunction with a vendor, Scytl and the Overseas Vote Foundation. In 2010 the process was labor intensive for local officials in 2010, yet they are working to improve that in 2011. <video>
  • Many of the existing systems non-online voting systems are actually very similar to the process of the West Virginia online voting pilot and do on result in significant numbers actually voting
  • In Maryland they found that overseas voters made use of electronic ballot delivery of materials at twice the rate of military voters
  • In the Q&A Mark Ritchie discusses the problems that spam filters cause with the actual receipt of emails by voters
  • Many states like the West Virgina  pilot require an absentee application, followed by an ID and Password to be sent to voters for them to retrieve materials or to vote.
    (It seems obvious to us: This can result in problems with mailed information getting to military voters with frequent changes in addresses. If sent via email then there would be security issues and many might well be lost in transmission to the voter)

 

Earlier this year we pointed to and covered a technologists panel on Internet voting at the same conference.

We believe Connecticut can do better at supporting Military and Overseas Voting. We should be following and improving on the success of states like Minnesota and New York. We should avoid risky, expensive, insufficient solutions like the West Virgina prototype.

Exit Polling Nixed in Middle of Wisconsin Election

Government Accountability Board halts citizen election accountability. Despite prior approval, volunteer citizens group barred from doing what Corporations have been doing for years.

From BradBlog: Wisconsin ‘Government Accountability Board’ Shuts Down Recall Election Exit Polling – Says nonpartisan polling ‘electioneering’ because candidates’ names appear on exit poll ‘ballot’ <read>

According to a press release (see below) issued yesterday by EDA, despite local volunteer pollsters being equipped with copies of GAB regulations and a letter from the head of GAB outlining permission for exit polling, the rules were apparently changed during the day and pollsters forbidden to hand out the exit polling ‘ballot’ voters were asked to complete anonymously.

EDA National Chairperson Sally Castleman told The BRAD BLOG, “The numerous red flags that came to light in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election this spring alerted many Wisconsinites to the need for citizen oversight in their elections. With official vote counts being conducted secretly inside computers, exit polling is one of the very, very few mechanisms left to the public for assessing the legitimacy of official outcomes.” Castleman added, “We need to see this level of public participation all over the nation in order to halt the privatization of our elections.”

From the press release:

Despite having the GAB Regulations (§§5.35 (5), 7.37 (2) ) in hand plus a letter from Kevin Kennedy, head of the GAB, both clearly allowing exit polling, the GAB today through GAB member David Buerger, has said that the group is “electioneering” because candidates names appear on the polling “ballot.” He further dictated that no voter would be allowed to touch an exit poll ballot, that pollsters can only verbally ask the voters their responses. This despite the fact that Edison-Mitofsky, the polling company commissioned by the Media Consortium to conduct Exit Polling nationally over the last many years, uses written polling ballots that the voters fill in themselves.

The polls were being run by concerned Wisconsin citizens volunteering under the guidance of Election Defense Alliance and Protect California Ballots, two non-partisan organizations with the mission of restoring transparency to our elections. Both organizations have run non-partisan exit polls many times in the past in close to a dozen states. Neither group has ever been harassed in such a way before.

“This is reasoning beyond specious”, said Jonathan Simon, Director of Election Defense Alliance. “Exit polling in this country has been going on for decades. To call it ‘electioneering’ simply because candidates names appear on the poll ballot, when all names appear without any advocacy involved, is absurd. This is concealment in OUR elections. Public participation is being forbidden!”

And from the press release, related charges we have not seen elsewhere which require more detail for verification:

Despite the fact that the law says a photo ID is requested but not required for this election, reports have been received from Glendale that voters are not being allowed to vote without photo ID.

In another related story, robo-calls, reportedly coming from Virginia, are being made to Democrats throughout the primary districts today telling them not to vote today because an absentee ballot is in the mail.

Update: Here is another story on those robo calls: <read>

The phone calls, which were traced to a tele­mar­ket­ing com­pany in Vir­ginia, car­ried the fol­low­ing mes­sage from Wis­con­sin Right to Life exec­u­tive direc­tor Bar­bara Lyons:

Hello, this is Bar­bara Lyons from Wis­con­sin Right to Life. I’m call­ing today to let you know that you will be receiv­ing an absen­tee bal­lot appli­ca­tion for the upcom­ing recall elec­tions in the mail in the next few days. These recall elec­tions are very impor­tant and vot­ing absen­tee will ensure that your vote is counted and that we can main­tain a pro-family, pro-life state Sen­ate. We hope that we can count on you to com­plete that appli­ca­tion and send it back to us within seven days. Thank you for your sup­port. Wis­con­sin Right to Life can be reached by call­ing 877–855-5007.

