Verified Voting Blog: On the South Carolina Primary – A call for recountable, auditable voting systems

Last week’s surprising outcome in a party primary in South Carolina for United States Senate was accompanied by anecdotal reports of voting problems on election day, and many questions about the accuracy of the vote count. Whether specific reports of irregularities in this election are confirmed, the most important fact about South Carolina’s voting system is that most ballots cannot be effectively audited or recounted. Serious concerns about the integrity of the primary (and of other elections conducted using the same technology) are inevitable, and legitimate. South Carolina uses paperless touch-screen electronic voting machines for all but absentee voting, which is done using paper ballots. Thus for the vast majority of votes, voters cannot check to be sure their votes were recorded as intended, and election officials cannot conduct legitimate recounts or audits to prove that the machines were counting the votes correctly. When there is no reliable hard-copy record of the voters’ intent to fall back on, election officials, candidates and the public are at the mercy of the counting software, which may or may not function correctly.   Absent a “do-over” election using a system that can be recounted or audited, there is simply no way to know if the outcome was correct. In our 2008 joint report report “Is America Ready to Vote,” Common Cause, Verified Voting, and the Brennan Center for Justice rated South Carolina inadequate for failing to offer the basics of a verified election: an auditable system, and manual audits of the system to check electronic counts.

The Voting News Daily: SC: Greene voters blues.1000s of CA mail ballots dont count. HAVAs real scandal

A Greene voter admits: “I had just never heard of either of these guys and it never occurred to me that anything like this could happen or my vote and that…our votes would contribute to South Carolina being the butt of a joke again..”..Thousands of California mail ballots too late: Riverside Co.-20,000, Sacramento- 2,053, El Dorado -750, Yolo- 408, Napa- 125, LA – 653…Iowa mispent $575K of HAVA funds.”But the real scandal was the money that was ‘properly’ spent on touchscreen voting machines that have since been scrapped.” says Jerry Depew, IowaVoters..”..the rush to adopt paperless, non-auditable electronic voting machines has subverted trust in the process and outcome of elections.” ~Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Network World

All this and more in todays voting news below…

Editor’s Note: Voting News Voting is now on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/VotingNews and Twitter at http://twitter.com/VotingNews

AL: Recount, runoff cause controversy
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/article/20100614/NEWS/100619921/1017/NEWS
MONTGOMERY — A recount of the June 1 Republican gubernatorial primary will begin in Etowah County and in other counties today but the recount and a July 13 GOP runoff are mired in controversy by the parties involved.
…
James’ campaign spokesman Brett Hall said the campaign is sending checks to all 67 counties to cover the expense of a recount, estimated to be about $200,000.

CA: Thousands of mailed ballots too late to be counted in California *
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/15/2822821/thousands-of-vote-by-mail-ballots.html
(Late by county breakdown)

CA: Verifying vote-by-mail ballots is vital but time-consuming
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100615/OPINION02/6140335/Verifying-vote-by-mail-ballots-is-vital-but-time-consuming As of Friday, more than 50 of the state’s 58 county elections offices had more than 1 million ballots combined still to verify

CA: More mail-in votes counted, election results largely unchanged
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15296026?nclick_check=1
Santa Cruz. At least 11,000 ballots still need to be counted, County Clerk Gail Pellerin reported Monday. The county has until July 6 to report official results, and elections officials don’t expect to update the tally until closer to that deadline.

CA: Miscommunication with post office cited for 12,500 late ballots *
http://www.pe.com/politics/gang/stories/PE_News_Local_D
_ballots15.246469b.html http://is.gd/cQNzh
A miscommunication between Riverside County and the U.S. Postal Service may have led to as many as 12,500 ballots arriving too late to be legally counted, officials said Monday.

CA: In our opinion – Bring back the polls
http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ci_15300744 If anyone needed any more proof that mail-in balloting is not needed or wanted in Mendocino County, check the numbers.
Some 10,559 voters who no longer have a polling place to go to actually took their mail-in ballots and dropped them at a polling place on Election Day.
That’s over half (55.5 percent) of the mail-in ballots used in this election

CA: Stanislaus County clerk reviews ballots
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/14/2822933/stanislaus-county-clerk-reviews.html
It’s also reviewing about 1,900 provisional, military, damaged and absentee ballots. It’s unlikely that the tallies will sway any races

CA: Count continues
http://www.record-bee.com/ci_15298009
LAKE COUNTY — The registrar of voters said there’s no “funny business” going on and it’s normal to have unprocessed votes after Election Day, in this case 3,766 votes, including provisional ballots.

The Registrar of Voters Office is continuing to count 3,081 vote-by-mail ballots turned in at the polls and office or received in the mail on Election Day or the day before, Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley said.