Our Editorials | CTVotersCount.org

Nov 2010 Election Audit Observation Report

Coalition calls again for legislature to act.
Citizen observation and analysis show little, if any, improvement in
November post-election audits.

The Coalition noted significant differences between results reported by optical scanners and the hand count of ballots by election officials across Connecticut. Compared to previous audits, the Coalition noted little, if any, improvement in the attention to detail and in following procedures in the November 2010 audits.

For the full report visit http://www.CTElectionAudit.org

Coalition calls again for legislature to act.
Citizen observation and analysis show little, if any, improvement in
November post-election audits.

Coalition Report: Bridgeport Recount and Recommendations

Votes were miscounted and miscalculated adding votes to each candidate, but not changing winner in the race for governor

Each candidate for the governor’s race gained votes in the recount when compared to the officially reported results, as follows: Foley (+174), Malloy (+761), and Marsh (+19). These differences parallel candidate shares in the initially reported results. Counting of all ballots in the governor’s race resulted in differences in many counts, totaling 1,520 votes miscounted, of these 1,236 were initially under reported and 284 were initially over reported.

Simply printing more ballots only reduces the chance of the specific problem that occurred in Bridgeport. There are other causes that could result in a municipality having to scramble to photocopy ballots or perform hand counting such as a massive power failure or ballots lost in a fire, flood, or accident shortly before or during Election Day.

Votes were miscounted and miscalculated adding votes to each candidate, but not changing winner in the race for governor

Full report, press release, and supporting details at Coalition site: <read>

Courant Editorial: “State Must Review Ballot Blunders” – We agree and disagree

We note that there are two registrars in Bridgeport, elected to use their two eyes and two brains to represent opposing interests toward voting integrity and access. Today, would the Courant maintain or reconsider its past editorial position proposing a single registrar per town, not in the interest of integrity, but in the interest of saving money?

Courant Editorial: State Must Review Ballot Blunders <read>

There are areas where we agree and disagree with the Courant:

Hartford Courant: “By all means, Gov. M. Jodi Rell should assemble a bipartisan panel to review Bridgeport’s ballot blunders — with an eye to preventing mistakes, not to casting suspicion on the outcome of the Nov. 2 governor’s election, the closest in 56 years.

Legislative leaders ought to have a say in the panel’s makeup, since they’ll have a say in the remedies.”

We agree with appointing a group to study our current election system and recommend solutions. The Legislature obviously should be involved. We are less confident that the lame duck Governor should appoint the panel. There should be a strong emphasis on addressing the whole system of election administration in Connecticut. As we said two days ago, Editorial: Understand all the Symptoms, “Explore the Options, Then Act”

CTVotersCount: “Editorials and legislators are already reacting and taking sides to solve the “ballot printing” problem. It is critical to understand the entire scope of issues and inadequacies in all aspects of the election process; then review all the options, look for local best practices in Connecticut and explore what other states do well; then and only then develop a comprehensive cure. This is the common sense way to proceed, unfortunately it is hard work from start to implementation. Otherwise we are destined to react to one problem at a time, with one expensive, disruptive band-aid after another.

In its last paragraph, the Courant hits the nail on the head:

Hartford Courant: “State leaders have to do better at ensuring competently run elections in towns and cities at risk of being overwhelmed by the task.”

And the Courant is correct in recommending a second set of eyes:

Hartford Courant: “Somewhere in the process, probably in the secretary of the state’s office, a second set of eyes should check the number of ballots ordered, at the least.”

We would go further with a recommendation that almost everything to do with election management requires a second set of eyes, usually with opposing interests: Ordering ballots, reviewing petitions, voter registrations, ballot observation and transport, when ballots are counted by hand, and every step of the way in accumulating vote totals across the state.

We note that there are two registrars in Bridgeport, elected to use their two eyes and two brains to represent opposing interests toward voting integrity and access. Today, would the Courant maintain or reconsider its past editorial position proposing a single registrar per town, not in the interest of integrity, but in the interest of saving money? See our post: Downsizing Newspaper Recommends Downsizing Registrars. As we said then:

CTVotersCount: “Most of us would agree that Central Connecticut needs more than one daily newspaper. If there was any doubt it certainly was erased this week. On Monday the “New” Hartford Courant came out with its latest and most drastic downsizing. On Tuesday an editorial suggesting among other things that we should have a single elected registrar per municipality. However, downsizing to a single registrar will serve democracy no better than the continuous downsizing of the Courant…

