Skulduggery and Errors | CTVotersCount.org

Testimony on Well-Intended Bill That Would End Publicly Verifiable Elections

On Monday we testified against H.B.5173 An Act Protecting the Privacy of Voters

Note that this version of partially protecting some voters includes preventing open, transparent, and publicly verifiable elections by any and all voters, candidates, and parties.

Here is my testimony <read>. This is the summary:

The heart and soul of democracy is justified trust in elections. [This Bill]would be a death blow to the heart of public verifiability. [It] would preclude independent verification of the lists and electors recorded as voting; it would preclude officials from demonstrating to the public that our elections are on the up and up.

Like paper ballots, voter registration records need to be open, transparent, and publicly verifiable. (And recorded on paper.)

On Monday we testified against H.B.5173 An Act Protecting the Privacy of Voters

Note that this version of partially protecting some voters includes preventing open, transparent, and publicly verifiable elections by any and all voters, candidates, and parties.

Here is my testimony <read>. This is the summary:

The heart and soul of democracy is justified trust in elections. [This Bill]would be a death blow to the heart of public verifiability. [It] would preclude independent verification of the lists and electors recorded as voting; it would preclude officials from demonstrating to the public that our elections are on the up and up.

Like paper ballots, voter registration records need to be open, transparent, and publicly verifiable. (And recorded on paper.)

In my verbal testimony, I added to my written concerns that procedures, regulations, and most importantly laws need to change to be consistent with this proposed law, so that election officials and clerks can know how to implement the law, given its many conflicts with current law.

I also noted that it was “Address Suppression Light”, given that it did not suppress all the other addresses which are suppressed under the existing address suppression program, like land records. The regular address suppression program also includes an ID card issued to those that have their addressed suppressed, so they can be positively identified in the polls. (There are books written, mostly for felons, on how to find addresses for police, judges, and prosecutors etc. Many of those avenues remain unprotected by this bill).

Here is all the testimony submitted <read>

On one side in favor, was Secretary of the State Denise Merrill and the Connecticut League of Women Voters.

On the other side against, included CTVotersCount, the FOI Commission, State Elections Enforcement Commission, and the Freedom of Information Council.

The ACLU seemed to be in favor of expanding some provisions and against others.

“Does your vote count?” Glastonbury MLK Conversation

Last Wednesday evening, I was one of five speakers and a moderator at a Community Conversation held by the Glastonbury Martin Luther King Community Initiative. There were about 60 to 75 in attendance. We addressed “Does your vote count? An examination of the Issues” I addressed issues in two areas: How could you know if your vote was counted? And what I would recommend to expand democracy in Connecticut, without risking election integrity. Here are my prepared remarks:

Last Wednesday evening, I was one of five speakers and a moderator at a Community Conversation held by the Glastonbury Martin Luther King Community Initiative. There were about 60 to 75 in attendance. We addressed “Does your vote count? An examination of the issues.” I addressed issues in two areas: How could you know if your vote was counted? And what I would recommend to expand democracy in Connecticut, without risking election integrity. Here are my prepared remarks <read>

Some excerpts:

I tend not to agree with anyone 100% of the time. I view voting through a lens of balancing three priorities

Voting Integrity, that is Justified Confidence

Engaging more people in Democracy

The costs of Elections

To me, Justified Confidence is the highest priority, followed by a balance between increasing voter engagement and cost.

Let’s talk voting integrity. Said another way “Does your vote count?” The problem is that you and I cannot answer that question. The systems we have, by intention or not, prevent us from answering that question…

For Democracy to function, citizens must have JUSTIFIED CONFIDENCE in elections — elections providing strong evidence that the correct winner was declared.

The 2016 elections surfaced two election integrity questions in the minds of many citizens:

First, Did the Russians hack our election systems? That is distinct from did they influence our elections?

Second, Were the winners of the Primaries and Election accurately determined?

There is a lack of confidence in the system. There are legitimate, yet often exaggerated questions of integrity.

It is especially important that losers believe they lost fair and square.

