Guest Blogged by John Gideon

If you recall The BRAD BLOG has reported on the Summit County memory card failures in the recent past; most recently on April 4. Summit County's memory card (PCMCIA) failures have not gotten any better according to an article in this morning's Akron Beacon Journal...

This seems to be a complete melt-down of everything provided to the county by ES&S. The Beacon-Journal goes on to report the problems...

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

The folks in Marion County Indiana announced today that they had completed testing their iVotronic machines. They claim the machines are all ready to go. I think that is probably a bit of soothing for the voters. In fact, none of their iVotronics can be used for accessibility in the primary so they are announcing that disabled voters will be able to have someone assist them in the voting process. Also some ballots cannot be read by the op-scan machines and will have to be counted by hand. Kanawha County West Virginia is also having problems getting software for their AutoMarks so there will be no accessible voting in that county. Voters with disabilities are being told to bring a friend or ask for help. And, the Democrats in Alaska have gone to court, finally, in an attempt to get the records of the 2004 election from the state....

My article yesterday "The Approaching 2006 E-Voting 'Train Wreck' Continues On Course" seems to have hit a nerve in the Allegheny County Executive's Office. Apparently the County Executive's Spokesman, Kevin Evanto, does not like his remarks, as printed in The Daily News characterized as being "silly".

Evanto told The Daily News:

Yesteday afternoon Evanto sent me an email in which he defends his statement; well a part of it:

To which I responded:

Nice try, Kevin. I guess we will leave it to the readers to decide about "sweeping, incorrect statements".

Blogged by John Gideon

In an article last week I pointed to the copious evidence that our elections are headed straight towards disaster; a "Train Wreck". That "Train Wreck," however, may still be avoided. The engineers of one of those trains, as it were, are the elections officials who are allowing themselves to be cowed by vendors like ES&S, Sequoia, and Diebold. The disaster can be avoided, but it will require the election officials to switch their train to a different track � by first acknowledging that there are problems.

In order to begin that process those officials must finally realize that they are not alone. Counties across the country are finding the exact same problems. The bad ES&S memory cards were not just found in Summit County, Ohio; they were also found in North Carolina and probably other counties in other states. ES&S will fail to deliver on contracts for voting machines in many counties all across the country. Does anyone really expect the engineer of the other train --- the voting machine vendors --- to switch tracks? They only see the money bags at the end of the track and not the other train barreling down on them.

The federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 --- has likewise not been doing their job. They seem to be content to just sit back and watch as voting systems across the country are in melt-down. Do they really serve any purpose other than to shovel out HAVA funding for these new systems to the states, who in turn pass them on to the vendors? It appears not. Take a look�

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

The most ridiculous quote for the day: "The ES&S iVotronic machines are fully HAVA compliant. They have been certified by both the U.S. government and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The optical scan machine does not have a voter-verifiable paper trail." Kevin Evanto, spokesman for Allegheny County Pennsylvania Chief Executive Al Onorato. Some North Carolina counties are now experiencing a problem that a lot of us told them would come up; that is storage space. They now have voting machines in every nook and cranny and they have to find climate control storage for them. ...

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

Most people agree that elections are successful when the losing candidates can be certain that they lost the election. Losing candidates and the Republican party in Cook County, Illinois have joined together in a request for re-vote or re-counts of all races due to the poor performance of the voting system and elections officials in last month's primary. ES&S continues to get a lot of deserved heat in Indiana where they seem to have failed to uphold contractual agreements. And the county council in Allegheny County Pennsylvania has have issued a resolution to stop the use of new voting machines in this years primary. They are asking for a moratorium on any changes until November. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

The BRAD BLOG has received a copy of the 'Complaint For Declaratory and Injunctive Relief', as filed earlier this week in Allegheny County, PA, by several disabled voters. The complete suit is now available here [WORD format].

As the suit itself is some 43 pages, we will distill it for you a bit, and cover the most notable aspects. The BRAD BLOG is just thoughtful that way.

As we reported on Wednesday, the complaint was filed against the Pennsylvania Secretary of State, other state and county officials, an Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the US Dept. of Justice, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The complaint asserts that the state certified Electronic Voting Machines made by Elections Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) are not accessible by voters with disabilities --- contrary to the requirements of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 and the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). Nonetheless, Allegheny County has selected their machines for use in upcoming elections. That, after previously hoping to go with Diebold, and then with Sequoia Voting Systems, until finally settling on ES&S after the first two choices fell apart either due to the politics of the companies involved and/or due to the discovery their Electronic Voting Systems were found to be hackable.

As mentioned, the choice to not use Diebold in Allegheny occurred, in no small part, because of the company's known hard-right partisan leanings. The lawsuit, however, points out the irony of finally choosing to go with ES&S --- considering their own dubious partisan background...

