Category: Skulduggery and Errors

For Those Who Long For Lever Machines

Update: Bloomberg Charges ‘Fraud’ in NYC Primary, But Believes ‘No Legal Issue at Stake’  <Brad Blog Summary>

So if we have all of that straight, the NYC Mayor’s office confirmed they believe there was “fraud” at work in the city’s Primary Election, but don’t believe there are any “legal issues at stake.” Interesting position…

How the anti-Election Integrity folks who control the front page at the Daily Kos will have to twist and contort themselves to cover this news is beyond us

Original Post: Continue reading “For Those Who Long For Lever Machines”

Two Companies’ False Statements – Should Both Be Of Concern?

Company #1 keeps some of us warm: Breaks the law and hides information from consumers.

Company #2 is the state’s sole source for maintaining our democracy: Previously under SEC and DOJ investigation, now admits hiding financial woes.

This is the second time in recent months that utilities have been caught red handed and the second time we note the irony in voting systems suppliers getting a pass.

#1 Connecticut Natural Gas

The Hartford Courant has been covering the story of improper billing by CNG, now getting scrutiny from the Attorney General and the DPUC. <read>

Under increasing public pressure and a looming public investigation, Connecticut Natural Gas officials admitted Monday that they had sent fabricated bills to 2,600 customers in 13 central Connecticut towns.

In a written report to state public utility regulators, CNG officials also admitted that they have known about the problem — caused by three meter readers making up low readings in October and November — since mid-January…

CNG said in the cover letter accompanying its five-page filing that it notified the DPUC on Feb. 1 about the problem — the day after I called the company to tell them I was writing a column.

State regulators, however, failed to disclose that conversation to me, or the public. CNG said in its cover letter it was simply told to file a written report…

“There needs to be a dramatic lesson” taught, Blumenthal said. He said CNG’s letter smacks of “Oops, you caught us and now we will follow the law. That is business as usual.”

“This is one of the more astonishing aspects of this [CNG] communication,” said state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, adding that someone should investigate “what the DPUC knew, when it knew it and what it did about it.”

#2 Diebold Premier

Brad Blog has the latest installment on Diebold Election Systems Premier Election Solutions woes. The company we have contracted for our voting systems, already under investigation by the SEC and DOJ, now admits to overstating revenue by a mere 300% – to lay off 800 employees. <read>

  • What will happen to our election systems if Premier cannot support them or goes bankurpt, and cannot support LHS in meeting Diebold’s obligations?
  • Can we expect memory card quality control to increase as Premier sheds employees?
  • Is it possible that Premier is in breech of paragraph 2.3 of its contract, as suggested by one advocate at last night’s GAE public hearing in Norwich?
  • Should the CT DAS undertake its own audit of Premier under the provisions of paragraph 7 of the contract.
  • Should our constitutional officers in Connecticut be concerned?
[Premier/Diebold] admitted last week that they had over-estimated revenues of their election system division by more than 300%.As well, the company announced they will soon be laying off 5% of their full-time global workforce. The restatement of revenues comes as part of a deal worked out with the SEC, which continues its ongoing investigation into the financial practices of the once-great, now-disgraced company. Diebold also acknowledges that they are still being investigated by the DOJ, although the reasons and details of that particular investigation remain undisclosed at this time…

The 50% decrease in the company’s share price began just after a number of company executives sold off several thousand shares of stock, all on the same day in August of last year…

According to the statement, the earlier 2007 estimate for revenue from their election division was $185 to $215 million. The newly revised estimate for 2007 election business is just $61 million, revealing their original numbers were inflated by 300-350%.

The admission also reveals that estimated election system revenue for the company is down some 69% from 2006.

Press Conference: Bysiewicz “Tried To Rest Lingering Skepticism”

Christine Stuart has an accurate report of yesterday’s Press Conference and the post-election audit discussion: <read>

Asked why the machines tend to over count by one vote, Dr. Alex Shvartsman, director of the voter research center, said he didn’t know. “That’s a very good question,” he said, adding that the center would continue to look into the results.

But Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz was quick to step in an answer the same question for Dr. Shvartsman as she tried to put to rest any lingering skepticism about the results. She said that the machine overcounts may have happened in races with multiple candidates when voters unintentionally marked an additional bubbles on the sheet.

For example, a voter may have wanted to vote for three of five candidates, but accidentally made a mark in a fourth bubble, Bysiewicz said. In such a case, the machine counts the vote, but a poll worker conducting a hand recount may not count the additional vote because to them it appeared to be an inadvertent mark or smudge, she said.

