Category: CT

Election Fraud In Bridgeport?

Update 6 /17/2009: Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud
Update: 10/07/2008: Election Enforcement Commission investigation opened
Update: Secretary Bysiewicz Responds

(Without editorial comment, see Editor’s Note)

Update 6 /17/2009: Head of CA GOP Voter Registration Firm Pleads Guilty to Voter Registration Fraud <read>

Update: 10/07/2008: Election Enforcement Commission investigation opened <read>

Update: Secretary Bysiewicz Responds: <read>

“Voter fraud is an allegation that my office takes very seriously. The only state agency that can investigate potential voter fraud, however, is the State Elections Enforcement Commission. In fact, the Office of the Secretary of the State has consistently instructed local Registrars of Voters that if they see any voter registration cards that raise red flags or do not look correct, they should make photocopies for their own records and send the problematic cards to the State Elections Enforcement Commission for investigation. If anyone feels there is enough evidence to warrant an investigation, I would urge them to file a Complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. ACORN has informed our office that there were indeed problems with voter registration cards being filled out improperly or incorrectly in Bridgeport and in fact those cards were not counted. This case proves the system works. Locally elected Registrars of Voters are trained statewide to detect discrepancies or inconsistencies in information provided on voter registration cards.?

As CTVotersCount.org readers know there are a lot of questionable practices and issues with the conduct of elections and post-election audits in Bridgeport which are the responsibility of the city’s Registrars and their election officials. <read> <read>.

Now issues of external fraud are being to be raised by one of the Bridgeport Registrars and the Republican Party Chair is calling for an investigation. We suggest watching the video. and reading the article

HARTFORD In the wake of a recent interview posted on the website ElectionJournal.org (www.electionjournal.org) with Bridgeport Republican Registrar of Voters Joe Borges, Chairman Chris Healy is calling for Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz to launch a full investigation into the activities of the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). “There should be no room for playing games with elections in Connecticut,” said Healy, the Chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. “The allegations of voter registration fraud by ACORN should be fully investigated, and if any crimes are uncovered, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.?

According to the interview, which is now posted on the CTGOP blog The Everyday Republican, Bridgeport Republican Registrar of Voters Joseph Borges indicated that “at least 20%” of the voter registration cards ACORN had submitted were duplicative or falsified. Mr. Borges even told of one instance where an ACORN employee had solicited voter registration cards under the guise of “job employment applications”.

Election Costs $ – Democracy? Priceless!

We have said that conducting elections cost from $5.00 to $20.00 per ballot cast and that our estimate of $0.20 to $0.50 for an audit is a small price to pay to assure that the votes are counted as the voters intended. But the news from Norwalk indicates we may need to revise the high-end cost of running an election upwards from that $20.00. <read>

“Everybody has their right to have a primary, but they should consider the costs and if they really statistically have a chance to win,” said Betty Bondi, Democratic registrar of voters in Norwalk, where 6.3 percent of registered Democrats voted.

Bondi said the primary will cost Norwalk taxpayers about $50,000 by the time the bills get sorted – all that for a contest in which Himes got 899 votes and Whitnum got 70

The calculation is $50,000 / (899 + 70) = $51.59 per ballot cast to run the election, totally dwarfing the cost of a strong, effective post-election audit.

A story earlier this week highlighted complaints of high barriers by third-party candidates. Today’s article features complaints from election officials of barriers being too low for primary challengers.

We cannot help but agree with one comment from Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz:

Lopsided results and low turnouts must be put in perspective, Bysiewicz said.

“Sometimes democracy costs money,” she said

We would add that the costs of the peoples’ intention not being followed can be trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, no matter how you look at it, Red, Blue or Green. The value of Democracy? Priceless!

Too High A Barrier?

(Without editorial comment, see Editor’s Note)

Hartford Advocate article on the petitioning effort required to get on the presidential ballot: <read>

In a rare show of third party unity, the campaigns of Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr and the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney, the last two former Congress members, are joining forces across state lines to overcome ballot access rules designed to keep minor party candidates out. The camps are sharing workers, swapping petitions and urging voters to sign up for another third party candidate along with their own. They’ve joined forces in Maine, West Virginia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania and now Connecticut, where Barr submitted 13,000 signatures and McKinney turned in “close to the necessary number,” a Green Party boss says…

Sidewalk petitioning can be thankless work: Campaigns pay workers $1 to $1.50 per signature to stand on baking asphalt, asking irritated grocery shoppers to sign in support of a candidate they’ve often never heard of, or might consider a “spoiler.” Nader’s national ballot coordinator, Christina Tobin of Illinois, arrived in Hartford last week to turn in the fruits of their labor…

…petitioners must carry a form for every town—Andover to Woodstock—which the state then mails to those towns. Another law says petitioners must be state residents, which poses a problem because the most reliable workers are the few paid national staffers who travel from state to state, not local volunteers. Beyond that, requiring 7,500 valid signatures when other New England states require a fraction as many (1,000 in Rhode Island, 3,000 in New Hampshire) disadvantages small-dollar grassroots campaigns, Tobin says.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, the state’s top election official, is unsympathetic. She says town officials must validate petition signatures because only they have the original signed voter cards. If something looks suspicious—say, several signatures in the same handwriting—officials need to check the source documents.

