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Don’t Kill the Election Assistance Commission

The new administration and state election officials have the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in their crosshairs. It is not a watchdog agency. The EAC is intended to help assist officials across the country share information and create voluntary standards for election systems. Many states look to and require Federal certification of election equipment. In a stranglehold for years, the EAC was on life support until commissioners were finally appointed a couple of years back. Efforts to update outdated standards, improve and streamline the certification process are close to fruition, yet may never be completed.

It is not just the Republicans. It is the National Association of Secretaries of State, currently headed by Connecticut’s Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill. Good Grief! the EAC is intended to help them do their jobs. Maybe they will change their stand this week, yet we doubt it.

Every odd-numbered year since 2011, Republicans in the House have tried to kill the Election
Assistance Commission—the tiny federal agency responsible for helping states improve their
voting systems. None of their previous efforts made it very far, and with Barack Obama in the
White House…

The EAC went fallow for a few years when the Senate stalled in confirming new commissioners,
a period that delayed the introduction of new voting machines in some states because the agency
could not approve new guidelines. Now housed outside Washington in a small suite of offices in
suburban Maryland, the EAC is waging a public battle for its very existence. The commission’s chairman, Thomas Hicks, issued a statement denouncing the GOP move to eliminate the EAC as being “seriously out of step with the current U.S. election landscape.” And in a subsequent phone interview, Hicks noted that among its other activities during the 2016 election, the agency had provided critical guidance to states seeking to bolster their systems against the threat of cyberattack.

In the interview, Hicks responded to Harper’s criticism of the EAC’s relevance by comparing its unheralded work to a city sanitation department that clears the streets after a snowstorm. “If you
don’t notice it,” Hicks said, “that means we’re doing our job.”

NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National Association of Secretaries of State, expressing their continued consistent position in 2015, reaffirm their resolution of 2005 and 2010 and encourage Congress not to reauthorize or fund the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

Journal Inquirer Editorial and Our Response

Journal Inquirer Editorial, Monday: ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS VOTING IN CONNECTICUT?

Our letter sent yesterday:

I agree with the sentiment but not the details of your editorial…There is a better solution…The solution is routine, independent, and publicly verifiable audits of all aspects of election administration. With such audits, we would not be in this situation…

Journal Inquirer Editorial, Monday: ARE ILLEGAL ALIENS VOTING IN CONNECTICUT? <read>

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill says they aren’t, but nobody has checked officially even as there is an easy way to find out.

The state Department of Motor Vehicles has issued 28,000 “drive-only” driver’s licenses to people who are living in the state illegally. New Haven has issued thousands of city identification cards to illegal aliens living there. To protect illegal aliens, these databases are kept secret, but the secretary could subpoena them and compare them against the state’s voter rolls, which are public.

Does anyone in authority want to know? Not likely.

Our letter sent yesterday:

To the Editor,

I agree with the sentiment but not the details of your editorial, dated 2/6/2017, “Are Illegal Aliens Voting in Connecticut”. The residents of Connecticut and the Nation deserve evidence to confirm or refute President Trump’s allegations that 3 million illegal aliens voted. The method proposed to compare alien driver’s licenses and registrations in New Haven to voter lists, by the Secretary of the State is inadequate and illegal. Illegal because the Secretary of the State does not have subpoena or even investigative powers. Inadequate because it only covers two segments of aliens – two segments that are taking the risks of identifying themselves. Inadequate because a secret investigation, including one by a government agency, especially of elections, should not be trusted by the public and the press.

There is a better solution which we have recommended to Denise Merrill, Secretary of the State and President of the National Association of Secretaries of State. The solution is routine, independent, and publicly verifiable audits of all aspects of election administration. With such audits, we would not be in this situation of baseless allegations of fraud and counter claims of unquestionable integrity. The science of election auditing could be used to economically provide an answer. It is estimated, that publicly, randomly selecting just 400 voters checked off as voting and determining if they voted legally could confirm with 99.7% certainty that nothing like 3 million voted illegally. That is just 400 nationwide! Publicly, randomly, selecting several hundred in Connecticut would provide more than adequate proof or refutation that our electors were correctly chosen. Note that the real issue is comparing actual voters, not the registration lists, yet those lists could also be audited with similar effort.

