This from our “Featured” article today:

The unbelievable is still happening in Palm Beach Co Florida. The county counted, re-counted by machine all previously machine counted ballots and recounted by hand all under and over voted ballots. The recounts showed that thousands of ballots were suddenly missing from the original count totals. A search was carried on by elections officials, police and fire personnel. That search found all of the missing ballots plus more. Now, under orders from the courts, a new recount is underway. The machine recount has added votes for both candidates from the original count, 227 ballots more than election officials reported were cast during the primary and 29 more ballots than officials said they had in their possession after the search and ballot count. Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson didn’t show up for the search or the re-recount that is still going on today and will probably not finish until tomorrow. He called in sick. Probably the right move and maybe he should just resign and let someone else fix the problems....

It is now a bit fun watching some previously silent news organizations fall all over themselves as they suddenly recognize that our election process is seriously flawed. Today CNN reported, and many smaller organizations picked up the report, that the GAO released a report this week on voting system testing that finds that the Election Assistance Commission [EAC] has not notified election officials across the country about electronic voting machine failures.

This has been no secret within the Election Integrity community and has been one of our main complaints about the EAC. Voting systems fail and the EAC does nothing about it. They argue instead that none of the voting systems were certified by the EAC so they have no right/mandate to do anything about them. The GAO recommends that congress step in with legislation to force this issue.

We agree but dislike the fact that we have to wait on a snail-slow congress to do anything. CNN also reports on the CommonCause/Century Foundation report that was also released this week and that points to 10 states that they believe will have problems in Nov. My guess is that the “ten states” will grow substantially to 40 or more by election day and on beyond.

Also in the news is that the re-re-recount of ballots in Palm Beach Co Florida is taking place today and tomorrow. One can only guess what they are going to find. Ballots from 2004? Punch cards with hanging chads?

And a member of the Washington DC council has subpoenaed Sequoia for records that may reveal what really happened in the recent primary. Could it be that the council will find that the Sequoia spokeswoman, Michelle Shafer’s, declaration that the company is not at fault; “No, no, no” is really “Yes, yes, yes”? ...

We’ve been telling you that voter registration issues are going to be important this year. Even voters who have been registered for years and who have voted in recent elections may find out, when they go to the polls in Nov., that they are not eligible to cast ballots. In our “Featured” article Kim Zetter of Wired News has done a great job in gathering information on voter registration data bases and presenting that information. It’s a scary story. Everyone needs to check to ensure they are still registered to vote and that the registration is correct. Do it now while there is still time to make corrections...

SAVE R VOTE is a group of election watchdogs in Riverside Co California. Yesterday the group gave the county Board of Supervisors a report that they wrote after pouring over more than 10,000 documents for the past three months. Their report included evidence of elections staff correcting documents to balance ballot inventory; electronic voting machines being delivered up to 11 days before the election, some times to bathrooms [Election law permits officials to deliver voting machines a week before Election Day]; and missing electronic voting cartridges. Of course the county registrar could only do all she could do to minimize the issue. Congratulations to SAVE R VOTE. They got the county supervisors to listen. They have ordered an audit of the Registrar’s office to determine why there were hundreds of violations found. ...

Last Friday a group of volunteers for a non-partisan veteran’s organization went to a Veterans Administration facility in San Francisco to meet with veterans and to provide them with an opportunity to register to vote. Just a couple weeks ago the Department of Veterans Affairs relented under pressure from state and national election officials, veteran’s advocacy groups, and legislators and agreed to allow non-partisan voter registration drives in their facilities. Contrary to assurances from the DVA the volunteers were stopped and told that for them to meet with residents they would have to go through a back-ground check to ensure they were, in fact, non-partisan and each visitor would have to submit to tuberculosis screening, a process that requires two medical appointments. A federal judge has already found that the DVA cannot impose special limitations on visitors simply based on their message. The DVA, at least in San Francisco, has decided to ignore the court and impose those special limitations. ...

Blogged By John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

Despite last week's agreement by the Dept. of Veteran Affairs to follow federal law --- after months of pressure from vet groups, members of Congress, and the public --- and relent to allow voter registration drives on the department's federal facilities, The BRAD BLOG has learned that the department is continuing to block non-partisan groups access to our wounded warriors in order to sign up voters. With most voter registration deadlines for the general election just one month away, the continuing stonewall, in this case by the San Francisco VA, continues to outrage.

The non-partisan Veterans for Peace organization has now been forced to file an emergency motion with the court in order to gain access. They contacted us this morning with the following statement...

"Having registered only 414 veterans nationwide, the VA needs all the help it can get," notes the press release from VFP, which continues in full below...

Voter registrations and voter registration data bases have been a huge problem during the primary elections. There is no reason to believe that they will not be a huge problem in November. One of the only ways to ensure a voter is registered is for that voter to check their registration. We recommend every voter check now and then check again just before the voter’s state registration closes before November. We urge voters who find themselves purged from the registration roles to write a letter of complaint to their local Board of Supervisors, especially their own representative, with a CC to their SoS, the local newspaper Editor, and their congressional members. If those responsible for representing the citizenry start receiving such letters they might act to eliminate the cause. You can find out the date that your state is closing registration and who to check to ensure your registration is still good HERE: ...

In today’s featured article the Brennan Center for Justice and the Advancement Project have reported that thousands of Florida voters may be disenfranchised by a last minute decision by the Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to enforce a “no match, no vote” law. “No match, no vote” essentially says that if a voters name or information on their registration does not exactly match their name or information on their ID they cannot vote or they can vote a provisional ballot and take the same ID to the county election office after the election to prove they are who they say they are.

