Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Besides the presidential primaries in South Dakota and Montana there are primary elections in many states across the nation. Most of those elections are reported to be low turn-out affairs. New Mexico is reporting problems with its state-wide voter database. If the database can’t handle a low-turnout election what will happen in November?

Premier (Diebold) has decided to file suit against Cuyahoga Co., Ohio, so the company can get a ruling that it fulfilled its contract with the county. The lawsuit, filed in a more friendly Franklin Co., is a pre-emptive strike against Cuyahoga, which had threatened to sue Premier....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I’m back after a much needed rest and with a freezer re-stocked with fish. Today, in catch-up mode, I am running some of what I think are important items from the last week. In two cases these items come from VotersUnite.

One is a recount of public hearings here in Washington state with regards to an upgraded voting system to count the “Ranked Choice Voting” ballots in one county’s upcoming primary and general elections. We were very pleased with the openness and willingness of state and local election officials to work with us and listen to our concerns, and then to act on those concerns. I would also like to give a plug to a book review done by my associate, Ellen Theisen, for a book called “Cassandra, Chanting.” The book is an excellent piece of fiction and I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in elections and electronic ballots. The author is “Anonymous” but is part of the NIST team so his or her concerns should be all of our concerns. This fiction could easily be fact and we may never know it.

Also please note the call for help from Arizona. Activists there have a ton of data given to them by the courts but they need technical help wading through it.

NOTE FROM BRAD: We interrupt this DVN to note we're happy to have Big John back safely on dry land! Thought you all might enjoy you're once-yearly look at the man who makes it happen every day. Apparently his trip to Alaska wasn't just for the halibut this year. Though this year's champion catch came in at "about 121 lbs.," John tells us, making last year's King Salmon seem downright puny.

"The deckhand [in orange] is the one holding the bigger of the two fish which weighs nearly as much as he does," says Gideon the Giant. Mind you, John is, himself, about 7 foot 13 inches. Both literally, and figuratively...

...And now back to your regularly scheduled Daily Voting News...As usual, notable stories are all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Faulkner Co, Arkansas, media are reporting that there was a tabulating error on machines in at least one precinct. In the East Cadron B precinct the iVotronic moved votes for Cadron Township Constable candidate John Edwards to Linda Tyler, who was a candidate for House District 45. This seems to be “vote flipping plus.”

Two US Senators have now joined together to sponsor bipartisan legislation that will ensure the continued use of DREs. In this case they require the voter has a means of verification but that verification can be paper, video, audio, or even electronic. Does that mean that the review screen on the present DREs is good enough? It may be.

I will be publishing DVN tomorrow and then we will be going on a week hiatus while the editor, publisher, writer, and chief cook and bottle washer takes his annual trip to chase the wily Alaska Salmon. Unfortunately the lodge now has wireless so I may be able to keep up with some of the most important news as it happens....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It was a successful day in Pima Co, Arizona, where a Superior Court Judge found that the county failed to prove its contention that the release of all electronic election databases to the Pima County Democratic Party would jeopardize the integrity of future elections and that they must release those computer records from past and future elections.

New federal legislation to be introduced by Sens. Feinstein and Bennett would require that voters casting their ballots using direct recording electronic (touch screen) voting systems would be able to simultaneously verify their choices by means of an independent paper, electronic, audio, video, or pictorial record. Such records would be auditable and would also be available for review in the event of a recount. The effective date for implementing this requirement would be January 1, 2012, unless a state requested a waiver until January 1, 2014. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The minor problems experienced by voters in Arkansas that I reported here two days ago seem to have been a lot worse than was reported by the media on Tuesday; at least in White Co. Not one voting machine functioned properly at any of 32 polling places in the county. In one race there was a 3,954-vote disparity. That problem was cleared up only after the losing candidate found the disparity and called it to the attention of officials. Also, the internal clocks were never set for Daylight Savings time so the machines would not open on time and would not close on time. Also on the list of errors was candidates' names left off of the ballot....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Is anything but a take-over by Hart Intercivic going to save Sequoia Voting Systems? The Sequoia president, Jack Blaine, seems to have been caught, again, trying to deceive officials. This time he may have been less than truthful when providing testimony and written responses to members of the Chicago Board of Elections and a concerned city alderman. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As of press time there are no reports in the media of voting machine problems in Kentucky. There were some reports of “minor problems” in Arkansas today where they are also holding elections.

