Category: Skulduggery and Errors

UConn Memory Card Report: Technology 82%-93%, Officials 19%, (Outrage 0%?)

We applaud Dr. Alexander Shvartsman and his team for developing the technology to perform these innovative tests, the diligence to perform the tedious tests, and the fortitude to report the facts.

We do not applaud the lack of cooperation of officials in the audit or the lack of official compliance with memory card procedures. We are left wondering if this is the level of compliance and cooperation when officials know their efforts will be disclosed: “What is their compliance when their actions are unlikely or impossible to scrutinize?” Can you imagine such numbers from any other technology or Government function? Where is the outrage?

The University of Connecticut (UConn) Center for Voting Technology Research posted its memory card report  for the November 2011 election: Technological Audit of Memory Cards for the November 8, 2011 Connecticut Elections <read>

We applaud Dr. Alexander Shvartsman and his team for  developing the technology to perform these innovative tests, the diligence to perform the tedious tests, and the fortitude to report the facts.

We do not applaud the lack of cooperation of officials in the audit or the lack of official compliance with memory card procedures. We are left wondering if this is the level of compliance and cooperation when officials know their efforts will be disclosed: “What is their compliance when their actions are unlikely or impossible to scrutinize?”. Where is the outrage?

Lets start with some good news.

We have had problems for years with bad memory cards which UConn calls “junk data”. Based on the questionable sample of bad cards sent to UConn, the estimate is 7.4% to 17.4% of cards were bad in the Nov 2011 election. This is similar to statistics generated in the Coalition post-election audit survey of officials. The survey showed a huge increase in the number of municipalities reporting bad cards in Nov2011, 90% with the previous high of 56% reported a year earlier <Coalition report page 26-27>.  Anecdotally many towns are hit with an overwhelming percentage of bad cards – we speculate that somehow the programming vendor, LHS Associates, receives batches of returned bad cards, LHS  installs new batteries and the cards tend to stay together, to be used in the next election for many or all of the cards programmed for unlucky municipalities.

The good news is that our memory card nightmare may have a cure in some future election, perhaps 2012 or 2013:

New non-volatile (battery-less) memory card was recently developed by the vendor. Our preliminary analysis of this card confirmed that it is completely compatible with AV-OS systems deployed in Connecticut. It is expected that a pilot deployment of the new cards by the SOTS Offce will occur in the near future. The use of the new card should eliminate the major cause of memory card failures.

No word on State Certification which would presumably be relatively easy, yet required before such cards could be used in an actual election.

At most 30.5% official compliance with pre-election audit requests

For the pre-election audit, the Center received 453 memory cards from 331 districts. Cards were submitted for two reasons per instructions from the SOTS Oce (a) one of the four cards per district was to be selected randomly and submitted directly for the purpose of the audit, and (b) any card was to be submitted if it appeared to be unusable. Given that cards in category (a) were to be randomly selected, while all cards in category (b) were supposed to be submitted, and that the cards were submitted without consistent categorization of the reason, this report considers all unusable cards to fall into category (b).

Among these 453 cards, 223 (49.2%) fall into category (a). 100% these cards were correct. 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. We note that the adherence to the election procedures by the districts is improving, however the analysis indicates that the established procedures are not always followed; it would be helpful if reasons for these extra-procedural actions were documented and communicated to the SOTS Offce in future elections.

According to the report 331 districts sent 453 cards, but at most only 233 of those cards were not bad cards. Thus at most 233 out of 730 districts in the election, registrars sent in a card as requested by “instructions from the SOTS [Secretary of the State] Office”. How many of these cards were in fact “randomly selected”? There is no way for the public to be sure. So we start with a maximum compliance rate of 233/730 or 30.5%.

Without a full sample, without some assurance of random selection, the statistical significance of the report is questionable and there is clearly a formula for a fraudster to avoid the memory card audit.

Considering pre-election testing we are down to at most 18.4% official (registrar) compliance:

UConn reported that 89 of those 233 cards were not set to pre-election mode yielding 134/233 or 61.8% correctly set in election mode. Thus for 134/730 or 18.4% of districts, registrars complied with both the simple procedures of sending in one card per district and testing all cards, leaving them in election mode.

This is only the most predominant of several problems uncovered:

(b) Card Status Summary:

Here status refers to the current state of the memory card, for example, loaded with an election, set for election, running an election, closed election, and others.

134 cards (60.1%) were in Set For Election state. This is the appropriate status for cards intended to be used in the elections. This percentage is an improvement over the 2010 November pre-election audit, where 41.6% of the cards were set for elections.

