Skulduggery and Errors | CTVotersCount.org

Did new elected Representative committ multiple voter fraud?

Elected initially to the Legislature last month, Christina Ayala, has been arrested for a hit-and-run shortly after the election, arrested for a domestic dispute, and then ordered to move to the district before being sworn in, is no under investigation for illegally voting and registering in that district. Also under investigation is her mother, the Registrar of Voters.

CT Post: Elections commission investigates Christina Ayala and her mom <read>

According to the registrar’s office, Christina lives at 604 Noble Ave. in the 128th District. Because of her address, she was allowed to vote there in the November 2011 general election and in this year’s Aug. 14 primary, the city’s special September election for school board, and in November’s general election.
However, when Ayala and her boyfriend were arrested for a domestic squabble two weeks ago, the police report stated they lived at 49 Hillside Ave in the 129th district. And when Ayala filed for a protective order, she told the court she lived at Hillside.
The same Hillside address was listed on a police report when Ayala was arrested the night after winning her August primary and charged with evading responsibility, failure to obey a traffic signal and failure to renew her vehicle’s registration.

Multiple votER fraud, multiple votes, multiple elections, multiple lessons

Individual votER fraud does not happen often, when it does it seldom, if ever, amounts to enough to change a result. But here is a Rhode Island size story from Texas that provides several lessons for those concerned with votER fraud, votING fraud, and the limits of voter ID:

Story in Houston Chronicle: Candidate voted twice in same elections, records show <read>

A Republican precinct chairman running for a seat on the Fort Bend County Commissioner’s Court has cast ballots in both Texas and Pennsylvania in the last three federal elections, official records in both states show.

Bruce J. Fleming, a Sugar Land resident running for Precinct 1 commissioner, voted in person in Sugar Land in 2006, 2008 and 2010 and by mail in each of those years in Yardley, Pa., according to election records in both states.

Fleming, who owns a home in Yardley, voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary in Texas. His wife, Nancy Fleming, who is listed as a resident of Yardley, voted by mail in both places in the 2010 general election, records show.

The lessons:

Absentee balloting is the easiest fraud to accomplish. Expanding mail-in and absentee voting leads to increased opportunity for organized and individual fraud.
Voter ID in Texas or Pennsylvania would not have prevented this fraud. They live in Texas, presumably have IDs, while no ID is required for absentee voting.
Preventing this type of fraud would be more possible with better quality voter registration databases, more cross checking, or possibly a national voter registration database or universal registration.
In this case the voters were caught. How many would risk the criminal penalties? How many would risk the embarrassment and career limiting aspects even if not convicted? All for a very slight chance of changing an election result.

Registrars trade complaints, official and unofficial

Is it voter suppression? Laziness? or Trumped up conflict? In any case, it does not serve voters and democracy.

It is hard to argue for the current system when these conflicts breakout, even harder to argue for the election of a single partisan registrar in each municipality.

West Hartford registrars are trading complaints, officially with the State Elections Enforcement Commission, and in the newspaper: State Investigating Complaint By West Hartford Democratic Registrar – Alleges Misconduct By GOP Registrar <read>

The state elections enforcement commission is investigating a complaint filed by the town’s Democratic registrar of voters that alleges misconduct by the Republican registrar, according to Joshua Foley, staff attorney and spokesman for the commission.

In her Sept. 10 complaint, Carolyn Thornberry claims that Eleanor Brazell violated state laws by not providing state-mandated supervised voting at nursing homes, specifically St. Mary Home, West Hartford Health and Rehabilitation and Atria Hamilton Heights…

State law requires that in “institutions” — including residential care homes, health care facilities for the handicapped, and nursing homes — where voters have difficulty getting to polling places,

a Democratic and a Republican registrar, or moderators from both parties, must supervise while voters fill out their absentee ballots. The ballots must also be collected at a designated time, according to state law.

The process allows a group to vote in one location at one time, according to Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state, and eliminates the need for the voters to mail their ballots to the town clerk.

“This situation is serious … your continued recalcitrance has cost several elderly their right to vote,” Thornberry wrote. “In the professional work of a Registrar of Voters, there is nothing worse.”

