Author: Luther Weeks

Federal Election Assistance Commission Rigged Election Report – Sen Dodd, Please Investigate

A Washington Post articles describes a report watered down by the Election Assistance Commission.  You will need a free password and Id to view the article.

Because my approach to election issues tends to be more closely aligned with Democrats, I was paired with a Republican co-author. To further remove any taint of partisanship, my co-author and I convened a bipartisan working group to help us. We spent a year doing research and consulting with leaders in the field to produce a draft report. What happened next seems inexplicable. After submitting the draft in July 2006, we were barred by the commission’s staff from having anything more to do with it…

Yet, after sitting on the draft for six months, the EAC publicly released a report — citing it as based on work by me and my co-author — that completely stood our own work on its head. (emboldening added)

As you may or may not know, Senator Dodd sits as Ranking Member on the Committee that created the Help America Vote Act and the Election Assistance Commission. Perhaps it would be a good time to drop Senator Dodd a note and ask for oversight and an investigation.

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Recommended Listening and Reading – Talk Nation Radio

Dori Smith aired the first of a four part series on voting integrity yesterday at 5:00 PM on WHUS. I highly recommend listening to the audio and reading the transcript while also marking your calendar for next week.

This segment really brings home the dangers and implications of the incident last fall when LHS violated election protocols. Although I was familiar with the incident from Dori’s earlier reporting, this broadcast really demonstrates the risks strongly and clearly.

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Wed 8/29 5:00 PM – Dori Smith Interview with LHS President – Don’t Miss It

Dori Smith, Producer of TalkNationRadion will air an interview with LHS President John Silvestro, Wednesday August 29th, at 5:00pm on the air and online at WUHS. She has also provided a preview and extensive background.

LHS is the distributor of Diebold Premier election equipment and services to Connecticut. Once again, hats off to Dori for great reporting and great service to the voters of Connecticut.

There is a lot to absorb in the preview, I will be reading it and listening in tomorrow. Let me provide a couple of teasers:

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Record Journal: New voting machines could be vulnerable

Differing levels of trust in the technology are apparent in statements from TrueVoteCT, the Secretary of The State’s Office, and a Uconn Scientist:

“How do we know the card was programmed correctly in the first place?” [Dr. Michael Fischer, computer science professor at Yale University and president of True Vote Connecticut] asked. “Up until that point (when the cards reach Connecticut), they’re vulnerable, beginning with LHS Associates and all the hands they pass through at the company to the shipping clerk. It’s real convenient to say that once the cards have reached Connecticut they can’t be changed. Any time you have a private company that has the power to control the outcome of an election, it’s a big threat. The only way I would trust the memory cards would be if there was a publicly available way to verify the cards afterward.”
Michael Kozik, managing attorney of the Elections Division of the Secretary of the State’s office, said this isn’t a large concern.
LHS performs the same service for five New England states and has been in business 20 years, Kozik said. “It’s their livelihood,” he said. “In terms of security after it leaves their facility, it is shipped to the registrar in tamper-evident packaging. If something has been done to the card, it will be obvious once it has reached the town.”
Dr. Alec Schvartsman, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Connecticut and head of the university’s voting technology research center, which is working closely with the Secretary of the State to safeguard elections, agrees with Fisher that there is a possible vulnerability at LHS.“
That’s a valid concern, and the issue of how well we trust the people who program the memory cards for the election is important, be they a state employee or not,” he said. “The concerns are very valid and very real.”

I recommend reading the full Record Journal story click here.

Review some CTVotersCount recent posts on LHS and Diebold here and here.

The Day: Elections Panel Finalizes Norwich Registrars’ Fines

Two recent articles of interest in The Day:

From Friday, two Norwich Registrars were fined for election day errors in judgement. No matter how one feels about the appropriateness of the fine, it is good to see the Election Enforcement Commission demonstrating seriousness.

Another from Saturday showing that a “Software error” lost record of 911 calls. This is a demonstration of the value of our laws in Connecticut requiring paper records for voting. Note that “Security” is invoked to avoid providing details and that the result might be a botched prosecution of a breach of the peace charge related to a shooting death.

Statistics Can Help Ensure Accurate Elections

The American Statistical Association’s Science and Public Affairs Advisory Committee has recommended that post election audits have at least a 90% level of confidence.

Election officials need to make sure the person elected winner is the person the most voters want..Election results are most trustworthy when the entire election process can be audited, not just the vote counts…the audit should have the statistical power to trigger additional action at least nine out of 10 times when the wrong winner is declared.(emboldening added)

What is significant with this committee is that it has recommended a specific level of confidence where other reports have used 90% or 95% as examples. For instance here and here.

As I have emphasized here and here Connecticut law is, in my opinion, inadequate because it over audits some races and it is woefully inadequate in other races. For example, in races such as state representative, senator, or small to mid size municipal races, the probability of detection would be 2%-4%. or one in 50, or one in 25, which is a far cry from nine out of 10. (Note: CT Law specifies auditing 10% of races selected randomly, which is quite different than the confidence %, a measure which represents the probability an audit confirms the correct candidate has won an election)

The committee goes on to cover other areas where statistics can be used to increase the integrity and confidence in the whole process. Read the entire report here.

The President of the association, however, recommended an even higher standard of 99% confidence in a letter to Senator Feinstein who, along with Senator Dodd has proposed woefully inadequate legislation at the federal level.

Brennan Center: The Machinery Of Democracy

On August 1st the Brannan Center released a report Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections which has been covered on CTVotersCount.org. Today we will look at the security portion of an earlier report The Machinery Of Democracy: Accessibility, Usability, and Cost and its implications for Connecticut.

The tone of the report is serious. The conclusions are serious. Like all computer voting machines, optical scan voting machines are vulnerable, they are most vulnerable to malicious software, they “pose a real danger to election integrity”, and most jurisdictions have implemented none of the counter measures recommended.

A key finding:

The Brennan Center’s Task Force on Voting System Security reviewed more than 120 potential threats to voting systems…attacks involving the insertion of software attack programs or other corrupt software are the least difficult attacks against all electronic systems currently purchased when the goal is to change the outcome of a close statewide election.

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FAQ: We all trust ATM’s. Why don’t you trust voting machines?

This is a very understandable and legitimate question that must be answered. If there were significant problems with ATM’s we would know about them because banks or consumers would be losing money, it would be reported all over the news, and there would be investigations by regulators. The guilty would be punished, the losses restored, ATMs banned, or fixed. Computer experts need to explain the apparent inconsistency.

Two too simple answers are: We are computer experts, voting machines have unique risks, trust us. We are voting equipment vendors and election officials, we know more about voting computers and running elections than computer experts.

An accurate simple answer is that voting machines are different from ATMs in several ways, especially in their programming, usage, and implementation which are based on the different requirements of voting vs consumer banking.

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A Rose By Any Other Name Could Be Just As Thorny

Diebold Election Systems, Inc. is now Premier Election Solutions, Inc. The <press release> emphasizes continuity with increased independence from the parent, Diebold. Yet, at the same time the release indicates that Election Systems has always been relatively independent.

Reuters article emphasizes that Diebold had failed to sell the Election Systems unit which has been a drag on the corporation’s earnings and reputation, speculating on a spin-off.

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