…“Wis­con­sin Right to Life con­demns blog­gers who are falsely and viciously report­ing that Wis­con­sin Right to Life is mak­ing calls telling peo­ple not to vote today. That is com­pletely untrue,” Lyons said . “Wis­con­sin Right to Life has not ever and is not now mak­ing phone calls to sup­press votes.”

Round-Up: O Me O My O – Errors in Jersey and Fraud in Ohio

We frequently highlight stories of election error and fraud nationwide. We do this as a service to provide references to counter the frequent statements from election officials and legislators claiming no record of such errors and fraud.

Editor’s Note: We frequently highlight stories of election error and fraud nationwide. We do this  as a service to provide references to counter the  frequent statements from election officials and legislators claiming no record of such errors and fraud.

O Me O My O –  How They Add Votes In Ohio

Secretary of State turns investigation over to prosecutors: Elections chief suspects voter fraud – Secretary of State seeks criminal investigation <read>

Looks like certain fraud and perhaps a strong case for prosecution:

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted wants the attorney general and the Lawrence County Prosecutor to determine if a group of Democrats attempted voter fraud in the 2010 general election.

If so, it could mean prison time and a fine for anyone convicted of these crimes.

On Tuesday Husted turned over to Mike DeWine and J.B. Collier the findings of his investigation into the applications of 119 Lawrence County absentee ballots for further review and possible prosecution…

At issue are applications for absentee ballots that were sent to two post office boxes — 42 were sent to a box in the name of Ironton resident Charles Maynard and 77 were sent to a box in the name of Russell Bennett of Chesapeake during the fall of 2010.

“Of the 77 absentee ballot applications marked to be sent to Russ Bennett’s P.O. Box, 68 reportedly were hand-delivered to the Lawrence County Board of Elections office by a man named Butch Singer,” according to the letter sent to Mike DeWine and J.B. Collier.

In October a board of elections employee noticed that the handwriting in the “Send Ballot To” portion of the applications differed from that in the section with the voter’s name. The board then contacted 10 voters to see where they wanted their ballot sent.

“All 10 voters replied that they wanted their ballots mailed to them at their home address, suggesting that the ‘Send Ballot To’ portion of the absentee ballot application was completed after the voters filled in their application form,” Husted’s letter states.

Incidents like this demonstrate the reality of absentee/mail voting risks and why we would limit such voting to those genuinely unable to vote in person.

Humans and Machines Err In Garden State

In New Jersey, a voting machine is misprogrammed, then apparently a faulty or lax pre-election test fails to recognize the error.  Finally, the surprise result causes an investigation: “Human error” found in Fairfield election results <read>

A supposed malfunction of the problematic and much-debated Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machines is being chalked up to human error.

Results from Primary Election day last month puzzled two candidates who expected the exact opposite. Less than a month later, there’s a line in the sand being drawn between a second election and inspection of the voting machine itself.

“On Election Day, the votes cast for Candidates Vivian and Mark Henry registered for Candidates Cynthia and Ernest Zirkle, respectively,” read a statement addressed to all affected by the Democratic County Committee election in Fairfield.

According to documents provided to The News, Cumberland County Board of Elections Director Lizbeth Hernandez takes responsibility and regrets a pre-election programming error.

Attached to a legal petition filed by the Zirkles were 28 affidavits from voters swearing they supported the two candidates.

Those 28 votes of the 43 total cast on June 7 make up the majority.

How frequently do such errors occur? We have no way of knowing. The good news is that in this instance the error was discovered and will be corrected. Yet, it is rare that so few voters are involved and that such strong evidence can be developed so that an investigation is initiated. Since New Jersey has paperless touch screen voting machines a re-vote will be required.

There is a tendency to dismiss these errors as “only” “human errors”, just as we dismiss transportation accidents as pilot, controller, or engineer errors. However, whatever role inadequate human capabilities or inadequate systems play in the equation, these are voting integrity issues that can be significantly reduced with better procedures, training, and systems, along with corrective measures like paper ballots and post-election audits.

