Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The February 28 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

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

The state of Florida has decided that just maybe they need to do something about security and the Diebold machines. They issued a technical advisory that tends to vindicate Ion Sancho. In New York advocacy groups, individuals and civil rights groups have filed to intervene in the DoJ suit against the state. And it appears that Burlington, Vermont will be the first US city to elect it's mayor using "instant run-off voting"....

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

Many of us worked long and hard with folks in Mississippi to keep out the Diebold TSx machines their SoS was pushing on them. One of our cautions was that cash-strapped counties would end up having to buy more machines in order to have enough. That concern is being borne out in counties across the state. Humboldt Co., California gets a look at the Vote-PAD and likes what they saw. In Iowa there is talk that Gov. Vilsack may take a cue from New Mexico Gov. Richardson and push for a paper ballot....

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

Today's news emphasis has moved from California to New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The news about the DoJ suing New York was expected and now it's here. The DoJ seems to want chaos in elections and they may get it. In Pennsylvania the state 'supremes' have decided that state law can be followed or ignored when it suits officials and they have allowed counties to go ahead and change voting systems. In Florida a bill has been introduced to require a voter verified paper ballot. And in Maryland it seems that the Governor is not convinced that the Diebold code question has been answered satisfactorily and he is concerned. Meanwhile there are protesters in California and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson signs the paper ballot bill into law....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

"American citizens once took for granted that every vote mattered, but no longer. It is time that we, the elected state officials, work to restore American's confidence in our electoral systems and undertake reform that moves to eliminate skepticism and uncertainty." --- NM Governor Bill Richardson's 3/1/06 Letter "To the State Officials of the 50 United States of America" (Posted in full below)

Today Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico made a powerful statement to officials in all states (see full letter below) as he announced that tomorrow he would be signing legislation that would require the state of New Mexico to go to a paper ballot based voting system. No longer will the state use Sequoia DRE (touch-screen) voting machines...the machines that reported large numbers of undervotes in previous elections...The same machines that disenfranchised minority voters...The technology Richardson describes as "simply fail[ing] to pass the test of reliability" in his open letter published today.

The Governor has also announced that the bill's signing ceremony will be webcast. The announcement says:

This all sounds wonderful, except???opponents of the legislation managed to get the legislation amended so that voting systems "owned or used" as of 1 May 2006 that do not use paper ballots can continue to be used until, among other things, debt on purchases of those machines are paid by the state. Then, the bill that appropriated funds to pay off the debt died in committee. Now the state needs to find the money to pay off the debt.

UPDATE 3/3/06: Signing ceremony video and petition calling on all states to join NM now here.

The complete letter from Gov. Richardson of New Mexico follows...

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

Today the hammer finally fell on New York as the DoJ did as they have been promising and filed a suit against the state for voting rights failures. Meanwhile in Pennsylvania the "Kuznick Suit" is being heard by the State Supreme Court. New Mexico Governor Richardson has sent a letter to officials in all 50 states to ask them to support an all paper-based voting system. And, finally, California got the Ciber ITA report from Diebold. It did not address the fact that 'interpreted' code is banned by the voting systems guidelines so, again, the ITA only did the bare essentials and did not do their job to ensure our voting systems meet all of the guidelines. ...

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

I'm back and today's DVN includes some articles from the past two days added in with today's articles. Early voting for this year's primaries is taking place in TX and IL. It looks like NY will be using their lever machines for another election year. It would be catastrophic for them to change this late in the game. PA is a mess with counties rushing to get anything and not much really certified by the state or federal authorities. ...

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

From Alabama comes a report that ES&S had an internal communications problem and they provide the optical scan machines used in Belforest in their elections. "The company delivered "data packs" --- the electronic devices in which the voters' selections are stored --- programmed for absentee voting, causing the two machines to reject the ballots, Johns said. The situation did not affect the voting, as voters filled out their ballots and slipped them in an emergency bin used for occasions such as this one, he said." Imagine if that had been DREs instead of optical-scan. Just why is there an IrDA port on those Diebold machines? Just a reminder, that this will be the last Daily Voting News until next Tuesday evening. I will be off line until then. Have a great weekend....

