Category: CT

CT: Unfortunately, we were correct.

Last week, we said “There are likely many other differences that have not been discovered.”

Last week, we said: “There are likely many other differences that have not been discovered.”

Unfortunately, we were correct.  We checked our own town of Glastonbury web’s reported results against the Secretary of the State’s results:

Totals for ROV in Glastonbury, on Glastonbury site:  9,018   8,501 <read>
Totals for ROV in Glastonbury, on SOTS site:           9,001   8,491 <read>

Checking with Zelda Lessne, Registrar of Voters-D, this is the difference between the originally reported results and those one the web listed as amended on November 17th.

Once again, this may not matter in the result in this eleciton, but it seems there are many errors out there that could change future results.  Its good that towns recheck their work after a good night’s sleep, but those results also should be reflected in the State’s posted results.

CT: More Errors In Reported Results?

We have covered reports of differences between the results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site and actual election results in Shelton and Stamford. We have learned of a third problem in the results posted for the Congressional race in Avon, with the possibility of similar problems in several other towns. David Bedell … Continue reading “CT: More Errors In Reported Results?”

We have covered reports of differences between the results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site and actual election results in Shelton and Stamford. We have learned of a third problem in the results posted for the Congressional race in Avon, with the possibility of similar problems in several other towns.

David Bedell (Green Party candidate for Registrar, Stamford) was researching the effect the Working Families Party may have had in the recent election. He noticed several anomalies: 9 towns with instances of zero counts for WFP and one with duplicate results for the Democratic and WFP for a candidate.

He checked with the Avon Registrar and she reported U.S. Representative Chris Murphy’s results were Democratic-5111 and WFP-269, making a total of 5380.

Checking this morning at the Secretary of the State’s web site we see totals of Democratic-5577 and WKF of 0, an extra 197 votes. By our calculations that amounts to about 1.9% of the initially reported results for the race in Avon.

As we have pointed out before, the manual calculation of votes, usually with three transcriptions and several additions along the way is an error prone process. It can be a daunting task for voters, candidates, and parties to check results independently, since the State publishes summary results which must be verified against multiple hand written reports and machine tapes held in each town hall. There are likely many other differences that have not been discovered.

Perhaps no errors, discovered or not, in the November election would change the winner in any contest, however, it could matter in future, closer elections and it does matter in the next election how votes are allocated to parties in this election.

CT: Audits Accurate? How Many Votes Is A Handful?

If we dismiss every discrepancy as human hand count error, how would we know if there was an optical scanner error – caused by the scanner hardware, human error, or human fraud?
AP article in the Hartford Courant: Audits: Conn. voting machine counts accurate

If we dismiss every discrepancy as human hand count error, how would we know if there was an optical scanner error – caused by the scanner hardware, human error, or human fraud?

AP article in the Hartford Courant: Audits: Conn. voting machine counts accurate: <read>

Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz (‘BYE-suh-wits) says audits of some of the state’s voting machines show they produced extremely accurate vote totals for last month’s elections.

Bysiewicz says her office reviewed results in 10 percent of the state’s voting precincts, as required by law, by comparing the machine totals with hand-count results.

Bysiewicz spokesman Av Harris says none of the totals were off by more than a handful of votes. He says past experience has shown that minor discrepancies are usually the result of human error during the hand counts.

The University of Connecticut will be doing a more thorough analysis.

Bysiewicz says Connecticut residents should feel confident that the optical scan machines are counting their votes correctly.

The Connecticut Citizen Audit Coalition will also be doing a more thorough analysis. In the meantime, we have reviewed some of the official audit reports filed by municipalities. Here is an image of one report from just one Connecticut city. <view>

To save you time, the discrepancies in various candidate counts in this one district are:
13, -2, 10, -11, 28, 13, 8, 16, 1, 12, 93
(we corrected for the one obvious error in the last column)

The discrepancy of 93 was in one of the Registrar Of Voters races, not one of those “challenging” cross-endorsement races.

