Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

VotersUnite would like to express our gratitude to all who have assisted us in the past year. We truly appreciate your support and friendship. We would like to wish you all the best for the New Year. While great strides were made this past year, unfortunately, it takes the failures of the voting machine vendors for us to get some people to listen; but they are beginning to hear now and actions are being taken. We have a very busy year in front of us with primary elections and then the general election in November. Unfortunately this year may be another “Train Wreck.” Hopefully this will be the last. We hope you have a better year than last.

And with that, today's notable voting news stories are all linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Pennsylvania has now decertified all Advanced Voting Solutions voting systems used by three counties. This action followed the EAC's cancellation of testing of AVS software. One of the three counties has already announced that they plan on filing suit against AVS for breach of contract. Can this be the end of another vendor?

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has now proposed that two or three counties test her newest plan to use vote centers in Ohio. The test would take place during the March 4 primary. There are now about 40 working days before the primary election. There are seven months between the primary and general election. Why this rush to test out major changes in elections in as short a period as possible? ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Election officials in Colorado and Ohio seem to have a different opinion every day. Now Colorado SOS Coffman wants legislation that will say that federal certification is good enough. He doesn’t want the state to do any certification testing of voting systems. Of course, that does nothing for any voting system presently used in the state but it may make a difference sometime next year when there are actually federally certified voting systems. Meanwhile Ohio SOS Brunner has reportedly announced that DREs used in counties other than Cuyahoga are alright and don’t have to go away in favor of central-count optical scan. Do either of these people understand what they are doing? It seems not....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

That story, and today's other notable voting news, posted below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. After telling the state of Colorado that changes can be made to allow electronic voting to take place next Nov. the SoS, Mike Coffman, is now supporting all paper elections and vote centers. This guy is like a flag and goes which ever way the wind is blowing. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are going to take tomorrow off for Christmas. VotersUnite would like to extend our heartfelt good wishes to all of you and your families for a wonderful day tomorrow. Merry Christmas to you all. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

New York City has already decided to purchase one “Ballot Marking Device” for each polling place in the city. That puts them one step ahead of the rest of the state.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania has joined other states which have read the Colorado reports and decided that any testing done in Colorado does not apply to their state even though they use the same machines.

West Virginia says that even though they use machines that were decertified in Colorado they just don’t know enough to decide whether to get rid of them.

Editorials and Op-Eds from Ohio papers are mixed. The opinions of the papers surely echo the opinion of the county election offices rather than an opinion made after research and education.

Those stories, and the rest of today's voting news, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Colorado Secretary of State Coffman continues to step as far away from state law as he possibly can. Rather than protect the voters it seems that Coffman wants to do everything possible to cut corners and ignore the facts in order for counties to use the machines he just decertified. Now Coffman is allowing Mesa Co to do their own certification testing to see if they can figure out a way to make their ES&S iVotronics work. “Even if Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S couldn’t get the systems to work for the certification, county officials likely can, Coffman said.” He wants to allow the counties to do their own testing and then go to the legislature and have them approve what has been done by the counties. Does anyone smell another law suit?

More info on that, and links to today's other notable voting news, follows below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just in late this afternoon, a typical-bad-news-on-a-late-Friday-after-the-news-week-is-complete, is the news that OH Secretary of State Brunner has ignored the statements of every person who spoke before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. She has decided that the county must change voting systems and voting system vendors before the primary election, which is March 4, with early voting beginning in a little over a month. ES&S will be given the contract.

Two more states have begun to look at the results of testing of voting systems and they are answering questions of the media. In both cases, Nevada and Louisiana election officials told the same story. Yes, they use the same machines and the machines have the same problems BUT they have administrative methods that make the findings from Ohio and Colorado inconsequential. Of course, both states have the same, or nearly the same, administrative methods as both Ohio and Colorado and the methods described in the media would not have any impact on the insecure, inaccurate and inaccessible voting systems in use.

Speaking of inaccessibility of voting systems; why has no one yet stood-up and reminded these states that their reports say the machines do not meet HAVA requirements? Why is this being ignored?

All of those stories, and many more, linked below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Did you wonder how Diebold/Premier escaped the axe in Colorado? While all of the other vendors had their machines decertified or had strict conditions set on them Diebold/Premier came away fairly clean. It seems that Secretary of State Coffman is running for Congress next year. The consultants for his campaign also seem to be the consultants for Diebold/Premier. Coffman went a long way to keep Diebold/Premier from being decertified because his testing board recommended that all electronic voting systems used in the state be decertified. Coffman reportedly used his discretion to decide which systems were “substantially compliant”. Diebold/Premier which has gotten consistently negative reports from across the nation got the head-nod and wink from Coffman.

