CTMirror: Connecticut’s upcoming primary election should be audited. Will it really be?

After every general election and primary, Connecticut law requires a post-election audit. Such audits are intended to provide justified confidence in our elections, that errors were not made, and that machines have not been hacked. However, unless something is done, this year the audits will be by far the weakest, least credible since audits were initiated with the adoption of optical scanners in 2007.

It is critical that we fully audit the August primary so any flaws can be fixed prior to the November election.

Paper ballots are of little use unless we actually vote and then exploit those ballots to provide justified confidence in our elections.

Op-Ed CTMirror: Connecticut’s upcoming primary election should be audited. Will it really be? <read>

Connecticut’s upcoming primary election should be audited. Will it really be?

Students at Wethersfield High School assist Secretary of the State Denise Merrill in a random drawing for the post-election audit.

Reasonably, in the COVID emergency, Gov. Ned Lamont and Secretary of the State Merrill have provided the opportunity for everyone to vote by absentee ballot in the primary. It is likely the General Assembly will do the same for the general election. Unfortunately, this will exacerbate preexisting gaps in our post-election audits.

Congress and voters are concerned with the potential for hacking by foreign governments and insiders, others do not trust the integrity of mail-in voting. The Federal Government has provided billions for protecting elections, with Connecticut spending millions of that Federal money on cyber security and absentee ballot mailings. In contrast, past audits have cost less than $100,000 in a presidential year and this year are on course to be halved in cost and effort for a second time.

In 2007 the General Assembly passed post-election audits that mandated auditing the counts in 10% of our polling place voting machines. The audits have proven useful in providing overall confidence and in identifying some flaws in the operation of those machines, uncovering persistent errors by officials, rather than computer errors, and exposing gaps in ballot security.

From the beginning, the audit law exempted hand-counted ballots, absentee ballots, and election day registration ballots — all under the flawed theory that if some machines count ballots accurately, they all do, even if they are exempted from the audit. Exempting ballots from audits provides hackers and insiders a formula for where to attack. The law includes no auditing of any of the processes around the election such as voter registration, absentee ballot applications, absentee ballot processing, or physical security of ballots.

Uniquely in Connecticut government, elections are beyond the scope of the state auditors or any sort of independent auditing. Several elections ago, the General Assembly, with the encouragement of the Registrars of Voters Association, cut the audit in half to 5%. Even with that, over 90% of ballots cast were subject to random selection for audit.

Now we face a primary, a critical election, and COVID-19. There will be a scramble to accurately process an unprecedented load of 10 to 15 times the number of absentee ballots. Since absentee ballots are excluded from the audit, less than half our votes will be subject to random selection and in the end only 1.5% to 2% will actually be audited. There will be no auditing of the absentee ballot processing and ballot security.

Registrars object to the expense and the drudgery of calling back polling-place officials to hand count selected ballots. That should no longer be a concern. The Secretary of the State’s office and the University of Connecticut have already built, tested, and paid for an electronically assisted post-election audit system. With that system registrars transport ballots to Hartford while the Secretary’s staff and UConn audit them under public observation. They verify a very small sample by hand against the UConn system. That system has been prototyped and in use for several elections. Last year it was used for over half of the towns selected for audit.

The General Assembly should act, at a minimum, to expand the current 5% audit to include all machine-counted ballots and order an independent audit of the absentee processes and ballot security. Failing that, the governor or Secretary Merrill should order those extensions. Available federal money is authorized to fund audits. There is a precedent. In 2008, facing a critical election and a public concerned with our new voting machines, using Help America Vote Act funding, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, then Secretary of the State, ordered that the 10% audit for the primary be expanded to 30%.

It is critical that we fully audit the August primary so any flaws can be fixed prior to the November election.

Paper ballots are of little use unless we actually vote and then exploit those ballots to provide justified confidence in our elections.

Luther Weeks is Executive Director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit.

Courant article on Merrill/Blumenthal press conference raises concerns.