In her complaint, Thornberry said that she found out during her first year as Democratic registrar that supervised balloting was arranged at certain institutions in town, but not at St. Mary Home or West Hartford Health and Rehabilitation.

State statutes require registrars to supervise balloting at institutions if more than 20 residents are electors or, for institutions with fewer than 20 electors, if an administrator from the institution makes a timely written request, according to the complaint…

State law requires that in “institutions” — including residential care homes, health care facilities for the handicapped, and nursing homes — where voters have difficulty getting to polling places,

a Democratic and a Republican registrar, or moderators from both parties, must supervise while voters fill out their absentee ballots. The ballots must also be collected at a designated time, according to state law.

The process allows a group to vote in one location at one time, according to Av Harris, spokesman for the secretary of the state, and eliminates the need for the voters to mail their ballots to the town clerk.

“This situation is serious … your continued recalcitrance has cost several elderly their right to vote,” Thornberry wrote. “In the professional work of a Registrar of Voters, there is nothing worse.”

In her complaint, Thornberry said that she found out during her first year as Democratic registrar that supervised balloting was arranged at certain institutions in town, but not at St. Mary Home or West Hartford Health and Rehabilitation.

State statutes require registrars to supervise balloting at institutions if more than 20 residents are electors or, for institutions with fewer than 20 electors, if an administrator from the institution makes a timely written request, according to the complaint.

The deputy registrars said they were told by Brazell and the former Democratic registrar that supervised polling wasn’t required at the facilities because they were designated polling places, Thornberry wrote.

The law does not distinguish between institutions that are used as polling places and those that are not.

Thornberry claims that administrators at St. Mary Home “shared their frustration about ‘begging’ the Office of the Registrar in past years to schedule supervised balloting and the registrars’ refusal to do so.”

Thornberry’s letter to the state elections commission says “it has been a struggle to assure effective operations and legal compliance due to the conduct of” Brazell.

“While we do differ in personality and work style, my only concern is the continuing pattern of irregularities and resistance to correction and change,” Thornberry wrote. “This is not a partisan issue.”

Thornberry wrote that Brazell failed to train election workers as required by law, did not re-certify moderators once their certifications had lapsed, and would change voter information without following the proper procedures.

Thornberry also also claimed that Brazell removed voters from the registry when mailers informing them of a change in polling places were sent back to the office marked undelivered.

In an email to town officials, town council members, the secretary of the state’s staff attorney and others dated Aug. 2 — more than a month before Thornberry filed her formal complaint — Brazell depicted a work environment full of threats and door-slamming, and said Thornberry’s “accusations are all lies.”

“She threatens me bullies me & the folks in the front office causing 2 of them to leave due to her bullying & a hostile work environment. She has made a mess of this office,” Brazell wrote in the email. “How long is the Town going to ignore her behavior? She is very unprofessional. I did not start this nonsense.”

Is it voter suppression? Laziness? or Trumped up conflict? In any case, it does not serve voters and democracy.

In our experience most registrars maintain good working relationships with their counterparts from opposing parties. Some form an effective, cordial team. Sometimes there is a political undercurrent which can occasionally get out of hand, possibly aggravated by genuine differences, or personality conflicts. This situation is not unique, see:
WFSB: What It Takes To Be A Registrar – Politics Play Out In Registrar’s Office
Hartford Registrars: Fighting Disrupts City Office
Bridgeport Registrars: Dustup, Charges, Investigation
Registrar Nomination: Surprise Change Results In Dustup
New Registrar and Two Databases add to campaign dustup

It is hard to argue for the current system when these conflicts breakout, even harder to argue for the election of a single partisan registrar in each municipality. We say “Do For Elections What We Have Done For Probate”

Roundup – VotER fraud vs. VotING fraud

Several states continue to argue about voter ID laws allegedly intended to prevent fraud by individual voters, in the face of little evidence of such fraud. Meanwhile the documented fraud which occurs regularly around the country is multiple vote absentee vote fraud. And now evidence of massive voter registration fraud.

Several states continue to argue about voter ID laws allegedly intended to prevent fraud by individual voters, in the face of little evidence of such fraud, with the most noted, Pennsylvania Deadline nears on judge’s Pa. voter ID law ruling <read>

Pennsylvania’s new law is among the toughest in the nation.

