Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Last year Luzerne County, PA, spent $2.4M on 750 ES&S iVotronic DREs and a one-year warranty. Now that the first warranty is to expire ES&S wants $300,000 for a three-year warranty. The county Director of Elections has written the state and told them, in part, “In addition to not being able to meet the financial burden that ES&S is asking us to meet, we cannot individually deal with such a large, multi-national corporation and the mix of deception this company promulgates.” And he asked the state to ensure “that voting-system vendors doing business here do not have the opportunity to threaten the democratic process with such unsavory business practices that vendors, such as ES&S, seemingly have a deep commitment to employing.”...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The New Jersey Voting Machine Examination Committee has scheduled public hearings beginning tomorrow and lasting until Friday to discuss the three voting systems that have been proposed to be used in the state. Proposed for state elections are the Sequoia Advantage, Sequoia Edge, and Avante Vote-Trakker. Voter verified paper audit trail printers for all three were recently tested by New Jersey Institute of Technology and failed that testing. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The New Jersey Institute of Technology has just released the results of testing done by their Center for Information Age Technology on voter verified paper audit trail printers provided by Sequoia and Avante International. The printers from Sequoia were for their Advantage and Edge voting systems.

According to the results, the printers accounted for 33 flaws. All three printers ran out of paper too fast, lacked concealed printer cables, and had problems alerting poll workers to malfunctions. It is important to state again that these printers were provided by the vendors so there is no reason to expect that these were not the best of the printers the vendors could find.

Anecdotal reports from users of the vvpat ["voter-verified paper audit trail"] printers of the other vendors show that there is no difference between the failures of the Sequoia or Avante as compared to Diebold or ES&S. These printers are the same printers that will be required by federal law with the passage of any legislation that allows the continued use of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Links to the many other notable voting news stories this weekend, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The New York Times reports today that state and local government organizations and the disabilities groups have had their say and Congressman Rush Holt’s HR-811 is being withdrawn so it can go back and be rewritten to appease the special interest groups. Special interests have spoken and are heard; the voters speak and are ignored. Meanwhile Senator Feinstein’s S-1487 is scheduled for a Rules committee hearing next Wed. Have any of our Senator’s read this legislation? One has to wonder because Senators like Bernie Sanders, Clinton, Kennedy, Obama, and Boxer have all co-sponsored a bill that takes any control of our elections that the voters have left and gives it all to corporations and a federal agency that has been a miserable failure, the Election Assistance Commission. If this bill had been the law in 2003 Bev Harris would never have been able to give the Diebold code she found on an ftp site to Avi Rubin and the infamous Diebold emails would never have come to light. Next Wed. Senator Clinton is scheduled to testify in support of this dangerous bill. It’s “Alice in Wonderland” all over again....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Yesterday the key word was “decision.” Today I will continue with that word. Has a "decision" been made with respect to HR-811? Only time will tell. Information is the grist that is fed into the mill to become a "decision." New York now has more information on the vendors so they can make a "decision" on their voting system selection. Another Pennsylvania county has to decide how they are going to pay for a maintenance contract for the ES&S voting machines. Maybe it’s time the counties decide it’s time to kick ES&S out of the state. Oklahoma did it years ago and, you know, there is very little news about voting machine failures in Oklahoma reported in DVN....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A lot of important decisions are nearing completion. Members of Congress are deciding whether they are happy with HR-811 as it came out of committee. Many members have said they are no longer in support of the bill. Riverside Co. California supervisors have a decision whether to follow the recommendation of their study group to rid the county of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. San Francisco California election officials have to decide whether they will have to count ballots by hand in November. And Pennsylvania counties that use ES&S DREs have to decide whether they want to continue paying the exorbitant fees for machine warranties. And, by the way, speaking about decisions; many groups decided to support, and pleaded with their members to support, HR-811 two-weeks before the bill was even filed. Yet, those same groups are totally mum on S-1487 even though it is due to go to committee hearing in a week. Why the silence? Why are they not standing up and being vocal about their support for democracy and opposition to the bill?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today was the day of congressional announcements. It’s funny how things all seem to happen on the same day. First, on the Senate side, it was announced that Feinstein’s democracy-busting S-1487 will be heard in the Senate Rules Committee on July 25. This bill is so dangerous that even many Holt bill supporters are speaking out against it. Also announced today is that Congressman and Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich has sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to ask Speaker Pelosi to stop the advancement of HR-811 so other voices can be heard regarding this legislation.