In today’s Hartford Courant a report on yesterday’s press conference: Absentee ballot process smooth so far – Blumenthal wants more election funding <read>

Gabe Rosenberg, a spokesman for Merrill, said the $45 million in additional funding would go toward new voting machines, new tabulators, more ballot boxes, voter education and enhanced cybersecurity. He said the funds, if distributed promptly, could ease a potentially chaotic Election Day in November.“It’s going to take along time to count because we don’t have high-speed ballot counters,” Rosenberg said. “That’s something we could buy with that kind of money.”…

As for the security of the new ballot boxes, Merrill said the receptacles were no less secure than a typical mailbox.“Just think of this as a mailbox,” she said. “The usual way you send back your ballot for 100 years is you send it back in the mail. This is just a fancy mailbox, and it’s here for a reason, because many town halls are still not open for business all the time.”

A crisis in nothing to waste, yet spending $45 million between now and November seems a bit excessive, especially when everything is complicated by COVID-19.

In today’s Hartford Courant a report on yesterday’s press conference: Absentee ballot process smooth so far – Blumenthal wants more election funding <read>

First a note of caution. I have been misquoted by the press, so perhaps some of that applies here. Here are the disturbing quotes:

Gabe Rosenberg, a spokesman for Merrill, said the $45 million in additional funding would go toward new voting machines, new tabulators, more ballot boxes, voter education and enhanced cybersecurity. He said the funds, if distributed promptly, could ease a potentially chaotic Election Day in November.“It’s going to take along time to count because we don’t have high-speed ballot counters,” Rosenberg said. “That’s something we could buy with that kind of money.”…

As for the security of the new ballot boxes, Merrill said the receptacles were no less secure than a typical mailbox.“Just think of this as a mailbox,” she said. “The usual way you send back your ballot for 100 years is you send it back in the mail. This is just a fancy mailbox, and it’s here for a reason, because many town halls are still not open for business all the time.”

A crisis in nothing to waste, yet spending $45 million between now and November seems a bit excessive, especially when everything is complicated by COVID-19.

The first concern is that evaluating and procuring new voting machines is very expensive and time consuming to do well, a long deliberate process. When Connecticut chose the AccuVoteOS machines in use now, the process took abut a year, with several machines evaluated by the UConn Voter Center, followed by public feedback and focus groups of voters, those with disabilities, officials, and technical experts. Even then Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz made a poor choice. To her credit, quickly changed for the better. Followed by close to a year of education of officials and voters along with pilot use in 25 towns. Not something to do in haste.
We do not need high speed scanners. Its a myth that our current scanners significantly slow absentee vote counting. I have led central count absentee vote processing five times. I also led a polling place where a scanner broke and we had to read 1,500 ballots into another scanner – that was done intermittently in less that two hours while voters continued to scan their votes into that same scanner. Scanning is a small part of absentee processing, perhaps 10%. In Glastonbury. in November 2016. we had less than 20,000 votes for President, 90+% counted in six polling place scanners. If we used six scanners for absentee counting, with a reasonable plan, they could count all the votes in a few hours, overlapped with the other aspects of processing absentees. Glastonbury has at least two scanners already dedicated to absentee counting. Secretary of the State Merrill has already purchased a reserve supply of AccuVoteOS scanners. Used AccuVoteOS scanners are available at about $40 at auction sites and dealers.
Its a big deal to purchase and test high speed scanners. We can’t use just any scanner. We need a high speed scanner made for vote counting. Not just any vote counting, but compatible with ballots used by our AccuVoteOS. It would help if they did not require separate programming from the AccuVoteOS scanners and did well with folded or creased ballots.
We do not currently audit absentee ballot scanners. Unless that is addressed, this August and November only the scanners in polling places will be subject to audit. Inadequate with uniform scanners, yet all but useless if a different model is used for absentees and counts the majority of ballots in the election.
These new ballot boxes are vulnerable and will be targets. Once again, if they are safe from attack, let us see the tests. Other states use them and keep them under video surveillance.

As I have said before, in this crisis I support expanded mail-in voting. Yet we cannot abandon common sense.

Comments on new Federal Voting Systems Guidelines

There are other issues with the proposed guidelines. The proposal is a far from a finished product, with wide-ranging comments. It will be a huge task to complete them, far more challenging to complete well.

