Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
In Vanderburgh County, IN voters were forced to stand in long lines in Nov. 2004 and some walked away in frustration. The county council has been investigating prior to spending the money to buy more machines. They’ve now found that 46 machines were left in storage rather than to be used. PA has begun the legislative actions to keep voters from voting. On the national scene HR-550 has picked up another co-sponsor and new legislation that will slow down HAVA has been filed….
NAtional: Legislation aims to bring voting machine relief (HR-4666) LINK
NAtional: Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) Co-Sponsors HR 550 LINK
AZ: Column: Show Us the Ballots LINK
CA: E-voting systems OK’d, except Diebold’s LINK
CA: El Dorado County – Registrar: Mail-in election remote LINK
CA: Riverside County – Opinion – Election fears are unfounded LINK
CT: Guilford – Guarding the Vote: New Dem Registrar of Voters in Town LINK
IL: Grundy County – A sign of the times. County introduces touch screen voting LINK
IN: Vanderburgh County – Voting machines don’t add up. County clerk says 46 unused in 2004 LINK
MD: Paper trail unlikely for 2006 elections LINK
NJ: Franklin Township – Dougherty optimistic on ballot challenge LINK
OH: State drops court fight to try to show 2004 election was fair LINK
PA: House votes to ban paroled felons from voting, require voter ID LINK
PA: Beaver County – County selects voting machines (ES&S iVotronic) LINK
SC: Putnam County – A new way to vote. Touch-screen demonstration converts leery voters to experts LINK
TN: Knox County – Knox to replace voting machines LINK
TX: Liberty County – LC goes electronic for future elections LINK
TX: Parker County – New voting machines quicker, better LINK
WV: Putnam County – Putnam residents get chance to try out voting machines 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**
Unless I’m much mistaken, Vanderburgh county in Indiana = Evansville, which I believe is the second largest urban area in Indiana. That could make it a key county for sabotaging the Dem vote (though I don’t know from the article referenced above if the long lines ocurred in Dem leaning areas).
There were also apparently problems in Sodrel’s narrow "victory" over incumbent (! – another Republican "miracle"?) Baron Hill, in another Indiana congressional district.
"The recount continues in Ripley, Scott, and Switzerland counties next week. All three used the same optical scan machines which somehow gave 600 Democrat votes to Libertarians in Franklin county on Election Day.
The secretary of state’s office says even if Hill gets all the Libertarian votes in those three counties it won’t be near enough to win."
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/st...8;nav=0Ra7Tl6N
Isn’t it interesting that such a large vote mistake apparently ocurred in a nearby county, using the same machines that were used in parts of the Sodrel/Hill election, but the importance of this is discounted as regards continuing the Sodrel/Hill recount, just because that mistake all by itself would not have been enough to turn the election.
Commonsense would suggest that if machines were messing up, there could have been other mistakes that could have switched more votes. It strikes me as very perverse to assume the opposite (because one mistake was found, it is unlikely that other mistakes might be found).
Hill ultimately stated that the recount proved that the official result was correct. But I believe he was under a lot of pressure to give up the recount, so I really wonder how effective it was.
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The Argentine press has a very interesting article up about the problems that the US is facing in the 06 elections with track-less voting.
They were suprised (!) that our ‘media’ had not printed the information that they had found.
http://argentina.indymedia.org/.../02/370780.php
Doesn’t seem to mean much, but there was at least one other indicator of problems in Ripley county, Indiana, a county in the Sodrel/Hill race:
"Voting systems already must undergo a public test in each county before the election and that’s where Ripley County discovered an error with Fidlar Election Co. optical scan memory cards, Ripley County Clerk Ginger Bradford said.
The memory cards that count the votes in optical scanners had the wrong precinct labels, so the cards were sent back to the company, Bradford said. Bradford said she didn’t know if the error could be called a programming error.
"They reprogrammed the cards when they got them back, so it sounds maybe like it was a programming error," Bradford said. "
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/a...le.php?id=5261
"Among the complaints Fanello said she’d heard was that the machines, manufactured by Election Systems & Software, malfunctioned for some who tried to cast "straight-party" ballots. Some who cast straight-party Democratic ballots saw their votes show up as votes for the Republican Party"
This quote has to do with the Vanderburgh county election Nov. 2 2004
http://www.indianalawblog.com/a...a_law_van.html
More Vanderburgh county problems Nov. 2 2004:
"Election officials will try to duplicate the computer malfunction that locked up the screens of some electronic voting
machines on Election Day. County Clerk Marsha Abell estimates approximately 150 mailed-in absentee ballots were not counted because of handling errors, either by voters or by a temporary Election Office employee who was terminated."
http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm#IN
Thanks, Rubber soul.
Your very welcome, Eppie
"Most of the complaints have been met."
Carl Laporo needs to shut his mouth…
Ohio voting lawsuits
Now’s the time for people to interject in Ohio and keep these court cases moving along, right to trial. Its time to get public record requests of ALL of those memory cards…..Ohio being one of the most corrupt states in the union, bar none, people need to declare war there.
As for pennsylvania…I’m surprised that the iVotronic machines are still even being used. I encourage and have told everyone in PA to introduce TROs, and hopefully the bill to delay HAVA will be voted on. With one single stroke of the pen, this can all stop…HR 550 becoming law.
But until then just keep spreading the vote pad and let everyone know they can CHOOSE optical scanners and audit tools and not have touch screens.
Doug E.
There is a voting systems lawsuit that has reached Federal Court in Philadelphia challenging the closed systems which count ballots. A reporter named Landes has her suit filed against state and Federal officials. I picked this up from a Buzzflash link to a Yahoo News story this morning. The defendants (including Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General) claim the reporter suffers no injury not being able to see the ballot transparency, and therefore her case should not obtain standing in the Federal Court. Landes is arguing based on Marbury v Madison precedents. Landes also feels activists have let her case go un-noticed as much as the Press has. Check it out.
Here is a link to the case.
http://www.EcoTalk.org/lawsuit.doc.
The gerrymandering cases now pending in the Supreme Court, and certiorari having been granted, the briefs are showing up.
Here is a link to the brief of the US government (PDF) which is supporting Tom DeLay’s position.
Besides gerrymandering, public financing of campaigns and pre-vote vote suppression, there needs to be a way for a voter to check how his vote is recorded and get it corrected if it isn’t recorded correctly. I’ve posted a method that I think works at the blackboxvoting.org forums that I think can cover it. Check it out and see what you think. It preserves anonymity, but allows the voter to get his vote corrected, and allows him to check up to and including the states’ final count.
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