Update: From NorwalkPlus: Results of 2008 post election audit show accurate Election Day machine counts <read>

By Secretary of the State’s Office

…“We set a record in Connecticut on November 4th with 1.64 million people casting ballots and Election Day went remarkably smoothly,” said Secretary Bysiewicz. “The results of this audit indicate, once again, that the optical scan voting system is secure and extremely accurate. Connecticut voters can be confident in the integrity of our elections and that their votes were counted correctly. Still, I’m not asking anyone to simply take my word for it: that’s why these post-election procedures are so important. We want to shine the light on the electoral process, before and after all votes are cast. So far, Connecticut’s new voting machines have passed the test every step of the way.”

As part of Connecticut’s audit law, believed to be the toughest in the United States…

While the audits did uncover accurate machine counts on Election Day, there were discrepancies in isolated cases involving the hand-count audits for some ballots marked with votes for major party candidates who were cross endorsed by minor parties.

Minnesota Recount vs. Connecticut Recanvass

The Minnesota recount which started on November 19th goes on and will probably continue for several additional days, perhaps weeks. You can read about some of the details of the ongoing Minnesota senate recount at the blog of the Citizens for Voting Integrity MN <blog> We ask: Would this happen here, in Connecticut? Should this … Continue reading “Minnesota Recount vs. Connecticut Recanvass”

The Minnesota recount which started on November 19th goes on and will probably continue for several additional days, perhaps weeks. You can read about some of the details of the ongoing Minnesota senate recount at the blog of the Citizens for Voting Integrity MN <blog>

We ask:

  • Would this happen here, in Connecticut?
  • Should this happen here, in Connecticut?

Continue reading “Minnesota Recount vs. Connecticut Recanvass”

CT: How Many Errors Can You Find In This Story?

Update: Cross posted at MyLeftNutmeg. See some of the comments there, especially Tessa’s describing obtaining election results on election night in Milford. <read> ConnPost has an article on errors in Shelton on election night. But we find other possible inaccuracies in the story as reported: State: Shelton vote snafu ‘human error”, <read> Shelton’s arithmetically challenged … Continue reading “CT: How Many Errors Can You Find In This Story?”

Update: Cross posted at MyLeftNutmeg. See some of the comments there, especially Tessa’s describing obtaining election results on election night in Milford. <read>

ConnPost has an article on errors in Shelton on election night. But we find other possible inaccuracies in the story as reported: State: Shelton vote snafu ‘human error”, <read>

Shelton’s arithmetically challenged voting officials snatched away a local victory from Democratic congressional challenger Jim Himes a week after initial results indicated that he won the city, state officials have determined…

It didn’t get straightened out until Nov. 13, nine days after veteran U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays conceded that Himes had won the Fourth Congressional District race representing 19 southwestern Connecticut communities.

Bysiewicz said there was no political malice involved, a fact that the feuding local voter registrars — Democrat John “Jack” Finn and Republican Peter R. Pavone — agree upon. With a lingering controversy over an incorrect result on a local ballot question sharply dividing the two registrars, both Finn and Pavone say it was strictly erroneous tabulation that initially had Himes winning in the part of the city that’s in the Fourth District.

While the initial results had Shays with 7,114 votes and Himes with 7,632, after Pavone and Finn performed the recount, Shays had 7,668 and Himes had 6,744…

Finn said, “A mistake could have come from a person reading the number to the person on the computer. It had to be an error putting numbers into the computer.” He noted that Shays’ absentee ballots were also initially omitted.

We are pleased that the error has been corrected and that it did not change the results of the race. It would be even better if the registrars could manage to get along.

This was not the only error found in reporting results in Shelton:

“The discrepancies seem to be in the congressional races where there were cross endorsements,” Bysiewicz said. “Shelton’s one of those weird, split towns where there are two districts.”

“I definitely think it was human error, a transcription problem,” recalled state Sen. Dan Debicella, R-Shelton, who won re-election that night, but whose numbers also changed over the week and a half it took to agree on a final total…

There were also transcription errors when election officials dictated results that were typed incorrectly onto city spread sheets.