Last week I submitted comments for the State Audit Working Group on the proposed (Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines) VVSG 2.0 standards which will define future voting system standards. Looking over all the submissions, ours were likely the most extensive detailed comments submitted. In total our submission was about three hundred and fifty pages! You might consider reading the cover letter and then the Glossary Comments which have their own cover letter. In all, we spent over 200 hours developing and agreeing upon our comments. We were pleased to have thirteen signers and endorsements in comments from others groups : <SAWG Comments>

In all there were seventy-seven comments from various voting integrity, vendor, disability rights groups, and individuals <All Comments>

By far the largest number of comments were from disability rights groups and individuals supporting their positions, many redundant. Access for the disabled is one of the most controversial and critical issues. Many argue that everyone should vote on exactly the same voting machines so that all have equal access. There are several problems with this argument which would have us all vote on BMDs (Ballot Marking Devices): BMDs are not fully developed to meet the needs of the disabled, they need lots of work; Despite voting on identical machines, BMDs provide multiple interfaces for those with various disabilities , leaving voters not actually voting the same way anyway; BMDs cost about four times what a combination of a single BMD per polling place with VMPB (Voter Marked Paper Ballots) for most voters; BMDs do not serve some voters with disabilities who cannot use them but can use paper ballots; BMDs are often the cause of the long lines we see in Georgia, Pennsylvania and elsewhere – almost non-existent in CT which has the single BMD and VMPB model; those long lines hurt the vast majority of those with disabilities who have issues with walking and standing in line for hours. I would favor investing the savings in BMD research and preparing to replace that one BMD per polling place as better solutions are developed. For some interesting comments on the challenges of the disabled that do not take the standard advocacy line, read the comments from <Marybeth Kuznik>, <Noel Runyan>, and <Harvie Branscomb>.

There are other issues with the proposed guidelines: They spend too little on vote-by-mail equipment; fail to fully recognize early voting; are too detailed in some areas and sketchy in others; provide for unsafe Recallable Ballots; and as vendors point out are often too prescriptive and expensive to implement. The proposal is a far from a finished product, with wide-ranging comments. It will be a huge task to complete them, far more challenging to complete well.

Editorial: Update on Expanded Mail-In for CT and Proposals in D.C.

I am normally opposed to expanded mail-in voting in CT because of proven continuous and recent votING fraud by campaigns and insiders in CT (Which is distinct from votER fraud which for all practical purposes does not exist). Yet in this virus situation, I am in favor of no-excuse mail in voting.

Bottom line: If the state can legally do anything it would be best to leave all current systems in place and hire lots of people to do absentee processing and hope each of the 169 clerks and 338 registrars are up to the jobs of hiring, planning, training, organizing and executing (questionable at best given the years of experience with, never cured, Electoin Day Registration lines in some towns).

I am normally opposed to expanded mail-in voting in CT because of proven continuous and recent votING fraud by campaigns and insiders in CT (Which is distinct from votER fraud, which for all practical purposes does not exist).

Yet in this virus situation, I am in favor of no-excuse mail-in voting.

Recent examples of votING fraud in Connecticut: <Stamford> <Hartford> <Bridgeport>
Some other examples <East Longmeadow, MA> <Dade County, FL>

The Secretary of the State has asked Gov Lamont to sign an executive order to permit it. However, reading between the lines: Since the Gov cannot by executive order override the Constitution, the fix proposed by Sec Merrill would likely be interpreted as an attempt to do that and an expected court challenge would likely succeed.

If they do come up with a fix that passes Constitutional muster about the only reasonable additional change could be relaxing the 48 hour deadline for the initial counting of votes. That poses risks too because recanvasses must be completed by day 8 and the Constitution requires that the results be certified by day 10.

If that is all that is done then local officials would have to plan and execute well a possible 10-15 fold increase in absentee ballots with a similar expansion in what all town clerks must do prior to the election and registrars before and after. Counting ballots and meeting integrity requirements also involves special (slower) procedures in the age of COVID-19. Of course, we can give up on integrity requirements like two people checking each envelope inside and outside, and two people examining each ballot (I would not recommend against skipping integrity).

