Saguache County CO election problems the result of computer errors…Recount of Bridgeport CT ballots under way..Indiana’s newly elected SoS is accused of “Voter Fraud” because his voter registration has incorrect address…Minnesota ‘Happy Recount Day’: First day is the start of a long and sometimes feisty process..NYC Election board stuck in time warp – voters get…
Is challenge to Alaska write-ins a ‘literacy test’?..Bridgeport recount: Luther Weeks, executive director of the Connecticut Citizen Election Audit Coalition, said the recount beginning Monday will take as long as necessary, but will probably end this week…..W&M School of Law writes on “Optical Scanners, Punch Cards, and Levers: New York City’s Continuing War Against the…
Palm Beach CO Commish Karen Marcus wants to lobby for return to touchscreen voting. FL Voters Coalition Pres Dan McCrea:”We all understand the pretty picture that is painted of a clean electronic push-button election that’s over and gives everybody an early night and reliable results..It remains fantasy with today’s technology.”..Illegal 6-foot barrier blocks CO poll…
Alaska GOP repudiates all of Joe Miller vote count allegations…Open Records request for Georgia election data denied…Minnesota starts recount of gubernatorial election Monday..Was internet vote for ‘Dancing with the Stars’ rigged?. In real internet elections Canadian citizens in Township of Huron-Kinloss council worried more about system crashes or not getting to vote rather than tampering…John…
Indiana voter describes “Voting as a deaf blind person” ..Bridgeport Conn to allow recount…Colorado Sunshine law partly cloudy after Election Day..Palm Beach Election sup changes mind,will consider new modems instead of whole new voting system. Modems are $1,500 each??.Minn. canvas board launches recount, battle over rules…Nevada SoS says time to replace old voting machines…New York:…
Osceola County candidate sues over election loss, cites irregularities. “While absentee ballots were being scanned, election workers shook the machines vigorously and often, at times even banging the wall with them.”..Tues night Brad Friedman radio interview outgoing Ohio Sec of State Jennifer Brunner…NYT: What the Secret Donors Want..No internet voting for Singapore: “The internet platform…
California GOP challenges signatures on provisional ballots…Update on 2 “lost” voting machines in NY..Dems mull recount in New York’s 60th District: “Make no mistake, this is really bad. The state put into law that there has to be a paper trail precisely so that when there are irregularities of exactly the type we’re seeing in…
US Senate candidate Miller(R)wins delay on Alaska election cert…Palm Beach officials building their case for touchscreen voting, now claim its about disability access…Now That He’s Been Elected, KS Sec. of State-Elect Kris Kobach Can’t Find Any ‘Voter Fraud’…Minnesota GOP lays groundwork to “remove” alleged phantom ballots. Ramsey County says suit should be rejected…2 ‘new’ voting…
For most Americans the election has been over for two weeks, but for the state and local officials tasked with administering elections the process continues. Most jurisdictions are involved in the certification process, during which vote totals are confirmed, absentee ballots are tabulated and the status of provisional ballots are determined. Over half the states conduct a post election audits of some ballots. And of course some jurisdictions are involved in recounts of close contests. Most of the time the demanding work of election officials goes unnoticed and unacknowledged until something goes wrong or comes under the microscope in the politically charged atmosphere of a recount.
Brad Friedman writes “Why Joe Miller is right to call for a ‘hand count’ in Alaska’s Senate Race”…Clarification – Bridgeport Questions its Legal Authority to Revisit Balloting”…Bad news: “Palm Beach County Elections Chief Susan Bucher wants to retry touch-screen voting” & she promises to lobby legislature to bring back touchscreens…Meanwhile, touchscreen vote flipping was cited…
AP news says Murkowski won Alaska Senate Race.Miller did not concede..The Connecticut city with too few ballots – “Bridgeport Embarrasses Itself Once Again, Refusing to be Audited”…Will California ever finish counting absentee ballots?..Who Stole Election Day? (Early voting)…Machine recounts in NC 2nd CD. Election fraud charged in Madison,Yancey Co NC..Photo ID proposed in OK and…
Bo Lipari on “Pulling the Lever for Paper”..Virginia needs paper ballots by 2012 to avoid fiasco: “It’s been a few years since Fairfax County got through an entire election cycle without a piece of voting equipment breaking down, a handful of votes vaporizing or an election result being delayed.”..Internet voting is “an affront to democracy..It…
The 2010 elections quietly marked a milestone in election technology history. For the first time in over a hundred years, this was the first national election in which mechanical lever machines were not used. Lever machines were at one time so ubiquitous in US culture that the phrase “pull the lever” is still the go-to phrase we use to mean “cast the vote”. Most states made the transition from levers years ago, beginning in the 1980s when the first optical scanners were employed. But in New York State, this election was the first one without levers in a very long time. Fortunately, the new technology the State chose to use is paper ballots and optical scanners, not paperless electronic voting. And those paper ballots are proving their worth already in several disputed elections around the state.
Media reports of “problems with the new voting systems” really have it the wrong way around. Perhaps it’s because New York isn’t yet used to having an actual paper record of votes, so we don’t yet understand the value of a recount. When outcomes are uncertain or disputed, recounting paper ballots is the best way there is to find out who really won an election. New York’s new ability to count the paper is not a problem, it’s the solution.
