On Thursday afternoon official “tabulators” were busily counting ballots from the city of Verona when the votes came up more than 90 short of what the electronic readout from the voting machines said they should. That sent Verona officials on a hunt, and a rubber-banded stack of 97 ballots turned up in the office of…
On Friday, day three of the statewide recount of the Supreme Court race, the Kloppenburg recall effort called in their attorney, Michael Maistelman, to monitor the recount in Waukesha County. Earlier Friday a clerk discovered that one of the bags full of ballots from the Town of Delafield was not properly sealed. The Kloppenburg campaign…
The British government will spend 48.5 Billion Kwacha to help the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) deliver free and fair elections during this year’s polls. British High Commissioner to Zambia Tom Carter says part of the money will also go towards enhancing democracy in the country. Mr Carter says the assistance which will be done through…
CT: Online voting is risky and expensive | The Connecticut Mirror Online voting is an appealing option to speed voting for military and overseas voters. Yet it is actually “Democracy Theater”, providing an expensive, risky illusion of supporting our troops. Technologists warn of the unsolved technical challenges, while experience shows that the risks are tangible…
We hear it all the time: How can you be against making voters show a photo ID when they vote? You need an ID to do almost anything in today’s society — buying beer, driving a car, getting on an airplane, going to an R-rated movie — so why shouldn’t you have to show a…
Online voting is an appealing option to speed voting for military and overseas voters. Yet it is actually “Democracy Theater”, providing an expensive, risky illusion of supporting our troops. Technologists warn of the unsolved technical challenges, while experience shows that the risks are tangible and pervasive. There are safer, less expensive solutions available. This year, the Government Administration and Elections Committee held hearings on a bill for online voting for military voters. Later they approved a “technical bill”, S.B. 939. Tucked at the end was a paragraph requiring that the Secretary of the State “shall, within available appropriations, establish a method to allow for on-line voting by military personnel stationed out of state.”
In 2008, over thirty computer scientists, security experts and technicians signed the “Computer Technologists’ Statement on Internet Voting,” listing five unsolved technical challenges and concluding: “[W]e believe it is necessary to warn policymakers and the public that secure internet voting is a very hard technical problem, and that we should proceed with internet voting schemes only after thorough consideration of the technical and non-technical issues in doing so.” The prevailing attitude seems to be, if voters and election officials like it and see no obvious problems then it must be safe.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg declared victory on election night when preliminary, unofficial returns put her 204 votes ahead of Justice David Prosser. Fifteen days later, she sought a statewide recount after the official county-by-county returns showed her trailing by more than 7,300 votes out of 1.5 million cast. In explaining her decision, Kloppenburg told…
Now The Tennessean reports that this session of the state legislature may repeal the never-implemented Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (April 25). It was the fine work of an earlier session to give us this law. It is a reliable system of voting that requires the use of paper ballots for a possible real check on the…
Westmoreland County Election Bureau officials are trying to avoid a repeat of the long lines of voters who waited to cast ballots in the last presidential election. So the county has purchased 21 additional touch-screen computer voting machines to ease the crush of voters in the largest precincts. “In the larger elections, such as a presidential…
Minnesota voters would be required to show photo identification at the polls under a Republican bill the Senate passed Thursday on a party-line vote. But the photo ID bill — the subject of fierce partisan debates for the past five years — is unlikely to become law. Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton last week said he, like…
Hoping to boost what they view as flagging confidence in the state’s election system, Senate Republicans approved a bill on Thursday that would require Minnesotans to present photo ID at the polls. The measure passed on a 37-26 party-line vote after two hours of debate. It would impose new identification requirements, eliminate vouching for most Election…
A Marion County judge on Thursday denied Secretary of State Charlie White’s request to halt a challenge by Democrats to his eligibility to hold office. The state Democratic Party claims White, who faces seven felony charges, including three of voter fraud, isn’t eligible for office because he wasn’t legally registered to vote when he declared his…
Today’s Republicans would never try to reinvent something so crude as the outlawed “poll tax,” which mostly Southern states used, along with literacy tests, well into the 20th century to block voting by blacks, poor whites and Native Americans. Removal of these barriers firmly established every citizen’s right under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause…
A very positive piece of news in the past few days was that negotiators from the three political formations had generally agreed on an election roadmap, with very few “sticking” points still to be resolved. Parliament has a significant role to play in the process of coming up with a democratic people-driven constitution and amending the…
