Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A large majority of this evenings fare is again from Colorado and Ohio. The big story, though, may be the story that has not yet been made public. The New York Times Magazine, this Sunday, is running a massive article by Clive Thompson called “The Bugs In The Machines”. At one point Thompson says, "The earliest critiques of digital voting booths came from the fringe --- disgruntled citizens and scared-senseless computer geeks --- but the fears have now risen to the highest levels of government." I’m sure those disgruntled citizens and scared-senseless computer geeks will be anxiously awaiting this article. I know, as a proud “disgruntled citizen”, that I will.

Links to details on all of the above and more, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

While we have been critical of Ohio SOS Jennifer Brunner’s push to change the voting system used by Cuyahoga Co voters before the primary election on March 4, we are encouraged today that Brunner has issued a statewide “Paper or Plastic” edict. This is a smart decision that will allow voters to not use DREs if they don’t feel comfortable using them.

Good news from Northampton Co Pennsylvania today. Even though the state is going to give the county $2M to buy voting machines to replace the Advanced Voting Solutions machines that have been decertified the county is going to continue with their lawsuit which was filed last Friday. The county is claiming breach of contract and warranties, failure to provide promised services and a claim for damages to pay for using other machines. Unfortunately Lackawanna Co seems to be happy they got taxpayers money from the state so they are now talking about dropping any plans to hold AVS responsible. The taxpayers should have the opportunity to voice their opinion.

People ask so here is the list of states taking part in Super Tuesday on February 5: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

As usual, all of today's notable voting news stories are linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Here we are back at work. It appears that the mainstream media are waking up and beginning to do their normal pre-election questioning of voter registration data bases and voting machines. We’ll be keeping our eyes on what is being reported and then passing those articles on to you. Counties across the nation should be getting their paper ballots and ballot programming soon and we will then begin to hear about all of the misprints and incorrect programming. One of the big questions will be how many ES&S customers will end up threatening law suits for failure to provide ballots, software, and memory cards. It is going to be a busy and interesting year right through the elections.

Today's many notable voting stories, are all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

VotersUnite would like to express our gratitude to all who have assisted us in the past year. We truly appreciate your support and friendship. We would like to wish you all the best for the New Year. While great strides were made this past year, unfortunately, it takes the failures of the voting machine vendors for us to get some people to listen; but they are beginning to hear now and actions are being taken. We have a very busy year in front of us with primary elections and then the general election in November. Unfortunately this year may be another “Train Wreck.” Hopefully this will be the last. We hope you have a better year than last.

And with that, today's notable voting news stories are all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Pennsylvania has now decertified all Advanced Voting Solutions voting systems used by three counties. This action followed the EAC's cancellation of testing of AVS software. One of the three counties has already announced that they plan on filing suit against AVS for breach of contract. Can this be the end of another vendor?

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has now proposed that two or three counties test her newest plan to use vote centers in Ohio. The test would take place during the March 4 primary. There are now about 40 working days before the primary election. There are seven months between the primary and general election. Why this rush to test out major changes in elections in as short a period as possible? ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Election officials in Colorado and Ohio seem to have a different opinion every day. Now Colorado SOS Coffman wants legislation that will say that federal certification is good enough. He doesn’t want the state to do any certification testing of voting systems. Of course, that does nothing for any voting system presently used in the state but it may make a difference sometime next year when there are actually federally certified voting systems. Meanwhile Ohio SOS Brunner has reportedly announced that DREs used in counties other than Cuyahoga are alright and don’t have to go away in favor of central-count optical scan. Do either of these people understand what they are doing? It seems not....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

That story, and today's other notable voting news, posted below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. After telling the state of Colorado that changes can be made to allow electronic voting to take place next Nov. the SoS, Mike Coffman, is now supporting all paper elections and vote centers. This guy is like a flag and goes which ever way the wind is blowing. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are going to take tomorrow off for Christmas. VotersUnite would like to extend our heartfelt good wishes to all of you and your families for a wonderful day tomorrow. Merry Christmas to you all. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

New York City has already decided to purchase one “Ballot Marking Device” for each polling place in the city. That puts them one step ahead of the rest of the state.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania has joined other states which have read the Colorado reports and decided that any testing done in Colorado does not apply to their state even though they use the same machines.

West Virginia says that even though they use machines that were decertified in Colorado they just don’t know enough to decide whether to get rid of them.

Editorials and Op-Eds from Ohio papers are mixed. The opinions of the papers surely echo the opinion of the county election offices rather than an opinion made after research and education.

