Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I am a Disabled Viet Nam Vet. I am also a retired federal employee. I understand the Hatch Act which was written to ensure that partisan politics has no place in our federal work force. It is a good act and not hard to follow. However, the actions of the Department of Veterans Affairs with regards to not allowing voter registration of veterans in VA run nursing homes, hospitals, and all other VA owned facilities, including a minor league baseball park, are despicable.

The group of people who have every right to vote are those who went to war and fought for that right. For the VA not to allow even non-partisan organizations to help our veterans register to vote and to hide behind the Hatch Act when doing so is a slap in the face to every veteran.

The thought that my brothers and sisters may be prevented from giving their opinion in November because an organization that is supposed to be there to help them actually wants them muzzled, is distasteful to say the least.

That story, and the rest of today's notable voting items, follow below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today is one of those days when there are a lot of important articles but not a lot that gets my brain matter working so I don’t have a lot to say today. Here is the news....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Help America Vote Act requires states to have centralized voter registration data bases. Most of the states have successfully been able to meet this mandate. Colorado, on the other hand, has done about as well with their data base as they did recertifying voting systems; they appear to have failed. Election officials throughout the state tested the system during simulated elections. They found the system extremely slow; in fact it is so slow that many plan on using their old systems to do the actual poll data work on election day. Just a reminder that voter registration data bases are fairly new and there has been a lot of data entry. All voters need to ensure they are on the rolls, their names are spelled correctly, and that there is nothing that will keep them from being able to get ballots in November.

What is all the talk about Lake Co, Indiana, (Gary) reporting last evening’s primary results late? Now the county is promising to be quicker in reporting. They need to ensure every vote is counted and that every vote is counted correctly. The media can wait for those correct numbers. Don’t speed up just to satisfy the cable news services....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As is becoming typical, the Main Stream Media are not reporting a lot of voting problems today. It appears that we have to wait for the busy election protection hotlines to report on their day. One thing for sure is that turnout was huge.

Early voting began today in Washington Co, Arkansas, where the county is using some paper ballots in which names of some unopposed judicial candidates are missing. State law requires any unopposed candidate to get at least one vote and that has happened. It is typical for the ballot printer, ES&S (yes, the one and the same ES&S), to mis-print ballots but why did the county not proofread their ballots before they got into a position where they had to use them? Those stories and more below. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Governor John Corzine of New Jersey has signed yet another extension of the electronic voting paper verification requirement for his state. Now citizens of New Jersey will again vote in an election without any paper. What the state needs to do is to get rid of their Sequoia Advantage voting system and get an actual paper ballot system that really works. Events in the state’s primary election prove that the Advantage system may have actually violated federal accuracy law (HAVA Section 301(a)(5)). No vvpat printer would have fixed that problem.

According to BlackBoxVoting.Org, while 4.3 million voters are registered to vote in Indiana the state has recently purged 1.1 million voters from the voter rolls with one quarter of that total coming from two counties. Those and other stories are below....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Indiana’s use of a wide range of voting systems and some produced by smaller vendors has historically proved to be problematic. There is no reason to expect next Tuesday’s primary to be anything different. North Carolina seems to have gotten past their issues with voting machines. It would be great if neither state had problems. One can only hope....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Yesterday Cuyahoga Co announced that in preparation for a lawsuit against Diebold/Premier they were going to have their old DRE voting system inspected by Systest Labs. This is a clear conflict of interest because Systest is presently testing the new Premier Assure voting system for EAC certification. Today the news from Ohio is that Secretary of State Brunner wants to get rid of the requirement that voting systems used in Ohio must be federally tested against the voting systems standards and federally certified. She wants the state to hire a lab to do the work [is there any doubt which lab?] for the state and to the state’s standards. Today’s news was accompanied by a statement that Brunner wants to eliminate the need to have the equipment also meet federal standards for accuracy, security, and reliability. What the reporter, or more likely whomever he spoke with in Brunner’s office, does not understand is that accuracy is a mandate of federal law. HAVA dictates the accuracy of voting machines; not the voluntary voting system standards....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In this space in yesterday’s DVN I made comments about “Women’s Voices; Women Vote” and their actions, as reported by the media, in North Carolina. Some readers have responded in defense of “WVWV.” Until yesterday I had not heard of that organization but the media reports that I read led me to believe that voters in NC were very possibly being disenfranchised by robo-calls made by this group. As I make every attempt possible to keep this space non-partisan I did not mention any names. Since yesterday’s DVN “WVWV’s” actions seem to have become a partisan issue. I regret the involvement of DVN in this issue, though I do want to condemn the use of robo-calls by any organization no matter whom they are supporting or what their goal. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

