Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The issue of 50,000 to 100,000 ballots that may not be counted in Los Angeles Co. is still alive and well. Every one of those ballots that can be counted must be counted. The Courage Campaign has a petition to Acting ROV Dean Logan telling him to count all of the “Decline To State” votes possible.

The news from the “Potomac Primaries” has been very quiet. The biggest problems seem to have been e-pollbooks that had voters who were registered as either Democrat or Republican listed as unaffiliated. This clearly kept many voters from being able to vote. The other huge problem was the reports from all over the area about polling places running out of ballots early. This caused lines and many people simply walked away without voting.

Those stories, and all of the other notable voting news items today, linked below as usual...

Yes. there was a primary in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia today. News was scarce before distribution time so stories on today's election will be listed in tomorrow's Daily Voting News edition.

What a mess Colorado has become. Last year the state lost in court because its previous system for certifying the voting machines used in the state was non-compliant with state law. The court required the state to test all voting systems used in the state and have them all recertified. The state hired test labs and spent a huge chunk of taxpayers’ money to do what they were supposed to have already done. This retesting actually managed to find that systems used in the state were not compliant and they were decertified. That put the counties into panic mode, which rendered the Secretary of State seemingly unable to make any decisions. The governor and the state legislature got involved and they have now signed a just passed law that will allow the Secretary of State to rush to recertify all of the voting systems that were previously decertified. Supposedly all of the problems found by the test labs will be taken care of and suddenly all of the non-compliant systems will be compliant. The counties are now happy and the vendors are happy. What a wonderful world.

That story, and the other notable voting news items today --- other than today's late primary elections related stories --- are all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Up to 100,000 votes may not be counted in Los Angeles Co. New Mexico is still counting ballots from the week-old caucus and probably will be for a couple more days. The Washington state GOP has stopped counting caucus votes, with 13% more to be counted, and has declared a winner. These are not voting machine issues but election administration issues. More voters are affected by these failures than they are by voting machines. When you add in all of the problems with voter registration data bases that have been apparent in CA, AZ, NM, LA, and other states so far this year, there is a pattern that should be of great concern. Tomorrow we have primary voters going to the polls in Maryland and Virginia and the District of Columbia. Let’s hope they do much better. If not, we will be reporting their failures.

Blog Owner's Prerogative: We interrupt this 'Daily Voting News' to offer its dedicated and tireless author our best, albeit one-day belated, Happy Birthday wishes! Happy Birthday John Gideon! Hey, at least we were more timely than the NM Dems, the WA GOP, and the L.A. County Registrar's Office! -BF

And now, please see below, as usual, for links to all of today's notable voting news stories...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Next Tuesday is another round of primary voting on DREs. Maryland uses Diebold/Premier DREs. Virginia uses a mixture of different vendors' DREs. Washington DC uses precinct-optical scan and DREs.

Citizens and the media in Bucks Co Pennsylvania are speaking louder and louder for a paper ballot based voting system. They need our voices to join with theirs. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Iowa appears to be on its way to a statewide paper ballot voting system. The Governor is backing down from his plan to outfit the state’s DREs with vvpat printers. Instead he now seems willing to support the plan of the Secretary of State who wants to get rid of the DREs and use optical-scan and paper ballots.

New York counties have made their choices for voting systems for voters with disabilities. Those choices were very important because they lead to the choice that the counties will make for next year for all voters. If a county chose a DRE (only one small county did) then chances are excellent that all voters in that county would end-up using those machines. Three counties and New York City chose AutoMark marketed by either Premier or ES&S and the rest chose a paper based system by Sequoia. These decisions are a tribute to the hard work by citizens in New York state....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The GAO’s report and other reports have done their best to absolve the Sarasota Co. iVotronic DREs from fault in the Congressional District 13 race of 2006. Following their lead a Congressional Panel has recommended that the Christine Jennings challenge to that race be dismissed. Over 18,000 voters were at fault in that race and over 89,000 voters were at fault for undervoting in the state Attorney General race on the same type of machines.

There was an NPR report on New Mexico yesterday that said they were going to do a full recount of all Democratic ballots. That report was incorrect. They are now counting all qualified provisional ballots.

Upcoming primary elections are Louisiana tomorrow and Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia on Tuesday. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Besides the growing number of voting machine problems, none of which would have been helped by adding a vvpat printer to a DRE but most of which would have been helped by banning the DREs outright, we’ve also got the leaking of the GAO report on the Florida CD-13 race from 2006. It seems that the GAO found that the machines were not the cause just the voters. Of course they overlook the fact that the same voting machines in other Florida counties also had a high percentage of undervotes but in different races.

It appears that the good folks who inhabit the Mesa County, CO, Commission seats are about to defy the Secretary of State and, possibly, the courts. They have voted to use their uncertified ES&S voting machines no matter what the state tells them.

