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- by jen
Election integrity news is happening fast and furious these days. To keep up with what’s going on in your state, and get involved, click the
“Get Involved” link at VoteTrustUSA.
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and the 11/11/05 Report The Staggeringly Impossible Results of Ohio's '05 Election
and the 10/21/05 GAO Report
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WHO’S GUARDING THE GUARDS?
GLITCHES, HITCHES, ANOMALIES AND IRREGULARITIES
BLIND TRUST Examination of transparency and security in elections worldwide WHY? A rhetorical musing in search of rationale
ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION (EAC) Numbers, Numbers, Numbers... THERE MUST BE 50 WAYS TO STEAL ELECTIONS PAPER TRAIL OF TEARS Pros, Cons and Tricks with Paper Dozens of Suggestions and Links to get on board in the Election Reform Movement HATE MAIL CONTACT US
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July - 2006: Encouraging Times!
These are encouraging and exciting times on the election protection front. Election integrity and election reform are at long last becoming a buzz issue within American politics. Emerging from a near total media blackout in 2004, the past few months saw a surplus of mainstream reporting, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal-- featuring such titles as; “Voting machine security flaws uncovered”, “New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems”, and “Voting Machine Tampering Feared”. ( LINK to four pages of articles from one week alone) Additionally, a recent issue of Newsweek contains the article; “Will your vote count in 2006?”
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweek/
A dangerous new security loophole in touchscreen software, discovered by computer scientists, triggered the unprecedented coverage. Dr. Michael Shamos, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, a staid authority and anti-alarmist, calls it: -- "the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system.” Colleague Dr. Aviel Ruben of Johns Hopkins University adds, “Anyone with access to a voting machine could install new software that could easily disable a precinct full of machines,” which he fears could cause an “Election Day meltdown”. This new flaw was discovered, of all places, in a remote county in Utah. The machines in question-- some 100,000 units-- are currently deployed in about 30 states, and will count tens of millions of our votes in November. See more in our story below, “Elections at Risk; The New Security Hole”.
As always, we still have work to do to ensure that our votes will be counted as cast, and that everyone who is eligible and wants to vote is not prohibited in any way.
Perhaps two of the more encouraging developments are the report put out last month by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University law school, which finally combats the erroneous long held notion that it would take some sort of massive “conspiracy” of people to attack or rig an election. The Brennan Center report confirms that one single person could successfully throw an election today and change the results.
And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's recent article in Rolling Stone, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? along with his subsequent filing of a Federal whistleblower suit against two voting machine companies.
7/11/06: CNN's Lou Dobbs Covers Voting System Testing And Certification
In his ongoing series "Democracy For Risk", CNN's Lou Dobbs focused on the lax standards and inadequate testing of voting systems in the United States yesterday. His guests included VoteTrustUSA's John Washburn, along with Michael Widman of the Brennan Center and DeForest Soaries, former chairman of the Election Assistance Commission.
Click Here to view the video
A transcript of yesterday's segment follows:
7/10/06: Kentucky litigation - 'When computers fear jail, they'll be ready for elections'
Seven candidates, from two different political parties, have joined together to fight the Kentucky machine. One ordinary citizen has galvanized this action and stopped this very important case from being dismissed.
When Glenda Young called Black Box Voting she was a woman with a mission. "I need a lawyer," she said. "Can you help?"
Her plain spoken Southern drawl was laced with urgency and determination. "I believe that a great injustice has been done. When seven candidates join together from different parties to contest an election because they believe it was not honest, something's terribly wrong."
7/9/06: CA Sec. of State Document on Voting Machine Certification 'Disappeared' from SoS Website
From BlackBoxVoting.org yesterday…
…the California document called "Procedures for Approving, Certifying, Reviewing, Modifying and Decertifying Voting Systems" has disappeared from the secretary of state's Web site — a remarkable coincidence, since many citizens are looking for it.
They want to know how it is that the Secretary of State can claim procedures were followed, given the sorry state of security and accuracy in many of the voting systems now being used in California.
See this BBV link for more details, and a "found copy" of the document via Archive.org.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/32936.html
According to Joseph Holder, the lead plaintiff in the VoterAction.org lawsuit against the State of California to halt the use and purchase of Diebold touch-screen voting machines, "Within the last month the link was still there and working."