Here in Connecticut we have paper ballots so that if such a problem were discovered we would not need a re-vote, just a recanvass or a recount. Yet we have little no reason to celebrate. We have many referendums  or special elections in single towns with all memory cards programmed identically. In many cases there is no obvious reason to believe, let alone realistically prove, which candidate or decision “should” have won – too  close an election or too many voters to realistically get enough  affidavits.  And referendums and special elections are exempt from post-election audits such as they are.

Audit Report: Flawed by lack of transparency, incomplete data, and assumed accuracy

Lack of transparency in the process, provides no basis for public confidence in the process, in the audit, and ultimately in our election system. The purpose of the audit is to determine the accuracy of the optical scanners, that purpose is negated when the accuracy is assumed. A statistical calculation based on randomly selected data, omitting some of that data not randomly chosen for omission, is invalid.

Update 8/12: We have received a clarification of the official report from the Deputy Secretary of the State, which modifies our opinion <read>

******************

Last week, the University of Connecticut released its official post-election audit report on the November 2010 election, just short of seven months after the election: Statistical Analysis of the Post-Election Audit Data, 2010 November Election <read>

Like previous reports, this official report fails to provide confidence in the post-election audit process and in the accuracy of the election itself.

The audit data received by the VoTeR Center contains 867 records. Among the 867 records received by the Center, 20 records (2.3%) were incomplete. This report deals with 847 records (97.7%) among which 799 records (94.3%) are from the original data and 48 records (5.7%) were revised based on the follow up conducted by the SOTS [Secretary of the State’s] office.

As demonstrated by the Coalition audit reports there are major shortcomings in the post-election audit process where official hand counts do not match optical scanner counts and incomplete reports are submitted. Based on the UConn report, these differences are addressed in three inadequate ways:

1) Some results are recounted by state officials outside of public view:

The VoTeR Center’s initial review of audit reports prepared by the towns revealed a number of returns with unexplained differences between hand and machine counts. The vast majority of records with high discrepancies were concentrated in the following three districts: East Haven (Deer Run School) with the highest reported discrepancy of 180, Hartford (Burns School) with the highest reported discrepancy of 170, and Preston (Town Hall) with the highest reported discrepancy of 55. Additionally, one or more discrepancies were reported in all but one district for the town of Orange; here the highest reported discrepancy was 14, however this could not be explained as no questionable ballots were reported. Following this initial review the SOTS Office performed additional information gathering and investigation and, in some cases, conducted independent hand-counting of ballots in the four districts mentioned above. The final information was conveyed to the VoTeR Center on June 17th of 2011 for the 48 records pertaining to those districts. The rest of the records (799 out of 847) discussed in this audit report are the original records reported by the towns. [Emphasis ours in all quotes]

We interpret this to mean that some of the counts with differences were recounted by state officials behind closed doors. And based on those counts the Secretary of the State’s Office assumed that all the counts in those districts with differences were hand counting errors. Further, assuming that when election officials make an error in counting in one case in a district and that the machine was accurate in that case, then in all cases where there were differences in those districts that the machine did not make errors.

For the last couple of years we have repeatedly, to no avail, requested that recounts of ballots for the audit be announced and open to public observation or at least the Coalition be notified and given the opportunity to observe. Lack of transparency in the process, provides no basis for public confidence in the process, in the audit, and ultimately in our election system.

As a service to the public, the Coalition provides transparent access to the official audit count reports. You can see scanned copies of the original reports from the towns mentioned <here>

2) Other differences were not recounted but “affirmed” to be hand count errors:

187 records (22.1%) showing discrepancy of 2 to 5 votes, 42 records (4.9%) showing discrepancy of 6 to 13 votes (for this group, although no manual review of the discrepancies was conducted, the SOTS Office affirmed that the discrepancies were due to hand counting errors),

We interpret this to mean that the Secretary of the State’s Office has such faith in the accuracy of our optical scanners and the election process that they assume that any differences must be caused by hand counting errors. The purpose of the audit is to determine the accuracy of the optical scanners, that purpose is negated when the accuracy is assumed.

3) Some audit reports contained incomplete data and such data was not included in the report:

The audit data received by the VoTeR Center contains 867 records, where each record represents information about a given candidate: date, district, machine seal number, office, candidate, machine counted total, hand counted total of the votes considered unquestionable by the auditors, hand counted total of the votes considered questionable by the auditors, and the hand counted total, that is, the sum of undisputed and questionable ballots. This report contains several statistical analyses of the audit returns and recommendations. The statistical analysis in this report deals with the 847 records that are sufficiently complete to perform the analysis.