There is excessive emphasis on Russian hacking, ignoring other risks. And a myriad of other cyber-attacks are just a part of the risks…

There is too much emphasis on cyber-attack by outsiders. The greater risk is INSIDER ATTACK. Insider attack is easier and likely more frequent – air-gaps cannot prevent insider attack – there is motive, opportunity, and the ability to cover-up…

Fortunately. there are remedies to these risks and lack of credibility. They come down to TRANSPARENT, PUBLICLY VERIFIABLE ELECTIONS. That is elections where every critical aspect CAN be verified by citizens, candidates, and parties.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence.”…

We need to open-up the system to candidates.

I would enhance our Citizen’s Election Program.

We should reduce prohibitive signature and finance requirements for third-party and petitioning candidates.

We have a crazy law that prevents the posting of the list of Write-In Candidates in polling places. Posting the list should be mandatory…

The evidence is not that Millennials avoid voting because it’s inconvenient. They avoid it because they don’t have enough information about voting and candidates.

We need to change our archaic lever-look ballot layout. I am tired of consoling voters who missed the question on the ballot.

We need better voting web sites in Connecticut’s towns, many lack critical information, some have incorrect information.

We have Election Day Registration, yet it is the most difficult, and restrictive in the Nation. That would remedy many of the errors that cause voters to be unintentionally not registered or removed from the roles…

I am an election official, a Certified Moderator. I ran our Glastonbury Academy polling place in the 2016 presidential primary. That day changed me.

Let’s at least allow unaffiliated voters to vote in the primary. I saw many voters who did not understand the system and could not vote. They were not party regulars, they were first time voters or those that had not voted in years. I was moved that very few were upset that they could not vote. That bothers me. We may never see them attempting to participate in democracy again.

Finally, Two things you can do to help – two days for each election.

First, volunteer one weekday observing a post-election audit with the Citizen Audit.

Second, Invest a day as an election official at your local polling place.

I guarantee you will learn a lot. Let us work together, to create a flourishing democracy we can trust.

************Update 2/29/2018

Courant coverage: Does Your Vote Count <read>

Note one small misquote:

“First, did the Russians hack our election systems? Second, were the winners of the primary elections actually determined?” [Weeks] said.

That ‘actually’ should be ‘accurately’ !

Supreme Court to Bridgeport: Those sort of things just aren’t done in CT

In a 3am decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered a third primary in Bridgeport. CTPost: Supreme Court orders 3rd primary for Bridgeport

“Citizens can expect and are entitled to integrity in the process and a fundamentally fair and honest election, and this, I regret to say, they did not get,” the judge stated in overturning the results of the primary and ordering a new one.

In a 3am decision, the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered a third primary in Bridgeport. CTPost: Supreme Court orders 3rd primary for Bridgeport <read>

The state’s highest court agreed that Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis was within her right to throw out the results of two previous primaries after she ruled they were skewed by political corruption.

“Citizens can expect and are entitled to integrity in the process and a fundamentally fair and honest election, and this, I regret to say, they did not get,” the judge stated in overturning the results of the primary and ordering a new one…

During a hearing Dec. 21, lawyers for the city of Bridgeport had asked the justices to answer four questions regarding the legality of Judge Bellis’ decision: if state law prohibits any person other than the elector from arranging for a designee to return an absentee ballot to the town clerk; did the judge err in rejecting the unpostmarked ballots; did the judge err in her Northbridge ruling and did the judge wrongfully apply the law in ruling there were substantial violations of law that left the reliability of the election in doubt.

In its one-page decision released shortly after 3 a.m. on Friday, the Supreme Court simply ruled “Yes,” to the first question, “No,” to the second, “Yes,” to the third and “No,” to the fourth question.

Once again, we oppose no-excuse or all mail-in voting for two reasons. 1) Its where the fraud actually occurs, ongoingly. 2) Despite common sense, increased mail-in voting does not increase turnout. (See: Grand Theft Absentee)

Video: Atticus v. The Architect: The Political Assassination of Don Siegelman

I have followed this story off and on for years. As promised this film not only reviews the story but adds additional information. People ask me if any elections have been stolen. I say probably a few are and point to this as one that was. The cover-up is much much worse than the initial crime. The cover-up of the cover-up even worse. Yet, nothing happening once everything was pretty much in the open is worst of all. Like many documentaries, the first half or so is a little slow, yet you will be richly, disturbingly rewarded for watching till the end.

