Did GOP Insiders Steal the Kentucky Governor's Race for Tea Partier Matt Bevin?

Lower down the ballot, many Democrats got tens of thousands more votes than Bevin.

By Brad Friedman / Brad Blog

We see, again, the nightmare scenario I've warned about for so many years: a U.S. election where all of the pre-election polls suggest Candidate X is set to win, but Candidate Y ends up winning by a huge margin instead and nobody even bothers to verify that the computer tabulated results accurately reflect the intent of the voters.

That's exactly what happened in Kentucky on Tuesday, where Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway was leading by a fair margin (about 3 to 5 points) in almost every pre-election poll in his race for Governor, but then ended up being announced as the loser to 'Tea Party' Republican candidate Matt Bevin by a landslide (almost 9 points) --- according to the state's 100% unverified computer tabulation systems.

As detailed on today's program with my guest Karoli Kuns of Crooks And Liars, there are a number of reasons to question the reported results. Among them, as Kuns points out today at C&L, the Democrats running in the down ballot races --- for Secretary of State, Attorney General (Conway's current job) and even state Auditor --- each reportedly received tens of thousands more votes than Conway did at the top of the ticket!

Bev Harris, of BlackBoxVoting.org, described the higher vote totals in the down ballot races as a "significant anomaly". She tells me that, at least until more records are requested and examined, the KY-Gov's race "has to be looked at as a questionable outcome, particularly because of the discrepancies in the down ballot races. More votes in those races and not at the top...that just doesn't happen."

(Here is a link to a helpful Public Records Request toolkit [PDF] from Black Box Voting for those of you who may be interested in helping to try and obtain some transparency in this race, as we also discussed on today's program.)

There are many other reasons for supporters to question the reported results in the KY-Gov's race, as I detail during the show. Of course, the reported results could also be completely accurate. But, without public, human examination of the hand-marked paper ballots (which, thankfully, now actually exist across most of the state!) and other related records, we have yet another unverified, 100% faith-based election to leave supporters wondering if they really won or lost.

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How trustworthy are electronic voting systems in the US?

Written by Beth Clarkson 

When you do your civic duty, and cast your vote for the various candidates and public propositions at an electronic voting machine, how confident are you that the results will be tabulated honestly?

If you feel less than sanguine about it and do a bit of the research to assuage your doubts, be prepared to feel even less confident afterwards. After years of casual research, the results I found have led me to file a lawsuit requesting access to the records needed to perform an audit myself.

My statistical analysis shows patterns indicative of vote manipulation in machines. The manipulation is relatively small, compared with the inherent variability of election results, but it is consistent. These results form a pattern that goes across the nation and back a number of election cycles. I’ve downloaded data and verified the results from several states for myself. Furthermore, the manipulation is not limited to a single powerful operator. My assessment is that the data reveals multiple (at least two) agents working independently to successfully alter voting results.

What convinced me that vote fraud is possible?

For me, it started with the 2004 Ohio presidential election. In 2005 I obtained and examined that data and it confirmed what other statisticians had said – that the results were highly suspicious. The official report from the congressional hearing on that election describes it as 'the abuse and manipulation of electronic voting machines and the arbitrary and illegal behavior of a number of elected and election officials which effectively disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in order to change the outcome of an election.'

For a thorough assessment, I recommend reading 'Post-Election Audits: Restoring Trust in Elections' published by the Brennan Center for Justice which includes a lengthy appendix of various well documented voting equipment problems. The audit in my county (Sedgwick, Kansas) that I wish to perform is similar to those recommended in this report. Currently, my county does not perform any sort of post-election verification of voting machine results, not even for recounts. I know because I requested such a recount after the November 2014 election. That request was denied.

The voting machine software used is proprietary and even the election officials are not allowed to inspect it. This is termed Black Box Votingand combined with Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting, which permits touchscreen machines and does not require a paper trail allows a situation ripe for exploitation. In addition, as Harper’s Magazine reported in 2012, the security of these machines is so lax that:

'As recently as September 2011, a team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory hacked into one of Diebold’s old Accuvote touchscreen systems. Their report asserted that anyone with $26 in parts and an eighth-grade science education would be able to manipulate the outcome of an election….Johnston’s group also breached a system made by another industry giant, Sequoia, using the same “man in the middle” hack - a tiny wireless component that is inserted between the display screen and the main circuit board - which requires no knowledge of the actual voting software.'