For a city the size of Hartford there should be no problem having three registrars and the costs should be minimal. Each city sets the budget, salary, hours, benefits, and staffing of their Registrars Of Voters Office. Hartford could simply cut staffing and perhaps cut registrars’ hours or salary when three are elected to do the job of two. Just cutting a full time staff position would go a long way toward reducing most of the $200,000…

In Connecticut, perhaps electing two official registrars paid a small stipend to provide a check and balance over a professional civil service chief election official would provide the best of both worlds and would work for large cities. This would not work for small towns – a single chief election official and staff would need to serve several small towns – a change that would not easily be accepted in New England.

What clearly won’t work is half baked solutions.”

Editorial: Understand all the Symptoms, Explore the Options, Then Act

Editorials and legislators are already reacting and taking sides to solve the “ballot printing” problem.
It is critical to understand the entire scope of issues and inadequacies in all aspects of the election process; then review all the options, look for local best practices in Connecticut and explore what other states do well; then and only then develop a comprehensive cure. This is the common sense way to proceed, unfortunately it is hard work from start to implementation. Otherwise we are destined to react to one problem at a time, with one expensive, disruptive band-aid after another.

Background: Reacting to one symptom at a time

The problems in Bridgeport stem directly from a series of errors and faults. The specific details will likely come out in calmer times. They include a combination of:

Ordering an unjustifiably low number of ballots based on past history
No review of that order in the light of Obama’s visit and the predicted closeness of the election
Lack of awareness in polls and/or city hall of the pending lack of ballots
Lack of timely reaction to the pending and actual lack of ballots
Lack of detailed standards for handling pending and actual lack of ballots

Solutions also revolve around ballot printing. The obvious solutions to the “ballot printing” problem:

Legislating enough ballots for all voters plus some spares
Not leaving ballot printing to the judgment of local officials
Legislating a minimum based on a formula based on past similar elections
Formal procedures to initiate, obtain, and protect emergency ballots
State funding of ballot printing

Editorials and legislators are already reacting and taking sides e.g. <Editorial NH Register> <AP: Lawmakers will try to fix ballot problems>. We point out that printing 100% of ballots would average on the order of $500,000 a year over printing enough for expected voters plus a generous margin, while post-election audits average on the order of $120,000 per year.

We are seeing several even more wide ranging reactions triggered by the problem with ballots. They include changing from optical scan to more risky, unproven, and expensive solutions: Touch Screens (DREs) are expensive, lead to long lines, unauditable, risky, and expensive. Internet voting is unproven, expensive, unauditable, risky and expensive. Others include making the Secretary of the State an appointed official.

Editorial: Understand All The Symptoms, Explore Options, Then Act

Ballot printing is only one weakness in the current system. Other major weaknesses include, but are no means limited to:

Inadequate ballot security and chain of custody
Lack of standards and uniformity in all aspects of election management, especially ballot security, post-election audits, and recanvasses.
Inaccurate, unreliable, non-transparent accumulation of vote totals for certification which also are critical to determine recanvass levels, and ballot access for third parties
Inadequate training of and for election officials at all levels
Lack of oversight and inspection of compliance in all areas including, election management, ballot security, post-election audits, and vote accounting
Ambiguous, incomplete, hard to comprehend manuals, procedures and directives
Our laws have not been fully updated to reflect optical scanning and paper ballots. Overall there is ambiguity between the roles and responsibilities of the Secretary of the State, Elections Enforcement, and the 339 registrars of voters

After the 2007 election, in early 2008 the General Administration and Elections Committee of the Legislature held five public hearings, one in each of our Congressional districts to understand issues with the first optical scan election. Yet little has changed. Perhaps it is time for more hearings covering a range of issues surrounding voting in Connecticut – not just in every district but also multiple hearings focused on various areas of election management.

It is critical to understand the entire scope of issues and inadequacies in all aspects of the election process; then review all the options, look for local best practices in Connecticut and explore what other states do well; then and only then develop a comprehensive cure. This is the common sense way to proceed, unfortunately it is hard work from start through implementation.

Otherwise we are destined to react to one problem at a time, with one expensive, disruptive band-aid after another – following a series of unnecessary election controversies.

HAVA Scary Halloween: Ten years older and deeper in debt, yet far from credible elections

Two years ago we posted a Halloween preview:”eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future.” Lets look at where we are this year, and then we will calibrate (not celebrate) how far we have come.

