Luther Weeks's blog

On Saturday October 1st, I was pleased to be a part of the The Future panel at the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project event, Election Integrity - Past, Present & Future. The event was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of a conference on voting integrity 1986.

Was the "online tampering" done by outside hackers? Or was it an insider? Does the Courant have the expertise to determine the cause in this instance and actually create effective controls to prevent future online voting attacks? If so, the editors should be advising the likes of the Department of Defense, banks, and Google.

UPDATED: Yesterday, members of the Coalition assisted in the drawing of districts for the Post-Election Audit of the September 13th Primary. New Haven, on average, expect to have 3-4 districts selected each time and Hartford 2-3 districts. However, since the law exempts districts from the selection that have recanvasses or contested races, the expected average is higher than 10% in each particular post-election audit. As random selection from a single collection of districts goes, the average seldom occurs.

Oooops the law passed just this year to fix the problems in Bridgeport said nothing about the SOTS being able to walk into central absentee ballot counting operations, only polling places. In the words of Cindi Rice, "Who could have imagined..." Update: More problems, documented this time. Was it fraud, mismanagement, or incompetence? Who knows for sure?

Monday's meeting featured presentations by Yale Law School Prof. Heather Gerken, Ted Bromley of the Secretary of the State's Office, and an outline of the next meeting, along with deadlines for the Task Force.

Who says there is little a single legislator can do to affect election integrity and confidence? Human error can change an election result or serve as a ready excuse to cover-up fraud.

Saving money, getting people voting are laudable goals, yet we caution that in the process we should not sacrifice voting integrity and confidence in pursuing increased participation. In fact, we should be increasing integrity and confidence while we also pursue convenience and participation. And we should be cautious that our efforts actual result in the intended results.

Rigged election or three human errors - we may never know for sure.

A three part series highlights ongoing, organized, absentee vote fraud in Florida. The [low] highlight is the video and story in the first part, of a disabled former county worker who tried her darnedest to vote but in the end was denied.

We often speak of the need for 'Integrity and Confidence' in elections, yet the words 'Integrity' and 'Confidence' are often misunderstood, with their meanings collapsed. We need both confidence and integrity in our elections, neither alone is sufficient.