Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Testing of Liberty Voting machines in Ireland; in July this year, the commission issued a second report revealing flaws in the software central to the system. It found the software could be manipulated to change the outcome of a vote and said tests had eliminated the wrong candidate in some cases. / Meanwhile Netherlands is doing what the US has failed to do. They are forcing NEDAP (Liberty) to make modifications to ensure their machines are secure. / The California SoS has sent a memo to each county reminding them that voters should have the right to use paper ballots and that each county needs to determine the number of ballots that must be delivered to each polling place....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

You have probably noticed that as we get closer to the general election the amount of voting related news is growing. I expect that very soon the amount of news will force me to make a modification to the way 'Daily Voting News' is sent out. I could cut the news in half and send some in the late morning and the rest in the evening. Rather than send it out twice a day I will send out a condensed version to the email subscribers. That version will have what I consider to be the top 15 or so stories. The complete 'DVN' will be posted at the normal locations; VoteTrustUSA, The BradBlog, OpEdNews, and ScoopNZ. VotersUnite will also be posting the complete list of articles and we have removed the dust bunnies from our "Voting News" database and many of the articles and the complete DVN can be found there. You will be notified when the change needs to be made. Thank you for reading and taking part in democracy....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In the September Maryland primary the Diebold E-Poll Book failed miserably throughout the state. It seems that when more than 40 names were entered into the machines they tended to crash and require rebooting. When they did crash some voters who had not voted were listed as having voted. In order to fix this problem it is reported that Diebold wrote two software patches and one of their sub-contractors wrote another. These were all installed on Maryland's equipment and tested. There was also a problem with the touch screen part of the E-Poll Book. Touching the screen caused some machines to crash. Diebold reportedly solved this problem by providing the state with over 5,000 'mouses' to replace the touch screen. These machines are part of an Independent Test Authority (ITA) tested and NASED qualified voting system. Until I talked to Sandy Steinbach yesterday, NASED knew nothing about any changes made by Diebold. But, NASED no longer qualifies new modifications or any voting system submitted for testing after July 10. The EAC now does that work. They too knew nothing about those modifications and, in fact, tried to point to NASED as the authority. The questions: Who is minding the store? What happens for other states that are required to have federally certified voting systems and are going to use the E-Poll Book? Will Diebold fix every E-Poll Book that will be used in November or will they try to keep this fix a secret because it has never gotten any federal testing and certification?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"A broad coalition of more than 50 election integrity groups and individuals sent letters today to all 50 governors, secretaries of state and directors of elections calling upon them to provide emergency paper ballots for the November midterm elections: "All voters must have the option to vote on an Emergency Paper Ballot if necessary, and all such ballots must be counted as regular, not provisional, ballots."" / "A report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on voter fraud and voter intimidation was released yesterday by USA Today over four months after it had been presented to the commission. The report confirmed that there is little verifiable evidence to support anecdotal accounts of polling place fraud involving voters voting more than once, non-citizens or otherwise ineligible voters voting, or voters voting in the name of deceased voters."...

Yesterday the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP) issued a press release that is, as I explained to Brad Friedman, "un-freaking-believable". The DuPage County chapter of IBIP has been hard at work tracking cronyism and favoritism on the part of DuPage County, IL Election Commission Chairman J.P. "Rick" Carney in his dealings with Diebold Election Systems representatives from Fidlar Elections and Liberty LLC.

Kudos to IBIP for some great reporting!

The complete "un-freaking-believable" press release follows below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ottawa Co. Michigan got $40,000 worth of new ballots from the printer, after copies had been proof-read by county staff. Unfortunately the ballots have 'public' in six places on the ballots and one of those 'public's is missing the 'l'. Ballots will be reprinted. / Shelby Co Tennessee will be using new Diebold machines for the first time next month, joining a too-long list of counties that will be using new voting machines for the first time in Nov. / ES&S has failed, up to now, to get programming to Dona Ana Co. New Mexico, for their Automark machines. No early voting for voters with disabilities even though the rest of the voters can vote early voting. / Sequoia has misprinted absentee ballots sent to 44,000 voters in Denver. And in a second error they printed postage on the return envelope that is 24 cents less than the actual postage. Sequoia will have to pay all expenses for their errors. / A West Virginia Election Commissioner has promised to have all ballots counted by two hours after poll closing; provided there are not technical problems. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

States and counties are being forced to purchase used, refurbished voting machines. In this segment Kitty talks to an election official and a voter about this practice. As Kitty points out, "the chain of custody for these machines is the real issue. Experts say the machines can be tampered with, and malicious codes inserted, as these machines pass from one jurisdiction to another."

-- Streaming Flash version...

