All you need to know about hand-marked paper ballots vs. computer-marked ballots
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
6M ago
Short summary: Computer devices that enable voters with disabilities to mark paper ballots are indispensable–for those voters. BMD use by all voters puts everyone’s votes and entire elections at risk. Here’s why. For the next few paragraphs, imagine yourself to be a municipal elections clerk–a particularly conscientious one who understands that “trust” is one thing a manager cannot do with computers. You know the cybersecurity mantra: Protect; detect; correct. After you do everything you can to protect the system, you routinely audit its business-day performance so that you can quickly correct ..read more
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Wisconsin’s Election Security Council sees the gorilla.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
6M ago
The first meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s new Election Security Council was both reassuring and scary. First, the good news. I’m genuinely not sure whether WEC created the council more to promote belief in security or to promote security itself. But whatever WEC’s intention, the members of the new council are there to promote security. They uniformly exhibited a desire for actual security. Understandably, they showed some legitimate interest in appearances, but their primary concern seemed to be for real security. Hang on to that idea as I describe the bad news. I do think inte ..read more
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Everyone calm down. No one is voting twice. No one is being purged.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
1y ago
The Wisconsin Elections Commission is working on a project to contact voters who have more than one home address on state government databases. If the voter has moved within Wisconsin, the WEC wants them to register at their new address. If they haven’t moved, WEC wants only to confirm their voting address. In our current political climate of eager fearfulness and lunging-at-each-others’-throats, this is causing controversy, even a lawsuit. But the facts are neither as the partisan Republicans or the partisan Democrats fear or want you to fear. Last October, the WEC checked the addresses on th ..read more
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Verifying a statewide election could be this easy and cheap.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
1y ago
Photo: Michigan election officials assess the results of a manual count of a sample of ballots for a risk-limiting audit in 2018. Photo credit: Berkeley Institute for Data Science, UC-Berkeley Think of “risk-limiting audits” as low-effort exit polls. Exit polls determine who won by asking randomly selected voters “Who did you vote for?” Risk-limiting audits work on the same principle to confirm the correct winners, but they do not involve talking to voters. Instead, RLAs pose the question directly to randomly selected paper ballots. Either way, a small sample can provide statistical proof of w ..read more
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The Election Guard we need isn’t one that Microsoft can provide. It’s human.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
In brief:  Microsoft’s ElectionGuard is sophisticated technology that gives the public (e.g., voters, parties) the ability to detect signs of electronic vote tampering. This essay describes that product and its live-election test in Fulton, Wisconsin in February 2020. There are two take-away points. First: Even if ElectionGuard successfully alerts its users to signs of trouble, election officials are unprepared to respond to those signs. We must disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that more or newer or shinier technology, by itself, can compensate for vulnerabilities that exist when no huma ..read more
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Do election officials listen to voters?
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
In brief: During the past nine years as I’ve advocated for better security for voting machines and the vote-tabulation process, I’ve observed a reflexive resistance by election officials to any suggestions for improvement. On matters relating to the voter-registration system, where federal pressure has been greater, they are reasonable. But when it comes to counting votes, they listen only to each other and to voting-machine vendors, and ignore authorities and cybersecurity experts. They seem particularly deaf to any suggestions from voters regarding security safeguards. I’m testing that obser ..read more
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Update on the Lawsuit
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
I’m writing this noonish on Wednesday, Dec. 2, and it’s possible I won’t get this posted before the Supreme Court decides. As expected, the Trump campaign did file a lawsuit to throw out thousands of contested ballots, and the defendants (Gov. Evers, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and the two counties) have filed their responses. Having read through Trump’s petition and Gov. Ever’s response, I’m thinking that whatever the Supreme Court wants to do, they can point to some law or precedent to justify it. Several, actually. Two things surprised me about the Trump petition: First, they filed ..read more
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Lawsuit Eve: Wisconsin, brace yourself.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
I’m writing this on Monday evening, November 30. This afternoon, the Chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission determined the results of the presidential race, and news media around the nation declared that it’s all over in Wisconsin. They say Biden will get our 10 electoral votes, and then they move on to other news. Only a few reporters within the state are paying close enough attention to know that it is NOT over. Even fewer–well, okay, none–have told their readers and listeners there is a significant possibility that Trump will get Wisconsin’s electoral votes. No, I’m not dumb or partisa ..read more
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Will your absentee ballot be counted? The risk depends on where you live.
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
Summary: Even absentee ballots that arrive on time can legally be rejected and not counted. In the April election, Wisconsin officials reported they rejected 1.8% of the ballots they received on time. Officials blame voter error (most commonly, missing signatures). Voting-rights advocates are trying to reduce the problem with voter education. However, rejection rates varied widely among municipalities in a way that indicates local administrative practices play a big role in determining each ballot’s risk of rejection — that is, absentee voters in some municipalities face a much greater risk of ..read more
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Absentee and vote-by-mail: What you need to know before you put your ballot in an envelope
Wisconsin Election Integrity Blog
by Karen McKim
2y ago
Summary: The pandemic has created much giddy enthusiasm for absentee and mail-in voting, but little sober assessment of its risks and benefits. In fact, evidence of better turnout is unclear, while evidence of rejected ballots and uncounted votes is undeniable. Generally, we can predict that for every 100 voters we convince to give up polling-place voting in favor of absentee, we will lose at least two ballots. This article makes the case that putting your ballot in an envelope for an election official to cast at a later time is inherently less secure than casting your own ballot and that vote ..read more
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