We interpret this to mean an assumption that the legally mandated audit of  three races in a randomly selected 10% of districts is valid even if some of the results are not reported. A statistical calculation based on randomly selected data, omitting some of that data not randomly chosen for omission, is invalid.

Spelling out our concerns, as we said last year, after the November 2009 official UConn report:

  1. All counting and review of ballots should be transparent and open to public observation.  Both this year and last year we have asked that such counting be open and publicly announced in advance. [And again in 2011 to the new administration]
  2. Simply accepting the word of election officials that they counted inaccurately is hardly reliable, scientific, or likely to instill trust in the integrity of elections.  How do we know how accurate the machines are without a complete audit, any error or fraud would likely result in a count difference, and would be [or could have been] very likely dismissed.
  3. Even if, in every cases officials are correct that they did not count accurately, it cannot be assumed that the associated machines counted accurately.
  4. Simply ignoring the initial results in the analysis of the data provides a simple formula to cover-up, or not recognize error and fraud in the future.

As we have said before we do not question the integrity of any individual, yet closed counting of ballots leaves an opening for fraud and error to go undetected and defeats the purpose and integrity of the audit.

We also note that in several cases officials continued to fail perform the audit as required by law or to provide incomplete reports.

There are other flaws in the audit law.

  • For instance, there is no legally mandated deadline for the towns to submit audit reports to the Secretary of the State’s Office or for UConn to provide the analysis. We believe seven months after an election is a long time for the public and candidates to wait.
  • As the Coalition covered in our August 2010 Post-Election Audit Report and the November 2010 Post-Election Audit Report, the list of districts used in the random district drawing is inaccurate and challenging to verify. This also negates reliability, accuracy, and confidence in the random audit.
  • The November 2010 election, most glaringly pointed out the need for the audit to select from all ballots in the election, not just those counted by optical scanners in the polling place. Among the omitted are centrally counted optically scanned ballots and all originally hand counted ballots. The Coalition Bridgeport Recount Report demonstrated to the public that hand counted ballots can be counted inaccurately on election night. The official election system was not able to audit or recanvass those ballots and has never officially, as far as we know, recognized even the possibility the original hand counted, hand transcribed, and hand totaled numbers may be inaccurate.

As we have pointed out, over and over:

We have no reason to question the integrity of any official. We have no evidence that our optical scanners have failed to count accurately. However, if every difference between a hand count and a scanner count is dismissed as a human counting error then if a machine has or were ever, by error or fraud, to count inaccurately, it would be unlikely to be recognized by the current system.

People and scanners have and will make counting errors. The solution is transparent counting, multiple times to insure accuracy, along with credibly ballot security.

4th of July Suggestion

This weekend is a great time to [re-]read the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence asserts our rights to determine and change our form of government – without voting integrity we lose that most fundamental of rights.

This weekend is a great time to [re-]read the Declaration of Independence. We find it very inspiring to read it sometime around the 4th of July each year.  As we have discussed before, some believe that the right to vote is more fundamental than the Constitution. Here is a link to a copy for your reading <Declaration of Independence>

The Declaration of Independence asserts our rights to determine and change our form of government – without voting integrity we lose that most fundamental of rights.

“The right to vote… is the primary right by which other rights are protected” – Thomas Paine

 

David Jefferson: Email Voting — A National Security Threat in Government Elections

While all Internet voting systems are vulnerable to such attacks and thus should be unacceptable to anyone, email voting is by far the worst Internet voting choice from a national security point of view since it is the easiest to attack in the largest number of different ways.

Security expert David Jefferson, articulates the vulnerabilities of email voting, perhaps the most vulnerable form of Internet voting (and that is saying a lot, since all forms of Internet voting are very risky). <read>

David Jefferson is a computer scientist and researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California where he studies cyber security and ways to protect the nation’s military, civilian, and government networks from cyber attack.  He is also the Chairman of the Board of Verified Voting, and has been studying electronic and Internet voting for over a decade, advising five successive California Secretaries of State on voting technology issues.

Excerpts:

Neither the Internet itself, nor voters’ computers, nor the email vote collection servers are secure against any of a hundred different cyber attacks that might be launched by anyone in the world from a self-aggrandizing loner to a foreign intelligence agency. Such an attack might allow automated and undetectable modification or loss of any or all of the votes transmitted.

While all Internet voting systems are vulnerable to such attacks and thus should be unacceptable to anyone, email voting is by far the worst Internet voting choice from a national security point of view since it is the easiest to attack in the largest number of different ways.

