[EL] FL absentee voting rules and the attempted Miami-Dade web-request absentee ballot fraud

[Bev Harris]

>   If any of these are a mischaracterization, please correct me.

> (1) Unscrupulous insiders can compromise an election, so insiders must be
> trustworthy.

Elections can't be based on trust. All insiders will never be trustworthy.
Therefore elections must be based on public transparency. That means the
essential processes used in elections must be something the public can see and
authenticate. Essential processes include: (1) Who can vote (voter list); (2)
Who did vote; (3) Vote count and (4) Chain of custody.

> (2) Excuse-required absentee balloting makes fraudulent requests more
> easily detectable, because officials can more easily observe deviations in
> the volume of requests using each category of excuse, compared to the
> normal volume of requests using that category of excuse.

Correct.

> (3) The attempted Miami-Dade hack would have succeeded had the fraudster
> been more careful about proper geographic distribution, and distribution
> over time, of his online requests.

Correct.

> You make an excellent point with regard to (1). Though I'm not sure whether
> election administrators "typically," as you say, use third-party vendors to
> manage the mailing of absentee ballots

Yes, they do, in large jurisdictions. It would be unusual in any jurisdiction of
any size to actually do the printing and mail presort. That is indeed typically
outsourced, and the outsourcers frequently outsource the database portion to
subcontractors, like John Elder. If you do public records requests for these
vendors you will find them easily. John Elder, for example, shows up as an
outsourced absentee processing vendor for Boulder County, Colorado.

>I agree that regardless of who manages the mailings, that
> entity must be trustworthy.

Elections can't be based on "trust." That is a misconception. The mitigation for
fraud is public transparency of essential processes, not faith-based elections.

> But I'm not sure the trustworthiness of
> insiders is relevant to the failed Miami-Dade hack.

It's hugely important. The one thing no one has looked at is the entity that
handles their print and mail. That is controlled by insiders.

> Further, no unscrupulous insider would have used a hack
> similar to the attempted Miami-Dade attack, because the insider would have
> better means of generating fraudulent absentee ballot requests or
> fraudulently redirecting legitimately-requested ballots.

In large jurisdictions there are typically several different insiders with
different functions. There are various configurations, such as having a person
working for a vendor who gains access to the database after it goes to the
mailhouse, but who may not work inside the elections office. In that case, in
order for the number of absentee requests to match up to the number of ballots
paid for, you might want to insert names using online absentee requests. The
online requests go to the elections office personnel, whereas the ballots are
printed and mailed from a ballot printer/mailhouse/presort combination.

> while I agree that insiders must be trustworthy

I certainly don't agree with that statement.

You can't make insiders "trustworthy." In fact, that statement gives me the
heebie-jeebies. Do you really think it is possible to divine the
"trustworthiness" of all of the over 50,000 persons with inside access to our
electoral system? (10,000 jurisdictions, staffed by 4-10 persons each plus the
personnel at the various vendors).

Your post makes a lot of flawed assumptions, but the core problem with your
reasoning is a concept that elections would be based on trust. Checks and
balances are always based on DIStrust, and must always provide full control and
transparency to the owner of the system.

The owner of a democratic system is the public; thus, the test of whether the
system is truly democratic has to start with public transparency.

Increasing participation is great, but not if you have to blow up public
controls to achieve it. Usually, the convenience voting methods just mean
elections that have had public chain of custody and public accountability
removed, transfering power to government insiders (and the vendors they
select.)

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

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