The Voting News Daily: VA Election Site IT outage. Kathy Dent recount flap. AK’s 11,200 iffy mail ballots
Luther Weeks on Connecticut elections: “State recanvass law inadequate for close elections”…Alaska mail ballots – Over 20,000 Votes Still To Be Counted, 11,200 are ‘question’ ballots…Sarasota FL Election Sup Kathy Dent accused of influencing election in recount…Virginia’s State Board of Elections still affected by IT outage that began last week in a data center run by outsourcer Northrop Grumman…Wasted opportunity: Harris County TX replaces paperless voting machines with more paperless voting machines….
All this and more in today’s voting news below…
AK: Over 20,000 Votes Still To Be Counted *(absentee mail ballots)
http://www.ktva.com/ci_15917459
On Friday, the Alaska Division of Elections said there are more than 20,000 ballots that have not yet been counted. Over 11,200 are absentee ballots with much of the rest being question ballots.
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All ballots have to be postmarked election day, and if it’s postmarked within the United States, it has ten days following the day of the election to be received, which would be September 3, and if it’s postmarked outside the U.S., fifteen days to be received, which is September 8,”
AK: Miller’s lawyer warns of vote tampering by Murkowski campaign
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/blogs/political-animal/6598-millers-lawyer-warns-of-voter-tampering-by-murkowski-campaign In the letter, Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein accuses the observer, who he calls Mike, of accessing the Division of Elections computer database for 20 minutes to “check voter records.” That Mike had access to private data was bad enough, Van Flein said in a letter, but the Diebold voter software used by the state is also vulnerable to voter hijacking.
http://www.adn.com/2010/08/28/1429399/absentee-ballots.html
Miller campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto said in an e-mail Saturday that there are many calls going out to Alaskans who voted absentee ballots, asking them who they voted for in the primary.
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“I believe, and time will prove it, (the calls) are being done for nefarious purposes,” DeSoto said in the e-mail. “It is definitely not being done by the Joe Miller campaign. It is being done, I believe, by the National Republican Senatorial Committee or someone they contracted with as the beginning of a legal battle to throw out ballots.”
AZ: Election Watcher Files Affidavit Saying He Saw Sequoia Employee Illegally Connect To E-Voting Tabulator* http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100824/11150310763.shtml
…He then includes the affidavit he filed. Basically, he spotted a Sequoia employee hooked into the central tabulator, via an ethernet cable from his own laptop, and he saw that the laptop had an EVDO card from Sprint…
CA: Ballots redesigned for machine to verify them (Riverside CO absentee mail)
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20100830/NEWS0301/8300305/Ballots-redesigned-for-machine-to-verify-them The system, which banks also use to verify signatures on checks, is supposed to cut down the steps it takes to manually verify and process the increasingly popular vote-by-mail ballots.
CO: (Aspen) Election Commission Inherits Complaints from 2009 Election
http://www.glassballotbox.org/storage/Times8.27.10EC.pdf
CO: State sues Arapahoe County over election ballot drops
http://www.aurorasentinel.com/articles/2010/08/30/news/metro_aurora/doc4c78262dd9241177562425.txt
Officials from the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder’s office have said the legislation amounts to an unfunded mandate from the state, insisting that providing drop-off mail facilities at more than 200 polling places would cost the county at least $80,000 in 2010.