But now it's gone. Go figure...
7/1/06: Report: Flawed Voting Machine Could Alter Elections
The year-long study by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University law school was conducted by security and voting-machine experts, and government, academic and private-sector scientists. The National Institute of Standards and Technology initially met with the group to help members identify security threats. NIST officials then reviewed the report methodology as it was being written.
The group identified 120 ways to compromise the machines. Larry Norden, who chaired the task force that wrote the report, said inserting a software attack program is the easiest and could happen before or after a machine is purchased.
The study also found that voting machines with wireless components are significantly more vulnerable to attacks from devices that people could bring to polling sites or activate remotely. While two states, Minnesota and New York, ban wireless components, the report said they are too risky to have on any voting machine.
"A single person could change the vote of a close state election -- a single person," Norden said.
Howard Schmidt, a former White House cyber-security adviser and former chief security officer for eBay and Microsoft, said information technology experts are greatly concerned with how easy it is to compromise a machine -- and an election.
But he said the good news is the problems are easy to fix. "The report holds low-cost or no-cost solutions," Schmidt said... Cont. Here
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Equally as encouraging, Lou Dobbs has taken up the issue of compromised elections on his nightly news program on CNN, in a series called "Democracy for Sale." A recent on-air poll taken during the series showed that 97% of Dobbs’ viewers would prefer to do away with electronic voting systems in America, further confirming the dramatic turns in public sentiment since the 2004 election.
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Brad Friedman, of The Brad Blog, continues to keep the issue front and center, focusing on the battle in California where the recent Busby/Bilbray race in San Diego, may be the one to bust this issue into the mainstream.
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And the story of the Utah hack that caught the media’s attention:
Elections at Risk: The New Security Hole
Computer security experts say they have found the worst security flaw yet in the oft-criticized touch-screen machines that voters will use in this year's election.
County Clerk Bruce Funk had been running elections in Emory County, Utah for the past 23 years when he discovered certain glitches and memory irregularities in some of the Diebold touchscreens he had been issued by the state. Confident he was doing his job, Funk called in the professionals to inspect and evaluate the erratic e-voting machines. That was when computer scientist Harri Hursti, working in Utah with Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit election watchdog group, discovered the latest and, by all accounts, the gravest security hole yet in Diebold voting systems. Among other problems, a feature was found that could allow someone to load unauthorized software on the machines.
"Instead of using pass codes or other security protocols... anyone with access to a voting machine could install new software that could easily disable a precinct full of machines", Dr. Rubin said, which he fears could cause an “Election Day meltdown". He recommends the counties have “stacks of paper ballots” on hand...
Black Box Voting issued a 12 page report on the find, and in turn, Hursti informed other computer science professionals to alert officials in those states about to use the same flawed systems in their upcoming primaries. In Pennsylvania, California and Iowa, urgent security warnings were issued to ocal elections officials to enact additional security measures before the primaries because of the newly discovered security problem. A flurry of national press picked up on the story.
After studying the problem, Johns Hopkins University computer science professor and veteran voting systems tester Dr. Avi Rubin exclaimed, "I almost had a heart attack. The implications of this are astounding." Rubin characterized the defective Diebold touchscreens as, "-- the nuclear bomb for e-voting systems..." and adds that they were "much, much easier to attack than anything we've previously seen", and he has seen his share. Rubin led the team who first cast doubt on the reliability of the technology in his now oft quoted 2003 Hopkins-Rice report.
Fellow academic Dr. Michael Shamos, PhD, Carnegie Mellon computer science professor, a staid authority that no one would ever mistake for an alarmist said:
-- "the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system....It's a big deal. It's a very big deal....It’s worse than a hole, it’s a deliberate feature that was added by Diebold—“
Douglas W. Jones, Computer Science professor at the University of Iowa, weighs in with;
"If the states don't get out in front of the hackers, there's a real threat...This is worse than any of the others I've seen... This is the barn door being wide open—“
What about Bruce Funk? Instead of being heralded for his vigilance, Funk, after 23 years of exceptional service, was reprimanded for his actions and removed from his position on the grounds of a resignation he disputes.
And the faulty machines in question-- some 100,000 units-- are currently deployed in about 30 states, and will count tens of millions of our votes in November if Diebold has their way.
