Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In yesterday’s DVN I said, “When the bill goes to the floor there will be a bipartisan 'unfunded mandate' amendment that will be allowed to be voted on and added to the bill if it passes.” I should have said that there will LIKELY be a bipartisan “unfunded mandate” amendment. The bill actually goes before the House Rules Committee at 3PM (EDT) tomorrow, so it will probably not go to the floor before Thursday. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

HR-811 is rumored to be going to the floor of the House for a vote on Wed. Sept. 5. They would not allow it to go for a vote unless they had the votes to pass it so, I imagine, it is now a done deal. However, suddenly we are being informed that those who were hoping for the benefits of the bill for 2008 are probably going to be disappointed. It seems that through the writing of the bill and three complete rewrites there is a funding problem. When the bill goes to the floor there will be a bipartisan “unfunded mandate” amendment that will be allowed to be voted on and added to the bill if it passes. This amendment will require action on the bill to be held up until funding can be appropriated; in other words 2010 or 2012 or never. So everything is status quo for 2008 (DREs, no vvpat, no audits) except no one can say if the non-funding portions of the bill would also be delayed. So the protection of the vendor’s software may happen upon signature by the President. The vendors are protected while the voters get no protections. And, Holt and his people knew about this for months. I’m told it was public information but if no one points you to the information the information is not public; it’s hidden in plain sight....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution, empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the particular States, would any man have hesitated to condemn it, both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a premeditated engine for the destruction of the State governments?" --- Federalist No. 59, 1788 In today’s world yes, the authors of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 would hesitate. Rush Holt would hesitate. Diane Feinstein would hesitate....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Colorado Secretary of State seems to be having a bit of problem with the big 4 vendors. The state has been ordered by the court to re-certify all voting systems used in the state. This order is a result of a lawsuit that proved that previous SoS Gigi Dennis had failed in her job to ensure voting systems were actually certified. Now Secretary Coffman is trying to follow the court order but the vendors seem to be standing in the way and making the pre-certification testing and inspection a process that is harder than necessary. Of course the vendors claim that they are doing all they can to assist the state. One has to wonder why Secretary Coffman would lie about the lack of support. Do the vendors want to drag the process out as long as possible so time runs short and the certification process has to be rushed? Are they all trying to hide something?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A Sequoia VP told Riverside Co., California, officials that the company may be willing to discuss a rebate or credit if state or federal regulators decertify their equipment. May be willing? The county, like every county that has purchased these machines, needs to demand its money (our tax money) back from the vendors. Sequoia sold its machines as being accessible. They aren’t accessible as proven by the California “Top-To-Bottom” review. The company sold its machines as meeting the voting systems standards. As proven by the source code review team, Sequoia uses banned software components. May be willing? If Sequoia misrepresented its system at any time to those who were spending our money, then Sequoia needs to give our money back or go to court and prove that it hasn’t misrepresented its product. And the other vendors need to do the same in other counties across the nation. Meanwhile, KY has discovered that machines used in their largest county were not state certified; more on the retirement of Conny McCormack; and the four major vendors are dragging their feet in providing information to Colorado that is necessary to allow the state to do court mandated inspections....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Kentucky Attorney General, Greg Stumbo, has announced that during his investigation of the state's voting system usage, as reported several weeks ago by The BRAD BLOG, a surprising result has been discovered.

Just prior to the AG's investigation, Diebold Elections Systems, Inc. (now re-named Premier Election Solutions), sent a letter to Jefferson County, KY, election officials to tell them that they had been using an uncertified voting system for the last three elections.

At the beginning of the investigation Stumbo had contacted the Secretary of State, Republican Trey Grayson, who is rumored, like Stumbo, to be a gubernatorial candidate. SoS Grayson assured him that only certified systems were being used in the state.

Grayson was wrong...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just after the “Dan Rather Report” ran for the first time Sequoia Voting Systems issued a press release and promised exculpatory evidence in the way of documents. These documents were promised to demonstrate proper paper thickness; to demonstrate the ballot card chad removal pressure was within the appropriate industry specifications; and to demonstrate proper overall specifications, signed by quality control. Over a week after the press release the documents were finally released. The documents did nothing that was promised. What was presented was numbers on paper with no comparison with the industry standards and no signatures. The only dates on the documents were pre-Florida primary, which brings into question whether the documents even represent documents for the general election run of ballot cards. Also of interest today is that Conny McCormack, Diebold’s spokeswoman and LA County Registrar of Voters, has decided to retire....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.org

Joining Karl Rove and Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales in announcing their retirements is Conny McCormack, the much embattled and always friendly to voting machine vendors Registrar of Voters for Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation.

In a statement on the LA County Registrar's website McCormack begins by saying:

Here's a picture from a Diebold brochure that features McCormack. Could our question that accompanies the picture, which we used in a recent article on McCormack's expressed concerns for Diebold's profits, be an omen of what is to happen in the future?

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Despite McCormack's exit statement to the contrary, as linked above, she has left Los Angeles County a mess. At this time, we have no idea what voting system will be used in next February's Presidential Primary Election, as she's sided with the vendors, rather than the voters, when it came to meeting the requirements for CA SoS Debra Bowen's "Top-to-Bottom Review" of voting systems.

