The Minnesota recount which started on November 19th goes on and will probably continue for several additional days, perhaps weeks. You can read about some of the details of the ongoing Minnesota senate recount at the blog of the Citizens for Voting Integrity MN <blog> We ask: Would this happen here, in Connecticut? Should this … Continue reading “Minnesota Recount vs. Connecticut Recanvass”
The Minnesota recount which started on November 19th goes on and will probably continue for several additional days, perhaps weeks. You can read about some of the details of the ongoing Minnesota senate recount at the blog of the Citizens for Voting Integrity MN <blog>
We ask:
Continue reading “Minnesota Recount vs. Connecticut Recanvass”
Update: Cross posted at MyLeftNutmeg. See some of the comments there, especially Tessa’s describing obtaining election results on election night in Milford. <read> ConnPost has an article on errors in Shelton on election night. But we find other possible inaccuracies in the story as reported: State: Shelton vote snafu ‘human error”, <read> Shelton’s arithmetically challenged … Continue reading “CT: How Many Errors Can You Find In This Story?”
Update: Cross posted at MyLeftNutmeg. See some of the comments there, especially Tessa’s describing obtaining election results on election night in Milford. <read>
ConnPost has an article on errors in Shelton on election night. But we find other possible inaccuracies in the story as reported: State: Shelton vote snafu ‘human error”, <read>
Shelton’s arithmetically challenged voting officials snatched away a local victory from Democratic congressional challenger Jim Himes a week after initial results indicated that he won the city, state officials have determined…
It didn’t get straightened out until Nov. 13, nine days after veteran U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays conceded that Himes had won the Fourth Congressional District race representing 19 southwestern Connecticut communities.
Bysiewicz said there was no political malice involved, a fact that the feuding local voter registrars — Democrat John “Jack” Finn and Republican Peter R. Pavone — agree upon. With a lingering controversy over an incorrect result on a local ballot question sharply dividing the two registrars, both Finn and Pavone say it was strictly erroneous tabulation that initially had Himes winning in the part of the city that’s in the Fourth District.
While the initial results had Shays with 7,114 votes and Himes with 7,632, after Pavone and Finn performed the recount, Shays had 7,668 and Himes had 6,744…
Finn said, “A mistake could have come from a person reading the number to the person on the computer. It had to be an error putting numbers into the computer.” He noted that Shays’ absentee ballots were also initially omitted.
We are pleased that the error has been corrected and that it did not change the results of the race. It would be even better if the registrars could manage to get along.
This was not the only error found in reporting results in Shelton:
“The discrepancies seem to be in the congressional races where there were cross endorsements,” Bysiewicz said. “Shelton’s one of those weird, split towns where there are two districts.”
“I definitely think it was human error, a transcription problem,” recalled state Sen. Dan Debicella, R-Shelton, who won re-election that night, but whose numbers also changed over the week and a half it took to agree on a final total…
There were also transcription errors when election officials dictated results that were typed incorrectly onto city spread sheets.
Bysiewicz believes that initial miscounts on absentee ballots was another problem…
“Arithmetic mistakes are not unusual,” Bysiewicz said, noting that her staff even found a mistake in the turnout percentage of the finalists for her “Democracy Cup” award that goes to the towns and cities with the highest Election Day turnout.
“Avon said they had 96 percent, but when we when crunched the numbers ourselves they were wrong and New Hartford ended up being the winner,” she said.
There is also plenty of confusion about the dual endorsements:
Part of the problems, Bysiewicz said last week, was that Himes was cross endorsed by the Working Families Party, so he appeared on the ballot in two places.
Some voters filled in their ballots in both spots and in those cases, if the tabulation machines did not reject the ballots, the votes were given to Himes on the Working Families ballot line.
“It’s not in [state] law, but it’s our advice to count double votes for Working Families, or whatever the cross endorsement is, because it’s up to us to help the minor parties,” Bysiewicz said.
We question the statement that “the tabulation machines did not reject the ballots, the votes were given to Himes on the Working Families ballot line”. Our understanding is that when a voter voted for the same candidate, they were counted once but then listed as UNK (unknown party) on the tabulator tape. The hand counted ballots should also have been counted that same way as UNK. We presume the Post misunderstood the Secretary.