"This 11th-hour decision is an ill-advised move to apply a policy the state has never enforced in its current form, at a time when registration activity is at its highest," stated Beverlye Neal, director of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, a plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenges Florida's matching law. "The Secretary's decision will put thousands of real Florida citizens at risk due to bureaucratic typos that under the 'no-match, no-vote' law will prevent them from voting this November," said Alvaro Fernandez of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, another plaintiff in the case.

"Voters who do everything right, who submit forms that are complete, timely, and accurate, will suddenly find themselves unregistered when they go to vote, just because someone somewhere punched the wrong letter on a keyboard," said Myrna Pérez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice. "The no match, no vote policy is unjust and unnecessary, and Florida voters will pay the price this fall," stated Jean-Robert Lafortune, president of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, another plaintiff in the lawsuit...

In early reporting of the Washington DC primary one Sequoia memory cartridge reported what appeared to be thousands of write-in votes that officials say did not exist. Of course, these inaccurate results created chaos at the elections headquarters.

Just after an election, officials use ‘turnout’ as a yard-stick of success. If turnout is low they tend to make negative comments about the voters as do other officials. If turnout is not high the voters are blamed for just not caring enough. However, in the months leading-up to a national election some election officials do all they can to keep voters from going to the polls. In today’s DVN there are articles on voter suppression from Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

From Washington Post...

These are voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems, whose systems have failed in many recent elections. Their Edge touch-screen system, with its Verivote paper-trail printer, was featured in a video released this week by the UC Santa Barbra Computer Security Group. The video from the scientists at UCSB offers step-by-step instructions on how a single person can hack such a voting system, in about two-seconds, resulting in a county-wide flipped election that even a full post-election hand count of the systems paper trails would not reveal.

It has been pointed out on one of my mailing lists that this same issue may have taken place in Alameda Co, CA, in Feb. 2008.

UPDATE: As expected Sequoia Voting Systems has now made a statement that their investigation shows that the problem was user error or --- in a fresh new excuse for the company --- possibly even "static discharge". The Washington Post reports:

A couple days ago in this space I mentioned a newly posted video and report from the good folks at UC Santa Barbara with some of their findings from their work on the Calif. Top-To-Bottom Review. This report has gotten a lot of press and the video is very much worth viewing. A few of the articles are linked below.

There is also a report of a potential problem in Johnson Co Kansas where election officials are reporting that Premier/Diebold software causes their TSx DREs to time-out after 2.5 minutes of no activity. So if a voter takes too long to read or think about their next choice the machine begins to warn them and then after 2.5 minutes the voter card is kicked-out and the ballot is cancelled. The voter then has to start over, after some assistance from poll workers. This is a national problem that is probably being ignored or worked-around in most counties.

There are also reports from Pennsylvania and Indiana, The Brennan Center and the New York Times concerning student voting issues and what seems to be a concerted attempt to make it harder for students to vote. ...

After months of pressure from state election officials, voting rights groups, veteran’s organizations, members of the US Senate, and citizens, the Dept. of Veterans Affairs has decided that it will be alright for veterans who live in VA facilities or are patients in VA facilities to be visited by non-partisan folks who want to help them register to vote. Unfortunately this decision comes just a month from the voter registration deadlines in most states. Now those groups who have fought hard to get permission to register veterans need to go do the job.

Ohio is becoming a battle ground for voter registrations. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is going to battle against the state legislature over a law that was passed in 2006 that allows counties to remove voters from the rolls if election notices sent by the counties to the voters are returned for any reason. This is a violation of state law and federal law and the US Constitution according to her lawyers. Any voter removed from the rolls must be given due process. ...

• National: V.A. to Allow Voter Signup for Veterans at Facilities
  http://www.nytimes.com/2...=slogin&oref=slogin
• National: Senators Feinstein and Kerry Welcome Changes in Voter Registration Policy at the Department of Veterans Affairs
  http://feinstein.senate....egion_id=&Issue_id=
• National: Helping Veterans Register to Vote
  http://blog.newsweek.com...ns-register-to-vote.aspx

In this space we have mentioned voter registrations many times and asked that everyone check with their state to ensure they are still on the voter rolls. Now the EAC has added their voice with ours. The EAC has also provided a new tool to give the voter more information on who to check with and when is the deadline for registration in each state and territory.

Today the Security Group of University of California at Santa Barbara released a report and a movie on their part in the Top-To-Bottom Review of the Sequoia Voting System....

Today’s featured article is, again, from Palm Beach Co Florida. The quotes in this article make it clear that failing elections supervisors are going to blame the transition from DRE voting systems to optical-scan voting systems for any failures they encounter this election season.

“It was extremely challenging to make the transition" from touch screens to optical scanning of paper ballots in just three months, Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said”. Yes, I’m sure it was a challenge. Just as much a challenge as the successful move from DRE to Optical-Scan accomplished by the state of New Mexico a couple years ago or the same change made by Cuyahoga Co. Ohio prior to this year’s presidential primary. New Mexico and Cuyahoga Co didn’t seem to have anywhere near the problems that Palm Beach Co had.

“[County Judge Barry] Cohen said there were no numbers on the documents he signed to certify the judicial race on Tuesday. County Commissioner Addie Greene said she didn't notice whether vote totals were listed.” This judge has now admitted to signing legal documents without having all of the numbers filled-in. Now, I’m not an attorney but this seems to me to be an admission of misfeasance on the part of a county election official and probably the whole canvassing board on which Mr. Cohen serves.

And then there is this gem; "I decided whatever system (Palm Beach County) buys next time, I'm not buying it," joked Kay Clem, elections supervisor for Indian River County, the only other county in the state with Sequoia equipment. "I feel bad for them, it's tough. I can't imagine dealing with all those paper ballots. It must be a nightmare." This quote from an elections supervisor who allowed an experiment to be done with real votes in a real election and that resulted in over 10,000 votes being mis-reported....