UCONN: Failed memory cards caused by weak batteries, inadequate design

This week at the 2010 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop on Trustworthy Elections in Washington, D.C., Dr. Alex Shvartsman and his team from the Uconn VoTeR Center delivered a significant paper. It covered research into the cause of the complete failure of the AccuVote-OS memory cards, at an unacceptable rate — We suggest the costs of mitigating the problems should be born by the manufacturer and/or distributor since the ultimate cause is the inadequate design of the memory cards for their intended purpose.

This week I attended the 2010 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop on Trustworthy Elections in Washington, D.C., Dr. Alex Shvartsman and his team from the Uconn VoTeR Center delivered a significant paper. It covered research into the cause of the complete failure of the AccuVote-OS memory cards, at an unacceptable rate. <See our earlier coverage>. <The Research Report>

[W]e determined the time interval from the instant when a battery warning is issued by the AccuVote to the point when the battery does not have enough voltage to retain data on the memory card.We show that such interval is about 2 weeks. Thus timely warnings cannot be provided to protect against battery discharge and loss of data during the election process…

Recommendations

we determined the time interval from the instant when a battery warning is issued by the AccuVote to the point when the battery does not have enough voltage to retain data on the memory card. We show that such interval is about 2 weeks. Thus timely warnings cannot be provided to protect against battery discharge and loss of data during the election process…

The lifetime of the Energizer battery, when its voltage remains above the 2V needed for data retention in standby mode, at that current load, according to its datasheet [9] is 9,000 hours or approximately one year.

Given that it is possible that a memory card is used for elections once a year, it leads us to the same conclusion: For each election, a decision would be made, whether or not to replace the batteries for this election. The decision would be based on the amount of time since the batteries were last replaced and on the estimate of the service life of the battery (e.g., using the procedure at the end of the previous section).

Discussing the challenge with Dr. Shvartsman at the workshop, it seems that replacing the batteries is more complicated than might be assumed. The battery is under the memory card label, so replacement includes completely removing all remnants of the old label then preparing and placing a new label on the memory card. Shvartsman estimated the replacement cost, including labor, may be on the order of $10 per memory card.

We suggest that $10 per year per card is well worth avoiding most of the problems associated with the current huge, unacceptable failure rate. The total cost would be about $40,000 per year, somewhere in the range of $0.025 per ballot cast. To put this in context, ballot printing is about $0.45 per ballot and election costs average in the range of $5.00 to $8.00 per ballot cast. We also suggest the costs of mitigating the problems should be born by the manufacturer and/or distributor since the ultimate cause is the inadequate design of the memory cards for their intended purpose.

PS: Dr. Shrvartsman is mentioned prominently in an article posted at Verified Voting: Voting Technology Research Gets In-Depth <read>

No-Excuse Absentee Voting – Unintended Consequences

As the Connecticut legislature, Secretary of the State candidates, and our current Secretary of the State contemplate following Florida’s lead in expanding mail-in voting, including considering no-excuse absentee voting, we have this cautionary tale from Florida.
This is another fast-food-like voting issue. We like no excuse absentee voting, just like we enjoy fast, fatty food – the problem is that they both have unintended consequences. Yet, most voters and many eaters are not aware of the known risks.

This is another fast-food-like voting issue. We like no excuse absentee voting, just like we enjoy fast, fatty food – the problem is that they both have unintended consequences. Yet, most voters and many eaters are not aware of the known risks.

Voting by mail has increased in popularity, but has unintended consequences <read>
Absentee voters have changed the election cycle

By: Brendan McLaughlin

TAMPA – Absentee ballots are flying off the presses and into people’s homes in record numbers. Hillsborough county will send out possibly four times more ballots than they did just ten years ago.

A main reason according to Hillsborough County’s election chief of staff, Craig Latimer is convenience.

“In today’s world people are busy. They may not be able to take time off to be at the polls on Election Day” said Latimer.

Florida’s rules for absentee voting were loosened in 2000 after the close and chaotic presidential race of that year. Since then every county in the Bay Area has seen dramatic increases in the number of those voting by mail.

USF political science professor, Susan MacManus says candidates and their campaigns like and encourage early voting.

“It does lock in voters early and let’s you spend the last day of the campaign micro targeting those who haven’t yet voted” said MacManus.

Absentee voting by mail has its risks for candidates and voters. The method is considered more vulnerable to mischief and outright fraud. In 2009, voters in a special State Senate election were persuaded to send their ballots to a private mail box instead of the elections office in an apparent attempt to void their votes. But more often the problem is human error.

In 2008, the Hillsborough elections office under then supervisor, Buddy Johnson misplaced 846 absentee ballots. They were found in an office more than a week after the election. Craig Latimer points out that since he took over as chief of staff changes have been made.