Bysiewicz believes that initial miscounts on absentee ballots was another problem…

“Arithmetic mistakes are not unusual,” Bysiewicz said, noting that her staff even found a mistake in the turnout percentage of the finalists for her “Democracy Cup” award that goes to the towns and cities with the highest Election Day turnout.

“Avon said they had 96 percent, but when we when crunched the numbers ourselves they were wrong and New Hartford ended up being the winner,” she said.

There is also plenty of confusion about the dual endorsements:

Part of the problems, Bysiewicz said last week, was that Himes was cross endorsed by the Working Families Party, so he appeared on the ballot in two places.

Some voters filled in their ballots in both spots and in those cases, if the tabulation machines did not reject the ballots, the votes were given to Himes on the Working Families ballot line.

“It’s not in [state] law, but it’s our advice to count double votes for Working Families, or whatever the cross endorsement is, because it’s up to us to help the minor parties,” Bysiewicz said.

We question the statement that “the tabulation machines did not reject the ballots, the votes were given to Himes on the Working Families ballot line”. Our understanding is that when a voter voted for the same candidate, they were counted once but then listed as UNK (unknown party) on the tabulator tape. The hand counted ballots should also have been counted that same way as UNK. We presume the Post misunderstood the Secretary.

It is also our understanding that the Secretary of the State did make a decision to not only count the UNK votes for the Working Families Party, but also to total them in the same bucket when reporting results on her website.

We are not sure if the following statement is correct:

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said a review last week of the city’s mistakes found that Shelton had the biggest Election Day tabulation breakdown among the state’s 169 towns and cities.

Our understanding is that there are still unresolved errors in Stamford, from a comment on a post on MyLeftNutmeg on the Shelton story <ref>:

Weird numbers in Stamford too… on the Constitutional Convention. The original number they sent to the SOTS office was 41,775 “no” votes. That was amended to something like 23,000 “no” votes due to an “Excel error,” I’m told. That’s a pretty big error. The original number is still posted on the SOTS web site.

If true, then perhaps it was not a “tabulation breakdown among the state’s 169 towns and cities” but made elsewhere. Looking at the Stamford numbers at the Secretary of the State’s web this morning, we see:

President Total Votes 49543 McCain 17510 Obama 31733 Nadar 289 Others 11

Congress Total Votes 47327 Shays 19735 Himes-D 26039 Duffee 213 Himes-WF 1035 Carrano 305

Question 1 Total Votes 58024 Yes 16249 No 41775

Question 2 Total Votes 49087 Yes 25679 No 23408

Looks like there is, at minimum, an anamoly of about 9,000 votes.

A big part of a solution would be for all polling place moderators to be required to fax their moderators’ returns, checklist reports, and tabulator tapes to the Secretary of the State’s Office on election night. The Secretary’s Office post the faxed images on the web, along with much more detailed keyed in results, in downloadable format. Then interested parties would be able to check the data. Of course, the remaining potential transcription error gap is hand counted ballots and hand transcribed numbers to the moderators’ reports not on the tabulator tapes.

CT: Errors found in town’s first vote audit

Like several towns in the most recent Post-Election Audit, Hamden found unexplained discrepancies in the post election audit. Unlike most towns, the media in Hamden takes note. The Hamden Chronicle has the story <read> Not by a large number, though Esposito considered any deviation to be problematic. They estimated no more than 3 percent as … Continue reading “CT: Errors found in town’s first vote audit”

Like several towns in the most recent Post-Election Audit, Hamden found unexplained discrepancies in the post election audit. Unlike most towns, the media in Hamden takes note. The Hamden Chronicle has the story <read>

Not by a large number, though Esposito considered any deviation to be problematic. They estimated no more than 3 percent as of Thursday, Nov. 20. That was within the range of standard human error according to Esposito.
“We’re looking at three to four votes out of 2,000 so far,” said Esposito.

We wonder where the 3% figure for standard human error comes from? We also note that four votes out of 2000 would represent .2% of the votes and perhaps a .4% margin difference in a 2000 vote race.

Our belief is that people can easily make errors, however, with reasonable procedures and supervision teams of people can count accurately. Machines can count accurately or inaccurately, but they ultimately cannot judge voters’ intent.


