Hearing On Public Financing – Ad Hoc Testimony On Voting Integrity Issue

I debated testifying. The hearing was about the Citizens Election Program. IRV [Instant Runoff Voting] was really off topic. However, this was the first time to my knowledge that IRV has come up in the Legislature. Perhaps with a few words I could express an alternative view before a large number of legislators take a position; so that they would know that there are alternative views and significant concerns.

Yesterday the Government Administration and Elections Committee held hearings on proposed fixes to the Citizens Election Program which has been ruled unconstitutional and is currently under appeal.  You can read the details at CTMirror and CTNewsJunkie.  As the systems stands now there is great uncertainty.  For now the program continues under the current law, but the appeals court could rule at anytime confirming the law or more likely ruling it unconstitutional.  In the event the law is ruled unconstitutional the legislature would have seven days to fix the law to maintain the program, but  the fate of a fix and its details would remain unknown leaving uncertainty until it is fixed.

Officially the state’s position is that the law is constitutional. The Legislature and Governor can act now to fix the law, yet that would seem to have the same effect as a ruling that the law is unconstitutional.  The result is ongoing uncertainty for candidates now as they contemplate what might happen if they choose to participate in the program.

Ad Hoc Testimony On Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)

We went to the hearing to listen, with no intention of testifying.  We focus our efforts on voting integrity.  While I personally support the Citizens Election Program we see no voting integrity implications positive or negative.  However, Representative Linda Schofield brought up the issue of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) in her testimony.  She urged the committee to consider adding IRV to the bill and stated the benefits she found in research on IRV.  After her testimony I gave her my card and asked to discuss the reasons some are concerned with IRV.  Later another advocate expressed support of IRV in his testimony.  A committee member,  Representative Peggy Reeves, asked Representative Schofield an important question:  Could our current optical scanners handle an IRV election?

I debated testifying.  The hearing was about the Citizens Election Program.  IRV was really off topic.  However, this was the first time to my knowledge that IRV has come up in the Legislature.  Perhaps with a few words I could express an alternative view before a large number of legislators take a position; so legislators and advocates would know that there are alternative views and significant concerns.  I was the last speaker after a long day, accepting the Chair’s generous offer for anyone to testify who had not signed up.  My goal was to be brief and not waste anyone’s time. Hopefully we will have a transcript in a few days.  I made the following points:

  • Like many people, I initially thought IRV was a good idea – something that would promote democracy and improve participation.  Yet, after more reading and understanding I found significant concerns.
  • It is difficult to determine the winner and verify the result particularly when votes are close.  It may be feasible for races in a single district or a single small jurisdiction, yet gets much more difficult and complicated when elections cross jurisdictional boundaries.
  • IRV requires more work and knowledge on the part of voters.  Imagine a several page ballot replacing what we now fit on a one-sided ballot.  Where IRV has been used, voters do not understand it. (Not to mention quite a bit of extra work and knowledge required of election officials as well).
  • There are theoretical problems with IRV actually delivering the desired/claimed benefits.  In practice such problems have frequently occurred.

For more background and details on concerns with IRV refer to our post, IRV: Not So Fast, Not So Simple.

Update: Rep. Schofield called me the next day; we had a very good discussion. She was completely open to considering additional information, as I am.

Insider Fraud In Kentucky

The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their elections, then changing their choices…White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their vote to make sure they cast ballots for the candidates who had paid.

We have blogged  in the past about the fuzzy line between retail and wholesale vote fraud.  A story from Kentucky describes alleged, long-standing, fraud by officials.  In this case the fraud may have been limited in scope, but so were the elections which might well have been decided by skulduggery.  <read>

Wanda White testified that Clerk Freddy Thompson — the county’s chief election officer — helped show her how to manipulate voting machines along with Charles Wayne Jones, the Democratic election commissioner.

The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their elections, then changing their choices, said White, the Democratic judge in a precinct in Manchester.

White said she stole more than 100 votes that election.

“It was easy done,” she said.

White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their vote to make sure they cast ballots for the candidates who had paid.