“Daily those ballots are brought to this office and stored in a secure area under surveillance camera twenty four hours a day. That can’t happen again” promised Latimer.

Voters also take a risk in returning their absentee ballots too early because a lot can happen in the last days of a campaign. MacManus says the downside for the voter is if they vote early via absentee or early voting and something dramatic breaks toward the end of the campaign, they can’t change their mind.

Here is a recent quote from our current Secretary of the State, from the Litchfield County Times: <read>

Ms. Bysiewicz said she also would “love” to see early voting in Connecticut, in which a ballot is mailed to voters weeks before the election and they can complete it and then submit the ballot to their local town hall.

Reports have indicated that it has boosted turnout and parents will talk to their children about how they plan to vote.

Ms. Bysiewicz said it produced positive results in Florida and North Carolina during the 2008 presidential election.

It is interesting to contemplate Connecticut following Florida’s lead in this area when the risks are known. If we do go this way, there truly will be noexcuse for unintended consequences.

There other reasons to be concerned with large scale absentee voting, along with frequent tales of problems across the country, see recent posts here, here, and here.

Update: 8/23/2010 – Early Voting expensive in Florida <read>

according to Florida’s Division of Elections, statewide, only 361,615 people took advantage of the two week early voting period.

That’s just a little bit more than 3% of all registered voters. That’s right 3.25% to be exact…

When you break it down by the tax dollars needed to man these locations. Tax payers pay between $35 and $56 dollars per voter for early voting or an average of $21.29 a voter county wide.

In Broward County it breaks down to $33.16 per voter for early voting.

In Monroe County, 1599 voters took advantage of early voting, costing a total of $15,640, or $9.78 per voter.

How’s that votie integrity thing goin’ for us?

Following the mainstream media reports on Tuesday’s elections we learn: Two CEO-Business-Women won CA Republican Primaries. Most incumbents are in trouble. Yet, in Arkansas out-of-state-far-left-and-labor-supported Bill Halter was defeated by incumbent Sen Blanche Lincoln. [Apparently Lincoln had no out-of-state support or significant funders of note].

From reading local papers and watching news channels we get the impression that there were no election glitches to worry about either.

Here at CTVotersCount we rely on the Internet for our news, particularly the venerable VotingNews, BradBlog, and Election Line. Unlike the mainstream media, they dug just a little deeper, providing national coverage of local news and even personally probing the election systems democracy depends on. These are some of their stories; any resemblance to fiction is purely a consequence of reality:

LOS ANGELES

Apparently America’s largest voting jurisdiction is not able to handle the equipment they employ. Brad Friedman continued his quest to vote like voters with disabilities [When they do vote, apparently they must avoid the InkaVote system]. This time he noted 6 failures in his two and one-half hour attempt to vote on Tuesday:

Two years ago, in June of ’08, the ES&S “InkaVote Plus” e-vote system in Los Angeles County misprinted 4 out of 12 of my own votes.

Today, as I tried to vote on the same system, the failure was even worse. Incredibly. And not just because I cover issues of Election Integrity for a “living.”

I spent more than two and a half hours not casting a vote on the system before eventually I, the poll workers, and, apparently, the folks at the L.A. County Registrar’s central help desk call center, simply gave up. A complete and total failure of the e-voting system for disabled voters in the nation’s largest voting jurisdiction. Again. On a system the county spent millions to buy in order to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) boondoggle by allowing disabled voters to cast their votes independently. <read>

Our Co-Founder, Denise Weeks, had a suggestion that might cure the problem: Require that the leaders in Washington that passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) be required to vote in the way that voters with disabilities are “Helped” by the Act.

ARKANSAS

Voters filed suit against Garland Co Arkansas. Garland Co had 2nd highest turnout yet voters were turned away as polling places were cut from 40 to 2. Those changes were illegal says SOS. “They’ve tried this before,” said attorney Ben Hooten who filed lawsuit on behalf of disenfranchised voters. <read>

Not just anywhere, but where the losing candidate was strong. To save the county money, yet the state pays:

Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter who is challenging Sen. Blanche Lincoln in today’s Democratic primary runoff has a beef with state election officials.

The Halter campaign complained that Garland County – the county seat is Hot Springs, and it’s one of Halter’s strongholds in the primary — had opened only two polling stations to serve several thousand voters, creating long lines and parking woes at points during the day.

Natasha Naragon, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Secretary of State, said Garland County election officials failed to notify voters of the reduced number of polling stations, as required by state law. Though a local official told the Arkansas press that he had made the decision to save money, Naragon said the state bears all costs for primary and runoff elections.

Garland County did allow early voting at the two polling stations for the week leading up to Tuesday’s runoff, as did counties across the state. <read>

Earlier Brad had noticed some odd results in Arkansas in the original primary:

What’s going on in Monroe County, Arkansas?