Also, there’s the fact that the polls are red-shifted (where there is systematic biasing toward Republican candidates) and have been for several election cycles. This is routinely assumed to be due to Republicans being less likely to answer pollsters, but there is no empirical justification for it. It’s used by polling organizations in their models in order to more accurately predict official results.

What convinced me to take action was a paper titled ‘Primary Election Results Amazing Statistical Anomalies’ by Francois Choquette and James Johnson. After analyzing the same elections (which I downloaded myself from various state government sites) and confirming Choquette and Johnson's results, I had to try and do something about the problem. The data I’ve analyzed supports their hypothesis that we have a serious pervasive and systematic problem with electronic voting machines.

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Congressional Democrats Launch a New Strategy to Restore the Voting Rights Act

Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., center, speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in support of a fix to the Voting Rights Act. (AP Photo / Lauren Victoria Burke)

The 2016 election is a year away, and many states are holding local elections today, but not everyone will be able to vote. 

Ari Berman

The 2016 election is one year away and many states and cities hold local elections today. But not everyone will be able to cast a ballot this year or next.

The 2016 election will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protections of the Voting Rights Act. Twenty-one states have put new voting restrictions in place since the 2010 election, with voters in 15 states facing these obstacles for the first presidential cycle in 2016, including in crucial swing states like North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Legislation has been introduced in Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act (VRA) following the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision gutting the law, but neither the modest Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 or the more ambitious Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015, which both have bipartisan support, have moved legislatively.

Today congressional Democrats unveiled a new strategy to build support for the Voting Rights Advancement Act. The bill compels states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination to clear future voting changes with the federal government, requires federal approval for voter-ID laws and similar measures, and outlaws new efforts to suppress the growing minority vote.

Every Tuesday while in session members of Congress will speak about the importance of voting rights, calling it “Restoration Tuesday,” spotlight stories of modern-day barriers to voting and rally on social media with the hashtag #RestoreTheVOTE & #RestorationTuesday.

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WHY ALL MAIL BALLOT ELECTIONS ARE A BAD IDEA

Adapted from Why 'Vote-by-Mail' Elections are a Terrible Idea for Democracy by Brad Friedman

Lack of Transparency: Absence of evidence does not mean absence of fraud
As with any voting system that is not fully transparent, proving mail-in fraud can be difficult or impossible. Once we drop our ballot in the mail, we can't verify what becomes of it, and elections become a matter of faith. Additionally, should our ballots arrive in the central aggregating location untampered, they are likely to be counted by the same private, secretly programmed electronic systems that have been proven vulnerable to rigging, hacking, and undetectable error. Central counting makes fraud on a large scale easier to accomplish and harder to detect. 

Lack of Security 
Ballots are stored in hundreds of thousands of locations with no security for two to three weeks. The chain of custody lacks security as the ballots are handled by many anonymous persons throughout the process. Any unmarked contest on a ballot can be marked by someone other than the voter when the ballots are opened for counting.

Voter Intimidation 
Voting can be done as a group at churches or union halls with people looking over the voter's shoulder to make sure they vote "the right way."

Election Fraud 
There is no way to be certain that the person who signed the envelope is the person to whom the ballot was sent. Ballots can be stolen from mail boxes while the voter is at work or away from home on an errand. Other tactics include vote harvesting by persons who show up at your door to "help" you vote. The elderly and those with disabilities are particularly vulnerable.

Potential for Ballot Mishandling 
Post office or contract mailing company illegally forwards ballots; more than one ballot sent to voters; postal workers put ballots in the trash. (All of these thing have happened in Colorado)

Lack of Secret Ballot 
When election judges check in your ballot, they can see how you voted when they match the inventory number on your ballot to the inventory number next to your name on the voter rolls. The Colorado Constitution guarantees your right to a secret ballot. [ed note: as do most other state Constitutions and elections code.]

Additional Resources: "Why Mail Ballots Are a Bad Idea" by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D

Mathematician suspicious of election fraud hires lawyer to force Kansas to hand over voting records

Kansas mathematician said this week that she had retained a lawyer and had scheduled a discovery hearing to force Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hand over voting records after they showed evidence of election fraud.

“I don’t understand why those patterns are there, the patterns are very definitely real. But we don’t know what’s causing them or why they’re there,” Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson told KSHB last month. “They do fit what would be expected if election fraud is occurring, and that’s very concerning.”

Brad Blog’s Brad Friedman explained the suspicious activity in a recent column:

Confirming a theory initially reported by two other statisticians in 2012 [PDF], Clarkson has found that computer-reported results from larger precincts in the state, with more than 500 voters, show a “consistent” statistical increase in votes for the Republican candidates in general elections (and even a similar increase for establishment GOP candidates versus ‘Tea Party’ challengers during Republican primaries). Those results run counter to conventional political wisdom that Democrats perform better in larger, more urban precincts.