White testified Friday in the continuing trial of eight Clay County residents who allegedly took part in a scheme to rig elections over several years…

The machines had a “Vote” button that people could push to review their choices, then a second button they had to push to record the choices and finish voting.

At Maricle’s direction, she went to Stivers, who taught her about distracting voters so they would leave the machine after pushing the review button, but before they’d recorded their choices, White said.

Thompson and Jones used a voting machine to show her and Charles “Dobber” Weaver how to change votes, White said.

White said they did that at the clerk’s office after legitimate training for all election workers. She and Weaver stayed late to learn how to manipulate the machines, White said.

Weaver, then the Manchester fire chief, was the Republican judge in the precinct where White was the Democratic judge in May 2006.

Let us point out that it is questionable to call this electronic voting fraud.  It is two schemes, one made possible by confusing touch screen machines.  That scheme would work even if the touch screen had a “voter verified” paper record.  However, the other scheme, watching people vote to verify they did what they were paid to do, would work just as well with voter verified paper ballots, no matter how they are counted.

Registrar of Voters suit: Alleged to have fudged petitions for herself and relatives

Hartford has three Registrars of Voters: Democratic, Republican, and Working Families Party. Apparently that is hardly enough when each registrar is responsible for their own party’s primary. There is a name for this in Hartford: Business as Usual.

Courant story: Town Committee Candidates File Suit Against Hartford Registrar Of Voters <read>

A group of candidates for the 5th district [Hartford] Democratic Town Committee has filed a lawsuit against Hartford’s Democratic registrar of voters, who also happens to be a member of the opposing slate of candidates.

The suit alleges that Olga Iris Vazquez accepted and submitted petition signatures for her slate that were not properly completed by circulators. The suit also alleges that when Vazquez realized that some of the petitions were not properly completed, she had a deputy registrar remove them from the city and town clerk’s office to be completed — after the deadline for submission had passed. The suit also names Garey Coleman, deputy registrar, and John Bazzano, city and town clerk.

The suit says that because some of the signatures are improper, the Vazquez slate had 268 valid signatures, rather than the 323 necessary to have the slate placed on the March 2 primary ballot. The suit alleges that Vazquez violated state statutes by accepting incomplete petitions and seeks to have them declared invalid. The suit also seeks to have Vazquez’s slate, which includes her husband, Radames Vazquez, and her mother-in-law, Juanita Giles, declared unqualified to run in the March town committee primary because of its failure to file the necessary number of signatures by the 4 p.m. Jan. 27 deadline.

Juanita Giles is the wife of Abraham Giles, a longtime city political operative and former state representative, who recently was associated with the altering of a census employment brochure to promote Vazquez’ town committee slate. A complaint was filed with the State Elections Enforcement Commission about the altered brochure, and it also was sent to the state’s attorney’s office.

There is a name for this in Hartford: Business as Usual. From the article:

Last month, a challenge slate in the 4th district also filed a complaint alleging that Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez and Chief of Police Daryl K. Roberts used their authority to deny members of one slate access to housing complexes in the city to gather signatures, while circulators from another slate were given access. Perez and Roberts denied any involvement…

Vazquez paid a $500 fine in 2004 when the state Elections Enforcement Commission determined that her office had accepted invalid petition signatures.

Also in the Courant today is a column by Helen Ubinas demonstrating the sad example of how Hartford City Hall celebrates Black History Month with sad examples of what passes for leadership, More Than A Few Dubious Honorees In Hartford’s Black History Month Exhibit <read>

honored among real Hartford heroes is the longtime Democratic ward boss who for years made or broke political aspirations with a house full of mysterious registered voters and who’s long lined his pockets with questionable parking lot deals. Just recently, he was arrested alongside Mayor Eddie Perez, who was charged with attempted extortion from a private developer for the benefit of his political pal Giles….

So, let’s just take the short tour.

That’s Veronica Airey-Wilson, the Republican councilwoman who was arrested for allegedly fabricating evidence to show that she had paid for work done on her home by the same city contractor from whom Perez is accused of getting discounted home repairs.