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Many States are waking up to the dire situation. John Gideon, of VoteTrustUSA keeps up on these both at his website, and with Daily Voting News posts at The Brad Blog.
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Should anyone require more proof that this movement has taken root in the citizenry, go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation link below to keep track of lawsuits currently being filed against election vendors and officials across the country. The whole country is finally waking up to the problem. Now... we need to focus on the solutions....
http://www.eff.org/Activism/E-voting/ <--- Link for pending lawsuits in elections
4-19-06: Evidence of ballot tampering in Warren County, Ohio
After locking out all media observers and declaring a Level 10 Homeland Security Alert, the Republican-dominated Warren County, Ohio reported in the wee hours of the morning on November 3, 2004 -- and gave George W. Bush a surprising 14,000 vote boost. Two election workers told the Free Press that the ballots had been diverted to an unauthorized warehouse where they had been possibly stuffed. That is, punched for Bush only. Maps were supplied to the Free Press showing the locations of the warehouse and the Board of Elections.
Warren County officials refused to allow the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism to handle the ballots, but they did allow us to photograph a few. Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., has analyzed the ballots for the Free Press and concluded that there is evidence of fraud in Warren County. The ballots as photographed with Dr. Phillips' commentary below each ballot are included here for the first time.
The Free Press predicted early on that the ballots would be found punched only for Bush in Warren County. The Moss v. Bush lawsuit pointed to Warren, Butler and Clermont Counties as the three counties that provided more than Bush's entire margin in the Buckeye State: Bush won Ohio by 118,000, and 132,000 votes were supplied in these three southwestern Republican counties.
Now, for the first time, the Free Press is releasing images of the obvious election fraud in Warren County. The Free Press will continue its ongoing investigation in Ohio despite stonewalling by Republican state officials.
View the actual ballots, and read additional commentary by Richard Hayes Phillips
4-10-06: EAC Commissioner Martinez Resigns
Commissioner Met With Election Activists On Saturday
The current vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, Ray Martinez submitted his resignation to President George W. Bush this morning. Mr. Martinez' resignation will become effective June 30, 2006. He cited family considerations as his primary reason for stepping down and lauded his colleagues at the EAC and the agency's staff for their continued work on behalf of the nation. Martinez had been recommended for nomination by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in 2003.
On April 8, Martinez had met with election integrity activists participating in a VoteTrustUSA leadership workshop. The Commissioner graciously and diplomatically fielded a barrage of questions from leading election reform advocates from across the country for well over and hour. The questions were challenging and well informed and reflected the growing crisis facing our democracy.
The day before he spoke at the VoteTrustUSA workshop, Martinez had presented a paper at a colloquium in Princeton, NJ. The paper presented four solutions to what he called the "alarming erosion" of American voter confidence following the last two presidential elections.
"One of the most alarming trends in our country is the continual erosion of voter confidence in the accuracy of our tabulated results," Martinez said. "The 2000 presidential election has adversely affected the opinion of the average American on our electoral process.
"Since then, voter confidence has continued to trend in the wrong direction," Martinez added, "and it's unlikely to fade any time soon."
At the top of his list was the idea that every state perform a regular election audit to determine that the administration of elections is fair, impartial and consistent with voter intent. The results of these audits should be widely dispersed.
Part of the problem with recent elections, Martinez said, is that not every state has clear directives on what constitutes a vote for each type of machine used. Where there are ambiguities, election officials must make snap judgments that are later open to suspicion or calls of partisanship, he said.
A regular and uniform state audit of these matters, Martinez said, would go a long way towards curtailing voter suspicion.
Martinez also would like to see each state's chief election official take a conflict of interest oath. In it, these political appointees would adopt a voluntary pledge of impartiality, distancing them from the party that appointed them. They would likewise refrain from participating in partisan committees or meetings or raising money for any political groups that would call their credibility into question.
Third, Martinez said all election equipment vendors -- particularly the top tier officers in each company -- should take a similar conflict of interest oath, and that the vendor industry adopt a list of impartiality standards by which vendors must conduct themselves.
Commissioner Martinez' Letter of Resignation - ElectionOnline.org
Sunshine Week started off with the slamming of the secretary of state's door Monday, when Leon County Commissioner Bob Rackleff and news reporters were shut out of an announced public meeting on county voting issues.