The good news is that there are a slew of articles and reports in the mainstream media covering election integrity 10 years after the 2000 debacle. Just in time for the 2010 mid-term elections and just in time for Halloween. For adults wishing for that old-fashioned Halloween scare these articles should do the trick.

Two years ago we posted a Halloween preview: eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future. Lets look at where we are this year, and then we will calibrate (not celebrate) how far we have come, with the help of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

Need To Know covers the risk of paperless electronic voting with excellent demonstrations and explanations direct from Princeton: Ballot boxing: The problem with electronic voting machines <video>

While USA Today provides an editorial: A decade after Florida fiasco, voting remains a hodgepodge <read> Especially equipped with a Board of Elections’ Prayer for those interested in “Faith Based Voting”:

Let the weather be clear, let the turnout be heavy and let everyone who wins, win big.

And if you are not scared yet, take a dose of expert warnings about Internet voting in an article from CSO Secrity & Risk, quoting Doug Jones and David Jefferson: E-voting: How secure is it? <read>

More than half of all states in the U.S. will allow some kind of internet voting this year. But security experts say it’s a mistake and puts the nation at risk…On-site electronic voting machines also risky

Back To The Future – Revisiting: eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future.

The Ghost Of Presidential Elections Future:
It seems the problems all stemmed from what happened in the 2008 election and its aftermath. Its a little hazy but the ghost warned of three possible outcomes:

The polls are said to be very very wrong:
The people chose one candidate for President, but manipulations of the data, voter suppression, or Supreme Court action made the other candidate the winner. The media covers every reason but the obvious one that goes unreported. The really scary part was that the voters docilely accepted it – instead of hitting the streets, we all ended up on the streets over time.

The polls are only off a “little”: The predicted candidate won the Presidency by a small margin. Instead of the predicted 58-60 Democrats in the Senate and 20 more in the House, there were 54-55 in the Senate and 5 more in the House. Activists continued to object and present a wealth of facts. They are dismissed by the media as “conspiracy theorists”.

Grade: Incomplete.

Can we get away with saying “On the way to Halloween the Obama landslide ate our homework”?. All we can do is hope things don’t go wrong before there is a change in voting integrity. If Harry Reid wins by 15% or Christine O’Donnell pulls an upset then the pollsters or the election officials will have a lot more than missing homework to explain.

To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, “Nothing has changed, but your votes are not there”. The nightmare continued:

Beltway Lugosi Appears, The D.C. Goblin:
How could this have happened? Surely by 2012 or by 2016 we would have had election integrity.

Rep. Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2009: The caucus says “what’s the rush Rush, come back later its too soon – we have important issues to deal with, there is plenty of time before the next Presidential Election”.

A persistent Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2010: – House Leadership says “its too much, work on it and come back next year”.

Rush Holt proposes weakened bill in 2011 – Everyone says “Its too late, the election officials can’t get it done in a rush Rush, come back after the next election when there will be plenty of time”.

Rush Holt proposes a better, stronger bill in 2009 and it passes the House – The Feinstein/Bennett bill is immediately resurrected in the Senate and passes – it is all put into a joint committee – the result is the “Star Wars” of voting with spending as far as the eye can see and even less voting integrity than 2008.

Grade: CTVotersCount: A-, Congress: F-

We can’t be sure of all the details, but it sure looks a lot like we got #1, #2 and #3 pretty close. But we bet on some congressional action and #4 did not happen. We are just too optimistic by nature. We can always hope for 2016 or 2020. Lets work and hope for a good tipping point, before a bad one gets our democracy.

At least in Connecticut, we can rest assured that our votes will count, with our nickname, “The Constitution State”. Even if the voters approve the ballot question in 2008 to have a Constitutional Convention, surely we can rely on our other nickname, “The Land of Steady Habits” to carry the day and eventually, some day, protect our votes. The nightmare continued:

The Devil Is Truly In The details:

Connecticut earns its nickname, “The Nutmeg State“. When it comes to post-election audit law, the “Devil” is truly in the details.

The Shays/Himes Congressional race is close, less than .5% There is a recanvass(recount). Since recounts are by machine, if Himes(D) loses, Secretary Bysiewicz(D) cannot call for a manual recount without being charged with being political. If Shays(R) loses, she would be under great pressure to reverse her decision to recount by machine.

