Bysiewicz calls for special election to fill future U.S. Senate vacancies in CT

Finally SOTS says something I agree with (0.00 / 0)

Thanks, mvbrown, for the link.

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 01:07:21 AM UTC

special elections must be audited (0.00 / 0)

Having just read a related piece at ctvoterscount.org, I am reminded that special elections are not audited in CT.

I wonder if this is odds with HAVA and the fact that it would be a federal election?

To avoid such a law changing how a senate slot is chosen from merely having the PATINA of legitimacy with unfortunate room for gamesmanship, any law changing the selection process should include imho the provision that the election is subject to the audit laws in CT.

Now, there's another piece of that equation -- at present we have an audit that Susan B keeps putting lipstick on every time it is done -- the lipstick, of course, equalling the patina of legitimacy.

Meanwhile, in three towns there were spreadsheet formula errors and other errors (Shelton released at least 3 different totals before it was all over), and it really seems like the "process" leading to the SOTS "certification of results" may...not....be...much of a process?  Of course, our audit only looks at district level data, and no hand counted ballots, so the key figures on number of voters who voted aren't cross-checked by the audit, nor are the aggregated district tallies leading to town level totals.  The "machine" that continues to function perfectly (as Susan B keeps telling us) may not be made by Diebold.

So -- lots of room for that special election to be lost in transcription and spreadsheet errors that remain undetected (or never make it into the certified vote once they are detected).

If we really want to give the special election of the senator to the people, then revisiting our "election verification methodology" in the first place (if it has ever been visited), or including in the audit e.g. a means of cross-checking the math and double-checking the transcribed numbers in our elections would seem kind of elementary.  IF anybody's looking at it and thinking about it.

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 13:59:38 PM UTC

Unfortunately, no Federal audit requirement (0.00 / 0)

You said: "Having just read a related piece at ctvoterscount.org, I am reminded that special elections are not audited in CT.  I wonder if this is odds with HAVA and the fact that it would be a federal election?"

I wish it was.  Unfortunately, there is no Federal audit requirement, no Federal paper record requirement, no Federal standards for what constitutes and "Audit".  What HAVA standards there are for election equipment performance are regularly ignored.

Hopefully, Rep Rush Holt will continue to propose election integrity bills until one passes.

What would it cost towns to run such an election?  

  Perhaps $5,000,000.

What would candidates, people, and special interests spend on the election?

  Perhaps: $20,000,000 - $40,000,000

What would be at stake for Connecticut?  

  Billions of $ and perhaps 100's of lives.

What would an audit cost for such an election?  

  $10,000 - $20,000

What would much more reliable results reporting cost for such an election?

  Perhaps $5,000

because Connecticut voters count: http://www.CTVotersCount.org

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by: BlastFromGlast @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 14:19:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

bingo (0.00 / 0)

What would much more reliable results reporting cost for such an election?

 Perhaps $5,000

What would you include under this heading, BFG?

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 14:36:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

bingo! bingo? (0.00 / 0)

What would much more reliable results reporting cost for such an election?

 Perhaps $5,000

or, before I say bingo, maybe I better check:  What would you include under this heading, BFG?

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 14:37:39 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Basically the following: (0.00 / 0)

1)
All district and absentee counting moderators fax their Moderator's Return, Checklist Report, and Tabulator Tape on election night to the Secretary of the State's Office.

2)
The fax would automatically go to a server, and someone at the SOTS Office would see that they are posted on the web, indexed by say, town and date, or election, town and date.

3)
The SOTS Office (likely using temporary help or outsourcing) would key in all the data, and post to the Web in addition the the summary information they post now, downloadable data to the same level of detail as required on Moderator's Returns, checklist reports, and tabulator tapes.

The $5,000 is based on the assumption that we do this for all elections, so the fax stuff would be already setup - although that could likely be outsources as well, and there is a relatively small amount of data in such an election to input.

Of course that's an estimate.  What if I'm wrong and it costs $15,000 and the election only costs $3,000,000 and it only actually costs dozens of lives.  On the other hand we could have a primary or two and the election cost could double or triple and the moderators would have to fax in the returns twice.

On the other hand the Governor could appoint someone that could cause many of us to go bankrupt, ruin the environment, leave the homeland insecure, or destroy our civil liberties.

But we could loose both ways: spend all that money on the election and then have the winner decided by error or fraud, rather than by the voters' intent.

because Connecticut voters count: http://www.CTVotersCount.org

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by: BlastFromGlast @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 15:50:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Big fan of "cards on the table" (0.00 / 0)

Oh, THAT.  Yeah.  That has crossed my mind from time to time as a good idea -- say, when the SOTS receives all those audit reports from the ROVs and SOTS says, "OOH, they were PERFECT!"... but actually has no way of knowing, since SOTS does NOT collect the district level data or machine tapes.

One of the way election discrepancies (errors or fraud) will get caught is to make the election documentation  transparent, as you suggest.  And, it's something that volunteers could do all by themselves with a website and an FOI request -- actually 170 FOI requests, one for each town and one for SOTS.