It is a signature accomplishment of Republicans in control of Pennsylvania state government who say they fear election fraud. But it is an emotional target for Democrats who call it a Jim Crow-style scheme to make it harder for their party’s traditional voters, including young adults and minorities, who might not carry the right kind of ID or know about the law.

It was already a political lightning rod when a top state Republican lawmaker boasted to a GOP dinner in June that the ID requirement “is going to allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

The high court told Simpson that he should stop the law from taking effect in this year’s election if he finds the state has not met the law’s promise of providing easy access to a photo ID or if he believes it will prevent any registered voter from casting a ballot.

The injunction Simpson was considering revolves around the portion of the law that allows a voter without valid photo ID at the polls to cast a provisional ballot. It would effectively excuse those voters from having to get a valid photo ID and show it to county election officials within six days after the election to ensure their ballot will count. Instead, they might be required to submit a signed declaration to the county.

Last week, Simpson heard testimony about the state’s ongoing efforts to remove bureaucratic barriers for people to get a valid photo ID. He also heard about long lines and ill-informed clerks at driver’s license centers and identification requirements that made it harder for some registered voters to get a state-issued photo ID.

Similar new laws are being more or less contested in several states including Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Tennessee

And in Ohio the issue of disqualifying votes when voters are given the wrong ballot by officials, Slate: Wrong Number – The crucial Ohio voting battle you haven’t heard about <read>

At issue are potentially thousands of Ohio ballots that the state will not count solely because of poll worker error. Here’s the problem: A number of the state’s polling places, especially in cities, cover more than one voting precinct, and in order to cast a valid vote, a voter has to be given the correct precinct ballot. Poll workers, however, often hand voters the wrong precinct ballot mistakenly. In earlier litigation involving a disputed 2010 juvenile judge race in Hamilton County, Ohio, a poll worker testified to sending a voter whose address started with the numbers “798” to vote in the precinct for voters with odd-numbered addresses because the poll worker believed “798” was an odd number. This “right church, wrong pew” problem with precinct ballots was a big problem in 2008, when over 14,000 such ballots were cast.

Meanwhile the documented fraud which occurs regularly around the country is multiple vote absentee vote fraud. Here is a recent case from N.J. <read>

The Mercer County jury found that Fernandez, who works for the Essex County Department of Economic Development, fraudulently tampered with documentation for absentee ballots in Ruiz’s Nov. 6, 2007 general election, submitting ballots on behalf of voters who never received the ballots or had an opportunity to cast their votes.

Fernandez was charged in 2009 along with several other defendants, including Ruiz’s husband, Essex County Freeholder Samuel Gonzalez. As a result, Gonzalez agreed to forfeit his seat on the freeholder board and his job as an aide to a Newark city councilman, and he was admitted into the Pre-Trial Intervention Program. Four other defendants previously pleaded guilty

And now, more and more evidence of actual voter registration fraud, of the type ACORN was alleged to do in 2008 Nationwide GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal Widens, Becomes Criminal Matter in Florida <read>

A major element of the Republican National Committee’s overall attempt to game the 2012 elections by trying to affect who gets to vote and who does not, has just been stopped dead in its tracks.

Along with it, a criminal election fraud complaint has now reportedly been filed with law enforcement in the state of Florida against a Republican firm, owned by a paid Mitt Romney consultant, which was hired by the GOP to carry out partisan voter registration operations in at least five battleground states.

Millions of dollars were spent on the aborted effort by the GOP over the last two months — their largest single expenditure in several of the states where the scheme was in full tilt — to seek out Romney supporters only, and sign them up to vote.

The strategy resulted in (or included) fraudulent registration forms collected by the firm and then submitted in Florida by the state GOP with voter addresses, signatures and party affiliations changed. Election officials in the state have told The BRAD BLOG that they fear the scheme could result in the disenfranchisement of a still-unknown number of otherwise legal voters, and they are taking extraordinary measures to try and contain the potential damage as they attempt to work through more than 45,000 new and updated registrations submitted by the GOP and verify their legitimacy.

2004 not so long ago, does it take a conspiracy? Consider the context, 2012.

A recent conversation and a video bring back memories and posts covering the 2004 election.