The Constitution question is close, less than .5%, and there is a recanvass(recount).
Since recounts are by machine, if “No” loses, Secretary of the State Bysiewicz, a strong supporter of “No”, could not call for a manual recount without being charged with making a political decision. If “Yes” loses, she would be under great pressure to reverse her decision to recount by machine.Worse, a single statewide recount, by law, eliminates all post-election audits, even if the Shays/Himes Congressional race is close but over .5%.

The Constitution question is close but over .5%:
It will not be audited – questions are exempt from post-election audits in Connecticut

The Shays/Himes Congressional race is close but over .5% and is not randomly selected for audit: We randomly select three offices for audit statewide. Instead of auditing close races for the U.S. Congress or the State Legislature we may waste resources excessively counting races with huge margins, or those with unopposed candidates, such as most races for Registrar of voters.

Grade: Course Not Offered. Maybe it will be available this November?

None of the races were that close. Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz chose to audit all five races and avoided any risk of biased selection.

This time, November 2010, the option of auditing all the races would be viewed as prohibitively to expensive to mandate. We will encourage the Secretary of the State to go beyond the law and to randomly select the three races to be audited in public (Its not required in the law, districts must be randomly selected publicly but not races). Let say there is a close race for Governor, Secretary of the State, or Congress. Choosing races for audit that avoid close races were the Secretary’s party won, or choosing those that the Secretary’s party lost can generate suspicion even when its done transparently in public.

Then again we could take the alternate course of a statewide recanvass – a nightmare in its own right!

I am awake now. With hard work and some luck, the voters choices may be confirmed in the election results and the voters could awake after the election to stay eternally vigilant. Some may say that this is just a dream, but it is preferable to the alternative nightmare.

eTRICK or reTREAT? Nightmare of Elections Future

The polls were accurate: The election results were as predicted. The predicted candidate won the Presidency. There were 58-60 Democrats in the Senate and about 20 more in the House. A few hard core activists remained, were completely ignored by the media, yet continued the fight for election integrity. The potential of election theft remained, while the potential for election integrity all but vanished.

Grade A–

From all the mainstream media stories about the Washington D.C. Internet voting test and the recent coverage of electronic voting, it seems that the media is waking up a bit. But we boldly predict, little, if any mainstream media coverage after, say, mid November.

Common Sense: Paper Ballots are Insufficient for Voting Integrity

Reminder: Myth #9 – If there is ever a concern we can always count the paper.

Note: This is the third post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <next> <previous>

Last time our post ended with, “Voter Verified Paper Ballots alone provide the opportunity for voting integrity, a necessary prerequisite for democracy. ‘Opportunity’ is insufficient.”

Introduction

Voter Verified Paper Ballots (VVPBs) are a necessary condition for voting integrity, yet as they say “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”. VVPBs are only one link in a long chain that provides voting integrity, we might construct different chains with different links, but in the end, the entire chain must be complete and strong enough to provide voting integrity.

Three major segments of the chain of voting integrity:

Democratic voting access and participation: This would include areas critical to an effective democratic process beyond counting votes accurately such as fair rights to vote, accurate voter registration, lack of voter suppression, ballot design, candidate access to the ballot, campaign financing mechanisms, along with voter access to candidate information, complete news, and sufficient education.
A reliable and credible ballot chain of custody: Just like evidence in court, if we cannot trust the chain of custody of ballots then they can only provide a false confidence.
Exploiting ballots to create voting integrity and credibility: Ballots never used, seldom used, or incorrectly used are as helpful as seat belts used improperly, or not at all. Ballots provide election integrity when used for timely and effective audits and recounts coupled with effective action.

In this post, we discuss item #3:

Exploiting ballots to create voting integrity and credibility

Ballots must actually be used for election integrity. This seems so simple it may seem unnecessary to point out, except that many voters and officials seem to believe merely employing optical scanners is sufficient – the cure for voting integrity concerns. In our The Myths In the Nutmeg State, this is Myth #9:

Myth #9 – If there is ever a concern we can always count the paper.

Reality

The law limits when the paper can be counted.

Audits can protect against error or fraud only if enough of the paper is counted and discrepancies in the vote are investigated and acted upon in time to impact the outcome of the election. See myths #1 and #2.

An automatic recount (called a recanvass in CT) occurs when the winning vote margin is within 0.5%. The polling place moderator or the Secretary of the State can call for a recanvass, but even candidates must convince a court that there is sufficient reason for a recount.

