Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Over 100 computer science and social sciences faculty from more than 20 colleges and universities across the state of New York have signed a letter to the governor, legislature and local election officials to urge them to replace the state’s lever machines with optical-scan machines.

Our friends in New Jersey have an urgent request for people from throughout the US to call the Governors office and ask Gov. Corzine to call off his Attorney General who wants to gut S-507 which many consider to be model legislation for post-election audits. Read about the bill and action Here

The GOP in Wharton Co Texas has taken the step to tell the county election office that their primary will be done using paper ballots and not the county's vote switching Ivotronics.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Knox Co Ohio reports that they have successfully certified the votes from Nov. 6. However, in doing that certification they found that votes from three precincts (418 votes) were counted twice. The problem, as reported by the media, was that an ES&S contract employee forgot to clear one report before running another. ES&S contract employee? Why was the county not counting those ballots and doing the reports? It’s bad enough that we have given over our elections to vendor’s proprietary software but to actually invite the vendors in to do our work; i.e. counting the votes and doing the reporting; is inexcusable. And what does the county want to do about this problem? They are turning to the County Prosecutor for a decision on what action they should take with regards to ES&S in the future. My advice, for what it’s worth, do the job you were hired for and count the people’s votes. If you can’t do that job then quit and put someone into the position who can do the job....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Yesterday, in this space, I stated that a problem in Wharton Co Texas had votes switching from a GOP candidate to a Democrat. In fact that information was incorrect. The election was a non-partisan election on constitutional amendments. There clearly was, however, vote swapping taking place. The information regarding the vote switching in Pennsylvania was correct. My apologies for the erroneous information.

The EAC terminated all certification of the Advanced Voting Solutions voting system that was being tested by iBeta. This renders the AVS system used in three Pennsylvania counties useless. Northampton and Lackawanna Counties are now discussing suing the vendor.

Twenty percent of the vvpat tapes from Diebold/Premier DREs used recently in Cuyahoga Co Ohio are damaged beyond use. The SoS has given the county permission to run ballot images from the DREs for recounts. Thus no voter verified paper ballots will be used to recount 20% of the votes. Diebold is looking for a way to blame election officials or the voters, of course.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Recently we were asked to answer some questions sent to us by someone in Wharton Co Texas concerning vote-switching. In the Wharton Co situation votes for a GOP candidate were switched on the touchscreen to the Democratic candidate. In doing a little research I looked at machine malfunctions over the past year with regard to ES&S Ivotronic DREs and chose Pennsylvania I was reminded that in Nov. 2006 there were reports from 12 counties that used Ivotronic machines of vote-switching and in every case the votes were from GOP to Democratic candidates. The inaccurate, unreliable voting systems sold to state and county election officials were sold simply due to the greed of the vendors. The machines need to be recalled sooner and not later and replaced by paper ballot supported voting systems....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began two weeks of testing 125 voting machines used in Sarasota Co Florida in the CD-13 race a year ago. These are supposed to be the same machines that lost over 18,000 votes. What if they find no problems with the machines? What if they find the machines were the cause?

Marin Co California has admitted that only 17 ballots have been cast in the past two county wide elections on their 130 AutoMark voting machines that they purchased for the use of voters with disabilities. That works out to over $45,500 per ballot. Oklahoma paid $1M to lease a telephone voting system last year. It was used by only 50 voters. Voters with disabilities must be allowed the opportunity to vote in privacy. We cannot go back to the days when they had to ask for someone to mark their ballot for them. However, some common sense has to be added to the mix. Why are states not going low-tech? There are options available.

Those stories, and many more, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We still have a few copies of a great new novel by Mark Coggins, mystery writer and Shamus and Barry award-nominated author of the August Riordan series. “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 and it is another example of the fact that election integrity is no longer conspiracy theory from “tin-foil hats”. 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.]

Today's notable voting news stories, including the full review of RUNOFF as quoted above, are all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We at VotersUnite are thankful for all of our friends in the Election Integrity community. The folks who support our work and who do their own work tirelessly in an attempt to ensure our democratic process is not taken over by corporations whose interest is to make as much money as quickly as possible. We thank all of you for all that you do in your cities, counties and states. Thank you....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS) which has sold voting machines in three Pennsylvania counties and much of the state of Virginia has finally been notified that if they do not tell the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) their plans for their voting system modifications by next Tuesday they will have all certification testing cancelled by order of the EAC. The modification was to the machines as they are used in PA so it probably won’t affect the Virginia counties. However, at least one of the PA counties, Northampton, has warned the vendor that they will be taking them to court for breach of contract among other charges. Perhaps the other two PA counties will join in this action now that it appears they will be left holding millions of dollars worth of worthless voting machines that have only been used in three elections. This is a clear indication, when teamed with lawsuits against ES&S announced by the state of California and the city of San Francisco that the tables may finally be turning against the arrogance and deceptive practices of the vendors. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The city of San Francisco filed their lawsuit against ES&S today. The city charges the vendor with a panoply of misdeeds including fraud, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and multiple violations of California's Elections Code, False Claims Act and Unfair Competition Law. In a press release concerning this lawsuit the City Attorney, Dennis Herrera, had this to say...