Those two guys over there are Russell Williams, one-time head of the Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP, and former Urban League of Greater Hartford CEO James Willingham. Both men cashed in big after supporting the company that was awarded the city schools’ multimillion-dollar construction project.

Makes you think they should change the name of the exhibit from “Honoring our Own” to “Getting Yours,” doesn’t it?

And that honking portrait is of Prenzina Holloway, who four years ago was fined $10,000 by state election officials for absentee ballot fraud. She paid a fraction of that fine after crying poor, then turned around and bought a used $31,727 Hummer she didn’t pay taxes on, despite drawing a city paycheck in the — wait for it — registrars of voters office.

But then, those details are bound to be overlooked when your daughter is the city council’s Democratic majority leader who is also the program’s one-woman nominating committee.

That is, until a couple of years ago, when rJo Winch expanded the committee to include herself, her mother and her sister-in-law.

CTVotersCount readers may recall that Hartford has three Registrars of Voters: Democratic, Republican, and Working Families Party.  Apparently that is hardly enough when each registrar is responsible for their own party’s primary.

ES&S Diebold Purchase: Groups Endorse Remedies for Unlawful Concentration of Market Power

We are deeply concerned about the public impact of ES&S’s purchase of Diebold’s Premier Election Solutions, Inc… Fortunately, the Federal Government has expedited its research into purchaser ES&S’s accelerated absorption of PESI assets into ES&S and the business goliath’s concerted attempt to achieve a de facto dissolution of PESI before the DOJ can act.

Groups endorse and recommend remedies to the merger of ES&S and Dieblod/Premier <read>

RE: ES&S Purchase of Diebold/Premier: Remedies for Unlawful Concentration of Market Power and Other Public Injuries Within DOJ Jurisdiction

Dear Attorney General Holder, Assistant Attorney General Varney, and Assistant Attorney General Perez:

The undersigned organizations and individuals possess nationally recognized expertise in voting systems technologies, local and State election administration, and in removal of barriers to voting participation. We have cooperated in the preparation of this letter thatseeks to address appropriate remedies for ES&S’s anticompetitive disruption of the relevantmarkets and the threats thereby posed to American election integrity.

We are deeply concerned about the public impact of ES&S’s purchase of Diebold’s Premier Election Solutions, Inc. (“PESI”), referenced here as the “merger.” Fortunately, the Federal Government has expedited its research into purchaser ES&S’s accelerated absorption of PESI assets into ES&S and the business goliath’s concerted attempt to achieve a de facto dissolution of PESI before the DOJ can act.

This purchase represents a dangerous concentration of election equipment, maintenance, and management in one company.  To understand the extent to which companies can control elections and hold election officials and government hostage, we recommend the VotersUnite report and our comments on the risks to Connecticut.

We are very much impacted by this purchase.  It seems that it is now highly unlikely that there will ever be significant software upgrades to our Diebold AccVote-OS optical scanners, and even less chance that there will be a hardware upgrade to fix their(our?) ancient failure prone memory cards.

We have only one other company supplying ballots in Connecticut in addition to Diebold.  Only one company programming all the memory cards in five New England states, including Connecticut.

ES&S has a track record that adds to our concerns. From the letter:

C. History of ES&S Anticompetitive Market Conduct:

Buyer ES&S’s record of anticompetitive market conduct includes:

1. Legally proscribed tying arrangements to achieve vertical integration and marketdominance;

2. Predatory pricing of goods and services; and

3. Threatened breaches of contracts on the eve of elections, unless the election jurisdiction agreed to ES&S’s unilaterally determined price increases for essential goods (e.g. ballots) and services (e.g., technical maintenance and testing of voting equipment) that had been previously negotiated and approved for local or State fiscal planning.

