‘Daily Voting News’ For January 13, 2006

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

In Arizona there has been a quiet (media nearly silent) battle about the Precinct 20 vote in last November’s election. There may have been election fraud, machine mistakes, procedure mistakes, or no problems at all. Doug Jones, UofIowa, was asked by a state senator and a local newspaper to look at everything that he could look at and then report back. His report is an amazing read. In New Mexico Governor Richardson and the SoS are now fully in favor of a vvpat. It’s amazing what a lawsuit can do to frame your thinking. And in Florida, ES&S has turned on Leon County and refuses to sell their equipment to the county. Those of you who have responded to the Action Alert from VoteTrustUSA have sent 15,372 emails to the EAC along with 1890 letters demanding the ITA be made to do their job….

  • NAtional: Verified Voting Names New President and CEO LINK
  • NAtional: Pacific Research Institute Carries Fresh Water for the Electronic Voting Machine Industry and Takes on California’s Debra Bowen in the Bargain LINK
  • NAtional: Rep. Bob Ney Likely to Relinquish Chairmanship: An Opportunity For Election Reform? LINK
  • AR: Clark County – Electronic voting machines coming to local precincts LINK
  • AR: Crittenden County – Commission opts for electronic voting LINK
  • AR: Poinsett County – Quorum Court allots funds for voting machines LINK
  • AZ: Voting expert says ballots from primary should be examined (Doug Jones) LINK
  • AZ: Arizona Awards Contract for Statewide Voter Registration Management System LINK
  • CA: Secretary of State to visit to North Coast LINK
  • CA: Riverside County – County E-voting will create paper trail LINK
  • CA: San Bernardino County – Another paper trail LINK
  • CA: San Mateo County – Supes to vote on vote-by-mail LINK
  • CA: Solano County – County considers mail-only election LINK
  • CA: Solano County – Mail-only voting a possibility LINK
  • CT: Supposed state requirement for voting machines never existed in law LINK
  • FL: Leon County – ES&S Betrays Agreement with Ion Sancho LINK
  • GA: Barrow County – Barrow County to participate in project to speed up voting LINK
  • IN: Vanderburgh County – County to reallocate voting machines LINK
  • MS: Clark unveils funding proposal for new voting machines LINK
  • NC: Jones County – Board of elections holds public forum LINK
  • NC: Lenoir County – Voting machines featured at forum LINK
  • NC: Northampton County – Residents pleased with voting machine (AutoMark) LINK
  • NM: Plaintiffs Applaud Governor’s Decision LINK
  • NM: PACE New Mexico and others join Voting lawsuit LINK
  • NM: Guv proposes paper ballots LINK
  • NM: Paper ballots back on track LINK
  • NY: Feds warn state over vote systems LINK
  • NY: Cahill is critical of New York’s lag in poll site access LINK
  • NY: State should seek HAVA waiver LINK
  • NY: Putnam hearing focuses on future of voting LINK
  • PA: Bradford County – Voting systems demonstrated to Bradford County officials LINK
  • PA: Bradford County – Voting machines demonstrated for Bradford County officials LINK
  • TX: Fort Bend County – Lack Of E-Voting Machines Stirs Debate Over Joint Primaries LINK
  • WV: Kanawha County – Bill would let county count at precincts LINK
  • Dominican Republic – Present pros and cons of the electronic voting in DR 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**

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    Reader Comments on

    ‘Daily Voting News’ For January 13, 2006

    8 Comments

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    8 Responses

    1. 1)
      Doug Eldritch said on 1/13/2006 @ 4:33pm PT: [Permalink]

      Goodbye Bob Ney, yes you’re going to be indicted….

      And for gods sake….CAN’T we hurry this along so everyone can vote on HR-550 and the paper record requirement becomes law?!???!

      HAVA being ammended with HR 550 would also make mandatory manual-random audits, against all the protest of fraud ridden company Diebold/Sequoia. Random audits ensure fraud or mistakes on either side get caught.

      And that is all which should happen mandating it nation wide.

      Doug E.

