Our Editorials | CTVotersCount.org

Reminder, Cybersecurity will never be enough

States and the Federal Government are pumping millions into cybersecurity and new voting systems. That is all good, especially when the new systems are for Voter Marked Paper Ballots and Ballot Marking Devices for those with disabilities. Yet ultimately, it can provide a false sense of security. No matter how strong the cybersecurity and the quality of software, based on Turing’s Halting Problem, it is impossible to secure a computer system from errors and hacking. it is also impossible to secure systems from insiders and others with physical access.

Today’s stories at The Voting News provide a reminder of current vulnerabilities:

How state election officials are contributing to weak security in 2020 | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post
Cyber firm examines supply-chain challenge in securing election ecosystem | Charlie Mitchell/InsideCyberSecurity.com
Editorials: Cyber attacks threaten security of 2020 election | Ray Rothrock/San Jose Mercury-News
Arizona: Is Arizona doing enough to protect 2020 elections? Computer security experts weigh in | Andrew Oxford/Arizona Republic
Georgia: Check-in computers stolen in Atlanta hold statewide voter data | Mark Niesse and Arielle Kass/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(PS: Instead stealing these computers they could have hacked them or the voting machines.)
Louisiana: New Louisiana election, same old voting machines | Melinda DeSlatte/Associated Press
New Jersey: Activists press for federal support to upgrade New Jersey’s vulnerable voting machines | Briana Vannozzi/NJTV News
North Carolina: Experts Warn of Voting Machine Vulnerabilities in North Carolina | Nancy McLaughlin/Greensboro News & Record
North Carolina: Voting equipment approval didn’t follow law | Jordan Wilkie/Carolina Public Press
Pennsylvania: Elections officials touted new electronic poll books. Now the city says they don’t work right. | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

That is why we need:

Voter Marked Paper Ballots that can be audited and recounted to verify the machine results
Strong physical security and chain-of-custody for ballots
Best is publicly scanned and reported machine totals compared to the physical ballots

Senate Intelligence Committee provides report on Russian Hacking

A highly redacted 67 page report: Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election. Volume I Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure With Additional Views

The threat is real. Lack of investigation and exaggeration does not help make the case. The science is clear. Senator Wyden is correct. We need voter marked paper ballots, strong security for those ballots, with sufficient audits and recounts.

A highly redacted 67 page report: Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election. Volume I Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure With Additional Views<read>

Overall I agree with most of the report’s conclusions, yet more so with the minority views of Senator Wyden (page 62). Some of the report’s claims are exaggerated.

Many headlines say that all 50 states were attacked. That is an exaggeration of what the report says. All 50 states may have been pinged or public websites read, yet the report says even that only as speculation. Much of the data in the report does not name states. Actually only Illinois is named.

As I commented on several posts on Facebook: “Several areas where I agree: Paper Ballots need to be protected, effective tabulation audits, and avoid online voting. All of Senator Wyden’s minority report, especially: No real evidence that votes were not changed, Federal standards are in order, we should primarily use voter marked paper ballots and (especially CT) should audit and improve paper Ballot security. Worst of all they all ignore the lack of investigation of the potential NC ePollbook hack.”

Editorial
The threat is real. Lack of investigation and exaggeration does not help make the case. The science is clear. Senator Wyden is correct. We need voter marked paper ballots, strong security for those ballots, with sufficient audits and recounts.

Common Sense: Justified Confidence

“I think the biggest issue facing us is trust in the elections,” said Denise Merrill, Connecticut’s secretary of the state. – As Feds struggle, states create their own anti-election propaganda programs

Trust and confidence are important – Justified trust and justified confidence. – Luther Weeks, Facebook comment

As we have said before Connecticut is above average in election integrity and security for statewide elections, less so for local elections. Above average, is not saying much. Many states, including Connecticut, have a long way to go to achieve justified confidence. PR alone will not protect us from outsiders and insiders. Will not protect us form loss of confidence in democracy.

