Articles in Category: Election 2006

CA Senate Panel Rakes Kern Co. Elections Officials and Diebold Over the Coals

By John Gideon on 8/1/2006 1:26pm PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday, according to an article in The Bakersfield Californian, a panel of California state senators held a hearing in Bakersfield to discern what happened in the county during the June 6 state primary. The panel consisted of Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach; Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield; and Sen. Joseph Dunn, D-Garden Grove.

The California Senate Select Committee on Integrity of Elections has launched an investigation into problems in elections in the state. That investigation started in Kern County (Bakersfield) with testimony by County Deputy Registrar of Voters Sandy Brockman, Diebold Election Systems official Mike Rockenstein, and other election workers.

Brockman stood in for her boss, Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett, who was on vacation and not available to answer questions about why some voters were not able to vote in the primary. In fact, the paper reports:

Ashburn asked why Barnett wasn't there to answer his tough questions about the decisions she made.

Brockman said Barnett was on vacation.

"She had scheduled vacation time prior to them calling this hearing," Brockman said.

Later, Ashburn said that "she (Barnett) chose not to be here. I got the impression at several points that Sandy Brockman had to take responsibility for actions that were made by Ann Barnett."

Ashburn was critical of Barnett immediately after the June 6 election. He called for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to investigate the county's election bungles.

The questioning was all about mistakes:

Committee members pelted local elections officials with searing questions about why they failed the voters.

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, asked why touch-screen voting machines failed and paper ballots ran out making voting nearly impossible for as many as 500 Kern County voters.

County Deputy Registrar of Voters Sandy Brockman, sitting in for elections boss Auditor-Controller Ann Barnett, took the brunt of Ashburn's questions.

Under his questioning, she said Barnett decided not to train elections workers on the use of paper ballots and decided to send only the minimum number of paper ballots to each polling place.

Elections workers testified they were told not to use paper ballots.

But when electronic voting cards failed, the paper ballots ran out and as many as 500 voters could have lost the chance to vote, Brockman said.

The Diebold representative got his turn to answer some hard questions from Sen. Dunn:

Diebold made the voting machines and electronic ballot cards that malfunctioned in Kern County on June 6.

Through the negligence of Diebold, Dunn said, hundreds of Kern County voters were turned away at the polls and lost their chance to vote.

If a chance to vote is priceless, Dunn asked Rockenstein, how much would Diebold be willing to pay voters who could prove they couldn't vote because of the company's mistakes?

Rockenstein said he had no answer to that question.

The next stop by the panel has been unannounced so far. Could San Diego Co. be very far down on their list?

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Election Irregularities, California, Election 2006

Paul Lehto Retained By Election Integrity Advocates In San Diego

Breaking!

By Emily Levy on 7/24/2006 7:50pm PT

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of the California Election Protection Network and the CA-50 Action Committee

Attorney Paul Lehto, who specializes in cases involving election law, business fraud and consumer law, has been retained for work on the issues surrounding the illegal election conditions in San Diego County.

Lehto came to the attention of BRAD BLOG readers when he filed a lawsuit in Washington state against Sequoia Voting Systems Inc.

He has also appeared as a guest on The BRAD SHOW of April 23, 2005. To listen to that interview, click here.

More details will be posted when they become available.

(DISCLOSURE: Paul Lehto is also a legal advisor for VelvetRevolution.us, a Voting Rights and Election Reform organization co-founded by BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman.)

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, California, Election 2006

What is San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas Hiding --- Besides the Truth?

Public Disinformation Campaign Continues with North County Times Article

By Emily Levy on 7/23/2006 10:44am PT

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of the California Election Protection Network and the CA-50 Action Committee

While San Diego's North County Times could have been reporting on Friday's protest outside the Registrar of Voters' office, instead the NCTimes donated its column-inches to the noble cause of further misinforming the public about the June 6 election debacle and the people's fight for democracy.

In Recount fee goes unpaid: San Diego Registrar says no recount happening in 50th District race, staff writer Erin Schultz appears satisfied to report Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas's lies as fact:

A voter's request for a recount of the June 6 special election ballots from the 50th Congressional District has been halted because the woman requesting the recount did not pay a required fee, the San Diego County Registrar's office said this week.

