Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
One day after winning a court decision in North Carolina that seemed to open the door wide for Diebold to ply their wares in the state; they decided to pull out. Their concern is that they could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to send a copy of all the software its machines use to a special holding company assigned by the state. They say they don’t have permission to provide code that is owned by third parties such as Microsoft Corp. This leaves ES&S as the only approved vendor in the state. There is concern from St. Louis Co., MO that ES&S may be over-pricing their AutoMARK machines in an attempt to force some counties into purchasing their DREs….
NAtional: 19 states will miss HAVA deadline LINK
CA: New California Voting Machines Face Tests (Diebold) (This article has been repeated nationally) LINK
CA: San Luis Obispo County – Voting machine investigation will not include SLO County vote scanners (Diebold) LINK
CT: Middletown – State Supreme Court rules re-vote needed. A broken lever on one voting machine spurred a remedy of unexpected size in state Supreme Court Wednesday: The court ordered a new, city-wide election for all common council candidates, set tentatively for Jan. 24. LINK
CT: Middletown – Defective machine prompts high court to void Middletown election LINK
FL: Opinion – Taking a stand for Florida voters LINK
IN: Dems continue fight against voter ID law LINK
IN: St. Joseph County – Decision nears on voting machines LINK
MO: St. Louis County – Amidst Intense Last-Minute Drama, St. Louis County Rejects Diebold! Questions arise over whether ES&S is really interested in selling AutoMARK. LINK
MO: Saline County – Feds force new voting machines local officials say weren’t needed LINK
NC: Lawsuit on voting machines hits wall LINK
NC: Diebold Pulls Out Of North Carolina! (Again! And For Now…) LINK
NC: Diebold withdraws as N.C. voting equipment vendor; only one left LINK
NC: Brunswick County – Brunswick to buy new machines for voting LINK
NC: Forsyth County – Voting Machine Impasse LINK
OH: Summit County – Summit voters will use optical scanners at polls LINK
PA: Bucks County – Democrats: Machines must get vote LINK
PA: Butler County – Butler County OKs electronic vote (DRE) LINK
PA: Chester County – No decision on voting system LINK
PA: Schuylkill County – Schuylkill officials allot federal money to help with voting LINK
VA: Recount Fails to Overturn Va. GOP Victory LINK
VA: Yes Virginia, there’s a problem with absentee balloting. (Recounting Deeds vs McDonnell) (The problem is those older Sequoia and ES&S Optechs) 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**
One day after winning a court decision in North Carolina that seemed to open the door wide for Diebold to ply their wares in the state; they decided to pull out. Their concern is that they could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to send a copy of all the software its machines use to a special holding company assigned by the state. They say they don’t have permission to provide code that is owned by third parties such as Microsoft Corp. This leaves ES&S as the only approved vendor in the state. There is concern from St. Louis Co., MO that ES&S may be over-pricing their AutoMARK machines in an attempt to force some counties into purchasing their DREs….
Ok the virginia thing pisses me off. I don’t care if it was the republican or the democrat who really won, I want to see those damn optical scanned ballots get counted!!!!
Doesn’t Virginia have the votoscope tool yet? Surely they could have run this through and tested for undervotes easily, given the HIGH RATE of suspicious undervotes sequoia allows on their OpTech Eagle.
This would have proved any fraud immediately, making a statewide recount not needed. It doesn’t make sense how this crap was cherry picked. I think someone needs to file a lawsuit to see all the ballots!!!
Again, it doesn’t matter who won. If McDonnell won good for him, he’s moved on cleanly in a clean election. And same for if Deeds won, which clearly would not be in dispute. But the fact of the matter is not all of the votes were counted, and they NEED to count those votes to see if there were problems with the Sequoia….
As far as I’m concerned, THAT is what transparency in any election must require.
Doug
Doug brings up an important point that any trollers need to take note of…
As they bitch and moan about us not jumping for joy over the Iraqi election, they refuse to acknowledge a sentiment that has been repeated here again and again…that is, that protecting the vote in America is NOT a partisan issue. It doesn’t matter from a standpoint of principle who wins the election, as long as they win cleanly, and that everyone can be assured that all votes were counted properly. If the citizens do not believe that their vote is counted properly, then we do not have a democracy, at least not one that means anything.
Get the fucking point trolls! This is about protected YOUR vote too – even if you chose to exercise it in the direction of idiocy. You have that Constitutionally protected right.
I still have mixed feelings about our gubernatorial election. I don’t know if Christine Gregoire really beat Dino Rossi. I’m sure it was close either way. I don’t doubt that things went wrong in the counting of the votes – it was as inept as I’ve ever seen, finding buckets of missing ballots and what not. So we ended up with both sides pointing fingers and crying ‘foul’, and now folks drive around with bumperstickers that say "She’s not my governor." It’s not healthy, regardless of who you voted for. What really pissed me off about the partisanship was all of the morons who thought that the first recount was illegal after Rossi had initially won by five hundred or so votes – it wasn’t, in fact it was the law that mandated a recount based on such a slim margin of victory.
We’ve got to get transparency.
Doug E & Soul R
Agree completely. Count ALL the ballots, regardless of who ends up being the winner.
No party can be trusted to have the high moral ground. Remember that those in office of both main parties are NOT encouraging or facilitating inspection of the electronic machines that got them elected! We can’t count on them to force this issue, it must come from the people–that’s US!
It’s the voters’ wishes that should be the determining factor, not which party one might prefer to be the winner.
If only some of our more ethical legislators (either party, or independents) would start saying they want the voting machines in their districts to be opened up for inspection. They could help this effort so much.
Those on either side of the aisle that claim to support election reform should be clamoring for this.
If there were irregularities in a district that doesn’t mean the election winner personally knew about them or facilitated them. Legislators of all political sides who claim to desire election integrity should align their actions with their words and call for inspection of the machines that elected them.
During the BBV online symposium in September Bev Harris suggested that there could be an amnesty period for election officers, so they would not risk being blamed for proposing or allowing their machines or procedures to be scrutinized. This seemed like a good idea to me. I don’t know if this idea ever went further, or how election officials would feel about it.
We can’t be thankful enough to Ion Sancho for taking the lead and standing up to Diebold’s childish threats.
Viva Ion Sancho and those like him! Viva BBV and the Velvet Revolution!
Thank God for all of you who are working so hard to return voting to the people. 2006 will probably be the most pivotal in the history of our democracy. With a President who acts and believes he is king, voting has become the only real balancing instrument for America.
The current regime (I refuse to call this an administration) is full of crooks and it’s time to call for impeachment proceedings for "King George." Yet what good will that do if voting is skewed and tampered with?
Sally Sun
Marina
California