Luther Weeks | CTVotersCount.org

Betting on the SEEC to get to the bottom of Bridgeport AB issues

From the CTNewsJunkie: State Commission Probes Bridgeport Primary Amid Ballot Concerns

I’m betting on the SEEC to get to the bottom of Bridgeport AB issues This might be a bit of work, but straight-forward. We have long advocated against signature checking during AB counting as that is a very sophisticated process requiring experts and a lot more than one signature given years ago or electronically at the DMV. However the value of signatures on AB applications and AB envelopes is just for these cases of suspected mass insider AB fraud…

Republicans focus on eliminating drop-boxes is exactly what not to do. The drop-boxes are not the problem, they are part of the solution…

From the CTNewsJunkie: State Commission Probes Bridgeport Primary Amid Ballot Concerns <read>

The tedious job is going through the applications and envelopes probing for those that have been filled out by the same individual(s). Not looking just at signatures but first those that have been filled out by the same pens and then all the writing to see if it was done by the same person. 1st line up all the ballot envelopes by the date and time received by the Clerk, stamped as required by law. The same to the extent possible with when applications were received and the ballots logged as sent. I would start with those received on the day when the video shows an individual submitting several. Its a big job because all those ballots may not have been submitted on the same day and only by one individual. Once similar items are identified, the experts can get to work to assess and prove they were filled out by the same individual(s) and perhaps identify them.

The great thing here is the video. It is very likely the individual can be identified and charged. It is also unlikely that a single individual was involved. That one individual can be used to identify others who were likely part of a conspiracy, leading to convictions. The bigger job is showing the likelihood that enough illegal ballots were cast to have changed the result. It is also possible that a campaign did legal things to get a large AB turn-out to win an election, even if there were some illegal votes.

Republicans focus on eliminating drop-boxes is exactly what not to do. The drop-boxes are not the problem, they are part of the solution. The video’s of the drop-boxes is what is raising suspicion. For $0.66 per ballot they could be mailed in any post-office or mailbox (1000 for $666, a drop in the bucket for a Bridgeport mayoral campaign.) ABs are risky, yet at this shows it is possible to catch and punish large scale fraud (If indeed it occurred in this case.) Drop-boxes, well secured eliminates all the risks of regular mail from the mail box, through postal employees, postal contractors, and from the mail room in town hall to the Clerk’s Office, where the risks from drop-boxes are concentrated in the Clerk’s office which is only a part of the process with regular mail.

Activists for hand-counting ballots don’t acknowledge drawbacks: More mistakes, time, and money

We have said it before, we will say it again: The best protection is machine counting in polling places on election night followed by sufficient post-election audits and recounts. <for example>

A recent article in Votebeat: Activists for hand-counting ballots don’t acknowledge drawbacks: More mistakes, time, and money

Years ago a minority of liberals wanted only hand-counts now its election-denying conservatives.

It seems that those who have never tried have opinions that are not informed by sufficient facts.

We have said it before, we will say it again: The best protection is machine counting in polling places on election night followed by sufficient post-election audits and recounts. <for example>

A recent article in Votebeat: Activists for hand-counting ballots don’t acknowledge drawbacks: More mistakes, time, and money <read>

Years ago a minority of liberals wanted only hand-counts now its election-denying conservatives. From the article:

Despite widespread coverage of the follies of hand-counting ballots, the quest to expand use of the method continues. This year alone, there have been 16 bills in 8 states that would ban the use of tabulators. It’s a really bad idea. And so, Votebeat has decided to compile a list of our favorite cold-hard evidence.

I’m sure many of you already understand the broad strokes of this: years of evidence and basic common sense shows that hand-counting is less accurate, more time consuming, and significantly more expensive than using tabulators. Still, the same arguments continue to motivate local officials and activists to attempt to upend elections systems. Let’s go through them here, point by point.

