Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Sequoia has now been sold, yet again. This time the new owners are the present management team. Who is really behind the purchase and what was the final purchase price? Smartmatic paid $16M for the company which represented a $7M loss for its previous owner. Also, now that the Venezuelans are not involved who is going to do all of the ballot programming?

Is Cuyahoga Co Ohio too big for Diebold/Premier? That’s a question being asked by the media and probably some members of the county Board of Elections.

Poll workers failed to remove the results cartridges from seven Sequoia Advantage machines in Camden Co New Jersey. If the votes on those cartridges won’t affect any races the votes won’t be considered in the final tally, according to state law. Election officials wonder why voter turn-out is so low. That’s one reason.

Counting of ballots in Lackawanna Co Pennsylvania was much slower than expected either with or because of Premier/Diebold employees running the optical-scan machines. Was the hold-up a ploy to make optical-scan systems look bad and to sell the county DREs?

Lawrence Co Ohio reports that votes have been flipped due to a software error by ES&S.

This is it for today. DVN will be on hiatus until Monday....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

This is a typical post-election day DVN. Lot’s of reports of failures and problems. Part of the problem with today’s technical elections is that they are “high tech” and probably too “high.” Voters don’t understand it all and election workers don’t understand even when they are supposed to have been trained. Most Election officials clearly don’t understand what is happening so they blindly take the word of the vendors. The single county with the most problems last year seems to have repeated its poor record. Marion Co (Indianapolis) Indiana has a real problem with elections administration and the machines. Atlantic Co New Jersey had machine problems and they are still not sure what happened though Sequoia did what they do well and immediately pointed the finger at the county as being the problem. Cuyahoga Co Ohio had far fewer problems than in the past but there is still an unexplained problem with their voting system. And Denver Colorado had to call in the Police Dept and SWAT members to help count a late deluge of mail-in ballots.

Also of extreme importance today is the DoJ decision to step in and attempt to usurp New York State’s right to select a voting system that meets their standards.

And late today the city of San Francisco announced that they are filing a breach of contract lawsuit against ES&S.

Tomorrow’s DVN will be sent earlier in the day due to your correspondent flying out to DC to attend a conference. DVN will go on hiatus for the weekend to be started up again on Tuesday.

But for today, all of the above stories, and the rest of today's notable voting news, are linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today seems to be a typical odd-year election day so far. Problems are reported throughout the nation. Of course no reasons are given for problems except in a few occasions the errors are “human error”; they are never the machines' fault or the vendors' fault. Marion Co Indiana has been the “poster child” for failed elections and it seems that this election is no different. Also today the DoJ has stepped in and suggested to the courts that New York needs to have help in selecting a new voting system and they need to have that system by next year’s elections. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today is a bit of housekeeping chores so please bear with me. First, tomorrow is election day for state and local positions and issues across most of the nation. As is normal the news for the next few days will be filled with machine failures and election officials and vendors blaming those failures on the voters or poll workers. Of course they neglect to say that if they had didn’t have the unreliable voting systems they have the voters and poll workers would not have problems. Also, I will be attending the “Claim Democracy” Conference in DC this coming weekend. I will do all I can to keep the flow of news going out to you but I may miss a day or two. I will do all I can to combine days or otherwise get the news out.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two elections so far this year and Cuyahoga Co Ohio is 0-2 in successful recounts. Both recounts were in small municipal elections and in both cases the recounted voter verified paper trail (vvpat) votes failed to match the official machine results. Why? Mistakes in counting? Not according to the county. The problem is that the vvpats are at times difficult and sometimes impossible to read. These vvpats along with audits of those vvpat ballots are supposed to be an acceptable solution to the problems with DREs. Cuyahoga Co is now concerned that they may have a close county-wide race that will require many days of trying to decipher what is on the vvpat tapes. Remember that in Ohio the vvpat is the vote of record in an audit so any damaged or unreadable ballots may be lost ballots and they could affect the results of an election. This, again, is proof that adding a vvpat printer to a DRE is like adding a seat belt to a Pinto. Let’s “Rage Against The Machines” and recall them all....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

Saturday's Daytona Beach News-Journal reports that Diebold Election Systems, now having renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, has admitted that some of its 25,000 optical scan voting machines used in Florida and elsewhere across the nation may have a problem that causes memory card failures during elections.

As we would expect, Florida election officials and Diebold/Premier have downplayed the problem as they say that the problem does not threaten the integrity of U.S. elections. However, the Volusia County, FL Supervisor of Elections, Ann McFall, said [emphasis ours], "I don't think votes are lost". Her office has also admitted that the problem has caused problems and adds to the cost of elections.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has yet to take action on this matter, despite impending elections, the commission's statutory mission as the oversight body for certification of electronic voting systems their mandated mission to be a "national clearinghouse" for information on them and two GAO reports critical of their failure to do any of the above. If they follow previous patterns, they will do absolutely nothing to alert other states and counties who use the same system, about this problem.

Diebold/Premier, of course, and again, is attempting to downplay the severity of their failures in Florida and refusing to release their own information gathered on it, characterizing the true extent of the failure as "proprietary business information"...