Recanvass by hand is not required by law. In early 2008 the Secretary of the State reversed her policy of hand recanvasses. We now recanvass by optical scanner.

Unlike Connecticut, some jurisdictions with paper ballots do not perform post-election audits or automatic recounts in any form.

To fully exploit paper ballots would require they be used in several ways in addition to the original election count (by hand or by optical scanner):

A thorough, complete, adversarial, manual hand recount on close elections. By thorough we mean checking each ballot to correctly classify it by voter’s intent and checking both sides the ballot for distinguishing marks which would disqualify the vote. By complete we mean reviewing absentee ballot and provisional ballot materials to make sure that appropriate ballots are counted and appropriate ballots are rejected. By manual hand count we mean that all counting is performed by human counters using counting and tallying methods that assure accuracy. By adversarial we mean one where all competing interests are represented in closely observing the classification and counting, have a right to object to the classification or procedures employed, and there are far means for resolving objections. By close election we mean one where there is more than a very small probability that errors in classifying votes, counting votes, qualifying ballots, or tallying errors could have caused a result different than the voters’ intentions in the original count.
Comprehensive, statistically meaningful, effective post-election audits. Audits approaching the standards in the Principles and Best Practices for Post-Election Audits and The League of Women Voters Report on Election Auditing. By Comprehensive we mean auditing all ballots cast including those originally counted by hand or by machine, and with all contests at least subject to selection for audit. We advocate for optical scanning followed by audits, those who advocate for counting exclusively by hand, should not trust that original hand count and should also insist on post-election audits. (We also point out that beyond the paper ballots, comprehensive election auditing should include auditing the whole voting process). By statistically meaningful we mean auditing enough paper and analyzing results such that strong statistical confidence in the result can be determined. By effective we mean the results of audits are used consistently for improving the election process, determining what levels to set for automatic close election recounts, and lead to full recounts when the audit cannot guarantee a high confidence in the original reported result.
Candidate and public directed audits. Candidates and the public (at least in the case of ballot questions) should be given the right to select ballots for audit or recount either as part of post-elections audits or by paying the cost of such audits. Given such rights, questioned results in specific districts could be selected for audit or recount to satisfy the concerns of candidates and the public.
Public access to the ballots. Several states provide for public review of ballots under freedom of information laws and other means. Such access has been used to instill public confidence in the process and also to confirm suspicions based on statically irregular results. When possible ballots should be posted to the web, rather than requiring access that is expensive and time consuming for officials, candidates and the public.

This is our list, let us know if we have missed another valuable use for ballots. Paper ballots are necessary but insufficient for election integrity. Using the ballots as we have described is also necessary for voting integrity. Yet, we must insure that the ballots audited, recounted, or accessed by the public are actually the ones cast by voters. Sometime soon we will discuss the chain of custody!

A Tale In Three Ballots

Now that Connecticut voters are used to optical scan ballots, perhaps it is time to revisit ballot design in the “land of steady habits”. Perhaps one of those habits could be continuous improvement! We hear a lot about increasing participation in elections. Creating a better ballot can increase the number of voters willing to vote, and their satisfaction with the process.

Bo Lipari published his testimony on the recent New York Primary <read>

It is all interesting reading. I find two points of particular interest. Bo’s comments on how excessive problems were attributed to the optical scanners and on the limitations of New York’s full face ballot requirement, that is not all that different from Connecticut’s:

media reports too often implied that all problems were machine problems, but in fact while some voting machines certainly did fail to perform as expected, these reports were in the minority. By far the largest number of problem reports were administrative and legislative issue…

Hard to Read Ballots – The single most common complaint was ballots that were difficult to read. Let me be perfectly clear – ballot problem reports are not a machine problem, they are a political problem. New York Election Law requires the full face ballot, a grid layout where all candidates in all races are traditionally presented on a single page. Further, all candidates from the same party must appear in a single row or column. These and other requirements, like the confusing but obligatory party icon displayed in each box (which is all too easy to confuse with the fill-in oval), leave no choice but to use lettering far too small to be legible for far too many voters.

In the past, New York’s Legislature has not been inclined to eliminate the full face ballot despite calls to do so from civic groups. Truth be told, the full face ballot layout reinforces straight party line voting-it’s easy and natural to go straight down or across the party line filling in boxes, and so political parties tend to favor it. The full face ballot is a holdover from the days of lever machines and like those machines, it’s time has passed. New York’s current ballot design is a usability nightmare for voters. The grid layout is unclear and confusing; the small boxes are filled with unnecessary symbols; the typeface is far too small to be readable. Far better ballot designs are not just possible, they are necessary. I call on the Legislature to change New York State Election law and abolish the full face ballot requirement at the start of the new session.