89 cards (39.9%) were in Not Set for Election state. This status would be appropriate for the cards that either did not undergo pre-election testing or were not prepared for elections, but not for the cards that are fully prepared for an election. This suggests that the corresponding districts sent these cards for the audit without first fi nalizing the preparation for the election. This is not a security concern, but an indication that not all districts submit cards at the right time (that is, after the completion of pre-election testing and preparation of the cards for the elections).

(c) Card & Counter Status:

Here additional details are provided on the status of the counters on the usable cards. The expected state of the cards following the pre-election testing is Set for Elections with Zero Counters.

All of the 134 cards (60.1%) that were found in Set For Election state had Zero Counters. This is the appropriate status for cards intended to be used in the elections.

85 cards (38.1%) were in Not Set for Election state and had Non-Zero Counters. This is not an expected state prior to an election. This suggests that the cards were subjected to pre-election testing, but were not set for elections prior to their selection for the audit. This situation would have been detected and remedied if such cards were to be used on Election Day as the election cannot be conducted without putting the cards into election mode.

4 cards (1.8%) were found to be in Not Set for Elections state with Zero Counters. This is UConn VoTeR Center April 5, 2012, Version 1.1 9 similar to the 85 cards above. This situation would have been similarly detected and remedied if such cards were to be used on the election day.

Taking the above percentages together, it appears that almost all districts (60:1% + 38:1% = 98:2%) performed pre-election testing before submitting the cards for the audit.

(d) Card Duplication:

The only authorized source of the card programming in Connecticut is the external contractor, LHS Associates. The cards are programmed using the GEMS system. Cards duplications are performed using the AV-OS voting tabulator; one can make a copy (duplicate) of a card on any other card by using the tabulator’s duplication function. SOTS polices do not allow the districts to produce their own cards by means of card duplication.

Card duplication is a concern, as there is no guarantee that duplication faithfully reproduces cards, and it masks the problem with card reliability. Additionally, it is impossible to determine with certainty who and why resorted to card duplication.

There were 18 cards involved in duplication. 12 of these cards (66.7%) were master cards used for duplication. 6 cards (33.3%) were copy cards produced by duplication.

We manually examined the audit logs of all duplicated cards and compared the initialization date of the card against the date of the duplication. We established that most of the cards (16 out of 18) were most likely involved in duplication at LHS. 12 out of 16 were involved in duplication either on the day of initialization, or the day after. The remaining 4 cards were involved in duplication within 4 days of initialization, however they were tested and prepared for election at a later date (4 to 7 days after the duplication occurred).

Only two cards out of 18 were most likely involved in duplication at the district, as they were prepared for election within a few minutes after the duplication event was recorded. This is an improvement from prior audits.

Given the SOTS polices, the districts must not be producing their cards locally. If a district finds it necessary to duplicate cards, they need to make records of this activity and bring this to the attention of SOTS Office.

Post-election, audited districts complied 27.8%

The registrars for districts selected for post-election audit are “asked to submit cards that were used in the election for the post-election technological audit”, 20/73 or 27.8% complied.

For the post-election audit, the Center received 157 cards. Out of these cards only 20 cards were used on Election Day. Given that the small sample of such cards does not allow for a meaningful statistical analysis, we report our nding in abbreviated form. To enable more comprehensive future post-election audits it is important to signi cantly increase the submission of cards that are actually used in the elections.

Cards were submitted to the Center for two reasons per instructions from the SOTS Oce (a) the districts that were involved in the post-election 10% hand-count audit were asked to submit the cards for the post-election technological audit, and (b) the districts were encouraged to submit any cards that appeared to be unusable in the election. Given that cards in category (a) were to be sent from the 10% of randomly selected districts, while all cards in category (b) were supposed to be submitted, and that the cards were submitted without consistent categorization of the reason, the number of unusable cards are disproportionately represented.

Can you imagine such numbers from any other technology or Government function? Where is the outrage?

We all are used to thumb drives, functionally similar technologically, yet much lower cost. What is your experience? Do they fail suddenly 18% of the time, after working correctly for months or years? How about your cell phone or GPS, much more complicated than a memory card?

Recently Connecticut was outraged by 42 state employees charged with illegally obtaining food stamps out of 800 obtaining them. That is a 94.6% compliance rate, quite a bit higher than election official compliance here of 18.4%

Even the UConn Basketball Team does better,  with a quarter of the players graduating.  Milner School, subject to our Governor’s concern, had 23.5% of 3rd graders passing the reading test. But this is not like students failing tests, this is more like Boards of Education overseeing that the curriculum is followed less than 19% of the time.

