Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
North Carolina counties continue to meet and make their selections of voting machines for the future. Unfortunately they cannot wait until a decision from the court on whether any voting system presently certified by the state board of elections can, by law, be considered to be certified. The state is certainly doing nothing to stop the counties from making their decisions….
NAtional – Op/Ed – The Business of Voting LINK
CA: San Francisco – Ranked-Choice Voting Favored By San Franciscans LINK
CA: Santa Cruz County – County will miss voting-machine deadline (Sequoia) LINK
FL: Florida Gov. Bush Expresses Concern About State Election Systems in Light of Leon County Hack Test LINK
FL: If ballots are good enough for Iraq… LINK
FL: Palm Beach County – Editorial – Fair vote-counting first LINK
GA: Photo ID bus gets little use LINK
LA: Election delay violates law, say critics LINK
MO: St. Louis – City election board selects Diebold for new voting system. Diebold says that the test in Leon Co., FL was faulty and couldn’t be duplicated if real election procedures were followed. LINK
NC: Craven County – Craven commissioners to look at voting options LINK
NC: Guilford County – Time for the county to vote on a system LINK
NC: Pamlico County – Pamlico to discuss voting machines LINK
NC: Misleading Editorial – N.C. leaders should put highest priority on ironing out voting machine issues LINK
NC: Officials in rush to buy new voting machines LINK
NC: Catawba County – County preparing to purchase new voting equipment LINK
NC: Chatham County – Scanning the reasons LINK
NC: Durham County – Vote talliers to face scrutiny LINK
NC: Polk County – Polk needs new voting machines soon LINK
ND: Wilson County – County welcomes new voting machines (AutoMARK) LINK
NM: Machine Purchase May Violate State Law LINK
NY: Vote reform is way overdue LINK
NY: New York and Help America Vote LINK
PA: Bucks County – Bucks voting coalition grows in numbers, influence LINK
TN: Shelby County – Voter case solved, says Ford LINK
TX: Redistricting map: ‘It’s the purest form of racism’ LINK
VA: Attorney general votes get second look on Tuesday LINK
WA: Snohomish County – Council to rethink mail-only vote LINK
**”Daily Voting News” is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in “Daily Voting News” may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or BradBlog.Com**
North Carolina counties continue to meet and make their selections of voting machines for the future. Unfortunately they cannot wait until a decision from the court on whether any voting system presently certified by the state board of elections can, by law, be considered to be certified. The state is certainly doing nothing to stop the counties from making their decisions….
Does anyone know what the status of the BBV demand to the California SoS is?
They had given the SoS until December 16, a few days ago, to respond (link here).
Regarding voting, this may be the biggest outrage you have ever read:
"13. ABasic Files. AccuBasic report files are used to configure AccuVote-OS and AccuVote-TS report contents and printing in precinct count mode. They are actually loaded into the memory cards for the AV-OS and AV-TS where their logic is executed. There are 24 report files supporting modifications to the reports for different states and jurisdictions. A few of these may provide options that are attractive to local jurisdictions as they provide variations on what summary reports are printed optionally or automatically and the order they are prepared. At the current time, the Federal testing only uses one of these files and does no source code review, leaving this to the states to verify. Within our state testing, we only verified the reports for the same file, 194US.abo, revision 1.15, and have checked the source files. Since the source file is not reviewed in the Federal testing, we have no absolute verification that the installed file found in the witnessed build (forwarded by Ciber) was created from these source files but signature information in the .abo file matches what would be expected from the source file.
The source code I was given clearly does not directly affect stored votes or even the voting result content of the reports. It just sets up the report options that will be available to the operator and some operator display information that sets up the options. The .abo file given is without risk to the election results.
The actual file used is selected in the AV-OS Options window of GEMS from the pulldown list in the Report field so the local user could potentially select any of these files or a modification of that file. The risk occurs in the opportunity to replace the verified file with some other .abo file (prior version, one the other existing versions installed in the GEMS/ABASIC directory, or by replacing the current code with rewritten code performing other operations.) In a certification report last year, we recommended that the unverified report files be deleted from the GEMS directory leaving only the verified files. The California Use Procedures should specify which files are approved for use and provide information so that the approved files may be verified.
This comes directly from Josh Washburn, Jim March of Black Box Voting.
It shows that any file in these Diebold machines whether they be touch-screen or optical scan, can be replaced with another file of executable code. And it is hidden straight in the .abo file, no actual encryption needed!!!
You heard me right….this file could be replaced with Clint Curtis source code obviously, or any known exploit already being used in the voting. And NOBODY would know about it because nobody would check the file extensions of the *.abo code whatsoever and wouldn’t be able to match any of the results…
Dr. Washburn, with the help of Dr. Thompson proved this to the point it can stand up in court.
ES&S and probably Sequoia have similar architecture. Diebold is who invented this architecture.
It is NOT sloppy, it is deliberately put there so executable code such as "vote switch" or "VB script" can be written in.
This was no mistake, these programmers are nothing but crooks who had malicious intentions to begin with. DIEBOLD the entire company should be prosecuted for this, and as for the Sequoia company, if its proven they have the same code we need to take this into the COURTS!!!!!!!!!!
Doug E.
The Iraqi election is being challenged by the Sunni bloc of voters (link here).
The are claiming election fraud was rampant.
re: California
It is in negotiations today. The positions are still pretty far apart, but it’s still very much alive and kicking.
Thanks Bev. May the force be with you.