It is also our understanding that the Secretary of the State did make a decision to not only count the UNK votes for the Working Families Party, but also to total them in the same bucket when reporting results on her website.
We are not sure if the following statement is correct:
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz said a review last week of the city’s mistakes found that Shelton had the biggest Election Day tabulation breakdown among the state’s 169 towns and cities.
Our understanding is that there are still unresolved errors in Stamford, from a comment on a post on MyLeftNutmeg on the Shelton story <ref>:
Weird numbers in Stamford too… on the Constitutional Convention. The original number they sent to the SOTS office was 41,775 “no” votes. That was amended to something like 23,000 “no” votes due to an “Excel error,” I’m told. That’s a pretty big error. The original number is still posted on the SOTS web site.
If true, then perhaps it was not a “tabulation breakdown among the state’s 169 towns and cities” but made elsewhere. Looking at the Stamford numbers at the Secretary of the State’s web this morning, we see:
President Total Votes 49543 McCain 17510 Obama 31733 Nadar 289 Others 11
Congress Total Votes 47327 Shays 19735 Himes-D 26039 Duffee 213 Himes-WF 1035 Carrano 305
Question 1 Total Votes 58024 Yes 16249 No 41775
Question 2 Total Votes 49087 Yes 25679 No 23408
Looks like there is, at minimum, an anamoly of about 9,000 votes.
A big part of a solution would be for all polling place moderators to be required to fax their moderators’ returns, checklist reports, and tabulator tapes to the Secretary of the State’s Office on election night. The Secretary’s Office post the faxed images on the web, along with much more detailed keyed in results, in downloadable format. Then interested parties would be able to check the data. Of course, the remaining potential transcription error gap is hand counted ballots and hand transcribed numbers to the moderators’ reports not on the tabulator tapes.
Eureka CA, Diebold error resulted in 179 uncounted ballots. The Times-Standard reports the story of the “Humboldt Election Transparency Project”, similar to a post-election audit <read>
Premier Elections Solutions (formerly known as Diebold Election Systems, Inc.), seems to have known about the glitch at least since 2004.
The Transparency Project is not an ordinary audit, it is partially accomplished by the public:
Continue reading “Election “Audit” Discovers Diebold-Known Error”
Like several towns in the most recent Post-Election Audit, Hamden found unexplained discrepancies in the post election audit. Unlike most towns, the media in Hamden takes note. The Hamden Chronicle has the story <read> Not by a large number, though Esposito considered any deviation to be problematic. They estimated no more than 3 percent as … Continue reading “CT: Errors found in town’s first vote audit”
Like several towns in the most recent Post-Election Audit, Hamden found unexplained discrepancies in the post election audit. Unlike most towns, the media in Hamden takes note. The Hamden Chronicle has the story <read>
Not by a large number, though Esposito considered any deviation to be problematic. They estimated no more than 3 percent as of Thursday, Nov. 20. That was within the range of standard human error according to Esposito.
“We’re looking at three to four votes out of 2,000 so far,” said Esposito.
We wonder where the 3% figure for standard human error comes from? We also note that four votes out of 2000 would represent .2% of the votes and perhaps a .4% margin difference in a 2000 vote race.
Our belief is that people can easily make errors, however, with reasonable procedures and supervision teams of people can count accurately. Machines can count accurately or inaccurately, but they ultimately cannot judge voters’ intent.
The Cross-Endorsed Counting Challenge:
Continue reading “CT: Errors found in town’s first vote audit”
Update: Roanoke Times agrees <read> Letter to the editor in Washington Post <read>, well said. Yes Virginia, nutmeg state recounts don’t involve much actual counting either. Not Quite a Full Recount in Virginia Sunday, November 30, 2008; Virginians will have a recount in the 5th Congressional District race [Metro, Nov. 25] — or will they? … Continue reading “Recount won’t actually count ballots”
Update: Roanoke Times agrees <read>
Letter to the editor in Washington Post <read>, well said. Yes Virginia, nutmeg state recounts don’t involve much actual counting either.
