PA GOP Describes Special Election Irregularities in Letter to PA SOS

The Republican Party of Pennsylvania asked acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Robert Torres to investigate several "irregularities" during last Tuesday's special election in the 18th Congressional District.  Democrat Conor Lamb won the race by just 627 votes over Republican Richard Saccone, a small enough margin that even a relatively small number of confused or disenfranchised voters could change the outcome of the race.

An attorney and authorized campaign representative was prevented from observing vote counting in Allegheny County:

First, an authorized campaign attorney, Russell Giancola, presented several forms of permissible credentials but was prevented from observing the computation of the vote count in Allegheny County Tuesday night. . . . While attorney Giancola was finally able to obtain this compliance with the inappropriate preconditions, the delay deprived the campaign of the right to have counsel present during the computation reporting process.

Allegheny and Washington Counties failed to provide the notice to military and overseas voter required by the Uniform Military and Overseas Voters Act.  Voting machines were not calibrated properly:

Third, we received multiple complaints throughout the 18th Congressional District regarding calibration issues involving the voting machines.  Numerous voters have called the Party and the Saccone campaign to complain that they selected Rick Saccone on the voting screen, only for Conor Lamb to appear on the confirmation screen.  It is our understanding that some of these issues were not resolved during the Special Election.

Poll workers failed to follow provisional ballot procedures:

Fourth, the Party received numerous complaints about voters not appearing on the voter rolls, and being denied the ability to cast a provisional ballot at their polling place.  In at least one instance, a voter was denied a provisional ballot at his precinct and directed to vote at his prior precinct in the neighboring county where he used to reside before moving several months ago.  This violates voters rights under the Help America Vote Act and Commonwealth's implementing statutes and regulations. In addition, given the closeness of this election, denial of the right to vote for even a small number of eligible voters could cast the outcome of this election into doubt.

When the Democrat-controlled Pennsylvania Supreme Court instituted a new congressional district map last month, it kept the previous lines for Special Election.  Both U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania declined to overturn that new map today (more about that on this blog tomorrow).  When voters tried to search for their polling place, they were incorrectly shown polling places under the new map:

Finally, as your office was made aware on election day, the Department of State's website www.votespa.com errantly directed voters to polling places matched to their address under the recently imposed Pennsylvania Supreme Court map . . . rather than the congressional district lines in use for the Special Election.  Since election day, we have heard from potential voters in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District who attempted to vote but were informed that they did not live in the district any longer. 

This illustrates some of the ills of court-ordered district maps - they create confusion for voters, generate administrative hassles (and opportunities for errors) for election officials, and disrupt constituencies mid-term.

We hope that the Pennsylvania Department of State takes these allegations seriously and investigates these irregularities so that the integrity of future elections is not called into question.

Recount Likely in PA Special Election Amid Allegations of Irregularities

Yesterday's much-publicized special election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district remains close, with the Democrat Conor Lamb leading Republican Rick Saccone by just 627 votes out of over 228,000 cast.  A recount is expected:

A source familiar with the next steps said Republican attorneys are planning to go to court Wednesday to demand the impounding of all ballots and machines that were used Tuesday night in all counties, as they plan for a possible recount.

There are allegations of irregularities with the voting machines and with absentee ballot processing:

Republicans plan to probe allegations that touch screen machines in Allegheny County were not properly calibrated and could have possibly registered votes for Lamb when the voter intended to vote for Saccone. 

These attorneys also plan to allege that GOP attorneys were blocked from observing absentee ballots by Allegheny County election supervisors.

There are also some concerns that the newly court-drawn map for the next election caused confusion. 

Another absentee ballot processing irregularity occurred in Washington County, which originally did not plan to count its 1,195 absentee ballots until today.  It planned to hold them in a secured location overnight before distributing them back out to the election precincts to be counted and reported back to the county election board.  Then, late last night, county officials changed their minds and decided to count them last night because of the close nature of the race.

We will update readers of this blog on the status of the recount, any investigations, and any litigation resulting from this race.

Concerns with Klobuchar-Graham Election Security Amendment

Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have co-sponsored an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act providing for federal funding for state election security measures.  While the security community has embraced this amendment, and we thank Sen. Graham for taking the problem of election security seriously in a way that attempts to respect state power, we have some concerns about this measure:

