Advanced Voting Solutions sold Northampton Co Pennsylvania faulty voting machines. The county took the vendor to court and won a default decision. Later this month the court will decide how much the county will be awarded in the law suit. The problem is that owner Howard Van Pelt and AVS have disappeared. They very quietly went out of business and stuck the county, and others, with a warehouse full of garbage. How much longer are the other voting machines vendors going to be able to stay in business? New Jersey is now rethinking their move to install vvpat printers on the state’s DREs because of the economy. That has to be a blow to Sequoia especially when you consider that the company went into debt in order for the officers to keep the company from being purchased by Hart Intercivic....

Now that the recent general election is completed some counties are now in the process of determining how much that election cost the taxpayers. One Colorado county reports a cost of $36.57 per vote cast. That is an amazing amount especially when much of that cost can be directly attributed to the type of voting system a county is using and the amount of “assistance” the county buys from the vendors....

From this evenings “Featured” article: “The recount of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race gives us an opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of precinct-count optical-scan voting. Though there have been contentious disputes over which absentee ballot envelopes to open, the core technology for scanning ballots has proved to be extremely accurate.”...

This will be the last plea for help for awhile. We don’t like doing it and I’m sure you don’t like getting the requests. We know times are tough and probably not going to get much better for awhile. A small donation of even $15 will help. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here: ...

We will try this one more time because I have nothing else to put into this space this evening. We do need help. VotersUnite.Org is proud to continue offering “Daily Voting News” as one of our services. Though we don’t charge for the service we do, on occasion, reserve the right to ask for a donation. This is one of those very few times. Please assist us in continuing all of our work. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here: ...

VotersUnite.Org is proud to continue offering “Daily Voting News” as one of our services. Though we don’t charge for the service we do, on occasion, reserve the right to ask for a donation. This is one of those very few times. Please assist us in continuing all of our work. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here: ...

Recently we have spent a bit of time discussing the cost over-runs found during an audit of Hillsborough Co Florida’s election office. Now the county has revealed that they just discovered 440 uncounted ballots that were found in their warehouse. These ballots came from two Temple Terrace precincts that had voting machine problems last Nov. While the county makes the normal “the votes not counted would not have affected any federal, state or county race” statement, they have admitted that the missing votes may affect local races. Because the election had been certified for weeks it will be up to any losing candidate to file a lawsuit....

VotersUnite.Org is really two dedicated voters who care about how our votes are counted and who does the vote counting. We aren’t the types who find it easy to ask for money but it is a necessary evil that we have to take on occasionally. Even though the big, 2008 General Election is completed and many people are ready to move on to other issues we plan on continuing to do our work. This year we plan to continue to point out the invasive participation of the vendors in our election process and we will continue to work with local election officials to come up with ideas on how to get rid of the vendors as much as possible. We will also continue to give our opinions on federal and state legislation as it pertains to the election process. And we will continue to produce “Daily Voting News” as our way of educating the readers on elections matters. We need help to continue, however. So please help us out with a donation. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here:

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The Pew Center on the States has just released a report on military and overseas voting (our featured article). This report “found that more than a third of states do not provide military voters stationed abroad with enough time to vote or are at high risk of not providing enough time. An additional six states provide time to vote only if their military personnel overseas return their completed absentee ballots by fax or e-mail—a practice that raises important questions about their access to this technology and the privacy and security of their votes.” This report also adds to the growing body of scientific/academic research that all agrees that sending completed ballots via the Internet is not a good plan.
The report is well worth reading for those who are concerned about the votes of our military personnel and overseas voters in general. ...

A large majority of today’s news is, again, from Minnesota. The ballots are counted and lawsuits have been filed, now by both candidates. Its going to take some time for things to shake-out.

$1,850 for a ballot box? That’s what Diebold/Premier charged Hillsborough Co Florida for 220 boxes to be used with their optical-scan machines. Meanwhile other counties in Florida paid as little as $145 per box from different vendors....

Recently it was revealed that the Humboldt Election Transparency Project had found that the county’s Diebold/Premier voting system had lost 197 ballots. Today Kim Zetter of WiredBlog, in one of our featured articles, revealed that the GEMS audit logs not only don’t answer questions about how the 197 ballots were lost but don’t answer many questions at all. Zetter also reveals that the state of California is investigating the lost ballots and these “Greek” audit logs. One of the featured interviews in Zetter’s article is with Doug Jones of U of Iowa. His comments are discussed in our second featured article....

It seems as if every year brings a new battle. This year some in state election administrations are going to be pushing internet voting as if it was a good idea. They will ignore all of the scientific evidence to the contrary. The simple fact is that the internet is a fine platform to get voting information and ballots to military and overseas voters but there is no way the internet is secure enough to allow voters to actually cast a ballot. This is not just my opinion but it was the opinion of the Dept. of Defense in 2004 when they cancelled their plans to allow the military to vote using the internet. It is also the opinion of the National Institute of Standards and Technology who recently issued a report that clearly states the internet is not yet a secure platform for voting....

As Humboldt Co California Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich reveals that the Humboldt Election Transparency Project has found another problem with the Nov. general election vote count it is also being revealed that the decision to move away from Diebold/Premier was made in Nov. The decision was made and those involved were sworn to secrecy. Now there is a move by some in the county, including the local Republican Party, to slow down the process so decisions can be discussed. This sounds like a smart decision. ...

In New Jersey there is a lawsuit that has been going through the court process since 2004. The complaint asks the State Superior Court to block the use of nearly 8,000 Sequoia Advantage Direct Recording Electronic (DRE touch-screen) because they “cannot be relied upon to protect the fundamental right to vote.” This lawsuit probably played some large part in legislation that required voting machines used in the state to be outfitted with a Voter-verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

Sequoia Voting Systems has not been able to meet the legislative deadlines, for a VVPAT printer, which have been moved a couple times. In fact only recently it was announced that the legislature may introduce new legislation to repeal the previous legislation. This move would probably have given more strength to the lawsuit.

Now, suddenly, the state has announced that they will require the Sequoia DREs being used in 18 counties to be refitted with VVPAT printers. It seems clear that this move by the Secretary of State is an attempt to make the lawsuit moot. The state will surely argue that because the DREs are refitted with printers there is no need to change to optical-scan technology.

One question that the state and Sequoia must answer though: Is there a printer in development or developed by Sequoia for use on the Advantage? If not, the state continues to be in violation of the law and it seems that they are being aided and abetted in that by Sequoia.

Also there are hints in the Houston media of problems in the vote count last Nov. Look for more on that over the next week or more....

The media is being fairly silent today. Hillsborough Co Florida is still in the news with some reports that there may be a million dollars of more that are missing. The county is trying to do an audit while, at the same time, an outside audit is being done. The ex-supervisor of elections claims that the outside audit will find nothing wrong (of course he will say that right up to the point that the auditors announce they found money misspent or lost).

We’ve also got reports of what may be a new problem from Montgomery Co Ohio. In this case votes were lost due to the use of a “broken” Diebold/Premier memory card. Of course, Diebold/Premier will do an investigation so they can figure out how to blame the problem on the voter or election workers....