ES&S is raping New Mexico counties for maintenance charges for the state’s machines. The Secretary of State has had to borrow $153,000 from another state agency to pay 6 months on the maintenance contract. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

41 voters in Atlanta, Texas went to the polls to vote for, amongst other items, a candidate for City Council District 1. Little did those voters know that the city had leased the machines from Cass County and Hart Intercivic had done the ballot programming which contained an error. It turns out that the vendor had programmed the DREs used by the city so more than just citizens of District 1 could vote in that particular race. Rather than 41 votes there was a combined total of 198 votes cast. This is an accuracy issue that was not caused by the voters and is another clear violation of HAVA Section 301(a)(5)....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

On March 4 election officials in Butler Co Ohio discovered that even though their system said that all memory cards had been read, in fact the system did not read one of the cards. This is an error in accuracy. Last Thursday Diebold issued a report to the county to report the results of their investigation. Diebold will fix the software problem and send it through the federal certification process. It appears that the county will just live with the problem and mitigate it with administrative procedures. First, this is a violation of HAVA Section 301(a)(5) but more importantly why would any county use a voting system that has already proven itself to be inaccurate? This is an outrage....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Some county election officials in Ohio are pushing to continue using only central-count optical scan. The ACLU withdrew a suit against Cuyahoga Co because the county promised to go to precinct-count optical scan. Now the county wants to renege on that deal.

It appears that Tennessee will join the paper-age. Newly passed legislation requires all voting machines to be paper based, i.e. optical scan, beginning in 2010.

The Missouri legislature was unable to pass any Voter ID legislation today, the end of their legislative session....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just yesterday we mentioned that there was not a lot about voting system problems in West Virginia. Today the media woke up and began reporting. Nothing really serious but there were problems reported and probably many more that the media never discovered or cared to ask about.

There may have been fraud in the handling of ballots in a local school council race in Chicago. Losing candidates, all incumbents, have hired an attorney and asked for a new election. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It appears that West Virginia either had very, very few machine failures yesterday or they were very, very successful at keeping the failures out of the news.

It appears that our friends north of the border want the same instant gratification that our media insist on. New Brunswick has changed to optical-scan machines so they can get quicker results, amongst other reasons....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Do you know where your passport is? Do you have one? Do you know where your birth certificate is? How about your marriage license? In Missouri, and probably more states to come, some law makers want you to prove your citizenship before you can register to vote. This is clearly an attempt to stop the hoards of Mexicans and Canadians who stream over our borders each Nov. just to vote in our elections; or more likely just an attempt to keep some people from the polls. If you don’t have a birth certificate you have to pay to get a copy. If you are a woman and married the birth certificate is not enough; you need a marriage license to prove your maiden name. Can’t afford the copies if you don’t have them? You don’t vote. Born without a birth certificate? You don’t vote. Birth certificate or marriage license originals no longer exist because of fire, flood, hurricane (Katrina, Rita)? You don’t vote. Who is affected? The poor, people of color, citizens with disabilities, homeless. This has got to stop....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Tomorrow is West Virginia’s turn to primary. Unfortunately for the voters WV is totally an ES&S state. Over half of the voters will vote on DREs, though some think that those machines are safer because they include a vvpat printer. As usual we will watch the media for problems in WV counties so you don’t have to.

As usual, today's notable voting news stories are linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Happy Mothers Day!

On Friday, not a day to announce good news in a press release, the EAC announced that Alice Miller, the Executive Director of the Washington DC Bureau of Elections and Ethics (BOEE), has been named to fill the post of Chief Operating Officer for the EAC. On the face of it this looks to be fine; however, Miller’s appointment keeps the door between NASED and the EAC revolving. EAC officers and employees; Davidson, Wilkey, Hancock, and consultants; Freeman; were all involved in what can only be described as a failed voting system qualification system. Alice Miller was the head of NASED at the time that many of the failing voting systems were being qualified for use in our elections. ...