The Voting News Daily: Public Option in voting? Iowa HAVA $ audited, ACORN rules for Corp Cheats
What do voting machines, laser speed guns, and parking meters have in common?…Voter machine monopoly promotes election fraud…Is Ken Blackwell ignoring the facts about voter registration?…”In Citizens United v. F.E.C., the court could wipe out a longstanding ban on corporate spending on federal elections, which would allow big business to swamp democracy.” ~ NY Times OP…Connecticut election audits fall short… Economy v Elections: Lake County IL cuts polling places to pay for new vote-by-mail program…Delaware Co. NY cuts polling places to offset voting machine cost. EAC audit of Iowa’s HAVA costs trigger investigation….Senate right to apply ACORN standard to defense contractors. Voter Action says we need a public option for voting systems…
All of that and more in today’s Voting News below…
CA. Vote By Mail Election Underway in Santa Barbara
Process Could Save the City $50-thousand dollars
A vote by mail election has begin in Santa Barbara. The city says it will save an estimated $50-thousand dollars. Ballots began arriving today. They must be received by 8 p.m. on November 3rd…The ballots come with a prepaid envelope. Voters must sign the envelope and the signature has to match the one on file in the elections office
http://www.keyt.com/news/local/63567782.html
CT. Greenwich Registrar and Deputy Secretary Mara Discuss Today’s Audit
October 2, 2009 …We would prefer audits that were intended to do more than just check the machines, that they also were intend to verify the election results as well…Not every count has gone well in the past. As the Coalition Report of the November 2008 Audit stated:…the November post-election audits still do not inspire confidence…Among our greatest concerns are the discrepancies between machine counts and hand-counts reported to the Secretary of the State by several municipalities
http://www.ctvoterscount.org/?p=2426
HI. What do voting machines, laser speed guns, and parking meters have in common?
Oct 5. Answer: You can’t be sure they are properly calibrated.
…I can only guess, but the laser speed guns may seldom, if ever, be tested at all. If that’s the case, then the city will have learned a valuable lesson as speeding cases are thrown out…For voting machines in Hawaii there is an administrative rule covering testing, and it applies to all computers used for elections:
…Anyone wanna bet on whether every computer is tested? I’ve been told that only a sample are tested, but I don’t have the last word on this…If any poll people know the answer to the voting machine question, though, I’d be curious to have your comments. I’d ask Kevin Cronin, the Chief Elections Officer, but he has enough headaches these days without a new challenge to deal with.
http://disappearednews.com/2009/10/what-do-voting-machines-laser-speed.html
IA. Feds question Culver’s voting promotion costs *
A federal audit of the Iowa secretary of state’s office has found questionable spending totaling $2.5 million of roughly $30 million that the state’s elections division received from the federal government while Gov. Chet Culver was secretary of state.
In particular, auditors questioned more than $1.2 million in spending related to a 2005 promotion to celebrate voting and milestones of voting rights.