Beyond the preview, you will have to pay to watch. It is available on Amazon or from the Movie Site

Here is my Amazon Review:

I have followed this story off and on for years. As promised this film not only reviews the story but adds additional information. People ask me if any elections have been stolen. I say probably a few are and point to this as one that was. The cover-up is much much worse than the initial crime. The cover-up of the cover-up even worse. Yet, nothing happening once everything was pretty much in the open is worst of all. Like many documentaries, the first half or so is a little slow, yet you will be richly, disturbingly rewarded for watching till the end.

Sufficient recount laws would have corrected this error. No cyber hacking was necessary, just insider skullduggery. Do not claim there are no conspiracies – or that they all would be found out and corrected. In this case it seems it was never addressed other than punishment of the innocent and promotion of the guilty.

Virginia saga continues

Last time we editorialized that the Virginia race that came down to a single ballot and a drawing was noting to be alarmed at, nothing but a close vote. Yet, there is a new twist, with many voters in Virginia registered in incorrect districts. In the district in question just a single voter incorrectly voting in the district or incorrectly excluded could have changed the result. Virginia: Thousands of Virginians may have voted in the wrong state House districts

Thousands of Virginia voters may be registered in the wrong state House district, raising the possibility of election disputes. In a statewide analysis, The Washington Post found addresses of about 6,000 registered voters that appear to lie outside a map of the assigned House district. If their turnout tracked the state average, more than 2,800 mistaken state House votes could have been cast in November.

A revote might be a remedy, yet there is not substitute for doing it right the 1st time.

Lots of Smoke in Broward County, after ballots destroyed

From Alternet via TruthOut: Was the Heated 2016 Democratic Primary Rigged for Debbie Wasserman Schultz?

“I see what I would call a high likelihood of massive incompetence. Either that or there is fraud. I don’t think you should see numbers this big in this many precincts.”

“This is really weird.” He continued that they ought to be reconciling the number of voters with ballots and if they’re not doing it, “they’re grossly negligent.” Jones served on the Election Assistance Commission’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee for four years, but said “I’ve never seen a county that looks like this.”

From Alternet via TruthOut: Was the Heated 2016 Democratic Primary Rigged for Debbie Wasserman Schultz? <read>

In August 2016, Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz faced off against progressive maverick and Bernie Sanders supporter Tim Canova — her first-ever primary challenger — after six terms in Congress…

Now new evidence of original ballots being destroyed and cast ballots not matching voter lists calls into question the results of that election…

According to a transcript of the November hearing, the attorney for the Supervisor’s office Burnadette Norris-Weeks claimed the ballots were destroyed, “Because they can’t just store hundreds and hundreds of thousands of boxes.

It’s possible that lack of storage space is not the only reason Broward County officials wanted to destroy the ballots. Months of investigating the Supervisor’s office and analyzing election data reveal that in the vast majority of precincts in the race, the number of cast ballots does not match the number of voters who voted…

Canova is not the first one to take the Broward County Supervisor of Elections’ office to court. He is in line behind the Republican Party that sued in November of 2016 over absentee ballots being opened in secret, and a not-for-profit that sued in October last year when Broward County left a medical marijuana amendment off some ballots.

Problems with the county’s elections go further back than that. In 2006, according to documents provided by the Florida Fair Elections Coalition, the Broward County Supervisor of Elections’ office admitted to a “loss of data” that included over 100,000 ballot images.

W do not buy the explanations/excuses. Two respected computer scientists characterize it succinctly:

Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science at the University of South Carolina, said, “I see what I would call a high likelihood of massive incompetence. Either that or there is fraud. I don’t think you should see numbers this big in this many precincts.” Buell has examined election records extensively in South Carolina.

Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa sputtered in disbelief at the data. “This is really weird.” He continued that they ought to be reconciling the number of voters with ballots and if they’re not doing it, “they’re grossly negligent.” Jones served on the Election Assistance Commission’s Technical Guidelines Development Committee for four years, but said “I’ve never seen a county that looks like this.”