North Carolina voters who live in predominately black neighborhoods are the target of robo-calls and a mailing campaign, by a national non-profit called “Women’s Voices; Women Vote,” that may result in many voters being disenfranchised. The calls warn voters, whether registered or not, that they cannot vote until they fill out the information in a packet they will receive in the mail. The packet contains a voter registration form. What the call and the information in the packet don’t tell the voters is that it is too late to register to vote in the primary and that if recipients are already registered they don’t have any concerns. This same scheme has been used in other states prior to their primary elections. It is time that legislation be written and passed that will make these schemes illegal....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In a laughable blog item Sequoia’s Michelle Shafer takes snippets of news articles that make Sequoia’s machines look good while she ignores all of the reports of problems. It must be harder and harder for Shafer to find good things to write about. Just last week she was attempting to make a point that Sequoia’s intellectual property (IP) must be protected from independent review in New Jersey. Then details of a company-wide phone call were released that revealed that not only does Sequoia not own any IP but that President Jack Blaine made statements about how good it was that they didn’t have any IP....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today’s wrong-minded Supreme Court ruling on voter ID is not really a surprise but it is still very disappointing and disheartening. I’ve listed a few articles under “NAtional” below even though the ruling affects Indiana only at this time. The ruling will open the flood gates for more states to join the move to disenfranchise voters. It is a sad day....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an updated article, Brad Friedman reveals that while the Sequoia spokeswoman, Michelle Shafer, claims that their Intellectual Property (IP) must be protected, in fact, they don’t even own the IP used on their voting systems. It is still owned by Smartmatic of Venezuela, the previous owner of Sequoia.

Does the State Attorney’s Office that has jurisdiction in Broward Co Florida really expect us to believe that there is no conflict of interest when the county writes a no-bid contract with ES&S for $5.4M for new optical-scan machines, where one of the county commissioner’s husbands works for the lobbying firm that represents ES&S? He was also the lobbyist who sold the county $18M worth of junk DREs in 2002. Are they blind or do they just think the voters are stupid?

Those stories, and more, all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Attorney Penny Venetis won a huge victory in court in New Jersey today. The judge found against Sequoia Voting Systems and the state. Election officials, who have complained about an issue with the machines where a few machines misreported some results on Super Tuesday, can now provide the machines to Prof. Ed Felten of Princeton University for inspection. The good Professor gets the machines, software, and source code. Sequoia had threatened to attempt to quash any subpoenas that were issued. The judge has now scheduled a court date for September to hear testimony regarding the reliability of the Sequoia voting machines. One has to wonder how the folks at Hart Intercivic feel about their attempt to take over Sequoia in light of this new development....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

What happened in Pennsylvania and what can be done about it? All indications, outside of the main stream media, are that there were problems all over the state with voting systems. There were many anecdotal reports of vote flipping and other machines failures that never made it into the media. State election officials from the Secretary of State on down seem to have misrepresented the facts as they talked about the “scattered” problems and the media reported that propaganda. The state needs to do an honest appraisal of their voting systems and decide whether the status quo is more important than the voter’s voices. The state must also realize that if they are only going to put two DREs per polling place they must make paper ballots available to anyone who wants one and certainly for use when a machine fails in any way. Not a provisional ballot that may, or may not, be counted but a paper ballot that will be counted on election night. Unless something is done Pennsylvania will be the site of an election disaster in November and our democracy does not need three national elections in a row that are train wrecks....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two and a half years ago Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield), purchased 930 new Populex voting machines for $1.7M. The state will not accept them for use to count vote-by-mail (absentee) ballots so the county has been hand-counting those ballots and using a machine to check the hand-count. Now Populex has said that they don’t plan on continuing the federal testing and certification process that they had begun over a year ago. The county will probably have to scrap these new machines and go elsewhere. An expensive mistake.

How can election officials in Pennsylvania find problems but not do all they can to ensure every vote is counted? There was more than one report of votes on machines that had problems but officials not being interested unless it is “necessary”.

Those stories, and more today, all linked below...