Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Next Tuesday is “Tsunami Tuesday,” in which 22 states will participate and of those 15 states will hold primaries. The primary states are: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CT, DE, GA, IL, MA, MO, NJ, NY, OK, TN, and UT. Whether these states will have successful elections or total meltdowns should be based, in large part, on their past history in elections using the same voting systems. Using only data such as whether a state requires a vvpat or post election audits tells only a small part of the story. Have the states experienced large numbers of machine failures, ballot programming errors, tabulating errors, long lines, and/or disenfranchised voters for instance? For instance, looking at VotersUnite’s “Election Problem Log – 2004 to Date” there have been no reported problems from Oklahoma. The risk of any major meltdown in Oklahoma is small when compared to Georgia with 13 machine malfunction reports or California with 24 machine malfunction reports. States that have a real risk of meltdown based on past record are Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Utah. Those will be the states that get our extra attention....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Counties are still making decisions on their voting systems of the future. Wayne Co Pennsylvania has opted for central-count optical scan machines provided by ES&S and AutoMark for accessibility. This decision was forced on the county when Advance Voting Solutions could not get their DRE system through testing and EAC certification. Meanwhile officials in Cuyahoga Co Ohio have decided to lease a central-count optical scan system, including 15 op-scan machines, from ES&S. There is no mention, yet, as to what the county will do for accessibility....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Florida’s primary is essentially over. There will still be some ballots to be counted, but the last election on the state’s DREs is complete. There were some reports of problems scattered around the state. Election officials and the media were pretty successful in minimizing the reports. However, there was one small graf in one article that jumped out at me. The county clerk in Volusia County had announced that they were going to have to recount one early voting precinct because the Diebold Optical-Scan used in that precinct had not counted 4 ballots. They are doing this, according to the report, because Diebold/Premier had sent counties in Florida an advisory that the machines used in those counties may stop with a ballot partially fed through. Those ballots are not being counted when this happens. My first reaction was, “How many other states/counties that use the Diebold AccuVote OS v. 1.94w have gotten this advisory?” This is the same system used in New Hampshire and many other Northeast jurisdictions as well as various counties across the nation. Why don’t vendors of these machines recall them when there is a problem like this? Who should be responsible to ensure the word is put out that there is a problem and ensure the problem is solved? ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Liberty voting systems is not able to take NO! for an answer. Liberty is the company that sold hundreds of thousands of Euros' worth of voting machines to Ireland only so those machines could be found to be insecure and to have them stored since delivery in warehouses across the country; and the company whose voting machines have been banned in its home country of Holland. Last week the New York State Board of Elections chose not to allow the use of any DRE voting machines for persons with disabilities, thus leaving Liberty with nowhere to sell its machines. Yesterday Liberty decided to ignore the decision and turn to the courts, so it filed a temporary restraining order in an attempt to get the courts to change the decision made by the state. Last night the court found against the company and refused to issue an immediate restraining order. A further proceeding will now take place on Thursday. The utter gall of this company that sells voting machines that can’t be used in its home country and that are gathering dust in Ireland is amazing.

There will be a report, in this space, on the Florida primary tomorrow....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In a surprise announcement late this afternoon ES&S has announced it has purchased all of the assets of AutoMark Technical Systems. This announcement means that ES&S will now manufacture and market the ballot marking devices. According to their press release this acquisition will now allow ES&S to “enhance the product as part of the company’s suite of end-to-end, fully integrated voting solutions.” In other words, they can now use inexpensive parts made in Asian sweatshops and sell the machines more expensively. Not explained in this release is what this sale will do to Diebold/Premier’s plan to market AutoMark machines.

The ACLU has now filed a motion with the courts in Ohio to stop Cuyahoga Co from using any central-count optical scan system as the primary system to count ballots in the March primary.

Those stories, and the other notable voting news today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has dictated that all counties must replace their Direct Recording Electronic voting machines with optical-scan machines. This was all done before the state announced a $1.9B shortfall in revenue. The media are now reporting that Brunner has two choices if she doesn’t back down: force the replacement and don’t help counties to pay for new machines or remove from office all officials who defy her wishes.

