In this election as in recent elections, we issued our Election Day Registration Warning to voters. We have been issuing warnings to the General Assembly for several years as well. We have warned that it is a “Civil Rights violation waiting to happen.” since the Secretary of State declared that voters in line at 8:00pm could not have the opportunity to register and vote unless officials completed their registration by 8:00pm.
Yesterday, there was great concern when for the third time in three even year elections, voters were deprived of registering and voting due to Secretary Merrill’s ruling and inadequate work by registrars. Read the New Haven Independent’s story: Ballot Pandemonium: Machines Break All Over Town; Voters Wait Hours; Stefanowski Seeks Injunction
By day’s end it appeared that hundreds of the people in line — mostly Yale students — wouldn’t be able to register in time (8 p.m.) to cast ballots. “Let us vote!” they chanted.
Sadly, our history with election concerns is to quickly move on from concerns, once a clear winner has been determined.
Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, just launched an investigation of the Democratic Party of Georgia, after their consultant pointed out a serious vulnerability in Georgia’s voter registration system/database: Kemp’s Aggressive Gambit to Distract From Election Security Crisis
This touches Connecticut because the vendor for Georgia’s system, PCC, is located in Bloomfield Connecticut and supplies Connecticut’s voter registration and election night reporting systems. It is not certain that the reports so far accurately portray PCC’s role in Georgia and if any of the same vulnerabilities apply to the Connecticut’s system. From our understanding Connecticut has paid a lot of attention to the security of our voter registration system and that PCC supplies the software by is not involved in its operation. We have reached out to the Secretary of the State’s Office suggesting that they address the relevance of the Georgia report to Connecticut.
Last week, West Haven paid a $2,000 ransom to hackers to unlock its computer systems. In a statement from the city, the ransom was characterized as a “one-time fee.” The word-choice here reveals an oversimplified view of the reality of ransomware, a cyberattack in which hackers lock data and demand payment.
First, West Haven was lucky to regain access to its systems after paying the ransom. Fewer than a quarter of ransomware victims actually get their files back after paying up. More often, hackers pocket the money and leave the data scrambled.
The notion of a “one-time fee” also fails to account for reputation damage and loss of trust. A city like West Haven — which is already navigating difficult financial straights — needs to rally community support. A blunder like this undermines the momentum it was building…
New article from Newsweek: Here’s How Russia May Have Already Hacked the 2018 Midterm Elections <read>
They are talking about PA, but the same could apply to Connecticut:
Even though Bucks County’s Shouptronics aren’t wired, hackers have several ways of compromising them. The most direct and effective way would be to replace a computer chip in the machine that holds instructions on what to do when voters press the buttons with one that holds instructions written by hackers.
Often, as a computer scientist, I forget that what a very small minority know that becomes almost intuitive, is far from obvious to others approaching magic, a deluded conspiracy, or amateur science fiction.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. – Arthur C. Clarke
This article from Bloomberg News is a case in point.
Merrill said her office will likely also increase its audits. Currently it randomly selects voting precincts to have primary results audited following elections; five percent of polling places that use optical scan machines are subject to the audit, as prescribed by Connecticut General Statutes 9-320f. Those counts are then matched against vote totals from optical scan machines.
Departing from past practice, the Official Audit Procedures, and the law as it has always been interpreted, the Deputy selected three statewide races from each party to be audited in their respective primaries and then selected only one party primary to be audited in each district. The Official Audit Procedures, and the law indicate that 5% of the districts in each primary be audited with a minimum of 20% of the races randomly selected by the municipal clerk from all races on each ballot.
As this CTNewsJunkie post implies, it will always be called The Bysiewicz Test <read>
Ambiguously defined in law and only slightly less ambiguously by the Connecticut Supreme Court. All we know for sure is that you have to be a lawyer in CT for at least ten years and have different experience than Susan Bysiewicz had in 2010. As I commented in on the article:
I always find it interesting that the AG and Judge of Probate are the only offices that have qualifications, as far as I know. They are both related to law. I wonder if the composition of the General Assembly makes the legislature realize how important qualifications are, in just these cases?
There remains no necessary training whatsoever to be Secretary of the State, while some of her employees, but not all, need to be lawyers to give advice to the public, would be candidates, and election officials. That could be going better, but of course, certification by itself does not preclude errors and incompetence, or as Jon Lender puts it Bungling