The poor woman went to all the trouble of filing for a hand count under the recount provision and then didn't bother to pay the fee, eh? Not so fast. It just might be relevant to mention that it was an improperly required fee. The only fees the Registrar of Voters' office is allowed to charge are the actual costs of a recount. The exorbitant $6,000 demanded by the RoV's office as a deposit for the first day’s counting should have been reduced significantly when the voter requesting the recount advised the RoV that no counting panel would be needed on the first day, as she was still awaiting documents needed in order to proceed with the recount. Haas has failed to provide these documents despite Barbara Gail Jacobsen’s being legally entitled to have them and despite—or perhaps because of—their significance to the recount.

And why weren't the documents provided? What is Haas trying to hide?

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, California, Election Reform, Election 2006

Cuyahoga Co., Ohio Primary Was A Disaster

Just Published Report Condemns The Election Director and His Top Assistant

County Elections Board Decides, On a 2 To 2 Vote, To Keep The Director In His Job

By John Gideon on 7/21/2006 8:46pm PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

According to an article in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer the recent Cuyahoga County primary fiasco was the result of widespread dysfunction in the county's election offices, where officials ignored specific warnings of the looming calamity, according to a report also released today that blames election chief Michael Vu and deputy chief Gwen Dillingham.

According to the paper:

In the 394-page report, a three-member panel concludes its investigation of the flawed May 2 primary with descriptions of breakdown after breakdown at every level of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. The problems included poorly trained poll workers, too few workers, the rehiring of poll workers with histories of poor performance, a lack of crucial supplies, error-filled and ambiguous manuals for poll workers, a careless or reckless disregard for security of the voting machines, and the refusal to accept help from outsiders with expertise.

The dysfunction was made worse by a rushed changeover from punch-card voting to electronic machines.

"Director Vu and [Deputy Director] Dillingham effectively ordered workers to do the impossible, or nearly impossible, with inadequate resources," the report says. "This is an across-the-board failure to plan and manage the first countywide endeavor in electronic voting."

The panel found that even when presented with 13 warnings of potential crises four months before the election, Vu forged ahead. In June, after most of the 13 predicted problems came to pass, Vu "had yet to grasp the enormity of the issues. . . . During a recent interview with panel members he said, "There's not much that I would change at all."

In a companion article the Plain Dealer reports on the 13 warnings and gives some examples:

Scanning machines might be unable to read thousands of absentee ballots.

Votng machine memory cards might not get to the election headquarters for counting.

Election workers might be unable to operate the machines.

Vu's system for counting votes might break down.

All of that came to pass.

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Election Irregularities, Ohio, Election 2006

Report Suggests Arkansas Renegotiate Contract With ES&S

By John Gideon on 7/21/2006 10:48am PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Readers of The BRAD BLOG know that the state of Arkansas had a "Train Wreck" in their primary election and that much of the blame was laid at the feet of their voting machine vendor Elections Systems and Software. Now the Associated Press and The Arkansas Democrat Gazette both report that an independent study has been done at the request of the state and the study agrees with what The BRAD BLOG has said all along.

According to the Associated Press article:

InfoSENTRY Services, Inc., a Raleigh, N.C.-based information technology services firm that performed the review, said the firm received below-average ratings from county election officials.

"ES&S was too busy running helter-skelter between Little Rock and Omaha," one county official said in a survey. "The result was a woeful lack of communication with the counties."

Another election official wrote, "This was the most disorganized bunch ever to run an election in Arkansas. They were untruthful in their responses. Their performance left the burden of this election on us and greatly increased the cost."

and they go on to report:

"We also received information that the ES&S project manager in Little Rock was overwhelmed from at least mid-April until relief and replacement resources arrived in early-to-mid May," the report said. "E-mails indicate that the (secretary of state's) office notified ES&S of the resource constraints and severe schedule slippages in mid-April and requested immediate action on this issue."

The report said several county officials questioned whether ES&S would be able to provide the resources necessary for the general election given the delays with providing staff for the primary.

ES&S has the largest slice of the voting machine business in the country. They found it impossible to support a string of state primaries held over a 5 to 6 week time span. How are they ever going to be able to handle a general election where all 50 states vote at the same time?