Let us not forget that the most complex memory cards are not tested:

In addition to the four cards for each district, in mid size to large towns absentee ballots are counted centrally by optical scanners with memory cards that a programmed to count ballots for all districts in such towns. These are not included in the post-election audits required by law, and apparently not included in requests for memory card audits.

Sadly most of this is entirely legal

In Connecticut election procedures are not enforceable so there is no penalty for officials not following procedures. The entire memory card audit is based on procedures, not law.

Also check out some of the audit log analysis in the report

UConn inspected audit (event) logs on the memory cards, discovering several instances of where procedures were not followed and other questionable events.

The rules implemented in the audit log checker do not cover all possible sequences, and the Center continues re ning the rules as we are enriching the set of rules based on our experience with the election audits. For any sequence in the audit log that is not covered by the rules a noti cation is issued, and such audit logs are additionally examined manually. For the cases when the audit log is found to be consistent with a proper usage pattern we add rules to the audit log checker so that such audit logs are not flagged in the future.

Out of the 223 correct 6 cards, 54 (24.2%) cards were flagged because their audit logs did not match our sequence rules.

The audit log analysis produced 106 notifi cations. Note that a single card may yield multiple notifi cation. Also recall that not all noti fications necessarily mean that something went wrong | a notifi cation simply means that the sequence of events in the audit log did not match our (not-all- inclusive) rules.

This problem (and solution) would never happen in Connecticut

We use manual addition and transcription to add results. Our audits would not catch errors made outside of polling place scanners.

Palm Beach Post  Vendor: software ‘shortcoming’ led to Wellington election fiasco  <read>

The short version:

  • Polling place machines counted races and votes correctly
  • Mismatched counters on machines used to accumulate results caused two races to be switched and the wrong candidates the apparent winners
  • The problem was discovered and corrected based on a post-election audit
  • The problem went undetected in pre-election testing as the only test is the polling place machines

Hats off to Wellington and their post-election audits. This problem (and solution) would never happen in Connecticut:

  • We leave all our totaling and transcription errors to a two and three level process of manual accounting, so we make our errors the old fashioned way.
  • Our post-election audits only compare the machine tapes to the ballot totals, not to the results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site (they don’t have enough details even if we wanted to)

Help is on the way as the Secretary of the State is about to pilot a better accumulation system. Perhaps it will include sufficient detail to check for errors in the subset of ballots we audit, and the law will be changed to audit using those numbers rather than the machine tapes.

Present, Past, and Future of Absentee Fraud in Connecticut

Absentee fraud may have changed the apparent winner in New Haven. The solution is not more absentee or mail-in voting.

While the Legislature is considering no-excuse absentee voting, we have a story of current likely and past documented fraud, with the Secretary of the State recommending even more risky main-in voting.

New Haven Independent story:  Voters Charge Absentee Fraud, Intimidation <read>

When college sophomore Shavalsia Sabb cast her first-ever ballot, she had no idea she would land in the middle of New Haven’s latest voting controversy.

Sabb, a Southern Connecticut State University student from Norwalk, said she voted for Audrey Tyson and Tom Ficklin in a Democratic ward co-chair election two weeks ago. She had never heard of them before. She voted by absentee ballot, even though she had no plans to be out of town and no reason to believe she couldn’t make it to the polls on election day.

Then she un-did her ballot. And decided this voting business wasn’t worth all the trouble.

“I didn’t really feel comfortable voting anymore the way it happened,” Sabb said in a conversation this week. The 20-year-old first-time voter said she felt misled and pressured by both sides in the election.

Sabb is among at least 10 Ward 29 voters—students and seniors—who either un-did votes or have filed affidavits with the State Election Enforcement Commission complaining of hanky-panky in the way that the Tyson campaign collected absentee ballots for the March 6 primary for two Democratic Town Committee ward co-chair seats.

Absentee ballots made the difference in that race. Tyson and Ficklin lost to their opponents when polling place votes were tallied on the voting machines. When absentee ballots were counted, they became the winners—Ficklin by one vote. A full 116 out of Tyson’s 256 votes came by absentee.

And at least some of the voters claim that her campaign tricked them into filling out absentees they either weren’t supposed to use, or else pressured them into voting for her against their intentions or wishes. State law requires that someone file absentee ballots only if planning to be out of town or otherwise physically unable to come to the polls; or because of military of poll-working duty or religious prohibition.

