Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

According to a BradBlog article [see below] by Michael Richardson, “CIBER, Inc., the nation’s largest so-called “independent test authority” (ITA) of electronic voting machines is at the center of a growing scandal about lax testing of voting equipment. The recent release of a long-kept secret assessment of the company by the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) detailing a shocking record of sloppy, incomplete or non-existent testing by CIBER led the test lab’s CEO, Mac Slingerlend, to call the report “old news” in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News. While CIBER’s shortcomings may be “old news” to Slingerlend, unaware election officials around the nation are angered at not being informed by the EAC prior to the November 2006 elections when voting machine models “tested” by CIBER were used by 68.5% of the registered voters in the country.” // The big story continues to be the total change of opinion in Florida where the Republican Governor has joined with a vocal Democratic Congressman (Wexler) to recommend the state change to optical-scan voting by 2008. They are now being joined by the Speaker of the State House of Representatives and some DRE county election officials. // “The price of freedom is not cheap. The importance of a democratic system of voting that we can trust, that we can have confidence is, is incredibly important.” Florida Gov. Charley Crist....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

The news today was overwhelmed by the announcement that Florida’s Governor has said he will recommend replacing all of the state’s Direct Recording Electronic voting machines with optical-scan machines. According to the Miami Herald [see below] Gov. Charlie Crist will recommend on Thursday that Florida's problem-plagued touchscreen voting machines should go the way of the butterfly ballot --- the trash heap --- and his proposed budget will recommend replacing them all with optical scan machines, which produce a paper trail, at a cost of up to $35 million....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today the Atlanta Journal Constitution [see below] reported, “Some key components of one of Georgia's most sacred institutions — that had been discovered in discarded office furniture — were recently auctioned on eBay. About 40 voter access cards and three electronic ballot encoders belonging to DeKalb County were purchased earlier this month on the auction Web site, according to Secretary of State Karen Handel. Another seven supervisor's cards, used to activate the encoders, also were up for bid.” // The revolving door is in effect in Williamson Co. Texas where an ex-Hart Intercivic and Sequoia employee has just been named to be their county elections chief. // According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel [see below] the new Florida Gov. Crist will recommend that DRE voting systems be replaced by optical-scan voting systems throughout the state....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Michael Richardson, in an article posted to The BRAD BLOG, writes, “Hours after reports last week on threatened subpoenas against the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and its banned voting machine test laboratory, CIBER, Inc., by the New York State Board of Elections, the company supplied information concerning its lack of accreditation to New York officials. Enraged NY State Election Commissioner Doug Kellner called the secret reports “soiled laundry” that both the company and EAC had been trying to hide. Friday, the EAC reacted to the disclosure by CIBER of confidential EAC documents by releasing the assessment reports upon which last summer’s decision for non-accreditation of CIBER was based. The documents, kept secret by the EAC for half a year, reveal a shocking level of incompetence and negligence by the “independent testing authority” (ITA) lab which tested electronic voting machines used by 68.5% of the registered voters in the November 2006 election.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Election Assistance Commission and Commissioner Paul DeGregorio make every attempt to convince the voter that 98% of them had confidence in the last election, even pointing to a fictitious exit poll as evidence. The Fort Worth Star Telegram [see below] correctly reports, “After a year in which voters across the state expressed a lack of confidence in election returns, several lawmakers are pushing measures including a backup system for electronic voting machines, last-minute registration and required proof of citizenship.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to an article in the Albany [NY] Times Union, Ciber has decided to give to the NY State Board of Elections, under the threat of subpoena, paperwork that shows why they were denied interim accreditation by the EAC. Even as the EAC obfuscates and stonewalls all efforts to get this paperwork, Ciber turned it over to officials yesterday. According to the article the paperwork shows that Ciber was understaffed and failed to correctly document its testing. What is the EAC hiding? Is it that both Executive Director Wilkey and Commissioner Davidson served together on the same National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) board that had previously certified Ciber’s work? A board that had an “ex-officio” member, Shawn Southworth, who is the only Ciber staff? // Then today the EAC, having been shown-up by Ciber, posted all of their documents on their website. The documents include a letter from the EAC to Ciber, dated today, that clearly chides Ciber for providing the documents to New York. The documents can all be found here...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to “End The Veil Of Secrecy” “At the New York State Board of Elections meeting on January 23, 2007 Commissioners Kellner and Aquila came out strongly for issuing a subpoena to the EAC and Ciber to force them to give up any information and paper work they have related to Ciber's failure to be accredited. This has resulted from Ciber and the EAC's refusal thus far to offer any information to the State of New York about the problems reported by the New York Times. As I've reported earlier, the State Board had told Ciber earlier this month to officially halt New York's certification testing until the situation is clarified.” // CNetNews.com confirms yesterday’s revelation about the Diebold key, “In a telephone interview, Diebold spokesman Mark Radke said the photograph had been removed because of the blogosphere buzz. He acknowledged that a single key can unlock every voting machine within a particular Diebold model but defended the decision.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The collusion on the part of some national elections officials is beginning to come to light due to the hard work of some researchers like Michael Richardson who reports [see below] “Election Assistance Commission Executive Director Thomas Wilkey moved to the EAC after serving on the National Association of State Election Directors Voting System Board, which he chaired. Wilkey's current boss at the EAC is Donetta Davidson, Chair of the federal commission. Davidson is a former president of NASED and served with Wilkey on the Voting System Board, which was tasked with certifying "independent testing authorities" to perform tests on electronic voting machines used throughout America.” Richardson also mentions that an “ex officio” member of that board was Shawn Southworth, the voting systems tester for Ciber labs. // According to an article in TheHill [see below] “A new academic study of voting in Florida’s 13th district congressional race refutes the prevailing opinion of experts that the large undervote in the race in November was likely due to poor ballot design. The new study points to an error message that the experts say correlates with the undervotes, as well as to voting patterns that show unusually high undervote rates for Democratic voters. The study’s authors say more information, specifically the secret software used by the voting machines, is required to draw any real conclusions.” // Today was also a big news day. Two election workers in Ohio were found guilty of misdeeds during the 2004 presidential recount and Virginia has taken one step closer to ridding themselves of DRE voting machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