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Article Categories: ES&S, Election Irregularities, Arkansas, Election 2006

SD Union-Tribune: 'Reliability of voting machines questioned'

Brad Blog: Reliability of U-T 'news article' questioned!

Also: State Senator Barbara Bowen 'plans to hold public hearings on possible voting irregularities'

By Winter Patriot on 7/20/2006 2:08am PT

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Staff Writer Leslie Wolf Branscomb of the San Diego Union-Tribune actually gets some of the story right in her July 19th piece: Reliability of voting machines questioned.

Brad mentioned this story yesterday, noting that it was among "the worst" of the most recent local coverage of the Busby/Bilbray election, which, as all regular readers know, happened over a month ago and is still under a cloud of doubt.

Just before he left for his "vacation", Brad mentioned that "the reporters continue to allow Haas to pass on his knowing obfuscations, and the media is usually too lazy or ill-informed to bother to call him on it. So that's your job now!" and he also said: "Please help such media out by giving them the facts to counter Haas' ass-covering spin, misleads, red-herrings and bald-faced lies."

And so, without further ado ... after the fold you will find extended excerpts and some commentary from your lowly and nearly frozen guest-blogger.

And please also read Brad's post on the subject, if you haven't done so already.

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: Busby/Bilbray, Diebold/Premier, California, Election 2006

CLAIM: GOP Likely to Charge E-Vote Fraud This November; DNC Advised to Wake Up! Quickly!

By Brad Friedman on 7/5/2006 12:05pm PT

BTCNews' Weldon Berger makes a very astute observation in an article posted Monday suggesting "Republicans set to cry 'Foul!' in November elections."

He contends (with a suggested measure of inside skinny) that the GOP will use the evidence and arguments of election integrity advocates, such as yours truly and others, in making their case that Electronic Voting Machine fraud may have occurred in certain close elections this November if needed.

Berger's observations are well supported by both common sense and history of the GOP --- who, unlike Dems, have proven themselves more than willing to pull out any and all stops to fight a close election and even go to court to throw out valid votes whenever necessary if that's what they need to do to win. The GOP doesn't have the same fear gene that curses Dems when it comes to standing up and fighting when they feel they've been robbed (or, perhaps more appropriately with the GOP, opportunistically announcing they've been robbed even when they haven't been.)

Berger's column ought to serve as a siren call for the DNC to wake the hell up about what's going on here. Before it's too late. If it isn't already.

My only dispute with the otherwise dead-on article is this contention:

The Democratic National Committee should begin raising and setting aside funds to challenge elections in which e-voting fraud is suspected

Right sentiment. Wrong plan. The fact of the matter is that by the time such elections have been completed, it will have been too late to do anything about it. Especially if it's one of those sore-loser, tin-foil hat wearing Democrats making the charge (the same charge, made by a Republican, will be met with no such derision, of course --- except perhaps via irony-drenched coverage here at The BRAD BLOG.)

If the DNC wishes to stave off the possibility of electronic voting fraud this November, when thousands of crucial elections will take place on the very same day around the country, the time to do so is now. Not in November. The DNC and DCCC ought to be out here and all over the illegally run Busby/Bilbray special U.S. House election from June 6th. NOW.

I can't say it any clearer than that.

At least the DNC won't be able to say, come the day after, November 8th, that they hadn't been warned. Give Berger's article a read.

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Article Categories: Election Reform, Election 2006

Marcy Winograd Fights the Good Fight

An Exclusive BRAD BLOG Interview with a Democratic Congressional Candidate Who's Not Afraid to Stand up for America, Even if it Means Standing Up Against Another Democrat (and a very powerful one at that!)

By Jim Cirile on 5/31/2006 11:23am PT

Guest Blogged by Jim Cirile

"No recounts? I mean, why bother even having elections? Bring in these electronic voting machines, hire a few people to flip the votes, outlaw recounts. You'd save a lot of money by outlawing elections!"

"We conducted a mock arrest at the Secretary of State's office. We went over with our 10-foot high arrest warrant for grand voting theft which we issued to McPherson for certifying those evil machines --- the TSx --- with a 30% failure rate and announcing the certification on a holiday weekend when nobody was paying attention."