Two things to note here:

  • This may well have made the difference in the apparent winner of the election.
  • If we have no-excuse absentee balloting this would still be illegal voter intimidation, but likely more difficult to prove that there was in fact intimidation, while in this case it is clear that the voters were convinced to illegally apply for such ballots.

Sadly this is not the first time for New Haven (and Connecticut):

Aggressive collection of absentee ballots is an art form among New Haven Democrats. Charges of fraud and mishandling of ballots have sprung up regularly over the years. One City Hall supporter, Angelo Reyes, was found guilty of stealing absentee ballots in a 2002 town committee race, for instance. But usually evidence or accusations of fraud—including former Newhallville Alderman Charlie Blango’s admission last fall that his staff improperly collected them in a hotly contested aldermanic race—are met with shrugs and no follow-up, although officials did disqualify 15 ballots in that race. (Click here to read about that.) The concern is that with absentees, unlike at a polling station, campaigns can pressure people into voting for their candidate whether or not they want it.

Secretary Merrill and Senator Looney weigh in:

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (pictured) said she has a couple of ideas of how to tackle absentee ballot fraud and get more people voting in the process. One step is to eliminate absentees altogether and let everyone cast votes by mail in advance of an election, no questions asked. There would still be polling places, but fewer people would use them….

Merrill supports a bill currently before the legislature to amend the state constitution to allow no-fault absentee, or mail-in, voting. Other states, like Oregon, allow people weeks to bring in ballots in person or mail them in; 80 percent of voters do so, she said.

She cited the controversy over SCSU absentee ballots in new Haven’s Ward 29 as a reason to make the change.

“This is what we’ve got to stop. We’re making liars out of people. A lot of people are thinking: ‘I may be out of town. …’ We have no way of knowing” if people filled out ballots truthfully, Merrill said.

State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney said he’s “not convinced” about the no-fault mail-in ballot.

“You have a danger of losing the integrity of the ballot boxes,” he said. The process opens the door even wider to the possibility of employers or campaigns pressuring people to vote for candidates. “We fought 100 years ago for the secret ballot,” said Looney, who represents New Haven in the legislature.

“I would dispute that,” Merrill responded. “The fraud we’ve seen in elections is all absentee ballot fraud, people ‘helping’ [seniors and the disabled] fill out their ballots. That pool of people is already at risk.” She is supporting a separate measure to increase penalties for bribery, intimidation and other “real election fraud” to match the penalties for impersonating people at the polls.

Here we agree with Senator Loony. The point Secretary Merrill makes about all mail-in vs. Absentee voting fraud is a distinction without a difference. All mail-in would expose all mailed ballots to being voted by intimidation or mail box theft on the days they are all expected.  As we see from the two instances above it is not all filling out ballots for seniors.

Absentee Ballot Hijinks in Hartford?

Evelyn Cruz filed a complaint accusing another resident, Clorinda Soldevila, of hand-delivering three absentee ballots to her home on Bond Street, and then picking up those ballots and delivering them to city hall.

Hartford Courant: Hartford Resident Alleges Illegal Handling Of Absentee Ballots <read>

Evelyn Cruz filed a complaint accusing another resident, Clorinda Soldevila, of hand-delivering three absentee ballots to her home on Bond Street, and then picking up those ballots and delivering them to city hall…

Cruz said in her complaint that Soldevila visited her on Feb. 4 and asked her to sign an application for an absentee ballot, which she did “with the understanding that [Soldevila] would return it to city hall.”

Cruz said she expected that city hall would mail her an absentee ballot, and that she would mail it back. But a week later, she wrote in the complaint, Soldevila turned up at her home again, this time with three absentee ballots — for Cruz, her husband and her daughter-in-law. She said Soldevila asked her to fill out a ballot, which she did, and put it into an envelope.

“Before I had a chance to place the envelope in the mail, Ms. Soldevila returned to my home and picked up the envelope, and told me that she would return it to city hall. This happened about two days after she brought the ballots,” Cruz wrote.

[Town and City Clerk John] Bazzano said, however, that the ballots were not dropped off, but that his office received the three absentee ballots by mail in sealed envelopes, which had been stamped and postmarked. He said the office would never accept hand-delivered ballots.

“We have the proof and the facts to back up that we did it right,” Bazzano said. “All of the envelopes are clearly stamped and postmarked.

