Category Archives: Post-election audits

The Blue Shift in California Elections

Guest Blog by Michelle Hyun

Michelle is an undergraduate student at Caltech. In the summer of 2019, she was a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow (SURF) at Caltech. Her research was conducted in collaboration with Yimeng Li and R. Michael Alvarz. We have recently released a working paper, it’s now available online, “Why Do Election Results Change After Election Day? The Blue Shift in California Elections.”

With the presidential primaries ongoing, and the November 2020 general election looming, it is critical to explain the trends of voters and the integrity of the election. In many past elections, the occurrence of the electoral “Blue Shift,” in which vote margins are observed to shift towards favoring Democratic candidates, has provided a surge of votes in the later parts of the vote count that has caused changes in leads more often than expected. This shift can cause people to call into question the integrity of the election system, which is dangerous for the legitimacy of democratic elections and the participation of voters in their government.

The blue shift has been observed in several past elections: one such example was the 39th District’s 2018 election for the U.S. House of Representatives, Young Kim believed she had won the race, but after a few weeks, it was revealed that her opponent, Gil Cisneros, had actually won. Elections in Orange County, California in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 for House of Representative seats, gubernatorial seats, and presidential seats were analyzed to seek the cause of the drift. Shifts occurred across almost all of these elections, and while they may not have been enough to change the results of all the elections, the drift was certainly enough to raise questions.

Technological advances have made ballot counting and transmission of election results faster than ever. In many states including California, soon after polls close, election officials release results from early-voting ballots and mail ballots that have been processed before Election Day, followed by regular ballots cast on Election Day as precincts report them. Major cable networks, radio stations, and other media organizations receive these results from The Associated Press correspondents stationed at local government offices and data feeds provided by local governments as soon as they become available and make projections on most races. As a result, for voters following Election Day coverage on TV, radio, the Internet, or through morning newspapers, it may appear that elections are mostly over except for a few close contests by the end of Election Night. This perception masks the reality that a significant fraction of ballots is counted after Election Day, especially in states like California where voting by mail and provisional ballots are common.

This paper shows that the demographics of the voters and the number of ballots that are counted later in the election process are directly related to the magnitude of the blue shift. Using data from the Orange County Registrar of Voters (OCROV), we were able to find a positive association between Democratic voters and blue shifts; additionally, using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) and the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), we were able to find that young, non-white voters are more likely to cast ballots that are counted later in the vote count process. Our findings are significant in that they explain a phenomenon that may call into question the integrity of our voting system. As the presidential primaries continue and as the general election approaches, we seek to establish voter confidence to encourage voter participation and ensure a smooth transition of power.

The plot thickens: Which Florida counties were targeted by hackers?

Earlier this week I wrote about the recent news that hackers may have gained access to election administration systems in at least one Florida county in 2016: see How to avoid an election meltdown in 2020: Improve voter registration database security and monitoring.

Now in the news are reports that may have been two Florida counties where hackers may have gained access to county election administration system in 2016 (see the NYT story, for example, “Russians Hacked Voter Systems in 2 Florida Counties. But Which Ones?”). This has set off a guessing game — which Florida county election administration systems might have been breached in 2016, and what where the consequences?

I’d like to return attention, though, to what I think is the most important issue here. It’s not whether one or two county systems were breached in 2016, the most important thing is to make sure that as we go into the 2020 election cycle, that security and auditing systems are in place to detect any malicious or accidental manipulations of voter registration databases. It’s now May 2019, and we have plenty of time to evaluate the current security protocols for these critical databases in every state, to improve those protocols where necessary, and to put in place database auditing and monitoring tools like those we have been working on in our Monitoring the Elections project.

Now’s the time to act — while we still can improve the security of voter registration systems, and establish auditing procedures to detect any efforts to manipulate the critical information in those systems.

How to avoid an election meltdown in 2020: Improve voter registration database security and monitoring

One of the most shocking parts of the Mueller report details the widespread efforts by Russian hackers to attack American election infrastructure in 2016.

Specifically, the report presents evidence that the Russian intelligence (GRU) targeted state and local election administration systems, that they have infiltrated the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections and at least one Florida County during the 2016 presidential election, using means such as SQL injection and spear phishing. They also targeted private firms that provide election administration technologies, like software systems for voter registration.

This is stunning news, and a wake-up call for improving the integrity and security of election administration and technology in the United States.

The Mueller report does not provide evidence that these hacking attempts altered the reported results of elections in 2016 or 2018. Instead the report highlights hacking efforts aimed at gaining access to voter registration databases, which might seem surprising to many.