Not Quite a Full Recount in Virginia
Sunday, November 30, 2008;Virginians will have a recount in the 5th Congressional District race [Metro, Nov. 25] — or will they?
As the article noted, optical-scan ballots will be run through the voting machine again. For direct-recording electronic voting (most commonly touch-screen) machines, officials will recalculate the results from the totals printed out on Election Day. Only hand-marked paper ballots will be physically recounted.
Voters should be surprised and disappointed that a recount won’t actually count ballots, especially since nationwide evidence shows that the direct-recording electronic voting machines are inaccurate and insecure. For instance, the computer systems that run the lottery are subject to tighter controls for accuracy than are electronic voting machines.
Also, unlike most states, Virginia doesn’t do any sort of audit of the machines to make sure they’re counting correctly. In fact, in most cases it’s illegal to conduct an audit. This isn’t the fault of the local elections board or registrars, but rather of the General Assembly, which has failed to pass needed reforms of Virginia’s archaic election laws.
JEREMY EPSTEIN
Co-Founder
Verifiable Voting Coalition of Virginia
Recent examples highlighting the risks of machine recounting <read>
The National Popular Vote Agreement will likely be proposed again, in 2009, in the Connecticut Legislature. Recently the Secretary of the State expressed her support for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of the President. Update 05/13: <squeaks by the CT House> We understand the appeal of the popular election of the President. However, … Continue reading “The Case Against “The National Popular Vote””
The National Popular Vote Agreement will likely be proposed again, in 2009, in the Connecticut Legislature. Recently the Secretary of the State expressed her support for a constitutional amendment for the popular election of the President. Update 05/13: <squeaks by the CT House>
We understand the appeal of the popular election of the President. However, CTVotersCount is conditionally opposed to the popular election of the President, in any form, unless and until there are uniform election laws, enforceable, and enforced nationwide.
We have two basic reasons for opposing the popular vote, at this time, in any form:
The above concerns apply to the popular vote in any form. There is a third reason for opposing the National Popular Vote Agreement:
Here is an updated version on an op-ed we wrote two years ago, when the Agreement was proposed in Connecticut.
The Case Against “The Agreement Among The States
to Elect The President by National Popular Vote”The Titanic sank not just because it hit an iceberg. It sank because too many of its compartments were flooded. If the integrity of a hull is breeched, if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few compartments, a ship will not sink. The Electoral College performs the same function as ship compartments for our democracy. If the integrity of an election is breeched, then if the damage can be sufficiently contained to a few states, the democratic process will prevail.
This year “The Agreement Among The States to Elect The President by National Popular Vote” has been proposed in the vast majority of states. Replacing the Electoral College sounds appealing. It was intended to protect the smaller states from domination by the larger states, while protecting wealthy landowners from uninformed, uneducated people. Today, the Electoral College protects us from our faulty and fragmented voting system.
Implementing a national popular vote would put at risk the integrity of the entire election process. If the votes of all the states were accumulated, errors, voter suppression, disenfranchisement, or fraud in any and every state count toward the popular vote. This would increase the potential impact of errors and the incentives for suppression, disenfranchisement, and fraud. Defying logic proponents of the Agreement simply claim the opposite effect. Its chief proponent, Senator Birch Bayh, claims benefits of fraud would be limited because “Under a direct popular vote system, one fraudulent vote wins one vote in the return. In the electoral college system, one fraudulent vote could mean 45 electoral votes”. In reality under the popular vote, one vote could take all 538 electoral votes.
Many researchers including the Carter/Baker Commission, Common Cause, The Secretary of State of California, and the Brennan Center for Justice have documented serious problems with our election systems. Reform bills have been introduced in Congress. These reforms include uniform national standards for poll worker training, enforcement, voter registration, paper ballots, provisional ballots, and ending conflicts of interest in election administration. Voter suppression and fraud have been documented in press reports, books, and the Conyers Report by Representative John Conyers, Jr. and The House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff.