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

“I think the biggest issue facing us is trust in the elections,” said Denise Merrill, Connecticut’s secretary of the state. – CNN: As Feds struggle, states create their own anti-election propaganda programs

Trust and confidence are important – Justified trust and justified confidence. – Luther Weeks, Facebook comment

Every time I hear election officials talk about ‘confidence’ I tend to hear what CNN heard, a desire for the public to be assured at all costs that elections can be trusted. Whenever I get the chance, either publicly or one-on-one, I point out to officials that we agree, up to a point; I want the public to have confidence, justified confidence. I always remember the first time my wife and I passed out a flyer about election integrity concerns at a public hearing on our flawed post-election audits. An apparently respected registrar said to us:

You shouldn’t be passing that out, you will scare the public. If there is ever a problem, we will fix it in the backroom, just like we did with the lever machines – Respected Registrar who trains Moderators

One caveat, I don’t know that elections officials always intend to imply that weak, PR type of confidence. Sometimes I may be too sensitive, but no matter the intent, the public often hears what CNN heard.

Case in point, the election complaint settlement in Hartford, covered in yesterday’s Hartford Courant: Hartford Registrar of Voters Penalized:

The registrar, Giselle Feliciano, and Martin Allen Jones, a ballot moderator, violated state statute during the Hartford Democratic Town Committee primary in March 2018, according to a June 19 order from the State Elections Enforcement Commission.

Feliciano and Jones agreed to a civil penalty of $750, which will be reduced to $500 if Feliciano repeats a certification class on absentee voting.The settlement was approved by the city’s corporation counsel, and will be paid by the city, according to city communications director Vas Srivastava.It stems from a complaint filed last year by Anne Goshdigian, a challenge slate candidate in the town committee primary, and Thomas Swarr, whose wife Donna Swarr was running on the same challenge slate…

The pair alleged they were trying to watch election officials count absentee ballots at City Hall about 1:30 p.m. March 6, 2018, when Jones said Goshdigian could not be in the room and all others needed to leave as well, including Jones himself.When Goshdigian and Swarr asked for written proof they had to leave the room Feliciano said Goshdigian could not be within a polling place during voting hours. City Clerk John Bazzano was consulted, and he said the room was not a polling place, according to the complaint.

“Feliciano then ‘changed tact,’ and asserted that it was within her authority to remove anyone disrupting the process,” the complaint said. The registrar called the police and had Goshdigian and Swarr removed.

The situation was partially resolved after Donna Swarr spoke with a state’s attorney, who confirmed to her and Feliciano that members of the public could observe absentee ballot counting.

But Feliciano still did not allow Goshdigian to observe the count, according to the complaint. And when Tom Swarr returned to City Hall that evening to observe the final absentee ballot count, he was again denied access .

Swarr said he’s frustrated that the commission’s decision doesn’t address the second incident.

According to the agreement the commission reached with Feliciano and Jones, it “does not believe that there was any untoward intent insofar as the handling of the absentee ballots themselves.” Feliciano admitted she did not know that the law required her to open the count to all members of the public.

“I don’t know how you could say she didn’t understand what the law was when I came back in the evening and was denied again,” Swarr said. And, the commission said it “does find a troubling lack of contrition and/or remorse in the Respondents’ statements in response to the allegations here. Their failure to acknowledge a material error of law in their answers to this matter weighs in the commission’s decision here…

The registrar’s procedural manual on counting absentee ballots also covers, on its second page, who may observe a count.Of what he saw, Swarr said the absentee ballet counting process seemed perfectly secure. However, the lack of transparency gave a false impression that the system was corrupt, he said.

“It’s silly to exclude people and basically create distrust of the system when letting people observe would add confidence in it,” Swarr said. “The lack of particpation is, to me, the greatest threat to Hartford elections. You should be encouraging people to come in and view and build confidence.