D. ES&S Conduct Post-Merger Designed to Obstruct DOJ Remedial Options

ES&S engaged in conduct which appears to have been deliberately designed to vitiate the Antitrust Division’s (AD) scope of available remedies, and specifically the Government’s ability to unwind the sale as by a divestiture of PESI. Given the market share of theresulting corporate entity and other factors that justify DOJ review, buyer ES&S should reasonably have known that DOJ-AD would examine the merger. ES&S conduct that soughtto obstruct DOJ’s vindication of the antitrust laws and larger public interest includes:

1. Taking physical possession and control of all PESI intellectual property and business records within a few days of the sale/merger;

2. Rapidly renegotiating contracts with local election jurisdictions, to transfer them to ES&S products and services at steep discounts if the contracts were executed quickly, thus eviscerating the PESI business relationships;

3. Discharging PESI employees, so that virtually no qualified workforce would remain to manage and execute PESI’s business if DOJ required ES&S to divest PESI; and,

4. Undertaking an arguably deceptive sales effort to excise some low-value PESI assets in order to unilaterally and superficially restructure the voting products and services markets, with the objective of superficially restoring competitive market conditions while also not actually reducing or endangering the ES&S dominant market share.

In sum, ES&S’s restrictive contractual provisions intensify the dependence of local and State governments on one privately held firm for their mission-critical election operations. ES&S’s vertically integrated business model and standard terms greatly reduce the opportunities for smaller vendors to offer goods and services to governmental units. The terms also augment the opportunities for ES&S vendor intimidation of governmental customers in ways that threaten the integrity of elections. ES&S’s oligopolistic control over the market (an estimated 70% share) and the injuries inflicted by this degree of market power will likely escalate unless DOJ-AD redresses ES&S’s problematic contractual provisions as part of the remedies ordered.

With the discharge of employees etc. the purchase cannot be undone to leave Diebold/Premier viable. Yet there are remedies that can mitigate and reverse the damage. From the letter (read the full letter for the details):

A. Prohibit ES&S From Conducting Business Under Contractual Provisions that Undermine Competitive Market Conditions and Unfairly Perpetuate Oligopolistic Market Share

B. Require Continuation of PESI’s Efforts to Achieve Increased Electoral Transparency

C. Require ES&S to Continue PESI’s Effort to Serve Voters With Disabilities By Identifying Alternatives to the AutoMark Voting Machine

D. Require Buyers of PESI Assets to be Qualified to Compete in Jurisdictions that Mandate Paper Ballots

F. To mitigate the increased threat to national security generated by this merger, require ES&S to divest sufficient assets, reduce its contractual control over election jurisdictions, and take other appropriate actions.

We are pleased to join the other signatories in urging strong action.

Update: 2/18/2010:  From Bo Lipari’s blog: Dominion [Voting Systems] Sues to Stop New York City Contract with ES&S <read>

A current example of the hardball we may face with possible questionable/illegal tactics by a single company driving further to monopolize election equipment and maintenance:

In court papers, Dominion argues that the New York City Board of Elections failed to comply with New York State and New York City Procurement Laws, Rules and Regulations, and awarded the contract on the basis of illegal criteria. Further, the lawsuit argues that the New York City Board of Elections:

1) Did not conduct a lawful bidding and procurement process;

2) Did not disclose the method and criteria used in evaluating bidders;

3) Did not award the contract to the lowest responsible bidder.

The city used a point system to evaluate the two companies. In the final evaluation, ES&S received 3,417 points, while Dominion received 3,395, a difference of only 22 points. Dominion claims that the slightly higher overall score for ES&S in the city’s evaluation is due to extra points given to the ES&S DS200 scanners for an option called “Easy Startup”. This option is said to include electronic machines pre-programmed in the warehouse prior to delivery to poll sites, and the ability for poll workers to open the machines without a password (such a configuration is not only an obvious security risk, but disallowed under New York election law). The lawsuit claims that the State Board of Elections explicitly ruled that the DS200 Easy Startup option does not comply with state law, and informed the New York City Board that it would reject any contracts that included it.

Bo also points to an article on a lobbiest for ES&S <read>

While a Republican lawyer was under federal investigation in a Yonkers corruption case, he was paid nearly $50,000 last year to help a Nebraska company win a contract to provide New York City with new voting machines.

Anthony Mangone was indicted this month with Yonkers Councilwoman Sandy Annabi and former city GOP Chairman Zehy Jereis on extortion, bribery and other federal charges related to payments made to Annabi for her to change votes on city projects.