We should cautiously consider the context. 2004 was our last close presidential election. We are in the midst of an apparent multi-state, swing-state, open conspiracy to suppress votes via unnecessary voter ID. And the 2012 election may again be close, like those in 2004 and 2000.

A recent conversation and a video bring back memories and posts covering the 2004 election.

The question I asked myself and answered was “Do I believe the 2004 election was stolen by a conspiracy?” The short answer is “Probably not, it was likely was stolen by several small conspiracies and individual actions”. A conspiracy takes just two or more people conspiring to commit a crime. Four years ago we reviewed Witness to a Crime, by Richard Hayes Phillips, the evidence he generated showed a variety of problems with the 2004 results in Ohio. The evidence seems to point to at least several small conspiracies that together added up to enough votes changed to alter the Ohio result, and the election result. As we have said before, to our knowledge none of the accusations in Witness to a Crime have ever been refuted. We also witnessed the voter suppression in Ohio, perhaps the least likely to be a conspiracy was the Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, rejecting voter registrations not submitted on very heavyweight paper.

Less certain is the claim that votes were manipulated on external severs, and the related small airplane death of a potential conspirator.

Several of these actions, conspiracies, and suspicions were covered yesterday on DemocracyNow!, interviewing Craig Unger on his new book about Karl Rove, Boss Rove.

The video also reviews the sad story of the unfortunate, strategic prosecution/persecution of Gov Don Siegelman. That is half the story. The other half is his stolen re-election.

We should cautiously consider the context. 2004 was our last close presidential election. We are in the midst of an apparent multi-state, swing-state, open conspiracy to suppress votes via unnecessary voter ID. The 2012 election may again be close, like those in 2004 and 2000.

As we were saying, stealing elections the easy way: Insider absentee fraud.

And now to add even more evidence to past experience, a timely story from the Los Angeles Times, to emphasize the existence of voting fraud, via absentee voting, executed by insiders, otherwise known as election officials.

It seems like just early this week that we were saying:

for all intents and purposes voter fraud is very rare, while voting fraud does regularly occur. Common sense tells us that very few voters would risk intentionally voting illegally for the purpose of casting a single fraudulent vote, given the effort, huge risk, miniscule value. Common sense also tells us that there is likely several times the instances of voter fraud and voting fraud than are successfully uncovered and successfully prosecuted. Yet, voter fraud would still be rare and generally ineffective. Not so with voting fraud, especially that committed by insiders.

And only a couple of days ago that we were saying:

Vote absentee, only if you have to! The risk of fraud is primarily a risk of campaigners, insiders, or others working to fraudulently vote for others or to trash votes somewhere between the voter, in the mail, or in town hall.

And now to add even more evidence to past experience, a timely story from the Los Angeles Times to emphasize the existence of voting fraud, via absentee voting, executed by insiders, otherwise known as election officials.: Feds: Cudahy officials threw away ballots, manipulated two elections <read>

Cudahy officials at the city’s highest levels tampered with and manipulated the results of at least two city elections, according to federal documents released Thursday.

The documents were part of the plea agreements of two Cudahy city officials who agreed to plead guilty Thursday to bribery and extortion.

But the documents also shed light on a culture of corruption within City Hall, with examples of widespread bribery and developer payoffs to voter fraud…

The documents show that a city official identified only as G.P. asked Perales and others to make non-residents register to vote in elections. They used an address that belonged to a Cudahy city employee. In exchange, that employee was rewarded with promotions and other favorable treatment, the documents say…

The documents show that a city official identified only as G.P. asked Perales and others to make non-residents register to vote in elections. They used an address that belonged to a Cudahy city employee. In exchange, that employee was rewarded with promotions and other favorable treatment, the documents say.

The fraud went beyond the fake registrants (Do you know where your absentee ballots are kept and how they are handled in city hall?):

In addition, the city officials tossed out ballots that did not favor incumbents.

Perales said that when absentee ballots were delivered to City Hall, he and G.P. determined through “trial and error” the best way to open the sealed envelopes without defacing them. “Routinely and systematically,” they opened the ballots. If they contained votes in favor of incumbents, they were resealed and counted. Ballots for non-incumbents were discarded.