But because the News-Journal could not get the percentages from Diebold/Premier, they submitted public records requests to all counties affected and found the results were not quite as rosy as the company would have us believe...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today the Daytona Beach News Journal reports that 25,000 Diebold optical-scan machines used across the country may have a defect that causes failures in the memory cards. Apparently Diebold has known about this problem for some time. One election official claims that she THINKS no votes have been lost. Diebold says that around one percent of the memory cards are affected but the News Journal has found that some counties have reported over nine percent failure. There will be an election in Florida next week but the state is not requiring any beefed-up audits to ensure there are no lost votes. Diebold says they will inspect machines outside of Florida on a “case by case basis.” In other words, they are not going to warn their customers, and they won’t inspect anything unless a customer forces their hand. This is just another reason to recall all voting devices qualified by NASED and inspected by ITAs paid by the vendors to look the other way. It is time to “Rage against the machines”....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an article in today’s Alternet, Steven Rosenfeld has said, more eloquently, what we have been saying for awhile now:

It’s just that simple. The vendors know they are selling defective, poorly designed, and insecure voting systems and previous attempts to inspect and qualify them for use have been nothing more than rubber stamps to get these systems out to unsuspecting customers. We need to support groups like VoterAction who are in the forefront of this “rage against the machines.”

That story, and today's other notable voting news, all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Last Nov. 55% of the voters in Sarasota Co Florida spoke with their votes for optical scan voting and for a meaningful audit of the ballots. Before the measure went on the ballot the county and state went to court and argued that the charter amendment would result in a violation of the state constitution. The court disagreed and the voters won. Yesterday a state appeals court decided against the will of the voters and for the county Supervisor of Elections and the SoS. The ruling was partially moot because the county is going to optical-scan machines, as is the state due in part to the pressure from passage of the amendment. However, the voters lose the ability to have an audit that will mean anything at all. They voted for an audit of 5% of all precincts. Instead the state is working on an audit of 1 to 2% of the precincts in each county and one race on those ballots AND this audit cannot happen until AFTER the election is certified....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ciber Labs teamed with Wyle Labs to test voting system code while Wyle tested hard and firmware. Under the NASED run [federal] voting system qualification process, Ciber inspected and tested about 70% of the voting systems presently in use. Ciber Labs has not been accredited by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to test voting systems under the EAC’s voting system certification program because the EAC found that Ciber did not do tests that they had claimed to do and did a lousy job of documenting those tests they did do. So we have no idea if the code used on about 70% of the voting systems presently being used in the United States meets the voting systems standards. In fact, we know in many situations that the code violates the standards and those are only the systems that have been tested or inspected by other labs or by Universities. States and counties are using untested voting systems that violate the voting systems standards. Let’s just recall all voting systems qualified by NASED and start over with good standards and labs that will do their jobs.

Today's notable voting news stories, related to the above and everything else, are all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

What is going on in Colorado? One has to wonder if the Colorado Secretary of State is truly looking out for the voters. On one hand Secretary Coffman sent a suspension letter to ES&S but on the other hand the Colorado Statesman points out that John Gardner is still employed in his old job, testing and certifying voting systems. Gardner’s lack of any experience with voting systems was one of the reasons that the court found that Colorado must test and recertify every system used in the state. Instead of being replaced by someone actually familiar with testing and certification of voting systems or other technical experience Gardner is still in his job.

As a check on Gardner the state has hired two consultants to look over his shoulder and review his work. The consultants are Paul Craft who has a degree in Restaurant and Hotel Management and who was, in part, responsible for the qualification of most of the failing voting systems used in the US at this time. He was on the NASED voting systems panel that rubber stamped the reports from the ITAs that were bought and paid for by the vendors. Also a consultant is Glenn Newkirk. Newkirk reviewed and approved many systems for different states. Included in his failures are the Advanced Voting Solutions voting machines that were recently found to have 1,946 anomalies in their source code. Neither consultant has met a vendors product he does not like. I ask again, “What is going on in Colorado?”

Links to that story, and the other notable voting news stories today, follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

ES&S voting machines have failed over and over again in Guilford Co North Carolina and, not to break the string, they failed again during early voting over the weekend. Of course the county claims there were no lost votes but they removed all five machines from one early voting site and replaced them. Why does this county continue to use machines that have failed them over and over again? If the county election director is not willing to take action why are the voters not outraged and taking action? It is time to recall all of the substandard voting systems being used across the country. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Colorado SoS has issued a letter to ES&S to inform them that state certification testing of their voting machines has been suspended due to a lack of concern and inaction taken by the vendor. In that letter the Secretary accused the vendor of “changing project managers multiple times since April, providing incorrect programming of required databases for testing, providing incorrect ballots for testing, failing to provide required documentation of Federal testing, and test failures requiring extensive machine servicing”. Meanwhile election officials in Mesa Co Colorado have decided that they will just ignore what is happening at the state level and they are going to buy more machines from ES&S for another $500,000. What are these people thinking? Where is the outrage from the citizens whose money is being wasted by these same election officials? Rather than buy more products from this company that is arrogant beyond belief they should be taking ES&S to court to get back the original $2.7M they spent....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The utter arrogance of ES&S has been revealed again with the revelation of a letter from the Colorado SOS to the company. It seems that ES&S is dragging its feet and obstructing the court-ordered recertification of their system used by two Colorado counties. One paragraph from that letter says it all about ES&S and its lack of any partnership with its customers:

Today’s quotation is from an Editorial in the Redding (CA) Record Searchlight: “In person or by post, though, it's more and more obvious that the smartest way to run elections is with dumb technology. Your ink might run dry, but nobody has ever hacked a pen.”

Those stories, and today's other notable voting news items, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

“There has been much complaining about the Iowa caucus this year: It is too early—it might even be in December of 2007. Iowa is not representative of the rest of the country in terms of demographics or policy concerns. It has a disproportionate influence on which candidates win the nomination. In a new issue brief from The Century Foundation, Tova Andrea Wang discusses caucuses: Because of their exclusionary nature, they go against some of the core values we express when we talk about voting rights, such as the fundamental nature of the right, equality of opportunity to participate in the process, and fair access to the ballot.”...