Those stories, and the rest of today's voting news, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Colorado Secretary of State Coffman continues to step as far away from state law as he possibly can. Rather than protect the voters it seems that Coffman wants to do everything possible to cut corners and ignore the facts in order for counties to use the machines he just decertified. Now Coffman is allowing Mesa Co to do their own certification testing to see if they can figure out a way to make their ES&S iVotronics work. “Even if Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S couldn’t get the systems to work for the certification, county officials likely can, Coffman said.” He wants to allow the counties to do their own testing and then go to the legislature and have them approve what has been done by the counties. Does anyone smell another law suit?

More info on that, and links to today's other notable voting news, follows below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just in late this afternoon, a typical-bad-news-on-a-late-Friday-after-the-news-week-is-complete, is the news that OH Secretary of State Brunner has ignored the statements of every person who spoke before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. She has decided that the county must change voting systems and voting system vendors before the primary election, which is March 4, with early voting beginning in a little over a month. ES&S will be given the contract.

Two more states have begun to look at the results of testing of voting systems and they are answering questions of the media. In both cases, Nevada and Louisiana election officials told the same story. Yes, they use the same machines and the machines have the same problems BUT they have administrative methods that make the findings from Ohio and Colorado inconsequential. Of course, both states have the same, or nearly the same, administrative methods as both Ohio and Colorado and the methods described in the media would not have any impact on the insecure, inaccurate and inaccessible voting systems in use.

Speaking of inaccessibility of voting systems; why has no one yet stood-up and reminded these states that their reports say the machines do not meet HAVA requirements? Why is this being ignored?

All of those stories, and many more, linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Did you wonder how Diebold/Premier escaped the axe in Colorado? While all of the other vendors had their machines decertified or had strict conditions set on them Diebold/Premier came away fairly clean. It seems that Secretary of State Coffman is running for Congress next year. The consultants for his campaign also seem to be the consultants for Diebold/Premier. Coffman went a long way to keep Diebold/Premier from being decertified because his testing board recommended that all electronic voting systems used in the state be decertified. Coffman reportedly used his discretion to decide which systems were “substantially compliant”. Diebold/Premier which has gotten consistently negative reports from across the nation got the head-nod and wink from Coffman.

A decision was made in the DoJ complaint against the state of New York. Details are still sketchy but it looks like the state needs to have a plan by Jan. 4.

174 ePROM chips for San Diego Co.’s optical-scan machines were lost somewhere between the California Secretary of State’s office and the county. The chips were packaged in two tubes by Diebold/Premier employees under witness by SoS employees. They were shipped by Diebold/Premier’s normal shipper, FedEx. San Diego Co.’s Registrar, on a witch hunt, is blaming SOS Bowen for the problems.

Cuyahoga Co.’s Board of Elections voted 2-2 on whether to accept SOS Brunner’s plan to change voting systems before the state primary election. The decision is now hers.

Details on all of those stories, and many more today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Now that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has followed state law and found that nearly every voting system used in the state has problems resulting in decertification or conditional certification of those systems, he wants the laws changed to make voting system certification easier.

He claims he doesn’t want to change requirements for security or accuracy but, on the other hand, he thinks a change to state law to allow the vendors to install software patches following an abbreviated certification process, with no federal testing or certification, would be good.

He also doesn’t want to be bothered with state certification testing, looking instead to other states for their test results. Of course this would allow him to pick and chose between states.

California decertified Diebold/Premier voting systems and recertified them with conditions. Colorado did not decertify their Diebold/Premier machines. Perhaps Coffman would rather look at testing done by Washington state where there is next to no testing other than an acceptability test done on vendor provided equipment with vendor provided test ballots? He clearly doesn’t like the results of his own testing so he is searching for a test that will give him what he considers to be acceptable results.

Links to that story, and all the other notable voting news today, follows below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two shipping tubes sent from the California Secretary of State's office in Sacramento to the San Diego County Election Office arrived without their contents. The tubes left the SOS Office with more than 174 memory chips, or Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM), containing firmware for the county's Diebold/Premier central-count optical scan voting machines. UPDATE: Precinct-based op-scan chips confirmed by the SoS to be missing as well! See update info at end of article.

The tubes arrived in San Diego but they were empty. The chips are now considered to be either lost or stolen.

WIRED's Kim Zetter reports today...

According to Zetter, the new firmware was being sent to San Diego following software and security modifications made following the state's recent "Top-to-Bottom Review" of e-voting systems. The packages were sent from the Secretary of State's office after being packaged by Diebold/Premier employees with SoS personnel standing witness. The Secretary of State's office confirms that Diebold/Premier regularly uses Fed-Ex as their preferred shipper.

New chips will now be sent and the state says the February primary will not be delayed by the issue. The California Highway Patrol and Sacramento Police are now investigating.

But the story gets worse, in this LATE UPDATE (FROM BRAD):