Mail/Absentee Voting | CTVotersCount.org

The dirty secret(s) of vote counting

In college I followed our nationally ranked hockey team. With ringside seats at an ECAC semi-final game, we struck up a conversation with a referee, who frequently stood just in front of us on the ice. For a long while it was a tie, and we learned from him that refs do no like tie games, with the pressure on every call in a sudden death overtime. Elections can get rougher than hockey, there are more and tougher calls in close contests – calls that can easily expose the little know vulnerabilities of our election system and the flaws in the promise to “count every vote”.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee. All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

Some of those vulnerabilities are covered in an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee: Paul Mitchell: The dirty secret of vote counting <read>

If there’s one thing elections officials pray for, it’s wide margins on Election Day.

A clear and convincing election result allows final tallies to be announced. Winners receive congratulations, losers give concession speeches and everyone else returns to work.

But that’s not what’s happening this year.

In the state controller’s race, we find an incredibly close result that has changed leads repeatedly throughout the counting period. Republican Ashley Swearengin is solidly in first place, nearly guaranteed a spot in the runoff.

But the vote differential between second and fourth is a mere four-tenths of a percent, with hundreds of thousands of votes to count. This easily could go to a recount if the margins remain this narrow.
With the spotlight on and representatives of each campaign lurking over their shoulders, elections officials are engaged in the painstaking process of validating ballots mailed in during the last days of the election or dropped off at polling locations. They are reviewing tens of thousands of provisional ballots used by voters who couldn’t get regular ballots at their polling places.

California doesn’t have the infamous hanging-chad or butterfly ballot, but there are damaged ballots and signatures that don’t match. Ballots are dropped off in the wrong county or mailed in the wrong envelope. Voters show up the day after the election and try to hand in their absentee ballot. Piles of ballots are marked “too late” because the mail arrived after Election Day.

The issue of signatures not matching is becoming an increasingly important wrinkle as more voters cast ballots by mail. Elections officials are reviewing more than 400,000 signatures of the 2 million early absentee voters in the June 3 election who signed registration 25 years ago. Similarly, few new online registrants realize that the signature on their registration form is actually their DMV signature, which could also be decades old. If non-matches can’t be resolved before Election Day, those ballots are invalidated.

All that, more and less, could happen in Connecticut.

We do not routinely check signatures on absentee ballots. Would a court be receptive to a challenge based on checking and verifying signatures? Maybe not, but just the exposure of the lack of actual checking would decrease confidence in a close result.
Unlike several other states we do not require voters to sign in at polling places. That does preclude any checking and embarrassment. Yet, the absence of the signature would leave many questions of error and fraud unanswerable.
Remember that close election for Governor in 2010? Many recall that there were hundreds of ballots not counted yet a citizen recount showed that they tended to confirm the winner. How many recall that the system never recognized those votes, never addressed the question? How many know that the number of voters signed in did not match the number of ballots by large margins in several districts? In a really close election, checking those counts might expose a very soft underbelly – it has happened at least twice since, in other municipalities with little public concern.
We also must point out that most of these problems in California are all related to absentee ballots, in a state with a rising percentage of such ballots. We will have a question on the ballot this November authorizing the General Assembly to provide the same for the Nutmeg State.

What is lacking in Connecticut’s Post-Election Audits (Part 2)

Some contend that Connecticut has the Nation’s toughest post-election audit law. We contend it has several holes, is not well executed by officials, and if a voting machine were ever to count inaccurately the audit would be unlikely to recognize that. Almost certainly, there will be bills and proposals to weaken and strengthen the audit debated this year. Today, we will focus on:

WWWSD (What would Willie Sutton do?)

From the law:

…the registrars of voters shall conduct a manual audit of the votes recorded in not less than ten per cent of the voting districts in the state, district or municipality, whichever is applicable..

This has always been interpreted as including only the votes cast in polling places for a district, rather than votes for a district.