Contrary to the article, I assert that hand-counting can be quite accurate, yet it takes a lot to do that. A good plan with lots of double checking, high quality people, and high quality supervision. That is why when I led teams in the 25,000 ballot Citizen Recount of Bridgeport, I used teams of four supervised by a fifth person. Yet, even then for many of the counts we could compare to original machine counts of ballots and votes to further check everything and pursue any differences.

It seems that those who have never tried have opinions that are not informed by sufficient facts.

Editor’s Note: I have been publishing less lately. Mostly because, it seems, there is less novel to discuss.

Report: Security Analysis of the Dominion ImageCast X

Report released this week on vulnerabilities of the Dominion ImageCast, used for the vast majority of the votes in Georgia <Report>

The report was actually submitted to a court on July 1, 2021 – the court considered the information so dangerous to elections that is has largely been suppressed until now!

However in two years, Dominion has made several fixes, yet Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is in no hurry to update Georgia machines at least until after the 2024 election.

Note: After planning for a couple of months, I launched CTVoters Count in late 2007, Little did I know that the California Top To Bottom Review would be release at that time! Many are claiming that this report may rival the impact of that California report.

Report released this week on vulnerabilities of the Dominion ImageCast, used for the vast majority of the votes in Georgia <Report>

The report was actually submitted to a court on July 1, 2021 – the court considered the information so dangerous to elections that is has largely been suppressed until now!

However in two years, Dominion has made several fixes, yet Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is in no hurry to update Georgia machines at least until after the 2024 election.

You do not need to read the whole report. Better to start with a summary from the author, Prof. Alex Halderman. <Summary Report>

…we discovered vulnerabilities in nearly every part of the system that is exposed to potential attackers. The most critical problem we found is an arbitrary-code-execution vulnerability that can be exploited to spread malware from a county’s central election management system (EMS) to every BMD in the jurisdiction. This makes it possible to attack the BMDs at scale, over a wide area, without needing physical access to any of them…

The report was filed under seal on July 1, 2021 and remained confidential until today, but last year the Court allowed us to share it with CISA—the arm of DHS responsible for election infrastructure—through the agency’s coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) program. CISA released a security advisory in June 2022 confirming the vulnerabilities, and Dominion subsequently created updated software in response to the problems. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has been aware of our findings for nearly two years, but—astonishingly—he recently announced that the state will not install Dominion’s security update until after the 2024 Presidential election, giving would-be adversaries another 18 months to develop and execute attacks that exploit the known-vulnerable machines…

The right solution is Voter-Verified-Paper-Ballots and sufficient post-election audits, recounts, and sufficient ballot security. Then even with election systems subject to errors and fraud, election results can be verified and corrected.

Testimony on two small, instructive bills

Last week I submitted testimony on two bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

This is likely the last time I will testify this year. Both of the bills seem minor, yet offered and opportunity to highlight errors and inconsistencies in the law that are overlooked and not addressed.

The first about collecting envelopes from drop boxes. There is no requirement for more than one person to collect the envelopes. There is no requirement that the collection and materials be logged. Who supports that ballots and other materials should be collected and transported by only one person, at any time?

The other making minor changes to the recanvass law, including requiring a training video from the Secretary of the State. I suggested several other changes, such as notifying all candidates, sending the video link along (so that everyone involved know the rules, and that one observer should be allowed per counting team.

When submitting testimony one can specify Support, Oppose, or General Comments. When signing up to speak the choices are Support or Oppose. I often wrestle with this. I know that some look just at how many support or oppose a bill. Here there is much missing, so I choose oppose.

Last week I submitted testimony on two bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

Testimony opposed to six bills on RCV and RLAs

On Monday I testified against five bills on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and one on Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs),

As I said,

I am not opposed to the concepts of Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs) or Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) but I am opposed to all six of these bills as they are insufficiently detailed. They also provide no guarantees of transparency..