This is reminiscent of 2004 across Ohio, there officials kept the ballots for the required time, yet worked to run out the clock on Freedom Of Information Requests. This helped Richard Hayes Phillips expose many issues there in his book Witness to a Crime

We do applaud Florida and Ohio for their unquestioned stand that ballots are FOIable public records.

Beware of the Watchdog that does not bark any details

NYTimes story that justifies our skepticism on NC ePollbook story: In Election Interference, Its What Reporters Didn’t Find That Matters

Among other things, we learned that intelligence agencies had intentionally worded their conclusions to specifically address “vote tallying,” not the back-end election systems—conclusions that were not even based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or the machines themselves, but on the accounts of American spies and digital intercepts of Russian communications, as well as on assessments by the Department of Homeland Security—which were largely superficial and not based on any in-depth investigation of the state electionsystems or machines themselves.

As we said in our earlier post: See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition

the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us.

NYTimes story that justifies our skepticism on NC ePollbook story: In Election Interference, Its What Reporters Didn’t Find That Matters <read>

I had been on the cyber beat for six years and had grown accustomed to deep, often lengthy digital forensics analyses of cyber attacks against a wide range of targets: Silicon Valley start-ups, multinational conglomerates, government agencies and our own Times breach by Chinese government hackers. In the vast majority of cases, it takes investigators months or years to discover that hackers had indeed been lurking undetected on victims’ machines…

Yet American intelligence officials were adamant in a report in January—just two months after Election Day—that vote tallies had not been hacked. This despite the broad consensus among United States intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election through an extensive disinformation and propaganda campaign, as well as the hacking of electoral databases and websites, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

My colleagues Michael Wines, Matthew Rosenberg and I set out to find out how government officials had nixed the possibility of vote hacking so readily. It was especially unclear to us given that officials at the Department of Homeland Security testified last fall that Russian hackers probed election systems in 21 states, with varying degrees of success, and that months later, a National Security Agency report found that Russian hackers had indeed successfully infiltrated VR Systems, an election service provider in eight states, including he battlegrounds North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.

As we dug more into our investigation, the more unresolved incidents we found.

Among other things, we learned that intelligence agencies had intentionally worded their conclusions to specifically address “vote tallying,” not the back-end election systems—conclusions that were not even based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or the machines themselves, but on the accounts of American spies and digital intercepts of Russian communications, as well as on assessments by the Department of Homeland Security—which were largely superficial and not based on any in-depth investigation of the state election systems or machines themselves.

In fact, we discovered that precious little research had been conducted, the result of legal limits on the authority of intelligence agencies to address domestic issues and states’ historic reluctance to permit federal oversight of elections.

This is associated with another story in the NYTimes: Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny<read>

In Durham, a local firm with limited digital forensics or software engineering expertise produced a confidential report, much of it involving interviews with poll workers, on the county’s election problems. The report was obtained by The Times, and election technology specialists who reviewed it at the Times’ request said the firm had not conducted any malware analysis or checked to see if any of the e-poll book software was altered, adding that the report produced more questions than answers.

Neither VR Systems — which operates in seven states beyond North Carolina — nor local officials were warned before Election Day that Russian hackers could have compromised their software. After problems arose, Durham County rebuffed help from the Department of Homeland Security and Free & Fair, a team of digital election-forensics experts who volunteered to conduct a free autopsy. The same was true elsewhere across the country.

As we said in our earlier post: See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition <read>

the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us.

We will post this under Skullduggery and Errors, since obfuscating and distorting the facts is deliberate skullduggery.

Registrars mess up, City (taxpayers) pay fines, eventually

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” What could be worse? Perhaps “Justice delayed and fines transferred to the victims.”

In 2014 the Registrars in Hartford failed to provide check-off lists to polling places in time for voting to begin at 6:00am. From the stories of the public and explanations from officials at the time, it seems pretty clear it was not a simple error or comedy of errors.

Editorial
The pollbook delay went beyond incompetence. These conclusions and fines should not take close to three years. The well-compensated registrars should be paying the fines not the City.

