Today’s news finds articles from Minnesota where the recount trial continues on. Now the justices are trying to decide whether they can allow Franken to take the Senate seat on an interim basis. It looks like there will be no final decision this week or maybe even this month.

Also we have articles from Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi and Oklahoma where Voter ID is being pushed by state legislatures under the false idea that voter fraud is rampant or that illegal aliens are streaming over the borders just to vote in our elections. In Georgia they actually want to expand what is already a restrictive law to make it more restrictive. Now they want voters to have to prove their citizenship. Not a problem? It is for voters like Arthur Remillard who was born by a mid-wife and was the placed for adoption. He has no birth certificate. No way to prove his citizenship even though he had never had a problem in his 75 years. ...

The long expected auditor’s report on Hillsborough Co Florida is out and, as we suspected, former supervisor of elections Buddy Johnson has some explaining to do. The auditors found that he overspent his budget by close to a million dollars and he misused some funds. Is their an indictment in Buddy’s future? ...

The recount trial is still ongoing in Minnesota. It’s hard to tell whether there will really be any changes or if this is all just a waste of time and tax money. Time will tell, I guess....

One of the most successful state election integrity groups has been New Yorkers for Verified Voting. Today their executive director and one of the founders of the group, Bo Lipari, announced that he was giving up his position with NYVV. He is still going to be working on elections issues and he will continue to work with the NY League of Women Voters on voting technology issues. We have worked closely with Bo over the past five or more years. He has been a good friend, mentor, and source of technical information in the past. We congratulate Bo on his work and on the successful organization he has helped to build. Bo will be leaving NYVV but he is leaving it in the able hands of Wanda Warren Berry with whom he has worked closely over the years. Thanks Bo. Good job....

Even though the Nov 4 election has been certified by the Riverside Co California RoV since Dec 2, the county is still in the process of doing the state-mandated hand count verifying all ballots cast on touch-screen voting machines. Maybe sometime this week?

The court in Minnesota is still busy gathering testimony and evidence in the Coleman-Franken trial. Maybe sometime this week?

New Mexico has joined a growing number of states that are turning to the insecure and non-verifiable internet as a voting option. It is amazing that state election experts have ignored computer scientists, network security experts, the Dept. of Defense, the National Institute of Sciences and Technology, the Government Accountability Office and others who all say the internet is not secure enough for elections. ...

The new Hillsborough Co Florida elections boss has saved the county $500,000 by going to Premier/Diebold and making them a deal they could not refuse. Of course with the problems the county had last Nov with uncounted ballots and memory card failures, Diebold should have returned all of the money the county has spent on their voting system and taken the machines back....

Most of the news is still coming out of Minnesota and the courts where Norm Coleman is trying to prove that he should still be the state’s senator. Most of the reports seem to point to unsuccessful arguments on the part of Coleman’s legal team. How much longer can this go on?...

The trial against the use of unverifiable voting machines in New Jersey is continuing. Computer scientist Andrew Appel was before the judge tearing apart a Sequoia Advantage DRE voting machine to show how easy it would be to get into the machine and replace memory without anyone ever knowing about it. The trial is expected to take a couple weeks.

Mississippi and Utah have joined Texas in their misguided attempts to push through voter ID laws to combat non-existent voter fraud. In the meantime, one Ohio county has reported that after investigating claims of wide-spread voter fraud in Nov. a special prosecutor has found only one case and in that one the man involved told on himself....

Today the New Jersey voting machine trial started. The trial will decide whether the state’s DRE voting machines can continue to be used or whether they are error-prone and too easily hacked. Today Princeton University computer scientist Andrew Appel demonstrated how the Sequoia Advantage v 9 DRE works. The trial may last as long as four weeks....

As our “Featured” article reports California Secretary of State Debra Bowen has sent a letter to new EAC Chair Gineen Beach. The letter has three proposals that Secretary Bowen is convinced will improve the integrity of voting systems used in the country. As stated in the article we at VotersUnite have also worked on this issue. The three proposals are that vendors should be required to disclose vulnerabilities, flaws, problems, etc. Also, the EAC should create a uniform incident reporting program. And finally, the “Election Day Survey” the states are asked to complete should include data from election officials about how their voting systems performed during a general election. We applaud Secretary Bowen for taking a stand on this issue....

Advanced Voting Solutions sold Northampton Co Pennsylvania faulty voting machines. The county took the vendor to court and won a default decision. Later this month the court will decide how much the county will be awarded in the law suit. The problem is that owner Howard Van Pelt and AVS have disappeared. They very quietly went out of business and stuck the county, and others, with a warehouse full of garbage. How much longer are the other voting machines vendors going to be able to stay in business? New Jersey is now rethinking their move to install vvpat printers on the state’s DREs because of the economy. That has to be a blow to Sequoia especially when you consider that the company went into debt in order for the officers to keep the company from being purchased by Hart Intercivic....

Now that the recent general election is completed some counties are now in the process of determining how much that election cost the taxpayers. One Colorado county reports a cost of $36.57 per vote cast. That is an amazing amount especially when much of that cost can be directly attributed to the type of voting system a county is using and the amount of “assistance” the county buys from the vendors....

From this evenings “Featured” article: “The recount of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race gives us an opportunity to evaluate the accuracy of precinct-count optical-scan voting. Though there have been contentious disputes over which absentee ballot envelopes to open, the core technology for scanning ballots has proved to be extremely accurate.”...

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We will try this one more time because I have nothing else to put into this space this evening. We do need help. VotersUnite.Org is proud to continue offering “Daily Voting News” as one of our services. Though we don’t charge for the service we do, on occasion, reserve the right to ask for a donation. This is one of those very few times. Please assist us in continuing all of our work. All of the information you need to make a tax deductible donation can be found here: ...