This means that all votes counted in central locations are not audited. Now we ask, if Willie Sutton robbed banks because “that is where the money is”. If you were a criminal insider prepared to rig an election, wouldn’t you rig the central count absentee machine(s) because “that is where the audit is not”?

Also the central count machines have ballot programming for the whole town, a bit more complicated than district machines, a bit more work to test. Now we ask, where is a bug or error more likely, in a machine with only one ballot, only one district, or one with more programming, where an error in any single district could cause a problem?

Now, we have EDR (Election Day Registration) in Connecticut, also counted centrally, also as complicated as central count absentee, also exempt from the audit!

With EDR and possibly no-excuse absentee voting on the horizon, we may have 30%-40% of our votes exempt from the audit before we know it – unless the audit law is strengthened to close this ~~loophole~~ gap.

Early Voting, the good, the not-so-good, and the ugly

For Connecticut, we favor in-person early voting, if we are willing to pay for the convenience. We oppose no-excuse absentee voting for security reasons.

Yet another study confirms previous studies that Early Voting Reduces Turnout: Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform <read>

From the abstract:

State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout . The impact s of these reforms va y in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections . The results show that election day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout while the most popular reform – early voting – is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself . We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.

Instead of reading the paper, we suggest the authors’ article summarizing their findings: The Case Against Early Voting <read>

The authors actually contend more reasons for concern than a bit of reduced turnout:

As the Presidential Commission on Election Administration notes in its new report, “no excuse” early voting — meaning it is open even to those who don’t qualify for an absentee ballot — has grown rapidly in recent decades in what the commission called a “quiet revolution.” In the 2012 election, almost one-third of ballots were cast early — more than double those cast in 2000 — and 32 states now permit the practice, allowing citizens to vote an average of 19 days before Election Day.

The commission rightly notes that early voting has its advantages for individual voters — not just avoiding long lines, but in many cases also getting to vote on weekends without having to miss work or school. But early voting run amok is bad for democracy. The costs to collective self-governance — which the report refers to only in passing, in a single sentence — substantially outweigh the benefits. Instead of expanding the practice, we should use this moment as an opportunity to establish clear limits on it before it becomes the norm.

Why? For all its conveniences, early voting threatens the basic nature of citizen choice in democratic, republican government. In elections, candidates make competing appeals to the people and provide them with the information necessary to be able to make a choice. Citizens also engage with one another, debating and deliberating about the best options for the country. Especially in an age of so many nonpolitical distractions, it is important to preserve the space of a general election campaign — from the early kickoff rallies to the last debates in October — to allow voters to think through, together, the serious issues that face the nation.

The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election, as some states allow. A lot can happen in those 46 days. Early voters are, in essence, asked a different set of questions from later ones; they are voting with a different set of facts. They may cast their ballots without the knowledge that comes from later candidate debates

In reality, the authors apparently are not against all early voting, just long early voting periods:

Moreover, there are other ways of achieving some of the benefits of early voting, such as old-fashioned absentee ballots or setting up more polling places. Even a limited few-days-early voting period could convey most of the advantages of the practice while limiting the most severe democratic costs.

Early voting is a matter of degree: Even Election “Day” lets people cast ballots at different times. But at the moment, there is no upper bound at all on the growing practice, and the president’s commission made no mention of such an option. With the group’s report opening a new round of discussion over voting policy, now is the time to consider whether the “quiet revolution” of early voting has gone too far.

For an alternative view, we have a critique from Doug Chapin: So Yesterday: “The (Rather Outdated) Case Against Early Voting” <read>

There are, to be sure, evidence-based arguments that early voting isn’t the turnout machine it’s often sold to be – indeed, Barry Burden and three colleagues have a provocative new paper that suggests that early voting actually DECREASES turnout in the absence of opportunities for same-day registration. There is also a growing realization of the need to do cost-benefit analyses of lengthy voting periods and identify the best time to open the process when significant numbers of voters are ready to take advantage of early voting.