The technical points I am about to state are not my opinions alone. The computer security research community in the U.S. is essentially unanimous in its condemnation of any currently feasible form of Internet voting, but most especially of email voting. I strongly urge legislators in states considering e-mail voting to request testimony from other independent computer network security experts who are not affiliated with or paid by any voting system vendor. Email voting is extremely dangerous in ways that people without strong technical background are not likely to anticipate.

Here are the problems with email voting:

1. Lack of privacy:

2. Vote manipulation while in transit:

3. Server penetration attacks:

4. Ballot files can carry malware into the election network:

5. Voters’ computers infected with malware:

6. Denial of service attacks:

7. Email ballots are unauditable; attacks are undetectable and irreparable:

8. Multiple simultaneous attacks:

9. These facts will not change:

10. Similar problems with FAX voting:

11. Move toward Internet distribution of blank ballots.

For these reasons I strongly urge states that do not currently provide for email voting not to start down that path. In my professional opinion this path leads only to a major risk to U.S. national security, exposing our elections to easy manipulation by anyone in the world.

Voter fraud? Or thinly disguised agenda?

Where there is smoke we expect fire. Where there are extraordinary claims we need at least reasonable evidence.

From New Mexico, officials claim voter fraud, but withhold evidence: In voter fraud case, officials err on the side of secrecy <read>

My efforts to obtain the evidence behind Secretary of State Dianna Duran’s claim that she has found instances of foreign nationals illegally voting have been shot down again, this time by the Taxation and Revenue Department

Two months ago I asserted that Secretary of State Dianna Duran failed the open government test because she put a number of hurdles – some of them illegal – in front of my efforts to obtain the “evidence” she claims to have found of foreign nationals illegally voting in elections.

Where there is smoke we expect fire. Where there are extraordinary claims we need at least reasonable evidence.

Will Internet voting cost small Canadian town $10,000 to 30,000?

No. That is the estimated cost of the “business case”. It sounds like they are asking the right questions, but may be getting in over their head in doing the “business case”.

As CTVotersCount readers know, our Secretary of the State has been charged by the Legislature “within available appropriations, recommend a method to allow for on-line voting by military personnel stationed out of state”. Its quite a task to do what the Defense Department, scientists, and security experts say cannot be done with today’s technology, at any cost, while taking resources from operations and other initiatives to make the report.

Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada is considering the same thing for its elections, but wisely is considering funding a detailed business case, including security and recountability before proceeding: <read>

Munic­i­pal Affairs Min­is­ter Hec­tor Goudreau requested the busi­ness case in order to for­mal­ize a city request to pilot online voting.

“The busi­ness case would need to address the per­ti­nent issues, such as the need for Inter­net vot­ing in the city, who is the licensed provider, how is secu­rity guar­an­teed, how is voter val­i­da­tion dealt with, what are the costs, and how are results ver­i­fied and recounts con­ducted,” Goudreau wrote.

The estimated costs of the business case?

Audrey Cerny, City Hall’s leg­isla­tive ser­vices man­ager, told the com­mit­tee it would take at least four to five weeks of staff time to develop a busi­ness case. But she said it is pos­si­ble to develop one that is less costly than the esti­mated $30,000.

“It is depend­ing on how much exter­nal con­sul­tant time is needed,” she said. “If the con­sul­tant is uti­lized for a fewer num­ber of days, the costs obvi­ously could be lower. So essen­tially it could be $10,000.”

In order for the province to study the con­cept and make a deci­sion in time for the 2013 munic­i­pal elec­tion, a busi­ness case would have to be fin­ished by Sep­tem­ber or Octo­ber, she said. That means an out­side con­sul­tant would be necessary.

“There’s no guar­an­tee (our) inter­nal resources may be able to fully com­plete this with­out using an exter­nal con­sul­tant,” she said.

It sounds like they are asking the right questions, but may be getting in over their head in doing the “business case”. We are bit skeptical that it can be done will for $30,000 or $10,000. Yet, perhaps with effective research into what others have tried a general cost estimate can be obtained and a review of the the security risks can be developed. They should also be wary of the vendor being selected as part of the business case, or of relying on vendors for “helping” with the security and recount portions of the evaluation.

Let us consider doing for Elections what we have done for Probate

The legislature should be considering doing for our elections what we have done for probate. I am not the 1st to suggest this, let us hope that our legislature is not the last to consider it.