This afternoon the New Mexico Democratic Party announced that they were going to go back and recount every vote cast on Tuesday....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are not even close to a settled “Tsunami Tuesday,” and we may not be for another week depending on whether the problems with the Los Angeles Co ballots (Double Bubble Trouble) go to court, but nothing happened to change my mind that DREs need to be banned from our election process. As proven in Arkansas and probably in other states, though news of machine problems was scarce, the addition of a vvpat to a DRE only adds to the possibility of machine malfunction. But we need them for accessible voting, you might say. Anecdotal reports from California are that the single DRE put in each state polling place may not have always actually been set up to be used. They were just there because federal law and state law say they had to be there. (More on disabilities access very soon)

Today's special 'Daily Voting News' Morning Edition headlines are here. Tonight's Evening Edition headlines all follow below in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In last evenings “Daily Voting News” I said that we seemed to have dodged a bullet. That statement may have been made a little early. Most of the big reports are election administration failures. Administration failures are those failures that cannot be blamed on voting machines or the voters or poll workers. They are those failures that fall directly in the laps of clerks or registrars or boards of elections. Not enough paper ballots at the precinct is an administrative failure. The “decline to state” issues in Los Angeles County and elsewhere in California, is an administrative failure that may cost hundreds of thousands of voters their voice. We are also picking out little pieces in media articles and some first hand reports that machines put in some California precincts for voters with disabilities were not operational and voters with disabilities ended-up losing the privacy of their vote just so they could cast a ballot.

Note: This will be the last of the two-a-day DVNs we hope. Headlines and links to the notable voting news stories, since last night's edition, are listed below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I know that any voter who was affected by a machine malfunction or had to wait in a long line will disagree but we seem to have dodged a bullet so far in this primary. Voting machine malfunctions were wide-spread as were electronic poll book failures. This evening and tomorrow will bring us many more reports of problems as counties get polls closed and begin to tabulate the votes. Please note that our information comes from media reports and not anecdotal reports from voters.

Also in the news this evening is a report from Cuyahoga Co Ohio where a judge has denied an injunction filed by the ACLU in which the group hoped to stop the county from changing to centrally-counted paper ballots.

Today's special 'Daily Voting News' Morning Edition headlines are here. Tonight's Evening Edition headlines all follow below in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

There is a lot of voting news today so this will be the morning edition of today’s news. There have been voting machine problems reported around the country. All of the reported problems, so far, have been on DRE machines. None of the reported problems would have been solved by the inclusion of a vvpat printer or an audit. In fact, of the reports we have seen so far, the inclusion of vvpat printers on DREs has actually caused problems with paper jams.

Headlines for those stories, and the other notable voting news items so far today, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Tomorrow will be a busy day for “Daily Voting News.” Depending on the number of reports of failures of voting machines around the country we may send out two issues of the news tomorrow. One will be around Noon Pacific and the second at our regular 4PM Pacific time. Let’s hope that this will not be necessary and that there are no reports of poll sites that didn’t open on time, long lines due to machine failures, voters turned away from the polls without voting due, “vote flipping”, or any other malfunctions or “glitches”.

Two days ago, in this space, I talked about Liberty voting machines and how they had been banned even in their home country, The Netherlands. Late this afternoon a judge in New York found that the state must allow these same machines to be sold in the state. Maybe the judge needs to take a trip and talk to officials in The Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland?

As usual, links to all of today's notable voting news stories, follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro wants to change the state’s voting machines to a paper based system using optical-scan machines. Meanwhile Iowa’s Governor and ex-Secretary of State Chet Culver wants to just add a vvpat printer to the state’s DREs. Mauro has support from the state’s active election integrity community and members of the state legislature from both parties and county election officials from both parties. Culver wants the counties to sink or swim on their own while the state still has over $3M of HAVA money that they can use to partially pay for the change-over. Unfortunately, Culver is in a position to veto any plan that supports Mauro and the voters in Iowa....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Liberty Election Systems (NEDAP) has already been to court in New York and should have a decision early next week as to their argument to be put on the short list of voting systems that can be purchased by the state’s counties. The firm's DRE machine has already been banned in its corporate home in The Netherlands and may soon be banned in parts of Germany. Yesterday Premier Election Systems (Diebold) went to court and obtained a show-cause order directing members of the state Board of Elections to appear for a hearing in state Supreme Court, on Tuesday, to learn why the Premier version of AutoMark was not on the same short list of approved voting systems.

The following message is for the few election officials who are in counties in Colorado and California and a couple other states and who will not be able to use their DRE voting machines. You know who you are. We’ve mentioned this before but the statements are still flowing so it is worth mentioning again: Stop. Whining. Stop whining about not being able to use your DRE voting machines while being required to allow your voters to vote on paper ballots. Yes, you may have to spend a little more time counting your ballots. However, counties all over the country vote on paper ballots and have a majority of those ballots counted at some point on election night. Of course, you’ve now told the media that you won’t be done counting for a week or two so you now have to do all you can to drag out the process so you can be right and you can then thumb your nose at your Secretary of State. Suck it up and do your job and stop acting like spoiled brats....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Next Tuesday is “Tsunami Tuesday,” in which 22 states will participate and of those 15 states will hold primaries. The primary states are: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CT, DE, GA, IL, MA, MO, NJ, NY, OK, TN, and UT. Whether these states will have successful elections or total meltdowns should be based, in large part, on their past history in elections using the same voting systems. Using only data such as whether a state requires a vvpat or post election audits tells only a small part of the story. Have the states experienced large numbers of machine failures, ballot programming errors, tabulating errors, long lines, and/or disenfranchised voters for instance? For instance, looking at VotersUnite’s “Election Problem Log – 2004 to Date” there have been no reported problems from Oklahoma. The risk of any major meltdown in Oklahoma is small when compared to Georgia with 13 machine malfunction reports or California with 24 machine malfunction reports. States that have a real risk of meltdown based on past record are Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Utah. Those will be the states that get our extra attention....