But the argument that early voting deprives voters of an opportunity to cast ballots in a simultaneous expression of public opinion “at a particular moment” is rather outdated given the current state of the field. That sense is amplified by the authors’ recommendations for fixing the problem via “old-fashioned absentee ballots or setting up more polling places” – options which are unattractive or unavailable to many election officials.

For Connecticut, we favor in-person early voting, if we are willing to pay for the convenience. We oppose no-excuse absentee voting for security reasons.

For many of the reasons pointed out by the authors of the Politico article, we favor a relatively short period of early voting, perhaps a week or ten day period, not necessarily every day, with a variety of convenient times during the day, evenings, early morning and weekends.
In Connecticut, with local election management, such early voting could be expensive, especially for small towns that have a single polling place on election day. There are some compromises and and alternatives: Provide for in-person absentee-like voting, which would has the security benefits of in-person early voting and some of the disenfranchising aspects of absentee voting; bite the bullet and do for voting what we have done for probate: Regionalize, Professionalize, Economize.
We are opposed to no-excuse absentee voting because of the known and proven fraud issues. We point out that its long period does not reduce the concerns with a long in-person early voting period.

Primary education: Levers and other lessons

Tuesday was primary day in many states including Connecticut and New York. There are several election integrity lessons to be learned or learned again.

In New York City, the integrity issue was the use of lever machines in an illogical rejection optical scanners.

Tuesday was primary day in many states including Connecticut and New York. There are several election integrity lessons to be learned or learned again.

Let us start with New York City which had nationally prominent primarys for Mayor and Controller. The real voting integrity issue was the use of lever machines in an illogical rejection optical scanners. The levers were brought back, justified on the claim that it would be too difficult to reprogram and test optical scanners if a run-off primary was required, ignoring that many more lever machines would have to be individually programmed and tested. The winner is clear, yet it is a close call if the winner has reached the 40% threshold to avoid a run-off.

Some lessons:

Switching technologies, expect glitches and media hype of glitches: New York Times, At Polls return of Levers Brings Problems and Praise <read> We saw this in Connecticut when we switched to optical scan in 2007 and watched NY go through the same thing.
Levers are like touch screens in that there is no voter verified paper record, that is why they should be avoided. Maybe New Yorkers will learn this again as they attempt to determine if a run-off is necessary and find some lever machines that did not work correctly, with no recourse to determine the actual votes.
Long lines. Like touch screens, levers require enough working machines to serve voters as they arrive. Optical scan alone is not a panacea, yet the machines can handle high volume, while paper ballots can be completed and submitted even when scanners breakdown.
Polls help yet have limits in increasing confidence. We can be pretty sure of the leader in the Mayors race as everyone expected him to win, based on polls consistent with the result. Yet polls have limits in close races, since they cannot eliminate fraud and error in very close results, like this run-off uncertainty.

Closer to home we have Bridgeport, where there have been charges of absentee ballot fraud in a highly charged and important Board of Education Primary which featured a party-endorsed, outside financed, slate against an alternative slate. Previously the Mayor worked to have the Board taken over, when that was ruled illegal, he supported and initiative to replace it with an appointed Board. The appointed Board change was defeated in a previous vote, despite large outside expenditures in favor of an appointed board. Those same forces on both sides were arrayed in this primary. There were and are charges of absentee ballot fraud. In the end, the alternative slate won by a two to one margin, with likely success in November changingthe balance on the Board and likely significant education changes for the city.

Some lessons:

Once again we have votING fraud alleged. Looking at recent news we see a constant stream of charged and confirmed cases of votING fraud, by insiders and outsiders, primarily by absentee ballot. Beware of no-excuse and other forms of mail-in voting.
Also looking at that same recent news we see cases where huge searches for alleged individual votER fraud have confirmed that it is all but non-existent. Voter-ID laws are almost entirely voter suppression in effect.
We can likely be confident in the result without polling. The outsiders won by a large margin, consistent with their past victory over eliminating the elected Board.
But, what it was close overall, and the absentee vote was decisive? What if the insiders won in those circumstances? And the fact is that the absentee count favored the insider slate. Confidence and integrity would likely and justifiably be in question.
So, those charges should not be dropped. They should be investigated, and to the extent possible confirmed or refuted.