We’ve been looking at their May 18 “Super-ish Tuesday” election night numbers on the AR Secretary of State’s website (Monroe County doesn’t have its own public election results website) since the night of the election, and the posted results can only be described as going from “impossible” on the day after the election, to possible but still entirely inexplicable…

The original tip-off to concerns about Monroe County’s results came when on May 19th, the day after the election, the state’s SoS website showed a total of 3,393 out of the county’s 5,252 registered voters had cast ballots — a rather impressive 64.60% turnout! But not “impossible.”…

Notice all of the precincts, in both the R and D Senate races, where the exact same number of votes were cast for each candidate.

For example, in the Dem results, there are four different precincts where 4 voted for Morrison, 9 voted for Lincoln and 7 voted for Halter. Not “impossible,” but curious. On the Republican side, some of the very same precincts also had identical numbers for each of the eight candidates, and a few more had nearly identical numbers. A few of the precincts also reported what appeared to be the exact same percentages for each candidate as seen in the precincts with duplicated numbers, but where the number of votes is simply doubled. All still not “impossible,” but certainly getting much more improbable. <read and view the data>

NEW JERSEY

The “Garden State” grows more than vegetables and oil refineries. It has one of the finest election integrity investigative teams at Princeton University. Professor Ed Felton checked out the security of several voting machines the night before the election, including the one he voted on the next day. With any luck it managed to count his vote, and perhaps even counted it accurately:

It’s Election Day in New Jersey. Longtime readers know that in advance of elections I visit polling places in Princeton, looking for voting machines left unattended, where they are vulnerable to tampering. In the past I have always found unattended machines in multiple polling places.

I hoped this time would be different, given that Judge Feinberg, in her ruling on the New Jersey voting machine case, urged the state not to leave voting machines unattended in public.

Despite the judge’s ruling, I found voting machines unattended in three of the four Princeton polling places I visited on Sunday and Monday. Here are my photos from three polling places. <read/view>

We hate to think it takes a Professor of Computer Science to check these things, or that it would take a science reporter to translate the implications to the public. What else could possibly happen that would cause concerns about voting in New Jersey?

PATERSON — City Council candidate Kenneth McDaniel is asking the state to investigate what he alleges are election irregularities and possible voter fraud surrounding 49 mail-in ballots that appeared last week before a recount of the May 11 municipal elections.

McDaniel appealed in writing to state Attorney General Paula M. Dow to investigate the recount after a state judge on June 2 decided to include the 49 ballots that a Board of Elections administrator said were discovered the day before.

Judge Thomas F. Brogan had ordered that the ballots be included in the recount, saying he did not want to disenfranchise voters. The decision reversed unofficial election results in which McDaniel defeated incumbent Rigo Rodriguez for the at-large council seat by six votes. The 49 ballots – 47 of which were ruled valid — made the final count 5,239 to 5,198, giving Rodriguez a 41-vote victory…

“Unfortunately, I was not provided with the time one would require to investigate a phenomenon of this magnitude; the sudden and unfathomable, untimely appearance of ballots cast for one candidate in a 10-candidate race, only after said candidate petitioned the court for a recount and recheck,” McDaniel wrote in his letter to Dow…

McDaniel said the fact that all the found ballots were delivered to the Board of Elections office by three of Rodriguez’s supporters raises suspicions about their “chain of custody, security and validity.” <read>

We ask, “Just how strange is it that the ballots delivered by a candidate’s supporters would mostly be votes for that candidate?”

We could go on, but you can read more for yourself at: VotingNews, BradBlog, or Election Line. As Hartford voter, Mark Twain said “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”

Could things get dramatically worse for our Democracy? Yes, but we will leave that story for another day.

Bridgeport Registrars: Dustup, Charges, Investigation

“What started out as an investigation into a missing voter registration card a few months ago ultimately led to the unveiling of 50 voter registration cards stashed away in a desk drawer for years.”

CTPost: Registrar of Voters office: Missing cards, gossip and deputy fired <read>

What started out as an investigation into a missing voter registration card a few months ago ultimately led to the unveiling of 50 voter registration cards stashed away in a desk drawer for years.

Republican Registrar of Voters Joseph Borges said he called an office meeting in late April to discuss the party affiliation change of part-time machine technician Jose Morales’ from unaffiliated to Republican.

Borges said he was concerned that Deputy Republican Registrar Theresa Pavia had changed Morales’ voter affiliation in order for the technician to qualify as her deputy chief if Pavia is elected to the position of Republican registrar in November.

Pavia, who makes roughly $48,000 a year as deputy registrar, won her party’s nomination last month for the position Borges plans to vacate once his term ends. Borges, who earns an annual salary of about $63,000, said former party chair Linda Grace has taken out petitions to challenge Pavia…

The Republican registrar then responded by firing his deputy, whom he had appointed four years earlier upon his election to the position. “I let her go because of her attitude and her saying I disliked her,” he said. “I don’t need anybody watching my back who doesn’t trust me.”