Kobach, however, went to court to block Sedgwick County from releasing voting records to Clarkson.

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Alabama to stop issuing driver’s licenses in counties with 75% black registered voters

The state of Alabama, which requires a photo ID to vote, announced this week that it would stop issuing driver’s licenses in counties where 75 percent of registered voters are black.

Due to budget cuts, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said that 31 satellite DMVoffices would no longer have access to driver’s licenses examiners, meaning that residents will need to travel to other counties to apply for licenses. The move comes just one year after the state’s voter photo ID law went into effect.

AL.com’s John Archibald asserted in a column on Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Justice should open an investigation into the closings.

“Because Alabama just took a giant step backward,” he wrote. “Take a look at the 10 Alabama counties with the highest percentage of non-white registered voters. That’s Macon, Greene, Sumter, Lowndes, Bullock, Perry, Wilcox, Dallas, Hale, and Montgomery, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. Alabama, thanks to its budgetary insanity and inanity, just opted to close driver license bureaus in eight of them.”

“Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one,” Archibald explained. “But maybe it’s not racial at all, right? Maybe it’s just political. And let’s face it, it may not be either… But no matter the intent, the consequence is the same.”

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If I Can Shop and Bank Online, Why Can't I Vote Online?

Photo by Image Source/DigitalVision / Getty Images

by David Jefferson, Computer Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 1 ], member, Verified Voting Foundation Board, Board of Directors, California Voter Foundation

There is widespread pressure around the country today for the introduction of some form of Internet voting in public elections that would allow people to vote online, all electronically, from their own personal computers or mobile devices. Proponents argue that Internet voting would offer greater speed and convenience, particularly for overseas and military voters and, in fact, any voters allowed to vote that way. However, computer and network security experts are virtually unanimous in pointing out that online voting is an exceedingly dangerous threat to the integrity of U.S. elections.

There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future. Anyone from a disaffected misfit individual to a national intelligence agency can remotely attack an online election, modifying or filtering ballots in ways that are undetectable and uncorrectable, or just disrupting the election and creating havoc. There are a host of such attacks that can be used singly or in combination. In the cyber security world today almost all of the advantages are with attackers, and any of these attacks can result in the wrong persons being elected, or initiatives wrongly passed or rejected.

There is no way to guarantee that the security, privacy, and transparency requirements for elections can all be met with any practical technology in the foreseeable future

Nonetheless, the proponents point to the fact that millions of people regularly bank and shop online every day without apparent problems. They note that an online voting transaction resembles an ecommerce transaction, at least superficially. You connect your browser to the appropriate site, authenticate yourself, make your choices with the mouse, click on a final confirmation button, and you are done! All of the potential attacks alluded to above apply equally to shopping and banking services, so what is the difference? People ask, quite naturally, “If it is safe to do my banking and shopping online, why can’t I vote online?” This is a very fair question, and it deserves a careful, thorough answer because the reasons are not obvious. The answer requires substantial development to explain fully, but in brief, in can be summarized:

1. It is not actually “safe” to conduct ecommerce transactions online. It is in fact very risky, and more so every day. Essentially all those risks apply equally to online voting transactions.

2. The technical security, privacy, and transparency requirements for voting are structurally different from, and actually much more stringent than, those for ecommerce transactions. Even if ecommerce transactions were safe, the security technology underpinning them would not suffice for voting. In particular, the voting security and privacy requirements are unique and in tension in a way that has no analog in the ecommerce world.

E-Commerce transactions are not, in fact, “safe”

Why do security experts say that ecommerce transactions are not safe when millions of people do them every day, mostly without problems? The question needs to be refined: “Safe for whom?” and “What degree of safety is required”? E-Commerce transactions may be relatively safe for consumers, but they certainly are not safe for financial institutions or merchants.2 Banks, credit card companies, and online merchants lose billions of dollars a year in online transaction fraud despite huge investments in fraud prevention and recovery. People have the illusion that ecommerce transactions are safe because merchants and banks don’t hold consumers financially responsible for fraudulent transactions that they are the innocent victims of. Instead the businesses absorb and redistribute the losses silently, passing them on in the invisible forms of higher prices, fees, and interest rates. Businesses know that if consumers had to accept those losses personally most online commerce would collapse. Instead, they routinely hide the losses, keeping the magnitude secret so the public is generally unaware. It’s a good business strategy.

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