Those voting news stories, and all the others of note, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

My turn to rant: Over five months ago Florida State University put out their report on what they found when inspecting the Sarasota Co. voting system that had not recorded over 18,000 votes for congress. FSU researchers found a serious security vulnerability in the voting system. I took it upon myself to try to get people in positions of responsibility to do their jobs and to warn counties that their voting machines may be vulnerable and that there were mitigations that could be used. Numerous emails to the Election Assistance Commission resulted in nothing happening because, according to them, they did not qualify it for use so they couldn’t do anything about any problems. NASED qualified the system and after five months of also talking with them a response was received yesterday: “I can assure you that we are aware of the importance of your issue. NASED will be discussing this issue at our next meeting.” “Next meeting”? Five months of no action while counties, cities, towns, hold their elections on these machines without any idea that they are vulnerable to attack. Next meeting? What was wrong with sending an email to those who use those systems and include a copy of the report and ask them to read the damn report? And these people expect us to have confidence in the election system. Not hardly.

Links to today's other voting news stories of note are posted below, as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The lion's share of the news is still about California. The tentative ruling by the judge in Alameda County, the report from the ‘Blue Ribbon” Committee in Riverside County, and the ruling from the state “Supremes” that they won’t hear the complaint regarding the Busby-Bilbray ruling from San Diego County....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Rebecca Mercuri, in an article on OpEdNews, reminds us that Avante International has a lawsuit against Sequoia, Diebold and ES&S for patent infringement:

She also reports, “In a one-two punch, Avante's key patent, #7036730 'Electronic Voting Aparatus, System and Method,' also includes claims that pertain to 'a Braille device,' 'an aural device,' and 'voice recognition apparatus.'"

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an excellent article posted at OpEdNews, Andi Novick has this to say

And from the PhillyBurbs blog comes the following:

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The use of the county’s new DRE voting machines means that this year’s municipal elections will cost Salt Lake Co Utah three times more than past elections. New technology has increased the amount of training and wages for election workers. Palm Beach and Sarasota Co’s have both made a decision to fund for new voting machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

An article at The BRAD BLOG reports the following:

The King Coounty, Washington, County Council voted on Monday that there can be no bar-code or other unique marks on paper ballots. In a press release one council member said, “The Washington State Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to cast a secret ballot,” said Councilmember Dow Constantine, prime sponsor of the motion. “We must protect this right by accurately tracking the return and signature verification of every voter’s sealed envelope, while ensuring that the ballot inside cannot later be connected with a particular voter.” One can only hope that now the state legislature will follow the county’s lead and make the same decision for the whole state.

Those stories, and the other voting news notables today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Another election official has jumped into the revolving door and joined the vendors. In this case ex-Commissioner and Chairman of the EAC Paul DeGregorio has become COO of an Internet voting software company, Everyone Counts.

Also charging that Congressman Rush Holt's (D-NJ) Election Reform bill (HR 811) "does not address the concerns that Americans have, to do something about electronic voting," Ohio's Rep. Dennis Kucinich reiterated his withdrawal of support for the controversial legislation last Friday. In an interview on the Peter B. Collins show, the Democratic presidential candidate confirmed earlier reports that he intended to drop his co-sponsorship of the bill in favor of requiring paper ballots for American elections. HR 811, as currently written, fails to ban dangerous electronic touch-screen (DRE) voting systems.

Those voting news stories, and others from today, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two years ago, on July 7, our friend and fellow election integrity activist, Andy Stephenson, lost his fight against pancreatic cancer. Andy was an outspoken supporter of paper ballots and worked as hard as any of us for the integrity of our elections. Andy was so entrenched in the movement that he ran for Washington Secretary of State in the Democratic primary in 2004. Many of his supporters, in Washington and at his on-line hangout, Democratic Underground, are now leaders in the movement. Thank you, Andy, for your fight for better elections and for leaving us with a healthier and more intelligent community of activists.

ES&S may be taken to task in California for not providing the source code to their InkaVote Plus voting system on time, and apparently at all. In an article in the Los Angeles Daily News, California Deputy Secretary of State Lowell Finley is quoted, “There also are discrepancies between the software version number held by the escrow company, and the version that was certified by McPherson last year.”

That, and more voting news stories of note today all linked below...