Overseas Vote Foundation, Voting Research Newsletter

Some important and fascinating information in the latest issue of the Voting Research Newsletter. In general there is some good news with regard to improvements over time in return rates of military ballots, yet several types of relevant data not collected or reported for specific states and for all states. Closer to home, Connecticut is one of the many states missing data.

Some important and fascinating information in the latest issue of the Voting Research Newsletter <read>

In general there is some good news with regard to improvements over time in return rates of military ballots, yet several types of relevant data not collected or reported for specific states and for all states. Closer to home, Connecticut is one of the many states missing data.

Some specific highlights we note (see the newsletter for charts and much more fascinating and important information):

THE IMPACT OF THE ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION OF BLANK BALLOTS IN 2012

…2012 proved to be a tipping point in the use of technology by military and overseas voters, as over 50% of survey respondents indicated using some form of electronic transmission to receive a blank ballot.

…Only 24 states were able to provide a breakdown of paper versus electronic ballots transmitted for the 2012

…Contrary to expectations of many in the election community, the preliminary data indicate that in most states (11 of the 16 respondents) electronic ballots had lower return rates.

…While the impact of electronic transmission of election material is unclear at this time, the overall ballot return rate suggests that the ability of UOCAVA voters to return their ballot on time may be a result of the MOVE Act mandate to send ballots 45 days before an election rather than electronic transmission methods.

…However, despite these improvements, about 25% of UOCAVA ballots are still not returned or their status remains unknown. Second, UOCAVA voter turnout has not increased, but appears relatively stable between 11% and 12%. Despite the new technology, the number of ballots transmitted in 2012 was lower than in 2008.

NEW FEDERAL REPORTS: LOOKING AT THE FVAP AND EAC’S 2012 REPORTS
[FVAP: Federal Voting Assistance Program. EAC: Election Assistance Commission.]
…With their 2012 report, the FVAP has done much to try and rectify the non-respondent bias in their survey.

…Unfortunately, the 2012 FVAP report does not consider overseas civilian voters. This is a significant flaw and as a result, any reported findings are overstated. The report, and its findings are limited to the population that has been studied (military) and does not take into account the diversity of the UOCAVA population, of which the FVAP is charged with fully serving.

…There are several other problematic elements in the report

…Both the FVAP and EAC reports have improved, but still suffer from inconsistencies within the reporting of the data. In 2014, the EAC and the FVAP will work together to improve the reporting process. In 2014, the EAC will consolidate their survey with FVAP’s local election official survey into one combined instrument. “The 2014 EAC survey is intended to meet the requirements of both the EAC and FVAP to collect election related statistics from local election officials.” The proposed 2014 survey is currently available for public comment.

Since it is safe to send cash in the mail, why shouldn’t we vote by mail?

Many people despite the evidence keep insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way, unless it was absolutely necessary?

Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’

We are always asked “Since we can bank safely by Internet, why can’t we vote by Internet”. The answer is that banking is safe only because banks save more in operations than the billions they lose each year in online banking. And they are two different applications, there is no receipt for your vote – we are even talking about voting by email – most people otherwise know that email is not safe.

Many people, despite the evidence keep, insisting that mail or absentee voting is safe. But would you really send cash in the mail? If not why would you send your vote that way unless it was absolutely necessary?