Election News Roundup

Several instructive articles and events this week.

Last week, Secretary of the State and President of NASS (National Association of Secretaries of State) held a press conference discussing Donald Trump’s allegations of 3 Million “Illegals” Voting. Secretary Merrill Challenges President’s Reported Claims of Illegal Voting
Meanwhile, at least, Connecticut is no Kansas: The Kansas Model for Voter-Fraud Bluffing
Here an article I generally agree with from Forbes: What The Election Can Teach Us About Cybersecurity
Speaking of attacks on voter databases here is a story from this fall: Hackers hit Henry County voter database

Several instructive articles and events this week.

Last week, Secretary of the State and President of NASS (National Association of Secretaries of State) held a press conference discussing Donald Trump’s allegations of 3 Million “Illegals” Voting. Secretary Merrill Challenges President’s Reported Claims of Illegal Voting <press release> <video>

After the press conference, I discussed the issue with Secretary Merrill:

I agree that it is unlikely there there were more than a few illegal in-person votes in the election (I doubt as more than a few undocumented are registered. There may be some, especially felons, registered by their and official’s mistakes)
Any credible investigation should confirm that.
We would not be in this bind, if there were routine audits of all aspects of the election process, including voter lists and estimates of the number of illegal in-person voting.
We know the lists are a mess.
An audit of check-in lists could for a very low cost and effort show that there was nowhere near millions of illegal in-person votes.
Speaking of audits, Connecticut’s voting machine audits are better than average in a poor field, considering that half the states don’t do audits at all and perhaps one or two states do vote count audits that are quite good.

Meanwhile, at least, Connecticut is no Kansas: The Kansas Model for Voter-Fraud Bluffing <read>

Here an article I generally agree with from Forbes: What The Election Can Teach Us About Cybersecurity <read>

Lowering The Bar For Information Warfare: Three Methods Of Interference

In the past, regimes wishing to upend elections had to do things like engineer strikes or military uprisings. Today the game has changed: Anyone can use the internet to destabilize elections in ways that are easily deniable — and perhaps more effective.

Around the world, no two elections are conducted the same way. However, as more campaigns come under fire, we can now see common hallmarks of offensive interference.

Doxxing: Gathering sensitive, confidential data and maliciously disclosing information in a calculated fashion to inflict setbacks in political momentum and unity.

The best examples of this are the email leaks that plagued the offices of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and its allies in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in 2016…

Forget Watergate-style break-ins; today, doxxing is easy to accomplish with simple phishing e-mails introducing malicious software to email recipients…

Digital Propaganda: Inundating voters with misleading or inflammatory information masquerading as news and other trusted sources.

Today it’s easy to fabricate websites with seemingly innocuous domain names hosting digital propaganda and then use orchestrated, automated social bots and other methods to seed it across social media and other channels…

Hacking Election Machinery: The most volatile attack scenario is compromising voting machines, agencies and other polling infrastructure.

This is the hardest category to pull off, because remotely compromising a voting machine, for example, is more difficult than tricking election staffers into clicking on malicious email attachments (as stage one of a doxxing expedition). Yet, every newly-disclosed vulnerability rightfully worries election regulators. Even quick technical fixes applied after such disclosures may not reassure voters’ perceptions.

Training their sights on election machinery is a high-stakes game for nation-state attackers, because a country could consider such intrusions attacks on their critical infrastructure systems, an act meeting the threshold for military retaliation and other dire responses in the physical world. The risk and sheer complexity of these attacks is likely why productivity-minded election adversaries spend most of their time on propaganda and email hacking.

That last part, I disagree with. Hacking is difficult, yet quite possible from the outside. Its much simpler from the inside. Its not just a cyber risk.