The recent primary clearly demonstrated that New York voters desperately need a new, usable ballot design. Senators, you are the ones with the power, and the responsibility, to accomplish it.

I have been meaning to bring up ballot design for a while. This is a good time with Bo’s excellent introduction to the subject.

Look at a sample Connecticut ballot it is in a grid just like a lever machine, one line per party and boxes for each candidate. To most Connecticut voters this has been the way it has always been – the only way it can be. Most of us are clueless to other designs except for a vague understanding that in Florida in 2000 there was something worse called a “butterfly ballot” and something we nutmeggers understand how to read, not at all, the “punchcard ballot.”

What could possibly be better or worse than our familiar ballot?

Lets start with worse. New York’s ballots are similar to ours, but they require a complete full face ballot, with all the questions, offices, and candidates on one side of one page. In Connecticut we can use multiple sides and multiple pages for complex elections. It gets worse, New York City requires candidate names in four languages and a party symbol in each box, take a look at a sample NY City Ballot courtesy of the NY League Of Women Voters. Part of which is below:

Now lets explore better. Another way of creating a ballot in other states is the so called, not partisan ballot, with each race getting a separate box on the ballot and the candidates listed with their party but without a party line. Voters have to work a bit harder if they want to vote strictly along party lines and hopefully think a bit more about individual candidates and races. Here is an example from Minnesota.

Now that Connecticut voters are used to optical scan ballots, perhaps it is time to revisit ballot design in the “land of steady habits”. Perhaps one of those habits could be continuous improvement! We hear a lot about increasing participation in elections. Creating a better ballot might well increase the number of voters willing to vote, and their satisfaction with the process.

There is more to it than simply changing laws, and moving names and boxes around. The Brennan Center for Justice has a report, Better Ballots, discussing extensive ballot design considerations including usability testing – actually testing to see how well voters understand the ballot! Take a look at page 23 of their report to see a before and after example of a ballot similar to Minnesota’s. <Brennan Center Report>

Common Sense: The Indispensable Role Of Voter Verified Paper Ballots

Paper ballots filled out by voters are inherently “Voter Verified”. They provide the ultimate record of voters’ intent. They alone provide the opportunity for determining the exact result in close elections and the opportunity to verify the correct result in all elections. They alone provide the opportunity for public transparency necessary for real trust and confidence. Voter Verified Paper Ballots alone provide the opportunity for voting integrity, a necessary prerequisite for democracy.

Note: This is the second post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <previous> <next>

Among the heroes of our Democracy, George Washington has been called The Indispensable Man. When it comes to voting integrity, voter verified paper ballots play The Indispensable Role.

Perhaps there is an alternative. I’ll grant that paper might not be the only possible media. Voter verified stone tablets/ballots might work but are hardly realistic. Beyond a different permanent media, so far, no safe alternative has been proposed which has withstood scrutiny.

The alternatives that fail to pass scrutiny, so far:

Basic Touch Screen Electronic Voting (DREs)
DREs with “Voter Verified” Paper Trails
Internet Voting (including: Websites, Email, or Kiosk based)

Any form of voting that relies solely on computers for integrity is subject to fraud and error:

A hardware error could occur changing a program, or causing a touch screen or scanner to function improperly and unexpected, undetectably, to dramatically change a result – either on an individual voting machine or in transmitting or accumulating results.

An unscrupulous insider could change a program or function of a computer in a variety of ways that could be difficult or impossible to detect.

A voting machine could be programmed incorrectly to begin with, running correctly for years and then suddenly produce the wrong result on a particular set of ballots or based on the placement or spelling of a particular candidate’s name.

(It is not common sense that the spelling of a candidate’s name could change the result. It is common sense for experienced computer programmers. Programmers all have stories of mysterious problems. Believe it or not! I cannot send emails with my cell number including imbeded dashes ‘-‘, I can use periods ‘.” and other marks, I can use other phone numbers but not my particular cell number with dashes – the sent emails just plain disappear. I was using the cell number on my email signature. It took months of lost emails, lost communications, interpersonal misunderstandings, changing software and email providers to no avail. until I stumbled onto this hard to believe fact. I still find it hard to believe, but it was repeatedly, rigorously tested to my amazed/dismayed satisfaction. As far as I can tell it is either a Microsoft or Apache bug which I have not pursued.)

