Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"It is a matter of fundamental fairness, of good government, and of accountability that we get to the bottom of this election," said Rep. Rush Holt. "It is imperative that every election reflect the will of voters accurately. In the case of Florida-13, there is no way to know whether the result presented by the Florida Secretary of State is valid - in fact, there is significant evidence that it is not. 18,000 missing votes in a race certified on the basis of a 369 vote margin is an overwhelming indication that something went wrong." / Meanwhile the Judge who heard the Jennings evidentiary hearing has ruled against Democracy and for ES&S. Even though the state and ES&S have allowed computer scientists to look at the source code (presently an ongoing process) the judge refused to allow Jennings' experts the same courtesy. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The past two days news has been about change and lack of change. Kentucky is talking about change and entry into the voter verified world of elections. Meanwhile New York counties are talking about a lack of change. They have voting machines that have been working well for them and they don't want to get rid of those old lever machines. Can anyone blame them? And, at least one county in Pennsylvania is selling their old lever machines to a salvager....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Tis the season that not much is being discussed in the news about voting machines. Daily Voting News will probably go to being sent out every other day or so until next week. In the mean time VotersUnite hopes that you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families and friends and we hope for the best for all of you in the new year....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

VotersUnite would like to extend our best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Prosperous and DRE-less New Year. Depending on the amount of Voting News tomorrow and Monday this may be the final DVN until after Christmas. / The revolving door is getting a work-out in Georgia. Going out on one side is Deputy SoS Kathy Rogers who was directly in charge of the state's voting systems amongst other duties. She also held a position on the Election Assistance Commission Standards Board. She is now an employee of Diebold. A fact that should call into question all decisions and statements made by Ms. Rogers over the last year or more. Coming in on the other side of the door is Rob Timms who is taking Ms. Rogers' job. Timms, until now, has been a political 'hack' working for various Republican office holders in the state of Georgia and most recently has been working for the lobby firm that has Diebold as its number one client in Georgia. Timms has no elections experience and has a BA in Government....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The huge news for today is the announcement that Smartmatic has decided to sell Sequoia Voting Systems. They claim it is because of the 'public debate' over foreign ownership of a company that is involved in our elections. I suspect that Smartmatic didn't like the idea that the Feds were looking into the sale and reports of bribery in Venezuela. There is certainly something suspicious about ownership of Sequoia. Smartmatic bought the company in 2005 for $16M from DeLaRue, a British company. That's $16M for a company that had well over $200M in sales in the past couple years. Either DeLaRue has terrible business acumen, which they don't, or there was something fishy about the deal right from the start. / In "E-voting Upgrades America’s Ballot Box" the author, a fellow at the biased, agenda-driven Pacific Research Institute, uses no facts in his article in favor of paperless voting. The problem is that some; not many but some; will read his drivel and actually believe what he says. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The power of the headline is amazing. What may be a fair and balanced article can be changed to be partisan and biased with the turn of the word in the headline. This is especially apparent when it is an Associated Press article that has been run across the country under the banner, "Congress asked to intervene in Fla. Race". That is until the biased North County Times, based in northern San Diego and Riverside Counties, gets the story. They deftly change the recommended headline to reflect their bias to, "State-declared loser in race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris asks Congress to investigate" and the same story reads differently. / A hand recount of over 264,000 ballots took 10 days in Vermont and overturned the original results in the race for state auditor. They had paper ballots to recount and not vapor-ware from the machines. / A state Representative in Pennsylvania is planning on asking Congress to allow the state to get rid of their electronic voting machines so they can return to lever-machines. He says, rightly, that electronic voting machines have been too problematic....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today's news is dominated with reports from Sarasota County and the first day of court hearings to determine the path of action that will be followed in the disputed Buchanan-Jennings congressional race. Yesterday experts for Jennings and the voters testified about why the machines are at fault. The hope is that the judge will allow an expert to spend a couple weeks reviewing the ES&S source code. Of course ES&S is doing all it can to stop anyone from taking a peak under the hood. Today ES&S's only expert, a political science professor, testified under cross examination that in his opinion if there had been no problems Jennings would have won. ES&S fielded NO computer scientist to testify that there were no problems with the software but that is not unexpected as they wouldn't really want to expose anyone to the possibility of cross examination where they would probably take a beating. Court is done. Both sides have until noon on Friday to submit their closing statements in writing and then it's up to the judge whether the experts get to look at the source-code....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

