This morning there are some articles that were from last night after I sent the evening edition. Anything I entered this morning is strictly about problems with voting machines and tabulation of votes. Except for something that I feel needs to be in DVN that is not about technology and vote counting I will probably skip it unless it is a big story. I have also made things easier and added notes between brackets [ ] so the reader will know the manufacturer of the system and/or what the problem is that is being reported.

There are some problems with vote tabulation that will be followed. Hillsborough Co Florida is having problems with their Premier/Diebold system and with the vendor. Washoe Co Nevada is reporting 40 blank memory cards. Boulder Co Colorado is having problems because their Hart eScan optical-scan machines have problems with ballot dust and dirt...

Provisional ballot usage has become a big issue this election. Many voters don’t want to use them and who can blame them? Many voters need to use them as the only way they can vote. Part of the problem is that they are misused by election officials.

Voter suppression schemes are being used around the country. Someone hacked into the George Mason University intranet and sent an email to staff and students, via the Provost’s email, that election day had been moved to Wed. The Provost, on discovering this, sent an email to tell recipients this was a hoax. Robocalls have been placed to voters telling them the same thing. However, with all of these schemes, and more, the turnout will probably set a record at the polls.

A judge has ordered a restraining order at the request of the McCain campaign to require the state to extend the date for adding votes from military voters to the totals to Nov 14 from close of polls today. This means the election may not be certified until after Nov 14.

Also going to court is a group representing the voters of Philadelphia who are asking a judge to tell the county to follow a previous ruling and to count emergency paper ballots tonight and not later in the week as they want.

And the Ohio GOP has filed asked a federal court to rule that provisional ballots be verified and counted the same way statewide....

Provisional ballot usage has become a big issue this election. Many voters don’t want to use them and who can blame them? Many voters need to use them as the only way they can vote. Part of the problem is that they are misused by election officials.

Voter suppression schemes are being used around the country. Someone hacked into the George Mason University intranet and sent an email to staff and students, via the Provost’s email, that election day had been moved to Wed. The Provost, on discovering this, sent an email to tell recipients this was a hoax. Robocalls have been placed to voters telling them the same thing. However, with all of these schemes, and more, the turnout will probably set a record at the polls.

A judge has ordered a restraining order at the request of the McCain campaign to require the state to extend the date for adding votes from military voters to the totals to Nov 14 from close of polls today. This means the election may not be certified until after Nov 14.

Also going to court is a group representing the voters of Philadelphia who are asking a judge to tell the county to follow a previous ruling and to count emergency paper ballots tonight and not later in the week as they want.

And the Ohio GOP has filed asked a federal court to rule that provisional ballots be verified and counted the same way statewide....

This is it. The day we have been waiting for.

Problems began first thing this morning with machine failures in New Jersey. There were also reports of memory cards failing on AVS Winvote machines in Fairfax Co Virginia. The wet weather in some states has caused problems with paper ballots that have swollen enough to not work in optical scan machines. The ballots are being put in ballot boxes until they dry enough to be run. Voting machines in 8 Philadelphia precincts have failed and emergency paper ballots are being passed out.

Voting machines supplied for voters with disabilities have been removed from use by order of a court. The counties Hart Intercivic eSlates failed to register straight-party votes properly. ...

Election day is tomorrow

Fulton and Clayton Counties, Georgia have decided that they will have enough time at the polls for all voters who want to vote to do that. They both decided not to ask the state, before-hand, to allow them to keep the polls open longer than normally allowed. Wouldn’t it have been better to ask to keep them open longer and have no one waiting on line than to force people to wait on line so you can close at the normal time? Of course, both counties have said they can handle the crowds because they have enough machines. They ignore, again, that the bottle-neck has been and will be the voter check-in procedure and their overly slow computer system. In other states it may be the ballot-on-demand system for optical-scan ballots.

In another great article from Kim Zetter and the WiredBlog, Threat Level, she reports on ‘vote-flipping’ and the ES&S voting machines.