”Election Day has come and gone, but for elections officials across California who must provide complete and accurate results, the election truly does not end until Nov. 30,”~ SoS Debra Bowen..Coloradoans need binoculars to observe processing of mail ballots..CT lawmaker drafts bill requiring 1 ballot per reg. voter..Ga. wants new voters to prove citizenship…100,000 Maryland…
In Alaska, the write in votes favor Murkowski so Miller awaits the military ballots..Another bad idea for elections in the Ohio Dayton Daily News: “Unused paper ballots are big waste for Ohio”. The Dayton DN editors should read the New Haven Register editorial: “Scrimping on ballots proved foolish”…Tennessee GOP requests investigation of possible voting machines…
Arizona Pot smokers ‘edgy’: Prop 203 still undecided..Colorado SoS to investigate Saguache County election after discovery of uncounted absentee ballots…Minnesota Recount part 2? Fewer absentee ballot rejections in 2010 vote…Spokane WA County Ballot Copying — Problem?..Six House Races Remain in Limbo..Africa election commission mulls EVMs for “ensuring free elections”..Beware the Perils of Internet Voting says…
Perry Co KY candidates report voting machine probs: voters would push button & wrong name lit up..John Sebes of TrustTheVote.org on flakey voting machines: “North Carolina Voting Machines Lessons Learned,Part Two” (not just NC)…Expert Jeremy Epstein on Virginia’s paperless voting: “What happens when there’s no recount possible?”…Veterans Day & the MOVE Act…Audio reveals Afghan election…
Miller campaign challenges mis-spelled write in votes for Murkowski in Alaska election…IL Appeals court rejects Barrow’s redo effort of ’09 mayoral election…Philadelphia voter forced to swear on Bible before casting vote…Junk the paperless machines: Computer scientist Jeremy Epstein describes his day as a poll worker in Fairfax,VA. “..one of the touch screen machines was crashing…
More bad ideas for Connecticut elections…Rep Tim Bishop wants hand count of 184,000 Long Island 1st dist ballots after vote swing. 10,000 absentee ballots uncounted…Was Stark CO, OH student’s video report of touchscreen vote-flipping just an isolated incident? Brad Friedman reports…Spokane WA officials busy duplicating 30,000 ballots that were damaged, poorly marked or unreadable…Dust Settles…
California STILL counting absentee ballots..CT,NM, NY having post election audits…Young, Russo file complaint to end electronic voting in Rhode Island…Dan Wallach describes voting experience & struggle to get paper ballot in Houston TX..Parties scramble as recounts loom in several House races..Congrats to Princeton Prof Ed Felton,e-voting expert for appointment as Chief Technologist of the FTC..…
Back in late August, Harris County (Houston)’s warehouse with all 10,000 of our voting machines, burned to the ground. As I blogged at the time, our county decided to spend roughly $14 million of its $40 million insurance settlement on purchasing replacement electronic voting machines of the same type destroyed in the fire, and of the same type that I and my colleagues found to be unacceptably insecure in the 2007 California Top-to-Bottom Report. This emergency purchase was enough to cover our early voting locations and a smattering of extras for Election Day. We borrowed the rest from other counties, completely ignoring the viral security risks that come with this mixing and matching of equipment. (It’s all documented in the California report above. See Section 7.4 on page 77. Three years later, and the vendor has fixed none of these issues.)
Well, the county also spent the money to print optical-scan paper ballots (two sheets of 8.5″ x 17″, printed front and back), and when I went to vote this morning, I found my local elementary school had eight eSlate machines, all borrowed from Travis County (Austin), Texas. They also had exactly one booth set up for paper ballot voting. After I signed in, the poll worker handed me the four-digit PIN code for using an eSlate before I could even ask to use paper. “I’d like to vote on paper.” “Really? Uh, okay.” Apparently I was only the second person that day to ask for paper and they were in no way making any attempt to give voters the option to vote on paper.
Alaska to hand count 83,000 write-in votes…CA still has est 1-1.4 Million mail ballots to count….Newspaper-Listening to voting vendor, suggests unsafe sophisticated voting system to Connecticut…ES&S apologizes to Alabama probate judges for problems arising when ES&S sent pencils instead of pens to polling places…Georgia’s Tammy Adkins Becomes the New Alvin Greene…Mississippi’s dis-functional elections…Hand recount called…
Update on Still-Undecided ‘Top-of-Ticket’ Races…They had ballot shortages: Auburn Lake Trails, CA & Ellsworth village,WA insufficient paper ballots created lines & long waits.. MN Recount to start Nov. 29 & end Dec. 14..Columbia County New York began a full hand count of ballots yesterday. Election Commissioner Virginia Martin wants independent check against machine tally…ES&S sofware…
Alameda Cnty CA has 122, 000 ballots to count. Other CA counties still counting mail ballots…Weld, & Arapahoe Cnty CO still processing mail ballots…Bridgeport CT ballot shortage fiasco leaves gov race un-decided…Reduction of polling places in Paulding, GA & Collins TX caused long lines &, long waits for voters…More vote flipping in NC, PA…Sumter SC…
Why didn’t Bridgeport CT order enough ballots?…Hennepin Co MN reporting error showed 880,000 votes cast instead of 470,470..MN Governor’s Race Likely Headed For A Recount…Nassau County (NY) Suing To Get Old Voting Machines Back..Paper vs. Electronic Voting in Today’s Election in Houston…Google Glitch May Have Sent 700000 People to the Wrong Poll..Colbert Goes ‘Inside’ The…
866-OUR-VOTE received over 10,000 calls today. Top states include California, Georgia &Pennsylvania. Some in today’s news. Would you believe Alabama didn’t have enough pens, so used pencils to mark ballots, causing probs? ..Maryland Diebold touchscreens flip votes from GOP to DEM!..California awaits millions of mail ballots..Various probs with epoll books, paper poll books, power outages,…
Do you wonder why “If we can bank by ATM, why not vote by the Internet?”~ CTVoter explains… Fox news report: Internet Voting Arrives -But Is It Secret and Safe?…Chuck Tyson, Craven County NCGOP Chair on NC’s touchscreen problems: “I think every vote cast should get to the right party no matter what party they…