Read the entire article for more details and opinion.

Connecticut Fails Lastest Holt Standard

Hats off again to Representative Rush Holt. Once again he offers emergency legislation to protect our vote. Even this streamlined bill is unlikely to pass. We admire Representative Holt for not giving up. We encourage him to persevere until we have election integrity. Meanwhile Senator Feinstein supports a phony, star-wars expensive, delaying plan. Here in Connecticut, the law our Secretary of the State calls the “strongest” and “toughest” falls far short of the minimum Holt bill standards. <read>

The bill would authorize funding for states that conduct audits that meet basic minimum requirements, including the use of a random selection, the requirement that audits be conducted with independence, at least a 2 percent audit sample, and public observation. All ballots must be included in the audit and they must begin within 48 hours and be completed prior to certification of the result. Only about a dozen states currently conduct audits.


Random Selection: Connecticut has it but the random selection of races is not always required to be public.

Independence: In Connecticut all decisions are made by the Secretary of the State and counting is done by local officials – this completely fails independence.

All Ballots Included: In Connecticut, hand counted ballots, central count absentee ballots, and provisional ballots are excluded. In addition districts with recounts or contests are excluded.

Begin within 48 hours: By law Connecticut audits cannot begin until after 336 hours.

Audio: Voice Of The Voters – Connecticut Update

Update: Audio is now available of the Nutmeg State update on Voice of the Voters. The Connecticut segment is about 2/3 of the way through just after the weekly update by John Gideon <Audio>

We look forward to more state updates over the coming weeks. So far, Connecticut is the best of the litter. but sadly that only serves to show how far the whole Nation has to go and the risks to democracy we face in November.

Summary report prepared before the broadcast:
Continue reading “Audio: Voice Of The Voters – Connecticut Update”

Fairfield Panel: Rosy Views and Thorny Issues

While I was on vacation, the Fairfield Citizen News had a report covering the panel in Fairfield last week, with added information, apparently obtained from our web site, and an interview with the Secretary of the State. Overall it is a good article fairly covering what was said on the panel. The two hours flew by. I would have loved to have had more time to respond to questions and statements by both the other panelists and the audience. The entire article is well worth reading. Below are some of the statements in the article and my comments: <my opening statement> <Fairfield Citizen News Article>

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz is in favor of the system. She explained Wednesday, “I firmly believe in Connecticut we have one of the strongest voting security laws in the country the Audit Bill It’s the toughest audit law in the country. After every election we put every precinct on a card and into the bingo box where 10 percent are chosen for public hand count.” She explained that 10 percent equaled 77 precincts in the state. “That’s a lot of ballots,” she said. “We shouldn’t take the machine’s word for it.”

On the measure of 10% we have the toughest audit law, but on other measures such as reliability, follow-up, transparency, and independence we have a law that is insufficient, unreliable and ineffective. See the 10 Myths.

Continue reading “Fairfield Panel: Rosy Views and Thorny Issues”

Update: Bysiewicz, Blumenthal Violate Federal Ban

Update: July 12, 2008 Other States Join Connecticut <read>

Bysiewicz and Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, have launched a national effort to overturn the directive. They’ve been joined by secretaries of state from Ohio, Montana, Vermont, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Kansas, New Hampshire and Maine.

Original Story and Update July 1, 2008

Continue reading “Update: Bysiewicz, Blumenthal Violate Federal Ban”

Panel In Fairfield – What Do You Want?

Last night I was on a panel in Fairfield with Deputy Secretary of the State Lesley Mara, Dr. Alex Shvartsman from the UConn VoTeR Center, and Michael Kozik of the Secretary of the State’s Office. The event was video taped by the sponsors. If possible I will make the video availabe here. For now, here are my opening remarks, my topic was “What Do You Want”:

Fairfield Panel

Introduction

Thanks to Jody Eiseman for creating this event and to the Fairfield Democratic Town Committee for hosting it. Thanks to everyone of you in the audience for coming tonight.

