The Minnesota recount is still on-going. Tomorrow the polls open for election day in Georgia for the re-vote for their Senate race. There was also a TRO sought by the Democratic Party in the recount of the Texas House District 105 race as part of a federal voting rights lawsuit. That lawsuit was filed today. Also, Washington DC city council member, Mary Cheh, announced today that she will be asking her council colleagues to pass a resolution to enforce subpoenas on Sequoia Voting Systems. She wants the source code and other Sequoia records and wants a judge to force compliance....

The good folks in Minnesota are still recounting votes in the Senate race. There will be a lot of heated discussion over how voter intent is decided by officials and my guess is that the courts are going to have to decide the winner and loser.

Tuesday is the runoff election for Senator from Georgia. They will be using the same Diebold voting system that is in question from the 2002 election. ...

I have been asked often about my position on Instant Runoff Voting [also known as Ranked Coice Voting]. My answer is always that I just haven’t formed an opinion on the basics of IRV. I do, however, have a problem with the fact that those who are avid supporters of IRV quite often favor IRV over voting system issues. They tend to be willing to turn a blind-eye to the use of voting systems that I would never support because there are no voting systems that actually support IRV that are federally certified.

Two west-coast counties, Pierce in WA and San Francisco in CA, used Sequoia systems that were a mix and match of certified parts and tested parts that were never tested and certified to be used together. Officials in Minnesota are now talking about IRV for the future. When asked about a second or third count election, officials said they would hand-count those ballots, but officials who have done IRV say that would be a “huge nightmare”.

One of the two west coast counties is even now thinking of going back to the voters to ask that IRV voting no longer be used. We agree with this position but only until there is a system that can actually count the ballots and not be a “huge nightmare”....

The “Daily Voting News” staff [all one of us] is going to take tomorrow off to enjoy family and friends. We will be back on Friday. We hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and have an opportunity to enjoy family and friends.

A three judge panel of the 6th US Court of Appeals in Ohio has ruled unanimously that a lawsuit filed by the League of Women Voters in the aftermath of the 2004 general election can continue in US District Court. One judge said this about disenfranchising acts by some election officials, “"If true, these allegations could establish that Ohio's voting system deprives its citizens of the right to vote or severely burdens the exercise of that right, depending on where they live”....

Prior to election day we, VotersUnite.Org, counseled voters to not use straight-party voting. We put it on our website and I wrote about it in these spaces. Straight-party voting as it is used in Texas is rife for misunderstanding and mistakes by the voters. When someone votes a straight-party ticket but then also selects the name of a candidate within that party in a particular race, electronic machines "deselect" that candidate. If no other candidate is chosen, no vote is counted in that race. The best solution, in our minds, was to NOT use straight-party voting but we got a lot of push back from some party officials in the state. Now Dallas Co. Democrats have been in court in an attempt to get the county to count all deselected or emphasis votes. The Secretary of State and the county both say no. The court, after two days of hearings and the promise of a decision, has, at the last minute, decided that they may have no jurisdiction. There would be no problem at all if straight-party voting had not been pushed by party officials....

Thousands of Georgia absentee ballot requests have been denied because the voters did not sign the requests. Many of the requests are via a post-card provided by the RNC and the signature block is supposedly hard to find on the card. Over 7,000 requests have been rejected in Cobb Co and 2,800 in DeKalb Co.

Connecticut has submitted their reports done by UConn for the SoS office with regards to their voting systems to the EAC for inclusion in the “clearinghouse”. The state and the university have become good partners and are to be commended for the audits of memory cards that they accomplish before and after elections. Every state and local election official should be aware of these reports and the results of the audits. As well as being a font of good information and warnings they should also serve as a valuable example of what a state can do when they actually want to ensure that voting system problems are found. While the reports the EAC allows to be on their site are only a small portion of the reports that should be in the EACs clearinghouse, what is there is a beginning....

The Minnesota Senatorial race is still the source of most of the news. The Minneapolis-St Paul Star-Tribune seems to have some of the best coverage of the recount. The link in the article below has not changed over the past few days but the story is constantly updated and changes as the news changes.

One of the counties that had problems on election day, readers will recall, was Kenton Co. Kentucky. You may remember that many of the county’s Hart Intercivic eSlate machines were not properly recording straight-party votes and they were taken out of service. The machines are sold, maintained and programmed by Harp Enterprises.