And apparently it changed the result:

It was the first contested council race in nearly a decade, and they lost by a few dozen votes.

We point out that requiring a voter ID at polling places would do nothing to prevent absentee ballot fraud by officials. Perhaps long jail terms for those that are caught and convicted would. Perhaps that will happen here.

Once again, there is little “Voter Fraud”. But “Voting Fraud” that is another matter.

As we have said before, for all intents and purposes voter fraud is very rare, while voting fraud does regularly occur. Common sense tells us that very few voters would risk intentionally voting illegally for the purpose of casting a single fraudulent vote, given the effort, huge risk, miniscule value. Common sense also tells us that there is likely several times the instances of voter fraud and voting fraud than are successfully uncovered and successfully prosecuted. Yet, voter fraud would still be rare and generally ineffective. Not so with voting fraud, especially that committed by insiders.

Def: Voter Fraud – an intentional vote by an individual voter in an election or district where they are not eligible to vote, to vote for someone else, or to vote more than once.

Def: Voting Fraud – an intentional action by one or more individuals to add, subtract, change votes, change voting results, or to intimidate others, create votes for other individuals, who may or may not be eligible to vote, etc.

Article in the latest Mother Jones: The Dog That Voted and Other Election Fraud Yarns – The GOP’s 10-year campaign to gin up voter fraud hysteria—and bring back Jim Crow at the ballot box <read>

As the article points out voter fraud is rare, yet laws touted as preventing voter fraud are actually a form of voter suppression and intimidation.

first there needs to be some actual fraud to crack down on. And that turns out to be remarkably elusive.

That’s not to say that there’s none at all. In a country of 300 million you’ll find a bit of almost anything. But multiple studies taking different approaches have all come to the same conclusion: The rate of voter fraud in American elections is close to zero.

In her 2010 book, The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine Minnite tracked down every single case brought by the Justice Department between 1996 and 2005 and found that the number of defendants had increased by roughly 1,000 percent under Ashcroft. But that only represents an increase from about six defendants per year to 60, and only a fraction of those were ever convicted of anything. A New York Times investigation in 2007 concluded that only 86 people had been convicted of voter fraud during the previous five years. Many of those appear to have simply made mistakes on registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, and more than 30 of the rest were penny-ante vote-buying schemes in local races for judge or sheriff. The investigation found virtually no evidence of any organized efforts to skew elections at the federal level.

Another set of studies has examined the claims of activist groups like Thor Hearne’s American Center for Voting Rights, which released a report in 2005 citing more than 100 cases involving nearly 300,000 allegedly fraudulent votes during the 2004 election cycle. The charges involved sensational-sounding allegations of double-voting, fraudulent addresses, and voting by felons and noncitizens. But in virtually every case they dissolved upon investigation. Some of them were just flatly false, and others were the result of clerical errors. Minnite painstakingly investigated each of the center’s charges individually and found only 185 votes that were even potentially fraudulent.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University has focused on voter fraud issues for years. In a 2007 report they concluded that “by any measure, voter fraud is extraordinarily rare.” In the Missouri election of 2000 that got Sen. Bond so worked up, the Center found a grand total of four cases of people voting twice, out of more than 2 million ballots cast. In the end, the verified fraud rate was 0.0003 percent.

One key detail: The best-publicized fraud cases involve either absentee ballots or voter registration fraud (for example, paid signature gatherers filling in “Mary Poppins” on the forms, a form of cheating that’s routinely caught by registrars already). But photo ID laws can’t stop that: They only affect people actually trying to impersonate someone else at the polling place. And there’s virtually no record, either now or in the past, of this happening on a large scale.

What’s more, a moment’s thought suggests that this is vanishingly unlikely to be a severe problem, since there are few individuals willing to risk a felony charge merely to cast one extra vote and few organizations willing or able to organize large-scale in-person fraud and keep it a secret. When Indiana’s photo ID law, designed to prevent precisely this kind of fraud, went to the Supreme Court, the state couldn’t document [26] a single case of it happening. As the majority opinion in Crawford admits, “The record contains no evidence of any such fraud actually occurring in Indiana at any time in its history.”