No amount of testing or security can be sufficient to prevent such errors and fraud:

Based on Alan Turing’s Halting Problem it is impossible to determine, in general, that a computer program will do what it is expected to do in all possible circumstances. We could test many sequences of ballots and prove they are counted correctly, but in different circumstances the computer might function differently: A different set of ballots, a different sequence of their submission, submission at a different time, or with different time delays between ballots etc. could yield different results. In reality, it would be almost impossible to test each voting machine with a reasonable number of typical sets of ballots to provide reasonable levels of confidence, let alone test each machine before each election.

Beyond these basic, insurmountable obstacles, voting has unique challenges:

Resources are limited. Election officials, in general have limited computer and security expertise. Jurisdictions cannot afford the expertise to plan reasonably effective testing and security measures. They cannot perform extensive testing of single voting machines, let alone each machine before each election.
Election computers are programmed anew for each election. Past results do not imply that current programming is reliable or that new errors or fraud have not been induced.
Scanners or touch screens can go out of alignment or develop blind/weak spots and errors.
Security measures to prevent insider tampering with programming and computer chips would be prohibitively extensive, costly, and sophisticated.

Each of the current alternatives have their own limitations:

Touch screen (DRE) voting machines without paper trails do not have transparent records which can be verified by the voter or election officials after elections. There is no way for anyone to determine if a vote cast by a voter increased the vote for the correct candidates; no way for the public or officials to determine if the counters or electronic records of votes accurately reflect the voters’ actual choices.

Internet voting methods are subject to all the risks of the public and “private secure” Internets. Sophisticated Government agencies and corporations are regularly subject to hacking (e.g. Google and the U.S. Defense Department). It is wildly optimistic and delusional to expect voting jurisdictions or voting vendors to do as well, let alone better. Kiosks mitigate a few, but hardly all of these risks. Banks lose billions in ATM electronic fraud each year – once again, they are more sophisticated and can afford more to avoid costly fraud. And bankers have an advantage with double entry bookkeeping and customer receipts which provide means to detect fraud – means by definition unavailable to electronic voting. The recent extensive Wikileaks disclosure of government documents is an example of what a lone or very limited number of insiders can do in compromising the security of a system.

Paper trail DREs provide an inadequate substitute for voter verified paper ballots. The current paper trails are difficult to read for voters and officials and are frequently lost to jams oeundetected “out of paper” conditions. A small percentage of voters actually verify their vote – fraud or error can misclassify a significant percentage of votes, with the smaller percentage verified chalked up to “I/you must have pushed the wrong button”. Beyond this DREs are much more costly to purchase, operate, and audit than optical scanners.

The Bottom Line

It is theoretically impossible to develop a computer only voting solution that is not subject error and fraud. Beyond theory, common sense shows that proposed electronic voting systems are subject to error and insider fraud, with all but impossible testing and security requirements, well beyond the capabilities and resources available to election officials.

Paper ballots filled out by voters are inherently “Voter Verified”. They provide the ultimate record of voters’ intent. They alone provide the opportunity for determining the exact result in close elections and the opportunity to verify the correct result in all elections. They alone provide the opportunity for public transparency necessary for real trust and confidence. Voter Verified Paper Ballots alone provide the opportunity for voting integrity, a necessary prerequisite for democracy.

We will have much more to say. “Opportunity” is insufficient.

Common Sense Election Integrity

One of the benefits of using optical scanners for voting is the requirement for voter marked paper ballots. They are much more reliable and useful than the paper records produced by some DRE (touch screen) voting machines. However, obtaining these benefits depends on the details surrounding the use of optical scanners and paper ballots. To provide true election integrity, Connecticut, like most states, needs to do much better in every dimension.

Note: This is the first post in an occasional series on Common Sense Election Integrity, summarizing, updating, and expanding on many previous posts covering election integrity, focused on Connecticut. <next>

Marked by voters, paper ballots, should accurately reflect the voters’ intent. Voter verifiable paper records (produced by DREs) are actually reviewed in detail by very few voters, providing an opportunity for fraud and for significant errors to go undetected.
Compared with curly, poorly printed, closely spaced DRE records (usually similar to store receipts), paper ballots are relatively easily preserved, organized, and recounted. They can be carefully reviewed for voters’ intent in the case of very close elections.
Properly tuned and programmed optical scanners can quickly and accurately count large numbers of ballots with many contests.