During an investigation of the Kenton Co problem the president of Harp told investigators that election officials in nearly 100 Kentucky counties failed to do any pre-election testing. If officials in Kenton Co had done the testing they should have found the problem that affected their machines. Of course, Harp has thrown the counties under the bus to some extent. It should have been their duty to warn the state that the testing was not happening. It is also important to note that Harp programs the machines in many of those counties so they are deflecting the blame to some extent...

The recount in Minnesota continues to dominate the news. Franken is inching closer to Coleman’s vote total but there are still a lot of votes to count and then a steadily growing number of challenged ballots that will have to be cussed and discussed. Also today we have news from Ohio where another close race, 15th Congressional District, may be decided by provisional ballots. Over 27,000 provisional ballots in Franklin Co were not going to be counted but a federal judge has stepped-in and ruled that at least 1,000 of those ballots must be counted and that will probably lead to a count of all of the ballots. Of course there is an appeal of this ruling so it will be another week at least before there is any final decision....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

A special hat-tip to citizen journalists K. Shawn Edgar and Shawn Waldow who produced and edited this piece and, of course, to the voters and staff of the Washington County, Oregon elections office.

For those of you who are closely watching the Minnesota senatorial recount there is a live blog that is dedicated to reports from the ground in the state. You can go here and keep up-to-date....

We have another report today from Connecticut and the UConn memory card tests that are done in that state regularly. These are Premier/Diebold memory cards and 9% of the cards inspected failed for various reasons including that some contained additional random data.

The recount of ballots for the Senator from Minnesota has begun. Already some new numbers are coming from at least one county. And in Alaska the decision seems to have been made and the voters have been heard. That leaves Georgia where early voting has begun....

Early voting has begun in Georgia for the senate re-election with election day on Dec. 2. By the time DVN is sent tonight nearly all of the final votes should be counted in Alaska and there should be an announcement as to who won that race. Begich was ahead of Stevens by 2,374 at last report. Will there be a recount? Re-election? In Minnesota Sen. Coleman was declared the winner of the original vote count and that recount has been audited. Now the state is going into a period of 100% hand recount. The results of that recount won’t be presented to the State Canvassing Board until Dec. 5 and the final results will be announced by the board on Dec. 19....

The subject of the moment seems to be Internet voting. The media isn’t reporting about it yet but the mailing list groups are all abuzz with concerns about Internet voting and, in my opinion, they should be concerned. The security of the Internet, or more correctly the lack of security of the Internet, should concern everyone in elections. Election officials like to tell anyone who will listen that their voting systems are totally secure yet many are also now talking about voting over the insecure Internet. A couple months ago the Department of Defense sent letters to all 50 states asking them to consider more use of the internet for voting. The Washington SOS is now on record as wanting to do something to forward that plan. Florida Senator Bill Nelson, has a bill filed that would ban all Internet voting yet he has recently come out in favor of Internet voting. This fight for secure voting will take everyone from the Election Integrity Community, I’m afraid. I hope we can forestall the inevitable until someone can figure out a way to make Internet voting secure....

I hate to disappoint those who like to read my lead-in to the news but I really can’t think of anything worthwhile to write today. This may be one of the last days when we in the Pac. Northwest can see the sun until next spring so I got out and away from the computer and went for a ride on my Harley to enjoy the fall colors. My son went along on his new Yamaha. As a 61 year old novice rider all of my attention and gray-matter was used to keep my bike upright and going where I wanted it to go. It was, however, a rewarding ride and a lot of fun. But, I have nothing insightful, interesting, or humorous to say to fill this space so it will just have to go blank....

Need more proof that the vendors have made elections expensive? The folks in Vigo Co Indiana find themselves having to hold a special election for mayor of Terre Haute, a city of over 44,000 voters. The county would probably pay for the election and then be reimbursed by the city. The last municipal election the county paid for cost $580,000. The cost for one race in the city would probably be something less than that.

Why so much? The county pays ES&S to manage the voting machines. What would happen if the county or city just decided to print the ballots and hand-count them? Well, the ballots would cost around $0.05 per ballot or around $3500. The cost to hand-count those ballots, based on the cost to hand-count ballots in WA in the 2004 gubernatorial hand-recount would probably be less than $10,000. Why is it that we have these vendors involved in making our elections much more expensive than they should be? ...