Both of these concepts involve detailed technical and computational issues. Neither are as simple as looking at marks on ballots and simply counting votes. Officials, candidates, the public, and the SEEC need to know exactly what is expected of officials, so they can perform as expected and such that all can determine if they are doing what is required, uniformly across the state…

On Monday I testified against five bills on Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and one on Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs),

As I said,

Both of these concepts involve detailed technical and computational issues. Neither are as simple as looking at marks on ballots and simply counting votes. Officials, candidates, the public, and the SEEC need to know exactly what is expected of officials, so they can perform as expected and such that all can determine if they are doing what is required, uniformly across the state.

Just like we need paper ballots to avoid trusting voting machines and software, we need transparency to judge all the counting and calculating required for RCV and RLAs.

In both RCV and RLAs the counting rules details are critical. Especially, in close contests, where the result is dependent on the nuances in the rules.

Here is a link to my complete testimony, also including a link to extensive comments on the RLA bill <read>

Testimony on Early Voting and Absentee Voting Bills

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

Yesterday I submitted testimony on four bills before the GAE (General Administration and Elections Committee.) (Read my testimony here)

I was pleased to learn that Secretary of the State, Stephanie Thomas generally agreed with me and that she called out my testimony in hers!

It was clear before I spoke that the Committee understood my main points, so I asked them to read the testimony and spent my three minutes discussing additional thoughts:

That if Absentee Ballots are made FOIable (I thought they were), we should post them to the Internet to save citizens from filing FOI requests and officials from processing them.
That my surveys show that our voting machines are NOT failing at an increased rate, and that this might be the worst time in history to replace them. (Because newer VVSG 2.0 machines will be available soon, making anything we buy today obsoleted soon as well.
Emphasizing that if they General Assembly had listened to me in 2013 then we could have avoided many of the problems, some that still remain with Election Day Registration – and that many of the same issues can occur with Early Voting and Same Day Registration, if they ignore similar suggestions in today’s testimony

Nov 2022 Post-Election Audit Report

From the Press Release:

Watchdog Group: 24 Audits Since 2007 with Little Improvement

Independent Observation and Analysis of Connecticut’s Nov 2022 Post-Election Audit

HARTFORD: We conclude, based on citizen observations and analysis of official municipal post-election vote audit of the November 2022 election, that it failed to meet basic audit standards

After 16 years with disappointing, locally performed, hand-count audits, we recommend replacement of all local hand-count audits with sufficient and efficient electronically assisted manual audits utilizing the UConn Audit Station.

The non-partisan Connecticut Citizen Election Audit has provided volunteer observation and post-election audit reports since the adoption of optical scanners statewide in 2007. Without the hours and mileage incurred by these volunteers after every election nobody but a few election officials would know the actual quality of the audits performed, while officials would have less motivation toward credible audits.

From the Press Release:

Watchdog Group: 24 Audits Since 2007 with Little Improvement

Independent Observation and Analysis of Connecticut’s Nov 2022 Post-Election Audit

HARTFORD: We conclude, based on citizen observations and analysis of official municipal post-election vote audit of the November 2022 election, that it failed to meet basic audit standards

The audits were not conducted and reported as required by law. The Secretary of the State’s Office continues to fail to take responsibility for that failure by local officials.
Human error was still considered an acceptable explanation of differences between machine and manual counts. This defeats the purpose of the audits.
Weaknesses in ballot chain-of-custody and security procedures necessary for confidence that ballots were not tampered with between the election and the municipal audit counting sessions.
The short schedule for audits and dates for electronic audits not announced sufficiently in advance cause both registrars and the Citizen Audit to scramble to conduct and observe audits – they should be added to the annual election calendar months in advance.
There were at least three municipalities with new registrars, neither of which had previously performed audits. This resulted in various failures to follow procedures and in one case failure to allow transparency required by the procedures.

The public, candidates, and the Secretary of the State should expect local election officials to be able to organize audits and produce accurate, complete audit reports. The public should expect the Secretary of the State’s Office to take the lead in ensuring that the audit is scheduled in advance, complete, and publicly verifiable.