"I've always said I have no objection to the press, but we do make faster progress without people having to look at cameras - that's a fact," said Florida Secretary of State Sue Cobb.
Tallahassee Democrat Political Editor Bill Cotterell, Associated Press reporter Brent Kallestad and cameraman Dave Heller also were threatened with eviction from a hallway outside Cobb's closed conference room by Capitol Police for trying to attend the meeting with Cobb, Leon County Commission Chairman Bill Proctor, Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho and staff members.
"I'm very concerned and very confused," Democrat Executive Editor Bob Gabordi said. "I have to know that when reporters show up to a meeting that has been given proper public notice, that they will not be harassed and threatened with arrest."
This story is just incredible.
For those just jumping into this tale, SoS Cobb (Jeb's recent political appointee) has been threatening Leon County's elected Election Supervisor Ion Sancho because he revealed that the Diebold voting machines in Florida and elsewhere can be hacked and flipped without a trace being left behind.
In the bargain, all three Voting Machine Companies certified to do business in Florida have now refused to do business with Sancho. Nonetheless -- and incredibly -- the state is now targeting [PDF] the heroic Sancho with threats to remove him from his elected position.
All, at the same time that Florida sent a "technical advisory" to all Election Supervisors in the state, warning them of what Sancho found -- but without mentioning their friends Diebold by name, and certainly not bothering to laud Sancho for discovering a huge electoral integrity issue in the "Sunshine State."
And now, a meeting with officials which is supposed to be open to the press and the public -- on the first day of Florida's phony "Sunshine Week", celebrating open government (no, seriously) -- results in closed doors, reporters tossed and calls to the police.
Just amazing...Please read on...
Cont. at BradBlog
3-13-06: Hart InterCivic Whistleblower Warned of Texas, Ohio E-Voting 'Fraud' Concerns in 2004
100,000+ Votes Were Errantly Added by Hart Machines in a Single County in Last Tuesday's Primary via Flawed, Paperless 'eSlate' Touch-Screen System.
Former Hart Employee, Tarrant County TX Election Worker Notified State, Legal Authorities in 2004 About Serious Voting Machine Problems, Procedures...All Warnings and Complaints Ignored.
Continuing in an exclusive BRAD BLOG series of Voting Machine Vendor and Election Fraud whistleblowers, another insider, from yet another voting machine company, has now come forward to reveal a myriad of known problems inside both the company and in several states and counties with whom they do business.
During last Tuesday's Primary Election in the state of Texas, scores of "computer glitches" -- as voting officials and electronic voting machine vendors like to refer to them -- were revealed occurred across the state. Many of those "glitches" occurred on electronic voting equipment manufactured and supplied to various counties in Texas by the Hart InterCivic company.
One such "glitch" occurred in Texas' Tarrant County, which encompasses Fort Worth. That "glitch" resulted in some 100,000 votes being added to the result totals across the county's paperless Hart-Intercivic "eSlate" touch-screen voting system.
Election Officials in Tarrant claim they didn't look into the problems on Election Night as the problem emerged because, as reported by the Star-Telegram last week, "they were dealing with a new system, new procedures and some new equipment."
The BRAD BLOG can now report, however, that according to a Hart InterCivic company whistleblower -- who also happened to have later worked as an "election programmer" in Tarrant County -- the problems with Hart InterCivic's systems in Tarrant County, Texas and elsewhere are not new at all. Not by a longhorn long shot.
Letters sent by William Singer of Fort Worth, a former Hart InterCivic "technical specialist" and Tarrant County election worker, to state officials back in July of 2004 warned of exactly such problems. The letters, obtained and published here for the first time exclusively by The BRAD BLOG, reveal that serious problems and concerns of possible election system meltdowns were already apparent with the Hart machines in Tarrant County long ago. However, the warning letters were all but ignored by both election officials and even state law enforcement officials...
<snip>
Singer's complete letter to [TX Secretary of State, Geoffrey S.] Connor outlines an astonishing litany of remarkably disturbing accusations of improper procedures, concealment of known problems by both Tarrant County and their two vendors (Hart InterCivic and ES&S), incompetency, unsecured hardware and software development, and much more.