WI: And the recount begins | ThirdCoast Digest If you’re expecting to see images reminiscent of Florida 2000, you’re out of luck. The first day of the Wisconsin Supreme Count election recount began and ended quietly in Milwaukee County with no protesters, a few citizen observers and about 50 Kloppenburg and Prosser operatives. No hanging…
If you’re expecting to see images reminiscent of Florida 2000, you’re out of luck. The first day of the Wisconsin Supreme Count election recount began and ended quietly in Milwaukee County with no protesters, a few citizen observers and about 50 Kloppenburg and Prosser operatives. No hanging chads – just election canvassers sorting through the…
Governor Jan Brewer has a lot on her plate this week, more than 100 bills to get through over the next few days. One of those bills is SB 1331 and it could prohibit Tucson from having mail ballot elections. Just this month the Tucson City Council decided all voters would get mail-in ballots for the…
Zimbabwe does not have the $400 million needed to organise elections this year, Finance minister Tendai Biti has said. Mr Biti said the coalition government also faces a $150 million deficit this year because it had missed all revenue targets with almost half the year gone. The government has set a revenue target of $2.7 billion…
WI: Recount reasonable — just ask a Republican – madison.com Candidates in close races who find themselves contemplating whether to seek a recount of the ballots — and the resolution of related questions about the quality and character of the initial count — need to have some standard for determining when it is reasonable to…
Heading into a presidential election in which North Carolina could be pivotal, a new Republican-backed bill would curtail early voting in the state and bar new voters from registering at the polls. The Senate bill introduced last week would shrink the early-voting period by at least a week, end it on Sundays and stop so-called “same-day…
Two bills that would close loopholes and increase transparency in Nevada’s election and campaign finance laws won approval in the Assembly today with no time to spare. Secretary of State Ross Miller is seeking the bills restricting the use of multiple political action committees to bypass campaign contribution limits and requiring electronic filing of campaign contribution…
Charlie White is asking a Marion County judge to temporarily stop Democrats’ challenge to his eligibility to serve as secretary of state. If his request is granted, Democrats’ plan to oust White through a civil complaint could be derailed. They claim he wasn’t legally registered to vote at the time he declared his candidacy and wasn’t…
Georgia’s election law should be changed to allow more third-party candidates, voting machines with paper records and vetting of presidential hopefuls, according to 19 witnesses at Wednesday’s initial meeting of the Georgia Election Advisory Council. Secretary of State Brian Kemp, whose office oversees elections, conceived the council and appointed it 15 members of legislators, academics…
If anyone needs a clue as to why the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature is making proposals that puts early voting in its cross hairs, one place to look might be Time magazine’s Oct. 30, 2008 issue. In it was a piece titled “How Early Voting Could Cost McCain Florida.” It detailed how early-voting Democrats, many of…
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy used the Citizens’ Election Program to great advantage in his winning race for governor last year. Strange, then, that he would preside over the destruction of the landmark program and its host agency, the venerable state Elections Enforcement Commission. That’s what will happen if the state budget as currently written becomes law. Mr.…
Candidates in close races who find themselves contemplating whether to seek a recount of the ballots — and the resolution of related questions about the quality and character of the initial count — need to have some standard for determining when it is reasonable to make the demand. Certainly, if the difference is a handful…
WI: Wisconsin Supreme Court recount begins Wednesday, required to be done by May 9 – StarTribune.com The recount in the state Supreme Court race will begin Wednesday and barring a court-ordered extension, must be finished by May 9. Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board discussed the recount procedure Monday with local election officials from nearly all…
The main opposition figures are boycotting after their demands for electoral reform were not met. There are concerns that the boycott could affect voters turnout. Mr Deby, who has faced two attempted coups since the last polls, has recently mended relations with Sudan, where rebel fighters were based. The BBC’s former correspondent in Chad, Celeste Hicks, says…
The recount in the state Supreme Court race will begin Wednesday and barring a court-ordered extension, must be finished by May 9. Wisconsin’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Board discussed the recount procedure Monday with local election officials from nearly all 72 counties. Given the rarity of a statewide recount, clerks on the conference call peppered board attorneys…
The Tennessee General Assembly had the right idea in 2008 with passage of the aptly named Tennessee Voter Confidence Act. Voters should be able to be completely confident in the electoral process or the government loses credibility.