• It is a serious amendment of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that should be approached carefully, and the process should include hearing where various stakeholders testify.
• It places enormous new responsibilities on the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an agency which has struggled to fulfill its existing mandate and operate its existing advisory boards, which faces a budget crisis, and which may not have the authority to accomplish what the amendment requires.
• The EAC already accomplishes many of the functions in this amendment, but the amendment adds more bureaucracy and spends more money to do it.  It is an enormous aggregation of federal power.
• It formalizes the role of the Department of Homeland Security and the Executive Branch to set standards, which the states are required to meet to receive federal funding.  Currently, the EAC is the only federal standard-setting standard entity for elections, and it is an independent agency.
• An existing voluntary program to certify voter registration systems appeared to be working well, aside from DHS withholding important security information from the states last fall.  States are agreeing to this new measure because they are already doing these things on a voluntary basis and need the funding, but a voluntary program and a mandatory (at least, from the perspective of funding) program are vastly different in terms of who is controlling the election security standards and systems.
• It excludes states that use direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines.  While there have been some serious problems with DRE machines (and Virginia decertified all DREs in the state last week), DREs are the only machines many localities have and they make voting easier for voters with disabilities.
• It would allow states to implement mandatory voter registration and other progressive reforms with federal funds.

This amendment needs some serious study and input from election administration experts--not just computer, national security, and cybersecurity experts--before it moves forward in the Senate.

Among other burdens placed on the EAC, the amendment requires it and a commission to conduct an investigation of the foreign interference in the 2016 election and the potential for interference in future elections.  An existing commission, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, is already investigating election security and voting machines as part of its mission to study the U.S. election system and what promotes or decreases voter confidence in the system.  The next meeting of the commission is tomorrow, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM Eastern.  RNLA will be live-tweeting the meeting.

The New Red Scare: No Evidence of Actual Russian Tampering with Votes and Tallies

“There remains NO evidence that voting machines were hacked or that anyone tampered with the result of the election,” David Becker prominently declared in his article in Center for Election Innovation and Research.

While we know the Russians attempted to interfere with the 2016 Election, there is no proof they were able to tamper with any voting machines, the result of any election, or even voter registration records. Mr. Becker’s piece serves as a summary of what we know and do not know about this Russian scheme. The article serves as a rebut to the recently leaked NSA report, which resulted in the arrest of a government contractor. Mr. Becker noted several important points that informed persons ought to know:

Information in voter registration systems was accessed. As we’ve known since even before the election, hackers successfully accessed some voter registration data. In at least two states [Illinois and Arizona] . . . it appears the breach was caught before information was compromised. And we’ve known about the hack of VR Systems since at least October. . . .

Voter registration systems are not the systems on which ballots are cast/counted. A successful hack on a voter registration database, or on a vendor that solely works with voter registration systems and electronic pollbooks, like VR Systems, cannot, by itself, put the vote count at risk. Voter registration data is routinely backed up and stored safely, in case of any system breakdown or hack. Even if voter registration data is compromised, at exactly the right moment to create the greatest mischief, it would be detected, as it would result in longer lines and increased provisional ballot . . . .

However, certainly questions remain [emphasis added]:

• Which local election offices were targeted by the phishing attacks outlined in the NSA analysis? This is important to assess the risk.

• Whether voter registration systems were compromised in a way that could have affected the voting process in November? [I]f a hack had been successful, it is virtually certain that we would have seen evidence of this, but more analysis could be helpful.

• Whether any of these attacks was successful, and if so, whether vote tallying systems were compromised? To date, there is still no evidence of this.

Mr. Becker concluded with this important point:

First, we should resist the instinct to jump to conclusions. We still have no evidence to suggest the results of the election were compromised, which continues to be exceedingly unlikely . . . There is still overwhelming evidence that Trump won the majority of the vote in those states that comprised a majority of electoral votes. Hysteria and misinformation does not help us get to the bottom of things . . .  

The reality is the media and popular press are purposely sensationalizing this story. This hysteria is designed to threaten the legitimacy of an Election, its results, and Donald Trump's Presidency just as he is starting to govern. While the Russians' attempts must be investigated, ALL the facts need to be fairly presented and accurately portrayed. 

House Panel Demands Explanation of DHS' Attempted Hack of GA Election Systems

A House Committee has asked the Department of Homeland Security to explain attempts to breach Georgia's election systems from a DHS IP address last year:

The leader of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform wants a fuller accounting from the Department of Homeland Security about complaints of the agency "rattling of doorknobs" on the state of Georgia's network firewall. 

Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent letters on Jan. 11 to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and DHS Inspector General John Roth asking about "unauthorized scans" and "unsuccessful attempts to penetrate" the Georgia Secretary of State's  firewall from last February into November's election season. . . . 

In his letter to Roth, Chaffetz requested the IG open an investigation into DHS' activities with the Georgia system. In his letter to Johnson, Chaffetz requested all of the DHS secretary's correspondence with [Georgia Secretary of State] Kemp. 