Writes Singer in his letter to the Texas Secretary of State; "What I witnessed at Tarrant County, what I was subjected to, what I was expected to do in order to 'pull off' an election, was far beyond the kind of practices that I believe should be standard and accepted in the election industry and I was baffled by Robert Parten's continued work with these election companies; even after admissions of concealing software problems, inappropriate pressure, hints of backroom deals, and poor support."
Amongst just a few of the many concerns sent to Connor, and apparently ignored by his office, are the following items as described by Singer: (NOTE: The most damning claims that Singer felt would violate his non-disclosure agreement with Hart were not included in his letters):
<snip>
WARNINGS OF HART INTERCIVIC 'FRAUD' SENT TO OHIO'S SECRETARY OF STATE
The letter to Connor was sent on the same day as another one sent to Ohio Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell (complete letter to Blackwell in WORD format here) outlining a series of concerns which, Singer wrote, "rise to the level of legal/contractual violations."
The letter to Blackwell describes a number of alarming concerns about the electronic voting systems of Hart Intercivic, their gaming of the testing procedures, as well as the conduct of their highest-level officials.
Amongst the series of complaints and concerns contained in the letter to Blackwell are both "Fraudulent Acts" and "Fraudulent Claims" as alleged by Singer...
Cont. at VoteTrustUSA (includes links to Singer's letters to Sec's of State Connor (TX) and Blackwell (OH).)
2-16-06: Documents show Maryland held
election, primary on uncertified, illegal Diebold voting machines
the "Hursti Hack."
The report date is the date the machines and software
were certified.
In an encouraging development and to our great delight, after nearly 15 months of silence on the part of MSM (Mainstream Media), today’s Washington Post has a major 2 page article acknowledging that there are indeed problems with electronic voting!
1-22-06: As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security
In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System
Special to The Washington Post - By Zachary Goldfarb
As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself. Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country. Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine. Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot: "Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?" Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no. "Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."…
…Questions about the security of electronic voting machines have been circulating widely in recent years. But many of the concerns have been dismissed as the fantasies of Internet conspiracy theorists or sore-loser partisans who could not accept that their candidates simply got fewer votes. Critics have not demonstrated that any real elections have had returns altered by the manipulation of electronic voting systems. But the questions raised by Sancho, who has held his post since 1989, show how the concerns are being taken more seriously among elections professionals. "While electronic voting systems hold promise for improving the election process," the Government Accountability Office said in a report to Congress last year, there are still pressing concerns about "security and reliability . . . design flaws" and other issues…
…The events that set in motion Hursti and Sancho meeting, and a new wave of concern over today's voting technologies, started in 2003, when a Seattle-based activist named Bev Harris released thousands of Diebold documents she said she found on an unsecured portion of the company's Web site. Some computer scientists said the documents showed Diebold's systems were vulnerable to attack. Today, more than 800 jurisdictions use their technology, Harris said. She wanted to find a way to test whether those vulnerabilities could be exploited. Sancho volunteered his equipment to be tested by experts Harris would select. Harris recruited computer expert Herbert Thompson, and on Feb. 14, 2005, in Tallahassee, Thompson met with Sancho and tried to crack the Diebold system remotely. The first attempt failed. On a second attempt, by directly accessing a computer where the votes are counted in a final tally, he manipulated returns. They used a local high school election for the experiment. In May, two more tests were held, this time with Hursti present. Using a device bought for about $200, he was able to easily alter the final vote by changing the program stored on the memory card. "You have to admit these systems are vulnerable and act accordingly," Hursti said. Diebold took a dim view of the experiments. On June 8, a senior company lawyer faxed Sancho: "You have willfully and intentionally allowed the manipulation of memory cards related to your elections. . . . We believe this to have been a very foolish and irresponsible act." The response frustrated Sancho. "More troubling than the test itself was the manner in which Diebold simply failed to respond to my concerns or the concerns of citizens who believe in American elections," he said. "I really think they're not engaged in this discussion of how to make elections safer." He is also critical of state officials who he believes should have caught the vulnerabilities earlier. He said that vendors such as Diebold have too much influence in the administration of elections, a view that resonated with Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, the founder of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. Sancho is "truly an advocate for voters," she said. "What he is doing in Leon County goes completely against the grain of county election commissioners elsewhere, who are allowing vendors to dictate how to run their own elections." Johns Hopkins University computer sciences professor Avi Rubin, who is leading a group that has received a $7.5 million grant from the National Academy of Sciences to research election technology, said the vulnerabilities of electronic systems -- including new touch-screen voting machines -- point to the need for a paper trail in any election. "The more I see, I say we need voting to rely on paper," he said. About 26 states require paper ballots, according to Verified Voting, an advocacy group.
