Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I always thought that “sleepovers” were beyond the limit of good security. In a court election contest in Wilkinson Co Mississippi the county Circuit Clerk pled the fifth amendment to several questions. One of the questions was “Is it true you had a pre-election party that voting machines were taken to?”

The results of the Ohio study are stunning with regards to the ES&S iVotronic DRE. The study found that a voter or poll worker can easily recalibrate the touch-screen; access control can be defeated by someone with a small magnet and a PDA or cell phone; and there is a back door entry that can be gained bypassing password requirements.

The Colorado SOS is now telling the media that they may be able to use some of the decertified voting systems by patching the software. Patches require testing and certification. Is he getting nervous?

Links to those stories, and the other notable voting news today, all posted neatly below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A very busy day today. There are still articles about the EVEREST report completed in the state of Ohio. Based on that report, recommendations were made to Cuyahoga County to change their voting system and vendor from DREs by Premier to central-count optical scan by ES&S. It appears that the county is going to do the correct thing and not make any rash decisions. They should probably make some changes but not a wholesale change of vendors and certainly not when that vendor is ES&S. A final decision will be made later this week.

This afternoon the state of Colorado announced that they were decertifying all voting machines and peripherals from ES&S as well as the Sequoia Edge II and Edge II Plus and optical scan systems provided by Hart Intercivic. Voting systems from Premier, optical scan and peripherals from Sequoia and DREs and peripherals from Hart were conditionally certified.

Also two amicus briefs were filed today in the NY v. DOJ case....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As we were expecting today’s news is dominated with news from Ohio and the results of Secretary of State Brunner’s review of voting systems used in that state. There are also reports from Cuyahoga Co. regarding the push by Brunner for that county to immediately change over to ES&S central-count optical scan machines and voting centers to replace the county’s polling places. In light of the fact that the state’s primary election is March 4 and state law requires early voting to begin 35 days prior to March 4 Brunner is asking the county to completely change voting systems and vendors and to train voters and poll workers in less than three months and to have ballots printed by ES&S five weeks from now. This is very unwise. As bad as elections have been in Cuyahoga Co this push from the Secretary will only make things worse. We urge the county to conduct the primary on what they have now then change during the 7 months between the primary and the general election....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner released the results of her EVEREST (Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing) report. There is a lot of interesting reading for the technical types and for the non-technical among us. Brunner has, with input from a bi-partisan group of county elections people, recommended that changes be made before next years elections; no DREs, no Precinct-Based Optical Scan, hand-marked paper ballots to be counted on Central-Count Optical Scan except for the use of Ballot Marking Devices for voters with disabilities, early voting up to 15 days, and voting centers. One has to hope that if all of the counting is going to take place on CCOS machines that no vendors will be involved in that counting and that the counting be open to the public. One pleasant surprise was that Brunner went farther than the rumors said she would go. Not only did she release her “Executive Summary” but the technical reports were released at the same time. Thank you for that openness, Secretary Brunner....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Prior to the 2000 general election thousands of otherwise eligible voters were scrubbed from the rolls in Florida. In 2002 the Help America Vote Act was signed into law. One of the issues that law was to help with was to clear up the voter registration issues such as what happened in 2000. That law required centralization of voter registrations at the state level and not, as previously, at the county. Now, in Florida again, voters have had to go to court in order to get put back on the voter rolls. Little things like missing hyphens, common in Hispanic surnames or Haitian first names, are enough to have a person’s registration denied. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It looks like counties in Southern California like to hire election officials who have failed in their jobs elsewhere. Michael Vu, the Cuyahoga Co Ohio election director who was run out of the state ended up as the number two in the San Diego Co election office. Now Los Angeles Co has named Dean Logan, who failed miserably while the elections director in King Co Washington (Seattle) as their interim elections director to replace Connie McCormack who was run out of Texas years ago.

California counties who have the AutoMark A200 machines have been told by the state that they can now use those machines. The lawsuit against ES&S will continue.

More bad news for ES&S as San Francisco is changing vendors to Sequoia Voting Systems. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to reports from Vigo Co Indiana, where there is a recount being held for Terre Haute mayor, a court-appointed recount commission is seated to oversee the process. State law, according to the news report, requires that one of the three members of that commission be a representative of the voting system vendor. So ES&S is overseeing the recount of ballots. It is time the people take back our elections. No vendor should be allowed to be contracted to take over counting votes or sitting on commissions that make decisions in our elections.

Is Cuyahoga Co Ohio being set-up to fail yet again? That is the question being asked and answered in a blog from a county voter. Just why is Brunner suggesting to the county that they totally overhaul their voting system before the March primary?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Good news today from New Jersey where S-507, a post-election audit bill, passed through the budget committee on a party-line vote even with opposition from the state Attorney General.