Speaking of attacks on voter databases here is a story from this fall: Hackers hit Henry County voter database <read>

Attempts by computer hackers to hold Henry County’s voter database for ransom had county and state officials scrambling just days before the Nov. 8 general election.

Voters were advised about the data breach in a letter sent by the Henry County commissioners earlier this month.

Commissioner Glenn Miller said the voter database was restored from backups at the county and state level, and no ransom was paid.

He said officials have no reason to believe the security breach compromised election results, or that voter registration information was extracted from the system.

The ransomware attack occurred on Oct. 31. Ransomware is a malicious software used to deny access to the owner’s data in an effort to extort money. Miller said hackers that use ransomware are typically after money, not stealing data.

Will good help be available from Homeland Security, and will Connecticut ask for it?

The Department of Homeland Security has designated Election Infrastructure as Critical Infrastructure. We ask three questions. We would like to see evaluations in Connecticut.

We emphasize the ‘see’ as secret evaluations would do little to provide the public assurance, and likely as not, would be available one way or another to those bent on using them to exploit weaknesses in the system.

The Department of Homeland Security has designated Election Infrastructure as Critical Infrastructure: <read>

By “election infrastructure,” we mean storage facilities, polling places, and centralized vote tabulations locations used to support the election process, and information and communications technology to include voter registration databases, voting machines, and other systems to manage the election process and report and display results on behalf of state and local governments…

Prior to reaching this determination, my staff and I consulted many state and local election officials; I am aware that many of them are opposed to this designation. It is important to stress what this designation does and does not mean. This designation does not mean a federal takeover, regulation, oversight or intrusion concerning elections in this country. This designation does nothing to change the role state and local governments have in administering and running elections.

The designation of election infrastructure as critical infrastructure subsector does mean that election infrastructure becomes a priority within the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. It also enables this Department to prioritize our cybersecurity assistance to state and local election officials, but only for those who request it. Further, the designation makes clear both domestically and internationally that election infrastructure enjoys all the benefits and protections of critical infrastructure that the U.S. government has to offer. Finally, a designation makes it easier for the federal government to have full and frank discussions with key stakeholders regarding sensitive vulnerability information.

We ask four questions:

Will the program continue in the Trump Administration? Many Republicans are skeptical of any Federal program and currently doubting foreign interference in our elections,
Will the program actually be meaningful? It could fail by being a whitewash or by being to critical.
Will Connecticut Municipalities and the Secretary of the State ask for reviews?
Will we ever know? Its results might be withheld from the public for reasons of security?

We would like to see such evaluation(s), statewide and locally:

An evaluation statewide of our election programming, memory card protocols, tabulator protocols, voter registration database, vote totalling, post-election audits, and recanvass procedures – not just the laws and procedures, but also their actual implementation.
An evaluation municipality by municipality of ballot and tabulator security.

Video: The Story of the Attempted Presidential Election Audit

Recount 2016: An Uninvited Security Audit of the U.S. Presidential Election

Also, I’m not sure that we at the University of Michigan could hack into all the paper ballots across multiple states sufficient to change the Presidential election. But I’m pretty sure my undergraduate security course could have changed the outcome of the Presidential election this year. It really is that bad, – Alex Halderman

Recount 2016: An Uninvited Security Audit of the U.S. Presidential Election <video>

Alex Halderman and Matt Bernhard discuss the recount efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In answer to the first question, about 50min in to the presentation:

Also, I’m not sure that we at the University of Michigan could hack into all the paper ballots across multiple states sufficient to change the Presidential election. But I’m pretty sure my undergraduate security course could have changed the outcome of the Presidential election this year. It really is that bad, – Alex Halderman

The sound varies through the hour long video, yet you will get an interesting and unique inside view of the efforts of citizens and scientists. Including fascinating insights into their discussions with the Clinton, and later the Stein campaigns.

Lessons from the “recount”. What would have happened here?