“Justice delayed is justice denied.” What could be worse? Perhaps “Justice delayed and fines transferred to the victims.”

From the Courant: City Fined $9,600 For Election Day Problems – Investigation Critical Of Registrars Of Voters <read>

The state Elections Enforcement Commission has fined the city of Hartford $9,600 for the 2014 Election Day snafus that left many people, including the governor, unable to vote when polls opened.

The state’s investigation found that the three Hartford registrars of voters didn’t finish preparing the official voter registry lists until a half hour before polls opened and, because of that, 14 polling places opened late or without the proper voter lists needed to check off names…

Even after polls closed, the registrars had issues. The investigation found that there was a 2,035-vote discrepancy in the number of ballots cast for governor versus the number of people check ed off as having voted. There also was a 93-vote discrepancy in absentee ballots.

After a second count, the absentee ballot disparity was corrected, but there was still a 1,542 difference in votes for governor that was never resolved.

The investigation is critical of all three Hartford Registrars—Republican Sheila Hall, Democrat Olga Vazquez and Working Families Party Urania Petit—but was particularly harsh toward Vazquez, who was tasked with getting the voter rolls ready.

“Ms. Vazquez’s wantonly poor decision-making reflected either a too casual approach to her work, or a serious deficiency in her ability to do the job,” the report concluded.

Vazquez was in charge of getting the voter registry lists to the moderators at each of the 24 polling places. But the books weren’t sent to the printer until only a few days before the election, and the registrars didn’t cross absentee voters off the lists until only two days before the election. They didn’t

complete that task until 5:30 a.m. on Election Day—a half hour before polls were to open.

The investigation made it clear the delay was primarily Vazquez’s fault.

“Starting with a misreading of the election calendar concerning when she needed to print the list—an inexcusable mistake by a registrar with her experience—she appeared to miss opportunity after opportunity to avoid the slowly unfolding calamity that rolled into the public eye on the morning of Election Day,” the report concluded.

Our Editorial
The pollbook delay went beyond incompetence. These conclusions and fines should not take close to three years. The well-compensated registrars should be paying the fines not the City.

Also victimized are the voters of the State and candidates for State Office who depend on every municipality to conduct fair and accurate elections.

Why Signatures and Checking Them Matter

A vigilant Registrar in New Haven pursues suspicions. From the New Haven Independent Judge Hopeful Submits Forged Signatures <read>

Americo Carchia Wednesday said he’s considering whether to end his campaign for probate judge and vowed to cooperate with any potential criminal investigations after learning that he had submitted petitions with forged signatures to qualify for the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot.

A vigilant Registrar in New Haven pursues suspicions. From the New Haven Independent Judge Hopeful Submits Forged Signatures <read>

Americo Carchia Wednesday said he’s considering whether to end his campaign for probate judge and vowed to cooperate with any potential criminal investigations after learning that he had submitted petitions with forged signatures to qualify for the Sept. 12 Democratic primary ballot.

Carchia turned in petitions on Aug. 9 with the names and alleged signatures of over 2,000 registered New Haven Democratic voters putatively supporting having his name appear on the Sept. 12 primary ballot against party-endorsed candidate Clifton Graves Jr. He needed 1,852 certified signatures to qualify; the Registrar of Voters office found 1,982 signatures to be valid — based on the names and addresses and birth dates listed matching those of registered Democrats. So Carchia made the ballot

One of those signatures belonged to Andrew Weiss, a Yale student listed as living in Yale’s Arnold Hall. Weiss told the Independent by email Tuesday that he never signed a petition. In fact, he wasn’t even in New Haven during the two-week period at the end of July and beginning of August when the petitions were collected. “I was in Japan,” he wrote…

Democratic Registrar of Voters Shannel Evans Wednesday confirmed that she had filed the complaint with the SEEC after speaking with voters listed on the petitions who said they, too, had never signed. (SEEC spokesman Joshua Foley said the agency can’t confirm or deny receipt of such a complaint until the full commission meets and votes on whether to launch an investigation.)