For some examples of real and alleged voting fraud in Connecticut see <CTVotersCount Index: Error and Skulduggery in Connecticut>

Registrar error. Will candidate and public get same redress as similar fraud case?

We believe that the law should be followed, but in cases like this courts should normally rule in favor of candidates that do their part in complying with the law and clearly have the support required. Last year in similar circumstances, with allegations of fraud and a clear conflict of interest a court ruled in favor of the candidate

Update 07/03/2012: Candidate files to get on ballot <read>

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A primary candidate got all the necessary petition signatures, but the registrar issued incorrect forms. New Haven Register: Goof sinks primary in 116th District serving West Haven, New Haven <read>

A mistake could cost a state representative hopeful his chance to get on the ballot, as the Democratic registrar of voters reportedly gave him the wrong paperwork to petition for a primary. The registrar, Michelle Hufcut, meanwhile, has withdrawn her candidacy in a primary for the Democratic registrar job, citing health reasons. David C. Forsyth, who is hoping to be the Democratic candidate for state representative in the 116th District, officially learned Thursday that he should have used petition forms from the secretary of the state’s office. Forsyth needed to collect signatures to bring an August primary against state Rep. Lou Esposito of West Haven, the party-endorsed candidate…

Prior to this year, 116th District candidates could use petition forms from the city registrar because the district was limited to part of West Haven. However, following the state’s redistricting earlier this year, the district now includes parts of New Haven, and candidates running for multitown districts must use petition papers from the secretary of the state office, according to Av Harris, spokesman for the office…

“The petitions … are not going to be able to get him on the ballot because they were invalidly issued by the registrar. … This is a pretty black-and-white issue because it’s a matter of state statute,” said Harris Forsyth said his lawyer has been in contact with the state and will help him in court.

Extra/missing ballots a problem in Pennsylvania, not in Connecticut

In Philadelphia its a problem to be investigated when there are several voting districts with a few more ballots than voters. In Connecticut we have no confidence that such differences would be found or considered worthy of resolution or investigation.

In Philadelphia it is a problem to be investigated when there are several voting districts with a few more ballots than voters <read>

Philadelphia city commissioners are investigating an unusual series of over-votes in last year’s primary election – 83 voting divisions citywide where the official vote totals were bigger than the recorded number of voters who showed up.

In most locations, the discrepancies were small, just a handful of votes. In many instances, minor procedural mistakes could account for the anomalies.

But so far, the bulk of the over-voting has not been explained.

Until they understand what happened, the commissioners say, they cannot rule out the possibility of deliberate, illegal efforts to run up votes for favored candidates, with the perpetrators losing count as they tried to cover their tracks.

In Connecticut we have no confidence that such differences would be found or considered worthy of resolution or investigation. There is no requirement that voters be compared with ballots in our post-election audits and recanvasses. In fact, even though the Citizen Bridgeport Recount found huge differences in both directions (more ballots than voters in some districts, and more voters than ballots in other districts) there has never been an official recognition of the problem. Also unlike many other states we do not require voters to sign in, a significantly more reliable and auditable process than the check-in marks by poll workers – because officials and voters make sure the correct name is marked, and there is a signature which can provide some evidence in fraud investigations.

At a 20th Ward polling place near Temple University in North Philadelphia, only six people signed the poll book, required before they were ushered to a voting machine.

Basics you need to know about election integrity in fifteen minutes

Kevin O’Neill, Capitol Thinking, interviews the authors of Broken Ballots – Will Your Vote Count, Prof Doug Jones and Dr. Barbara Simons <podcast> When it comes to elections and verifiability, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons are true experts that everyone can understand.

Kevin O’Neill, Capitol Thinking, interviews the authors of Broken Ballots – Will Your Vote Count, Prof Doug Jones and Dr. Barbara Simons <podcast>

When it comes to elections and verifiability, Doug Jones and Barbara Simons are true experts that everyone can understand.

They discuss the basics of election verification, pre-election testing, election auditing, and internet voting. They also offer graphic examples of what went wrong in recent elections in Iowa and Florida, that were corrected based on paper ballots and post-election audits.

Broken Ballots was released Apr 15, even thought Amazon and Barnes & Noble still list it as available May 15th. Look for a book review here in the near future.