Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org
Three disability advocacy groups have filed suit in California against the SoS and five counties for using voting systems that are not accessible, according to the groups. The list of systems includes AutoMark and Hart eSlate and Diebold TSx but not Sequoia Edge / “We have lousy voting machines and no results. When I voted this afternoon, there were three men standing behind me who could’ve seen how I voted.” said Park City, Kansas Mayor Dee Stuart about Sedgwick Counties ES&S voting system. / Shelby Co. Tennessee sent their Diebold voting machines home with election workers for the night tonight, ignoring the federal certification memorandum….
NAtional: Democracy In Crisis: An Interview with Mike Papantonio
An Explanation of the Qui Tam Cases Filed Against Some Electronic Voting Machine Companies LINK
NAtional: Whistleblower lawsuit filed against e-voting industry LINK
NAtional: Blowing the whistle on Diebold (Kennedy Qui Tam) LINK
NAtional: Lawmaker urges residents to exercise vote LINK
NAtional: EAC Requests Public Comment On Draft of 2006 Election Survey LINK
NAtional: Election Monitoring Shows Commitment to Democracy LINK
AZ: Pima County – Our Opinion: Security of vote machines still in doubt. Before Pima County commits to using touchscreen voting machines, it must know that the system is totally secure. LINK
CA: State, Alameda County sued over voter access LINK
CA: Lawsuit Filed Against Voting Machines LINK
CA: Disabled voters sue five counties, state over access LINK
CA: San Diego County – County sued over handling of primary: Lawsuit asks court to order recount of Bilbray-Busby race LINK
CO: Morgan County – Calling all voters Sheriff, assessor races to highlight primary elections (Hart Intercivic) LINK
KS: Computer glitch stalls some election results (VoTech) LINK
KS: Labette County – 16% of voters cast ballots LINK
KS: Sedgwick County – Voting reforms pass their first test (ES&S iVotronic) LINK
KS: Sedgwick County – County 4th District candidates left hanging LINK
KS: Sedgwick County – Glitches mark new voting system LINK
MO: Boone County – Poll workers learn to use newfangled election gear LINK
NM: Columnist – Safe and secure. Paper ballots will give New Mexico uniform voting procedures LINK
PA: Bucks County – Calming voters’ fears. County Commissioners attempt to ease residents’ concerns about using new voting machines in the upcoming election LINK
PA: Centre County – County OKs voting system contract. But opponents of the touch-screens say protest not over (ES&S iVotronic) LINK
TN: Veterans Fired On Corrupt Politicians To Prevent Election Fraud. Some Little-Known American History For Your Reading Pleasure, from Athens, Tennessee, August 1/2, 1946. LINK
TN: Don’t wait until the last minute to vote LINK
TN: Hamilton County – Kick the Rats Out! Election results may take a little longer to process Thursday ““ but they’ll be escorted by both parties (Diebold) LINK
TN: Shelby County – Diebold says voting machines are ready for Thursday’s election LINK
TN: Shelby County – Justice Department to have observers at the polls LINK
WA: Federal Judge Protects Eligible Voters In Washington. Court Blocks Law Creating New Obstacles to Voter Registration LINK
WA: Judge bars state from enforcing new voter registration law 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**
Well there you go, Throw the damn things out. Isn’t that why we got evote was for the handicapped? Thank You to these disabled groups for coming forward to file this suit. I hope this helps all of our voting rights.
Laura,
The fact is that if these three groups prevail they will not stop the use of DREs. They want to keep those. They just want to do away with any vvpat verifiability.
This same lawsuit has been filed by AAPD and CCB. They lost. The only difference this time is that they have included the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA).
If they win this one it will have nation-wide ramifications. The AutoMark will be outlawed. VVPAT will be outlawed. Optical-scan voting systems will have to be augmented with DREs and the poor PVA will be even worse off because none of the DRE machines are accessible.
Well Shit! Are they in each others pockets? We saw it with the money from Diebold to the blind. They are selling our democracy down the river. ARGHH! This makes me so mad. One step forward one back, this sucks!
You know what John They all need to be outlawed. BOSTON TEA PARTY!
John
I don’t think that requiring a VVPAT alone is the answer anyway.