In D.C. there have been independent and stimulus bill sections mandating mail-in and early voting in all states. These would be devastating requirements for CT to implement and execute in such a short time-frame by August or November. All but impossible in a normal year, but much tougher in the age of COVID-19. Mail processing vendors, all but required by such proposed laws, are already saying they are all but booked for November and have no spare capacity. Meeting those same requirements would also require massive changes, equipment and people in Connecticut, with little time for testing, planning and training. In person early voting would also be a similar huge change. All costly and risky to implement in a hurry.

Everyone points to CA, OR, and CO as shining examples. Not necessarily true. CA comes close to meeting all the requirements in these bills. To meet them CA allows 30 days for counting absentees. In the recent primary (much smaller than the general election) they extended the counting an additional 21 days. If that happens in Nov, its likely the CA electors would not be counted in the Presidential election. Hopefully they will do better.

Bottom line: If the state can legally do anything it would be best to leave all current systems in place and hire lots of people to do absentee processing and hope each of the 169 clerks and 338 registrars are up to the jobs of hiring, planning, training, organizing and executing (questionable at best given the years of experience with and never cured, disenfranchising Election Day Registration lines in some towns).

Rant Against Congress’s Plans to Rescue the Election

Both the US House and Senate have proposals to improve our elections in the age COVID-19. They are huge and dangerous, impossible to implement in Connecticut and many other states by November.

Instead of our usual format here, I will cover them by rants I have posted as comments on Facebook over the last two days. They are just to complex and out of touch with reality to comer in a neat and organized, point by point way.

Both the US House and Senate have proposals to improve our elections in the age COVID-19. They are huge and dangerous, impossible to implement in Connecticut and many other states by November.

Instead of our usual format here, I will cover them by rants I have posted as comments on Facebook over the last two days. They are just to complex and out of touch with reality to comment in a neat and organized, point by point way.

By my count the Senate bill has eleven significant changes to current election law, procedures, and electronic systems in Connecticut elections. I have not counted the details in the House bill, while it is similar to the Senate bill it has at least two additional very difficult to implement requirements.

Senate Bill Page Summary <read> Senate Bill <read> House Bill (start at page 814) <read>

Selected Recent Rants (edited):

As Denise Merrill testified, just one of these changes is too much to do by Nov especially for the biggest election of the cycle. The Election Night Reporting system took about 5 years to get right, if it is now. Motor Voter has taken two years so far, if it is right now. The Senate bill has 11 significant changes we don’t have now including online AB requests, permanent AB for all, count ABs until the day before certification, signature cure also until that date, expanded email ballot delivery for disabled and those that don’t receive it by two days before the election, no exception for a disaster without internet or phone service, expanded (ambiguous) requirements for disabled, 20 days polling place early voting, etc. The House bill adds mandatory signature match for all ABs and days 15 days of early voting that must include the day before Election Day – that is a significant addition, where the Senate bill provides four days between early voting and election day. The bills would pay for some hardware, software and implementation but I doubt for most of those local costs. We would almost necessarily need epollbooks to integrate the early voting data. Miss one part or screw it up for one voter, the US AG or v ANY citizen can sue for injunctive relief.

I’ll add it’s not 7 months as the AB stuff must be ready in Sept and Early voting in Oct. Plus all this is developed, tested, implemented and executed under COVID-19 separation rules. Unless it passes in time that we need it for the Aug Primary.

Lets not forget this is all being done under the gun of COVID-19. And the Electoral Count Act:

The bills have provisions for ABs that took CA, WA, OR, and CO years to implement. Secretary Merrill testified to the GAE last month that just one of those provisions was too difficult and risky to implement for Nov, I agree. There are several others even more difficult. Meeting those provisions and counting ABs are compounded by precautions for COVID-19. Even in CA where they have years of experience, they have 30 days to count ABs – now they have extended that to 51 days for the recent Primary – for 2020 the Safe Harbor date to report votes for electors is Dec 14, just 41 days after the election – Ask yourself what would happen if the Supreme Court stuck with the strong precedent from 1876 and disqualified the CA electors? And on top of that CT is starting years behind in procedures, practices, automation, and systems.

What would I recommend?