Rosenberg said his client told him she thinks she was fired not because of the argument but because an hour prior to the meeting she had given Borges paperwork requesting time off under the Federal Medical Leave Act because her husband is ill. Borges claimed he never saw the paperwork.

Before Pavia left the office, though, she dropped a bombshell. She presented both Borges and Democratic Registrar Santa Ayala a manila envelope containing 50 voter registration cards that she said contained errors made by Ayala and had been sitting in her desk drawer for years.

Two years ago Borges challenged the activities of ACORN in Bridgeport.

Update: 8/24/2010: Connecticut Post: Hearing finds registrar fired with ‘no evidence’ <read>

Absentee/Early Voting Method: Raise Questions and Risks

Another example from Arizona raises questions about the potential risks to integrity inherent in mail-in voting, unlimited absentee voting, and early voting by means similar to absentee voting. This is also similar to the method of election day registration voting proposed in Connecticut this year.

Another example from Arizona raises questions about the potential risks to integrity inherent in mail-in voting, unlimited absentee voting, and early voting by means similar to absentee voting. This is also similar to the method of voting for election day registration voting proposed in Connecticut this year.

From the YumaSun:

State calls for San Luis vote probe <read>

Smith: Recorder should investigate vote <read>

The basic question:

The issue of possible voter fraud became public with the release Wednesday of a letter Bennett had sent to Smith dated May 4 asking the county attorney to investigate irregularities in the San Luis primary election on March 9. His concern rose from the rejection of nearly 10 percent of early ballots for that election because they had signatures that didn’t match those of the registered voters.

Bennett’s letter stated: “Based on the extraordinary rejection rates alone and irrespective of the anecdotal stories, I believe that reasonable cause exists that voter fraud occurred in San Luis in the March 2010 election. I ask that your office investigate these irregularities.”

On the surface this seems like a lot of votes to be rejected based on mismatched signatures, raising several questions:

Were election officials too cautious in rejecting ballots?
Do we expect too much of officials who are not trained in handwriting recognition?
Were there really that many wrong signatures/forgeries? Is there some kind of fraud occurring?
If there was no fraud, then we must assume that most of the rejected ballots represent voters who intended to vote and are now disenfranchised.

On the other hand do we usually have too few ballots rejected? Can we really expect election officials to reliably perform handwriting analysis and comparison?

More critical information from the Secretary of State’s information:

Of the total 2,983 ballots cast in the San Luis election, 1,477 were by early ballots. And of those, 143 ballots were rejected because they had signatures that didn’t match the registered voters’, said Jim Drake, assistant secretary of state.

That’s an error rate of nearly 10 percent, he noted.

“The numbers were so extraordinary,” he told the Yuma Sun Wednesday. “Just looking at the raw numbers, something is amiss in the community. We based our request on just the numbers.”

In comparison, in the May 2008 election in El Mirage, there were 1,578 early ballots cast; only 18 were rejected because of bad signatures. This equates to a rejection rate of only 1.14 percent, Drake said.

In another comparison, in a March election in Maricopa County (excepting El Mirage and Guadalupe), 155,605 early ballots were returned, with only 46 rejected for bad signatures – a rejection rate of 0.03 percent.

“As you can see from these figures, something is terribly amiss in San Luis,” Secretary of State Ken Bennett wrote in a letter dated May 4 to Yuma County Attorney Jon Smith.

The 10% is extreme for the state. It also represents almost 5% of the votes in the election.

This might have gone undetected, but for added scrutiny based on earlier charges of fraud:

The spotlight was placed on the election when Bennett, the state’s top election official, and two members of his staff observed the San Luis election.

The visit was prompted by a previously circulated letter signed by Guillermina Fuentes claiming she had observed early ballots being destroyed in the 2006 municipal election.

Fuentes was the coordinator for incumbent Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla’s re-election bid in March, but in 2006 she was a backer of then-City Councilwoman Nieves Riedel, who lost that year’s mayoral race to Escamilla.

In the letter circulated earlier this year, Fuentes alleged that Riedel had opened early ballots that voters entrusted her to deliver to county officials who were conducting the 2006 election under contract with the city of San Luis. Any of the opened ballots that were for Riedel were delivered to the county, the letter alleged, but any for Escamilla were trashed.

The reasons we are conditionally opposed to no-excuse absentee balloting and mail-in balloting are the risks of fraud, loss of voter anonymity, and the level of possible disenfranchisement. Another recent story of absentee ballot questions from Dallas.

Update 7/27/2010: Another Tale from CA: DA probes voter fraud allegations in Calif. city <read>

District attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison said her office was looking into claims that off-duty Bell police officers were recruited to distribute absentee ballots in last year’s election and tell people which candidates to vote for.