Coincidentally that same day, the New York City Board of Elections voted to buy thousands of new electronic voting machines — a contract expected to be worth more than $40 million — from Mangone’s client, Election Systems & Software

Is this what Connecticut look forward to, totally dependent with most other jurisdictions on one company?

Farrell and Brinson visiting town committees. Abbate dropping out?

The article is focused on the Farrell campaign and a comparison with Brinson campaign, but possibly the most significant news is that according to the party chair, Richard Abbate is not going to continue as a candidate.

Record Journal:  Farrell campaign is putting family first <read>

The article is focused on the Farrell campaign and a comparison with Brinson campaign, but possibly the most significant news is that according to the party chair, Richard Abbate is not going to continue as a candidate:

In addition to Farrell, only Corey Brinson, a Hartford attorney, has filed to officially seek the party’s nomination, according to Republican State Chairman Chris Healy. Richard Abbate, a Cheshire resident who has previously been linked to a possible run, told him that he does not intend to seek the nomination, Healy said.

With a long head start has visited more of the state, yet Farrell is quickly catching up in contributions:

Brinson, who officially announced his candidacy in June 2009, does appear to have the edge on Farrell in number of town committees visited so far. Brinson said he has visited about 45 town committees as opposed Farrell’s eight and that he was confident he would secure the party’s nomination.

“My competition got into the race a few weeks ago; we’ve been in the race since last summer,” Brinson said. “We’re being well received as we travel across Connecticut.”

The two are about neck and neck in campaign fundraising, however. Both have pledged to use the public campaign financing program, with Brinson saying his campaign has taken in about $15,000 thus far, while Farrell said his team has helped him haul in just over $16,000. They each must raise $75,000 to qualify for a grant of $375,000 through the program.

A federal judge ruled Connecticut’s public campaign finance system unconstitutional last August, a decision that the state has since appealed, leaving some uncertainty as to whether that avenue will even be available for candidates this year.

Denise Merrill formally enters SOTS race

“With more and more money pouring into politics as it will this year with the recent Supreme Court case it will be increasingly important to protect our electoral process from the potential influence of that money”

CT NewsJunkie has the story: Merrill: ‘Moving on and Moving Up’ <read>

“It’s time for me to move on and move up,” Merrill said Monday at the Mansfield Community Center.

She said people have asked her why she wants to be Secretary of the State when she already holds the second most powerful position in the House of Representatives.

“I have always been passionate about civic engagement,” Merrill said. “There is no more important role that any public official can play than to actively engage the next generation of citizens.”…

If elected Secretary of the State Merrill said civic engagement will be a fundamental part of her role as the state‘s chief elections official.

“With more and more money pouring into politics as it will this year with the recent Supreme Court case it will be increasingly important to protect our electoral process from the potential influence of that money,” Merrill said.

Here is her website we note that the News section as of now has not been updated with items after December 19th and apparently it has no information announcing or covering today’s event.

Update: From the Courant:

Legislature’s Denise Merrill Enters Race For Secretary Of The State <read>

Merrill has promoted efforts to increase the efficiency of state government and said that, if elected, she would use the office of secretary of the state to continue those efforts. Among other things, Merrill said she would redesign the state’s registration to enable businesses of all sizes to submit required forms and applications online.

“I would do a lot more with online registration for just about everything,” she said. “We are way behind other states in that area.”

We agree that the Secretary of the State’s web site could be improved dramatically.  We aren’t familiar with the business registration process, but we certainly have a long way to go in improving election information.  On the election side we would start with having accurate, downloadable, and detailed district by district election results.  Connecticut did not come out well on the Pew study last year where we came in 48th.

Democracy Too Costly for Seymour?

Primaries would run the office an estimated $15,000 each. While primaries are likely to occur, no one’s certain at this point. “I don’t know what I’m going to do in August and that is the key,” said Ron Skurat, the Democratic Registar of Voters… Skurat did the math on the salaries and came up with roughly $6.81 per hour for the work he and Pelletier put in.

Valley Independent Sentinel:  More Voting, More Money <read>

Democracy. We love it, but man, that stuff’s expensive.