We are pleased with the following developments:

Electronic audits again included random manual verification comparing some paper ballots to Cast Vote Records produced by the audit station.
There was a significant reduction in incomplete forms.

We emphasize that this report does not question any election official’s integrity.

All reports and backup data are available online at: https://www.CTElectionAudit.org.

CT Secretary calls for 10 days of early voting starting in 2023

https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Press-Releases/2023-Press-Releases/Secretary-Thomas-Presents-Legislature-with-Recommendations-for-Early-Voting-Program From no ePollbooks currently approved and no early voting in place, this will be a tall order for the two elected registrars in each of our 169 towns. Likely tripling the number of pollworker days in most towns, requiring lots of recruiting and training and loads of novice pollworkers. This will also put a lot of work on the Secretary’s small staff to develop procedures, provide training, and approve all sorts of plans in a short time.

Editorial:..

Editorial:

Meanwhile in addition to likely approving new ePollbooks, the State has also recently acquired a new CVRs to be implemented. And presumably changes to our current Election Night Reporting system or replacing it with a new one in the new CVRS.

Also, quite a challenge for the Legislature to draft, finalize, and pass such a bill by March 31.

If this plan is approved, I can’t imagine anything but chaos.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 5 – Choices and Disappointments

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places…
Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days…
Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting…

Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience…

This is the fifth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks>

In this post we will cover the choices for implementing Early Voting facing the General Assembly along with the disappointments associated with each choice.

Disappointments are based on the expectations outlined in our first post. See <Part 1 – Expectations>

Option 1 – Fourteen or So Long Days of Early Voting Places

By this we mean, in general, following the request of the ACLU and the provisions of the For the People Act. Perhaps ten days or twenty-five. Likely requiring voting on at least two weekends including the Saturday and Sunday before Election Day. Open in the mornings and evening hours, at least during the week. Uniformity across the State. An early voting place similar to a polling place, i.e. checkin, ballot clerks, machine tenders and scanners – giving the voters who make overvotes the opportunity to spoil a ballot and vote another. Similar to what we see in other states, including CA, CO, GA, etc.

Disappointments:

Registrars and other election officials. In a small town with one polling place today. It will change the number of pollworker days from perhaps 8-10 to about 100! Finding citizens willing to work that many 16 to 17 hour days will be a challenge. Staffing, presumably, with inexperienced pollworkers will add to the challenges. Further it will be more difficult to find voting locations, especially during the week, that are not already used for other things and that have sufficient parking. It will greatly increase the stress and work for registrars as they do the normal work preparing for Election Day – especially tight preparing pollbooks between that last Sunday and Election Day. We expect many will join those that resigned in 2022. As an experienced pollworker, I doubt I could serve more than one or two 16 hour days in addition to Election Day.

Not much different in mid-size towns like mine, with six polling places and central count absentee, about 70 Election Day officials, this would add perhaps another 140 early voting polling place staffing days. That is plenty of novice officials, plenty of work for registrars, and stress. Including problems finding appropriate venues. Even for large cities it will be significant, perhaps doubling staffing.

The Public. Presumably many will want to try out early voting the first day that seems convenient and the last. So, there will likely be lines as we see in every election in Georgia. The public has been promised no more lines in Connecticut – yet there are none today, except for big problems like missing pollbooks, or at Election Day Registration. In fact, every option we discuss may have that same problem. It is especially likely for any option that opens early or closes late. Especially on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Perhaps we should start slowly and if early voting is popular, work up to Option 1. More on that in the next two options, and in our final comment.

Option 2 – Four to Six Days, Six to Seven-Hour Early Voting Days

This is a compromise between satisfying the public’s expectations for polling place like voting places, but with fewer and shorter days for officials.

Four days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, and Wednesday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. This would provide the possibility of election officials to do multiple days – a single Moderator (or with an Assistant) might be able to cover all these days and tabulate to votes on election night. Registrars would have more time to prepare pollbooks and otherwise for Election Day. Voters would have an opportunity to vote at any convenient time, weekend, early morning, after work, and at lunch time.