Also from Kim is the news that one Michigan election official warned the EAC over a week ago that ES&S M-100 optical-scan machines used in her county don’t consistently tally ballots. These machines are used all across the country....

Election day is tomorrow

Well, here we are. Tomorrow is the day we have been building toward. Today much of the news is articles of reassurance from election officials across the nation. They say they are ready. Tomorrow we will see just how ready they are. Our main reporting tomorrow will be on voting machine problems and long lines due to voting machine and voter registration data base problems. No matter how much officials assure their voters that they are ready machines still fail to work, polls open late, votes are flipped, polls run out of paper ballots, e-poll books fail, machines are allotted unfairly, and lines will be long. Wednesday and the rest of the week we will hear about the tabulation and reporting problems. Lost votes from tabulators that were not designed or built to handle the number of votes they are expected to count; ballot printing and programming errors that result in hundreds of lost votes. These and more have been the stories of the past. Can we expect any better for the rest of this week? I hope so but I’m not holding my breath....

2 days until Election Day.

I recommend that everyone watch the video that is our ‘Feature’ article this morning. This is what our election officials think of the voters? How can this woman compare standing on line to vote with standing on line for an I-Pod or baseball tickets? Amazing!

Lines for early voters in Georgia were reported to be 8 to 10 hours long last week. Lines in other states were hours long with thousands of voters standing in those lines. And now election officials across the nation are warning that lines will be long on Tuesday. What do the long lines do? They serve to turn voters away from voting.

How many of those voters who stood on line during early voting or who will be standing on line on Tuesday will lose wages from jobs they are not working at so they can vote? Is this not a type of poll-tax? Is it not voter suppression and disenfranchisement?

Our nation cannot allow this to be the norm. Investigations need to be held to find what are the causes of the bottle-necks and what can be done about them. If federal law needs to written and passed then that must happen so never again do voters have to stand on line for hours and hours so their voices can be heard. It is amazing that voters feel so strongly about exercising the franchise of voting that they would be willing to suffer as they have but they should never have to make that choice again....

3 days until Election Day.

Just a comment to those who want to dismiss ‘vote-flipping’ as voter error. All kinds of people go to the polls to vote. They are highly educated and high-school dropouts. Rich and poor. They have long fingernails and nails bitten to the quick. They have thin fingers and wide fingers. They are going to softly touch the screen or touch it hard. Vendors and election officials tend to blame vote-flipping on the voters. They touched the screen too hard; drug their finger; had long fingernails; or their fingers touched too large an area. So, is it the voters fault? NO! It is the vendors who designed, built and sold these machines that don’t work for all voters and it is the election officials who bought those machines.

A large majority of the ‘vote-flipping’ has been on older ES&S iVotronic DREs; those machines that were featured on last year’s Dan Rather Reports. The cheaply built, poorly tested touch screens that were used as components on those systems should have been scrapped long ago. It’s not the voters fault and this constant pointing of fingers is wrong. The vendors need to remember that when they point a finger at the voters they have three fingers pointing back at the real culprit, themselves; and it makes no difference what those fingers look like, they are the fingers of blame....

3 days until Election Day.

Amongst all of the stories of failures, lawsuits, voter purges and voter suppression there is an occasional story that begs to be read and passed on to others so they will read it. This morning’s featured article is one of those. Imagine wanting to exercise your right to vote so strongly that you are willing to travel from Bangalore, India to New York City just to step into the voting booth and pull the lever. It’s a story worth the read....

4 days until Election Day.

This from a statement by U.S. Rep. John Lewis this morning, during a state Capitol press conference to discuss those long waits to vote:

“We are requesting that the Secretary of State [Karen Handel] use Florida and North Carolina as an example. We ask that she extend early voting in Georgia through Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We believe the number of poll workers should be increased at polling sites where a large turnout is expected.

“She must increase the number of voter registration machines at locations where there is large turnout, and we are calling on Governor [Sonny] Perdue and Karen Handel to request emergency voting rights pre-clearance from the Department of Justice to clear the path for these changes.