Not sure we understand Bazzano’s statement or maybe the article is confused.  It could be accurate, however, if someone took the three absentee ballots illegally they still could have mailed them in and the main allegation would remain unresolved.

Scanners 0, Hand count 0, Officials 0, Press/Citizens 2

Connecticut has little reason to take comfort in New York’s latest election embarrassment. We do not expect an official system to recognize unofficial counts, yet we do expect a system that recognizes problems, and reacts by taking reasonable steps to correct errors.

Connecticut has little reason to take comfort in New York’s latest election embarrassment.

Yesterday we had this story from the New York Daily News:  Board of Elections does nothing as hundreds of Bronx votes go missing <read>

More than six months ago, voting experts at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center detected an alarming pattern at one polling place in the South Bronx:

The tallies from the electronic scanning machines at Public School 65 included high proportions of invalidated votes.

There were two possibilities: Either huge numbers of voters had improperly filled out their ballots, or at least one of the scanners had gone haywire. The board did nothing. Actually, the board did worse than nothing. It refused to check — even when asked to do so by state election officials.

Using the Freedom of Information Law, this editorial page then demanded the right to inspect ballots cast at PS 65 in the 2010 primary and general elections — the ones that put Gov. Cuomo into office.

The board complied, marking what may be the first time members of the public in New York State have been given permission to look over cast ballots and review how they were counted.

All too predictably, we discovered that voters had done their part correctly, while one of the three scanners at PS 65 misread and miscounted votes.

Scanners 0, Officials 0, Press/Citizens 1

But that is New York, not Connecticut. Our ancestors sold wooden nutmegs to the ancestors of today’s New Yorkers.

Recall November 2010 when Bridgeport had a  problem running out of ballots compounded by problems hand counting and accounting for the the photocopied ballots. The Connecticut Post asked to count the ballots, Bridgeport complied and citizens counted them.  And the State of Connecticut, nothing. The “Official” Bridgeport results still stand.

By our count, 20 of 25 polling places had photocopied paper ballots, but even that number was never recognized officially. We are reminded of this by an article, also yesterday, in the Hartford Courant covering a talk by the Secretary of the State: Secretary Of The State Outlines Proposed Changes In Elections <read>

Merrill has been considering changes to the way votes are cast in Connecticut following the November 2010 election fiasco in Bridgeport where only 21,000 paper ballots were preprinted in a city of 69,000 registered voters and 12 of 25 polling places ran out of ballots.

Of course we do not expect an official system to recognize unofficial counts, we do expect a system that recognizes problems, and reacts by taking reasonable steps to correct errors. We cannot hold the current Secretary accountable for actions that occurred before she took office yet we would like to see a system that not only reduced the changes of a very similar disaster, but also one that can recover from a variety of similar and dissimilar disasters in the future.

Scanners 0, Hand count 0, Officials 0, Press/Citizens 2

Americans Elect – A license to steal the presidency?

This is seriously dangerous. If you don’t join Americans Elect, their vote could determine the President. If you do join Americans Elect, the vote could be manipulated in the backroom or by hackers. Or the self-appointed board could override the actual vote.

We have written before of Americans Elect it seems the real story gets more and more suspect, more and more dangerous. A new story/investigation in Irregular Times: Americans Elect: A Corporation and a Political Party <read>

This is seriously dangerous. If you don’t join Americans Elect, their vote could determine the President. If you do join Americans Elect, the vote could be manipulated in the backroom or by hackers. Or the self-appointed board could override the actual vote.

In July of 2011, Americans Elect Chief Operating Officer Elliot Ackerman declared, “The key delineation to make is that we’re not a party.” These unequivocal claims are contradicted by Americans Elect’s observable behavior; Americans Elect has registered as a political party in a number of states…

Why does it matter whether Americans Elect is or is not a political party? As a registered 501c4 corporation, Americans Elect can hide the sources of unlimited funding from the American people. If it declared itself to be a political party, it would have to follow the rules for political parties, which include significant limitations to how much money they may take from individuals and mandate disclosure of them. Americans Elect is simultaneously using party status to get on the ballot for 2012 and sloughing off party status to avoid contribution requirements…

There are three elections envisioned by the Americans Elect bylaws, two of them taking place online. The first election is to select an Americans Elect presidential nominee, and only registered Americans Elect Delegates (see below) will be able to participate. The second election is the presidential election on Election Day 2012, one in which the Americans Elect nominee will be on the ballot in all 50 states and in which every registered voter in America will be able to participate as usual. The third election will take place after the November presidential election if no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes. In that circumstance, Americans Elect will hold another online vote of its Delegates to decide whether the Democratic or Republican presidential candidate will be given the electoral votes won by Americans Elect’s candidate. This third election would allow Americans Elect to throw the presidency to either party, a powerful position to hold. Americans Elect needs to win just one state in order to occupy that powerful position and trigger a third election…

