Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ohio’s Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has announced a plan to hire a firm to determine whether her state’s voting machines work, are secure, and can function under heavy volume. This is pretty much the same thing being done in California. Why don’t the two states join forces and save the taxpayer some money by sharing the costs?

Also, in a decision that I’m sure pleased Sen. Diane Feinstein and other protectors of corporate secrets over voters, an appellate court in Florida found that Christine Jennings has no right to examine programming source code that ran the machines that undervoted in her race last Nov.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In his WebLog New Yorkers for Verified Voting’s Bo Lipari relates:

These are the same lobbyists who left a closed door meeting with Senator Feinstein with a satisfied smile on their faces just before her corporate protecting election legislation, S-1487, was completed and filed.

That, and other voting news stories from today all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Juneau Empire reports:

Sounds like the same “glib lobbyists” who have had an effect on federal voting legislation in the House and especially in the Senate.

That story, and links to many more of today's notable voting news items, listed below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Concerned about overseas and military voters? According to the Military Times:

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to an article on BRAD BLOG a recent study by a doctoral candidate at Rice University found that approximately two-thirds of voters failed to notice malicious changes made to their DRE review screens during mock election testing. Approximately two-thirds of another group of voters failed to notice vote swapping that took place on their review screen. If two-thirds of voters do not review the review screen when voting on a DRE what makes anyone believe that voters will verify a voter verified paper audit trail printed by a printer on the side of their machine?

Also the EAC announced [PDF] today that they have terminated the interim accreditation of CIBER Labs due to a lack of required notification of key personnel changes. Wyle notified the EAC that Shawn Southworth left CIBER and went to work for them. CIBER apparently forgot to make that notification.

Links to those stories, and the other notable voting news items today, all listed below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A new study supports the contentions of Election Integrity advocates who oppose Rush Holt's election reform bill on the basis that it allows for the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting systems. Supporters of the bill claim that the bills mandate to require so-called "Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail" (VVPAT) printers on such DRE systems mitigate the concerns about the machines notorious inaccuracy and proven tamperability. The new study strongly indicates otherwise.

In her recently released doctoral thesis, “The Usability of Electronic Voting Machines and How Votes Can Be Changed Without Detection” [PDF], Rice University researcher and Doctoral candidate Sarah P. Everett reveals that review screens, presented to voters at the end of the voting process on DRE voting machines, fail to be effective.

Of 66 participants from the general Houston population, with a median age of 45 and an even distribution of educational levels only 32% of the voters noticed that malicious changes had been made to their review screens during mock election testing.

A further test was accomplished with 101 participants, with an even gender split (51 males, 50 females), a median age of 40, with most having either some college education or holding a degree. Of those, only 37% of the participants noticed that vote flipping had occurred on their review screens during mock election testing.

Also shocking is that of those 101 participants 6% walked away from the voting machine without pushing the button to cast their ballot. Instead, they just left the voting process at the final review screen. Thus, had this been a real election, a full 6% of the voters would not have had their ballots counted at all.

So when only about one-third of the voters actually review their ballot on the ballot review screen and notice problems why would anyone think that adding a "Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail" printer to a DRE will solve any problem? Rather than adding useless and expensive printers; why not just get rid of these machines all together?

In fact, Ms. Everett states, when it comes the use of DRE voting systems [emphasis added]...

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today’s news finds a scathing review of the Senate’s answer to the Holt Bill, HR-811. Senator Feinstein’s S-1487 was supposed to be the repository for fixes to the Holt bill; or that’s what the Election Integrity community was being told all along. However, S-1487 is a terrible response to problems the voters have been facing. Also in the news, Sarasota Co. has formally announced their plans to scrap their ES&S iVotronic DREs in favor of Diebold optical-scan machines and AutoMark ballot marking devices.

Links to those voting news stories, and many more today, all below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

There has been a lot of banter back and forth between members of the Election Integrity community who are on both sides of whether presently filed legislation should be passed or dumped. Today’s news finds four articles on HR-811 that discuss the issue in depth. We encourage everyone to read the four articles so they know what are the arguments. Today’s articles are from Ellen Theisen and Pam Smith, both members of the EI community; Michael Collins, of the media; and Mark Ritchie, the Secretary of State of Minnesota. Tomorrow Ellen Theisen will follow her article on HR-811 with another article on its Senate companion bill, S-1487, which is much worse and will be hard for any civil rights organization to support.

Links to those stories, and the other notable voting news today, all below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Did you know that the Iraq Spending Bill passed by Congress last week also guaranteed that states that had not yet complied with HAVA would not lose their funding? Well it did that. A hidden provision in the bill extended the HAVA deadline for purchase of new voting systems out two years. Who benefited from this extension? New York state and at least one Pennsylvania County; Bucks....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reported today:

Links to that story, and the other notable voting news items today, are all below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Connecticut House has voted 150-1 to follow the unanimous “yes” vote of the Senate to require audits in 10 percent of randomly selected polling districts during state elections starting in 2008. Only 13 states require audits of election results, and most stipulate far less than 10 percent of polling places. Our congratulations go to the voters in the state of Connecticut.

The Sarasota County, Florida Commissioners decided that not only will they follow the mandate from the voters to dump their ES&S iVotronic DREs but also to dump ES&S. One commissioner said, “I’ve lost faith in ES&S entirely”. The county will now turn to Diebold to provide their optical-scan voting system.

Links to those stories, and many other such notable voting news items from today, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We know that money is tight and that elections integrity is not one of the fashionable issues to support with what money you can afford to give to an issue. However, VotersUnite.org may not make it to another election if we don’t get some help. If you use our resources please help us to maintain our website and to continue providing those resources for you. Please help us out by going HERE. Thank you all again.

Today's notable voting news stories, as always, are all linked below...

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And of course, links to today's notable voting news stories all follow below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In a combined statement Common Cause, VerifiedVoting.Org and VoteTrustUSA have said the following to Senator Diane Feinstein regarding her election reform legislation:

This statement is in regard to the lack of any solution in the Feinstein bill to address the widespread problem of paperless voting before the 2008 Presidential election.

That story, and other notable voting news today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

When people try to make elections issues into a partisan issue we always tell them it’s not partisan; it’s about democracy. Actually it is very hard not to be partisan because we all are one way or another. It’s also not easy to be non-issue oriented. Some have said that because we feel a particular way about certain legislation that “Daily Voting News” will be used as our ‘bully-pulpit’ to spread the word only about our view point while stifling the other side.

Well, we are not Fox News Network. There’s a disclaimer at the bottom of every DVN that says that our view may not always match the views given in the articles we link to. That’s because we post articles from all over and we don’t take sides when we post. In fact, about the only things that I have consciously left out of DVN are articles that attack people or organizations that are in the Election Integrity community. If there are few articles posted that meet your particular view point it’s because none were written or I could not find them in my normal search places. Write an article/blog and get it posted somewhere and let me know. I’ll post it....