The criminal investigation hand-count has begun in Arizona. In the lead-up to the count the Attorney General spoke about Internet feed of video from the counting room. It’s a good thing he didn’t say the count would be public or the process would be transparent. Yes, there are cameras in the area and yes they are streaming live via the Internet. However, the cameras are physically as far away from the counting as they could probably place them and some of the cameras are focused on empty aisles or on swinging doors. No transparency here. Nothing to see here; move along....

There are election recounts in Minnesota and New York that have the media’s eyes and ears but we should not forget that there is also a recount beginning next week in Maricopa Co Arizona. In this case it is not an elections recount to decide who/what won an election. Instead this is a criminal investigation to determine whether there was manipulation of the vote tally on the voting machines in Pima Co. during the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election. Today’s “Featured” article has the whole story, including all of the background....

Today is a mixed bag of important news items. One mobile messaging company is predicting that we will be voting via our cell phones, twitter, etc. in just a couple years. There is more from California regarding the decertification of Premier/Diebold 1.18.19, as system that would not be used again anyway. There is also some news on yesterday’s election in New York state that found the two candidates with but 25 votes separating them. This election will clearly end up in court just as the Minnesota Senatorial race has. There are also a few editorials from newspapers in states that are considering VoterID.

I will be taking a bit of a hiatus until Sunday evening or Monday while I attend a conference. Enjoy the weekend....

Today the CA Sec. of State, Debra Bowen, announced that she will be decertifying the voting system that lost votes in Humboldt Co. This action is being taken after a state investigation that found that the Diebold/Premier voting system violates the standards because of problems with its audit logs as well as the inaccuracy of one version used in the state.

Humboldt Co has already decided to switch to another vendor and the other two counties are already upgrading their systems so Bowen’s action does nothing at all. The fact that she is ignoring the audit log problems means that she is giving her tacit stamp of approval on the Diebold/Premier systems that have the audit log problem.

I am going to begin posting links to new information that I find on the United States Election Assistance Commission website. I hope this will help keep the reader aware of part of what is going on in Washington DC with regards to our elections.

After this Wednesday evening’s “Daily Voting News” we will be taking a well-deserved hiatus to attend a conference. DVN will resume on Sunday evening.

After this Wednesday evening’s “Daily Voting News” we will be taking a well-deserved hiatus to attend a conference. DVN will resume on Sunday evening....

“Our voting machines cannot be hacked.” “Our voting system is not hooked up to the Internet so it is secure.” We hear this time and time again from the vendors and from election officials. Yet if it uses computers and they use software they can be hacked. Our ‘Featured’ article is another story of computer systems being looted by bad actors. Who could believe that our voting systems are not vulnerable and ripe for manipulation by the same types?...

As reported in today’s ‘Featured’ article the EAC has finally posted the transcription of their hearing from Feb 26 and 27. This is the hearing in which CIA cybersecurity expert, Steven Stigall said, “I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to...make bad things happen,”...

Today’s ‘Featured’ article [PDF] begins, “Florida’s Department of State is proposing a few strategically placed words that would gut Florida Statute 104.29, a brief but powerful law that currently offers Florida citizens their greatest protection for election observation. The altered language is buried on page 61 of a 68-page elections bill1 still in draft form, which, as soon as it is finalized, will be presented to the State Legislature for approval.

Also ‘Featured’ are two press releases (here and here) from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney’s website with regards to new legislation that will help military and overseas voters.

Correction: In this space yesterday I inferred that Humboldt Co had made the decision to move from Premier/Diebold to another vendor based on the problems encountered by the county in the Nov. 2008 elections. In fact the decision to change vendors had been made before that election....

According to our ‘Featured’ article Premier/Diebold has lost a customer for their voting system in Humboldt Co. California due to their admissions that the system used in that county loses votes under certain circumstances and that history of actions on the voting machines can be deleted from the internal audit file. The county has already made the decision to switch to another vendor for their voting system but they still use and pay annual fees for a Premier provided voter registration system. They did still use it anyway. In an apparent attempt to punish Humboldt Co a vindictive Premier has given the county a 90 day warning and a list of software and hardware that they want returned. Hopefully the county’s attorneys will take some action.