Six days, starting 10 days before Election Day: Saturday and Sunday 9:00am to 3:00pm, Monday and Tuesday 6:00am to 1:00pm, Wednesday and Thursday 2:00pm to 8:00pm. A bit more work, but more opportunities for voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting more days and will still see lines.

Election Officials. Who may be somewhat relieved but still face quite a bit of work and other challenges.

Option 3 – In-Person Absentee Voting

This would be voting very similar to the absentee voting that occurs today when one goes into a municipal clerk’s office, makes an application, votes, and hands in their absentee ballot. Except that any registered voter could do it. Clerks would need to be open on at least one weekend and in many cases open more hours than today, perhaps hiring one or two additional staff.

It would be more and less work for registrars and pollworkers. More checking-off of pollbooks between the end of early voting and election day. Today that happens on Friday and Monday before Election Day. As long as early voting ended before Friday, the only change would be more staffing for absentee checking and counting, with a somewhat smaller polling place staff on Election Day.

Some have suggested going to the registrars’ office and voting via machine for many hours of availability, yet that is really a variation on option 1, perhaps for small towns. It would still require Democrat and Republican Registrars or Deputies be present to correct registration errors, perhaps a checker, ballot clerk and definitely a machine tender all visible to each other and voters – not an option when you expect a volume of voters.

Disappointments:

The Public. Who were expecting that polling place like voting experience, the opportunity to be protected from overvoting, and the opportunity for correcting erroneously not being on the voters registration list – presumably that would require a call to the registrars office, visiting the registrars office when it was open, or requiring the registrars office to be open all the hours of early voting.

Once again, long lines are possible, especially if early morning or evening opportunities are limited and if on that last Sunday if “Souls to the Polls” materializes in Connecticut.

Finally, A Concern – The Experiences of California and Colorado

Many say the ideal for Connecticut should be California and Colorado. I would not emulate everything they do. They have ten or more days of early voting in vote centers, people can vote where they live or where they work, they have absentee voting, in fact they now send ballots to every voter to mail-in or drop off. Pretty close to the final draft of the For the People Act. They did not arrive there overnight. It has been perhaps 20-30 years in the making in each state.

Contrary to what the ACLU and Brennan Center would have us believe, we should not be trying to emulate the likes of Georgia, Florida and many other southern states that have the “Highest Early In Person Voting Rates” (see the map on page 3 of Brennan Center report, and the exclusion of California and Colorado from much of their report.) Those states have high in-person early voting apparently because they try to suppress absentee voting and do not provide enough polling places and voting machines on election day.

On the other hand, California and Colorado both seem to have the same experience. Until recently, the voters have chosen to use 70% main-in voting, 20% Election Day voting, and just 10% early voting. The latest trends in both states are closer to 90% mail-in voting.

As we have said, early in-person voting is expensive. If we are trending our policies toward California and Colorado, especially if we pass the 2024 constitutional amendment for no-excuse absentee voting in Connecticut. Why follow California and Colorado to massive early in-person early voting for just 5% of voters who could all easily choose to vote by mail or on Election Day? Why not benefit/save from their experience, before they do? Start slow, gain experience, add mail-in voting, and learn from our own experience.

Early Voting in Connecticut – Part 4 – Electronic Pollbooks

This is the fourth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Machines>

In this post we will cover Electronic Poolbooks – Why, How, and When we should add electronic pollbooks. Next time we will cover the alternatives for early voting in 2024. Hint: they all have advantages and disadvantages.

Our understanding is that UConn, under the direction of the Secretary of the State’s (SOTS) Office is already evaluating electronic pollbooks. Presumably they could be selected by the SOTS sometime in 2023.

