The Voting News Daily: India E-voting expert arrested. TN voters deserve answers. Australia Bush v Gore?
CTVoter on India’s arrest of Hari Prasad: “So as governments do to whistle blowers and those who bring uncomfortable facts, they have arrested the Indian member of the research team in an effort to determine the source of the voting machine and to intimidate.”..Sarasota FL voting machine meltdown proves value of paper ballots, no thanks to Kathy Dent..LTE: “Tennessee needs to join the 21st century with the majority of the rest of country and move to a verifiable, auditable paper trail/ballot.”..2010 Australian Election Results a Bush vs. Gore Repeat…
All this and more in today’s voting news below…
Editor’s note: The PacMan Voting Machine story and video has become viral.
One voting news reader writes: “My hair exploded about the pac man program!!”
AZ: Maricopa County Elections Sued Over Alleged Voting Violations
http://weeklyintercept.blogspot.com/2010/08/maricopa-county-elections-sued-over.html
A group of diverse individuals including Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Barry Hess, former Republican state Senator Karen Johnson, and voting activist John Brakey are suing Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, alleging that Maricopa County Elections is involved in various voting shenanigans.
CA: California’s online voter registration plan on hold
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voter-registration-20100821,0,3294207.story
The start of the program has been pushed back to June 2014 as the secretary of state seeks a new contractor.
…
She (SOS Bowen) said other states’ efforts are not comparable to California’s. “There is no precedent in any other state for this, because California is enormous,” she said.
CT: Greenwich picked – yet again – to audit primary results
http://www.greenwichtime.com/local/article/Greenwich-picked-yet-again-to-audit-primary-622620.php Six of the seven times since the state started mandating audits three years ago, the town has been picked for a recount, irking its two registrars of voters.
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Despite the hassle of conducting frequent audits, DeCaro said it was much better than the alternative of no checks and balances.
(Fred DeCaro III, Stamford’s Republican registrar).
FL: Early-voting machine malfunctions* (Sarasota – Dominion opscan machines)
http://www.yourobserver.com/news/sarasota/Front-Page/081920107656/Early-voting-machine-malfunctions …One of the inspectors noticed this week that the system count on the machine was different than the number of ballots that had been inputted.
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But Joe Gruters, chairman of the Republican Party of Sarasota County, said he is concerned.
“This proves the need to have paper ballots, so there’s concrete evidence, so no one could question the outcome,” he said. “Two thousand votes could decide a race.”
Rita Ferrandino, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Sarasota County, said issues such as this are why she has election observers watching every step of the process.
NV: The incredibly true, bizarre story of Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian and $35
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2010/aug/19/incredibly-true-bizarre-story-scott-ashjian-and-35/ …
Wrong. Colorado ain’t nothin’; in Nevada, Ashjian needed only need 250 signatures to get his name on the ballot for national office.
NY: Democracy, the Hard Way *
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/nyregion/22critic.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
The new system compounds the shortcomings of print media with those of electronic media — and makes matters worse with hard-to-read, hard-to-understand instructions and a lot of extraneous nonsense.
OH: Cuyahoga County Board of Elections posts bilingual ballots
http://www.cleveland.com/cuyahoga-county/index.ssf/2010/08/cuyahoga_board_of_elections_posts_bilingual_ballots.html
In response to a recent U.S. Department of Justice push for bilingual ballots, 70 precincts in council districts 2, 3, 4 and 7 will offer instructions, political parties and offices in both English and Spanish.