Prior to the 2000 presidential election, voter registration data was maintained in a hodgepodge of ways by county and state election officials. After the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states were required to centralize voter registration data in statewide electronic databases, to improve the accuracy and accessibility of voter registration data in every state.

But one consequence of building statewide voter registration datasets is that they became attractive targets for hackers. Rather than targeting hundreds or thousands of election administration systems at the county level, hackers can now target a single database system in every state.

Why would hackers want to target voter registration systems?

First, a hacker could alter registration records in a state or county, or delete records, with the goal being to wreak havoc on Election Day. By dropping voters, or by changing voter addresses, names, or partisan affiliations, a hacker could create chaos on Election Day—for instance, voters could go to the right polling place, only to find that their name is not on the roster, and thus be denied the chance to vote.

A hack of this type, if done in a number of counties in a battleground state like Florida, could lead to an election meltdown like we saw in the 2000 presidential election.

Second, a hacker could be more systematic in their efforts. They could add fake voters to the database, and if they had access to the electronic systems used to send absentee ballots, get access to ballots for these fake voters.

This type of hack could enable a large-scale effort to actually change the outcome of an election, if the hackers marked and returned the ballots for these fake voters.

These vulnerabilities are real, and an unintended consequence of the development of centralized electronic statewide voter registration databases in the United States. There is little doubt that the attempts by hackers to target voter registration systems in 2016 and 2018 could have produced widespread disruption of either election, had they been successful.

There is also little doubt that efforts to hack voter registration databases in the United States will continue. The GRU will have better knowledge as to what vulnerabilities exist in our election systems and how to target them. What can we do to secure these databases, to prevent these attacks and to make sure that we can detect them if hackers gain access to registration databases?

Obviously, state and county election officials must continue their efforts to solidify the security of voter registration databases. They must also continue their efforts to make sure that strong electronic security practices are in place, to make sure that hackers cannot gain access to passwords and other administrative systems they might exploit to gain access to registration data.

There are further steps that can be taken by election officials to secure registration data.

In a pilot project that we at Caltech have conducted with the Orange County (California) Registrar of Voters, we built a set of software applications that monitor the County’s database of registered voters for anomalies. This pilot project was financially supported by a research grant to Caltech from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation. Details are available on the project’s website.

Working with the Registrar, we began getting daily snapshots of the County’s dataset of about 1.5 million registered voters about a year ago. We run our algorithms to look for anomalous changes in the database. Our algorithms can detect situations when unexpectedly large numbers of records are removed or added, and when unexpectedly large numbers of records are being changed. Thus, our algorithms can detect attempts to manipulate voter registration data.

After running our algorithms, we produce detailed reports that we send to the Registrar, letting them know if we see anomalies that require further investigation. We have developed other data-driven tools to monitor the 2018 elections in Orange County, looking at voting-by-mail patterns, turnout, and social media mentions. The results of this comprehensive monitoring appear on our pilot project’s website, providing transparency that we believe helps voters and stakeholders remain confident that the County’s voter registration data is secure.

This type of database and election system monitoring is critical for detecting and mitigating attempts to hack an election. It also helps isolate other issues that might occur in the administration of an election. By finding problems quickly, election officials can resolve them. By making the results of our monitoring available to the public, voters and stakeholders can be assured in the integrity of the election.

We are now working to build similar collaborations with other state and county election officials, to provide independent third-party monitoring of registration databases, and other related election administration infrastructure. Not only is it critical for election officials to monitor their data systems to make sure they have a high degree of integrity, it is also important that the public know that registration data is being monitored and is secure.

Memories of elections past

This morning I read about a disputed election, for the student representative position on the Los Angeles Community College District board. It was written up in today’s Los Angeles Times, “After 2 contested elections, L.A. Community College District may finally have a tech fix.”

The basic issues with this election are that they are using paper ballots for the student trustee elections, and that they don’t seem to have any routine post-election auditing procedures to check the veracity of the hand-counting of the paper ballots. According to the story, “The fight may seem high schoolish, but it underscores a technology problem at the largest community college district in the nation. Instead of using machines to tally paper ballots, district officials counted them by hand. And instead of employing safeguards to make sure students voted only once, an audit revealed that up to six people voted twice.”

This just brought back memories of elections past, of paper ballots being counted by hand, and elections being conducted without strong post-election audit procedures. Regardless of whether the election is for the president of the United States, or for a student trustee to a local board, having strong administrative procedures can help insure that when elections are close and the results are disputed, there aren’t questions about the integrity of the election.