The Nation, hopefully, learned some lessons about our existing “recounts” after the November Election. We learned some disappointing lessons in three states. We likely would have learned similar lessons in the other states that have recounts. Remember that only about half the states have recounts at all. What might we have learned about Connecticut’s recanvasses?

We recommend three articles and comment on Connecticut’s recanvasses.

Our best guess is that Connecticut would rank close to Pennsylvania. Observed variations and poor recanvass procedures, with courts sooner or later. stopping or blocking the recanvass.

We recommend three articles and comment on Connecticut’s recanvasses.

From the Washington Post: Jill Stein has done the nation a tremendous public service <read>

To start, we must recognize that what we saw in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were recounts in name only. Though more than 161,000 people across the nation donated to the effort — and millions more demanded it with their voices — every imaginable financial, legal and political obstacle was thrown in the way of the recounts…

n an election tarnished by unreliable, insecure and unverifiable voting machines, ordinary Americans should at least be able to make sure their votes are counted, especially in states with razor-thin margins.

Beyond the obstacles to the recounts themselves were the irregularities and anomalies we uncovered while counting. The recounts did not confirm the integrity or security of our voting system; they revealed its vulnerability…

During the course of our representation, we consulted some of the world’s leading experts in computer science and cybersecurity. They all agreed on two fundamental points: First, much of our voting machinery is antiquated, faulty and highly vulnerable to breach; second, it would be irresponsible not to verify the accuracy of the vote to the greatest extent possible…

The campaign to verify the vote should be nonpartisan. Stein has done the nation a real service in demanding these recounts. By refusing to surrender in the face of significant resistance and criticism, she has exposed problems in our voting system and shown a way forward for reforms that will protect our democracy in a new age of vulnerability.

From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Candice Hoke compares Pennsylvania to Ohio: Pennsylvania’s voting system is one of the worst <read>

State officials don’t know if our elections have been hacked, and they don’t seem to care

…Experts in election technology have pointed out that most Pennsylvania counties — including Allegheny — use e-voting systems that have been outlawed by most states. The chief reason? The omission of voter-approved paper printouts that can be recounted and that allow for audits to check on the accuracy of the electronic machines. Even when voting systems are aged and vulnerable to hacking or tampering, durable paper ballots combined with quality-assurance audits can ensure trustworthy results.

Cuyahoga County [Ohio]election officials, like many around the nation, have learned that, even though their voting machines are certified and function perfectly one day, on another day they may fail to count accurately. Software bugs — especially from updates, malware and errors in programming — can lead to unpredictable inaccuracies. Cuyahoga County now conducts an audit after every election, using paper ballots, which most Pennsylvania counties are unable to do.

Paper ballots plus audits assure voters their choices have been accurately registered and that no partisan tampering, hacking or software glitches have affected the results of an election. Election officials can evaluate the accuracy of electronic voting systems and correct any tabulation problems. And no adversary — not even a foreign nation with sophisticated espionage capabilities — can manipulate elections results with e-invasions…

Unfortunately, Pennsylvania does not provide any of these assurances to voters, candidates, political parties or the nation. Instead, Pennsylvania law mandates little transparency or accountability when it comes to its computer-generated election tallies — something no business organization would tolerate in its information systems…

And yet, in Pennsylvania those officials close off all avenues by which forensic checks for evidence of tampering or miscounts could occur, then claim that no such evidence exists and that therefore Pennsylvania election systems are secure and accurate. This is utter nonsense. And it defies core principles of cyber risk management.

From a losing State Senate candidate in Colorado: Despite Jill Stein, Election Integrity Should Not Be A Partisan Issue <read>

The recount in Wisconsin financed by two losing candidates, Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton, was a total farce, but hopefully it will not also become a tragedy. That could happen if the partisan motivation behind that episode gives election integrity concerns and complaints a bad name…

I have seen some of those weaknesses and vulnerabilities up close and personal. In Colorado on November 8, I lost my own race for re-election to the Colorado State Senate by 1,478 votes out of 81,774 ballots cast, or less than 2%. Our Republican judges and poll watchers observed numerous irregularities, and we can prove some fraudulent votes were cast. I did not demand a recount because the errors and fraud do not appear to be on a large enough scale to affect the outcome. Nonetheless, those weaknesses leave me with less than 100% confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the final count.