Another issue was that 175 audit reports submitted to the University of Connecticut were “incomplete, unuseable, or obviously incorrect.” About 70 percent of the 958 reports submitted by 70 polling places were complete. The center decided to use about 783 of the reports to complete their audit.

The audit found that 66.4 percent show a discrepancy of 0 to 1 vote between the machine counts and hand counts; 89.4 percent show a discrepancy of 5 votes or fewer; and 31 records, or 4 percent, show a discrepancy of 10 or more votes.

Bysiewicz said overcounts happened in races where candidates were cross-endorsed by two parties.

Lingering “Skepticism”:

  • The machines do not “tend to overcount by one vote”. They tend to count very accurately in most cases. That “one” is an average that can be misleading. I was sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for a reporter to ask what the top counting errors were. The Coalition report and Dr. Shvartsman’s had about the same numbers, his overcounts were: 72, 54, 28, 26, 26, 22, 16, 14, 14 In our report we did not include the 72 because it was an obvious counting error.
  • Checking after the press conference, the analysis by the Secretary of the State’s office is not yet complete – they have not checked all 31 races to see how many were candidates listed on more than one line – the overcount of 72 votes was due to misclassifing votes of a candidate listed on two lines and was offset by an undercount of 74 votes on another line. (that is why we did not list it as a discrepancy in the Coalition report)
  • Finally, even if all of the 31 highest overcounts were candidates listed on more than one line, it is not in itself an indication that they were all due to human counting errors – some could be due to election programming errors – without further research the cause would all be speculation.

Post-Election Memory Card Tests, 8% “Junk Data”

Last week Dr. Shvartsman of the UConn VoTeR Center released a report on Pre-Election testing of memory cards, that report showed 3.5% of the memory cards had “Junk Data” (the cards could not be read) and that many election officials had difficulty following pre-election testing procedures.

This week Dr. Shvartsman released another Post-Election study of 100 cards collected for evaluation after the election. These cards were not randomly selected. The results were similar to pre-election testing with more “Junk Data” cards at 8%. <read>

Once again we appreciate the work of the Secretary of the State’s Office and Dr. Shvartsman’s team in implementing this program. We have much sympathy for election officials who had difficulty complying with the program this time as procedures were added close to the election. We have no sympathy for LHS Associates. Two things seem clear:

  • We should expect that compliance with procedures by election officials will improve dramatically over each of the elections in 2008, making this program a unique and valuable addition to election security
  • We should be very very disappointed with the performance of LHS in quality control — with years of experience programming elections in other New England states — they should have met commitments to Connecticut to provide tested cards to Connecticut municipalities. There is no reason to give them a pass for the November 2007 election.

The report was released at an 11:00am press conference at the Secretary of the State’s office. Also available at the conference was a yet to be posted analysis of the post-election audits by the VoTeR Center. The data presented was generally consistent with the data compiled and reported by the Coalition. We will cover that report when it is released in its final form.

96.6% Of Memory Cards OK, Half Of Registrars Follow Last Minute Procedures

At the request of the Secretary of the State, Dr. Alex Shvartsman and his team at the UConn VoTeR Center tested memory cards which were shipped to UConn by registrars across the state. <full report>

From the summary:

The total of 522 cards were received and tested by the VoTeR Center, out of which 378 cards were received before the election. Out of the total number of cards, 18 cards, or 3.5% were found to contain “junk” data, that is, they were unreadable, which is easily detected by the tabulators as such, and could not have been used in the election. The rest of the cards, or 96.6%, were found to have been properly programmed for election. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code on the cards.

About half of the cards were found to have been tested and set for election-the intended state of the cards following the prescribed testing procedure. Most of the remaining cards were tested by the towns but not set for election; while this is not a problem, this suggested that the relevant towns/districts either misunderstood the instructions or did not follow the instructions. One card was found in the state set for election but with non-zero counters, indicating that the district tested he card in election mode and did not reset the card. This is a potentially problematic, but detectable situation, since proper procedures require that the “zero counter” report is produced at the start of the election

Full Disclosure: I played a role in suggesting this program to the Secretary of the State’s office at a meeting in October. Professor Michael Fisher of Yale and TrueVoteCT greatly improved on my suggestion. Continue reading “96.6% Of Memory Cards OK, Half Of Registrars Follow Last Minute Procedures”

Legislature To Hold Public Hearings On Optical Scan Elections

The leadership of the Government Administration and Elections Committee(GAE) announced a series of five public hearings at a press conference yesterday. One hearing will be held in each of the five congressional districts in the state. Towns where the hearings will be held were announced with no specific dates or locations. Their goal is to have the hearings during the 2nd and 3rd week of February. The towns will be West Hartford, Norwich, East Haven, Norwalk, and Danbury.