The one good thing is that their was a penalty for this violation, yet everything else should leave us all with less than justified confidence in the system:

Like many complaints, this one took a stretched-thin SEEC months (15) after the election to resolve.
Although there was a penalty it was not paid by the Registrar or Moderator involved, like the legal defense it was paid by the City – what actual penalty is there in that?
The Registrar can save the City almost nothing after tuition and mileage, if she spends a half a day taking an applicable class. Yet the Moderator is not required to be recertified. In the law, the Moderator is just as much, if not more, responsible for following the law here.
Sadly, if the Moderator were re-certified he would not be taught about absentee counting – that is not covered as we recently pointed out to the General Assembly, to no avail, as they cut the moderator certification requirements in half.
And perhaps, worst of all, there was no real remedy to the problem. In one of the most partisan election situations, with insiders in charge of an election won by insiders, there was no transparency, no public verification. A complete lack of credibility and a formula for cheating available for the future: Steal some votes, if someone tries to watch and complains, have your city pay a small fine and WIN!

How Dumb Do They Think We Are?

Or are they dumber than we think?

No matter what you think about early voting, we find one argument by Senator Looney and Senator Flexer in a recent editorial completely irrelevant and misleading.

Or are they dumber than we think?

No matter what you think about early voting, we find one argument by Senator Looney and Senator Flexer in a recent editorial completely irrelevant and misleading: Senate Republicans should have supported early voting <read>

Our Republican colleagues in the Connecticut Senate, as well as Republicans nationally, often cite potential fraud as a reason not to enact early voting. However, the facts around voter fraud are simply not on their side. In 2014,the Washington Post published a comprehensive study that found 31 credible instances of impersonation fraud from 2000 to 2014. Even an analysis conducted by the National Republican Lawyers Association —a national organization of Republican lawyers —found only 332 alleged cases of voter fraud nationwide from 1997 through 2011. This is out of hundreds of millions of ballots cast.

What they have said is true, there is little if any votER fraud. Yet that point is irrelevant to the issue.

The problem is that their is plenty of votING fraud especially by Absentee Ballot, and right here in Connecticut. The problem is not the voters it is campaign and official insiders putting their fingers on the scale, RIGHT HERE IN CONNECTICUT, regularly. <e.g. here>

Editorial
We should expect more from the leader of the Senate and the Chair of the elections committee. They should know more, run their editorials past people that know more, and not try and pull the wool over our eyes. We should be able to rely on their words.

The Case Against Trusting Democracy to BMDs

Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) are under consideration by several states for use for all in-person voting. They have paper ballots, “What could possibly go wrong?”. A recent paper makes the case that they cannot be audited or trusted to provide accurate results. The paper recommends that they should be limited to use by voters that need accessibility: Ballot-marking devices (BMDs) cannot assure the will of the voters

not only is it inappropriate to rely on voters to check whether BMDs alter expressed votes, it doesn’t work.

Yet, this paper has been very controversial in election integrity circles. Advocates for those with disabilities argue that everyone should vote the same way on the same equipment, because that is what is needed to provide equality, to incentivize and cause better BMDs that meet everyone’s needs including those for evidence based elections.

..paper ballots provide no assurance unless they accurately record the vote as the voter expresses it. Voters can express their intent by hand-marking a ballot with a pen, or using a computer called a ballot-marking device (BMD),which generally has a touchscreen and assistive interfaces. Voters can make mistakes in expressing their intent in either technology, but only the BMD is also subject to systematic error from computer hacking or bugs in the process of recording the vote on paper, after the voter has expressed it. A hacked BMD can print a vote on the paper ballot that differs from what the voter expressed, or can omit a vote that the voter expressed…

Research shows that most voters do not review paper ballots printed by BMDs, even when clearly instructed to check for errors. Furthermore,most voters who do review their ballots do not check carefully enough to notice errors that would change how their votes were counted…There is no action that a voter can take to demonstrate to election officials that a BMD altered their expressed votes, and thus no way voters can help deter, detect, contain, and correct computer hacking in elections. That is, not only is it inappropriate to rely on voters to check whether BMDs alter expressed votes, it doesn’t work.

The entire paper is readable and makes a complete case for its conclusions.