With both Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Sen. Christopher Dodd stepping down, voting registrars in town expect to hold primaries for both major political parties this year.

That means more money in the budget that hasn’t much to begin with.

Primaries would run the office an estimated $15,000 each. While primaries are likely to occur, no one’s certain at this point.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do in August and that is the key,” said Ron Skurat, the Democratic Registar of Voters.

Skurat made his statement during a review of the registrars’ proposed 2010-2011 budget in front of the town’s Board of Finance Monday.

The registrars’ budget proposal climbs to $86,100 — up $20,200 from its current spending plan.

The majority of increases are to salaries and stipends…

Just because it is in here it doesn’t mean you get the raise,” said Paecht to Skurat and Republican Registrar Judy Pelletier.

Skurat did the math on the salaries and came up with roughly $6.81 per hour for the work he and Pelletier put in.

Their assistant, a part-time position described by Skurat as invaluable, makes the equivalent of less than $8 an hour.

Poll workers earn $8.50 per hour plus two meals.

State mandates drive most of the department’s costs. For example there is a necessity for two phone lines at each polling place. One is used for the regular machines and one is used exclusively for a machine designed for voters with disabilities.

“We’ve used it once in the last five years but it is a state law,” Skurat said.

The cost of keeping the phone lines active and available at three polling locations adds up, with all but $10 of the operating budget’s line item already expended.

Communications and telephones were cut from $3,000 in the 2008-2009 budget to $2,000 in the operating budget…

We point out that it is not all Chris Dodd and Jodi Rell’s fault.  The odds for a Democratic Primary for Governor were pretty high before Gov. Rell stepped down.  Before Sen. Dodd stepped down there was also a large possibility for a Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate.  In addition to the usual primary in Presidential years, we recall a statewide primary four years ago between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont.  As the article notes, the budget in Seymour also involves democracy and elections:

The budget proposal notes that the department returned money to the treasury during the past two fiscal years due to an “abnormally small number of elections.”

With the likelihood of primaries this time around, the registrar’s said this is a much tougher budget. They said at least one of the elections will be the referendum to pass the budget.

In Washburn’s World: Election Records Would Be Public

“I believe there cannot be effective oversight of an election (by an election official or by the public) if any of the election records are a secret.’

Blog post: The GAB: The Johnny Yoo of Election Administration <read>

I believe there cannot be effective oversight of an election (by an election official or by the public) if any of the election records are a secret.

We agree.

GAB provides legal cover to clerks so that the clerks may destroy election records which the clerks deem too inconvenient to preserve and retain.

In order to set the context for the last two years on this matter I will show my fundamentalist, Christian roots and begin with a creedal statement:

  • I believe there cannot be effective oversight of an election (by an election official or by the public) if any election records are secret.
  • I believe ballots are not secret, but anonymous.
  • I believe the content of a removable memory card used by a voting machine during an election is an election record as that term is used in state and federal law.
  • I believe that ALL of the content of a removable memory card is an election record.
  • I believe the contents of a removable memory card contain an admixture of some or all of the following:
    • programming,
    • ballot “images”1,
    • audit logs,
    • event logs,
    • vote totals at various levels of aggregation,
    • “ballot definition files”2,
    • audio files,
    • screen text,
    • page/screen layout,
    • whole, mountable file systems.
  • I believe the above list is likely incomplete because the exact contents of a removable memory card are secret and vigorously protected as trade secrets.
  • I believe election records should not be secret.
  • I believe election records are records that should have an “absolute right of access“. Under current law some election records in whole or in part are not even open records, much less records with an “absolute right of access“.
  • I believe the contents of a removable memory card used to aid in the administration of an election should be preserved and retained by jurisdictions for the same length of time as the jurisdiction is required to preserve and retain the poll registration lists used to administer the same election.
  • I believe state law, WI Stats. 7.23(1)(g), requires the contents of a removable memory card used by a voting machine in the administration of an election be preserved and retained for 22 months
  • I believe federal law, Title 42, Chapter 20, Subchapter II, § 1974, for federal elections, requires the same; preservation and retention for 22 months
  • I believe state law, WI Stats. 7.24, requires the backups made of the contents of a removable memory card pursuant to WI Stats. 7.23(1)(g) remain in the custody and control of the election official for the entire retention period.
  • I believe the contents of a removable memory card used in a voting machine is MORE important than the voter poll lists used in the same election. This is because the contents of the memory card actively and directly determine how the election is administered, where the poll books do not. If nothing else (and there is more), the contents of the removable memory card control how or if marks on the paper ballot or touches on the touch screen will be recognized and to whom votes will accrue based on those marks or touches. These are the election officials’ duties under WI Stats. 7.50 even if those duties have been delegated to an inscrutable black box.