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

One Cook County Illinois candidate is threatening to file a federal lawsuit for both Democrat and Republican candidates and against the county for voting counting problems. ES&Ss inability to deliver paper ballots on time is now being blamed on consolidation that the company did last year when they closed a Chicago office and moved their functions in with the Omaha office. Meanwhile Indiana SoS Rokita has decided that it is time to hold hearings into the failure of ES&S to provide contractual services and to learn more about reports that MicroVote has provided uncertified software to some customers in the state. The fines to ES&S could be as much as $300,000 per incident....

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

ES&S seems to be failing everywhere. Indiana officials are very concerned; a Pennsylvania county still has no machines; and West Virginia counties have no software so they can prepare for their primary. On top of that Allegheny County Pennsylvania is being sued for selecting ES&S due, in part, to the lack of accessibility of their DREs. The DoJ is sharing part of that lawsuit for threatening the county and forcing them to make a decision before they were ready....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Just announced by KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the news that a group of citizens and People For The American Way have filed suit against the Secretary of State; Dan Onorato, Allegheny County Chief Executive; James Flynn, County Manager; and senior officials at the federal Department of Justice. The citizen group includes members of the disabilities community who want to make sure the County purchases machines that are accessible to all individuals with disabilities.

KDKA reports:

These machines are sold and serviced by Elections Systems and Software, the same company that has played a major role in failures of memory cards and is a large reason why this nation is headed for a "Train Wreck" in our primary elections and, if no action is taken, in November.

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

I will be on the Mike Webb radio program this evening at 9:15PM Pac to discuss "The Train Wreck". You can listen from. I will also be on the Jay Marvin show tomorrow morning at 7:05AM Pac. You can listen at. Today I am beginning a new feature for 'Daily Voting News'. The beginning of the list of articles will now begin with those articles that represent the "Train Wreck" as I described it in my article of a couple days ago. So, for instance, the newly printed and received ballots in Marion County, Indiana have a sequencing error that makes them unreadable by the optical-scan machines; and that dear readers is part of the "Train Wreck"....

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

Today we got the surprise news that EAC Commissioner Ray Martinez has resigned his position. This just two days following his appearance, in Washington DC, at a conference of voting activists from around the country. Also, another county (Wood Co., WV) joins the growing list of ES&S customers who have received less than adequate service....

By John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Normally this space is taken with my ideas of what are the "Top 5" voting news stories for the week. Today I am going to use this space to talk about what I see as the beginning of a disaster in the making with our elections. This isn't the election fraud that some point to when they talk about the vendors and some elections officials. It's not about recounts or audits. This is a real, get your hands around it, happening problem that will disrupt our election process if we do not do something about it now. While we have been involved in all of our issues about Direct Recording Electronic (DRE or "touch-screen") voting machines or paper ballots the electronic voting machine vendors have been wreaking complete havoc across the country.

So far this year two states have conducted primary elections. In Texas there is at least one candidate who has stepped forward and has challenged the election because of anomalies in vote counts and known voting machine failures. One county's machines counted some votes up to 6 times which resulted in approximately 100,000 more votes being counted than were cast. Though the vendor, Hart Intercivic, initially blamed the problem on human error, they finally had to admit that it was a programming error and not poll workers or voters who had erred. In Illinois some county officials are threatening to withhold final payment of funds on contracts with Sequoia Voting Systems because of failures with their machines that ended with results in the primary not being known for over a week after the voters went to the polls. In both states the involved vendors were very successful in the media with deflecting the blame from their machines to "human errors" or "glitches". However, when you listen to people who were there and who saw and worked through the problems you get a very different picture...

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

The failure of ES&S to provide their services as they are contracted to do with their customers across the nation is becoming a daily news event. Counties in Indiana are not getting their ballots on time and when they do get them they can't be used. Summit County Ohio reports they are still having problems with the ES&S memory cards; they are getting a 4% failure rate now; and those are supposed to be cards that were checked and re-checked by ES&S before shipping. And meanwhile Allegheny County Pennsylvania buries their heads in the sand and orders $11M worth of ES&S voting machines. ...

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

69 of 93 Nebraska counties have no paper ballots even though early voting began last Monday. ES&S is doing the printing and is late. The Omaha World-Herald admits ES&S is partially owned by the newspaper. ES&S is reporting a "glitch" in the software of their iVotronic DREs. A 'write-in' vote comes out a 'jumble' of letters. The article says that ES&S is contacting all of their jurisdictions. A few phone calls found that none of the iVotronic jurisdictions called knew anything about this problem. Meanwhile a Chicago Alderman has lashed out at Sequoia and his idea that "at least 15 Venezuelans, who may not have been in the country legally, worked side-by-side with Chicago election officials on primary night March 21, which turned out to be a vote-counting nightmare."...