It was only one of several allegations the district attorney is looking into in the city where three top officials resigned last week after it was disclosed they were being paid salaries totaling about $1.6 million a year…

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that a retired Bell police sergeant had filed a lawsuit claiming off-duty city police officers were recruited to distribute absentee ballots in last year’s election and tell people which candidates to vote for.

One Bell resident, Hugo Herrera, told The Associated Press his mother was among those approached by an officer who asked if she would sign a paper showing her support for Hernandez.

When she got to her polling place and attempted to vote, Herrera said, she was told the paper she had signed was actually an absentee ballot. She asked that the ballot be disallowed and that she be allowed to vote for another candidate, adding she never really supported Hernandez but just wanted the officer to go away.

DA probes voter fraud allegations in Calif. city

Update 8/11/2010: Ballot blunder could keep votes from counting; envelope design to blame

Florida another story of voters potentially disenfranchised by voting absentee: <read>

LEE COUNTY, Fla. – A ballot blunder could keep your vote from counting in the upcoming primary election. A new envelope design is forcing the return of some absentee ballots back to Lee County voters. They should be going to election’s officials for processing.

The tiny bar code at the top of the ballot return envelopes is behind the mess. Mail sorting machines are reading the envelope’s return bar code, instead of it’s destination… potentially leaving some absentee ballots in limbo.

Phil Douglas didn’t think twice about sending off his absentee ballot in the mail last week.

“I signed the ballot on the back, I took it to the Estero post office and low and behold, on Monday I got it back!” Douglas said Wednesday.

Frustrated and confused, Douglas tried to send his vote again, taking his ballot to the Three Oaks Parkway post office… only to find it returned to his mailbox for the second time in a week.

“The first thing that came to mind was, hey, this can’t happen. But it did,” Douglas said.

It could be happening across Lee County. Over 40,000 absentee ballots were requested, and all sent out with the same faulty return envelope design. Lee County Elections officials are working with USPS on the problem. Still, the ballot blunder is a sorespot for many, who are trying to make their vote count in the upcoming election.

West Haven Registrar’s Actions Under Scrutiny

The complaints were filed by Charles Marino, former Democratic registrar of voters, and Deborah Evangelista, who worked 16 years as administrative assistant in the registrar’s office before Hufcut took office…Animosity between Hufcut and Marino goes back to 2008, when Hufcut unseated Marino as Democratic registrar in a heated primary election.

New Haven Register: State probing actions of W. Haven registrar <read>

WEST HAVEN — The state is investigating two election-violation complaints stemming from the March 2 Democratic Town Committee primary and subsequent recounts.

Nancy Nicolescu, spokeswoman for the state Election Enforcement Commission, confirmed the commission is reviewing two complaints against Democratic Registrar of Voters Michelle Hufcut. At a March 24 meeting, the commission approved investigatory subpoenas in the case, which authorized the state to seize materials related to the election in question.

The complaints were filed by Charles Marino, former Democratic registrar of voters, and Deborah Evangelista, who worked 16 years as administrative assistant in the registrar’s office before Hufcut took office.

Hufcut Tuesday confirmed the state came in this month and seized ballots and other election materials as part of the investigation. Regarding the complaints, Hufcut dismissed them as politically motivated.

“I don’t think there is any validity. I think it is their attempt to try to discredit me. I think once the state is finished with their investigation, I’ll be vindicated,” Hufcut said.

Evangelista said she and Marino filed the complaints because they were appalled by Hufcut’s handling of the election and recounts.

“It was a fiasco,” Evangelista said…

Animosity between Hufcut and Marino goes back to 2008, when Hufcut unseated Marino as Democratic registrar in a heated primary election. Hufcut at the time decided to challenge Marino after she read a University of Connecticut report that uncovered dead people on statewide voter registration lists, including West Haven.

We tend to go along with that last statement. We recall the controversy involving the two Registrars and the newly elected Hufcut at the November 2008 election, which also involved the Secretary of the State and her advice to Hufcut.

Fox Overseeing Chicken Coops – Federal Election Commission Edition

“Caroline Hunter lied to a federal judge about illegal vote caging by the RNC. She now sits on the Federal Election Commission where she continues to do everything possible to deprive Americans of the right to vote. We cannot allow someone like that to practice law. We are calling for her to step down from the FEC and if she does not, to be removed.

Update 4/21/2010: In defense of Caroline Hunter <read>

********

Velvet Revolution files Complaint To Disbar FEC Commissioner Caroline Hunter For False Testimony In Voting Caging Lawsuit <read>

“Caroline Hunter lied to a federal judge about illegal vote caging by the RNC. She now sits on the Federal Election Commission where she continues to do everything possible to deprive Americans of the right to vote. We cannot allow someone like that to practice law. We are calling for her to step down from the FEC and if she does not, to be removed.