CTMirror: A turnaround for the fiscally troubled probate courts <read>

We particularly note from the article:

On the heels of a major consolidation, Connecticut’s probate court system will end a year in the black for the first time in six fiscal years later this month, reducing its reliance on the General Fund and returning more than $5 million to the state’s coffers…

One of the oldest probate courts systems in the nation with roots dating back over 300 years, the Connecticut courts underwent a dramatic restructuring in January to reverse growing financial woes…

“The first point of the whole reorganization was to stem the hemorrhaging once we abandoned the idea that the courts could pay entirely for themselves,” said Rep. Robert Godfrey, D-Danbury, who spearheaded the reform effort that took two years to move through the legislature. “The fact that it happened was a miracle.”

As we said in 2nd comment on the CTNewsJunkie article:

The legislature should be considering doing for our elections what we have done for probate. We have 169 towns, each with at least two elected registrars of voters. Consolidation, if done appropriately, could yield decreased costs, increased professionalism, increased convenience, increased integrity, and confidence.

I am not the 1st to suggest this, lets hope that our legislature is not the last to consider it.

There are several ways this could be accomplished. Regionalization of dual elected registrars is one. Another way, which I would favor, would be regional professional, civil service, directors responsible for voting, perhaps with local registrars elected and paid a small stipend to watch out for the integrity interests of municipalities, voters, and parties. No matter how it is strutured it can be done well or poorly.  The current system is inefficient and has proven problematic both in small towns and in large cities.

Some Question Integrity Of Union Vote

There seems to be several issues. First, does the overall process and accounting for approval correspond to predetermined bylaws and rules? Second, will the election itself be free from manipulation? And Third, is it sufficiently transparent to generate confidence in the losing side that they actually lost?

CTNewsJunkie: Union Voting Begins, Integrity of Vote Called Into Question By Some <read>

Union leaders are optimistic the labor agreement reached with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration will be ratified despite vocal opponents questioning the integrity of the voting process…

But there is some distrust among members regarding the process and a strong opposition movement encouraging members to vote against the agreement. Several union members have also emailed CTNewsJunkie with questions regarding how the vote will be counted, how that 80 percent will be calculated and what sort of oversight the process will have…

One member said he could not locate language in the union’s bylaws requiring the 80 percent vote or specifying how it is calculated. However, section 10 of SEBAC’s bylaws state the agreement requires a “four-fifths majority of representatives in good standing and not more than one bargaining agent voting in opposition.”

[State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition spokesman Matt] O’Connor likened the process to the presidential Electoral College. Unions vary in the size of their membership, and their votes are weighted depending on that size, he said…

But one member said that system lends itself to rigging and dropping a piece of paper into a cardboard box gives few members confidence.

“This is outrageous and is not logical, unless you’re attempting to fix the vote to pass the most difficult aspect. The correct way is to let all votes stand as they have been cast, report those for and against numbers to SEBAC and combine all the yays and nays and arrive at a true membership percentage,” he wrote…

Members have also expressed concern over how the voting process will be monitored and whether or not an impartial third party would have oversight of it. O’Connor said the process is as transparent as possible but pointed out that the specifics of how votes are cast are really up to each individual union. Much like how each state in the nation decides its own voting process, each element of the coalition sets its own rules…

Members looking for specifics about the process can find them spelled out in their union’s individual constitution, he said.

Will there be a third party overseeing the votes of each union and their subsequent bargaining units?

“We’re not inviting the Carter Center in if that’s what you’re asking,” O’Connor joked.

There seems to be several issues.  First, does the overall process and accounting for approval correspond to predetermined bylaws and rules?  Second, will the election itself be free from manipulation? And Third, is it sufficiently transparent to generate confidence in the losing side that they actually lost?

If the sketchy details are consistent with the voting system, then we  suspect that the voting process may not be transparent enough to generate that confidence. Voting with slips of paper in a box is fine if the vote takes place all at once and the ballots are publicly counted immediately thereafter. There seem to be two problems with the system described – the ballots need to be counted immediately and publicly after the box is opened, and the box must be on public display and actually observed by opposing interests the whole time.

Connecticut’s alternative for our elections is ballots publicly inserted into optical scanners then a result tape immediately produced and displayed publicly – followed by a post-election audit.  This could work for the unions except that if there are multi-day elections the issue arises of security of the ballots and scanners between voting times. (Unfortunately, in the case of Connecticut elections ballot security and chain of custody between election day and the audit is insufficient to provide confidence.)