In our ‘Featured’ article Greg Gordon of McClatchy News reports on a presentation given during an Election Assistance Commission hearing last month. The presentation was given by a CIA analyst concerning the use of electronic voting machines in foreign elections and the concerns about the machines’ vulnerability to tampering. The official said at one point in his presentation, “"You heard the old adage 'follow the money’. I follow the vote. And wherever the vote becomes an electron and touches a computer, that's an opportunity for a malicious actor potentially to . . . make bad things happen."...

We are still waiting on a court ruling from Minnesota. In the meantime here is a mixed-bag of voting news articles. ...

The summary of this weekend’s “Featured Article” says:

We live in a world of complex computerized systems --- medical equipment such as MRIs and CAT scans; flight control software; an automotive fuel injection system; the databases that store, retrieve, and collate data. All these systems undergo stringent testing.

The primary purpose of any testing of computerized systems is to show either that the system works as designed or that it doesn’t. If the system does not work as designed, then the test results are expected to provide information on the nature, and perhaps the cause, of the defective behavior.

Using these criteria, this report evaluates one specific test --- a test designed to confirm or refute that a specific computerized vote-counting system meets the accuracy level required by federal law. The details that follow contain many numbers and many technical details, but the discussion centers on a single, simple question: did the test, which was approved by the federal agency tasked with certifying voting equipment, provide evidence that the accuracy requirement was met, or did the test provide evidence that the accuracy requirement was not met?

As the author demonstrates in this specific instance, the answer is: the test provided neither. The test, which was designed by a federally-accredited test lab for the sole purpose of testing the accuracy of the vote-counting equipment, cannot prove whether or not the system accurately counts votes, nor can the test yield any measure of the accuracy rate.

The author wants the reader to understand that such testing provides false assurance that a federally-certified vote-counting machine meets the accuracy requirements of federal law.

A group of election officials in Clay Co Kentucky were arrested over the past few days for election rigging schemes that have taken place over the past few years. One of the schemes they used was to instruct some voters that when they finished on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines they were to only push the “Vote” button once. The unsuspecting voter would then leave the booth and crooked poll workers would enter the booth with the last voter’s ballot still in “Review” mode. The poll workers would then select the names of candidates who had paid for the service and finalize the ballot. The FBI and DoJ should have a fun time with this one. ...

More bad news for a voting machine vendor. This time the California Secretary of State’s office has announced that they have settled their lawsuit against ES&S. It was back in 2007 that the state discovered that ES&S had ignored state laws and sold uncertified voting machines to some counties as if they were certified. CA filed a $15 million lawsuit against the company, and now ES&S has agreed to provide $3.2 M to the state’s coffers by way of settling the suit.

Will it make any difference in the long run? Probably not. ES&S will continue their past bad business practices and many of their customers will continue thinking they only have the choice provided by ES&S....

Yesterday the s**t hit the fan for Diebold/Premier in California and the splatter may be even more widespread than just in California. If you think that is a bit graphic then read the articles from California about the revelations that came from the public hearing held by the Secretary of State, Debra Bowen. One panelist asked Diebold’s western area representative if the company has done anything at all about problems revealed as a result of the Humboldt County Transparency Project.

On the subject of audit logs being wiped with no trace and inaccurate timestamps, Justin Bale could only say “We’re now looking at it as a priority”. Bale also admitted that these problems existed, and have always existed in their software. It was correctly pointed out by Lowell Finley of Bowen’s office that each of these problems should have kept that system from passing testing at both the federal and state levels. Bales tried as best he could to put as much of the blame over onto Humbold Co. Clerk Carolyn Crnich but in the best line of the hearing she shot back, "if you are saying that your system needs to be checked every damn time you turn it on, then I agree with you."...