In the top tier of Americans Elect is the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors and only the Board of Directors appoints its own members and corporate officers. The Board of Directors and its appointed designates write the rules for the Americans Elect elections and may overrule all actions of Employees. The Board of Directors may overrule nearly all actions of Delegates and writes the rules within which Delegates “independently” make a presidential nomination, constraining Delegates’ choices. The Board of Directors is the only body in the entire Americans Elect system to make procedural decisions by democratic majority vote, making it the swiftest means for Americans Elect to take political action…

Another reason why Americans Elect needs to disclose information about its origins, funding and activities is its unfortunate history. It’s not just that Americans Elect is currently making claims that don’t match the observable facts; there’s a history of misrepresentation, misdirection and malfunction in Americans Elect’s previous effort under the name Unity08

These are just some snippets. The full details in the article demonstrate the dangers.

 

Concern with electronic skulduggery is Right, Left, and Center

Hackers threaten Presidential Primary. The particular threat may or may not be real. Yet, being concerned with electronic skulduggery is Right, Left, and Center

AP, via Yahoo: Iowa GOP worried by hacker threat to caucus vote <read>

As the article points out the particular threat may or may not be real, but as those quoted in the article point out, cyber threats to voting are real:

With two weeks remaining before Iowa kicks off the 2012 campaign with its first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, the state Republican Party is taking steps to secure its electronic vote collection system after receiving a mysterious threat to its computers…

state authorities have not taken any actions since the call to “peacefully shut down” the caucuses does not amount to a crime, said Jim Saunders, director of the Iowa Intelligence Fusion Center at the state’s Department of Public Safety…

The GOP is also encouraging the party activists who run the precinct votes to use paper ballots instead of a show of hands, which has been the practice in some areas. The ballots would provide a backup in the event of any later confusion about the results…

Drew Ivers, chairman of Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign in Iowa and a member of the state GOP central committee, said party officials and consultants will also monitor for any hacking threat using software and other methods, but added, “How do you stop a hacker? That’s the question.”…

Among the early voting states, the hacking concerns have most spooked officials in Iowa. In New Hampshire, whose primary is one week after the Iowa caucuses, officials rely on a mostly manual process that uses paper and is less vulnerable to an attack on computer systems, said Assistant Secretary of State Anthony Stevens. In South Carolina, which follows 11 days later, State Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire said he was not aware of any concerns.

But Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa who has consulted for both political parties, said the Iowa Republican Party is right to be concerned about the security of their computer systems. The Internet, he said, is “becoming more and more like the Wild West.”

Voting machine investigation leads to serious issues and cover-up

This is serious stuff. The words that come to mind are: Illegal, unacceptable, unconscionable, ridiculous, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.

Brad Friedman articulated the details last week  <read>

Forensic Analysis Finds Venango County, PA, E-Voting System ‘Remotely Accessed’ on ‘Multiple Occasions’ by Unknown Computer

Battle for independent election investigation rages in rural Republican county, pitting renegade Election Board against County Commission, giant E-Vote firm ES&S…

What is wrong in this situation?

  • Illegal software found on vote accumulation machine
  • On several occasions the system was accessed remotely, unauthorized
  • Evidence of an illegal flash drive mounted on the system
  • The log shows out of sequence events
  • The Election Board that should be leading the charge to get to the bottom of the problem is fighting to cover-up the evidence and avoid investigation
  • The vendor, ES&S who should be offering to assist in the investigation is keeping the code secret and suing the investigators to stop, to keep the evidence hidden
  • There is no paper record of the votes such that investigators and citizens can determine if votes or elections were comprised

This is serious stuff. The words that come to mind are: Illegal, unacceptable, unconscionable, ridiculous, unconstitutional, and undemocratic.

Hats off to the citizens of Pennsylvania who fight for voting integrity, the researchers at Carnegie-Mellon, and the interim Election Board.

According to the Initial Report from a landmark independent forensic audit of the Venango County, PA, touch-screen voting system — the same system used in dozens of counties across the state and country — someone used a computer that was not a part of county’s election network to remotely access the central election tabulator computer, illegally, “on multiple occasions.” Despite the disturbing report, as obtained by The BRAD BLOG and posted in full below, we may never get to learn who did it or why, if Venango’s County Commissioners, a local judge, and the nation’s largest e-voting company have their way. And that’s not all we won’t get to find out about.