Carchia was shaken as he received photocopies of all his petitions from the City Clerk’s office before visiting the Registrar of Voters Office to learn more about the approval process.

“I can’t be more numb right now. Look at these!” he exclaimed.

“I’m seething inside.”

He said someone who gives him political advice — he said he couldn’t remember who — had steered him to Yellow Dog Strategies. He said he trusted that the company knew what it was doing. “It was difficult” to find enough help to gather so many signatures in just a two-week window, Carchia said. He said he had no knowledge of corners being cut by the consultants.

This is why signatures are important and useful. Its not that every forgery can be caught, yet when there are a lot of fraudulent polling place sign-ins, absentee ballots, or petitions those redundant signatures can raise suspicions or in other cases confirm suspicions.

Reminds us of 2004 in Ohio as recounted in the book Witness to a Crime, reviewed here. One of several incidents in the book was multiple districts with sheets of added polling place voters signed in with similar signatures – signatures of an election supervisor in headquarters, not at any one of the polling places.

Unlike Ohio and many other states, Connecticut does not require voters to sign the check off lists at polling uplaces and does not require absentee vote counters to meaningfully check signatures. As we too often say here, look for not evil, see not evil, find no evil.

Also outsourcing your campaign is not all its cracked up to be.

See No Evil, Find No Monkey Business, ePollbook Edition

NPR All Things Considered Russian Cyberattack Targeted Elections Vendor Tied To Voting Day Disruptions

“Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn’t,” recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Timeline: Foreign Efforts To Hack State Election Systems And How Officials Responded
Investigators later discovered the company that provided those poll books had been the target of a Russian cyberattack…

NPR All Things Considered Russian Cyberattack Targeted Elections Vendor Tied To Voting Day Disruptions <read>

When people in several North Carolina precincts showed up to vote last November, weird things started to happen with the electronic systems used to check them in.

“Voters were going in and being told that they had already voted — and they hadn’t,” recalls Allison Riggs, an attorney with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice.

The electronic systems — known as poll books — also indicated that some voters had to show identification, even though they did not.

Timeline: Foreign Efforts To Hack State Election Systems And How Officials Responded
Investigators later discovered the company that provided those poll books had been the target of a Russian cyberattack…

“I became really concerned that this might be a cyberattack, some sort of cyber event,” says [Susan] Greenhalgh.

Despite NSA Claim, Elections Vendor Denies System Was Compromised In Hack Attempt
But she had trouble getting anyone’s attention. Greenhalgh says a contact she had at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was concerned but said there was little federal officials could do unless the state requested help…

“States were very adamant about declaring their independence from the federal government with respect to the 2016 election and, of course, we respected that,” says Ferrante. “However, we wanted to make sure we were prepared and assets were available in the event that states did call us for assistance.”

North Carolina didn’t call for aid. Instead, officials assured federal authorities that things were under control and that they had switched to the paper poll books.

The problem was, on Election Day, the state was operating with limited information. It was unaware that Russian hackers had tried to break into VR Systems, which provided the poll books for 21 North Carolina counties.

It appears from the article that officials may finally be giving more scrutiny, yet the simple case is that we now have no reason to trust the claim that it was all a simple software error, that the Federal and State Governments were actually protecting us. And it is the very type of ePollbooks the Russians may have hacked. That is not all.

The investigation was triggered by the leak made public by the Intercept, allegedly from Reality Winner: Report from North Carolina Makes Reality Winner Leak Far More Important <read>

Because of the publicity surrounding the VR targeting — thanks to the document leaked by Winner — NC has now launched an investigation…

So this may be the first concrete proof that Russian hackers affected the election. But we’ll only find out of that’s true thanks to Winner’s leak.

Except she can’t raise that at trial.

Last week, Magistrate Judge Brian Epps imposed a protection order in her case that prohibits her or her team from raising any information from a document the government deems to be classified, even if that document has been in the public record. That includes the document she leaked.

The protective order is typical for leak cases. Except in this case, it covers information akin to information that appeared in other outlets without eliciting a criminal prosecution. And more importantly, Winner could now point to an important benefit of her leak, if only she could point to the tie between her leak and this investigation in North Carolina.