Today an update on the Miami-Dade apparent absentee vote fraud from Brad Friedman: Partial Answers Emerge in FL’s Fraudulent Absentee Ballot Request Cyberhack Mysteries (Prosecutor: ‘Absentee voting is the source of all voter fraud’…) <read>

As we detailed at that time, some 2,500 absentee ballots were fraudulently requested online for three different 2012 primary elections in Miami-Dade, FL. One race involved requests for Democratic absentee ballots in a U.S. House primary, the other two involved requests for Republican ballots in two different Florida State House primary races. All of the fraudulent “phantom” ballot requests are said to have been flagged as such at the Supervisor of Election’s office and, therefore, never fulfilled.

Late last year, a grand jury and federal prosecutors [PDF] were unable to identify the person or persons behind the failed attempts, as well as why they were actually made, since the ballots, had the fraudulent requests not been flagged and prevented, were set to go to the actual addresses of real voters whose online identities had been fraudulently used to make the requests online.

One of the reasons that prosecutors were originally unable to identify those behind the attempted July 2012 cyberhack was because the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used for most of the requests were masked by proxy IP addresses from overseas. It was not until excellent investigative reporting from The Miami-Herald discovered that a number of the requests came from IP addresses located in the Miami-Dade area. For reasons currently chalked up to administrative confusion, the Elections Division never gave those Miami area IP addresses to the grand jury.

Armed with the new information offered by the Miami-Dade IP addresses, it now appears that prosecutors are closing in on suspects believed to be behind at least one of those sets of cyberhacks — the ones involving the Democratic U.S. House primary. Over the weekend the investigation led to the resignation of the Chief of Staff of the Democratic Congressman who eventually won the primary in question, as well as last November’s general election…

The Congressman says his Chief of Staff took responsibility for the plot after the homes of two other staffers — Communications Director Giancarlo Sopo and Campaign Manager John Estes — were raided by the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office in search of computers and other electronic devices thought to have been used in the phantom ballot requests. None of the three men, Chief of Staff Garcia, Sopo or Estes, have offered public comment yet.

Miami Herald reports that “466 of 472 phantom requests in Congressional District 26 targeted Democrats. In House District 103, 864 of 871 requests targeted Republicans, as did 1,184 of 1,191 requests in House District 112.”…

So, it is Democrats for sure, but also likely Republicans. And what about the possible insider collusion or coverup by the elections office?

The “winning” Candidate provides about as lame an excuse or questionable explanation as could possibly be imagined:

At a press conference on Saturday, an “angry” Rep. Garcia described the plot as “ill-conceived”, but added: “I think it was a well-intentioned attempt to maximize voter turnout.”

Of course, many will likely claim despite the evidence that “Miami-Dade is so far away noting like this would happen in New England and especially here in the Constitution State, maybe just in places like Florida and California.

LA: Two campigns debate absentee ballot fraud. Meanwhile in Hartford and New Haven plans to prove early voting works.

In La, apparently there is evidence and no disagreement that fraud occurred. The issue is which campaign did it. Maybe it is both? Absentee voting is a convenience, not just for voters, it really helps fraudsters as well.

Cash strapped New Haven would be a bad place to test early voting in 2013. It is the first competitive election in New Haven in 20 years. Turnout is all but guaranteed to increase – early voting or not – we can predict that early voting would get the credit.

Apparently there is evidence and no disagreement that fraud occurred. The issue is which campaign did it. Maybe it is both? Absentee voting is a convenience, not just for voters, it really helps fraudsters as well.

Brad Friedman reviews the story and reflects the same concerns with mail voting that we have: Absentee Ballot Fraud Allegations in L.A. Underscore (Again) Dangers of Vote-By-Mail <read>

The BRAD BLOG has long detailed the dangers of Vote-by-Mail and absentee balloting, describing the practice as “terrible for democracy,” for a number of reasons. Among those reasons are the ease by which absentee ballots can be undetectably gamed, bought or sold, used for intimidation (“Show me that you voted this particular way or you will be fired/beaten, etc.”) or otherwise lost in the mail, never added to the optically-scanned computer tally, etc., just to name a few.