Simply stated Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other states seeking accurate, credible elections need paper ballots, sufficient post-election audits, ballot protection, and Voter-Marked Paper Ballots. BMDs are insufficient and cost several times more.

Editorial

We completely agree with the paper’s conclusions. Overall there is nothing new here, except an extensive review and clarification of older and recent work.

We are sympathetic to the needs of those with disabilities. We need better interfaces and BMDs to serve them better. Yet, spending triple on inadequate equipment is not the path forward.

As long as we have absentee voting, we will have voter marked paper ballots, as long as BMDs use multiple interfaces, all voters will not vote the same way.

Better that money and effort be spent on research and innovation, than on excessive purchases of inadequate equipment. Where is the incentive for vendors to innovate when election officials can be, all but, mandated to buy the inadequate equipment on the market? The only incentive would be for multiple rounds of modestly better BMDs followed by multiple rounds of expensive replacements.

An Election Bill Crib-Sheet

This year I submitted testimony on a total of twenty-three bills. Fortunately, many were easy for us to understand and quite redundant. The General Elections and Administration Committee passed a total of one-hundred and eighteen bills. To me, they should have been much more selective in choosing bills to hear and those to pass. Although most of my testimony opposed bills, some of it was followed by the Committee. We are pleased to support seven bills passed by the Committee and oppose eight.

Here is a crib-sheet to help in understanding critical election bills (Those with “*’ are those where we submitted testimony):

H.B.5417 Oppose – Task Force to study blockchain for the registration database. An over-hyped technology in search of an undefined problem.*

H.B.5816 Support – Eliminates the archaic inner absentee ballot envelope.

H.B.5817 Oppose – Will add work to checkers, increase staffing and lines. Unnecessary, and burdensome.*

H.B.5820 Oppose – Task Force to study Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Study too limited, RCV incorrectly defined.*

H.B.6047 Support – Multi-color ballots for multi-district polling places.*

H.B.6063 Oppose – More than one ballot in inner envelope. Dangerous, prevents legally required tracking of absentee ballots an important check on double voting. Instead consider passing H.B.5816.*

H.B.6876 Support – No change for scanning documents by cellphone etc. Current charge is exorbitant.*

H.B.7160 Oppose – One of several poor to harmful Election Day Registration Bills Instead, pass S.B.1049.

H.B.7321 Support – Increases voting security and audits.

H.B.7383 Support – Strengthens Freedom of Information for database data.

S.B.156 Oppose – Absentee ballot requests w/o signature. Signatures have helped catch frequent fraud in Connecticut.*

S.B.265 Oppose – Reducing Moderator Certification. We need more training, not less. Watch the meetings of the Commission on Contested Elections on CT-N for examples of insufficient training.*

S.B.1036 Support – Study regionalization of election administration.

S.B.1046 Oppose – Election Day Registration in polling places. Makes the current civil-rights violation worse without solving problems. Instead, pass S.B.1049.*

S.B.1049 Support – By far the best Election Day Registration bill. Removes arduous cross-check, and eliminates civil-rights violation.*

As we have said before, we aim for a balance between voting integrity, serving voters, and costs, in that priority order.

VotING fraud via Absentee, this time in Stamford

When Connecticut passed public financing of elections a major part of the justification was a history of campaign finance scandals. Avoiding expanded mail-in voting can be justified by the similar pattern of AB abuse. We do favor a form of early voting for Connecticut we call in-person absentee voting – in-person at the municipal clerk’s office, where officials can be expected to easily detect a single person attempting to vote 14 times under different names!

From the Stamford Advocate: Former Stamford Dem Party boss charged with falsifying absentee ballots <read>

STAMFORD — John Mallozzi, the city’s former Democratic Party chief, was arrested Wednesday on charges of absentee ballot fraud in the 2015 municipal election. He allegedly forged ballots for relatives, Spanish-speaking residents and Albanian-Americans new to the election system, according to the State’s Attorney’s Office.