However, obtaining these benefits depends on the details surrounding the use of optical scanners and paper ballots. At a high level the requirements are:

The integrity of the paper ballots must be guaranteed by a trusted, reliable chain-of-custody.
There must be a trusted, reliable reporting process for accumulating results from multiple polling places and jurisdictions.
There must be a trusted, reliable post-election audit process that will detect and correct errors or fraud in ballot accounting, optical scanning, manual counting, and reporting process
In very close elections there must be a thorough, transparent, and adversarial recount.
The entire process must be effective, followed uniformly, enforceable, and enforced, along with a maximum opportunity for public transparency and meaningful observation.
The risks of error and opportunity for fraud should be minimized by: non-partisan and opposing party election management/oversight; security, testing, and controls over optical scanner programming and chain-of-custody; and extensive training and certification of election officials.

To provide true election integrity, Connecticut, like most states, needs to do much better in every one of these dimensions.

CTMirror Op-Ed: State recanvass law inadequate for close elections

The recent Hartford close vote, recanvass and election challenge provides an example to highlight the limitations of the Connecticut recanvass law. Read our op-ed published today in the CTMirror.

The recent Hartford close vote, recanvass and election challenge provides an example to highlight the limitations of the Connecticut recanvass law. Read our op-ed published today in the CTMirror: <read>

State recanvass law inadequate for close elections

You may have heard or read about post-election recounts after the recent primary. The reports were incorrect. There were no recounts. Connecticut law calls for something else, a recanvass.

The current recanvass law and procedures are inadequate to assure that the every vote is counted accurately and the correct winner certified. Experience shows that the current law is not well understood by election officials, candidates, and the media. The recanvass is often referred to as a recount, yet it is a far cry from the thorough, transparent, and adversarial recount process in other states. A positive example was the highly publicized Minnesota recount of the U.S. Senate race in 2008.

Connecticut’s current recanvass procedures are designed to parallel, for optical scanners, a law which was written for lever machines. In the age of lever machines recanvassing meant rereading counters of lever machines and recounting absentee ballots by hand. The current parallel optical scan procedure calls for rescanning most ballots and hand counting those that election officials deem to have a potential for being misinterpreted by the scanner.

The procedures to select ballots for hand counting are inadequate and do not spell out how ballots should be examined and the standards for manually evaluating them that would conform to law and precedent. Bubbles can be incompletely filled so that they might not be read by the scanner; the voter may have missed the bubble completely; the voter may have crossed out one candidate bubble and filled in another, which the machine would not have counted as a vote; and there may be voter identifying marks on either side of the ballot, which would disqualify the ballot altogether. Observing two optical scan recanvasses, I have seen that, in general, neither candidates nor election officials understand these important details.

The recanvass process is not transparent. The public may only observe from a distance. Even if candidates understand the details, they are only allowed two observers each to watch the entire process. Observers may not object during the process unless election officials consent and act on the objections. Two observers may be insufficient if more than two critical operations are being performed simultaneously, such as multiple teams counting ballots while others assess the scanability of ballots. Some municipalities have separate teams simultaneously counting several districts. Once again, my experience shows that officials and candidates do not generally understand how closely the process should be observed.

Compare that to the way Minnesota handles recounts: All votes are reviewed and counted by hand by teams of two officials, each team closely observed by a representative of each candidate. Both sides of each ballot are shown and examined for disqualifying voter identifying marks. The officials determine if and how each ballot counts. Any of the candidate representatives can disagree, in which case the ballot will later be adjudicated by agreement of the campaigns or, when necessary, by a state canvassing board.

The need for change in Connecticut is evident from the recent primary and recanvass of the race for state representative between incumbent Kenneth Green and Matthew Ritter in Hartford and Bloomfield. Preliminary results had Green ahead by two votes and the recanvass has Ritter ahead by two votes. Just one vote assigned to the wrong candidate or just two votes disqualified could mean a tie.

Green is contesting the count, pointing to some irregularities in the process. Candidates and voters should go beyond that and insist on a thorough, transparent, and adversarial recount on the general principle that the current process, even if accomplished flawlessly by the procedures, is inadequate in very close elections.

Luther Weeks is executive director of CTVotersCount and the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of other Coalition member organizations.