Usually when we point these matters out, we’ll get some amount of push back, most notably from someone from Oregon, where many voters love their all Vote-by-Mail elections (despite all the dangers, as demonstrated once again by the recent stories out of the state where, in one, a man was convicted of fraud after offering $20 for blank, unvoted ballots prior to the 2012 election, and another where an election official was charged with fraud after it was discovered she was filling in unvoted races in favor of Republicans while processing incoming mailed ballots.)

Those allegations in Oregon are new to us. It just confirms that claims that everything is fine with their all mail-in system are not justified.

Meanwhile in LA, from the LA Times as quoted by Brad:

Prosecutors are investigating allegations of voter fraud in Little Armenia, part of a Los Angeles City Council district where two candidates are waging a bitter battle for an open seat.

According to a spokeswoman for L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey, prosecutors are trying to determine whether backers of one candidate illegally filled out mail-in ballots for dozens of voters in the Armenian enclave in East Hollywood. The May 21 election will decide who succeeds Eric Garcetti, who is running for mayor…

The complaint alleges that O’Farrell campaign workers filled out voters’ ballots for their candidate while telling them they were voting for Sam Kbushyan, a candidate of Armenian descent who ran and lost during the primary election.

Kbushyan and many of his former campaign volunteers are now working on behalf of O’Farrell.

The O’Farrell campaign rebuts the allegations, saying it was [opposition candidate John] Choi workers who filled out and took ballots from voters. “These are Choi people who are doing this,” O’Farrell spokeswoman Renee Nahum said.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, for Hartford Courant Editorial Board, anything goes, it supports the safer option in-person early voting and unlimited absentee voting : Early Voting Options May Be Premature <read>

Changes that might be in the offing could include early voting in all its manifestations: no-excuse absentee voting, voting before Election Day at the precinct or a voting center, voting by mail and so forth.

As it stands now, the Connecticut Constitution forbids early voting in statewide elections except for voters casting absentee ballots under very strict circumstances such as illness, infirmity, religious proscriptions or being absent from the state on Election Day. This narrow early-voting rule could be scrapped by the legislature if the constitutional amendment is approved by voters.

As for the early-voting pilot program in this year’s municipal elections being pushed by three New Haven representatives: Lawmakers need to ask state Attorney General George Jepsen for an opinion on its legality.

As for the early-voting pilot program in this year’s municipal elections being pushed by three New Haven representatives: Lawmakers need to ask state Attorney General George Jepsen for an opinion on its legality…

The state constitution doesn’t speak specifically to the question of voting early in municipal elections. Neither did then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal specifically address local elections in a 2009 informal opinion to lawmakers saying a constitutional amendment would be required to permit no-excuse absentee voting in Connecticut.

The pilot might pass constitutional muster — or it might not.

Early voting will spur turnout in elections for local office. Far too few voters go to the polls to choose mayors, selectmen and members of boards of education and finance. Low turnout drains the life from municipal government, the level of government closest to the people.

We agree that the Constitutionality should be evaluated. Where we also disagree is the claim that forms of early voting increases turnout. They increase convenience, yet are proven by the best science available to actually decrease turnout.

Absentee/Mail-In voting in the news again

Today we have two reports highlighting the worst of the risks. i.e. mass mail voting, sending ballots unsolicited to voters and tracking ballots to voters, completely eliminating the secret vote. One good thing about tracking, apparently it shows dramatically the problems with error and fraud, as well as the lack of official concern with integrity.

We have long warned readers of the election integrity risks of absentee and mail-in voting, including stories of actual cases of mail voting fraud and error, as close as Bridgeport, Hartford, and East Long Meadow. Risks include vote selling, coercion, stealing ballots from mail boxes, false requests, loss in the mail, insider abuse in town hall, and ballots rejected by innocent mistakes. We believe that absentee and mail-in voting should be limited to cases where voters are overseas, out of town, or unable to go to the polling place.