The battle for election integrity continues in Venango, with the County Commissioners teaming up with e-voting vendor Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) on one side, and the county’s renegade interim Republican-majority Board of Elections on the other. The Commissioners and ES&S have been working to spike the independent scientific forensic audit of the county’s failed electronic voting machines that was commissioned by the interim Board of Elections. Making matters worse, the Board has now been removed from power by a county judge, a decision they are attempting to appeal as the three-person board and their supporters continue to fight the entrenched establishment for transparency and accountability in the rural Western Pennsylvania county…

Omaha-based ES&S, which had issued no objections prior to the start of the study, but changed its mind quickly after it began (as we detailed in an Exclusive report in late October) has now hardened their position, sending threatening legal letters to both the county and the two computer scientists. The e-voting firm has warned them they are likely to face a lawsuit if they do not agree to complete confidentiality and if results of their analysis are released publicly without their prior review and approval…

There were real, not just theoretical, concerns motivating the investigation in the first place:

As the analysis finally began, Election Integrity advocate Marybeth Kuznik, founder of the non-partisan watchdog organization VotePA.us explained that the Board was calling for the investigation after the county had experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

While reporting on the Venango Board’s efforts to get their analysis under way during one of our regular fill-in stints as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show in late October, we received an unexpected call from Adams to offer more details on why his Board had sought the forensic audit.

“It started with an election in 2008 when the machines were basically showing a large number of undervotes,” he explained. “And then there were candidates for positions in the county and they had zero votes, but there was like 250 or 260 undervotes.”

“Wait a minute, there were people who had zero votes on the ballot? Is that normal?” we interrupted to ask.

“No. No, it is not normal,” he responded directly, describing the anomaly as “a red flag.” When pressed to explain why he believed the the County Commissioners and their legal representatives had been working so hard for months to keep the audit from happening, Adams told us bluntly: “They know there’s something wrong.”

This provides one more reason to scrap unverifiable election systems without a voter verifiable paper record in favor of more economical, auditable optical scan technology. But that is not enough!

  • Every state, every ballot should be subject to sufficient post-election audits. But that is not enough!
  • Strong security and chains of custody is needed for ballots.
  • And a total audit of voting systems and election systems should be required: e.g. Do pollbook counts match ballot counts? Are voters given a fair opportunity to vote? Are absentee ballots properly secured and submitted? Is there any evidence of machine tampering or irregularities?

Beware: Americans Elect – We were just too optimistic

We were just too optimistic, yet prophetic when we suggested the founders might not be happy with anything but their type of candidate.

In July we posted about Americans Elect a new third party aimed directly at the center of politics as defined by Tom Friedman: Friedman predicts 2012 Presidential candidate via Estonia-like Internet voting system <read> Sadly we were just plain too optimistic when we said things such as:

This is  reminiscent of the article on Estonian voting we covered yesterday. No mention of any transparency in the development, testing, and operation of the actual system. Rather than quoting independent technical experts, we see the system pronounced safe by the architect. Did Ronald Reagan say “Trust Me”?  Of course not. Actually it sounds like something Bernard Madoff might have said. President Reagan actually said “Trust But Verify”…

Or maybe the process is not “hijacked” but the people create a party platform close to some of the results we have seen in some recent polls? A platform of banning guns, protecting Social Security, universal health care, and decriminalization of pot? (Remember when Obama asked his supporters to vote on initiatives after the election? Not much publicity after they voted pot decriminalization as the top priority). What is scary is the potential for insiders to actually hijack the process by disqualifying or discrediting such votes. Or outsiders successfully attacking the system undetected.

No mention here of the possibility of candidates being chosen such as Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or, Pat Roberson forbid, Michael Moore, Keith Olberman, or Ralph Nadar.

It does not sound transparent financially or electorally. Yet, I can see why almost everyone would want to sign-up to promote their favorite type of candidates and party platform.

We were just too optimistic, yet prophetic when we suggested the founders might not be happy with anything but their type of candidate. So now we have an article from Politico confirming our worst fears and them some. Democracy deficit at Americans Elect? <read>

Rather than gush about this group, I fear many aspects of it: its secrecy; the uncertain security for its Internet election and, most important, the lack of democracy in its system for electing a presidential nominee.

