(Note: We have offered the Secretary of the State’s Office an opportunity to comment on this post)
Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, was on “Where We Live” on WNPR this AM. She made several misstatements and misleading omissions (these are not exact quotes as we have no transcript)
Misstatement:
Bysiewicz: UConn tests the cards before they are used in the election.
Fact: UConn does pre-election testing of some cards before some elections and produces a report after the election. As far as we know none of the cards pre-election tested by UConn have been used in an election.
- In Nov 07 the tests did not cover all districts and we have no reason to believe that the cards were selected randomly – and they showed that less than half of election officials fully followed procedures.
- In the Feb 08 Presidential Primary there was no pre-election test.
- In the Aug 08 Primary single cards were shipped to UConn from the vendor, LHS, for testing and not randomly selected.
- Given this record, we cannot predict what method of testing will be used this November.
Fact: CTVotersCount.org pushed for 100% pre-election testing of memory cards by UConn under a transparent chain-of-custody and controls. The Secretary of the State and the Government Elections and Administrations Committee supported this. However, the bill was not taken up by the Legislature and the Secretary of the State has not chosen to pursue such testing. This would cost money, but so does the campaign to educate voters in filling out ballots.
Misstatement:
Bysiewicz: LHS invented the Diebold AccuVote-OS optical scanner.
Fact: This was debunked here the last time we heard the Secretary make this misstatement in March: <read>
Omission:
Bysiewicz: Your paper ballots will be counted in the audit.
Fact: Only some paper ballots will be counted in the audit – only those counted by machine in the district – exempt are centrally counted absentee ballots, ballots hand counted in precincts etc.
Omission:
Bysiewicz: In close elections in a recount each ballot is checked by two individuals.
Fact: The Secretary did not mention that most ballots are then simply counted again by machine. See recent events in Washington D.C. to understand the practical dangers of such recounting <read>
Omission:
Bysiewicz: Our 10% audit is the toughest in the country.
Fact: The 10% is only one parameter. Our audit law has many loopholes and exemptions which make it less than adequate <read>
Fact: Actual observations of the audits have shown them to be of questionable credibility. <read>
