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

The failure of ES&S to provide their services as they are contracted to do with their customers across the nation is becoming a daily news event. Counties in Indiana are not getting their ballots on time and when they do get them they can't be used. Summit County Ohio reports they are still having problems with the ES&S memory cards; they are getting a 4% failure rate now; and those are supposed to be cards that were checked and re-checked by ES&S before shipping. And meanwhile Allegheny County Pennsylvania buries their heads in the sand and orders $11M worth of ES&S voting machines. ...

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

69 of 93 Nebraska counties have no paper ballots even though early voting began last Monday. ES&S is doing the printing and is late. The Omaha World-Herald admits ES&S is partially owned by the newspaper. ES&S is reporting a "glitch" in the software of their iVotronic DREs. A 'write-in' vote comes out a 'jumble' of letters. The article says that ES&S is contacting all of their jurisdictions. A few phone calls found that none of the iVotronic jurisdictions called knew anything about this problem. Meanwhile a Chicago Alderman has lashed out at Sequoia and his idea that "at least 15 Venezuelans, who may not have been in the country legally, worked side-by-side with Chicago election officials on primary night March 21, which turned out to be a vote-counting nightmare."...

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

"I have no idea what happened in Pennsylvania or Chicago. I don't read about any of that." Essex Co., New Jersey Superintendent of Elections Carmen Casciano when asked about recent problems with Sequoia machines. "I am not happy about the outcome, or the state of the industry. I think that something needs to be done. I'm not sure what it is, it probably doesn't include AccuPoll at this point, but I do not feel that any of the vendors has a system that voters can trust. I think that vendors outright misrepresent the robustness, stability, and security of their systems. You just have to look at the litany of problems and it points at one thing, bad fundamental design, and not enough checks and balances. I also wonder why the other vendors were so adamant in fighting a VVPAT system requirement. They spent much more in fighting it than in implementing it." Ex-AccuPoll CEO Dennis Vadura. Eleven Indiana counties were forced to suspend absentee voting when they found out that the ballots they were provided could not be read by their Diebold optical-scan machines....

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

It is apparent that even though the vendors had three years to prepare for the large number of machines they are selling, they were not ready. Now counties across the country are going into elections without enough machines or the machines they have were hastily built and are failing. There have been two, large, state primaries so far and two disasters. Though the vendors have done a good job of deflecting blame from the machine failures toward the human factor, they have not been totally successful. Local governments are threatening lawsuits or threatening to withhold money that is owed. Something must be done on a national basis, and very soon, or we are in for a disaster in November....

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

Today we have an "Action Alert" for all voters to demand fair elections in the state of Florida. We also have another in support of Emery County Utah clerk Bruce Funk who has taken a stand against Diebold DREs. And there is a petition at VoteTrustUSA in support of HR-550. That petition has over 50,000 signatures and the number is growing quickly. The petition will be delivered to the House Rules Committee on Friday. In the bad news category we have more failed memory cards in Summit County, Ohio and now a report of ES&S not meeting dates for smart card delivery in Johnson County Indiana. That will force that county to use paper ballots (which may be a good thing)....

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

We get a reprieve in primaries this month. Next month there are two or three every Tuesday with Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio all leading off the month. It seems to me that we should be using April to get the word out about voter registration and have people ensure they are, in fact, registered to vote. The new voter registration data bases are going to disenfranchise voters if they are not vigilant. Verification should be just a phone call away in most states....

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

California, and I suspect, many other states, are heading for a 'train wreck' with regard to their new voter registration data bases. Many state primaries will feature disenfranchised voters. The screaming from voters who were registered but find that they are no longer may end up drowning out the news about the failing voting machines. Counties in Texas are speaking out against the heavy-handedness of ES&S. Their machines failed and when the counties refused to pay until they are fixed, ES&S refused to do any work for next weeks run-off elections. The counties have no choice but to bow down to ES&S....

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

The testing and failure of the Sequoia Advantage machines in Pennsylvania dominates the news today. It will be interesting to see if Sequoia can get it right and can get something to pass testing by the state and then get it federally qualified in enough time to allow the counties to use it. I don't see it happening but then the whole process with the ITAs seems to be PFM (Pure F*****g Magic) sometimes. They may even stamp it with the 2002 qualification even though it is still not accessible....

Last night's DVN mentioned that Dr. Michael Shamos had found a "minor glitch" in the Sequoia Advantage system that he was inspecting for the state of Pennsylvania. In fact, Dr. Shamos had never called the problem a "glitch", that was the reporters words and not his, and it has now been reported that the problem is worse than he originally found and he has refused to certify these machines at this time....

Last night's DVN mentioned that Dr. Michael Shamos had found a "minor glitch" in the Sequoia Advantage system that he was inspecting for the state of Pennsylvania. In fact, Dr. Shamos had never called the problem a "glitch", that was the reporters words and not his, and it has now been reported that the problem is worse than he originally found and he has refused to certify these machines at this time....

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

Another county in Pennsylvania is reporting that they have been told by ES&S that they will not get all of the machines they have contracted for. It appears that ES&S has overextended their promises and their Philippines manufacturing plant just can't crank them out fast enough. Also in Pennsylvania Michael Shamos has found a problem with the Sequoia software but he is passing it off as a 'minor glitch' even though it appears to be the same problem that affected machines in Illinois in their primary. In Florida the AG has decided to subpoena the three vendors who have decided not to sell to Leon County. Collusion? ...

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

Jefferson Co. Texas had so many problems with their ES&S voting machines in their primary that they have asked for the system to be fixed. They are withholding final payment until that happens. They also have a runoff election to hold and now ES&S is refusing to program their machines for that election until they get final payment. Typical ES&S service with a smile. In Utah Emery County election chief, Bruce Funk, is threatening to resign rather than use the counties Diebold machines. Meanwhile in Illinois the cry to not pay any further funds to Sequoia and the questions about their Venezuelan ownership are getting louder....

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

Today we learn that maybe we should worry about the ownership of Sequoia. Some of us have been talking about this for months; now the MSM may be interested. The folks in Chicago are worried and now threatening to withhold payment to Sequoia. We also learn that Michael Shamos is going to be evaluating the Sequoia Advantage for use in Pennsylvania and that Jim Dickson and the AAPD are actually against the use of the Advantage....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA

The "DVN Top 5" is a feature in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The March 20 edition can be found here. The selection of what will be the "Top 5" for each week and where it goes on the list is all mine. The fact that you may disagree with my choices is great because it shows that you have been reading the DVN articles that I've posted throughout the week here on The BRAD BLOG!...

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

The news was slow today. Two counties announced that they had ignored, or were unaware of, what has recently happened in Illinois as they get closer to having Sequoia voting machines. Another Pennsylvania county has switched from AVS to Diebold due to AVS's inability to provide voting machines on time. And the votes are still being counted in Texas....