The Cross-Endorsed Counting Challenge:

Continue reading “CT: Errors found in town’s first vote audit”

CT: UConn Memory Card Reports: More Info, More “Junk” Data

Results also indicate continuing extensive problems with procedures not being followed by election officials. The UConn VoTeR Center recently released two more reports in its series of memory card audits <Aug Primary Post-Election> <November Pre-Election> We applaud UConn for carrying out these tests and the Secretary of the State’s Office for commissioning these tests. We … Continue reading “CT: UConn Memory Card Reports: More Info, More “Junk” Data”

Results also indicate continuing extensive problems with procedures not being followed by election officials.

The UConn VoTeR Center recently released two more reports in its series of memory card audits <Aug Primary Post-Election> <November Pre-Election>

We applaud UConn for carrying out these tests and the Secretary of the State’s Office for commissioning these tests. We appreciate the valuable addition of analysis of the Audit Logs.

From the Presidential Pre-Election Report:

The UConn VoTeR Center performed a pre-election audit of the memory cards for the Accu-Vote Optical Scan tabulators that are to be used in the November 2008 Elections in Connecticut. The cards are programmed by LHS Associates of Methuen, Massachusetts, and shipped to Connecticut districts for use in the elections. For the pre-election audit the VoTeR Center received and examined 620 memory cards as of November 3, 2008. These cards correspond to 620 distinct districts in Connecticut. About 2/3 of these memory cards were randomly chosen by the VoTeR Center personnel during the visits to LHS and before the cards were packed and shipped to the towns. Another 1/3 of the memory cards came from the towns directly, where the cards were randomly chosen for pre- election audit (this procedure applied to the town for which the cards were not selected at LHS). The towns that shipped the cards to be audited were not asked to perform the local pre-election testing before shipping, thus the majority of the cards received from the towns did not contain the pre-election testing events in their audit logs.

This document reports on the findings obtained during the audit. Among the 620 cards received and tested as of this writing, 564 cards (91%) were found to have been properly programmed for election. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code.

One of the ongoing areas of concern is the quality of memory cards and the quality control of our vendor LHS Associates, which supplies the Diebold memory cards and programs them for each election. Past tests at UConn, in other states, and surveys by the audit Coalition indicate significant problems.

The source of the problems remain in question: Are the cards bad from the beginning? Do they leave LHS working correctly, to be harmed by transport or by testing by election officials? These latest reports may get us closer to some of the answers. Looking at the results and the reports conclusions, we conclude:

  1. The quality control is getting worse: The pre-election test showed 3.8% of the cards were programmed correctly but contained additional random data, apparently a new issue.
  2. Election officials continue to violate procedures: 16 of 297 post-election cards sent by registrars were from the wrong election. 23 cards were duplicated which is prohibited by the Secretary of the State’s procedures.
  3. The cards are bad when they leave LHS: 8.9% of the cards tested post-election contained “Junk” data, when 2/3 of the cards tested were directly from LHS. UConn noted no significant difference in card failure rates between those collected at LHS and those shipped by Election Officials

We might conclude, perhaps erroneously that:

  • The problems are getting worse: The August Post-Election report showed 15.4% of cards with “Junk Data”, while previous post-election reports have shown 5% and 8% junk data.

However, the memory cards shipped by election officials are not selected at random and do not represent all the districts in the election. The results may reflect a tendency for election officials to send in the “Junk” data cards or for districts with problems not to send cards – we have no way of knowing.

The results show serious problems with the hardware and the election system: Memory cards should not fail at these rates. In the unlikely event the memory card problems are shipping and handling, then LHS should specify exactly how the shipping and handling should be improved. Election officials should be expected to follow procedures. How can the public have confidence in our elections when procedures are not followed?

We note from the pre-election report:

The current SOTS procedure is not to duplicate cards, but this is now being reconsidered, with one possibility being to allow duplication at the districts and to document and report all such occurrences.