SEND A MESSAGE:
Put the EAC on notice that violations of federal standards by Diebold and other voting machine manufacturers will not be tolerated by voters.
Support Congressional bills requiring a voter-verified paper record.
- Urge your U.S. Senators to
co-sponsor Senator Ensign's bill,
S.330 (VIVA 2005).
- Urge your U.S. Representative to co-sponsor H.R.704 (identical to S.330) and to co-sponsor H.R.550 -- Congressman Holt's bill.
http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction.asp
1-19-06: CA - Vote-PAD Rocks the Disabled Vote
Touch-screen ballot machines billed as the ideal solution for disabled voters are facing unexpected competition from a newly designed system using inexpensive plastic sleeves and paper.
Called the Voting-on-Paper Assistive Device, or Vote-PAD, the device has won high marks from some advocates for the disabled, and has already been selected for use in California's Yolo County in order to meet federal voting-accessibility requirements.
With Vote-PAD, poll workers fit specially designed sleeves over paper ballots. Audio instructions guide visually impaired voters to bumps on the plastic next to each race. Holes in the sleeve corresponding to ovals on the ballot allow voters to mark the ballot with a pencil or pen without going outside the oval. Afterward, voters can run a specially designed LED wand over the ovals to verify their choices.
"This is a very generic, very simple solution," said Freddie Oakley, Yolo County's registrar of voters. "We don't have to train poll workers to do anything complicated."
The Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, requires states to have at least one accessible voting system at each polling place by this year's federal elections…
…Vote-PAD designer Ellen Thiesen is a voting activist who founded and until recently ran VotersUnite, a group that opposes touch-screen systems on security grounds. She said the device could save counties millions of dollars as they bring polling stations into compliance with HAVA.
"I was concerned that counties were spending a lot of money to purchase accessible machines that weren't really accessible to everyone," she said.
Yolo County, for example, was looking at spending $250,000 just to design storage space to house the accessible optical-scan machines it was considering purchasing for each precinct, on top of the thousands it would have cost for each machine. Vote-PAD, by comparison, costs $2,000 per polling precinct, which includes software to create audio instructions and enough sleeves to last a precinct five years...
…AJ Devies, a member of Handicapped Adults of Volusia County in Florida, tested Vote-PAD and found it fully accessible...
1-07-06: PA - Lawsuit leveled at electronic voting group wants voting machines on ballot
State Sen. Jim Ferlo has joined a group of voting rights activists in a lawsuit aimed at forcing Westmoreland County to seek more public input before it purchases a new generation of touch-screen voting machines for the upcoming May primary election.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday, could have statewide implications. It argues that, under the Pennsylvania Constitution, all 67 counties must let voters pick their preferred model of electronic machines through ballot questions.
"This goes to the issue of having fair and accurate elections," said Mr. Ferlo, D-Highland Park, whose district covers a portion of Westmoreland County. "I really think there are serious concerns about this technology."…
…Local governments across the country are scrambling to get machines that meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act, which came out of the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida.
Last month, commissioners in Westmoreland County approved a resolution to replace aging lever machines with high-tech equipment from Nebraska-based Election Systems and Software Inc. (ES&S) The county expects to receive $3 million in federal aid to cover the cost of 750 iVotronic machines.
County officials have not yet signed a contract.
Mr. Ferlo and his group want all counties to buy machines with paper trails that let voters check their choices. He is a co-sponsor of legislation that would require voting machines to have paper trails. The author of the bill, state Sen Joe Conti, R-Bucks, plans to start holding hearings soon.
1-05-06: Bush Recess Appoints New Federal Election Commissioners
The U.S. Senate convenes two weeks from now. George W. Bush could not wait and had to "recess appoint" the three latest additions to the Federal Elections Commission…
Amongst Bush's 17 recess appointments made today:
Robert D. Lenhard, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission. Steven T. Walther, of Nevada, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission. Hans Von Spakovsky, of Georgia, to be a Member of the Federal Election Commission.