If there were 270 Republican ballots with questionable signatures, and Republicans are only 34% of registered voters, that means there were probably over 800 ballots with questionable signatures in that one legislative district alone. The Colorado Voter Group, a watchdog organization promoting election security, believes our signature verification system is inadequate and wide open to abuse.

What if Connecticut was one of the close states?

In summary, we don’t know exactly what would happen.

Unlike other states, Connecticut has no law for citizens to call for a recount. They could always go to court and attempt with evidence to get a judge to order a recount. That would likely end up in appeals court and likely the Supreme Court.
Unlike other states, we do not have a recount – the word does not appear in our statutes. We have a recanvass which is something like a machine recount.
Our close-vote recanvass is at the 0.5% margin typical in other states. Yet is limited to margins of under 2000 votes. So in this past November election by our calculatinsthat would be a margin of about 0.12%.
Unlike recounts in other states, our recanvasses are not closely observable by the general public. The law is a bit ambiguous, yet there are only a very limited number of observers allowed to each candidate and party, at most two each. So, a town could easily have a recanvass with twenty-five teams of counters, with a Jill Stein, Hillary Clintion, and Donald Trump limited to two close observers each. Hardly enough to closely observe ballots marks counted at 25 tables.
Unlike recounts in other states, parties and candidates have no standing to object to the proceedings or to participate and dispute the counting of particular ballots. In practice party lawyers observe the process to find procedural errors to take to court and call for a “recount”. The last time that happened, the result was a repeat recanvass, with a party lawyer put in charge (it was a primary). The only difference was that he sat and watched while essentially the same process was repeated.
In practice, the recanvasses vary in their interpretation and adherence to the law from town to town. Recall that was one of the Supreme Court’s objection to the Florida recount in Gore v. Bush – that it was unfair, because it was not uniform across Florida Counties.

Our best guess is that Connecticut would rank close to Pennsylvania. Observed variations and poor recanvass procedures, with courts sooner or later. stopping or blocking the recanvass.

[Election] law is an ass

State and Federal have ruled that Jill Stein does not have standing to call for a recount in Michigan.

Our Opinion: The Michigan law[and or this ruling] is an ass, every single voter in the United States has an interest in the vote in every state, in every municipality, and that the vote of each voter is counted and totaled accurately. Each of those plays a part in selecting our President and the majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.

State and Federal have ruled that Jill Stein does not have standing to call for a recount in Michigan.

For more details and further outrage see:

Alternet: 7 Election Integrity and Cyber Security Experts Say Stopping Michigan Recount is a Corrupt Exercise of Power <read>

“Americans will never know the truth about what happened.”

Make no mistake, a travesty has occurred. On Wednesday in courtrooms and government boardrooms across the state, a series of legal dominos fell on Stein’s statewide presidential recount. In state legal venues, the linchpin was a three-member appeals court of Republican judges who ordered a state vote canvassing board to shut down the recount. That board then voted to reverse its earlier decision allowing the recount to start. Later Wednesday evening, a federal court judge lifted his prior restraining order preventing Michigan officials from calling off the recount. On Thursday, Michigan counties had suspended the recount. “It’s stopped,” said the receptionist answering the phone at the Wayne County Election Division in Detroit.

What follows are seven statements from election integrity activists and computer security experts who supported the recount.

We would also add that this is just the normal partisan corrupt process of deciding elections in the U.S., since our founding, see: <Ballot Battles>

How Do We Know Without Recounts?