By executive order of Governor Lamont, allow no-excuse AB, allow counting to go for 9 days not 2, to delay recanvasses until after day 10 – Day 10 is the certification date which is hard baked into the Connecticut Constitution, Registrar/SOTS and Clerk task forces created to plan to get their jobs done within the necessary time constraints, with state funding to cover planning training and the large staffing and supervision challenges for municipalities, including extra overhead for COVID-19. PS: The same for protecting everyone in polling places. Printers added to essential businesses.

The challenges of elections in the age of COVID-19

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has called on Governor Lamont to use emergency posters to expand Absentee Voting.
From CTNewsJunkie Merrill Calls On Lamont To Allow Absentee Voting For Presidential Primary <read>

This will be complex and expensive. So is operating a safe polling place.

Counting a large number of Absentee Ballots is a huge increase in work for the clerks office and for election day officials. If the deadlines for counting, recanvassing, and certification are not extended then it could take 5-10 times the number of AB counters, along with lots of supervision and planning. Everything needs to be double-checked by staff of opposing interests, yet now they need to be six feet apart and protected from contaminating ballots, likely with latex or plastic gloves. Expanding staff will mean fewer works will have experience counting ABs and doing the work in the clerk’s office before election day. CT law gives, at most, two days to complete the count, and then six more days to complete recanvasses, and the certification deadline is ten days. In CA they have three weeks to count ABs after the election. Unless something has changed in the last few days, they are still counting the presidential primary.

Recent repeated failures to staff up and organize to handle Election Day Registration should be a cautionary tale.

I used to think that wipes etc. were the solution for polling places, yet we have learned that they harm the ink on ballots and then gum up optical scanners. (And the surface touch screens as well). Once again, plastic/latex gloves may be the best solution for voters and pollworkers. It will take staff to help voters with gloves. What happens if they refuse?

In addition to gloves, in polling places voters and pollworkers need to keep a six foot distance. A great challenge for checkers, ballot clerks, and for curb-side voting. We should give up on privacy folders as well in this emergency.

Perhaps better ideas will emerge as we think about it and hopefully learn from other states.

I am not opposed to the idea of no-excuse AB in this emergency, yet it would be quite a challenge, as will be safe polling place voting.

Lessons we likely will NOT learn from Iowa

There is a lot of lessons that could be learned from Iowa. Yet we may not learn them. On the other hand we may learn other lessons. In no particular order:

Bernie and Pete both won…
Change anything in the rules, and the result is likely to have been different…
People tend to tout their favorite reform as a cure for any crisis….

The bottom line: Be careful what you ask for, the cure may be worse than the disease. Its complicated. Don’t let a crisis go to waste, but avoid knee-jerk solutions.

“‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

There is a lot of lessons that could be learned from Iowa. Yet we may not learn them. On the other hand we may learn other lessons. As Mark Twain said “‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

In no particular order:

Bernie and Pete both won. We go crazy over exactly who won by a few votes or delegates. Sometimes it is critical and important, like in a close election where we need to declare a winner. Not in a single primary where one or a couple delegates are hardly likely to make a difference in the end. Pursue every vote, count everything as accurately as possible. Pursue every irregularity and act on that (unfortunately, that often does not happen.) No matter if Bernie won by 0.2% or Mayor Pete did, they both won. It is amazing the Pete came from nowhere and did so well. It is amazing that Bernie, with obstacle after obstacle placed in his way by the DNC and the media, rose to the top.
Change anything in the rules, and the result is likely to have been different.
Did Bernie win the popular vote? No more than Hillary did in 2016. That will likely outrage my democrat and Bernie friends, yet it is true for several reasons that we do not know. First, this is a town by town delegate contest. That is the rules. The turnout at the caucuses varies from district to district far from the population, and far from November. Those that propose the National Popular Vote claim that would cause more people to vote – more Democrats in blue states, more Republicans in red states, yet also more Democrats in red states, more Republicans in blue states – they are correct. Yet,nobody knows what the results of a true popular vote would have been in either case. Second, more in the case of Hillary or Al Gore, than in Iowa – there is very little scrutiny of the exact vote, no audit across the country. Who cares if Hillary won by 3,000,000 votes in CA or 2,500,000 or 200,000 in CT or 250,000. We do not have an accurate popular vote number for 2016 or 2000 or for any other year for that matter. Change the rules and it would matter.
People tend to tout their favorite reform as a cure for any crisis. This week, one reputedly smart state representative claimed that Iowa was a case for paper ballots. I agree we need paper ballots everywhere, yet Iowa had paper ballots. Even better the caucus votes were held in public so there was no question that the ballots were correct and not compromised in the reported vote count. That same representative votes in the General Assembly all the time without paper ballots. They push a button and it lights up a screen. That is a very transparent, publicly verifiable vote, closer to the Iowa caucus than elections in Connecticut, much safer than any secret voting system. Regularly in Connecticut insiders and political operative steal votes via absentee, almost as regularly that is used as a reason to call for more main-in voting.
Many say Iowa is a reason to get rid of caucuses. I agree.
Many say Iowa is a reason for Ranked Choice Voting. Actually the Iowa system is more like Ranked Choice Voting than winner take all. Like Ranked Choice Voting it takes more math and accuracy to determine the results, it makes close votes more likely, not just in the end, but at every round where a close vote can determine the ultimate result in a caucus or a RCV. RCV can take much longer for results to be determined. Errors in single RCV precincts are much more likely to effect the final result than in the Iowa Caucus.
Elections are complex, people don’t know that. It is hard to account for over 1700 precincts. It is hard to manage dozens or hundreds of people and count their votes correctly in a caucus. Its hard to apply the difficult equations to determine deligates accurately, in the environment of a caucus. It is hard to double check all that. Especially hard since there apparently is no training for caucus leaders, many recruited the day before. Hard to get 1700+ of those counts all correct, add them up and double check them. Hard for a candidate to have individuals in every precinct to collect the data, verify the vote counts, verify the formulas and get all that information to the campaign and then for the campaign to redo and double check that information.
May say Connecticut is better off because we have trained election officials. They are mostly correct. Yet, how do you know there are no errors in the results from Connecticut? How many inaccurate results are reported? In how many cases are results reported with more votes than voters signed in? In how many cases are more voters signed in than ballots counted? I do not know the answers exactly, yet there are many in every November election. Many times they do not matter when contests are decided by many votes. Yet in many cases they do matter. A rare example from 2018 where such a situation was uncovered, investigated and ultimately not remedied.
The Iowa app was a badly botched system implementation, with no real backup. Yet a few years ago Connecticut’s Secretary of the State tried to mandate a system where polling place moderators would put in all our results on election night with smart phones – with greatly tired officials who had worked a 17 hour day, with many times the small number of results posted from each caucus. That system was stopped by an uprising from election officials, who should have been part of designing the system. That took a couple of years for them to be heard by the Secretary’s Office who blamed the officials as being against technology. We now have a pretty good system that uses fresh staff with laptops in town hall to enter data using laptops, not smart phones. Yet that system took a couple of years of Novembers to work out all the bugs to work well enough to be mandated to every town.
Connecticut is fine. Until the next thing happens. Then the Secretary of the State will again say it was outside her responsibility as Chief Election Official, ask for more power and laws to prevent that specific problem. All will be well until the next thing happens…
Having paper ballots and checkin lists means we can resolve most issues, yet it will take time. Maybe weeks. Yet we cannot resolve all problems, missing ballots, voter suppression, screw-ups like the one in Stratford above, illegal absentee ballots etc. We need better plans and processes to resolve those issues, including more re-voting.

The bottom line: Be careful what you ask for, the cure may be worse than the disease. Its complicated. Don’t let a crisis go to waste, but avoid knee-jerk solutions.

“‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

Early Returns from Iowa: Losers and Potential Winners

We may not know who won Iowa, yet we know the losers: Internet Voting, Caucusing, and Immediate Gratification.

NYTimes article: 2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion

““This is an embarrassment but it shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in the results,” Mr. Halderman said. “If this had been an election conducted by phone, or online, that would have been a major disaster. We might never know the results and would have had to re-run the entire contest.”

“This is an urgent reminder,” Mr. Halderman said, “of why online voting is not ready for prime time.”

Editorial: Potential Winners…

We may not know who won Iowa, yet we know the losers: Internet Voting, Caucusing, and Immediate Gratification.