Velvet Revolution references the details on Raw Story: FEC commissioner helped RNC conceal role in 2004 vote suppression <read>

In her affidavit , submitted under penalty of perjury, Hunter claims “the RNC is not initiating, controlling, directing, or funding any programs of ‘voter challenges’ … including the effort by the Ohio Republican Party to challenge voter registrations in Ohio.”

“Although representatives of the RNC were involved in the emails discussing the possibility of the challenges described above,” she continues, “the RNC has not initiated any challenges to the absentee ballots in Ohio or in any other state.”.

Burchfield tells the court that Hunter’s affidavit is proof the RNC isn’t violating the decree. Rather, he says, her statement demonstrates the party was diligent to avoid “initiating, controlling, directing or funding” any voter challenger programs….

“Miss Hunter’s information and belief,” he[Judge Debevoise] concludes, “is belied by the evidence developed during the brief period of discovery.”…

They also made clear that this was not a statement by a lawyer in open court to the judge, but rather an affidavit signed under oath by a witness in the case for one of the parties.

“If a lawyer makes a misleading statement in sworn testimony to the court,” said Hebert,[executive director at the Campaign Legal Center] “and then the court not only finds that the statement was misleading but it turns out to be ‘belied’ by the actual facts in the case, I think a state bar would be interested in that.”

“It could be viewed as a serious ethical breach for an attorney, one that might warrant a review by the state bar in which she’s accredited and may be grounds for disbarment,” Hebert continued.

RoundUp: Registrar Error or Election Fraud? – Saving $$$ or Empowering Voters?

Our Editorial: One clear theme in Connecticut this year is saving money. That is certainly an important goal, but the value delivered for expenditures and the value lost in the name of savings should be recognized and considered. Should we stop inspecting highways, bridges, school buses, and buildings because it costs money? Or should we continue because it protects the value of our investment in infrastructure and saves lives? Should we save on election audits and voting? Or should we further empower voters and strengthen voting integrity because we value fair elections and a participatory democracy?

We are likely to have several busy news days over the next few weeks as the General Assembly considers changes to the election laws and the 2010 election heads towards the May party conventions.

Court Rules In Hartford Primary

One slate in Hartford recently accused a registrar of illegally certifying another slate. There is also a potential conflict of interest (probably legal) given that the registrar and two of her relatives are on the slate <earlier coverage> Now a court has ruled the slate should be removed from the ballot, yet because of an appeal the election will go forward with both slates on the ballot. <Courant Article>

“The court has made a finding that there are names on the ballot that do not belong there” [Plaintiffs’ Attorney] Sweeney said…But [Hartford Corporation Counsel] Rose argued that the case boiled down to “an error by the registrar” and said that the court did not have the authority to remove the names from the ballot. [Judge] Peck said she decided not to terminate the stay because if her ruling is eventually overturned, the election would have already been held.

Courant Proposes Cost Savings At The Expense Of Voters

Also today, the Courant has an editorial proposing centralized voting and no excuse absentee voting to save money in elections: Would ‘Vote Centers’ Work? <read> The article touts success in Indiana in saving money. The focus of the editorial is on saving money, but likely at the expense of voter convenience:

Voting centers, an alternative to precinct-based elections, are usually set up in strategic locations and save money because they require fewer workers and voting machines. Centralized electronic voting records are used to ensure security. In some places, centers open before Election Day for early voting. Ideally, vote centers will give local election officials the flexibility to anticipate election turnout and modify the number of locations and the level of staffing…

If the centers have to be open for weeks before the election with paid staff, that might eliminate the savings. If they were only open on Election Day, that might cause crowding that would discourage voting or make it difficult for workers to assist older or handicapped voters. The change in location could inconvenience voters who travel by public transportation…

Even with these caveats, the idea should receive a public airing. We are looking at a massive budget deficit. If regional election centers will save some money, they should be on the table. Perhaps the place to start is with a good idea Ms. Bysiewicz put forward last year, “no excuse” absentee ballots.

We note that these are not early voting centers that add to the convenience of voters, they are a few polling places replacing many at the expense of voter convenience, especially for those dependent on public transportation: From an article reporting the results in Indiana – the savings based on dramatically consolidating polling places: <read>

Vote centers allow ballots to be cast at any county voting location instead of at home precincts. The Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute reported recently the centers would save every county money. Tippecanoe, Cass and Wayne counties have been piloting the idea.

House Democrats aren’t buying the plan. House Elections Chairman Rep. Kreg Battles of Vincennes wants more study because of questions over electronic poll books, security and other matters.

A Porter County Commissioners task force study in 2009 found the cost savings to taxpayers could climb as high as $200,000 per year. The study showed the county’s poll worker numbers would drop from 640 to about 120.