The Government Accountability Board (GAB), its staff, and the clerks who head the Wisconsin Towns Association, Wisconsin County Clerks Association, and the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association do not agree with most, if any, of the above credos.

I object to the notion that there can be such things as secret election records.

Nov 09 Election Observation Report – Improvement, Yet Still Unsatisfactory

The Coalition noted significant differences between results reported by optical scanners and the hand count of ballots by election officials across Connecticut. Compared to previous audits, the Coalition noted small incremental improvements in the attention to detail, following procedures, and in the chain-of-custody.

In this report, we conclude that the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence. We find no reason to attribute all errors to either humans or machines.

Press Release, Full Report etc: <click>

Summary, from the Press Release and Report:

Coalition Finds Unsatisfactory Improvement
In Election Audits Across The State

Citizen observation and analysis show the need for more attention to detail by officials, improvement in counting methods, and ballot chain-of-custody

The Coalition noted significant differences between results reported by optical scanners and the hand count of ballots by election officials across Connecticut. Compared to previous audits, the Coalition noted small incremental improvements in the attention to detail, following procedures, and in the chain-of-custody.

Coalition spokesperson Luther Weeks noted, “We acknowledge some improvement, yet there is still a long way to go to provide confidence in our election system that the voters of Connecticut deserve.”

From the report:

In this report, we conclude that the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence because of the continued lack of

  • standards for determining need for further investigation of discrepancies,
  • detailed guidance for counting procedures, and
  • consistency, reliability, and transparency in the conduct of the audit. .

We find no reason to attribute all errors to either humans or machines.

Cheryl Dunson, League of Women Voters of Connecticut’s Vice President of Public Issues, stated, “We continue to support our past recommendations to the Secretary of the State and the Legislature for improvement in the post-election audit laws, counting procedures, and chain-of-custody.”

Tom Swan, Executive Director, Connecticut Citizen Action Group, said, “Among our greatest concerns are the discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by municipalities When differences are dismissed as human counting errors, it is unlikely that an audit would identify an election error or fraud should that occur”

Cheri Quickmire, Executive Director, Connecticut Common Cause said “There needs to be training and accountability.  Election officials need to be familiar with the procedures, follow the procedures, and the procedures must be enforceable.”

Press Release, Full Report etc: <click>

Norwalk Town Clerk: Sixth Dem Running for Secretary of the State

“It is reaching out them on the electronic level,” he said. “Remind them how to vote and when to vote.”
Garfunkel often points to technological upgrades made in the Norwalk city clerk’s office since he was first elected in 2001. They include putting maps and other documents online and introducing payment by credit card. The changes have come as the office itself has seen staffing and other cuts.

The Hour: Garfunkel to run for Secretary of the State <read>

Democrat Andrew S. Garfunkel thinks 10 years as Norwalk’s town clerk make him the perfect candidate to replace Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz…

“Engaging our young voters and getting them to register and then vote on Election Day is important to me,” he said. “I will reach out to them where they are, on Facebook and those places.”

He said he wants to make the office more accessible with “alerts” and “reminders”.

“It is reaching out them on the electronic level,” he said. “Remind them how to vote and when to vote.”

Garfunkel often points to technological upgrades made in the Norwalk city clerk’s office since he was first elected in 2001. They include putting maps and other documents online and introducing payment by credit card. The changes have come as the office itself has seen staffing and other cuts.