NYTimes article: 2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion <read>

“This app has never been used in any real election or tested at a statewide scale and it’s only been contemplated for use for two months now,” said Mr. Jefferson, who also serves on the board of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election integrity organization.

“This is an embarrassment but it shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in the results,” Mr. Halderman said. “If this had been an election conducted by phone, or online, that would have been a major disaster. We might never know the results and would have had to re-run the entire contest.”

“This is an urgent reminder,” Mr. Halderman said, “of why online voting is not ready for prime time.”

A detail that emphasizes how ridiculous caucuses can be: Count Bernie 101, Mayor Pete: 66. Result after a coin-toss: 2 delegates each. That is actually mathematically defensible, yet unsettling. The whole process from beginning to end seems like that.

Editorial: Potential Winners…

Picking up where Dr. Halderman left off: Perhaps tomorrow, we will be able to declare two winners: Paper Records and Publicly Verifiable Elections

Too early to tell. If there are good paper records and they were displayed and photographed or otherwise verified by candidate supporters, both of those ideas will prove their value. On the other hand, even so, will those lessons actually be learned?

BMD’s are dangerous to democracy

One of the key issues this year is the purchase of Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) for all voters vs. Voter Marked Paper Ballots. In recent weeks, two board members have resigned from Verified Voting over a perception that VV is doing too much to tout Risk Limiting Audits (RLAs) of BMDs to the detriment of secure, evidence based elections. An extensive article in the NY Review of Books highlights the issues with BMDs: How New Voting Machines Could Hack Our Democracy. By mid-week Verified Voting had issued a clarification that states its general opposition to BMDs.

Editorial: We should not be wasting Federal and state money on BMDs except for those with disabilities. Instead, we should be using a portion of the savings on developing better BMDs that better serve those with disabilities.

The problem cited by the two board members, Philip Stark and Rich DeMillo, was VV touting RLAs of BMDs, with that publicity used as evidence in court by vendors refuting claims of the inadequacy of BMDs.

By mid-week Verified Voting had issued a clarification that states its general opposition to BMDs: Verified Voting Blog: Verified Voting Statement on Ballot Marking Devices and Risk-limiting Audits <read>

Verified Voting strongly advocates for best practices, including hand-marked paper ballots (with some judicious use of BMDs), careful voter verification of machine-marked ballots, strong chain of custody for all paper ballots, proper ballot accounting, and risk-limiting audits to verify tabulations of paper ballots.

We have one nit with VVs position, when they say: “Verified Voting recommends that any electronic tabulation of paper ballots be checked by a risk-limiting audit.” We say that RLA, better described as Risk Limiting Tabulation Audits, are unsuitable for small contests. They are excellent for Statewide and Federal contests, yet at some point between that size and contests with a few thousand ballots the only actual RLA would be more costly or always degrade into a full recount.

From the Review of Books article:

Most leading election security experts instead recommend hand-marked paper ballots as a primary voting system, with an exception for voters with disabilities. These experts include Professor Rich DeMillo of Georgia Tech, Professor Andrew Appel of Princeton University, Professor Philip Stark of the University of California at Berkeley, Professor Duncan Buell of the University of South Carolina, Professor Alex J. Halderman of the University of Michigan, and Harri Hursti, who is “considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic of electronic voting security” and is “famously known for his successful attempt to demonstrate how the Diebold Election Systems’ voting machines could be hacked.” These scholars warn that even a robust manual audit, known as a Risk Limiting Audit, cannot detect whether a BMD-marked paper ballot has been hacked. BMDs instead put the burden on voters themselves to detect whether such ballots include fraudulent or erroneous machine marks or omissions—even though studies already show that many voters won’t notice.

For this reason, many analysts have cautioned against acquiring these new ballot-marking machines for universal use, but election officials in at least 250 jurisdictions across the country have ignored their advice. Georgia (all one hundred and fifty-nine counties), South Carolina (all forty-six counties), and Delaware (all three counties) have already chosen these systems for statewide use in 2020. At least one or more counties in the following additional states have done the same: Pennsylvania (for the most populous county, plus at least four more), Wisconsin (for Waukesha, Kenosha, Chippewa and perhaps more), Ohio (for the most populous county and others), Tennessee (for at least ten counties), North Carolina (for the most populous county), West Virginia (for the most populous county and at least one other), Texas (for at least Dallas and Travis counties), Kentucky (for the most populous county), Arkansas (at least four counties), Indiana (for the most populous county and at least eight others), Kansas (for the first and second most populous counties), California (again, for the most populous county), Montana (at least one county, though not until 2022), and Colorado (for early voting). New York state has certified (that is, voted to allow) one such system as well.