This week we are scheduled to hear the results of the Ohio Secretary of State’s EVEREST project. This project and resulting reports from academics and others was supposed to be Jennifer Brunner’s “Top-To-Bottom Review” with the resulting recognition comparable to that given to California’s Debra Bowen. We are still waiting to hear whether we will actually see the reports or just an executive summary that only gives us the information the Secretary wants us to hear. In the meantime, Brunner seems to be nudging Cuyahoga Co to change from DRE voting to optical-scan. While those nudges would have been great 6 months or more ago, it is questionable as to whether the county should change now. The Ohio primary is March 4 with absentee voting beginning in January. The county should now be working on ballot lay-out, ballot programming and ballot printing. This is NOT the time to make any changes. One has to wonder whether Brunner is trying to emulate Bowen or Blackwell. The jury is still out.

Links to those, and today's other notable voting news stories, all posted below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

San Francisco has finally certified their Nov. 6 election. They hand-counted 80,000 ballots which delayed the final certification by a month. Officials in Cuyahoga Co Ohio seem to be reluctant to get rid of their Diebold DRE voting machines even though they have caused many problems which have affected many voters....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The court case in Pima Co Arizona goes into its fourth, and what is supposed to be last, day today.

While the Secretary of State of Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, is asking Cuyahoga Co to look into changing over to optical-scan and paper ballots for future elections. It’s probably time for the county to tell Diebold/Premier to bring in a large garbage truck and pick-up the trash. Then file a lawsuit for misrepresenting their product as something that would work.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

For election watchers there will be a special congressional election next week in northwest Ohio. There will also be another congressional election in Virginia at the same time. In the Virginia election voters are being given their choice between DRE or paper ballots.

Goshen New York held an election on a $70M school bond issue and brought out two lever machines to count the votes. As the counters on both machines hit 999, they each rolled back to 000 like an overused car odometer. The question that will never be answered is, for which side were those 1,998 votes cast?

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

HAVA mandated that all punch-card voting systems be replaced? Not at all. In fact a close reading of the law will prove that there are protections for punch-card and hand counted paper ballots. 12 counties in Idaho are still using their punch-card voting system. Seldom do you see Idaho as a source for any articles on this page and never have you seen an article on this page about a problem with voting in Idaho.

Many of you know our friend Bernie Ellis of “Gathering To Save Our Democracy” His is a story much too long for this space but I wanted to pass on some good news about Bernie to all of his friends. Yesterday Bernie learned that his probation had been cut in half and that he is now a totally free man. One of his first actions today was to re-register to vote....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Sequoia Voting Systems should be very happy today. Palm Beach Co Florida signed a non-bid contract with the company for 1001 precinct based optical scan machines. The contract is worth $5.5M. One has to wonder what the vendor may be holding over the heads of the county commissioners to get them to not take bids and not bargain for the best price.

NJ State Senator Nia Gill will be on Voice of the Voter Radio again tomorrow night to discuss the NJ statistical audit bill, S.507, which was reported out of committee yesterday, as written and amended by Senator Gill....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Last month 108 voters went into the voting booth to vote on a school bond referendum and walked away without voting at all; or that’s what the county is questioning. The votes were cast on ES&S iVotronic DREs. The total undervotes was less than 2% of the 6,252 total ballots cast but about 8% in some precincts.

The Pima Co Arizona lawsuit goes to court tomorrow. That suit, if the results go our way, should provide a lot of information about elections and the voting machines being used across the country.

There is also a great review of “Margin of Error, Ballots of Straw”. We have a couple copies left which we would be happy to send out as a premium in exchange for a $50 donation. [Note: VotersUnite! is in affiliation with International Humanities Center, a nonprofit public charity exempt from federal income tax under Section 501[c](3) of the Internal Revenue Code.] ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Need a good book as a Christmas gift for someone? We still have a few copies of “Runoff” by noted novelist and mystery writer, Mark Coggins. We had the following to say in our review of the book; “What could be better than a fun fiction about the real dangers of electronic voting? Coggins shows us that elections can be hacked and the cover-up can be murder.” The book is gripping and laugh-out-loud funny in places. Read more about the book at VotersUnite.Org and help us out with a $50 or more donation and get a copy of the book as a premium. You help VotersUnite continue our valuable work and you get a great book. [Note: VotersUnite! is in affiliation with International Humanities Center, a nonprofit public charity exempt from federal income tax under Section 501[c](3) of the Internal Revenue Code.]

Links to today's voting news stories follow below as usual...