    2. 2)
      Floridiot said on 1/14/2006 @ 4:05am PT: [Permalink]

      Right John, and not the ITAA either

      Them good ol STINKTANKS make it CONfusing to the average Joe

    3. 3)
      Dredd said on 1/14/2006 @ 5:33am PT: [Permalink]

      For those who have not yet sent the emails John mentions, they are very easy to send.

      Just follow the link, fill out a few fields, and click to send the email to the relevant officials.

    4. 5)
      Doug Eldritch said on 1/14/2006 @ 2:26pm PT: [Permalink]

      Here is some more evidence to show everyone needs to get off their high horse and make this bi-partisan for serious reform:

      This guy’s a hard-line conservative, but he is NOT a neocon and he’s not like Senator Chris Dodd.

      "Personally, I would require there be entries on each line for "no choice", for which the voter must select, to indicate an intentional non-vote for any candidate. Also, for the sake of perception if nothing else, companies that produce DREs should be restricted to far less access to the hardware and software than they appear to have now. My proposed plan addresses that as well.

      The plan is necessarily bold and comprehensive, which is required to satisfy all the transparency issues. Because even with the remedies that GAO and others have urged, computers are by their nature complex devices, and who’s inner workings are less visible than paper or punch ballots, which people on the left still prefer. The voting system I outline offers the efficiency and accommodation to the handicapped (etc.) that only computer interfaces can offer, but with the transparency and confidence that paper ballots are perceived to offer.

      If DREs continue to be employed absent of a comprehensive plan like mine, then I fear that confidence in election results will wane. Computer glitches will never be proven to the losing side to be accidental. Opponents of electronic ballots will continue to argue that it’s impossible to verify that the vote which was cast was the vote that got tabulated. And the other side will continue to allege that the vote that was cast wasn’t from an eligible voter. And of course, whenever exit polls don’t resemble the subsequent actual vote, the left will challenge the accuracy of the actual vote.

      [Note that when this occurred in 2004, not only had left-wing Democrats dismiss the admissions from liberal mainstream media that their polling consortium had skewered their test samplings more toward Kerry, they also wouldn’t accept the logical sequelae that it had the effect of discouraging Republican voters and depressing turnout for Bush. And all this occurred BEFORE their rage against the DRE machine had taken hold the way it has now. Today, the paranoia and distrust is at it’s zenith.]

      One can only appreciate the juxtaposition from the usual political stances: The Republicans favor the HAVA voting reforms that call for modernization, while Democrats prefer the status quo and urged states not to enact laws to qualify for the HAVA grants. They oppose robust voter eligibility screening and want states to keep using paper ballots or the old lever-operated mechanical machines.

      Preventing Voter Fraud

      The ideal remedy to all forms of voting frauds must be comprehensive, else those who feel cheated from ballot tampering will feel justified in perpetrating voter fraud, and vice versa. Thus, we cannot merely seek the ideal voting device, for example, without trying to get voter fraud under control. As John Fund notes in "Stealing Elections", prosecuting election fraud is almost nonexistent for a variety of both political and practical reasons. So we need a systemic, uniform and comprehensive solution.

      Almost every type of flaw in our voting system which I mentioned in the previous sections can be traced to one factor common in all balloting systems used in the U.S.: A ballot once cast cannot be traced to the voter who cast it. It might seem obvious that this prevents us from discovering what Republicans seem most concerned about: ineligible voters. But it also prevents what Democrats claim to want most—that all ballots are counted, and counted accurately.

      My proposed solution might also seem to violate an axiom in this country: the privacy of our vote. But with encryption technology, that should not be a concern. After I run through my proposed ballot system, you will see how that’s accomplished:

      The state supplies a registered voter with a unique registration number. That number will never have other data linked to it, other than the person’s name, date of birth, current residential address, political party registration, and a face photograph of the person. As it’s always been, voter registration information will be in the hands of local election officials, to allow them to properly identify people as eligible to vote or not. Election officials will never have access to how people voted. As you’ll read later, such information might only need to be "unblinded" to authorized investigators to look into indications of fraud or tabulation errors. I suggest that it may be the state’s attorney general, or some nonpartisan entity that the state may designate.

