By Luther Weeks on March 17, 2024
All sorts of elections proposals to solve the Bridgeport elections problems from increasing penalties to a minimum of a year in jail to a 17 member committee under the Secretary of the State to take over elections in municipalities.
They are all missing the point. What we need is …
Posted in CT, CT Law, Electronic Vulnerability, Mail/Absentee Voting, Our Editorials, Skulduggery and Errors
By Luther Weeks on March 14, 2023
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.
Posted in Chain of Custody, CT, CT Law, Mail/Absentee Voting
By Luther Weeks on March 7, 2023
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…
Posted in CT, CT Law, Instant Runoff Voting, Post-Election Audits
By Luther Weeks on February 23, 2023
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:
Posted in Chain of Custody, Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting
By Luther Weeks on January 20, 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:..
Posted in CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on January 4, 2023
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…
Posted in Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Mail/Absentee Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on January 2, 2023
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:
Posted in CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on December 26, 2022
Having passed the Early Voting Constitutional Amendments in November, everyone expects the General Assembly will pass implementing legislation in 2023 and give some time for officials to implement it, i.e. the Secretary of the State’s Office to detail procedures and registrars to implement them.
We plan a series of posts. Today we will start with the expectations of various groups, as we understand them.
Voters
We can only speculate what voters expect, certainly they are not a homogeneous group. They have read and seen in the news that Connecticut is one of only four states that do not support some form of early voting (in-person early voting and/or no-excuse mail-in voting). They likely understand that this amendment only authorizes in-person early voting…
Posted in Chain of Custody, Costs, CT, CT Law, In-Person Early Voting, Our Editorials
By Luther Weeks on September 12, 2022
Last week, in return for an endorsement, Ned Lamont endorsed Ranked-Choice Voting Minor party endorses Lamont after a pledge for election reform
Monte Frank got one thing right that we have not seen recognized by anyone before:…
As I said in my testimony summary:
I am open to the benefits of IRV. Yet, I have several reservations about the use of IRV in Connecticut and other states. I support a comprehensive study of all IRV, RCV, and related options along with the challenges of implementing them in Connecticut.
I remain skeptical of all the touted benefits and if Connecticut voters are ready for the associated complexity, costs, and delays. For more see my testimony.
Posted in Costs, CT, CT Law, Instant Runoff Voting
By Luther Weeks on April 19, 2022
Last month I wrote about S.B.472 for Risk Limiting Audits, despite all but unanimous testimony that the bill was highly flawed, a flawed substitute was passed shortly thereafter by the General Administration and Elections Committee. Last week that revised bill became available on the web, allowing public scrutiny. There is a Word version and a .pdf version, the .pdf version has a fiscal note and an Office of Legislative (OLR) analysis.
It is revised from the original with some improvements, yet remains ambiguous and confusing, although now it may be closer to an actual Risk Limiting Audit. I question if the person(s) who wrote this updated bill had or took advantage of review by anyone familiar with the science of Risk Limiting Audits. Considering the fiscal note and the OLR Analysis, it seems to me that the description in some cases reads things into the bill that do not seem to be reflected in the bill. In particular, it assumes costs and roles for UConn that are not clear in the bill. Costs and roles that would be consistent with the prototype last year, but not obvious in the bill that would become law.
Posted in Costs, CT Law, Post-Election Audits