What's up with this document?  (note signature date and date stamp from clerk).  I THINK there is no statutorily mandated time frame on when the document is filed with the clerk (does anyone else know?), but the time frame on filing with SOTS is by end of day, essentially, the day after the election IF it is hand delivered by the state police, otherwise due on election night via fax.

OK, so why again would this be signed on 11/6 and not 11/5?

SEE HOW MUCH FUN POSTED ELECTION DOCUMENTATION WOULD BE???

And this is even before you start doing some quick tallying and asking why there are 593 more votes for president than ballots cast shown on the checklist page (5)?  (as did a Stratford citizen -- clear answers still pending)

BFG's method could make a certification of election results involve much, much more than....holy water.  Or am I wrong?  Were these apparently questionable results carved into stone?  Or were they fixed in time for that "certification" of "results"?  Or is there an explanation that mere citizens cannot fathom without byzantine rulebooks?  

Inquiring minds want to know -- and until then, we can support hot documents/cards on the table while they are "hot"/timely reporting of the pieces of the election puzzle that make it possible to reconcile and cross check that what is said to have occurred, actually DID  occur as reported.

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by: greenpeas @ Thu Dec 18, 2008 at 19:00:07 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

. (0.00 / 0)

What's up with this document?  (note signature date and date stamp from clerk).  I THINK there is no statutorily mandated time frame on when the document is filed with the clerk (does anyone else know?), but the time frame on filing with SOTS is by end of day, essentially, the day after the election IF it is hand delivered by the state police, otherwise due on election night via fax.

Presidential ballots, unlike ABs, are not tallied by local district. Those voters are not on the "official checklist" so the votes are not included in the individual district moderator's returns. That's my guess as to what they are.

–7.25 / –7.28 | http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tw...

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by: mattw @ Fri Dec 19, 2008 at 19:59:53 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Where do they show up in the tally? (0.00 / 0)

re: abs vs. prez ballots, I conclude as you do that the 593 votes more than the # of ballots cast likely represent prez preference ballots that were not added into the total ballots cast because they were unregistered voters, but if one wanted to examine the head moderator's return and try to reconcile, it would be like trying to reconciile a checkbook with a missing check:

1.  The number of voters checked in (including abs voters checked off on list) should matched the total ballots cast (machine plus hand plus abs).   this formula does NOT explain how you would balance out the PPBs.  (If there were  more ballots than voters, either check in person was asleep at the wheel and missed a few voterss checking in, or ballot box may have been stuffed - or machine is tallying wrong,  or somebody put a number in the wrong column.

2.  The number of ballots cast should be more than or equal to the number of votes cast, and should be equal if the undervotes (written as blank votes by the machine on its results tape) were added in for each race.  The number of votes counted should not be greater than the number of ballots cast.  

Clearly above, there are more votes than ballots identified on the form.

The issue is not so much identifying what they are -- it's understanding why a return that doesn't reflect all ballots cast is acceptable as correctly filled out.  It is not clear whether there is an error in the form design/instructions  either 1) that there appears no place clearly marked for data related to unregistered voters/PPBs, or 2)  that the instructions appear to contemplate mixing registered and unregistered voters together for purpose of reporting a result -- which disables the use of the voter check-in list as a corroborating figure, unless there is a similar check in list for the PPB voters that is kept in chain of custody and directed to be added into the check-in list for an aggregated reg plus unreg voters voting figure.  To figure this out requires a fair amount of reading of manuals, so I'd rather just ask first if somebody can explain it.

Since it is conceivable that a very few people may  not have voted for president in some cases, the fact that the total votes cast on the top race may be slightly less than the ballots distributed is not unheard of.   What is pretty unusual is for 593 votes more than ballots to appear to have been cast and have SOTS not say anything about it when they see the result (I am concluding they are not in the results checking business and just do the steno).  

Or so it seems to me.

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by: greenpeas @ Sat Dec 20, 2008 at 00:22:47 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

old absentee procedure provides some insights (0.00 / 0)

Can't find the most recent absentee ballot instructions (I think there may be an update), but here is a link.

1. Prez ballots ARE counted "with" abs ballots and it appears that ultimately they are added into them using a space provided on at least some versions of the forms.

2.  There IS a checklist of unregistered prez ballot voters, the tally of which is listed on the voter check-in accounting of all voters of various stripes who voted.

3.  Stratford appears not to have used a form that provides  space for presidential ballots and voters, but worksheets/forms do seem to exist with that data intended to be broken out on it.

We're still back to election results in a hypothetical special election that do not make the results' cross check transparent.

Now this is a regular election situation.  There were 3 audits in Stratford of "machine function."  None, of course, would have touched upon this presidential preference ballot issue, since PPBs are by definition NOT counted in the audits, even though they maybe  counted by machine.

So looping back around to mbrown's subject about special elections, is it enough just to say "make it a special election?"  Or must we insist that the results of such a special election also must somehow be transparent and be  able to be accounted for?

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by: greenpeas @ Sat Dec 20, 2008 at 00:57:23 AM UTC

[ Parent ]