This lawsuit is on top of the suit filed yesterday by the state against ES&S for nearly $15M.

Diebold’s memory card failures have happened in Connecticut as well as in Florida. How many more states will have the same problems?

Those stories, and many more, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today California SoS Debra Bowen announced that she is suing ES&S for nearly $15M for selling uncertified voting machines to counties in the state. The total includes $9.72M for selling the 972 machines and $5M to reimburse the counties. This is the second suit announced in the past three weeks against ES&S and the third lawsuit to be announced against a voting machine vendor in that time period.

“How much does it cost to fix an election?” VotersUnite.Org has just received copies of a great new novel by Mark Coggins, mystery writer and Shamus and Barry award-nominated author of the August Riordan series. We were honored to have been asked to review the book a few months ago and our review included the following opinion; “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 and it is another example of the fact that election integrity is no longer conspiracy theory from “tin-foil hats”. 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.] ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

“How much does it cost to fix an election?” VotersUnite.Org has just received copies of a great new novel by Mark Coggins, mystery writer and Shamus and Barry award-nominated author of the August Riordan series. We were honored to have been asked to review the book a few months ago and our review included the following opinion; “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 and it is another example of the fact that election integrity is no longer conspiracy theory from “tin-foil hats.” 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.]

Finally one Pennsylvania county has told Advanced Voting Solutions to expect a lawsuit to be filed against them for breach of contract. Maybe the other two AVS counties will join in?

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

New Mexico county taxpayers are being plundered by ES&S for maintenance and software contracts. Roosevelt Co. paid $3,500 in the past for software upgrades and they have $500 budgeted for maintenance this year. ES&S wants $15,075 for next year. The county has only 54 optical-scan machines. These money hungry, arrogant vendors will continue raping the tax payer until we finally stand up and tell them we will not take it any more. Now is that time. New Mexico needs to run ES&S out of the state on a rail. Why can’t the state do its own maintenance? Why can’t they upgrade their own software and do their own ballot programming? Oklahoma does it all themselves and we hear very little about problems in the Sooner State. The vendors are NOT mandatory to states running successful elections. In fact, they are a detriment. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Officials in Belmont Co Ohio tested the use of paper ballots and optical-scan at one precinct. The test was an attempt to see if elections could be held with less expense using paper ballots than using the county’s DREs. The test was a success so the county is now thinking about spreading the experiment to the whole county. One result of the test was that there were no lines because many voters can mark paper ballots all at the same time. Hopefully Belmont will tell their neighboring counties and they will experiment and tell their neighbors and we will suddenly have a paper ballot movement that will spread across the whole country and more and more counties will join in the “Rage against the Machines”....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

An editorial in today’s Daytona Beach News-Journal begins: “For votes to count, they must be counted, and accurately. Americans expect tallies to be quick, as well.

“It doesn't always work that way. Ongoing problems with electronic vote-counting machines have eroded voter confidence and raised anxiety about the potential for tampering. In an era when voter-participation levels are already low, it's a problem local, state and federal leaders should confront.

“That effort should start with coordinated, national information-sharing. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, created in 2004, was charged with creating a central clearinghouse detailing glitches, hardware problems and tampering attempts. That database has yet to be created. So when supervisors in Illinois or California --- or Volusia or Flagler counties --- want to know about potential problems with a system, their only recourse is to turn to the Internet. Grass-roots voting-accuracy advocates, to their credit, are operating informational Web sites, but elections officials should have an objective source to turn to --- especially since advocacy groups might not always have access to insider information about how an error occurred.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I’m back from a very rewarding trip to Washington DC. The conference was a combination of Election Reformers of all types plus elected officials and just interested citizens.

Today’s DVN is a mixture of today’s news and some selected from the weekend’s news. Included in this are three articles from yesterday’s Daytona Beach News-Journal. When you read these articles ask yourself why the EAC would refuse to put out a warning. Diebold admits to the problem. Diebold has also as much as said they won’t warn other customers. The EAC spokesperson explains all that the EAC has done but only makes excuses as to why they feel they can turn their backs on a problem with 25,000 voting machines as if it will just go away. We should all let Ms. Layson and the EAC know our displeasure with this “head buried in the sand” attitude.

There were more ballots counted in East Haven Connecticut than voters who went to the polls. A hand-recount in a close mayoral election found a discrepancy between the machine total and the recount total. The good thing is this is the first election in which the state has used optical-scan so they have paper ballots to hand-count.

True to their ways, ES&S is turning the screws on New Mexico counties in order to get every tax-payer dollar from them....