“My office is preparing a letter right now, advising the Attorney General Mukasey of these issues in Georgia and encouraging him to grant emergency pre-clearance, when it is requested.”

It is still unknown whether the state is interested in letting their citizen’s voices be heard....

4 days until Election Day.

Georgia has, again, had problems with their voter registration database. This time there were between 500 and 1000 voters, depending on reports, who were left standing in line for two hours while they waited for Fulton Co. officials to reestablish connection with the state’s computer system. This will be a huge problem on election day and may cause thousands of voters to give-up and go home. Let’s hope not.

I never imagined that I would find myself agreeing with anything that John Fund had to say but in our ‘Featured’ article Fund wrote one graf that gives me hope for the guy. He said, “Independent, nonpartisan groups, as well as candidates and parties, should be authorized to appoint poll watchers to observe the election and the vote tabulation. All vendors who supply voting machines and computer software should be required to undergo investigation for financial security and integrity. Clear rules for identifying what constitutes a vote and procedures for contesting an election result must be developed by each state”....

5 days until Election Day.

The Brennan Center, Common Cause, and Verified Voting are reminding election officials from Diebold/Premier jurisdictions about a problem with Premier Election Solutions' vote tabulating software that could cause the system to lose votes. I hope this reminder and their recommended actions are not too late and that officials will listen and pay heed.

CNN did a pretty good article on straight-party voting. There was one quote that is good for a chuckle and shake of the head. One of the voting systems that has had reported vote flipping in straight-party voting is manufactured by Hart Intercivic. The vendor’s spokesman, Peter Lichtenheld, actually pointed at the voters for making the error and then said the problem stems from habits formed when doing punch-card voting. Yes, the voters just can’t tell the difference between a punch card and the Hart eSlate. He claimed, “In that system, you didn't know if the chad separated or not, so people would punch each candidate after punching the [straight-ticket] part, just to be sure.” It is amazing to what lengths the vendors will go to blame the voters for all of the problems with the vendor’s machines. ...

5 days until Election Day.

A deal was struck last evening in Colorado with the Secretary of State. 20,000 voters who were illegally purged from the state’s voter rolls will now be allowed to vote using provisional ballots and those ballots will get priority handling and a presumption of validity by Colorado counties.

The Reform Institute, a non-partisan public policy organization, today released a checklist to assist voters in casting their ballots. The checklist provides helpful tips for voters, especially those going to the polls for the first time, to facilitate a voting process free of complications....

6 days until Election Day.

Today a federal judge found in favor of the voters of Pennsylvania and ordered the state to require every polling place to be prepared to hand out paper ballots to voters any time 50% or more of the polling places voting machines go down for any reason.

The Election Assistance Commission announced today that they were intending to suspend SysTest Labs accreditation to test voting systems. This action follows the suspension of the lab by the National Voting Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The suspension was for SysTest’s lack of properly documented and validated test methods, testing conducted by unqualified or untrained personnel, and improper assurances made to manufacturers regarding testing outcomes. This loss of accreditation will probably affect SysTest’s ability to complete testing for the state of New York. It also brings into question all recent testing done for the state of Colorado and Ohio and all previous testing of voting systems under the previous NASED system. ...

6 days until Election Day.

A blind voter in Dane Co, Wisconsin, went to the polls hoping to finally be able to vote without assistance from another person. She ended up having to call over an election worker to assist her because the ES&S AutoMark machine only gave her an error message. Then when that was fixed her ballot would not print out because the machine was out of ink. She had to have someone help her to mark a paper ballot. And, this was in the Madison City Clerk's office, not an out-of-the-way polling site. Federal law says there must be an accessible voting machine at each polling place. I guess Congress should have pointed out the obvious: That machine has to work.

This morning, along with the rest of the news, we also have reports of vote flipping on ES&S iVotronic machines in Jefferson Co, Texas. And also from Texas there are reports of ill treatment of voters at some polls in the state. Poll workers are taking it upon themselves to demand photo ID even though state law does not require it. They are also not offering provisional ballots in instances where they are required to offer them....