Editorial: We should not be wasting Federal and State money on BMDs except for those with disabilities. Instead, we should be using a portion of the savings on developing better BMDs that better serve those with disabilities.

Editorial, Bridgeport Part 1: What NOT to do

Remember the 1st law of holes: “When you are in a hole, stop digging!”

The election integrity story in Connecticut lately has been the Bridgeport Primary where Marilyn Moore won the primary for mayor in the polling places and Joe Ganim won the absentee votes by enough to win by a comfortable margin of 270 votes, with an absentee margin of 3 to 1. You can read our Recent News links on our home page for more of the details. Bridgeport is known for absentee problems and a high energy absentee operation, mostly by party insiders who in this case support Ganim the incumbent. Yet the extent of this year’s operation seems to be even greater than usual. Neither campaign is looking very professional at this point.

The questions are: 1) To what extent has this operation resulted in lots of illegal absentee ballots? 2) To what extent did illegal activities change the result? 3) Should there be a rerun of the primary? 4) What should/can be done to prevent this from happening again in Bridgeport or anywhere in Connecticut? 5) What should not be done – what would not help?

We will address what not to do today and what we could do, later in part 2.

Here are my short answers to the first three questions, we will address what not to do today and what we could do, later in part 2.

We will likely never know how many absentee ballots were issued illegally, how many votes were not completed by voters, and how many voters were intimidated. It is hard work to investigate each absentee vote and harder to prove if a particular vote was illegal.
We will likely never know. There were illegal activities on both sides, yet clearly more on the Ganim side. Yet, maybe they actually won by legal active absentee promotion.
Courts are very reluctant to call for rerun elections. They are not only costly but bring out a different set of voters, a compressed time for legitimate absentee votes, less time for the election, and a change in voters because other races are not on the ballot. Its a bit easier in municipal races where the actual election day could be conceivably be postponed as well as requiring additional an additional primary. One standard is proving that enough votes were compromised that the result could have changed. Another standard is any skulduggery or errors. Both are too stringent in our opinion, if you agree then it is a judgement call somewhere in the middle. My decision in this case would be for a rerun with strong, independent monitoring. Perhaps a creative solution, considering reality in Bridgeport would be a separate Mayoral ballot in November with Moore and Ganim with equal positions on the ballot. Many courts would disagree. In this case, I suspect many would agree to a rerun.

Two things NOT to do:

Remember the 1st law of holes: “When you are in a hole, stop digging!”

Bad Idea #1: It has been suggested, even by the Secretary of the State, that what we need is more absentee voting, no-excuse absentee voting. That would seem to be almost obviously the wrong thing to do, if you want to reduce absentee abuses. In fact, violating the current law requiring a valid excuse is one of the several frequent abuses in the recent primary. It would be like reducing illegal speeding by doubling the speed limit. There are many states claiming no significant increase in fraud when they went to no-excuse absentee voting. We are skeptical of those claims, yet even if they are true, they are not Connecticut where we have a steady stream of proven absentee fraud – including recent fraud in Bridgeport(last two primaries), Hartford, and Stamford. I have said it before, and I will say it again: We justified the Citizens Election Program because of a history of campaign finance problems, similarly we can and should ustify not expanding absenting voting because of a Connecticut record of ongoing of fraud. For more see or testimony in opposition in 2017:

Bad Idea #2: There was a proposal in the last General Assembly to let voters submit absentee ballot applications online, without signatures S.B. 156. One of the key ways fraudulent absentee ballots are created is by fraudulent applications, where voters attest to their excuse. On of the key ways fraud is discovered and proven is hand-writing analysis of those applications. A huge mistake. For more read my testimony against the bill: Would Remove Valuable Fraud Detection/Prosecution Tool.

Perhaps we will hear several more ideas for digging the hole deeper before this is over.