According to Chaffetz' letter to Roth, Johnson informed Kemp the attempt to gain access to the state's network had been "normal…interaction" by a DHS contractor with the Georgia Secretary of States' website." Johnson, according to Chaffetz, assured Kemp that "'there was no scanning,'" or security assessment of the network by DHS. . . . The official explanation, Chaffetz wrote, is dubious and requires an independent investigation.

We thank Rep. Chaffetz for taking this issue seriously and trust that DHS under the newly confirmed Secretary Kelly will fully investigate this attempted breach and reign in DHS' overreach into state election administration.

EAC Commissioner Questions Extension of DHS' Power to Elections

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was designating election systems as "critical infrastructure," thereby bringing elections under the purview of DHS.  EAC Commissioner Christy McCormick raised serious questions and concerns about this extension of federal power over elections:

1. The scope and effect of this action is unknown. There was not a thorough discussion or review of what the designation means. . . . The so-called benefits of a critical infrastructure designation provided by DHS appear no different than those that have already been provided. . . . I am still unconvinced that a declaration of critical infrastructure status is necessary for DHS to help the States with security efforts, because we’ve already seen them do so.

2. This action politicizes elections. There is a reason that the Founding Fathers gave the authority of conducting elections to the States. There is a reason that when Congress set up the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), they made it a bipartisan, independent agency and gave it no regulatory authority. Our nations elections should not be handled or governed by a partisan branch of the Federal Government. The party that occupies the White House singularly controls the DHS and other Federal agencies in the Executive Branch.

Pick which party you want driving the security of our elections--are you comfortable with the other party doing so? It's important that we maintain the decentralized nature of our elections so that our voters and citizens can maintain faith and confidence that our elections are run freely and fairly, and that they can depend on the integrity and accuracy of the outcomes. 

3. The designation creates a layer of non-transparency and unnecessary Federally controlled bureaucracy. . . . 

[4.] The technical explanation for this designation is insufficient. . . .  

[5.] The critical infrastructure designation opens the States to legal, financial and privacy liabilities. . . . 

[6.] The process leading up to this designation has been disingenuous, at best. . . .

Commissioner McCormick concluded by requesting that President-elect Trump reverse the action and provide for productive, non-instrusive federal-state cooperation on election security:

Elections officials asked for more time, conversation, and discussion and a thorough understanding of the scope and benefits of the critical infrastructure designation. That request was flat out denied by the unilateral action of Secretary Johnson. I ask that President-elect Trump and his designated DHS Secretary General Kelly immediately reverse this unjustified and unsupported critical infrastructure designation, as well as Executive Order 13694, review the actions of DHS, provide a non-intrusive way for our intelligence community to provide information and resources to our election administrators, and leave the conduct of elections to the States as mandated in our Constitution. Thank you. 

Thank you, Commissioner McCormick, for standing up for election administrators across the country and fighting this federal intrusion into election administration.

ICYMI - DHS IP Address Attempted to Hack GA Secretary of State

Shortly after the election, there was an attempted hack of the Georgia Secretary of State's network, which was traced to the Department of Homeland Security:

Georgia’s top election official this week accused the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of trying to hack a computer network containing the state’s voter registration database. 

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, demanded information about the alleged intrusion attempt in a letter sent Thursday to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. 

“On Nov. 15, an IP address associated with the Department of Homeland Security made an unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Georgia Secretary of State’s firewall. I am writing you to ask whether DHS was aware of this attempt and, if so, why DHS was attempting to breach our firewall,” Mr. Kemp wrote. 

“At no time has my office agreed to or permitted DHS to conduct penetration testing or security scans of our network,” he added. “Moreover, your department has not contacted my office since this unsuccessful incident to alert us of any security event that would require testing or scanning of our network. This is especially odd and concerning since I serve on the Election Cyber Security Working Group that your office created.”

Not having received any satisfactory answer or explanation from Obama's DHS, Sec. Kemp is now asking President-elect Trump to investigate when he takes office:

Kemp said he is not satisfied with the response from current DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.  

"Since contacting DHS with these concerns, we have collaborated with the agency and provided extensive, additional information," Kemp wrote. "Last night I received a letter from Secretary Johnson which lacked any specific information as to the attacks' intent or origin despite the fact that many questions remain unanswered." . . . 

DHS has offered several different, yet unconvincing, reasons for the attempted breach of Georgia's systems, leaving Sec. Kemp to wonder if his opposition to DHS overseeing elections was the reason for the attempted breach:

Kemp, who sits on a DHS-managed election cybersecurity working group, has also been the most vocal critic of the idea of adding elections to DHS’s portfolio of critical infrastructure systems. 

“The people of Georgia are very concerned about what exactly happened here, and they are demanding transparent and honest answers,” Kemp told Trump. “It appears that will not happen with the current administration.”

We trust that the Trump DHS under Secretary Kelly will take this breach seriously and investigate the source.