While it is providing voters a path to choose a presidential ticket through the democratizing force of the Internet, the process can, in fact, be overruled by a small board of directors, who organized the group. This board is to have unfettered discretion in picking a committee that can boot the presidential ticket chosen by voters if it is not sufficiently ?centrist and even dump the committee if it doesn’t like the direction it’s heading...

Campaign finance reformers have already condemned Americans Elect for switching its organizational status under the Tax Code from political organization to 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. This change allows an organization to shield its donors…

Kahlil Byrd, the president of Americans Elect, told NPR that the group does not disclose donors because they fear retribution…Who is going to throw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a radical centrist?

Perhaps one reason Americans Elect is hiding the names of its donors is that people might draw conclusions about the group’s interests based on the contributors — especially given the rumor that most of its money comes from the hedge fund industry...

Despite the veneer of democracy created by having ?delegates? choose a presidential candidate through a series of Internet votes, the unelected, unaccountable board of Americans Elect, funded by secret money, will control the process for choosing a presidential and vice presidential candidate — who could well appear on the ballot in all 50 states.

Update: 05/01/2012 Yet another silent majority of almost none starts biting the dust. We are not surprised.

Americans Elect Cancels its First Primary Ballot — not enough Actual People want their Candidates <read>

Well, most Americans don’t agree. As the Pew Research Center documented in a poll last December, most Americans don’t buy centrist talk. Most Americans — three out of four of them — believe there is “too much power in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations”. Most Americans believe the “country’s economic system unfairly favors the wealthy.” Most Americans “believe Wall Street hurts the economy more than it helps.” These are not centrist positions. They’re not Americans Elect’s positions. The few financiers of Americans Elect whose names have been leaked out are Wall Street money managers and hedge fund operators. Americans Elect spokeswoman Ileana Wachtel last week declared of her organization: “No one at AE can dispute that Mr. Peterson’s message is the right one.” “Mr. Peterson” is billionaire Pete Peterson, who wants to cut social security, cut medicare, cut medicaid and make this country safer for big business.

Bridgeport: Early ballots bring victories, sometimes fraud

In Bridgeport, a hallmark of Democratic Party politics has been the aggressive use of absentee ballots — so aggressive, in fact, that more than a dozen consent decrees have been signed since 1988 with the State Elections Enforcement Commission stemming from allegations of wrongdoing by party operatives.

CTPost article: Absentees: Early ballots bring victories, sometimes fraud <read> The article discusses the pursuit of absentee votes in the recent primary, the history of absentee ballot fraud in Bridgeport, and the Secretary of the State’s comments for early voting in preference to absentee voting.

“Goal: 1,200 absentee applications,” read a sign hanging in Mayor Bill Finch’s campaign headquarters last month.

By the time polls opened at 6 a.m. on Sept. 27, that goal had been surpassed — more than 1,300 applications were turned in and nearly 900 ballots returned. Before the first paper ballot was marked, Finch already had a 420-vote lead over Democratic challenger Mary-Jane Foster on Primary Day, the fruits of a well-organized absentee ballot operation.

“We, the politicians, we will do whatever we can to get that vote,” said Lydia Martinez, an East Side city councilwoman who for years has led the most successful absentee ballot operations in the city. “You can give transportation to people. You can call people to ask if they got their absentee ballot. I do have a record of who votes by absentee every year. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. I know who the people are.”

In Bridgeport, a hallmark of Democratic Party politics has been the aggressive use of absentee ballots — so aggressive, in fact, that more than a dozen consent decrees have been signed since 1988 with the State Elections Enforcement Commission stemming from allegations of wrongdoing by party operatives.

Nearly all the cases involved a Democrat helping someone apply, vote or submit their absentee ballot.

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said she’d like to make reforms that could prevent absentee voter fraud. She said the problems could be resolved if Connecticut took advantage of new technology. One area she is considering is keeping electronic copies of voter signatures on file so they could be compared to what appears on the ballot or application.

Additionally, she is proposing a constitutional amendment that would allow the state to explore methods of increasing voter turnout by such practices as early voting, thus eliminating reasons for voting by absentee ballot.

Connecticut is one of 15 states, including New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, that do not allow early voting and require valid reasons for voting by absentee ballot. Nearly 30 states allow voters to cast an absentee ballot without Connecticut’s required excuses of being out of town, working, disabled or sick on election day. In Oregon and Washington, voting is done entirely by mail.

“No system is going to be perfect,” Merrill said. “Think of how elaborate the process is now and you still get allegations of fraud.”