DRE’s would be fine if they were used to take advantage of their strengths rather that their weakness. Any VVPAT still have to be guarded to make sure it is not replaced with a second copy which changes the voter verified selections to the liking of any programmer, who gains access to the system. The strength of any computer that we need to take advantage of is the computers ability to memorize very precisely. Before we should be willing to let any computer count are votes we need to require them to keep a uniquely numbered record of the selections of each voter and publish that record. Then and only then can we arrive at verified computer voting. The result of properly run computer elections can be elections with better verification than any of the elections in the past. All we have to overcome to get there is the desire of the very many who only want voting they can rig. With such a system in place the counting ability of the computer becomes a mute point. Any good computer programmer can read in the memorized data and check that the computer did count the verified votes correctly. With such a system counting only the votes the counters wish to count will no longer be possible like it has always been in the past. When coupled with effective ways to prevent ballot stuffing this system would result in highly reliable transparent elections. We can go there if we chose to. The big question we have left is do any of those in charge of counting our votes want reliable transparent elections or do they still want to continue to be in a position where they are able to control the outcomes of our elections?
I have presented more details on the type of system I think we need for computer voting in some of your other threads here. Therefore I skipped some of the details here.
Perhaps we need a notion of “affirmative action” in the equation.
I mean when habits get so bad, as racial discrimination did, ordinary reactions are not sufficient to treat and heal the social malady.
So in the EVM context the affirmative action to use would be reverting to paper ballots and hand counts until the election situation becomes stable again.
When things simmer down, sane electronic voting machine rules and laws are nationwide, and there are methods for demonstrating honesty in elections again, (exit polls, etc) then we could ease into EVM trial usage once again.
But for now I think the affirmative action to take nationwide is paper ballots and hand counts in place of EVM junk.
Earth to Brad: This Green party/Romanelli/Santorum/Casey thing is heating up around here. On WILK today, they said that ALL of the Green Parties contributions were from Republicans, except for Romanelli himself. And the Republican donors changed letters in their names, so they weren’t the exact spelling to match their Republican donation names. Isn’t that fraud??? They’re setting up the impossible storyline for us to follow, after the GOP hacks the e-vote machines, “it was the Green Party that put Santorum in”… This story is getting big…
#6
Dredd
With all the money HAVA has put into the picture your “affirmative action” looks like a fantasy to me. But even if we could get them to turn back to hand counted paper ballots that does not take us to honest elections. The machines did not take honesty out of are elections. Dishonest people did. Those dishonest people are changing the rules to make dishonesty easier to get away with. Recounts are never complete recounts and bring made harder and harder to get. Exit polls are on the way out and if not out of the picture, then limited to use after the polls close. If they don’t release them until after they adjust them to the actual vote counts what are exit polls good for? Propaganda only???
We sure do need to go to where sane voting laws (electronic or otherwise) are nationwide, but once again we are clearly headed in the opposite direction. It’s those same dishonest people doing the leading after all.
I see a lot here about 50 to 49 elections but that is so old school. Along with the 2004 presidential election being converted from a landslide loss into a victory, came the death of 50 to 49 surprise neo-Con “victories”. Now you cheat enough to win by enough to avoid a recount. All you need are laws (guidelines. Is there such a thing as an election law in this country?) to prohibit recounts if the election are not close enough. Some of these “laws” are all ready in place.
If you can get your affirmative action adopted I’ll be there to support you since it’s a step up from 2004. Unless something very dramatic takes place at somebody reports that it has, 2006 will be the biggest disaster ever.
A lot of great effort being is made here and elsewhere but if a tree falls in the forest when nobody is around. Does it make a sound? Every time I leave here and check out the MSM I sure get the sinking feeling that no sound is being made here.
I got two ideas on the topic of folks with serious disabilities problems.
Their disability is not their fault. However it also does not mean that we should allow all of the votes to be compromised.
1. Family or SOMEONE can help them (preferably from their own political affiliation.) They have a disability and need help, we should all agree on that.
2. I can see a possibility a mobile specilised entry devices based laptop and printer to service their needs. The laptop is strickly to PRINT a ballot to be for all practical purposes the exact same as any other countable ballot.
I’d rather go with #1 because you never know when there will be a glitch with electronics. But the FACT is there are more voters that are not disabled, than voters that are disabled. Technology allowed for this specific problems should not be allowed to compromise all ot the elections as a whole. It needs an air gap. That air gap is the removal of
ELECTRONICS
NETWORKS
DIGITIZED DATA
I don’t even want precint’s calling on the phone with numbers .
Q: How can you verify the voice / person?)
A: you can’t.
Paper ballots should be counted, and the numbers driven physically across the country to a central location.
