In my opinion voter suppression is an ugly act. When one party is in power and then pushes legislation that only serves to help to ensure they will stay in power then there is something wrong with our democracy. This is now the case in Florida where the party in power waited until week seven of a nine week legislative session to attempt to ram-rod through bills in both the House and Senate that will help to ensure they stay in power. Our two ‘Featured’ editorials (here and here) explain what is happening in Florida much better than I can. ...

“Announce plans to improve the quality of your equipment. ... Announce plans to guarantee adequate staff to support first deployment of the new equipment. ... Negotiate supportive policies for software licensing fees, especially for small counties. ... Announce a provision for 'open-source' software.” These are all requests of two potential vendors of voting systems to New York State in an open letter to them from New Yorkers for Verified Voting. See our ‘Featured’ article [PDF]....

My apologies for the lateness of DVN this evening but when you lose the Internet you lose all contact with the world it seems. For those of you concerned with the voters right to actually vote I suggest reading the articles concerning Florida’s Senate Bill 956 that will do a lot to suppress the vote. Also the articles from Texas including the fact that the DoJ may have to weigh-in on any VoterID laws passed by that state’s legislature to keep the state in compliance with the National Voting Rights Act Section 5....

The following is one of the stunning revelations in our ‘Featured’ article today.

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From the Minnesota Senatorial court decision [PDF]:

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We really need your assistance with some funding. We know times are tough right now but any funding assistance you can provide us will keep us going. We don’t have foundation or grant support. Our support comes from the voting public via small donations and a couple kind donors who are able to occasionally give a bit more. We don’t just do “Daily Voting News”. Our database of voting machine failures is probably the only real clearinghouse of voting problems in existence. The EAC can’t seem to do it so we do it for them. Please help us continue doing our work. You can find out how to help here. Thank you for your continuing support....

Today begins a couple days of doing the business of keeping ourselves afloat funds wise. We don’t get any assistance from any other funders. We are not financially supported by PEW or any other foundation. We rely on the public and their small donations of $20, $50 or $100 to keep us doing what we do. Please help us help our democracy with a donation. The information for how to donate is all located here
Thank you and Happy Holidays....

Voters in Salina, Saline County, Kansas went to the polls this past Tuesday and some of them had their votes flipped by the county’s ES&S iVotronic machines. Our ‘Featured’ article talks about the vote flipping and gives some new information. Kansas was warned about ‘vote flipping’ in an October letter from the Brennan Center and Verified Voting. Naturally they ignored that warning.

ES&S has now admitted that their touch screens lose calibration during the day, from normal use, and that they have to be recalibrated on occasion. The county seems to be sure that no flipping was done without the voter noticing it; a baseless assumption. They think that the voters review their ballot before hitting the “Vote” button. That is a false assumption according to studies. The county also thinks they can go to the internal audit log to find out what happened. That is not possible because the voters touch on the screen happens before the audit log records anything. ...

Another country has now had problems with Internet voting schemes. In this case Finland used Internet voting in three municipalities in 2008. Nearly 2% of the votes were lost due to a “usability glitch”. The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court found that the election must be redone. The law allowing the use of any Internet voting scheme has expired so the people of the three municipalities will now be able to vote on a more secure and accurate system, using paper ballots. One of the companies involved in this scheme was Scytl, a Spanish corporation that was also involved in the Okaloosa Co Florida Internet voting scheme last Nov. At least with that scheme paper ballots were also generated....

Some ES&S iVotronic DREs used yesterday in Saline Co. Kansas were found to be flipping votes. When asked about the incident the county clerk blamed it on a calibration problem caused during the shipping process from storage to the precincts. Naturally the clerk also minimized the problem by claiming that the chances were slim that any voters vote was incorrectly recorded. He disingenuously tried to claim that the review screen and vvpat printer kept that from happening. Of course, there is no evidence that most voters even look at the review screen before touching the “Vote” button.

Also 407 votes cast on a Premier op-scan in one St. Clair Co Illinois precinct were nearly not counted after the machine failed to have its vote totals tabulated....

Recounts! We have recounts. Minnesota’s Senatorial recount appears to be done, as of today, with Franken gaining more votes than Coleman. The count of the NY-20 absentee ballots will begin tomorrow. This isn’t a recount yet but will probably go that way after these ballots are counted. The criminal investigation recount in Arizona will go throughout this week, at least....

The criminal investigation hand-count has begun in Arizona. In the lead-up to the count the Attorney General spoke about Internet feed of video from the counting room. It’s a good thing he didn’t say the count would be public or the process would be transparent. Yes, there are cameras in the area and yes they are streaming live via the Internet. However, the cameras are physically as far away from the counting as they could probably place them and some of the cameras are focused on empty aisles or on swinging doors. No transparency here. Nothing to see here; move along....

There are election recounts in Minnesota and New York that have the media’s eyes and ears but we should not forget that there is also a recount beginning next week in Maricopa Co Arizona. In this case it is not an elections recount to decide who/what won an election. Instead this is a criminal investigation to determine whether there was manipulation of the vote tally on the voting machines in Pima Co. during the 2006 Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) election. Today’s “Featured” article has the whole story, including all of the background....

Today is a mixed bag of important news items. One mobile messaging company is predicting that we will be voting via our cell phones, twitter, etc. in just a couple years. There is more from California regarding the decertification of Premier/Diebold 1.18.19, as system that would not be used again anyway. There is also some news on yesterday’s election in New York state that found the two candidates with but 25 votes separating them. This election will clearly end up in court just as the Minnesota Senatorial race has. There are also a few editorials from newspapers in states that are considering VoterID.

I will be taking a bit of a hiatus until Sunday evening or Monday while I attend a conference. Enjoy the weekend....

Today the CA Sec. of State, Debra Bowen, announced that she will be decertifying the voting system that lost votes in Humboldt Co. This action is being taken after a state investigation that found that the Diebold/Premier voting system violates the standards because of problems with its audit logs as well as the inaccuracy of one version used in the state.

Humboldt Co has already decided to switch to another vendor and the other two counties are already upgrading their systems so Bowen’s action does nothing at all. The fact that she is ignoring the audit log problems means that she is giving her tacit stamp of approval on the Diebold/Premier systems that have the audit log problem.

I am going to begin posting links to new information that I find on the United States Election Assistance Commission website. I hope this will help keep the reader aware of part of what is going on in Washington DC with regards to our elections.

After this Wednesday evening’s “Daily Voting News” we will be taking a well-deserved hiatus to attend a conference. DVN will resume on Sunday evening.