Why Electronic Pollbooks (ePollbooks)

The answer here is not as simple and clear as many would suggest. There are two advantages often touted for ePollobooks which are not actually true:

This is the fourth in a series on Early Voting in Connecticut. See <Part 3 – New Voting Machines>

Why Electronic Pollbooks (ePollbooks)

The answer here is not as simple and clear as many would suggest. There are two advantages often touted for ePollobooks which are not actually true:

First, they are often touted as speeding up checkin such that fewer pollworkers are required. Actually, they don’t significantly speed up checkin. Sometimes they speed it up a little, sometimes they slow it down a bit. There are several variables here: The model of electronic pollbooks employed, what the State checkin requirements are, checkers capabilities, checker training, and how the pollbooks are implemented (including are they connected to a central database which may slow down the process). Suffice to say that no matter if 1, 2, 3, 4, or more checkers and lines are required today, likely that number will still suffice and be required.

Most states require voters to sign a pollbook or sign electronically with an electronic pollbook, Connecticut does not. Some print a pass for the correct district for each voter – now Connecticut may need to do that to tell ballot clerks what ballot to give to a voter – especially for early voting. All these things take extra time on the part of checkers – or maybe save time in other states over what they were doing without ePollbooks.

Second, they save paper because paper pollbooks do not have to be printed. In fact, they still need to be printed as a backup for when electronic pollbooks fail. They fail for many reasons: software glitches, download glitches, power failures, hardware failures etc. So not only are paper backups required, the checkers must be ready to immediately fallback on paper pollbooks.

There are advantages:

Any voter can go to any line as ePollbooks are usually connected within a polling place and coordinate a master checklist between them. That can speed the process a bit and also allow for easily reducing the number of checkers in slow periods and similarly facilitate adding checkin lines.

A more comprehensive voter search may be available. Easily finding and restoring voters moved off the rolls for not voting recently, finding voters added supplementally, and finding which polling place to which a voters is assigned.

All checkers can handlevoters in multiple districts in a polling place (especially early voting places).

Especially for early voting places, if connected to the Central Voter Registration System (CVRS), then more than one polling place can handle voters in a municipality. Also, even when not connected a single polling place, they speed the setup for Election Day voter lists. They can simply be uploaded to the CVRS to then update pollbooks for Election Day.

Finally, they can save registrars a lot of time updating the CVRS with who voted after the election. Today it is a time-consuming manual process, to data enter who voted from the paper checklists.

How to Add Electronic Pollbooks

Most important in evaluating them is testing them with actual typical pollworkers and people acting like a range of average voters. How fast can the average pollworker type in the addresses and select voters? How fast can they do searches when the voter is not initially found? What does it take to setup the systems in a typical polling place? What additional time does it take to provide voters with receipts for which district they are in?

ePollbooks should be tested for compatibility, ease of use, and performance in downloads, uploads, and connectivity to the CVRS. And what happens during Election Day or early voting when connection is lost? Our assumption though is that especially on Election Day many, if not most, polling places will not be connected centrally, since many polling places do not have internet and may also be in poor cell communications territory.

And like new scanners, ePollbooks should be purchased and maintained by the State. Each polling place should have one station (likely a laptop) for the maximum number of checkers in that polling place, plus one or two extras. That is perhaps $500-1000 per station, plus annual maintenance.

Like implementing new machines and early voting it takes procedure development, planning, training of registrars and pollworkers.

But unlike some other changes ePollbooks can be implemented in stages: Start with a few polling places using them in parallel with paper pollbooks or just using them officially, verifying their effectiveness and improving procedures before a full rollout. Like other changes, they can best be implemented in lower volume elections or primaries.

When to Add Electronic Pollbooks

As we discussed in Part 2, change should be limited to one big thing at a time, if possible, done in part first, and avoiding a big change in even year elections.

There is good news for electronic pollbooks here. It would be possible to do a small test either in the September 2023 Municipal Primaries, the November 2023 Municipal Elections, or both. Then expended and made universal across the State in the 2024 Presidential Primaries or the August Primaries, so every municipality and checker could be experienced in time for the November 2024 election with some of their benefits available for early voting.