Mallozzi was charged with 14 counts each of filing false statements and second-degree forgery. He turned himself in to Stamford police on the charges, both Class D felonies punishable by up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to $5,000 per count…

Hoti told investigators that on Election Day 2015 he was rejected at his District 8 polling place in the Cove by a monitor who told him the record showed he’d already voted by absentee ballot. Hoti said he had not. The monitor allowed Hoti to vote after Hoti filled out a form attesting that he did not vote by absentee…

On Jan. 10 a state forensic science analyst determined that signatures on 14 absentee ballots “share common authorship” with the handwriting samples provided by Mallozzi, according to the affidavit. None of the 14 voters whose names were on the ballots had requested them, the affidavit states.

Allegations, convictions, and enforcement penalties for AB fraud are regular occurrences in Connecticut. There are likely many more that are not discovered. Just lucky that one of these voters attempted to vote legally and through diligence of the election officials the fraud was discovered. If that one voter had not attempted to vote, if may never have been discovered and continued in subsequent elections.

Editorial

This is why we oppose expanded mail-in voting, such as no-excuse absentee voting. If might be safe in other states, yet Connecticut has an ongoing record of absentee votING fraud (as opposed to votER fraud) by insiders or candidate and party officials. This year and last we have cases in Hartford and Bridgeport as well.

Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey…on my mind

Story in Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlines what keeps election integrity awake all night: Georgia prepares to move from electronic to paper ballots .

State lawmakers broadly agree that it’s time to replace Georgia’s 27,000 direct-recording electronic voting machines with a system that leaves a verifiable paper trail.

With a paper ballot, recounts and audits could verify the accuracy of electronic tabulations.

But there’s disagreement about what kind of paper-based voting system Georgia should use and how much taxpayer money to spend on it…

It would be a sad shame if state and Federal money is spent to buy such risky equipment at triple the cost of voter marked paper ballots.

Story in Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlines what keeps election integrity awake all night: Georgia prepares to move from electronic to paper ballots <read>

State lawmakers broadly agree that it’s time to replace Georgia’s 27,000 direct-recording electronic voting machines with a system that leaves a verifiable paper trail.

With a paper ballot, recounts and audits could verify the accuracy of electronic tabulations.

But there’s disagreement about what kind of paper-based voting system Georgia should use and how much taxpayer money to spend on it…

One option calls for voters to complete paper ballots by hand, filling in bubbles with a pen and then inserting their ballots into optical scanners for tabulation.

Under another type of system, voters would choose their candidates on touchscreens — similar to those currently in use across the state — and then machines would print paper ballots reflecting their selections. Voters could then review their ballots and insert them into optical scanners…

Many election integrity advocates favor hand-marked paper ballots, saying they most closely reflect voters’ intentions. Election officials would be able to review how voters filled out their ballots, and they wouldn’t have to trust that a computer printed out their choices correctly.

Some county and state election officials prefer ballot-marking devices, which are more familiar to Georgia voters who are accustomed to casting their ballots on touchscreens. Ballot-marking devices can accommodate the disabled and elderly by adjusting type size or providing audio, and they help avoid mismarked ballots by preventing voters from circling candidates’ names or scratching out their choices.

There’s also a third potential option. Georgia could switch to hand-marked paper ballots and also provide at least one ballot-marking device at each precinct to accommodate the disabled…

Replacing the state’s voting machines won’t be cheap.

It could cost the public about $30 million to move Georgia to hand-marked paper ballots and over $100 million for ballot-marking devices.

Editorial

We favor the third option. Most voters filling out paper ballots by hand, with ballot marking devices available to accommodate those with disabilities. There is no guarantee voters actually check ballots created by ballot marking devices (see: Handmarked paper ballots more verifiable than ballot marking devices ), no guarantee they would consider it a machine error rather than their own mistake, and no reason for officials to believe or to verify voters that claim that the machine made an error. Worse many forms of those marking devices and their forms of ballot are much more difficult (expensive) to audit and recount.

It would be a sad shame if state and Federal money is spent to buy such risky equipment at triple the cost of voter marked paper ballots.