-- Marcy Winograd, Candidate U.S. House of Representatives, CA 36th District

Marcy Winograd "was tired of our leaders not listening to us." So she decided to run against one of them --- Jane Harman, another Democrat --- who she felt wasn't listening.

You may not have heard of Winograd yet. But it's time you do.

Winograd hopes to represent California's 36th congressional district (West and Southwest Los Angeles). On June 6th she faces off in the California primary election against the powerful incumbent Harman --- a six-term Democratic U.S. Congresswoman who Winograd describes as a "Bush Democrat".

A 12-year board-certified teacher and activist, Winograd received the 2004 Los Angeles Democrat of the Year award. She's been making waves in the progressive community with her grassroots assault on the incredibly well-financed, pro-war Harman, who has a record of voting consistently with the Bush administration.

Drive around the west side of Los Angeles and you'll see plenty of signs for both Harman and Winograd on telephone poles --- but on people's lawns, you only see Winograd signs. She's making waves?and even Harman's beginning to listen.

Winograd is part of the Impeach Team --- three congressional candidates who have made impeaching George W. Bush and Dick Cheney part of their platform.

She's also a staunch defender of election protection issues and has been fighting tooth and nail to prevent the hostile takeover of California's elections by the right. Unlike so many Democrats, she's unafraid to talk about issues of election integrity --- and she's got a plan in case there's any whiff of chicanery at the ballot box. Okay, so now she's got us listening too.

She recently gave The BRAD BLOG at least an hour of her time for an exclusive interview on everything that actually matters to America right now. We thought that was a refreshing change of pace for a Democrat. So we like her. A lot. And think you will too?

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: California, Election 2006, U.S. House, Democrats

E-VOTING TRAIN WRECK: Another 100+ Machines Fail in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh)!

More Disasters for Pennsylvania, This Time on ES&S Machines, Following Earlier Similar Disasters on Machines in Philly

ALSO: Rick Santorum Locked Out of Polling Place, Unable to Vote This Morning

By Brad Friedman on 5/16/2006 7:55pm PT

Following on our earlier report today, covering 100's of electronic voting machines in Philadelphia which failed to start up this morning for Pennsylvania's primary election, we now have a similar report from the other side of the state.

100's of machines in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, also failed to work correctly today. If we're able to remember correctly (since the story doesn't name any voting machine company names), Allegheny County finally settled on voting machines made by ES&S, after they abandoned hopes of going with Diebold when their machines were found to be hackable, and then later found machines from Sequoia Voting Systems --- who they'd planned to use instead --- were discovered to be similarly hackable.

ES&S eventually won the prize, just weeks before today's primary --- we warned about going with a new system with so little time to prepare, but did they listen? --- yet appear to have lost the day for PA voters, according to this report from Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette...

The first Allegheny County election with electronic voting machines got off to a somewhat rocky start this morning, when more than 100 machines had problems. Surrounding counties reported almost identical problems.

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato today said 120 machines wouldn't produce "zero-count" printouts to start the day confirming there were no votes registered in the machines.

Mr. Onorato said the elections bureau got 400 calls to start the day. By 11 a.m., there were still more than 20 polling places with problems.

There are more than 2,600 of the new machines spread over 1,314 precincts.

Mr. Onorato also said nine machines had their screens cracked during transit to the polling places.
...
Surrounding counties also were reporting problems with the zero-count printouts.

Larry Spahr said 20 or 25 of Washington County's 185 precincts reported problems. Mr. Spahr is director of elections.

More details on the failures in the Post-Gazette's story. Amongst those details, apparently Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was locked out of his polling place when an election worker failed to show up to open it this morning.

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Article Categories: ES&S, Election Irregularities, Pennsylvania, Election 2006, Republicans

E-VOTING TRAIN WRECK 2006: The Wheels Begin to Come Off

Diebold Disasters Leading to Self-Destruction As ES&S Continues to Meltdown and Miss One Contractual Obligation After Another?

By John Gideon on 5/15/2006 6:53am PT

By John Gideon, www.VotersUnite.Org and www.VoteTrustUSA.Org May 15, 2006

Yes, the wheels are wobbling on the locomotives. The vendors --- ES&S, Diebold, and the rest --- attempt to keep a stiff upper lip as they both fail to perform, yet continue collecting tax-payer dollars from the county election coffers. Meanwhile some elections officials have just turned a blind-eye to what is happening while they continue to make excuses for their vendors: The private corporate American Electronic Voting Machine behemoths that are being paid to take over America's Public Electoral system.