I attended the press conference but did not take verbatim quotes so I will summarize.

This is very good news for several reasons.

  • The GAE clearly recognizes that the public as well as registrars have concerns.
  • The GAE indicated that they have heard from registrars but also want to hear more from the public.
  • The areas of concern recognized so far include: registrars’ concerns for time and cost of recounts and audits; voters concerns with election day privacy, with the optical scan machine integrity, and with the integrity of the audits. (our coalition report was mentioned in the press conference)
  • The GAE is open to hearing the public and, if warranted, changing the law in the short session.
  • It is a true bi-partisan effort supported by the committee co-chairs and the ranking members. Democrats Caruso, Slossberg, and Urban. Republicans Freedman and Heartherington.

I was also pleased with the questions from the press, asking about Connecticut vs New Hampshire, and the outsourcing of elections to LHS. The GAE members said that we may well learn from the experience in New Hampshire.

On the other side of the ledger, the GAE is open to considering an optical scan based recount in close races. They say it is only one suggestion and they are not at this point recommending it. We have seen that the machines usually count accurately, yet they also frequently count inaccurately both in New Hampshire and in Connecticut. We certainly hope this idea is quickly abandoned in favor of physics, science, and reason.

Update: Stamford Advocate Story <read>

“[Secretary of the State Bysiewicz] Susan’s been the biggest cheerleader for this system and at times I don’t think she’s been able to step back and look at it objectively (and) hear some of the problems that are occurring,” Caruso said.

Connecticut Reporter Uncovers Voting Machine Problems In New Hampshire

Dori Smith of TalkNationRadio.org articulates problems with voting machines in New Hampshire for Brad Blog in Diebold Voting Machine Failures Found Across State During New Hampshire Primary <read>

Election Officials Confrim that Employees from LHS Associates, Diebold’s Sole Programmer, Vendor, and Service Provider in NH, Were Allowed to Access Vulnerable Optical-Scan Systems Throughout Election Day

…

All four counties I contacted on January 10th that had used Diebold’s electronic machines last week reported problems during the election with the machines. Two other calls that same day turned out to have been to areas where electronic voting is not in use, where hand counts are done instead. If the small sampling is any indication, a statewide study would likely reveal that voting machines failed many times during the 2008 Presidential Primary across the entire state.

…

The paper ballots cast by 80% of the state’s voters have never been examined by anyone to determine the mechanical vote-counting accuracy. The computer counting of those ballots is overseen by a single, private company which is routinely granted extraordinary access to the systems, and interviews with a number of state officials indicate they all seem to have different understandings of what, if any, rules exist to regulate that access…

Just like New Hampshire, Connecticut purchases our optical scanners from LHS Associates and outsources the programming of our elections and the maintenance of our election equipment to LHS.

Recounts: Some Good News. Some Not So Good News.

Update: 1/11/2008 I have scanned in the actual report of the New Canaan recount sent to the Secretary of the State’s Office. Read the full report <here> the critical information provided by the Head Moderator is:

Totals were the same as the original count or close with the exception of Paul Foley (-31 votes) [MINUS 31]. An assistant registrar, a registrar, and I independently recounted (again) all tally sheets and totals for the recanvass and the tapes’ data from the tabulator print-outs on the moderator’s report for the 11/06/07 returns finding no error. The cause of the variance of Foley versus the other six candidates is unknown.

In other words the machine counted 31 votes more than the paper indicated. Perhaps we can say a lot of things but we cannot say that “the machines counted perfectly or accurately”. We could say “the machines counted every vote (and then some)”.

Original Post 1/4/2008:

Continue reading “Recounts: Some Good News. Some Not So Good News.”

DemocracyNow! Interviews New York Times Author

<read, listen, view> More scary and devastating than reading the article in the New York Times Magazine.

Still does not fully address the similar issues of optical scan which are only solved with sufficient post-election audits. Yes, recounts of the paper from optical scan is vary reassuring, yet recounts are seldom done, even in cases of important suspicions, like the recent New Hampshire Primary. Precisely why we need post-election audits.

This interview does more fully cover the issues of outsourcing.

New York Times: Broken Polls

New York Times Editorial, Broken Polls <read>

Election officials hate to admit how vulnerable their voting systems are to errors and vote theft. ..
Election officials across the country should be asking the sort of tough questions Ms. Brunner and Mr. Coffman have. In 2000, the nation only confronted the flaws in its voting technology after a presidential election was irreparably harmed. With just under a year to go before the next presidential election, the time to fix these problems is now.