We have reservations about making this change and question the added vulnerability associated with the duplication of cards. We have concerns that election officials will follow any such procedure given that they have clearly failed to follow the current procedure for memory cards and a similar procedure associated with the post-election audit requiring them to call the Secretary of the State’s Office when incorrectly sealed ballots are discovered. Procedures are insufficient when they are difficult to follow, they are regularly violated, they cannot be effectively monitored, are not enforced, and are not enforceable.


CT: Secretary Bysiewicz Expresses Staunch Support Of Audits

Greenwich Time, Once again, town faces election audit: <read>

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a staunch advocate for the hand counting of ballots, said that she would oppose any measures to weaken the state’s auditing requirements, which she called the toughest in the nation.

“Auditing the election results is critical,” Bysiewicz said. “It is important to guarantee the integrity of our elections. We don’t just take the machine’s word for the vote tally.”

We appreciate the Secretary’s support of post-election audits and that she is staunchly opposed to weakening them. We also share the goal that Connecticut’s law be the “toughest in the Nation”. Our enthusiasm is tempered by our observations and conclusions that our audits are not the toughest and are, in any case by several measures, inadequate to provide confidence.

CT: Post-Election Audit: 84 Districts, 55 Towns, and 5 Races

Yesterday, I was present as the Secretary of the State held the random drawing of districts to audit.  Later in the day the Secretary ordered that all five State and Federal offices be audited rather than three randomly selected races as required in the law.

Here are a couple of sample news articles on the drawing:

Hat City Blog <read> with selected districts and statement from the Secretary of the State’s Office.

Conn Post article <read>

In an e-mail later in the day to registrars with districts selected, the office explained:

All offices on the ballot will be audited except local municipal races such as RTM, Board of Education, etc. Therefore, the Offices of President, Representative in Congress, State Senator, State Representative and Registrar of Voters will be included in this audit.

As CTVotersCount.org readers know, we have been calling for stronger, more effective audits of all races and contests.

Auditing all five State and Federal races will provide more confidence in the results of those races. While we are pleased to see such enhanced confidence, we would rather the legislature provide audits based on statistical confidence. We would audit statewide and Congressional races based on the number of districts in the race and the margins. We would include questions. We would exempt non-contested races, such as registrar in most districts.

For instance in this election we would audit: Continue reading “CT: Post-Election Audit: 84 Districts, 55 Towns, and 5 Races”

CT: Secretary Of The State, Town Clerks Open To Explore Early Voting

Update: Photo of Secretary Bysiewicz and caption indicating she will look into early voting <view>
*****

Westport News: A Concept Worth Exploring <read>

Many viewed the long lines as a success for democracy. Well, the record turnout — most notably among younger Americans — sure was. But the lines, no way. In our fast-paced society, where time is money, some voters may have been discouraged by the lines and decided it was not worth the wait. We certainly hope this wasn’t the case and would like to extend our support to a concept that could be the remedy in Connecticut — early voting.

Fortunately, we believe, Connecticut was spared those long lines, as were most states with optical scan voting. If we did have long lines anywhere they could easily be cured by more space and more election officials at those polling places – a much simpler solution than early voting.

We do recognize the value of encouraging more citizens to vote by making it more convenient.

There are two ways early voting can take place: opening polls for a specified period prior to an election and permitting no-excuse absentee ballots.

Without a detailed analysis we can say that we are conditionally against early voting for Connecticut at this time(*). In simpler terms, we would want to see a very detailed plan and have an opportunity for it to be reviewed by nationally respected voting experts, computer scientists, and security experts. Until we see a detailed proposal and it is positively reviewed by experts our position would be against.

“No-excuse absentee ballots” is another name and form of mail-in voting. Like touch-screen voting it is attractive to the public and some election officials and, unfortunately, that ease may be accompanied by an unwarranted confidence that votes will be counted.  For more on concerns with mail-in voting, see <novbm>

“The secretary of the state is open to any and all suggestions that improve access to voters so it’s easier to cast a ballot,” said Adam Joseph, deputy communications director for the Office of the Secretary of the State.

In regard to early voting, Joseph said, “It is definitely going to be on our agenda for consideration in the upcoming legislative session.”

Continue reading “CT: Secretary Of The State, Town Clerks Open To Explore Early Voting”