And the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) which was put in place by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), theoretically, to keep all of this from occurring? Well, all they do is raise their hands and shrug and tell anyone who asks, that they don't do voting systems certification so they just don't know anything. The Sergeant Schultz Defense, perhaps?

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Article Categories: (Uncategorized), Diebold/Premier, ES&S, Arkansas, Florida, Election Reform, Bruce Funk, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Voting System Certification, Election 2006, Maryland, HAVA, BlackBoxVoting.org, EAC, Harri Hursti

ES&S MELTDOWN: Indiana County to Hand Count Ballots from May 2 Primary After ES&S Machines Discovered to Have 'Malfunctioned'

By Brad Friedman on 5/13/2006 3:16pm PT

From WISH-TV...

CORYDON, Ind. Harrison County election officials will manually count ballots from at least 15 of the county's 35 precincts after malfunctions by election equipment during the May Second primary.

The Indiana secretary of state's Election Division has notified the county that it has the authority to recheck votes cast in precincts where election equipment malfunctioned.

Programming errors in automatic tabulation equipment connected to voting machines were discovered by county officials during the primary. It's unclear whether the manual recount will change any race results.

Harrison is one of several Indiana counties that used voting equipment from Election Systems and Software Incorporated. The Nebraska company has come under investigation by state election officials for numerous software programming problems.

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Article Categories: ES&S, Indiana, Election 2006

ES&S MELTDOWN: Company Secretly Changes Contract with Tennesee Counties, Sends USED Machines for Upcoming Primary Election

By Brad Friedman on 5/13/2006 3:15pm PT

From today's Tennessean...

Used voting machines lack approval by state
Vendor changed contract form language, memo alerts counties

State officials say a vendor of voting machines that more than a dozen counties have lined up to buy surprised them by changing the contract form to allow for used equipment for the Aug. 3 elections.

The state election office had never signed off on the change, according to an "alert" memo it sent out to affected counties.

The April 12 memo said that Election Systems & Software Inc. had added --- without permission --- "used equipment" language to a Tennessee Voting Equipment order form. Davidson, Williamson and Wilson are among the counties waiting for their ES&S machines.
...
Eddie Bryan, chairman of the Davidson County Election Commission, said he doesn't know why ES&S bid on Metro's business if it can't deliver the goods.

"These people have been playing games with us," he said. "I'm not for having any used equipment."

As usual, btw, the reporter gets the story wrong with the same misinformation concerning the Help America Vote Act (HAVA):

The law requires at least one handicapped-accessible machine at each precinct.

As if we haven't repeated this hundreds of times here: HAVA requires one disabled-accessible voting device (not machine!) in each polling place (not precinct, though that error is one we had made previously ourselves). Larger point being that there are other devices for voting that can be used which are not "machines" --- despite how much the vendors appreciate the mainstream media doing their misinformation for them.

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Article Categories: ES&S, Tennessee, Election 2006

DIEBOLD DISASTERS CONTINUE: Company Ships Uncertified Machines, Software to 5 Florida Counties!

By Brad Friedman on 5/12/2006 4:33pm PT

And we entrust these guys to correctly count our votes?! Are we out of our minds? Can these guys do anything right? (These questions have long ago been answered on these very pages, of course.)

From AP today...

Five Florida counties get uncertified voting machines

ORLANDO, Fla. - Five counties received new touch-screen voting machines that weren't certified for use in Florida because they were upgraded without approval from state officials, officials said.

The Diebold Election Systems machines were delivered in Volusia, Polk, Leon, Putnam and Glades counties with memory, processor, display and other improvements.

And from the Daytona Beach News-Journal...

Touch-screen voting devices not certified

DELAND --- A funny thing happened when Volusia County elections officials fired up their new touch-screen voting machines --- they discovered the equipment wasn't certified by the state.

Diebold Election System shipped upgraded models --- 210 of them --- not yet verified by the Florida Division of Elections.

How much higher can the mountain of evidence get to make the case that these guys should be put out of the election business and our democracy's misery immediately and entirely?

