Guest Blogged by John Gideon, of VotersUnite and VoteTrustUSA
As an introduction, the “DVN Top 5” is a feature that I have been providing in the weekly voting newsletter of VoteTrustUSA. The December 13 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 BRAD BLOG!…
#5 – This has been a busy week for Diebold. First their CEO announced his resignation. Then two days later Scott+Scott, LLC announced that they had filed a securities fraud class action suit against the company.
#4 – The Election Assistance Commission announced that they had adopted the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Unfortunately these new guidelines do not take effect until Dec. 2007.
#3 – A judge in North Carolina delayed acting on a lawsuit challenging the certification of three voting machine vendors Wednesday because he needed more time to familiarize himself with details of the case.
“The lawsuit, filed by California-based Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of a Winston-Salem activist, asks the court to block the approval of what it called “unqualified voting systems.””, as reported by the
Associated Press
#2 – The county council in Volusia County, Florida decided to ignore misinformation from some and facts from “citizen patriots” as they voted 4 to 3 in favor of getting rid of their Diebold voting machines so they can have a voting system that is voter verified, auditable and recountable. The county has made a deal with ES&S who will lease the county DREs until such time as the AutoMARK is state certified and then they will allow the county to trade in the DRE’s for the AutoMARK. As reported by BradBlog
#1 – As reported in the Miami Herald and other media sources across the nation, “A top election official and computer experts say computer hackers could easily change election results, after they found numerous flaws with a state-approved voting-machine in Tallahassee.” Ion Sancho, the election chief in Leon County, Florida and two computer experts working with BlackBoxVoting.Org were successful in changing the results in a mock election on the counties Diebold Optical-scan machines. The results of this test caused Sancho to go to his county council and get them to agree to dump their Diebold voting machines. They will follow the plan from Volusia County (#2 above).
I’m your "Jump The Shark" President!
Don’t forget the gerrymandering cases that are in the fast track before the US Supreme Court.
This could change things in Texas for the ’06 election. DeLay will seek revenge, however, if the gerrymandering is outlawed he can’t do much.
Future Voting News
AP: Vote Shuttles Successful
The price of gasoline has reached such high prices, that many poorer people can no longer afford to drive to the polling places.
Organizations are purchasing buses that shuttle poorer folk to polling places.
See the movie Syriana (link here) and Good Night, and Good Luck to get a drift of this future.
Don’t forget to urge your members of congress to support Rush Holt’s "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" (H.R. 550)
Sign the petition here
Tell your congressperson here.
Iraqis waiting in line to get gas so they can get to the polls and stand in line to vote.
In the United States in the 18th century we made human and civil rights law forever so we do not have to stand in line anymore to vote for "inalienable rights".
Anything a citizen can vote for is not as valuable as that which we do not vote for.
The vote propaganda the administration neoCons are pushing is much, much, much ado about second rate quality.
Has anyone noticed that Democracy Now hasn"t reported on the Diebold/voting problems yet?
Kind of fishy to me