The Illinois Ballot Integrity Project has announced that they have begun a clearinghouse for election problems at the polls. Illinois voters are encouraged to go to their blog and report the problem. This sharing of information is vital to our discovering problems and getting those problems solved. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In response to the Colorado Governor and legislative leaders' push for every county to use paper ballots at the polls in November, and to be counted by optical-scan, county election officials are warning of long lines and late results. We’ve heard this from election officials in California and Ohio, also. My opinion? So what. I want my vote counted and I want as much assurance that it has been correctly counted as possible. I don’t need immediate gratification, i.e., a winner or loser within 30 minutes of the polls closing. The media crawl all over themselves to be the first to call the election for one candidate or another. Well, if they have to wait a few more hours then so be it. I want my damn vote counted the way I cast it. Tomorrow is fine. And about the long-lines; have they heard of cardboard boxes? Voters don’t necessarily need to use a specially built voting booth. If they have a choice between using a cardboard box as a booth or standing in a long line in the rain or snow, which do you think they will chose?

Our sincere congratulations to the elections staff and poll workers of Horry County, South Carolina, for what is being reported as a trouble-free election today.

As usual, links to those stories, and the rest of today's voting news, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just announced by Voter Action is that they have filed a preliminary injunction to stop Lackawanna, Northampton, and Wayne Cos Pennsylvania from purchasing and using unverifiable, paperless DREs. They are citing state law which requires that all voting systems produce a “permanent paper record.”

The South Carolina Democratic primary is tomorrow. The state promises there will be no repeat of last Saturday’s train wreck in the Republican primary. Let’s hope the promises are kept and the machines all work the way they are supposed to.

In New Hampshire Secretary of State Gardner has told the media that Kucinich was satisfied with the few ballots that had been recounted and had called a halt to the recount. Gardner seems to have a bit of a problem because he had already received a letter from Kucinich that was critical of the results from some polling places and asked that the state conduct a complete and accurate recount. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

The community of Gloucester Mass. has a huge environmental disaster on its hands due to a sewage pipe that is leaking into the bay. The community has $150M in unfunded mandates due to the sewage pipe and all of that on an $80M budget.

Now the community, as well as those across Massachusetts, has been told that they must replace all of their ES&S Optech Eagle III-P precinct based optical scan voting machines. ES&S has told these people that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has mandated that those machines can no longer be used. According to the Gloucester Times Daily ES&S has told its customers in MA that "the firm's software 'will not meet federal standards and can't be modified to meet those standards.'"

In fact, the software may not meet the present federal standards that it would be tested against, if it needed to be tested today. However, the software and the machines have worked fine in the past and can probably continue to work for as long as Massachusetts communities want to use them.

This morning I called the Editor of the Gloucester Daily Times. He was interested to learn that the EAC had made no such mandate and that this seemed to be a sales ploy by the vendor. His interest was not unexpected after he ran an editorial in his paper this morning in which he said:

Then I called the city clerk's office and spoke with the gentleman in charge of voting machines. He said that communities across the state like the III-P's and want to keep them. They cannot afford to buy new machines and they don't understand why they are being forced into that position. He told me that with the III-P's the only failure they ever had was a "read head" that was easy to replace. Newer technology has many more moving parts.

It's amazing that ES&S is clearly misstating the facts and accusing the federal Election Assistance Commission of making mandates that will cost these Massachusetts communities hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Late yesterday a report was released by the Florida Fair Elections Center regarding the Nov. 2006 election in which voting machines did not register over 18,000 votes in the congressional district 13 race. The report, “Sarasota's Vanished Votes - An Investigation into the Cause of Uncounted Votes in the 2006 Congressional District 13 Race in Sarasota County, Florida January 2008,” is a well researched and presented report that chronicles the problems that very probably led to the wrong person serving the voters of Florida Congressional District 13. The report is damning to the vendor, ES&S, and to local and state election officials. ES&S’s statement about the report is that the writers of the report are “biased.” Of course the report had just been released and they had no way to have read a word.

This morning when I began working on this space I wrote something about New York and how the State Election Board could (would) not make a decision on what voting technology would be used for accessibility. A decision that allowed DREs would have nearly guaranteed that some counties in the state would be using DREs in the future. Apparently Board Member Doug Kellner was able to convince the other two members that New York State Law must be followed and that none of the DREs would meet the legal requirements. So, today the board met again and unanimously voted to allow only optical-scan or ballot-marking-devices for accessibility. No DREs were approved. This is a huge win for the voters in New York....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today is a mixed bag of articles. Officials in South Carolina have been told to have the proper amount of emergency paper ballots at the polls for the Democratic primary election this Saturday. It seems that Republicans were forced to vote on any scrap of paper available in Horry Co last Saturday.