Vote centers also would mean fewer voting machines would be needed. They cost about $4,000 each and need to be replaced every 10 years.

Vote centers would be an added convenience for citizens who would have the choice of voting near work, home or their child’s school. The bill should pass.

Depending on where they work, live, and their children go to school. Its hard to imagine that dramatically less polling places would leave many voters closer to the polls.

As we have stated many times we are opposed to the expansion of absentee voting for any purpose. It disenfranchises voters without their knowledge and risks voting integrity.

Our Testimony On A Flawed Bill

Yesterday we testified to the General Administration and Elections Committee on a bill for Election Day Registration in Connecticut. We support Election Day Registration and testified in favor of the original bill submitted last year. Over the course of the year that bill was changed to a form of absentee voting with little safeguards. This year that bill has been resurrected. I testified in favor of the concept and against the details in the bill. Once again the motivation is to provide an image of voter empowerment with a focus on saving money and the convenience of election officials: <H.B.5321> <Testimony>

I support the good intentions and concepts behind H.B.5321, yet I have serious concerns with the specific approaches in the current bill.

I am generally opposed to the expansion of absentee balloting for any purpose. Absentee ballots have security and integrity risks not associated with regular voting. Election day registration may represent over 10% of the votes in an election. Beyond risks to integrity, in every election absentee voters are disenfranchised without their knowledge in two ways:

First, they may make a simple mistake in following procedures and have their ballot rejected.

Second, voters do not have the opportunity to revote their ballot if by mistake they overvote.

It would serve the voters of Connecticut much better if Election Day Registration (or EDR) were available at each polling place as is the case in five (5) of the six (6) states with EDR as of 2006. Connecticut could follow the examples of Maine, New Hampshire, or Minnesota. We are piloting a less than adequate system, I presume because of concerns with cost and integrity. I recall testimony before the GAE demonstrating the integrity and effectiveness of polling place EDR in Maine.

I would also recommend that any pilot program include a requirement for independent objective analysis with reporting back to the Legislature, rather than relying only on feedback from election officials. When Secretary Bysiewicz chose new election equipment in 2006, she included an independent professional analysis involving citizen evaluation, along with focus groups of citizens and election officials. Without that study we might well have doubled our costs and be voting today on inadequate touch screen voting equipment.

There are several ways in which polling place EDR could be accomplished. Any EDR method will increase some election day costs, yet there would also be savings in other election day and pre-election day costs.

Major improvements to the bill would include:

Requiring voting booths, a ballot box tender, and ballot clerks in central EDR locations to provide the opportunity for a smooth, secure voting process, along with a clear opportunity for voters to correct errors on their ballot.

Allowing single polling place towns to provide EDR in the same building as the polling place, with voters voting by optical scanner as usual.

Requiring towns with central count absentee ballot locations to use an optical scanner for EDR ballots, rather than the using the “absentee ballot” like process.

In summary, the focus should be on enfranchising voters and encouraging participation, while maintaining voting integrity.

We note no testimony in public in favor of the bill’s absentee-like mechanisms for voting. Perhaps some was submitted on paper.

Our Editorial:

One clear theme in Connecticut this year is saving money. That is certainly an important goal, but the value delivered for expenditures and the value lost in the name of savings should be recognized and considered. Should we stop inspecting highways, bridges, school buses, and buildings because it costs money? Or should we continue because it protects the value of our investment in infrastructure and saves lives? Should we save on election audits and voting? Or should we further empower voters and strengthen voting integrity because we value fair elections and a participatory democracy?

Insider Fraud In Kentucky

The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their elections, then changing their choices…White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their vote to make sure they cast ballots for the candidates who had paid.

We have blogged in the past about the fuzzy line between retail and wholesale vote fraud. A story from Kentucky describes alleged, long-standing, fraud by officials. In this case the fraud may have been limited in scope, but so were the elections which might well have been decided by skulduggery. <read>

Wanda White testified that Clerk Freddy Thompson — the county’s chief election officer — helped show her how to manipulate voting machines along with Charles Wayne Jones, the Democratic election commissioner.

The scheme involved duping people to walk away from the voting computer before they had finished their elections, then changing their choices, said White, the Democratic judge in a precinct in Manchester.

White said she stole more than 100 votes that election.

“It was easy done,” she said.

White said she also went into the booth with people who had sold their vote to make sure they cast ballots for the candidates who had paid.

White testified Friday in the continuing trial of eight Clay County residents who allegedly took part in a scheme to rig elections over several years…

The machines had a “Vote” button that people could push to review their choices, then a second button they had to push to record the choices and finish voting.

At Maricle’s direction, she went to Stivers, who taught her about distracting voters so they would leave the machine after pushing the review button, but before they’d recorded their choices, White said.