76 Bad ballots, followed by unfortunate decision for election integrity

Rep. Philip Young, D-Stratford, won re-election to a second term on Nov. 6, defeating Republican Jim Feehan by 13 votes in the 120th District. But Feehan says as many as 76 voters at Bunnell High School were given ballots for the 122nd District, which uses the same polling place.

Ruling from the bench, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismissed Feehan’s request for a new election, agreeing with the attorney general’s office that she had no jurisdiction to do so under the Connecticut Constitution, lawyers for Feehan and Young said.

“That power has been committed exclusively to the House of Representatives, and this Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to grant the relief that Feehan requests,” the attorney general’s office said in a brief filed Thursday.

From the CTMirror: Trial judge dismisses call for new House election in Stratford <read>
The facts are simple, the law is apparently clear, yet the decision in our opinion is unfortunate for democracy.

Rep. Philip Young, D-Stratford, won re-election to a second term on Nov. 6, defeating Republican Jim Feehan by 13 votes in the 120th District. But Feehan says as many as 76 voters at Bunnell High School were given ballots for the 122nd District, which uses the same polling place.

Ruling from the bench, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismissed Feehan’s request for a new election, agreeing with the attorney general’s office that she had no jurisdiction to do so under the Connecticut Constitution, lawyers for Feehan and Young said.

“That power has been committed exclusively to the House of Representatives, and this Court therefore lacks jurisdiction to grant the relief that Feehan requests,” the attorney general’s office said in a brief filed Thursday.

I am not a lawyer, yet here we are, waiting at least until January for the General Assembly to decide. The correct decision for democracy seems to us to award a new election. It was a simple mistake that led to an unfair election where the result has moderate odds of being incorrect. It is not good for democracy when a partisan body is making a decision with political results. The odds of partisan decision is a bit less when made by a judicial body, especially when it is such a straight-forward application of other precedents.

Overall, the U.S. has a poor system of deciding close elections. History shows over and over partisan bodies making partisan decisions indistinguishable from those their party affiliations would predict: <Read Book Review: Ballot Battles>

Courant Editorial Misses the Mark on At Least Three of Five Points

On Sunday the Hartford Courant lead Editorial proposed fixes to its perceived problems with Connecticut’s election system: 5 Fixes For State’s Broken Election System. Note that all the statewide races were decided by 8:00am on Wednesday morning after the election.

To the Courant’s credit, for the second time in a row, they published a letter of mine criticizing an editorial.

Proposed Fixes Could Make Problems Worse

The editorial “Five Fixes for State’s Broken Election System” misses the mark on at least three of its five proposals

On Sunday the Hartford Courant lead Editorial proposed fixes to its perceived problems with Connecticut’s election system: 5 Fixes For State’s Broken Election System <read>

We say perceived problem, since the newspaper’s concern is for quicker results to feed the Courant and other impatient media:

Connecticut is a slowpoke on election results compared to other states. This will not do. Voters need to know on election night who their new governor is. They shouldn’t have to wait till the next morning.
Here are a few ways for the state to catch up with the rest of the nation…

1. Take humans out of it… 2. Stop using pens and rulers… 3. Send in state help… 4. Appoint professionals… 5. Vote Earlier.

Note that all the statewide races were decided by 8:00am on Wednesday morning after the election.

To the Courant’s credit, for the second time in a row, they published a letter of mine criticizing an editorial. The letter is slightly modified from the one I sent after extensive fact checking by Carolyn Lumsden, Opinion Editor, and a couple of emails back and forth. It makes the same points as the original. I would only quibble with a bit of grammar. I said as much as I could in keeping the letter within the size that the Courant usually publishes.

Proposed Fixes Could Make Problems Worse

The editorial “Five Fixes for State’s Broken Election System” misses the mark on at least three of its five proposals [courant.com, Nov. 11].

It suggests that early voting would provide quicker results. Is The Courant aware that California, Colorado, Georgia and Florida all have early voting and were still counting mail-in votes on Saturday? In fact, California counts mail-in votes for weeks after each election.