The Registrar of Voters of Sacramento Co California, Jill Lavine, has revealed that the county's ES&S M-100 precinct-based optical-scan machines failed “Logic and Accuracy” testing for the Feb 5 primary:

We applaud Lavine and her staff for doing a thorough L&A test and for making the correct decision. One can only wonder as to whom ES&S will blame for this problem.

Meanwhile Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has changed his mind again and he is now backing the state’s county clerks association which wants vote-by-mail. The governor and legislative leaders today announced legislation that will require all counties to keep poll site voting but do away with the state’s DREs and require paper ballots. It cannot be long before Coffman changes his mind again and announces his support for paper ballots at the polls.

Those stories, and all the other notable voting news today, linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A group of political scientists from the Universities of Maryland, Rochester and Michigan have done a study and written a book to let us know that touch screen voting leaves the voter satisfied and confident. They have decided that most critics have been focusing on the wrong issues. The wrong issues? They begin by blaming recent election problems on the inability of the voter to correctly cast their ballot. According to the information in their press release they seem to ignore ballot programming errors, voting machines that will not start on election morning and shut down on polls closing. They ignore vote switching and voting machines that are supposed to be accessible but will not allow most voters with disabilities to vote without assistance. They ignore over 18,000 undervotes in Sarasota Co Florida and 108 blank ballots cast in a one-contest election in Florence Co South Carolina. It’s not security so much as the problem is poor, amateurish design of voting machines made cheaply and sold expensively. They also found that usability concerns cannot be addressed by adding a paper trail. No argument here but no one has been claiming that they would be. The paper trail is not for usability but for verifiability. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Horry Co South Carolina is now reporting that they had more problems than reported on Saturday. It seems that not only could they not get 80% of the machines to start up on Saturday morning but many of those same machines could not be turned off when the polls closed. It seems that the internal clocks were set for the ES&S iVotronics to be closed out next Saturday evening following the Democratic primary. Those machines had to be taken to the county election office and the clocks had to be changed. The county was still counting ballots late on Sunday. I had a reporter call me from one SC newspaper. He asked how I felt about this delay in getting the results out. My response was that quick and early results were for the media not for the voter. We want our votes counted accurately, not quickly. It is, in part, the media that have driven election officials to waste our tax money on the purchase of machines that give some result as quickly as possible upon poll closure. It may not be an accurate number but it is a number that can be reported. Tomorrow the Republican South Carolina primary will be forgotten as all eyes turn to the next primary and the next potential disaster. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two weeks ago South Carolina election officials told their voters that they needn’t be concerned about the negative reports relative to the state’s chosen voting system, ES&S iVotronic DREs, that have come from Ohio and Colorado. Officials talked about how security in the state was top-notch. So yesterday, in Horry Co, the voting system melted down forcing voters to cast their ballots on any paper they could find. A state representative told the media even paper towels would suffice if necessary.

OK, so the problem turned out to be what appears to be a human error again. Someone forgot to complete the last step of testing and the machines would not start at the polls without the testing being closed out. Early reports were that 80 to 90% or more of the machines in the county were affected. Today, one day after the meltdown, damage control has kicked-in and one media outlet is even saying that just 20 machines in the county were affected.

But no matter, yes it appears to have been human error and that error may have affected 20 or 20,000 machines, the fact is that some voters went away from the polls without voting. The fact is also that state election officials provided the counties with a voting system that may be too difficult and too technical for use by someone without a computer sciences degree.

I would lay better than even odds that an ES&S representative or two were there when the machines were tested and probably had an active role in that testing. Even they failed to follow the instructions and complete the process. Voting should be easy. Voters should be able to walk away from the polls with a feeling of pride in taking part in our democracy; not concern for whether the paper towel they voted on would actually by counted. The KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid - rule should apply.

Coverage of that story, and all of the other notable voting news stories today, are all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Voters went to the polls in Horry Co South Carolina this morning in hopes of casting their vote in that state’s Republican primary. Unfortunately testing of the voting machines had not been completed by the county and ES&S so poll workers were not able to start the machines. Over 80% of the machines used in the county sat dark until technicians could be sent out to get them cleared and ready for the voters. While county election officials were telling the media that no voters had been turned away, voters were telling the media the truth. Voters were sent away without voting.

Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner has moved back a bit from her plans for November. Gone are her demands for vote centers and gone is her mandate for only central count. Now she will allow counties to use precinct based optical scan to unofficially count the ballots at the precinct level so they can compare those numbers to the official centrally counted tally. There is still no mention of accessible voting for voters with disabilities or federally mandated over vote protection. ...