We had more previously on these characters when they were first nominated last month, including details on Bush crony von Spakovsky as well as Lenhard, who happens to be the husband of Vivica Novak (she, not just coincidentally, of TIME Mag/RoveGate fame). Novak will likely be testifying in some fashion concerning crimes surrounding the Bush Administration's alleged outting of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Now, it seems, Novak will have to decide whether or not to give damaging testimony against her husband's boss…
1-05-06: New Wisconsin Election Bill Not as Positive as Originally Reported By Activists and Others
Contrary to reports, bill does NOT allow for examination of source code!
Original version -- which did -- was changed during amendment process to remove important clause.
The voting activist and election reform advocacy community was excited yesterday upon release of news about the signing of a new bill in Wisconsin, AB267, that originally included wording that would allow municipalities to "provide to any person, upon request, at the expense of the municipality, the coding for the software that the municipality uses to operate the system and to tally the votes cast".
<snip>
The bill, as understood and reported by many, would have been the first time that voting activists would have been afforded the opportunity to actually "look under the hood" of voting machines by examining the source code used in the software in order to see what was really being done on the equipment supplied by Voting Machine Companies. So far, those companies have managed keep such source code secret and proprietary and away from the 'prying eyes' of the pesky public who has been forced -- by the corporate privatization of America's public elections -- to rely on such secret software to accurately record and count their votes.
The apparent "good news," however, was incorrect, as The BRAD BLOG has learned. The language from the original bill was changed during the amendment process to strip it of the provisions that would have allowed the public inspection of the secret code!
The good news still left to report is that the bill, signed yesterday by WI Gov. Jim Doyle, will at least require a voter verified paper "record" for every vote cast. In theory, the measure would allow for a manual count or recount of votes in cases where the state determines such a count would be necessary.
Unfortunately, the version of the bill widely cited by election reform advocates was to the original language as introduced on August 24, 2005.
On November 3, 2005 a committee gutted the "disclosed source code" requirement with an Assembly Substitute Amendment 1. That amended deleted AB627 as introduced and replaced it with ASA1.
On November 10, that version was replaced in toto by Assembly Substitution Amendment 2 which is the version eventually signed by the Governor yesterday.
1-04-06: Connecticut scraps new voting machines
There likely will not be a high-tech voting machine in your future this year. After announcing late last year that Connecticut's 3,300 mechanical, lever-style voting machines could no longer be used, the secretary of the state reversed herself. It's all about a big foul-up by companies bidding for Connecticut's business.
<snip>
"I am stopping the purchasing process for electronic voting equipment in Connecticut," Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz. "The state will use lever voting machines in the 2006 election."
After a much publicized, public testing of modern electronic voting technology late last year, it was determined that none of the high-tech devices met all of the requirements of new state and federal rules. In addition to being user friendly for those with disabilities, voters must be able to see the entire ballot all at once and there must be a voter verifiable paper record of their vote. Not even one of the machines tested qualified.
So the secretary of the state announced the process must start all over again.
At our invitation, two professors of computer science from a group called True Vote Connecticut watched. They had tried to raise the red flag on the electronic machines. Their complaints were dismissed last month by Secretary Bysiewicz, but today they learned that their observations were right on the money.
"Yes, exactly, so they came to the right conclusion, and I commend her for that," said Dr. Michael Fischer, Yale University.
The professors had also said all of these machines had reliability and integrity problems.
"These issues have been playing out in other states as well, that's why we need to go slowly here and really look at these systems carefully," says Prof. Ralph Morelli, Trinity College.
1-04-06: New Mexico: State Halts Purchase of Sequoia Edge
According to an article in the Albuquerque Journal, Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has delayed the purchase of 800 Sequoia Edge touchscreen machines that some New Mexico counties had chosen to meet federal accessibility requirements. The machines are subject to a pending motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction .
Lawyers
for the Attorney General's Office advised Vigil-Giron to delay purchase
until after a court hearing later this month in Albuquerque, Ernest Marquez,
the secretary of state's elections director, said Tuesday.
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