Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

"We can make lemonade but we can't count votes with a lemon." Ann Frisch of Oshkosh, Wisconsin in an LTTE....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

UniLect is trying to regain a foothold in the voting machine market after their equipment meltdown in Carteret Co., North Carolina in 2004. Oh, wait! It wasn't the machines fault it was the elections officials fault. We hear that tired litany over and over again. / In Arkansas 8 counties have now chosen to eschew their poll site voting machines and their voters will use paper ballots in the run-off elections next week. ES&S has failed to service their contracts in those counties. Those counties will be violating state and federal law....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Alameda Co. California supervisors voted 3 to 2 to purchase Sequoia voting machines. Of the 3 yes votes one supervisor said "I have no idea what's happening here - I have no idea what you're talking about" before he voted 'Yes'. One other said, "I must admit I don't have a clue what to do" and "I feel like I'm in the twilight zone" before she voted 'Yes'. / At least one journalist got it right when he mentions all of the press about how Alameda's hand counting of paper ballots was going to delay election results for the whole state. It was, pure and simple, a ploy to put pressure on some supervisors to buy new machines / State investigators have investigated how Kern Co., California voters could have gone to the polls and been asked to use last years memory cards, which did not work. Voters were then directed to use paper ballots until they were exhausted. Voters were then asked to come back later. / Pulaski Co., Arkansas decided to eschew the ES&S ballot programming for their optical-scan machines and they did their own. / "Someone else should administer the election? How can they even stand up there with any credibility and talk about that stuff?" Carlo Loparo in defense of his boss, Blackwell keeping control of elections in Ohio as he runs for Governor. ...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Officials in Bucks Co., Pennsylvania hope to save a 'buck' by purchasing used, reconditioned Danaher 1242 voting machines. Will those machines be brought up to 2002 standards? What about voters with disabilities? / San Joaquin Co., CA's Debra Hench blamed all of the counties problems on absentee poll workers and ignored all voting machine problems but a few "paper jams". / As officials in Pottawattamie Co., Iowa hand-count their paper ballots due to an apparent tabulator failure (ES&S) one county officials said, "I love paper trails."When asked about DREs he said, "If you program them wrong, it would do the same thing (as Tuesday's counting errors)." / "It is unconscionable that in this day and age any American voter would be turned away from a polling place," said Calif. State Senator Ashburn in regards to problems in Kern County. "If there are problems with the system that is in place, then we need to know about it immediately. If yesterday's problems were caused by administrative errors or faulty training, then we need to know that too."...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Yesterday we had primary elections in eight states, yet all problems have not been settled in states that had primaries even a month ago. There are still residual problems being reported in Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. How are these being addressed by the EAC? They are being ignored as the state's problems. /Underfunded candidates who did no campaigning won in the first count of absentee ballots in one Iowa county on ES&S Optical-scan machines. The county is hand counting those ballots./There were many reports of problems throughout the state of California yesterday. One can only guess that there were at least as many unreported problems./ Leflore Co., Mississippi had ballot programming problems even though a Diebold tech had worked on their machines for a month/...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Madison Co. Indiana needs to do a recount but before they do two ES&S employees have to come into the state to do that count for them. There are reports of failures of Diebold DREs coming from Mississippi. In Contra Costa Co., California 5 to 10% of the counties AutoMark machines did not work today. Kern Co., California had problems with their voter access cards which weren't programmed properly at the beginning of the day. Pima County, Arizona officials voted to purchase Diebold DREs for their disability accessible machines, ignoring the fact they are not accessible and the vote does not say they are going to use the machines in Sept. Thieves stole two optical-scan machines and an AutoMark from a polling place in Barbour Co., Alabama....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Today's news was dominated by preparation for 8 states to hold their primaries tomorrow. Also leading in the news were stories from USAToday and UPI, among others, regarding the lawsuits being filed around the country. Just breaking is the news of a possible injunction being filed this afternoon in Los Angeles Co., CA over the use of uncertified GEMS software and a plethora of internet connected PCs in the counties tally room. More on that, hopefully, tomorrow....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

