Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty compares the paperless Direct Recording Electronic voting in Maryland to the potentially auditable and verified electronic voting in California. Guests were Dan Wallach of Rice University and California State Senator and Secretary of State candidate Debra Bowen.

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

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

It is important to note that the Cuyahoga Co. Ohio County Commission contracted with Election Science Institute (ESI) to investigate the counties voting system and the results of how it was used in the May primary. It is the Board of Elections (BoE) who selected and purchased the Diebold voting machines used in the county. It is the BoE that has joined with Diebold to question the ESI report. The County Commission still seems to be supporting ESI....

Guest Blogged By John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco, California was paid $341,000 by Cuyahoga Co., OH to investigate why the county had so many problems with their voting system in the May 2006 election. Were the problems really all human or were the machines at fault? ESI finally issued a report last week that had plenty of blame to go around between poll worker training problems to voting machines that could not add votes, counting devices that didn't match up on the same machine and, in several cases, machines that registered no votes at all.

Of course Diebold Elections Systems Inc. immediately denied that there were any voting machine problems at all as they blamed all problems on voters, poll workers, and election administrators. As reported earlier on The BRAD BLOG, Diebold also received nearly instantaneous assistance from "outside" sources who obfuscated in their reporting of the problems, singling out the issues concerning the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and ignoring everything else that was in the report.

Now county elections officials seem to have decided that they don't like the results from the investigation they paid for, as done by ESI, so they are throwing ESI under the bus while they run to defend Diebold. Suprised? Apparently they don't want to have to explain why they spent millions of dollars for a voting system that is flawed. Or perhaps Diebold applied pressure to their partners in crime at the Cuyahoga Board of Elections.

In either case, Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday morning that Diebold and the County have worked everything out, and it's all just fine after all...

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

ES&S denies any wrong-doing for it's failures in Indiana while agreeing to pay $245,000 to the state and provide other services such as training through 2007. Total cost to ES&S $753,130. Sounds to me like they are admitting they were wrong. / Cuyahoga Co. Ohio paid $342,000 for an investigation into the failures of their May primary. The report from the investigators, ESI, is scathing and shows an error riddled, difficult to administer voting system (Diebold TSx). The county didn't hear what they wanted to hear so they are now joining with Diebold to attack ESI. / Teton Co. Wyoming reported a ballot programming error. Another ES&S failure. / Diebold machines failed in Alaska requiring hand counting and manual uploading of results....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco California was hired to investigate and report on problems with the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The 240-page report was just released this month (August), and some in the elections community have ignored a large majority of the report and zeroed in on a single aspect that supports their thesis that voters don't need any paper, even when voting on a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine.

Daniel Tokaji is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and the Associate Director of Election Law at Moritz. He has testified against a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to a US House committee and the Election Assistance Commission..

In his paper on the ESI report, Tokaji ignores many significant findings of the report and distorts the overall findings by highlighting only the compromised VVPAT. As pointed out by VotersUnite.Org in their analysis of the ESI report, there was much more substance from ESI than just VVPAT printer problems:

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

Unlike some California counties who have chosen to remove themselves from a law suit against the use of Diebold TSx voting machines by choosing to use optical-scan systems, Nevada Co. have decided, today, to go the opposite way. They are spending $250,000 to RENT machines for Nov. / ES&S has agreed to give Arkansas counties credit for $388,000 of the vendors mistakes in the state primary. / A new paper on Independent Verification has been released today. /...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty Pilgrim reports that Pinellas Co.'s voting machines passed Logic and Accuracy (L&A) Tests until a Sequoia Voting Systems technician changed some software. A subsequent test failed so the county changed the software back and re-did the test successfully. There was no report as to what caused the problem or why Sequoia tried to install software that was, very apparently, unnecessary; or was it?

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight, Dobbs reporter and stand-in Kitty Pilgrim interviews Professor Avi Rubin about his new book and about the dangers of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Video in Streaming Flash format...

The video is also available on Rubin's new blog.

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

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

Early voting started in Florida today. Tomorrow is primary election day in Alaska and Wyoming / It looks like officials in Auglaize Co. Ohio may have some problems responding to a new law suit that was filed today. They are accused, in part, of artificially swelling the voter rolls just to get a bigger piece of the HAVA funds pie./ Zogby will release a new poll tomorrow that shows that 92% of Americans Oppose Secret Vote Counting...

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

Franklin Co. Ohio is planning on putting the results from each of their voting machines on-line for anyone to see. This will happen after all vote counting takes place and after the final canvass. They are also asking the County BoE for funds to do an independent hand-count of the paper ballots. Is this another attempt to discredit the vvpat and will Election Sciences Institute (ESI) do that hand-count? / ...

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

"There's a lot to be concerned about here," said Maryland Gov. Ehrlich recently about the state's Diebold TS voting machines. "I think the system is fabulous," said Linda Lamone, administrator for the state Board of Elections. "It's probably the most secure system in the country." / "Is it even possible to ensure the trustworthiness of the hardware and software in a voting system? My opinion is no," said David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and a critic of electronic voting. / "Basically, all election officials say, 'We're as pure as the driven snow, and nobody has ever cheated,' " said John Washburn, a Milwaukee software analyst. "It's the same as if you're a bank and you say, 'OK, I'm going to assume that my tellers will never steal money from the till.' "...

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

A recount was done in Georgia and, guess what? The results on the Diebold TS machines were the same the second time they were run-off as the first. It goes to show that computer memory does not change all by itself. That is all it proves because no one knows that these were really the people's votes; only the machines. / The ACLU filed a lawsuit in Missouri against the state's VoterID law. / Was the ESI/Cuyahoga Co. report just a sham to make the voter verified paper audit trail printers look as bad as possible? If so, some seem to believe that. ...

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

The big news today is still the ESI report on Cuyahoga Co. Ohio. Diebold claims the only flaws are in ESIs report. Democrats are asking for a complete investigation. Even the Republican candidate for SoS is asking for a complete inventory of Blackwell's office. / A press conference was held in Arizona yesterday with Congressmen Holt and Grijalva discussing future legislation on voting rights and vote administration / There may be a recount in the Nevada Republican 2nd Congressional District primary. It will be interesting to see how this turns out especially because the winning candidate is the SoS so the recount would be against him. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Lou revisits the world of electronic voting in Ohio, where the evidence points to voting machine problems, but the vendors, especially Diebold, and the state want everyone to believe that the poll and election workers are just too dumb to do the work and all of the problems are their fault. For more on this story see the recent BRAD BLOG article regarding the Cuyahoga County investigation.

Here's a quick sample from the text transcript:

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

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

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

Nearly 10 percent of Cuyahoga County's official ballots in the May 2 primary were "destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised," according to a group hired by the county to investigate. But even when the paper receipts were legible in the May 2 primary, more than three-quarters of them listed vote tallies that did not match the electronic record in the touch-screen machines. ...