Who the hell is running the federal Elections Assistance Commission (EAC)? OJ's jury?!

...CONTACT...
United States Election Assistance Commission
1225 New York Avenue N.W., Suite - 1100
Washington, DC 20005

Telephone: (202) 566-3100
Toll Free: (866) 747-1471
Fax: (202) 566-3127
E-mail Address: HAVAinfo@eac.gov

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Florida, Voting System Certification, Election 2006

Wall Street Journal Covers E-Voting Train Wreck

Glad They've Noticed! But that said...

By Brad Friedman on 5/11/2006 9:51pm PT

An article in the conservative Wall Street Journal tomorrow covers a number of E-voting meltdown/train wreck issues around the country, including the nine lawsuits currently in progress around the country to push back these damned, untested, unsecure, hackable machines and other points of which The BRAD BLOG has been reporting over the last many many months.

We're glad to see them finally take notice and report on these problems to the nation.

The niceties now set aside, the article minimizes the myriad severe problems and security issues throughout. One way of doing that, is referring to these problems as "glitches" no less than five times by our count. Another way of doing that, is quoting Election Integrity attorney Lowell Finley of VoterAction.org in half a sentence. And devoting the rest of the quotes in the piece to spokespersons from Diebold (known liar, David Bear) and ES&S, along with unsecure electronic voting proponent (and cowardly disinformation expert), AZ Sec. of State, Jan Brewer.

None of the many Election Integrity advocates, computer science or security professionals, apparently, were allowed to refute the silly apologists disinformation statements of Brewer, Bear or Ken Fields of ES&S.

Still, one passage from late in the article is just flat wrong:

Despite common charges that the machines lack adequate security, no cases have emerged proving that a hacker or an insider has or could electronically manipulate the vote.

Sounds a whole lot like David Bear talking there. The fact is, the so-called "Hursti Hack" in Leon County, Florida in December, 2005, covered in some detail by the mainstream media, confirmed by CA SoS and Diebold proponent Bruce McPherson's own independent analysis [PDF], proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that both a hacker and an insider could electronically manipulate the vote.

We're happy to see the national coverage. It would be nice if they could avoid such statements that are demonstrably wrong and misleading.

National media may feel free to contact us. We'll be happy to help you avoid such easily avoidable errors and will put you in touch with all manner of experts who can help you understand what's really going on here.

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Article Categories: Diebold/Premier, Mainstream Corporate Media, Election 2006, Mainstream Media Failure

ES&S MELTDOWN: West Virgina Files Formal Complaint with Feds

Sec. of State, Formerly an ES&S Supporter, 'More than Upset About Broken Promises' by Country's Largest E-Voting Company

By John Gideon on 5/10/2006 7:38pm PT

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Just hours ago Betty Ireland, the Secretary of State of West Virginia filed a formal complaint against ES&S with the federal Elections Assistance Commission. A story in the State Journal quotes Secretary Ireland:

"I am more than upset that or county clerks and their staffs and county commissions had to withstand stress and anxiety over the broken promises and delays ES&S put them through".

"And, Ireland says, now that the election is over, strategy talks about the problems with Election Systems and Software will begin...but, "We will not and cannot discuss publicly our legal strategy. As before, we continue to work with the Attorney General's Office to address our options"."

"The state's selection committee chose ES&S because of it's past service in the state and it's knowledge of West Virginia election deadlines and procedures. Ireland says, "Unfortunately, we now feel ES&S let West Virginia down"."

There have been failures all over the state. A small sampling of problems gives us:

Taylor County's votes could not be counted last night because the main computer would not read tabulators from individual voting machines.

Upshur County's counter was in such bad shape that as of midnight the county was trying to get a similar machine from a neighboring county

Mineral County's optical scan ballot counter was producing skewed results

Ohio County could not count about 800 absentee votes because it was not given the equipment to do so

- and ?

Clay, Gilmer, Greenbrier, Putnam, McDowell and Webster that all violated provisions of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 when they were not able provide any voting machines for their voters with disabilities.

The national media? Mums the word for them, it seems.

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Article Categories: (Uncategorized), ES&S, Election Reform, West Virginia, Election 2006, Mainstream Media Failure

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