We have all seen many articles and posts on the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We are likely to see many more. For now, here are a few points about the recounts:

I am entirely in favor of thorough post-election audits and recounts.
I am entirely in favor of the recounts initiated by Jill Stein.
Even if there is no change in the state winners, Election Integrity has won already
Yet, maybe we will not win that much in the end
All the objections to the recounts are partisan

We have all seen many articles and posts on the recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. We are likely to see many more. For now, here are a few points about the recounts:

I am entirely in favor of thorough post-election audits and recounts.

Jill Stein and those who have contributed to her fund are doing a service to democracy and for all voters. We should have routine audits and recounts after every election. Currently only about half of states have post-election audits and routine close-vote recounts. Neither is sufficient alone. An audit finding discrepancies, that if widespread, would change the winning candidate(s) should result in a full recount. Close vote recounts alone are insufficient. Without audits we cannot be sure that the results are not off more than the trigger for recounts. At a minimum audits should be risk-limiting, subject all ballots to audit, check the entire totaling process, and assess ballot security. Audits should also cover the registration and checkin process.

With new techniques such as single ballot auditing and ballot polling audits, post-election audits can be quite economical. With detailed election reporting, auditing the total result can also be accomplished efficiently.

I am entirely in favor of the recounts initiated by Jill Stein.

She and those who have contributed donations and time to the project are doing a service to our Democracy and every voter. Since apparently, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania lack post-election audits the recounts are necessary. At least, in Pennsylvania, the margin is now so close that a close-vote recount and checking of all totals should be automatic.

Even if there is no change in the state winners, Election Integrity has won already

The initiation of the recounts have already highlighted the lack of integrity in the current system. We now know that it is hard to get recounts in these three states; that the recount laws, at least in Wisconsin, are inadequate to cause a “real” adversarial recount as we saw in Minnesota in the Coleman-Frankin recount; in Pennsylvania the law for recounts is ungainly requiring affidavits by three voters in each polling place in a short time; and highlighting the impossibility of really auditing unverifiable DRE, touch-screen, voting machines.

Yet, maybe we will not win that much in the end

Still I am skeptical that the audits will result in real change toward national minimum standards for voter-verified paper ballots along with sufficient audits and recounts. Perhaps if the recounts reverse the result in one state or at least show a significant level of change in the numbers that will be enough to result in enforceable Federal minimum standards, or failing that reform in a number of states.

All the objections to the recounts are partisan

Lets start by conceding that Jill Stein and the Green Party hope to gain from doing this service. What candidate or politician does something without a hoped partisan gain?

The initial complaints against the recounts came apparently from Hillary supporters. To me, it seemed that they blame Jill Stein for Hillary’s loss as well as Bernie supporters. Whenever there is a close election the apparent looser has many individuals and groups to blame, while the apparent winner has many to thank. The closer the election the more small factors can directly contribute to the result.

Now the Trump team is objecting to the recounts, (after campaigning on maybe not accepting the initial result).

Thus has it always been. See our review of Ballot Battles.

Some Coverage:

Robert Koehler via Common Dreams: Vote Recount vs the Media Consensus <read>

In other words, the American president is essentially determined every four years by a sort of quick-draw consensus of corporate media conglomerates, not by a cautiously precise hand count of the votes that have been cast

There is evidence already for suspicion in Pennsylvania: Walter Mebane Jr. via the Washington Post: New evidence finds anomalies in Wisconsin vote, but no conclusive evidence of fraud <read>

Walter Mebane has a unique way of analyzing elections for suspicious results. He analyses the digits in the numbers reported at a low level. The lowest digits should fall into a certain, non-random pattern in most elections. If there is wide manipulation of data it is very difficult to mimic those expected patterns. His analysis points to suspicion in Wisconsin. Yet, for now its a bit less than “where there is smoke, there is fire.”