The most amazing, instructive, and sad story from Washington State: <read>

San Juan County Superior Court Judge Donald E. Eaton ruled that a controversial voting system using voter-identifying barcodes on ballots is illegal. The system has been used for years in several Washington counties. Similar lawsuits are underway in Colorado.

Local voters and the San Juan County Green Party prevailed over former Secretary of State Sam Reed and San Juan County Auditor Milene Henley in a citizen suit originally brought by Orcas Island residents Tim White and Allan Rosato in 2006. The two seek to remove the unique ballot bar codes.

The system, dubbed VoteHere Mail-in Ballot Tracker (MiBT), is a paperless election tracking, processing and auditing software package. A series of processing station time stamps purports to track each ballot from the time it was sent to the voter to the time it was counted. On March 27 Judge Eaton ruled that MiBT is an integral part of the voting system, and required to undergo rigorous certification. State law prohibits voting systems not certified under the legislature’s program of public examination and expert testing.

White and Rosato decided to pursue the suit after intensive sampling of MiBT tracking data posted online by San Juan County in 2005. They documented anomalies suggesting inconsistent, impossible and changed ballot tracks for some ten percent of voters: ballots counted before they were received, two ballots accepted from the same voter, ballots received and counted though never sent out, and dozens received and signature-accepted but not counted. The two became even more concerned when, after they presented their findings and the election was certified, much of the inconsistent tracks were suddenly “fixed” with new entries-and then returned to its original confused state two months later.

Meanwhile the Colorado Legislature is close to passing a bill including several large changes in election laws. Some may be good ideas well legislated, others good ideas poorly legislated, and still others seem to be bad ideas destined to increase election integrity risks and leave more activities to election officials behind closed doors. ‘Fraud’ Controversy Over Sweeping CO Election Reform Bill Misses Mark by a Vote-by-Mail Mile <read>

An ambitious election reform bill supported by state Democrats and the Colorado County Clerks Association, which is largely made up of Republicans, will soon land on the desk of Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, despite the objections of Republican lawmakers and the state’s extraordinarily partisan Republican Sec. of State.

The bill has now been approved by both chambers of the Colorado legislature — along party lines in each — but must be approved again in the House due to “technical” amendments from the Senate. But while it may be too late, partisans and lawmakers would have been wise to look carefully before leaping in support of this bill which offers both excellent reforms and reasons to be very concerned about one of its central provisions…

House Bill 1303 seeks to expand voter participation mainly by establishing a system that includes same-day registration up to Election Day and that mails ballots to all eligible voters in the state. Under the proposed law, voters would choose whether to mail their ballots back to the clerks, drop them off at early voting centers or fill them out at the polls on Election Day.

Tomasic goes on to explain that the bill, dubbed “The Voter Access and Modernized Elections Act”, is sponsored by Democrats in both the CO House and Senate, but it’s “based on a plan approved by a large bipartisan majority of clerks who run the state’s elections county to county. The Colorado County Clerks Association reports that 75 percent of the 64 clerks in the state support the bill. The Association is anything but a left-wing cabal: At least 44 of the clerks, some 70 percent, are Republican officeholders.”

Bills Approved Earlier by the GAE Committee

As promised, comments on earlier bills passed through the Government Administration and Elections Committee.

As promised, comments on other bills passed through the Government Administration and Elections Committee.

S.B. 901 Post-Election Audits This bill would allow officials to perform the post-election audit by counting with an identical AccuVote-OS scanner and memory card. Connecticut would go down as in history as the first state to effectively kill post-election audits. Machine Assisted Audits that are publicly verifiable are possible, but not this way.

S.B. 1058 Destroying Unused Absentee Ballots By Town Clerks We would like to see a comprehensive strengthening and standardization of the retention of all ballots. Currently clerks retain voted absentee ballots in manila envelopes in unnumbered tamper evident tape, for six months or twenty-two months. Polling place ballots are retained for the same period by registrars, and are sealed in bags with numbered tamper evident seals, for only fourteen days. Without comprehensive reform, this is essentially a harmless bill.

