Category: Post-Election Audits

Harftord Courant: Vote Recounts Prove Tedious, Time-Consuming

We are likely to see more articles like the one in the Courant today: Vote Recounts Prove Tedious, Time-Consuming, <read>.

General comments on the article:

We arrived at this point by knee-jerk reactions in Washington, resulting in the Help America Vote Act and little heed to advocates in Hartford when the audit law was written this year. We do not need to determine the future of a critical piece of democracy by further off-the-cuff assessments followed by further knee-jerk reactions.

We need a rational process to determine the most accurate and efficient process to actually perform the recounts and audits. Several states in New England have such experience. PEW is funding research on best practices for manually counting ballots. Just like highway inspections, building inspectons, bridge inspections, and functioning parole boards, we need to pay a small price for insuring integrity of our elections.

In Connecticut we have seen a flurry of reactions to electronic voting, along with reactons to the costs and work of recounts and audits – let us hope that the result will not be a knee-jerk reaction by the legislature resulting in weakened audits at a time when we need stronger audits. The costs of recounting and auditing are much lower than one would gather from the flurry, the value of preserving our votes and insuring democracy, priceless.

My further comments on some of the statements in the article below. Continue reading “Harftord Courant: Vote Recounts Prove Tedious, Time-Consuming”

TalkNationRadio: Interview with Deputy Secretary of State Lesley Mara on Voting Machine Glitches: Breaking News re LHS Violations and State Elections

Another very informative show <read/listen>

Random Audit Drawing – While Everybody Was Watching East Haven

I was at the Random Audit drawing yesterday. A Press Conference at the Secretary of the State’s office at 1:00pm.

We drew 70 districts to be audited along with 15 extras in case there are additional contested races which prevent audits in any of the 70 selected districts.

If my preliminary count is correct there are 44 towns required to audit at least one district. Several towns have mutiple districts with Waterbury and New Haven having quite a few to audit. Also several towns with only two districts will audit both of them! <read the press release>

TalkNationRadio – Raindrops Keep Falling

This week’s TalkNationRadio by Dori Smith, Raindrops Keep falling on Connecticut’s Diebold Voting Machines: <read and listen>

Interviews with Connecticut Registrars, Deputy Secretary of State Lesley Mara, and True Vote Connecticut member George Barnett.  Coverage of the November 6th election and the problems with wet ballots.

Former corporate auditor George Barnett:

‘In 2006 twenty eight of the 550 recounts from seventeen districts there were differences of ten votes or more between the machine counts and the hand counts. In 19 of those of those 28 recounts the machines recorded a higher votes than the hand counts. Now, after these audits the Secretary of State put out a press release saying the optical scan machines performed very well on election day without any problems and that any changes in vote totals found in these audits were due to ballots being marked incorrectly by the voter–not to any problems with the optical scan machine.

So if 19 recounts the machine count was higher than the hand recount during the audit, that contradicts that statement. And I personally reviewed an audit in Monroe where the machine had a higher count than the hand recount and I talked to the Registrars there and they never spoke to the Secretary of State. So it seems like the Secretary of the State made this statement without basing it on fact. She did not look into any of these differences.

Barnett has also written about these issues at CTVotersCount <here> and <here>.

What I learned at the Post Election Audit Summit

Update 10/31: 1) Some grammar improvements courtesy of D. Weeks. 2) The good news: Connecticut is a Voter Intent State. 3) The not so good news: Connecticut does not require that andit or recount observers be able to viably verify that paper ballots are counted correctly. Thanks to Ted Bromley of the Secretary of the State’s Office for answering these questions.

I have just returned from the Post Election Audit Summit. A unique and powerful event which brought together stakeholders in election audits including computer scientists, statisticians, election officials, legislators, and advocates.

One of the main themes was “Better Together” taken from a book of that title. By meeting in an open, respectful atmosphere we could each be open to share concerns, ideas, successes, and failures. I found the entire event extremely stimulating and educational. We will be able to create better proposals which provide greater voter confidence at less cost, while mitigating concerns of other stakeholders and helping them meet their goals and responsibilities. I am left with much more to do, yet with the tools to provide election integrity and confidence at a higher level with more velocity than was possible three days ago.

Stay tuned for new announcements in the next two weeks about a citizen audit observation project for the November Connecticut post-election audits. The greatest value of your volunteering for the project is the opportunity and pride of actually participating in democracy.