A decision was made in the DoJ complaint against the state of New York. Details are still sketchy but it looks like the state needs to have a plan by Jan. 4.

174 ePROM chips for San Diego Co.’s optical-scan machines were lost somewhere between the California Secretary of State’s office and the county. The chips were packaged in two tubes by Diebold/Premier employees under witness by SoS employees. They were shipped by Diebold/Premier’s normal shipper, FedEx. San Diego Co.’s Registrar, on a witch hunt, is blaming SOS Bowen for the problems.

Cuyahoga Co.’s Board of Elections voted 2-2 on whether to accept SOS Brunner’s plan to change voting systems before the state primary election. The decision is now hers.

Details on all of those stories, and many more today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Now that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has followed state law and found that nearly every voting system used in the state has problems resulting in decertification or conditional certification of those systems, he wants the laws changed to make voting system certification easier.

He claims he doesn’t want to change requirements for security or accuracy but, on the other hand, he thinks a change to state law to allow the vendors to install software patches following an abbreviated certification process, with no federal testing or certification, would be good.

He also doesn’t want to be bothered with state certification testing, looking instead to other states for their test results. Of course this would allow him to pick and chose between states.

California decertified Diebold/Premier voting systems and recertified them with conditions. Colorado did not decertify their Diebold/Premier machines. Perhaps Coffman would rather look at testing done by Washington state where there is next to no testing other than an acceptability test done on vendor provided equipment with vendor provided test ballots? He clearly doesn’t like the results of his own testing so he is searching for a test that will give him what he considers to be acceptable results.

Links to that story, and all the other notable voting news today, follows below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I always thought that “sleepovers” were beyond the limit of good security. In a court election contest in Wilkinson Co Mississippi the county Circuit Clerk pled the fifth amendment to several questions. One of the questions was “Is it true you had a pre-election party that voting machines were taken to?”

The results of the Ohio study are stunning with regards to the ES&S iVotronic DRE. The study found that a voter or poll worker can easily recalibrate the touch-screen; access control can be defeated by someone with a small magnet and a PDA or cell phone; and there is a back door entry that can be gained bypassing password requirements.

The Colorado SOS is now telling the media that they may be able to use some of the decertified voting systems by patching the software. Patches require testing and certification. Is he getting nervous?

Links to those stories, and the other notable voting news today, all posted neatly below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A very busy day today. There are still articles about the EVEREST report completed in the state of Ohio. Based on that report, recommendations were made to Cuyahoga County to change their voting system and vendor from DREs by Premier to central-count optical scan by ES&S. It appears that the county is going to do the correct thing and not make any rash decisions. They should probably make some changes but not a wholesale change of vendors and certainly not when that vendor is ES&S. A final decision will be made later this week.

This afternoon the state of Colorado announced that they were decertifying all voting machines and peripherals from ES&S as well as the Sequoia Edge II and Edge II Plus and optical scan systems provided by Hart Intercivic. Voting systems from Premier, optical scan and peripherals from Sequoia and DREs and peripherals from Hart were conditionally certified.

Also two amicus briefs were filed today in the NY v. DOJ case....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As we were expecting today’s news is dominated with news from Ohio and the results of Secretary of State Brunner’s review of voting systems used in that state. There are also reports from Cuyahoga Co. regarding the push by Brunner for that county to immediately change over to ES&S central-count optical scan machines and voting centers to replace the county’s polling places. In light of the fact that the state’s primary election is March 4 and state law requires early voting to begin 35 days prior to March 4 Brunner is asking the county to completely change voting systems and vendors and to train voters and poll workers in less than three months and to have ballots printed by ES&S five weeks from now. This is very unwise. As bad as elections have been in Cuyahoga Co this push from the Secretary will only make things worse. We urge the county to conduct the primary on what they have now then change during the 7 months between the primary and the general election....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner released the results of her EVEREST (Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing) report. There is a lot of interesting reading for the technical types and for the non-technical among us. Brunner has, with input from a bi-partisan group of county elections people, recommended that changes be made before next years elections; no DREs, no Precinct-Based Optical Scan, hand-marked paper ballots to be counted on Central-Count Optical Scan except for the use of Ballot Marking Devices for voters with disabilities, early voting up to 15 days, and voting centers. One has to hope that if all of the counting is going to take place on CCOS machines that no vendors will be involved in that counting and that the counting be open to the public. One pleasant surprise was that Brunner went farther than the rumors said she would go. Not only did she release her “Executive Summary” but the technical reports were released at the same time. Thank you for that openness, Secretary Brunner....