The Courant proposes following Philadelphia by using memory cards to accumulate results. Philadelphia is one of the notorious areas of the country with paperless direct-recording electronic voting machine, or DRE. Using memory cards to total results in Connecticut in any reasonable time frame would entail connecting memory cards to the internet, which would risk hacking, a risk that Secretary of the State Denise Merrill has steadfastly and appropriately avoided.

There are some benefits to electronic poll books, yet there are also risks that must be mitigated. Electronic poll books have proved in some places to slow down check-ins, requiring more lines; there must be paper backup and effective contingency plans when poll books fail, as they did in a North Carolina county in 2016.

Professionalization may be part of a solution, yet any solution brings its own challenges. I would support professionalization as part of regionalization of elections, so that professionals are not appointed and funded by partisan local government. A part-time or individual professional would be insufficient to conduct professional elections in our small towns. There are real challenges, money can help, yet we need a thorough, rational top-to-bottom review that considers best practices from other states and countries.

There was also an excellent letter on Tuesday from Fred DeCaro III, Republican Registrar of Voters from Greenwich. DeCaro expands on the reasons why replacing two registrars in a town by a single town appointed official is not a good idea.

Bipartisan Registrar System Is Fairer

Every election season, The Hartford Courant likes to complain because writers don’t have the results in time to get their beauty sleep [editorial, Nov. 6, “Editorial: Governor Results Take Too Long”].

The logical leap for Courant editorialists is that we need to get rid of our system of two registrars per town, one from each of the two major parties, and replace it with “one professional nonpartisan registrar per town.”

Because things would go faster and with fewer errors if one person typed in the numbers instead of two? I suppose the news would get printed faster if The Courant didn’t use fact-checkers, too.

I’m sure Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim would love to be able to appoint his own personal registrar. And if his appointee doesn’t get him the results he wants, he can swap the registrar out. Kind of like President Trump and the head of the FBI. Eventually both will find a candidate sufficiently “nonpartisan.”

Having two individuals of different viewpoints checking each other is common sense. Financial institutions are required to have dual control. Most states have boards of elections, which are bipartisan. Having a Democratic and a Republican registrar in every municipality is Connecticut’s method of making certain that all actions with regard to an election are measured.

The fastest election results can be found in Brazil, which uses an all-electronic system with no paper ballots, electronic transmission and the added benefit of recording your fingerprints before you vote. No public watchdogs are allowed to examine the proprietary code. You vote or you pay a fee.

I’ll stick with paper ballots and wait a little longer for the results. And I’ll sleep more restfully as a result.

I also had a short, related Facebook exchange with Essie Labrot, Town Clerk of West Hartford, which clarifies my concerns with undue haste and expanded absentee balloting:

Essie Labrot As a Town Clerk, my office issued over 3,000 absentee ballots. We need to change the statutes to allow counting of them earlier than 10 am on election day. Also, streamline the application process for AB’s (including acceptance of electronic signatures). Reliance on mail system leaves ballot errors and late applications missed votes.

Luther Weeks or change the law like CA, CO, FL, GA … to allow counts to go on days or weeks after Election Day. That would also entail adjusting recancass dates.

Essie Labrot I don’t think candidates would want to wait weeks for final results..our state is much smaller than those who have all mail voting..and county based.

Luther Weeks I was not suggesting weeks. Maybe 2 days. The law already provides 48 hours for polling places, except for reporting the tape [which is supposed to be completed on election night]. There are other risks and issues with the law in starting [counting absentee ballots] before Election Day. Many states give voters time to cast in person on Election Day to override their AB. For different reasons we give them until 10:00am [on election day]. Also the dead voter rule [which requires pulling of absentee ballots for voters not alive on election day]. Lots of choices and associated issues to consider with any change!

Essie Labrot absolutely! Looking forward to seeing you at the Capitol..

One real problem in this election was the civil rights violation that is our Election Day Registration system’s 8:00 cutoff, see: <Connecticut dodges EDR bullet. How long will EDR dodge the Civil Rights bullet?>