This coming Tuesday's primary election calendar is very full with elections in Alabama (precinct based Optical-scan(OS)), California (a hodge-podge), Iowa (ES&S and Diebold OS and DREs), Mississippi (Diebold TSx), Montana (AutoMark), New Jersey (many Sequoia Advantage DRE counties), New Mexico (a hodge-podge), and South Dakota (AutoMark)....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

On the heels of yesterday's Lou Dobbs show where Lou showed his ire when talking about the foreign ownership of a company that counts many of our votes, the LATimes moved up the release of an article on the same subject. Be sure to watch Dobbs on Monday for more on the story. Guess who has failed to send software to Miller Co., Texas in time for early voting for run-offs? If you guessed ES&S, you're right. Who else could fail in every election; in every state? And the Salk Lake City Tribune editorializes against Diebold....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Humboldt County California has announced plans to scan every ballot cast and post those ballots on-line for anyone who wants to check the vote counts. This plan has been endorsed by many activist groups such as VotersUnite.Org. Alabama needs to be held-out as an example of the right way to do things. While the states surrounding them have sold-out to DRE's they are all precinct-based optical scan and AutoMark for the disabled voters. It seems that Mississippi is trying to obfuscate the issues with their new voting machines. In article after article the machines are identified as being AccuVote Touch Screen machines. It's as if the SoS has put out an edict that the name 'Diebold' will not be uttered by the media. And Pulaski County Arkansas has laid all blame for primary problems at the feet of ES&S....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

In defending his choice of hiring voting machine vendor talking-head Glenn Newkirk to review the Arkansas elections problems of the past few weeks, SoS Charlie Daniels actually referred to Dr. David Dill as a "conspiracy theorist". What a maroon! One Univ. of Calif. professor speaks out in favor of "Idol Voting"; i.e. phone or Internet and a panel of judges to interview each candidate. The much awaited Robert F. Kennedy Jr. article from Rolling Stone is out. Also we have press releases regarding a new lawsuit in Colorado and a call for improvements in voting in Pennsylvania....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore has decided to not follow directives from the SoS and not to post the results at the precincts. The reasons? For one, she said, there's nothing to keep people from walking off with the tallies. More importantly, observers might be able to deduce how particular people voted at polls where only a handful of voters cast ballots, violating a central principle of American elections, she said. It seems that no excuse is too small for Ms. Dunmore. Loraine and Cuyahoga Co.'s in Ohio report that they had to do what many counties in many other states have had to do and they "modified the machines, wiring them directly into elections computers to bypass the limited capacity in the machines' memory cards". Has anyone heard of ITA testing and federal certification? Arkansas continues to fail all around in their elections administration and with ES&S as their vendor....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

It seems that officials in Arkansas are headed for the "worst election administration" award for the year. They clearly ignored scores of voters in the primary who went to the polls to vote but found that there was no paper ballots left to vote on so they were sent home without voting. Essentially they were disenfranchised. All of this on the top of a complete failure by ES&S to support their elections. Now, just one week after the state's primary election they are beginning early voting for their run-off elections. Some counties just finished counting from the primary. There has been no time for ballot programming, ballot printing, etc. How could they have ignored the fact that it takes time to get ready for an election? This state has to be at or near the top of any list of the worst states for elections administration. I feel sorry for the local elections officials who are under the gun and have no support from the state or the state's choice of voting machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

There are still problems being reported from Arkansas and there probably will be a lot for the foreseeable future as they begin early voting again next Tuesday. To be fair, there is no way most of the counties in the state could have gotten complete with their primary last week and then get the ballot-programming done to support another election this week. It is a little confusing, however, as to how they mailed ballots to military voters already. Or do they just ignore the overseas and military voters? It's something to think about on this Memorial Day Weekend....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Allegheny Co., Pennsylvania is admitting to 16 more voters voting on optical scan machines and 24 on iVotronics than ballots counted. Lonoke Co., Arkansas hoped to finally begin counting votes yesterday as ES&S may have fixed their software finally. White Co., Arkansas has announced they will go back to punch-cards for their early voting in the run-off elections....