The ideal of a precise popular vote count is far from the reality of the current system of rushed tallying of the vote to produce a winner on election night, followed by pressures to justify the initial count to avoid a time consuming, frequently embarrassing series of recounts. The 2000 Supreme Court decision, Gore v. Bush, stated “The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter in the special instance of a statewide recount under the authority of a single state judicial officerâ€. In 2006, in Sarasota, Florida 18,000 votes were lost forever and never counted in heavily Democratic districts, resulting in the contested election of a Republican congresswoman by less than 400 votes. Recently, in Ohio two election officials were convicted of rigging a partial recount. In Connecticut in 2006, in the 2nd CD re-canvass, the margin changed from 167 to 91. In 2008 in Connecticut there were several reporting errors discovered in the originally reported results posted on the Secretary of the State’s web site. Review of thousands of actual votes in Ohio has demonstrated that votes were deliberately changed in several counties in 2004 using a variety of methods. In Alabama, votes were deliberately changed to defeat the sitting Governor, Don Siegleman.
Direct election of the President would magnify errors and distort voter eligibility differences among the states, while offering an open invitation to voter suppression and fraud that will lead directly to voter disenfranchisement and cynicism. We can also expect an unending series of court challenges of vote counts and the Agreement, in almost every state, in every presidential election, leading to a tradition of the Supreme Court deciding the President.
Electing the President by popular vote sounds truly democratic and fair. Yet, until we have uniform standards for voting, effective independent enforcement, and can suppress our obsession for immediate results, the national popular vote is a certain a disaster for our democracy, like an oil tanker without compartments heading toward an iceberg.
We do not take this stand lightly. The National Popular Vote Agreement has been endorsed by several legislators in Connecticut, The Hartford Courant, and some national good government groups. <National Popular Vote web>
*****
Update: Secretary of the State, Bysiewicz: For the Popular Vote. Against the Compact. Says it will increase inner city vote. <read> We don’t agree with all her logic: In Connecticut few inner city voters go to the polls even when there are hotly contested Mayoral or Senate primaries and elections.
Update: Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie also opposes the National Popular Vote <read>
*****
Update: Cross posted on MyLeftNutmeg. Comments there are worth reading: http://www.myleftnutmeg.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=10856 (on MyLeftNutmeg, I am BlastFromGlast)
Update: Article questioning the purported failure of the Electral College in the 1800’s <read>
Update: Washington Post, Dec 18, 2000: Public Backs Uniform U.S. Voting Rules; Poll Finds Wide Support For Guidelines on Ballots, Closing Times, Recounts.
Most voters agree it’s a mess, and 61 percent said they want the federal government to clean it up. Barely a third said they wanted to allow local and state governments to continue to set election law…
Nearly nine in 10 want a federal rule that requires all jurisdictions in the country to use one kind of voting machine…
About six in 10 Americans say they want to amend the U.S. Constitution to select the president by direct popular vote and do away with the electoral college...\
Q: Do you think voting rules in presidential elections should continue to be set individually by states and counties, or should the federal government establish voting rules for all states and counties?
The federal government should establish voting rules 61%
Of course we would be the last to say that HAVA was a good example of meeting the voters’ requests for uniformity. But we can conclude that the public does want uniform Federal rules for Presidential elections as much as it would like the popular vote – pretty close to what we would like to see, sufficient, uniform, enforceable, and enforced eleciton laws nationwide as a prerequisite to considering a Constitutional Amendment.
The right to vote… is the primary right
by which other rights are protected – Thomas Paine
“The right to vote… is the primary right
by which other rights are protected” – Thomas Paine
Continue reading “FAQ: Voting Integrity and Constitutional Rights”
Results also indicate continuing extensive problems with procedures not being followed by election officials. The UConn VoTeR Center recently released two more reports in its series of memory card audits <Aug Primary Post-Election> <November Pre-Election> We applaud UConn for carrying out these tests and the Secretary of the State’s Office for commissioning these tests. We … Continue reading “CT: UConn Memory Card Reports: More Info, More “Junk” Data”
Results also indicate continuing extensive problems with procedures not being followed by election officials.
