Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A large majority of today's news comes from Sarasota Co., Florida where the voters won a referendum vote to require the county to provide a voting system that has paper and is verifiable. Unfortunately the voters spoke at the same time the machines decided not to count over 18,000 votes in a congressional race. / Polls were kept open late in Kane Co, Illinois, by court order, but now the state Supreme's are deciding if that judge overstepped in his court order. Many voters may now be disenfranchised. / Undervote rate for Florida attorney general in Sumter county was 22%; Lee was 18%; Charlotte was 21%. / In Benton Co. Arkansas a problem was found with the vote totals. They re-ran the ballots and the final results of 8 races changed. Another great election for ES&S...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It took over 24 hours for Cook Co. Illinois to count their votes. That's with their brand-new Smartmatic clone Sequoia voting machines. County Clerk David Orr conceded that the hardware and software being used should be re-examined. / One of the striking problems that has come up around the country is the reason for long lines in many places. They just didn't buy enough machines for the turnout they had. Another boon for the vendors when all they really needed to do was buy one PBOS for each precinct and there would have been no need to go out and buy more DRE machines. And the cause of the long lines in Denver; poorly written, poorly tested voter registration software from Sequoia. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

'Hey! Let's take all of our polling sites and consolidate them into a few large, super poll sites. Then we have thousands of voters vote in the same location on the same machines. We will save all kinds of money.' That's Denver Colorado and everything worked great until the machines began to fail and the process to get voters in and out slowed to a crawl. Result: Lines 4 blocks long. Day After Result: "Denver Auditor Dennis Gallagher today asked that Denver's two elected voting commissioners resign and that the mayor fire Clerk and Recorder Wayne Vaden as well as the entire senior staff of the election commission." / Over 18,000 under votes were recorded in the FL-13 CD. In a race that has less than 500 votes difference. Unfortunately most of the votes were cast on paperless ES&S voting machines. The software needs to be removed from the machines and closely inspected by experts. This race will not be decided for awhile....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

David Tom, elections manager, county of San Mateo: "I feel very secure in the machines and how they work. We do a lot of testing on these machines and we're absolutely 100 percent sure these machines will work the way they do." Huh?? / “We can expect that things will go smoother this November,” said Michelle Shafer, spokeswoman for Sequoia. In other words, more problems will be blamed on 'human error' than in previous elections. / Tonights DVN is more heavily weighted toward reports of problems and less to the editorials and opinions. Some of the news services and local media outlets are talking about the 'minor glitches' and ignoring the major failures across the country. Today's election proved Ms. Shafer wrong but the blame will go on the 'human error' just the same....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

If you have a problem voting, call The Election Integrity Response System at 1-866-OUR-VOTE / 'The state of Florida was on high alert today as an electronic voting machine that was being tested in advance of Tuesday’s midterm election went berserk and killed nine in a terrifying rampage.' (Satire) / 'There are reports from at least seven states of voters being harassed by multiple phone calls with recorded messages - "robocalls" - that appear to be a devious manipulation of voter's pre-election advertisement overload.' / Well, it all starts/ends tomorrow. Let's hope things go smoothly in all 50 states and that every losing candidate is satisfied with the results of the election. I'm a dreamer but what the hell…...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The full, un-redacted SAIC report has finally been released today. / Today marks the 58th anniversary of the "Polk County Massacre" in Tennessee. / The news for the past week, today and surely tomorrow has been rife with 'feel-good' articles about how prepared counties are and how well the voters like their voting machines. If the primaries and early voting are a gauge, then we are looking at many of these counties, especially those in states with no early voting, to have problems. / Bibb, Camden and Cobb Co.s Georgia will all use machines with a vvpat for the first time this year. Let's hope the state is serious about this test and that the printers are properly serviced and not allowed to fail just so the state and Diebold can claim it is a mistake. / Anderson Co South Carolina has sleepovers this weekend. ...

Blogged by John Gideon

UPDATE: See the update at the end of this article describing the injunction now received from a New Mexico judge enjoining the Republican party in the state from making phone calls to non-Republican voters in the wake of what appears to be wide-spread dirty tricks in the state, aimed at Hispanic voters by the GOP.

The following email has been sent to various listservs by the party who received these phone calls. It is only one complaint from one party but it is probably indicative of phone calls made to hundreds of voters in the state of New Mexico. Everyone needs to be wary of any phone calls alerting them to last minute changes of polling places. Call your county to find out if there are any changes and then call 1-866-OUR-VOTE and report the incident:

Follow-up: The aggrieved party contacted DNC attorneys who got an injunction against the state Republican party to stop them from giving polling location information to non-Republican voters. There is thought that voters with Hispanic surnames were targeted.

The judge who issued the injunction via cell-phone while she was at a basketball game, has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow. The Dems need to have more voters who will step forward and join in the lawsuit.

