From Ken Dixon, Connecticut Post:
HARTFORD — Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz will order audits of the vote totals from the dozen Bridgeport precincts that used photocopies of election ballots last week.
“I think it would be in Bridgeport’s best interests and the candidates’ best interests,” Bysiewicz said Tuesday during an interview in her Capitol office. “This is a concern of ours.”
She plans to include the Bridgeport precincts in a mandatory hand count of statewide totals as part of her office’s upcoming annual random audit of 10 percent of Connecticut precincts.
The review is part of the quality-control procedures set up to oversee the state’s now four-year-old optical scanning program.
Bysiewicz said she is still not sure how many votes were cast on photocopies, which were later hand-counted by local election officials because the ballots could not be read by the optical scanners. Voting officials in Bridgeport earlier this week said they had no idea how many photocopied ballots were used after polling places on Election Day exhausted their supply of regular ballots.
Bridgeport’s Democratic and Republican registrars made a major mistake, state officials said, when they ordered only 21,100 ballots — at the cost of 35 cents each — printed for the Nov. 2 election for about 68,000 registered voters in 25 polling places.
A total of 23,185 people cast ballots in Bridgeport, according to the head moderator’s tally sheet sent by the city to state officials. A New Britain printing company supplied an emergency delivery of 2,700 ballots to the city on Election Day.
*** Too little too late! ***
If officials knew we could use photocopies then why don’t they make that general practice? It seems the city could save big on future elections if there’s no mandate to use “originals.” If not then maybe we should use the old machines. Not everything new is best.
The article above promises a state audit of photocopied ballots in Bridgeport. At first glance, sounds good. Second glance, could be a feel-good PR move that doesn’t prove a thing.
Here’s why: The reporter doesn’t ask and the state doesn’t say what they mean by “audit.” The key issue with photocopied ballots is whether they are valid ballots from real voters or stuffed ballots stuck in there from who-knows-where.
There is a huge disconnect, even among election integrity activists, with what it means to audit. Simply counting items of unproven origin–whether you count 100% or a sample–tells you nothing at all about whether the items are valid votes. The issue with photocopied ballots (as well as with absentee ballots!) is who cast the vote, not just how many there are.
Without a rigorous and uncompromising chain of custody exam on these photocopied ballots, who knows if they are real or fake? And if they are fake, it doesn’t matter if the count matches.
So one very real question here is: In this “audit” will they compare the physical signatures in the sign-in book with the overall number of ballots?
Also: Since they hand-counted the ballots, why on earth do neither Bridgeport officials nor the Connecticut Secretary of State know how many photocopied ballots there are?
And as former King County Election Supervisor Julie Anne Kempf mentioned in her interview about this topic here: www .bbvforums.org/forums/messages/134/81340.html–if some of the photocopied ballots were run through the scanners, it won’t do to just hand-count the photocopied ballots, as apparently was done. That’s because the scanners sometimes count the photocopies and sometimes don’t. If ANY photocopied ballots have gone through the scanner, the whole scanner count is tainted and you can’t just fish out the photocopies and count them, keeping the scanner tally.
Ms. Harris great website I made it a favorite.