The UConn VoTeR Center recently released two more reports in its series of memory card audits <Aug Primary Post-Election> <November Pre-Election>
We applaud UConn for carrying out these tests and the Secretary of the State’s Office for commissioning these tests. We appreciate the valuable addition of analysis of the Audit Logs.
From the Presidential Pre-Election Report:
The UConn VoTeR Center performed a pre-election audit of the memory cards for the Accu-Vote Optical Scan tabulators that are to be used in the November 2008 Elections in Connecticut. The cards are programmed by LHS Associates of Methuen, Massachusetts, and shipped to Connecticut districts for use in the elections. For the pre-election audit the VoTeR Center received and examined 620 memory cards as of November 3, 2008. These cards correspond to 620 distinct districts in Connecticut. About 2/3 of these memory cards were randomly chosen by the VoTeR Center personnel during the visits to LHS and before the cards were packed and shipped to the towns. Another 1/3 of the memory cards came from the towns directly, where the cards were randomly chosen for pre- election audit (this procedure applied to the town for which the cards were not selected at LHS). The towns that shipped the cards to be audited were not asked to perform the local pre-election testing before shipping, thus the majority of the cards received from the towns did not contain the pre-election testing events in their audit logs.
This document reports on the ï¬ndings obtained during the audit. Among the 620 cards received and tested as of this writing, 564 cards (91%) were found to have been properly programmed for election. These cards contained valid ballot data and the executable code on these cards was the expected code, with no extraneous data or code.
One of the ongoing areas of concern is the quality of memory cards and the quality control of our vendor LHS Associates, which supplies the Diebold memory cards and programs them for each election. Past tests at UConn, in other states, and surveys by the audit Coalition indicate significant problems.
The source of the problems remain in question: Are the cards bad from the beginning? Do they leave LHS working correctly, to be harmed by transport or by testing by election officials? These latest reports may get us closer to some of the answers. Looking at the results and the reports conclusions, we conclude:
We might conclude, perhaps erroneously that:
However, the memory cards shipped by election officials are not selected at random and do not represent all the districts in the election. The results may reflect a tendency for election officials to send in the “Junk†data cards or for districts with problems not to send cards – we have no way of knowing.
The results show serious problems with the hardware and the election system: Memory cards should not fail at these rates. In the unlikely event the memory card problems are shipping and handling, then LHS should specify exactly how the shipping and handling should be improved. Election officials should be expected to follow procedures. How can the public have confidence in our elections when procedures are not followed?
We note from the pre-election report:
The current SOTS procedure is not to duplicate cards, but this is now being reconsidered, with one possibility being to allow duplication at the districts and to document and report all such occurrences.
We have reservations about making this change and question the added vulnerability associated with the duplication of cards. We have concerns that election officials will follow any such procedure given that they have clearly failed to follow the current procedure for memory cards and a similar procedure associated with the post-election audit requiring them to call the Secretary of the State’s Office when incorrectly sealed ballots are discovered. Procedures are insufficient when they are difficult to follow, they are regularly violated, they cannot be effectively monitored, are not enforced, and are not enforceable.
Greenwich Time, Once again, town faces election audit: <read>
Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a staunch advocate for the hand counting of ballots, said that she would oppose any measures to weaken the state’s auditing requirements, which she called the toughest in the nation.
“Auditing the election results is critical,” Bysiewicz said. “It is important to guarantee the integrity of our elections. We don’t just take the machine’s word for the vote tally.”
We appreciate the Secretary’s support of post-election audits and that she is staunchly opposed to weakening them. We also share the goal that Connecticut’s law be the “toughest in the Nation”. Our enthusiasm is tempered by our observations and conclusions that our audits are not the toughest and are, in any case by several measures, inadequate to provide confidence.
Take this survey. The Verified Voting Foundation and the UC Berkeley Election Administration Research Center have created an online survey of election workers for the November 4th election. If you worked the polls, please consider spending 15-20 minutes taking the survey
Take this survey
The Verified Voting Foundation and the UC Berkeley Election Administration Research Center have created an online survey of election workers for the November 4th election. If you worked the polls, please consider spending 15-20 minutes taking the survey: <survey link>