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

Texas began early voting for their primary with the news that many counties still do not have their paper ballots or their ballot programming complete. In California the fall-out from last Friday's announcement by SoS McPherson is making news. One can only wonder when the lawsuits will begin....

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

What's going on in Maryland? The Gov is against a vvpb; now he is for it. Democratic members of the legislature who are for a vvpb are belittling the Governor's change of heart as being political and are claiming he is creating chaos. Now kids! Can't we just get along and give the voter a vvpb like they want? Meanwhile in Pennsylvania the Governor has said he will veto the legislation that requires a voterID...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The February 13 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

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

The big news for the day is the announcement that California's SoS McPherson has conditionally certified Diebold AccuVote OS and TSx voting machines for use in the state. This announcement has many people puzzled and mad. Has McPherson bowed to pressure from the counties and, in actuality, set them up for legal problems? It seems that may be the case. Meanwhile in Maryland ES&S steps forward and says they have no idea what Linda Lamone is saying when she says no one can provide a paper based system to the state before November. They say they can do it no problem. Could it be that Linda Lamone has been caught in another lie?...

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

In California, SoS Bruce McPherson reached down and deep and certified Diebold for use in the state with some conditions. Note that there has still been no report from the federal ITA that was asked to reinspect the Diebold memory card. At the same time, in Maryland, Diebold and Linda Lamone have taken to ignoring the truth, or misrepresenting it as they ignore proof of lost votes in elections and try to assure voters that there are no problems. And good news from New Mexico where the state legislature has passed a voter verified paper ballot bill....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon (with some additional updates/info from Brad)

Updated with much more information...

Secretary of State McPherson seems to have a thing for making major announcements late on Fridays just before holidays. Following in what seems to be a pattern of his, he announced late this afternoon that he was certifying Diebold Optical Scan and AccuVote TSx (touch-screens) for use in elections in the state.

The re-certification (they had been originally decertified in California in 2004 when it was revealed Diebold had installed illegal software updates on the machines) is conditional on some items but not on the one thing point he had announced last December when he sent the system back to federal authorities for further testing. At that time he said he was sending the machine's memory cards to the federal Independent Testing Authority (ITA) Lab for reinspection in light of the news out of Leon County, Florida that the cards used "intepreted code" which is specifically banned by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). A "hack test" in that county revealed that an entirely election could have its results flipped by a hacker exploiting that "interpreted code" --- without a trace being left behind.

McPherson made his announcement today without waiting to hear back from the ITA lab.

Last summer, after a massive mock election test with Diebold touch-screen machines revealed that 10% of them failed entirely with screens freezing and printers jamming --- later reports would reveal that as many as 30% of the machines actually failed! --- McPherson said, "We certainly can't take any kind of risk like that with this kind of device on California voters."

Apparently the Secretary of State of America's largest "voting market," as Diebold refers to it, was just kidding about that.

State Senator Debra Bowen, (D-Redondo Beach), the chairwoman of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment, & Constitutional Amendments Committee issued the following Press Release after learning of McPherson's remarkable decision.

VOTING SYSTEMS HEARINGS, MARCH 1:
Also of note is the announcement of public hearings (as mentioned in Bowen's release) persuant to the certification of various voting systems, many of which are still not federally qualified. This announcement is not accompanied by any of the test reports necessary for citizens to go to this hearing with any knowledge of what the state found in their testing. Perhaps this is because none of these systems have been tested by the state yet?

...DEVELOPING...MUCH MORE BELOW...UPDATES, ACTION ITEMS, ADDITIONAL INFO...

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

The news today is full of news from Maryland in regards to the letter from Gov. Ehrlich to the State Elections Board. Is this another nail in Diebold's coffin? The fact that they have raised their maintenance charges 1000% over four years is astonishing. Also, counties in Pennsylvania are still trying to decide what they can do in the aftermath of the court decision of earlier in the week. And, the DoJ has given their opinion to Connecticut and they have promised to work with them to meet HAVA mandates....