Thompson and Jones used a voting machine to show her and Charles “Dobber” Weaver how to change votes, White said.

White said they did that at the clerk’s office after legitimate training for all election workers. She and Weaver stayed late to learn how to manipulate the machines, White said.

Weaver, then the Manchester fire chief, was the Republican judge in the precinct where White was the Democratic judge in May 2006.

Let us point out that it is questionable to call this electronic voting fraud. It is two schemes, one made possible by confusing touch screen machines. That scheme would work even if the touch screen had a “voter verified” paper record. However, the other scheme, watching people vote to verify they did what they were paid to do, would work just as well with voter verified paper ballots, no matter how they are counted.

Registrar of Voters suit: Alleged to have fudged petitions for herself and relatives

Hartford has three Registrars of Voters: Democratic, Republican, and Working Families Party. Apparently that is hardly enough when each registrar is responsible for their own party’s primary. There is a name for this in Hartford: Business as Usual.

Courant story: Town Committee Candidates File Suit Against Hartford Registrar Of Voters <read>

A group of candidates for the 5th district [Hartford] Democratic Town Committee has filed a lawsuit against Hartford’s Democratic registrar of voters, who also happens to be a member of the opposing slate of candidates.

The suit alleges that Olga Iris Vazquez accepted and submitted petition signatures for her slate that were not properly completed by circulators. The suit also alleges that when Vazquez realized that some of the petitions were not properly completed, she had a deputy registrar remove them from the city and town clerk’s office to be completed — after the deadline for submission had passed. The suit also names Garey Coleman, deputy registrar, and John Bazzano, city and town clerk.

The suit says that because some of the signatures are improper, the Vazquez slate had 268 valid signatures, rather than the 323 necessary to have the slate placed on the March 2 primary ballot. The suit alleges that Vazquez violated state statutes by accepting incomplete petitions and seeks to have them declared invalid. The suit also seeks to have Vazquez’s slate, which includes her husband, Radames Vazquez, and her mother-in-law, Juanita Giles, declared unqualified to run in the March town committee primary because of its failure to file the necessary number of signatures by the 4 p.m. Jan. 27 deadline.

Juanita Giles is the wife of Abraham Giles, a longtime city political operative and former state representative, who recently was associated with the altering of a census employment brochure to promote Vazquez’ town committee slate. A complaint was filed with the State Elections Enforcement Commission about the altered brochure, and it also was sent to the state’s attorney’s office.

There is a name for this in Hartford: Business as Usual. From the article:

Last month, a challenge slate in the 4th district also filed a complaint alleging that Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez and Chief of Police Daryl K. Roberts used their authority to deny members of one slate access to housing complexes in the city to gather signatures, while circulators from another slate were given access. Perez and Roberts denied any involvement…

Vazquez paid a $500 fine in 2004 when the state Elections Enforcement Commission determined that her office had accepted invalid petition signatures.

Also in the Courant today is a column by Helen Ubinas demonstrating the sad example of how Hartford City Hall celebrates Black History Month with sad examples of what passes for leadership, More Than A Few Dubious Honorees In Hartford’s Black History Month Exhibit <read>

honored among real Hartford heroes is the longtime Democratic ward boss who for years made or broke political aspirations with a house full of mysterious registered voters and who’s long lined his pockets with questionable parking lot deals. Just recently, he was arrested alongside Mayor Eddie Perez, who was charged with attempted extortion from a private developer for the benefit of his political pal Giles….

So, let’s just take the short tour.

That’s Veronica Airey-Wilson, the Republican councilwoman who was arrested for allegedly fabricating evidence to show that she had paid for work done on her home by the same city contractor from whom Perez is accused of getting discounted home repairs.

Those two guys over there are Russell Williams, one-time head of the Greater Hartford branch of the NAACP, and former Urban League of Greater Hartford CEO James Willingham. Both men cashed in big after supporting the company that was awarded the city schools’ multimillion-dollar construction project.

Makes you think they should change the name of the exhibit from “Honoring our Own” to “Getting Yours,” doesn’t it?

And that honking portrait is of Prenzina Holloway, who four years ago was fined $10,000 by state election officials for absentee ballot fraud. She paid a fraction of that fine after crying poor, then turned around and bought a used $31,727 Hummer she didn’t pay taxes on, despite drawing a city paycheck in the — wait for it — registrars of voters office.

But then, those details are bound to be overlooked when your daughter is the city council’s Democratic majority leader who is also the program’s one-woman nominating committee.

That is, until a couple of years ago, when rJo Winch expanded the committee to include herself, her mother and her sister-in-law.

CTVotersCount readers may recall that Hartford has three Registrars of Voters: Democratic, Republican, and Working Families Party. Apparently that is hardly enough when each registrar is responsible for their own party’s primary.