I want to thank Dr. Shvartsman, Mike Kozik, and Deputy Mara for being here tonight. A bit over three years ago I was on a panel with the previous Deputy Secretary of the State. That panel directly precipitated actions that were instrumental in the passage of the paper ballot bill in 2005 and the eventual rejection of Touch Screen (DRE) voting equipment in early 2007.

CTVotersCount is committed to voting integrity and that our democracy flourishes.

Lest we forget, democracy is dependent on the voting integrity of every district in your town; dependent on the voting integrity of every district in the state; and indeed every district in the nation.

My Topic Tonight
Continue reading “Panel In Fairfield – What Do You Want?”

Meanwhile In The Real “Wild” West

Update, Another Problem, this time in FL: In the “Wild” South an Audit catches uncounted votes, almost 20% of the total <read>.

When it comes to elections, what happens in any precinct in New Mexico can determine who sits in the Oval Office and the balance in our U.S. Senate and House. What happens in any election district in Connecticut can do the same for National offices and in addition determine our Governor and the balance in the Connecticut House and Senate.

Earlier this year in the Danbury Connecticut public hearing, one member of the Government Elections and Administration Committee compared our election system to the “Wild West”. This was based on the failures to follow procedures along with the lack of consistency in the process from one Connecticut town to the next. Many of these issues were evident in the coalition observation reports and in the recent investigative report showing more ballots cast that voters checked-off in Bridgeport.

It seems that the real west, is still pretty wild with this Sun News story from New Mexico: NM revises recount procedure in close races <read>

Like Connecticut, New Mexico law does not require hand recounts. While Connecticut has recently revised procedures to eliminate hand recounts, New Mexico, faced with a close election and a concerned candidate they are rethinking their procedure:

The secretary of state’s office has revised procedures for recounts in close primary election contests, including a state Senate race in which some ballots are missing in one county.

The change came as one of the candidates in the Senate race voiced objections to the recount plan.

Secretary of State Mary Herrera said earlier this week that the recount would be conducted by having counties recheck the results of voting machines—inserting memory cards into tabulators and printing out the results. A change was announced Thursday.

Now, paper ballots will be fed into the tabulators again for the recount except in two Cibola County precincts where ballots are missing. When necessary, ballots will be counted by hand. Provisional ballots, for example, are handed tallied.

Unfortunately, that is not possible:

[Clemente Sanchez, a Grants Democrat who finished second in the Senate contest] said he remained troubled by the missing ballots in two precincts in Grants. About 180 votes were cast with the missing ballots, according to the secretary of state’s office.

“To this day nobody knows what happened to them. It amazes me,” said Sanchez.

New Mexico implemented its paper ballot voting system in 2006 to try to make voting more secure and restore the public’s confidence in elections.

Ballots are supposed to be removed from a storage bin underneath a tabulator and placed in a separate ballot box, which is to be locked and transferred to the county clerk’s office.

Apparently, the ballots in the two precincts were not locked away in ballot boxes after polls closed. Ballots are supposed to be removed from a storage bin underneath a tabulator and placed in a separate ballot box, which is to be locked and transferred to the county clerk’s office.

As in our situation in Bridgeport, election officials did not find/report the problem.

However, Sanchez said he was unhappy that candidates were not told about the missing ballots by county elections officials and that the issue was not disclosed publicly when the county canvassed its election results. Sanchez learned of the missing ballots from news reports. The missing ballots were first disclosed in a story last week by The Associated Press.

Better late than never, however, the time to revise procedures is before an election. Otherwise there could be ethical questions of bias based on the politics of the Secretary of the State and that of the loser in the initial count.

Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up

Summary: This article and the Bridgeport Primary expose the problems with a “system” that ignores and excuses discrepancies that are discovered. As we have often pointed out in post-election audit reports, ignoring and excusing away discrepancies means that if there is ever an error or a fraud it will not be recognized. In this case we will never know who actually won the Bridgeport Primary. We may have some penalties assessed by Elections Enforcement. All we know for sure is that this was not a reliable election, that voting integrity in Connecticut is far from assured and does not exist in Bridgeport.

ConnPost article by Bill Cummings: Voting Numbers Do Not Add Up <read>

In the midst of a heated court battle over last fall’s Democratic mayoral primary, state Rep. Christopher Caruso’s legal team asserted there were more votes than voters.

City officials and their lawyers scoffed at Caruso’s contention, calling it untrue and irresponsible.

However, a Connecticut Post examination of election records from the Sept. 11, 2007, primary shows there were more votes than voters — 105 more.

Continue reading “Broken System: Bridgeport Primary Does Not Add Up”