      The sole reason for the ID number is that numbers are unique identifiers that cannot be duplicated, and it’s required for the computer tracking process described later. Voters must register as usual. They will receive their voter registration card in the mail—sent to the address they claimed as theirs. The card itself will contain only 3 pieces of the total information: The person’s photograph, his registration number, and his election district. It will also contain a magnetic strip of the registration number, so that the voter can "swipe it" while in the voting booth, for ease and speed.

      That’s right, voting will be a little like a transaction at an ATM booth. People will go to central locations to cast their votes, just like they do now. Casting your ballot will also be done in a private booth, just like it’s done now. The voting machine would essentially be a computer terminal. The user interface will employ touch-screen activation, with the option for mouse input and voice recognition (for the visually-impaired).

      Voters will either swipe their registration number into the computer, or enter it manually. The method of entering your votes might be through screen activation, or whichever method Congress deems best. After the voter reviews and confirms the entries on his ballot, he must enter his PIN (personal identification number). This PIN is just like a PIN you use on an ATM machine. It’s not known to anyone but the voter. Without the correct PIN for that registration number, the votes entered into the computer will not be recorded, transmitted or tabulated. It won’t go anywhere.

      The process to ensure proper identification is necessary to stem voter fraud, and as I’ll describe later, ballot manipulation. The PIN number prevents anyone else from voting using that voter registration number. The computer will store votes cast as "write-once" (then read anytime) data, to be sure. But the unique PIN adds an extra layer of assurance that votes cannot be altered (for any given registration number) or multiplied after they’re cast. Only one completed ballot per registration number will be allowed. The photo of the voter on the card will prevent various forms of fraud as well, but at the same time represent a far less intrusive measure than say, having your fingerprints registered, as is required to vote in Mexican elections. Indeed, voter ID cards with photo, thumbprint, voter ID numbers, and magnetic strips are commonplace in the very same countries that the left urges us to emulate with regards to paper ballots."
      Take out the machines and make them produce backups

      The ridiculous fraud in national elections has been favoring the GOP when it comes to machines, but in local elections the ballot stuffing for the democrats especially DLC democrat is intolerable and is using the same machines.

      They are all in this bastardized bullshit together, so again, ALL ballots should be counted at the precinct level with manual audits.

      Doug Eldritch

    5. 6)
      Brantl said on 1/16/2006 @ 6:59am PT: [Permalink]

      If you get people in the polling precinct with the best voter ID available and change your procedure to this: A voter has his thumb scanned for a (unique to voting algorithm) hash number that’s used in hashing the voter ID unique number and then casts his ballot, verifies his choices on the 2 ballots that are produced, (the ballot box copy and the voter’s copy) he agrees the vote is correct and he keeps the legally-binding copy of his vote.

      He ink-thumbprints his copy ONLY and leaves the precinct. He can check his vote by the ID number over the internet and at the precinct.

      If they got it wrong he can be re-thumbscanned and get it CORRECTED to what his legally binding copy says. If the thumbscan doesn’t match he has the option of making another ink thumbprint and showing that they match and then getting his vote corrected, and walks away with all copies of the thumbprints.
      Only in the event of incorrect recording of the vote is any risk to the anonymity of the vote engendered, and wear a ski mask if you want to do that.
      In the event of extra votes discovered with all of the appropriate stuff on the ballot box copies, your asked to return to have your thumbscan checked. They check for duplicate thumbprint hashes at this time, as well. (People who voted twice, won’t come back). You have a couple of days, and if you don’t return to have your vote validated under these circumstances, your vote doesn’t count.

    6. 7)
      Brantl said on 1/16/2006 @ 7:02am PT: [Permalink]

      I submitted that previous post’s idea in greater detail at Black box voting forums, (blackboxvoting.org) search for legally binding copy or legally binding ballot in the text and I think you’ll find it.

    7. 8)
      Doug Eldritch said on 1/16/2006 @ 2:03pm PT: [Permalink]

      Thanks Brant. It isn’t too much security either since identity theft is rampant, and any voter can take a thumbprint using a simple blot of ink.

      Doug

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