An article in Time supports better election night reporting data: How the Wisconsin Recount Could Help Fix American Elections <read>

And this on the importance of election security by David Dill via Scientific American: Election Security Is a Matter of National Security <read>

It is not good enough to say, “We can’t prove fraud.” In every election we need evidence that vote counts are accurate

An Electoral House of Cards – When votes are not publicly verifiable

An Alternet interview of Jonathan Simon: Something Stinks When Exit Polls and Official Counts Don’t Match – A discussion with an exit poll expert reveals an electoral house of cards.

When their were claims that exit polls did not match in the Democratic Primary, I said that neither side made the case saying, “I stand with Carl Sagan who said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

Now a very thoughtful interview with Jonathan Simon who outlines the case that we should be concerned about the exit polls and concerned just as much that we cannot verify our elections

An Alternet interview of Jonathan Simon: Something Stinks When Exit Polls and Official Counts Don’t Match – A discussion with an exit poll expert reveals an electoral house of cards. <read>

Now a very thoughtful interview with Jonathan Simon who outlines the case that we should be concerned about the exit polls and concerned just as much that we cannot verify our elections:

We try as carefully as we can. I’ve been doing this pretty steadily now for the last 15 years along with some of my colleagues, and I would be the first to acknowledge that there is a lot of smoke there and there’s a lot of probative value to this work, but that bringing it forth as ironclad proof is very problematic. So we’re stuck at a place where I pivoted to is looking at the risk involved in having a computerized, privatized, unobservable vote counting system and just taking on faith that that system is not being manipulated when there is such a obvious vulnerability (on which the experts strongly agree) of the system to malfeasance and manipulation. That is where I’ve tended to go, is to look at that risk rather than screaming fraud from the rooftops and claiming proof…

Simon goes on to refute many of the reasons raised to be skeptical of exit poll data, yet also acknowledging that without evidence, the polls could be consistently wrong. Yet, errors strongly trend in the same direction.

In this past Tuesday, again we saw a very consistent pattern of exit polls that were more in favor of Hillary Clinton, more in favor of Democratic senatorial candidates and then vote counts were shifted from the exit polls to the right towards Donald Trump, towards the Republican senate candidates. Those are the figures that I pulled down and did a very basic analysis of. You have a column of numbers of state by state showing the degree of that shift and we’ll eventually do that for the national vote for the House of Representatives as well…

What it means to me is that neither system is self validating. Neither system can be trusted. If you look at accounting, you do double entry accounting. I’m not an accountant so my terminology may be off, but you basically audit by checking one column of numbers against another column of numbers. If they disagree, you know something is wrong somewhere. There is some arithmetical mistake, some failure of entry, possibly fraud … you don’t know. You just know that if two things that are pretty much supposed to agree had disagreed, there’s a problem somewhere. I can rule out mathematically and scientifically, by this time, errors due to random chance. Errors due to random chance, sampling errors, what we call margin of error issues, would not be expressing themselves so consistently in one direction. They’d be going in both directions and they’d be much smaller…

If you want to sleep well at night, which I also prefer to denial, and you want to say to yourself, Yeah, it must have been people just lying to the exit pollsters and I’m not going to worry about it, that’s fine. What you’re missing at that point is the fact that if you challenge me to say, How do you know these exit polls are valid? I would turn right around and challenge you and say, How do you know the vote counts are valid?

The fact is, and this is cold hard fact, neither of us can prove our case. That is the problem. We have an unobservable system that cannot answer the challenge that it might be subject to manipulation. It can’t demonstrate that it is not rigged. Exit polls are just a tool that we use to look at it and say, Well folks, there might be something to dig deeper into here. The problem is virtually never is anyone allowed to dig deeper. We have optical scanner equipment all over this country right now that have the voter marked ballots that drop through the optical-scan reader device and sit in their cabinet below. Those voter marked ballots need to be saved 22 months in theory, although they’ve been destroyed early, in fact, in many cases, especially if when there was an investigation going on in Ohio…They are corporate property. They are off limits to public inspection. It might as well, in the 99.9% of cases, be a paperless touchscreen that has no record whatsoever.