NOTE: We will follow-up with contact information for the attorneys just as soon as we can get it.

UPDATE BY John Gideon 5:25PM: Any aggrieved New Mexico voter is encouraged to contact attorney John Boyd at 505-842-9960.

UPDATE BY John Gideon 8:45AM: We have just been contacted about the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that we reported was issued last evening. In fact that TRO was withdrawn by the judge after the Republican Party of New Mexico called and claimed that the phone calls were just "innocent mistakes". There is no injunction or any other decision at this time. It is being reported that a judge will hold a hearing at 10:30 local time this morning. It is also being reported that the "innocent mistake" was also made with at least six people who have stepped forward.

In an article on this issue from the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Associated Press the following is reported:

What Ms. Kramer fails to explain is who made the two phone calls from the GOP offices that followed the incident she reports. An "innocent mistake" once, but three times it is no longer "innocent" or a "mistake".

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The good folks in Luzerne Co. Pennsylvania are starting to wake-up and realize they may be spending a bit more of their tax money than they expected. Their contract with ES&S does not cover maintenance fees for next year. The tax payers will be expected to pony-up over $250,000 just for next year. Previously, the tax payers paid NOTHING for their lever machine maintenance. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The complete, unredacted SAIC Report is finally in the process of being released by someone on the inside. There will now be a mad crush of people who will want to read the report. Diebold's worse nightmare. / Here's a five-step plan guaranteed to make an obscure company [Diebold] absolutely notorious. First get into a business you don't understand, selling to customers who barely understand it either. Then roll out your product without adequate testing. Don't hire enough skilled people. When people notice problems, deny, obfuscate and ignore. Finally, blame your critics when it all blows up in your face....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

'Lawyers for the state and groups that opposed Ohio's voter identification rules claimed victory Wednesday in a settlement that suspends the law for absentee voters and clarifies and expands it for voting in person.' / Hart Intercivic has been under the radar lately. VoteTrustUSA has an article that lets you see who is behind the company. / Cuyahoga Co Ohio is back in the news again. Seems they decided that they would make free use of workers lap-tops to make memory card reading a bit easier. No telling what viruses may have been passed around. / There seems to be a yellow button on the back of Sequoia DREs that is suddenly getting a lot of attention because it can be used to gain access to the machine and could be used to vote more than one time....

Quickly Blogged by John Gideon

In a 17-page report published by the Columbus Free Press and written by Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman, and Robert Fitrakis it is revealed that:

Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

A Press Release, which is copied in full on the other side of the fold, was just received from Steven Hertzberg, the Project Director of Election Science Institute that exposes the fact that in September election workers in Cuyahoga County, Ohio put every Diebold memory card into laptop computers in order to archive election information. These laptops were found laying around the office and, in some cases, were even brought from home. There is no way to know how many viruses may have now been transferred from these laptops to the memory cards. Luckily this incident was caught on video tape.

This failure on the part of county election officials is exactly the type of failure that Diebold has claimed over and over again cannot happen. In the new release, Prof. Edward Felton of Princeton University and the recent Diebold TS hack, says:

The press release from Princeton and the Election Science Institute is posted in full below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

This segment of "Democracy at Risk" was a head nod to the activists and it's about damn time too. As Kitty points out, voting activists have had to step up and try to ensure the voters' votes are counted correctly because elections officials have failed, in large part.

The text-transcript of Wednesday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Remember – 1-866-Our-Vote / In an attempt to stop HBO from airing the documentary 'Hacking Democracy' which starts tomorrow evening and runs for the whole month at various times, Diebold has made threats and pointed out mistakes that they feel are in the documentary. What is funny is that the errors Diebold claims are in the documentary are not even in this film. / On Guam, Bill 355 passed the territories legislature, if now signed into law by Governor Felix Camacho, would suspend the use of electronic voting machines in local elections until their use can be demonstrated to be as accurate and effective as traditional paper ballots. / Today we feature links to a well done series of informational articles in 'Computerworld'....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

Tuesday's segment of "Democracy at Risk" was about the increasing incidence of problems in Florida during early voting. After discussing the problems encountered by some voters, Gov. Bush was quoted and showed that he is no smarter than his brother:

Bush needs to open his eyes and look at what is happening around him. Of course, he might find out there are problems and that would mean doing something to fix them, which would mean making decisions, which would mean....Oh never mind! As Lou said in closing the segment: "Idiotic. Idiotic. Unbelievable. It's just --- it's incredible."

And in the "Hacking Democracy" segment we learn that although Diebold is protesting the fact that HBO is going to air the documentary all month beginning on Nov. 2, Diebold is protesting a different documentary than the one HBO is airing.

It is no wonder that no one from Diebold has agreed to appear on Lou Dobbs. They might have to get the facts right.

The text-transcript of Tuesday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...