All US citizens who have not been otherwise disqualified, have the right to vote for President? Not if you live in the US Virgin Islands. They are citizens but residents have no right to vote for President. / "If you needed any more evidence to counter the argument that it would be "too expensive" to dump all the shitty, unreliable, inaccurate, hackable, disenfranchising touch-screen (DRE) voting systems in favor of paper ballots, just take a look at Utah. They're the state which pushed out heroic 23-year Emery County Election Clerk Bruce Funk because he had the temerity to allow independent computer security experts to test the Diebold touch-screen systems the state was forcing him to use. (The experts found massive security flaws described as "the most serious" ever discovered)."...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

If there was ever any reluctance to point a finger at Sequoia Voting for the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in Denver Colorado last month then the time to admit the failure is now. A recently released by city-officials 32-page report found enough blame for county and state officials but pointed the finger squarely at Sequoia. The report blasted Sequoia for “decidedly subprofessional architecture and construction” work on the ePollBook software. “The ePollBook is a poorly designed and fundamentally flawed application that demonstrates little familiarity with basic tenets of Web development,” consultants Fred Hessler and Matt Smith wrote. Is there any reason at all to believe that their voting machine software is any better?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Many in the Election Integrity community have been telling anyone who would listen that the new voting technology is expensive. Utah didn't listen but now they are learning. The cost of this year's election on Diebold DREs is twice what it was in previous elections using punch-cards. AND the taxpayer gets to continue paying millions of dollars to Diebold for the privilege of using their machines. The costs are so high that many Utah jurisdictions will revert to hand-counted paper ballots in local elections....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

NOTE: Our apologies for the lack of a DVN yesterday. We were one of the million, or so, households in the Pac.Nor.West who lost power during the big Thursday night storm. QUOTE: “The e-voting machines are a threat to democracy. Putting a VVPAT on them is nothing more than a band-aid. It’s like requiring a seat belt in a Ford Pinto. What good does it do when the Pinto explodes?” Brad Friedman...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"Almost any system, including paperless touch-screen voting systems, can be jury-rigged to attach a printer and generate a hard copy of each voter's choices. That is a far more complicated, and potentially troublesome, process than one which generates a real, live, legally valid paper ballot; it does nothing, for example, to mitigate the security risks that so many researchers have exposed in a number of e-voting systems. In addition, I suspect that no matter what type of voting system is involved, paper ballots are likely to carry far more legal weight in a court challenge --- thus allowing a judge to rule on the matter as quickly and confidently as possible and to keep the process moving along."...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Poor software design, serious IT management inefficiencies and an untested deployment of a critical application were all major factors in last month's Election Day problems in Denver, according to a scathing report from an IT consultant. The problems led to hours-long delays for voters looking to cast ballots and raised questions about the overall efficacy of e-voting. / The challenge is on in Riverside California and it appears that the county supervisors are back-peddling a bit and distancing themselves from the man who made the challenge, Jeff Stone who may be out $1M if he accepts the challenge and the hack is accomplished....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"At least two commissioners and [Broward County] Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes question the reliability and credibility of touch-screen machines without a physical record of each vote. They want county staff to explore the cost of several alternatives, among them buying printers for the controversial system or switching to paper ballots that can be read by scanners." It appears that some are beginning to realize they were wrong in their support of paperless voting all along. / Harri Hursti --- The Lead Programmer Who Hacked Diebold Systems in Both Florida and Utah --- Looking Forward to Testing the Security Vulnerability of Riverside County's Systems! Election Integrity Individuals, Group, Stake $1000 for Charity on Supervisor Jeff Stone's Offer!...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The EAC was established by HAVA to oversee the implementation of HAVA. Their oversight has been minimal and irresponsible. Instead of providing the informed leadership and guidance the states needed as they purchased and deployed new voting systems, the Commissioners have deferred to the wishes of vendors, propagated preconceived notions of election officials, and acceded to popularly-disseminated misinformation. They have failed to accomplish the goals in their mission statement. It would be very unwise to assign them any new important duties until they begin to fulfill those already assigned to them. ...