According to a Michael Richardson article posted at OpEdNews [see below]; “Although the public was not informed by the Election Assistance Commission about its decision to not issue interim accreditation to Ciber, Inc., one of the nation's three previously certified test laboratories for electronic voting machines, the company executives were very aware they had lost a hold on the lucrative testing business. While unknowing election officials around America continued to incorrectly claim their voting machines were properly tested and certified in the months leading up to the November 2006 elections several Ciber honchos quietly began a stock sell-off. // And according to a newspaper in St. Louis [see below], an Illinois state representative has filed a bill that calls for the state of Illinois to study the idea of using Internet voting as early as 2010....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

The Election Assistance Commission has some explaining to do. The secrecy that pervades the EAC, which oversees testing and certification of voting systems, holds dire consequences for our electoral system. Both chambers of Congress need to work to dispel this culture of secrecy. / In the past year, concerns about the accuracy and integrity of computerized elections have entered the general consciousness and become accepted as serious. Issues that [were] addressed in the March 1, 2006, edition of the Spectator have since been written about in the national media, and the momentum has grown for legislative solutions to be found at the federal level. A new Congress is getting under way, and decisions will be made that will profoundly affect the way Americans cast and count their votes. While computerized voting has been touted as a way to make elections easier and the results more reliable, an increasing number of voters, poll workers, and election officials have concluded that the process in 2006 was more difficult—not easier—and confidence in the tallies has been undermined. Many activists and legislators now question both the wisdom of relying on software to record votes, and the degree to which our elections depend on computerized voting systems and the manufacturers that sell them. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an Op-Ed in the Miami Herald today, the President of Sequoia and President and CEO of its parent company, Smartmatic, said, in defending the Sequoia ownership, "Most important, the idea that foreigners could somehow influence the U.S. voting process is untrue and ignores the numerous safeguards and stringent regulations in place to ensure fair and accurate elections. Sequoia Voting Systems' election equipment and software have been tested and qualified by federal Independent Testing Authorities and certified by individual states." The Independent Testing Authorities (ITAs) mentioned are companies like Ciber. Is this supposed to give us some confidence? Are they kidding?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"In the Cuyahoga case, the poll workers are charged with circumventing state recount laws that require a random sampling of at least three percent of the votes cast in a given precinct, to be recounted by hand and by machine. The prosecution charges that the workers instead hand picked sample precincts to recount that they knew did not have questionable results. Once they were able to match those recounts with official results, they could then do the rest of the recount by machine, in effect rendering the entire process meaningless. "This was a very hush operation," said prosecutor Baxter. Similar allegations have been made in other counties. Indeed, such illegal non-random recounting procedures appear to have been common throughout the state, carried out by board of election employees with the tacit consent of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell", according to an article in "The Free Press"...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Duval Co. Florida finance committee approved funding for printers for the counties DREs (Diebold TSx). The first question that came to mind when I read this is, "How can Duval buy printers for their machines when the state has said they are not allowed and they are not state certified? Then I got deeper into the article. "Verifiable Paper Audit Trail"? Where is the 'voter'? Then it is all explained: “The voter will not see it and they cannot take it,” said Phillips. “The paper trail will be rolled up in the machine.” The voter will not see the printed ballot. In other words the county has approved funding to install a printer on the machines and that printer is already on those machines. Perhaps that's why in the cost breakdown no where do they mention the cost of the printers only repairs, maintenance, etc. In other words, this is all more misleading information and obfuscation on the part of an election official who only wants to promote confidence at the expense of the facts. / Three Cuyahoga Co. Ohio election workers went on trial today for 6 counts each of misconduct for rigging the 2004 state mandated recount in their county. The workers pre-counted and sorted ballots in order to find precincts where the recount would find no problems....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Mahoning Co. Ohio sits on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. Like most of that area of the country they are struggling with funds to keep their infrastructure operating. In fact the county is discussing laying off employees. They have ES&S iVotronic DRE voting machines that use batteries that need to be replaced after 5 years. They have had the machines for 5 years so they went to ES&S for new rechargeable batteries and the chargers. ES&S wants $197,500 for the equipment. The county then found a company in California that would provide them with the batteries and chargers for only $50,877. ES&S and their ilk are raping this country in their efforts to squeeze every possible dollar out of the taxpayers....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

According to "Roll Call", "After rewriting rules for lobbyists, increasing the federal minimum wage and moving on other election-year promises, senior Democratic Members in both chambers said Friday that within weeks they will begin scrutinizing electronic voting equipment and, for now, shelve other election-related proposals such as overhauls of 527s and electronic financial disclosure in the Senate. "The first thing is going to be elections," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, told a group of reporters Friday. "We're going into 2008 with [an electronic voting system] that is problematic." ...