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ever in control of the situation, Diebold is late in delivering absentee ballots to counties in Maryland. Many of the voters who have recently requested absentee ballots, heeding the advice of the governor and some elections officials, may not have a ballot to vote on next month. This will teach the voters not to mess with Diebold. / The Pennsylvania Dept. of State has determined that absentee ballots must be counted by hand and not by the counties voting machines. / The head of the county government in Montgomery Co. Maryland is asking voters to vote absentee. / The DoJ has now announced that they will be filing a lawsuit in Mississippi for violations of the VRA. In this case, the suit is being brought against blacks suppressing the right to vote of whites. / The EAC seems not to have liked the results of a study on voter fraud that they commissioned. Amid some apparent dissent within the agency they chose to not issue the report rather than have a report that said that there is NO evidence of wide-spread voter fraud as many would have us believe. / But on the other hand; officials in Missouri have found that ACORN may have turned in over 1500 fraudulent voter registrations. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

Last night Lou Dobbs doubled the reporting on his semi-regular "Democracy At Risk" segment. Kitty Pilgrim reported on the recent breakdown of the system in Volusia County where but for the local newspaper and stalwart activists the county would have been able to bury discrepancies in their recording of votes in their primary election. Also Bill Schneider reported on how important the November general election is and that there are teams of lawyers ready to step in and take action.

-- Streaming Flash version...

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Sequoia has done a good job in an attempt to misrepresent the facts in the Brennan Report. They seem to have twisted the facts in order to deceive potential customers in New York. Read more in the NY section / "There is something you can do NOW, even before the election starts. Verified Voting's Election Transparency Project is enlisting members of the public (and especially organized groups) to help find out what really goes on in our elections. Our aim is to document everything we can, so that we actually know what happened after election day. The project has six questionnaires to guide you through the observation process. You can choose one of them or all of them. You can even do them if you are involved in other election observation projects, such as the Election Protection Coalition or Pollworkers for Democracy (consult Google for more information on these projects)." For more information see directly below....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

'The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and its partners are currently recruiting volunteers for the 2006 national Election Protection program. Election Protection, the nation's largest non-partisan voter protection coalition, is led by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP, the National Bar Association, and People For the American Way Foundation. Election Protection provides direct voter assistance through our toll-free hotline, 866-OUR-VOTE, and through legal field programs in targeted states.' 'Volunteer attorneys, paralegals, and law students are needed in Washington, DC, New York, and San Francisco to staff the national voter hotline on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7th (6:00 a.m. - 12:00 midnight EST) and Monday, November 6, 2006 (8:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m. EST).' – See directly below....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Even R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, an association of election officials realizes the November election is going to be a problem. "We've made some valiant attempts ... (but) there are going to be some problems. Things could be just a little bit ugly this time." Meanwhile the EAC still has their heads buried deep in the sand. Paul DeGregorio, chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, said he doesn't believe "it's necessarily going to be chaos out there. We will see mistakes made just as we've seen in other elections, but because of close contests ... these problems will be magnified. People will wonder about all those reforms since 2000." DeGregorio is still preparing to blame all problems on election workers and the voters. / A lack of enough poll workers seems to be one of the big problems for this coming election. Everyone should be encouraged to volunteer for the day....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Elections changes mandated by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 have created expensive elections. Historically school districts, fire districts and any other governmental entity that raises funds via voter approval have had to pay to put their requests for funding before the voter. Now these city and county entities are faced with much more expensive elections. In Wisconsin school districts are deciding to change their bond elections and school board election from odd to even-numbered years so they can just add their election in with the even-year general election. That will lower their costs but add to the size of an already overly large ballot. This is another unintended disaster brought to us by the fine folks who gave us HAVA. / An election challenge in Rhode Island is now before the state supreme court. ES&S is being raked over the coals in court, again....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

"In Friday's Democracy at Risk segment Lou and Kitty look into the story from New York state where counties are beginning to question whether their voters should be forced to vote on electronic voting machines. Why should they not be able to keep the machines that have served them well for decades?

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

For the amount of problems the EAC has faced in its short history one would think that it would be important that the President would fill openings on the commission with people who have experience and who meet the requirements mandated by the Help America Vote Act. In fact the President ignored the HAVA requirements and nominated Caroline Hunter to take the seat being emptied by time-limited Paul DeGregorio. Ms Hunter's only elections experience was as one of the Bush-Cheney attorneys challenging voters in Ohio in 2004 and she is presently serving as Deputy Director of the Office of Public Liaison at the White House. Newsday correctly asks the Senate to 'question Hunter closely on her background and make an enlightened decision on whether her experience meets the statute's requirements'. / The regressive voter ID law in Missouri is being challenged in state supreme court while the Arizona law was blocked in Federal Appeals court. / Newton Co Arkansas has asked the state to allow them to use paper ballots at the polls. They are not confident in the ES&S DREs that have failed them in the past two elections....