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

Some Missouri counties and the city of St. Louis are now joining a lawsuit just filed against the state to stop the voter ID requirement. / Today is primary day in Georgia and reports began almost immediately of machines switching votes on the monitor and they have no vvpat / An investigation into primary election failures in Cuyahoga Co., Ohio has pointed the finger of failure at election officials and Diebold. They are blaming the paper ballots and a too-heavy line on those ballots. What happened to the L&A tests that are supposed to find those problems before election day? / ...

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

It appears that the ballot format was changed in Tennessee in order to accommodate the voting system vendors. In changing the format officials may now be violating state law. / In a next step, after winning against the state of Georgia and their Voter ID law, the ACLU has now announced they are taking action in Missouri / The NEA, one of the nation's largest unions, has come out in support of a voter verified paper ballot and audits ...

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

The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States is now looking into the purchase of Sequoia by a Venezuelan owned company. / A grand-jury in Clarke Co., Georgia "expressed concern about "the overall security of the voting machines, the handling of the voting results, and the verification process used to detect potential voting fraud." In particular, the presentment said it's possible to tamper with the Diebold voting machines used across Georgia, and criticized the Clarke County Board of Elections employees for losing a CD copy of voting results from the 2004 election." ...

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

ES&S has still not solved their problem with a lack of ability to deliver purchased voting equipment to the counties who have spent their money on those machines. Boone Co. Missouri's machines are a month past due and Williamson Co. Tennessee went into today's start of early voting without promised PEBs. ...

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

Tennessee law says "no voter who is voting without assistance may remain in a voting machine booth or occupy a voting compartment for more than five (5) minutes if other voters are waiting or more than ten (10) minutes in any event." Voters with disabilities now get to vote (supposedly) without assistance. The Tennessee ballot will be very long this year. 5 min.? 10 min.? / Utah continues to brag about how their recounts are proving their DREs are accurate. Of course the recount only compares the machines results against the machines results. / Voters in Georgia have filed a lawsuit to stop unverifiable voting / A federal "qui tam" lawsuit has been filed by RFK Jr. and others / "The designers of video games have built far more sophisticated security into their systems than have the manufacturers of voting machines," said Lowell Finley, co-director of Voter Action...

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

Salt Lake County has 2 primary races to recount. The recount will be done in a couple hours according to news reports this morning. That means they will just run the tapes again and come up with the same answers. No real recount. Garbage in – Garbage out! / This evening the county reported that they had completed the recount. There was no change. Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen says the result is a big boost of confidence in the new electronic voting machines. / The Arkansas Co., Arkansas Election Commission Chair told a court that she got a bill from ES&S for programming PEBs in the primary and run-off elections recently and "of course it's wrong". / Avante International Technology is suing Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia for patent infringement / Accenture is failing in another state, Wisconsin, to provide a voter registration database on time and that works....

A press conference to announce the filing of a lawsuit in Georgia by a group of voters and organizations on behalf of all voters in the state will take place tomorrow.

The suit, according to a press release (posted in full below), calls for action that will "Immediately decertify the state’s Diebold Election System" due to the extraordinary vulnerabilities found in the system by computer scientist Harri Hursti over the last several months.

Georgia, along with the state of Maryland, was one of Diebold's original "showcase" states. They first employed their systems in 2002, and continue to use the paperless touch-screen Diebold AccuVote TS system which has been shown to be extraordinary susceptible to tampering, according to leading computer scientists, in just two minutes time with no password necessary.

A media advisory announcing a press conference tomorrow, and another describing the action being taken in detail both follow in full...

In a just issued Media Release SimmonsCooperLLC has announced that their client, Avante International, has decided to sue Diebold, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), and Sequoia Voting Systems for infringing on their patents for voter verified paper audit trail printer and some optical-scan patents.

The full Media Release follows...

Last night, Tuesday, Kitty Pilgrim stood in for Lou Dobbs for "Democracy At Risk" on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Tonight's report (text transcript at bottom of this article) featured a discussion of the reliability of the voting machines used across the United States. Featured in tonights segment were John Washburn of VoteTrustUSA.Org, New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler, and EAC Commissioner Paul DeGregorio.

DeGregorio had this to say about the reliability standards:

We believe that it is very important that these guidelines and any kind of standards be improved all the time, and we're working on spending federal money to do that because we want voters to have trust and confidence in the voting process in America.

Even though the standards have not been changed since the 2002 standards went into affect and they have not been changed as of yet in the proposed standards that were signed into existence by the Elections Assistance Commission. There is no trust and confidence when elections officials can't even get their facts straight.

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

The complete text transcript follows…

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

San Diego Co. is charging between $0.76 and $0.95 per ballot for a possible recount but Orange Co. California charged $0.14 per ballot for a comparable recount last April. The county says the extra cost is to cover making other documents available. / Over 4000 Riverside Co. California ballots were rejected because they were not received prior to election-day. / Unfortunately a judge in Texas found that Travis Co. can continue to use their unverifiable voting machines....

On Monday night, Lou Dobbs and his correspondent, Kitty Pilgrim, again did a segment on "Democracy At Risk" on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Tonight's report (text transcript at bottom of this article) featured a discussion of the certification standards used (or, more accurately, not used) for the certification of voting machines by the US Government. Featured in tonight's segment were Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center For Justice, John Washburn of VoteTrustUSA, and Rev. DeForest Soaries who resigned from his post as the first chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Soaries was also recently interviewed by Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson.

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

The complete text transcript follows...

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

Voters in at least one precinct in Mobile Co. Alabama were apparently given the wrong ballots on June 6. In precincts with split districts all voters were apparently given ballots for only one district. In one precinct 108 voters live in one district but no votes were voted for either candidate for State Representative. / The EAC is finally going to take over the testing and certification of voting systems. Will anything change? / ...

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

While the GOP in Utah is demanding recounts in three races the state has to figure out how to do those recounts. If there is any doubt as to how the state is leaning you only need to listen to the Lt. Gov.'s spokesman, Joe Demma, who says "The area we see the most susceptibility to need a recount are the paper ballots." / A Grand Jury may explore nine issues with one race in Boyd Co. Kentucky where 530 more votes were cast than voters who voted. / Wherever the elections are close this fall, they'll most likely be scrutinized by armies of lawyers. By setting those January 2006 deadlines for various reforms, "Congress designed it this way so we would have 2006 be our 'get experience' year," says Doug Lewis, head of the nonprofit Election Center, which trains election officials. Then everything will be smoothed out in time for the 2008 presidential election. Or that's the idea, anyway.(USNews)...

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

In a sharply worded ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland said Friday that Georgia's voter ID law "unduly burdens the fundamental right to vote rather than regulate it" and would cause "irreparable harm."...

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

Recently Catherine Crier of CourtTV did a segment of her "Crier Wire" on elections and democracy. It is a must see. / The state of Indiana has now announced that they are sending their old voting machines to Benin in order to help to nurture democracy in that country, according to SoS Todd Rokita. Benin has been hand counting their paper ballots. Why can't we just leave the rest of the world alone? Maybe they have it right and we are wrong. / The county of San Diego has decided that any recount will cost petitioners about $1 per ballot to count. That's over twice as much as any other county is presently charging for a recount. One can only assume that the county really, really doesn't want any recount of their ballots....