The bottom line is that Democracy requires citizen engagement and action:

[Around election time concern] passes briefly in front of the public eye. There’s a lot of stirring about it and then it dies out and it’s basically left to us hardcore election integrity advocates. This is catastrophic. This is tragic. What we’re left with is a system that was accepted more or less without real proof.

If that’s what democracy is worth to us, then we deserve what we get. Democracy requires support. It requires citizen support. It requires an investment of care and an investment of vigilance and an investment of participation more than deciding, Yeah, I’m going to vote or I’m not going to vote. It requires the fulfillment of a duty to be part of the public that counts and observe the counting of the votes so we don’t have the ludicrous situation where we hand our ballots to a magician who takes them behind a curtain, you hear them shred the ballots, comes out and tells you so-and-so won. This is what we’ve got now and it’s what we’ve accepted. We spend more money in two weeks in Iraq then would cost us for 30 years to hand-count our elections. This is surrealistic, this is absurd, but it’s the very strong inertial reality. Getting the energy up to change that reality, especially when that reality has worked well by definition for everybody who is sitting in office. They’re the people with the least incentive to look under the hood and say, Hey, we need to change this. It’s what put them in office.

It is an outstanding interview. I highly recommend reading in its entirety.

Be Careful What You Ask For: NPV Compact Has Unintended Consequences

Once again, we have an election where it is alleged that the losing candidate won the popular vote. Understandably we have calls from her supporters to abolish the Electoral College by means of the National Popular Vote Compact.

Once again, we must articulate to our friends why this is a bad idea. Once again, we point out to most of those that support the Electoral College that they support it primarily for the wrong reasons.

We have a broken, risky, unequal election system. Cobbling a well-intended compact on top of it makes it more risky, more vulnerable, and the results even less credible:

*****Update 11/16/2016 Pleased to be republished at the CTMirror.

We have a broken, risky, unequal election system. Cobbling a well-intended compact on top of it makes it more risky, more vulnerable, and the results even less credible:

Our current system is subject to multiple risks from officials, other insiders, domestic partisans, independent hackers, and foreign powers. The Compact does not change any of that. It makes the system more risky to manipulation in every state. Currently the risk is limited to the so-called swing states.
Our current system is not audited at all in half the states and insufficiently audited in the majority the states that have audits. The public should have little confidence in the accuracy of vote totals in each state and in the unofficial and official national totals. We should have little confidence in the purported popular vote winner, and even less if the compact is enabled.
The compact is flawed in that there is no official national popular vote number until after the Electoral College is required to vote. The Compact does not and cannot change that. Its supporters attempt to refute that fact with obfuscation.
Voters are unequal between states. The Compact will not fix that. It will aggravate that. Different voters are enfranchised and disenfranchised by differing state laws for eligibility. Voting is easier or more difficult by differing ease of registration and voting across the states. Frequently there are obvious attempts to make it easier or more difficult for certain classes of voters to vote. The Compact will increase those trends.
Contrary to the Compact’s proponents contentions there is no national recount possible. Only half the states have some form of recount available. Those recounts are based on state margins, not on the alleged national popular vote number. The Compact does not change that. It could not, since the Compact will be triggered and apply to states representing barely more than half the votes. It would also require the establishment of a national body to declare and manage a recount. Once again, proponents claim through obfuscation that a recount would be possible.
Let us not forget that we do not have voter verified paper records for a significant percentage of votes, so those votes are not actually auditable or recountable.

I would favor a national popular vote amendment to the U.S. Constitution, if and only if, it provided for a uniform franchise, required sufficient voting systems, sufficient audits and recounts nationwide. And sufficient laws that were enforceable and enforced to provide a trustworthy and trusted national popular vote number. Those ifs are a large leap for our democracy, yet are reasonable, economical, realistic requirements to achieve trustworthy democracy.

For more, here is my most recent testimony to the Connecticut Legislature: <read>

And all of our posts related to the national popular vote: <NPV posts>

*****Update 11/16/2016 Pleased to be republished at the CTMirror <read>