ICYMI - Michigan Recount Revealed Serious Issues in Detroit

Jill Stein's unsuccessful effort to force a recount of Michigan's presidential election did reveal a serious problem in many precincts: a discrepancy between the number of voters who checked in and the number of ballots.  The problem was greatest in Wayne County, where Detroit is located, but also occurred in other counties.

Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News. 

Detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett show optical scanners at 248 of the city’s 662 precincts, or 37 percent, tabulated more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books. Voting irregularities in Detroit have spurred plans for an audit by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday. . . . 

Overall, state records show 10.6 percent of the precincts in the 22 counties that began the retabulation process couldn’t be recounted because of state law that bars recounts for unbalanced precincts or ones with broken seals. 

The problems were the worst in Detroit, where discrepancies meant officials couldn’t recount votes in 392 precincts, or nearly 60 percent. And two-thirds of those precincts had too many votes. 

The Detroit Free Press concluded that the discrepancies were likely due to human or machine error, not fraud:

In 248 precincts, there were a total of 782 more votes tabulated by voting machines than the number of voters listed as picking up ballots in the precincts’ poll books. That makes up just three-tenths of 1% of the total 248,211 votes that were logged in Detroit for the presidential election. That number was far too small to swing the statewide election results, even in this year’s especially tight race that saw a Republican win Michigan for the first time since George Bush in 1988. . . . 

The Free Press analysis found there were 248 precincts in Detroit where voting machines tabulated more Election Day votes than people who were counted as checking in to vote. The affected precincts represent 37% of the city's 662 precincts. 

Most of those overages were by small amounts — on average about 3 votes — with the largest being 12 votes in a single precinct. Those small numbers, which add up to 782 total spread out across more than 200 precincts, tend to point to human or machine malfunction as the culprit, rather than widespread fraud. 

In 158 precincts, the number of ballots tabulated by the optical-scanning voting machines was inexplicably less than the number of people who signed in to vote. At least 362 ballots were not counted in those precincts, even though the voters had been listed in poll books. 

Whether due to fraud or human/machine error, these discrepancies show that Michigan has a serious problem of election administration that it needs to address, whether through better procedures, better training, better equipment, or all of the above.  To their credit, Michigan's Secretary of State and local election officials are taking these problems seriously and seeking to identify the sources of the discrepancies and address them.

Make Elections Great Again: House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Addresses Election Security

On Tuesday, September 13, 2016, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing focusing on protecting the 2016 elections from cyber and voting machine attacks.

The hearing comprised a panel of experienced election professionals, some from the scholarly arena with research backgrounds, and others from the governmental sector boasting vast experience in promulgating standards and administering elections.

On the panel was 1) Dr. Charles Romine, Director of Informational Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. 2) Hon. Tom Schedler, Secretary of State of the State of Louisiana. 3) David Becker, Executive Director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.  4) Dr. Dan S. Wallach, Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Rice Scholar at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

The presented goals were to improve preparedness, improve physical security of actual voting devices, and to secure against cyber-attacks of our voting databases.

Dr. Romine focused on preparing for elections in a manner similar to preparing for natural disasters. He believes having a cybersecurity contingency plan in place is the best mechanism to seamlessly continue to conduct election activities even in the event of an attack.

Secretary Schedler, focused on more practical aspects of voting, the machines. He discussed the process of vetting the employees who deliver, work on, and manage the machines, as well as stating the machines are never connected to the internet, and thus unsusceptible to cyber-attack. He notes there could be a physical attack on an actual machine, but that is less likely to occur as they are heavily monitored, and each is independently programmed.

Mr. Becker approached election security in a distinctive manner. While not focusing solely on election day, he noted securing our voter registration data is just as vital to having integrity in the election process. He stated for the most part election days are secure. They are highly decentralized, and there is no single entry point for a hacker. Machines are kept securely, and not connected to the internet so it would require physical access to hack them, and lastly, 75% of voters use paper ballots, or use electronics and paper so there is always a hard-copy record. Also, many battleground states (VA, WI, AZ, CO, FL, NV, NM, PA, OH) require paper ballots to be counted as the official record in the event anything happens.

Lastly, Dr. Wallach focused on the decentralization of the system as an instrument to secure the elections. Having varying devices and mechanisms to administer elections helps protect us all. He does emphasize the vulnerabilities of voter registration databases which are online and could be a potential target for hackers. He credits the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) for creating standards and funding new equipment for election security.

While the panelists addressed problem areas, and methods to better improve election procedures, largely all panelist have great confidence in the security and integrity in the election system as a whole. Relying on paper as a backup to protect against vote loss in the event of computer malfunction and having emergency preparedness policies in place are an added level of reinforcement to secure our elections.