S.B. 1118 Prohibits Some Criminals From Certification As Moderators A common sense idea, although we know of none who have been. We would like to see the same criminals prevented from becoming Registrars of Voters and Registrars at minimum required to be certified as Moderators.

S.B. 6630 Allowing Delivery of Absentee Ballots At An Agreed Upon Time Codifying what is largely already the actual practice.

H.B. 6635 Requiring Election Results To Be Certified By Local Officials Seven Days After An Election We would be for this bill if an earlier or later date were chosen. Recanvasses must be complete eight days after an election. Specifying seven days is too late to cause a necessary recanvass, and too short to reflect the difference made by a recanvass. Looks like more work at a less than useful time.

S.B. 647 A Report On Laws To Be Changed For Online Voting We see no need for another report. We know it is risky, we know it is unconstitutional. Better than S.B. 283 that mandates fax and email voting this year, just like the bill vetoed by Governor Malloy last year.

S.B. 432 National Popular Vote Agreement/Compact An act we have long opposed because it would make a flawed system for electing the President even worse. We would be in favor of the popular election of the President if we had a, verifiablyaccurate, uniform, enforceable, and enforceable election system.

S.B. 433 Creating a Democracy Index A well intentioned idea to collect, publish, and track data around election performance. We like the idea, but will remain skeptical until we see what is collected, how accurately it is collected, and if the program is well done for several cycles. Otherwise it may just produce some feel good statistics or be quietly ignored. As Norman Augustine said, tong in cheek, “Most projects start off kind of slow, and then sort of taper off”.

H.B. 5999 Provisional Ballots For State And Municipal Offices A good idea, still needed even with Election Day Registration. e.g. When a voter claims to be eligible to register or to vote when already checked-off and officials question that.

H.J. 36 To Change The Constitution To Allow The Legislature To Decide Early Voting We supported this because the Legislature may be in a better position to choose and correct voting methods than the blunt method of specific Constitutional Amendment. But we wonder some times when we see inadequate early voting bills proposed to take effect before and amendment, after years of insisting an amendment is necessary. Either it is or it is not necessary – pass one set of bills with confidence or perhaps face court challenges.

Groundhog Deja Vue for Fax, Email Voting

Now we have it, a redrafted S.B. 647. We do not know who was involved around the table rewriting it, yet what we have is almost an exact copy of the bill Governor Malloy vetoed last year as risky and unconstitutional.

Three decades ago, when I went off for my year in the United States government, an old hand explained to me the nature of the job: it was mostly about fighting bad ideas. And these bad ideas, he went on to explain, were like cockroaches: no matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they keep coming back.
– Paul Krugman

The Veterans Affairs Committee held hearings on Feb 19th on S.B. 647, An Act Concerning Voting By Members Of the Military Serving Overseas. We testified against the bill which would allow fax and email return of ballots for presumably military serving overseas. The concept is risky, unconstitutional, ineffective, and unnecessary – there are better, more economical alternatives available, proven effective in other states. The Committee talked of working with others to rewrite the bill. Two days later they voted to draft S.B. 647 as a committee bill.

Do not let the bill’s title mislead you. It is not just for the military, it includes all overseas voters(*). It is not just for overseas military and their dependents, it is for any military anywhere, presumably even a national guard member living and working in Connecticut:

any elector who is living, or expects to be living or traveling before and on election day, outside the territorial limits of the several states of the United States and the District of Columbia and any member of the armed forces who is an elector or an applicant for admission as an elector, or the ember’s spouse or dependent if living where such member is stationed…

*Although we are opposed to online, email, and fax voting, we are in favor of treating all overseas voters equally, including military contractors, State Department staff, CIA staff, Peace Corps volunteers, and NGO staff and volunteers.