Furthermore, while she joined the throng of California Registrars all too happy to rush to the media, to bitch about having just six months to implement Bowen's new security requirements with just six months before the next big primary, it's telling that she's willing to leave nation's largest county altogether just a month before that primary. What does that tell you about her (and the other Registrars') feigned concern about having enough time to make sure the voters are well served in the next election?

The question is not will she go to work for a voting company, the only question seems to be which one, and how soon.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org, with additional reporting by Brad Friedman

The latest set of documents released by Sequoia Voting Systems, in an attempt to clear its name after a recent damning news report, fail to answer any of the questions that the company had claimed that they would. Worse still, The BRAD BLOG has learned that the documents proffered by Sequoia may not even refer to the specific election about which new and alarming questions have been recently raised.

The day after damaging revelations about several touch-screen voting machine manufacturers was aired in a remarkable exposé on Dan Rather Reports, the Vice-President and lead spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, Michele Shafer, responded in a press release to the charges made, on camera, by seven company whistleblowers featured in the broadcast.

The charges included claims that the workers at Sequoia's paper punchcard ballot plant had been forced to use inferior paper stock for ballots that were created for the 2000 general election in Florida and, as well, they were instructed to misalign the chads for punchcards made specifically for Palm Beach County.

Nobody at Sequoia was willing to take credit for the use of the bad paper, even as the seven workers had, time and again, refused to accept delivery for the inferior stock which was ultimately used anyway. The company failed to provide documents to Rather's team, showing who it was who finally signed off on the delivery. And when pressed, Sequoia had given questionable "received" documents for the paper which didn't have anyone's signature, as the Sequoia Quality Control specialist interviewed said she would have expected.

Shafer responded in her statement by promising to deliver exculpatory documents to prove that Rather's report was all wrong. The documents finally produced late last week, do nothing of the kind...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As reported by Kim Zetter in her Wired Blog and yours truly on OpEdNews, ES&S has responded to the EAC’s rebuke for not disclosing that they were manufacturing voting machines in Manila, The Philippines. ES&S arrogantly acted like a spoiled child in their response to the EAC. In the end they provided a list that included factories in Manila, Taiwan, and China, but not before trying to blame the EAC for their corporate reporting failures. Have you ever noticed that these vendors take no ownership of any problems? Vote-flipping is always the voters' fault. Machine failure is always the poll workers' fault....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It has been a very slow weekend. Next week look for something about the “evidence” that Sequoia’s VP Michelle Shafer promised would prove the recent “Dan Rather Report” was wrong; it proves nothing at all. There will also be something about the childish actions of ES&S who seems to think they have an ability to act arrogant and not be called out for it....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just as newspapers used their headlines to lead their readers in how they wanted them to understand the California Field Poll mentioned in yesterday’s DVN, the voting industry’s trade group has attempted to do the same. The Election Technology Council reads the poll as saying 82% of the voters polled are confident in the vote counting process. In fact, only 44% have great confidence in the process. The ETC also ignores the rest of the poll which shows that 32% of the respondents have the most confidence in paper ballots while 31% have the most confidence in touch-screen voting and an equal number, 31%, have the most confidence in punch-card voting. So, while Michelle Shafer and David Beirne of the ETC seem to like to add findings together to make a point, we can show that 63% of the respondents like paper based voting systems and have little confidence in touch-screen voting....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today’s news brings us more from California. A poll was conducted by The Field Poll in the state with 402 registered voters responding. The questions asked were to gauge the voters’ confidence in different modes of voting, i.e., paper ballots, DRE, and punch card. The report showed a near equal percentage of voters had confidence in each of the three voting methods, with paper ballots leading by one percentage point. 44% of the voters polled had a great deal of confidence that their ballot was being accurately counted without regard to the system being used. What is interesting is reading the headlines from those sources reporting on this poll. The poll results are entitled, “Voter Confidence In Touch Screen Voting Systems No Different Than Its Confidence In Other Vote Methods.” The newspapers then put on headlines that reflect their opinions, from “Many skeptical on vote counting” to “Voters confident in counts” to “Electronic voting trusted, poll shows.“ There appears to be no truth in marketing there. [Note: A hat-tip to Frank D. Russo, who wrote about the same issue in today’s “California Progress Report”]...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

So now ES&S is in trouble, again, in California. They appear to have sold uncertified AutoMark voting systems to counties and those systems were used in recent elections. I think it is important to know that this is an ES&S issue and not an AutoMark issue. AutoMark is a separate company that happened, at the time, to have an exclusive sales agreement with ES&S. Hopefully AutoMark will distance themselves from ES&S....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Here we go again with more wrong-doing by a voting machine vendor. This time ES&S (no surprise there) got caught modifying AutoMark voting machines used in many California counties by voters with disabilities. California state election law does not allow any modification to any voting system without notification to the SOS and a determination that the modification does not affect the accuracy and efficiency of that system. It seems that ES&S made a modification to hundreds of AutoMark machines used in counties across the state and did it with no notification. The state has announced a public hearing for 20 September when specific relief will be discussed. That relief could be $10,000 per incident and/or decertification and/or banishment from the state for one to three years and/or other fines or restitution including refund of all tax-payer money spent to purchase those machines. It will be interesting to see how many local election officials suddenly come to ES&S’s defense. And the burning question is whether the modification was federally approved and how many other states have machines modified by ES&S in the dark of the night?...