THEN after all precints are in, THEN the MSM may be allowed to post their crap on the broadcast media.
http://civilliberty.about.com/g...logspot.com%2F
Am I right or wrong? The guy above is running for Senate on the Libertarian Party. Isn’t he going to take votes away from Santorum? Why isn’t the media saying so?
http://www.constitutionpartypa....ards/index.php
Isn’t this guy going to take votes away from Santorum, if he enters the race???
Question: Why are Republican donors changing their names and donating to ONLY the Green Party candidate, and not helping the Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates?????????????????????? In Pennsylvania?????????? Because the “story” they need in the MSM for when they hack the e-vote machines, is “the Green Party candidate swung the election”…which is impossible, based on past election statistics…
…but it will be “the story” in the MSM AFTER the GOP pulls another “coupe”…their only chance, because Casey has been consistently ahead by 10-15% in pre-election polls…that’s half a million to 3/4 million votes… The highest 3rd party vote total for a 3rd party candidate in a Pa. senate race, going back to 1992, was 220,000, way less than half of what Santorum needs to swing the election…AND…assumming all half to 3/4 million voters 100% would’ve voted for Casey, had there not been a Green candidate. I liked the Green Party, now I’m doing a double-take, because they’re accepting “blood money” from the devil (the Republicans). The Green Party will be media patsy’s, the excuse how Santorum won, instead of e-vote manipulation and disenfranchisement of minorities… You can’t “deal with the devil”…and the Green Party is “dealing with the devil”. I heard on the local radio WILK this morning, that ALL the donations except for Romanelli himself, are from Republican donars, a lot who didn’t put down their real names. Isn’t that fraud??????????
This is NOT the way for the Green Party to get more popular!!!!!!
Bob Young #8
You said:
I call it a hope, and what I hope for is hand counts of paper ballots. And it is a hope that will probably never happen.
The argument that “we have spent so much money on this useless, insecure system, we should use it anyway” does not hold up either.
It is similar to a situation where someone has spent so much money on a home security system that does not work but they decide to use it anyway. (Sounds like homeland security doesn’t it?)
Cutting losses is a sound financial concept. One can’t change the past, but one can avoid the inevitable future by changing to a different course so that the outcome changes.
Suing the junk election machine companies, exposing them, and hoping the public will get it is the best game in town right now.
Nothing, in terms of prevention, has worked so far … exit polls included. Everything so far is after-the-fact of a stolen election.
Big Dan
The people who vehemently deny that Greens damage the democratic party chances are in denial it seems.
The republicans know how to split elections and use the non-democrats to hurt the democrats.
I do not know why the Greens do not get it … because in general they seem to be smarter than the republicans.
But in the instance you mention, I am not so sure.
Lieberman is doing the same thing … taking from republicans in animosity to democrats.
I would like to hear some Greens defend the practice … I have already heard Lieberman’s defense and it did not persuade me.
I live in Illinois, the green candidate for governor needed 25,000 signatures to get on the ballot. He received quite a few more then that. Guess who is doing the challenging in our state….. The Dems. We have two corrupt candidates running for governor Blago and Topinka. If the green candidate gets on the ballot I’m voting for him. I know everyone thinks its bad to split the ticket but I am just that fed up with the corrupt status quo.
Residents of the State of California,..
Meetings to discuss voting issue,..
Calendar
August 9 , 2006: The Secretary of State will hold a public hearing regarding the proposed certification of voting systems for use in California, 10:00 a.m. at 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, CA.
August 9 , 2006: Voting Modernization Board meeting, 10:30 a.m. at the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles (Board Room), 354 South Spring Street, Los Angeles.
Source:Link
OldTurk said:
“August 9 , 2006: The Secretary of State will hold a public hearing regarding the proposed certification of voting systems for use in California, 10:00 a.m. at 1500 11th Street, Sacramento, CA.”
Why are these meetings held during the day when the average person who has to put food on the table cannot attend?!
They should be at 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening.
The money I would lose to take a day off of work is my weekly food budget!
“Public” Hearing my ass!
Bluebear2 #17
You got that right. Public hearings should be held over many days on the internet so no matter what time you work, you can still participate. Run it like Wikipedia and let the “public” filter out junk or deceptions.
Average working people don’t have a chance, and the powers that be love it that way. They would scream and holler that ordinary folks don’t understand the issues, but I counter that by saying when you let your children run their own affairs and suffer the consequences, they learn quickly.
I never had children, but I’m not wrong am I?