Let me list, in no particular order, some of the things I learned and re-learned at the Summit:

Continue reading “What I learned at the Post Election Audit Summit”

Ballots More Costly Than A Sufficient Audit

We have been saying that a sufficient audit would cost $0.20 to $0.50 per ballot cast. Now we have an example in Connecticut demonstrating that at least for one town, ballots cost $0.40 each to print. Given that extra ballots must be printed, it is clear that counting the paper is less costly than printing it in the 1st place. Just one more reason to sign the petition and change the law: Democracy is Priceless – Audits are a bargain.

Post-Election Audits – the 7.2% Audit and Other Glitches

(Note: This is an abbreviated and edited version of observations and concerns with the post-election audits recently submitted to and discussed with Lesley Mara, Deputy Secretary of the State)

It is natural for things to be learned in practice that were not anticipated in creating laws and procedures. The recent random audits are a demonstration of this. Many problems not anticipated by legislation, procedures, and yours truly. Unfortunately, the number and complexity of the problems and issues indicates that there is a need for significant changes in training, procedures, and the law.

There was no easy way to determine the dates, times, and locations of the audits other than repeatedly calling the registrar’s offices. This is especially time consuming in the case of part time registrars who don’t all return messages and don’t provide office hours on their voice mail messages. There were no other members of the public as observers in Cornwall and Hartford. The only other observer was an Assistant Registrar from an opposing party in Hartford. Voter apathy or lack of publicity? There are no notice times or publication requirements for the public audits. The only notice required is to inform the Secretary of the State’s office of the date, time, and location of an audit. For instance, a pubic audit for 9:00AM could be set at 8:45AM.

The selection of races is not required to be public. The selection of races to be audited should be public and subject to notification procedures similar to those for the audits.

The time-frame of the audits, 15 to 19 days after the election, provides too much time for the ballots and machines to be manipulated and is completely counter to the opinions of the Brennan Center. This can only be fixed in the statutes; however, the procedures can be changed to mitigate some of the difficulties: a) The random selection of districts for audit could be held much closer to day 15. b) The drawing of races should be moved much closer to the date of the audit – it could be required to be the first order of business of the same public event as the audit itself.

I was able to observe two of three audits I attempted:

Continue reading “Post-Election Audits – the 7.2% Audit and Other Glitches”

Another Day, Another Loophole In PA 07-194

What if a post-election audit uncovers a problem with the machine count? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to examine the memory card and the voting machine for evidence that could be used to detect fraud or to understand the cause of the problem so it could be prevented next time?

Unfortunately, audits must start a minimum of 15 days after the election (for the most recent primary, September 26th). And there is a prohibition for unlocking the voting machines that expires 14 days after the election (for the most recent primary, September 25th). accompanied by a possible 5-year prison term.

 

So, the evidence in the memory cards or in the optical scanner can be destroyed before, during, or right after the audit, legally.

 

As we have pointed out before, holding the audits so far after the primary, and so far after the random district drawing provides plenty of time for ‘adjustments’ to make things look good in those districts chosen for audit. Now part of that can be planning the timely unlocking of the machine and memory cards before the audit report could result in an investigaton.

 

Also, are there sufficient proceedures to stop the hacking of the optical scanner itself between elections? What can be done while a machine is unlocked? What security is in place?

 

(Thanks to Mike Fisher for noticing the Sept 25 expiration date for machine locking on the Municipal Elections Calendar)

Statute details:

Continue reading “Another Day, Another Loophole In PA 07-194”

Random Drawing

Updated: 9/14 and 9/16

Yesterday I attended and participated in the public random drawing of districts for audit. Hopefully, in the next day or two CT-N will put up the video. I did manage to catch some of the rerun late last night. (Note: I will keep updating this entry as more information and the video becomes available.)

Read the Good News, The Not So Good News, and What We We Can Learn, below:

Continue reading “Random Drawing”

Primary Audits Insuffient – The Numbers and The Loopholes

CORRECTION: Watching the CT-N rerun Secretary Bysiewicz said 98%-99%

UPDATE: I participated in the random district drawing today at the Secretary of the State’s press conference.

Actual count: 110 districts, 11 to be audited.
Loophole leaves West Haven, part of Bridgport, and other elections exempt from audit.
Secretary claims audits detect errors and fraud 96?-98% of the time, I say at most 2%-4%.
More details and comment tomorrow.

Original post 09/12/07:

We say that the audits mandated by Public Act 07-194 are insufficient. Yesterday twenty-three Connecticut municipalities held primary elections. Here are the numbers, if I have them correctly:

Primary elections: 23

Election districts (approximately): 125

Districts, statewide, to be selected for audit: 13

Minimum number of primaries that will not be audited: 10

Continue reading “Primary Audits Insuffient – The Numbers and The Loopholes”