A funny thing happened recently to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on its way to nailing an alleged illegal voter. Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigative arm found that clerical mistakes are sometimes made and that people can be accused of trying to vote illegally when they actually didn’t. The investigators, with the…
A Marion County judge has ordered the IndianaRecount Commission and the State Republican chairman to explain why they haven’t moved quickly to resolve Democrats’ challenge to Charlie White’s eligibility to serve as secretary of state. On April 7, Marion Circuit Court Judge Louis F. Rosenberg ruled the Democrats’ challenge is valid and told the Recount…
College students seeking to vote at their campus precinct will find it harder to do. So will women who’ve changed their name but not re-registered before an election. The time for early voting would be cut from 14 days to six. Groups like the League of Women Voters will find it tougher to register voters. And citizens…
Oak Ridge, spear phishing, and internet voting – Freedom to Tinker Oak Ridge National Labs (one of the US national energy labs, along with Sandia, Livermore, Los Alamos, etc) had a bunch of people fall for a spear phishing attack (see articles in Computerworld and many other descriptions). For those not familiar with the term, spear…
The leader of an observer mission at last weekend’s presidential election in Nigeria says the vote was largely free and fair. It was a significant improvement over the 2007 general elections, said Robin Carnahan of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute [NDI], and the secretary of state of the U.S. state of Missouri. Most observers described those…
A plan to require paper ballots in next year’s elections is on the verge of being repealed, the latest in a series of actions taken by Republicans in the state legislature to rewrite Tennessee election laws. State representatives are trying to reverse most of a 2008 law that called for the replacement of electronic voting…
A few days after New Mexico Secretary of State Dianna Duran notified all 33 county clerks that their biennial voter purge would be canceled this year, Deputy Bernalillo County Clerk Robert Adams made a disturbing discovery — 44,601 county files stored on the state’s voter registration database had been accessed and altered. Accustomed to spending…
Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler on Wednesday announced the settlement of a claim against Premier Elections Solutions, formerly known as Diebold. The settlement, negotiated by the Office of Attorney General, will be worth more than $3 million to the State. In 2008, the Attorney General, on behalf of the State Board of Elections, brought a…
Voting rights advocates say that Kansas’ new law that requires a photo ID to cast a ballot is bad enough, but what’s worse is its requirement that to register to vote a person, must prove U.S. citizenship. “That part is actually far more troubling,” said Ernestine Krehbiel, president of the League of Women Voters of…
With a fast-approaching presidential election expected to bring more than 8.5 million Floridians to the polls, the Legislature is battling over sweeping changes to nearly every aspect of state election law. Supporters tout the changes as fighting fraud. Opponents say they are disenfranchising. And the people charged with counting ballots wonder why lawmakers are trying…
Four candidates are running for Clerk & Recorder in Denver, and one of them, Jacob Werther, is claiming the all-mail ballot election is costing the City too much. “I’m thinking about four dollars a ballot,” said Werther. “When you factor in the paper and the labor involved in handling 290-thousand ballots it’s about 1.2 million dollars.”…
Tucson city leaders voted two weeks ago to hold all mail elections. It was a way to save money for a cash starved city and increase voter turnout. But Republicans at the state legislature have different ideas. After the city vote, the lawmakers inserted language in SB 1331 which in essence says Tucson can’t do that. Any…
This is what a recount looks like: An indoor sports arena is filled with poll workers from every municipality in Milwaukee County, each in their own area. At each station, poll workers examine and count ballots one by one. And as they count, campaign volunteers, attorneys and journalists watch their every move – with the campaign…
Members of the Sumner County Commission recently voted to send a proposal to state legislators to either repeal or fund a bill currently being considered that mandates the use of paper ballots in local elections. “We just purchased new machines that are electronic, and if they mandate paper ballots we’ll have to go to a…
Oak Ridge National Labs (one of the US national energy labs, along with Sandia, Livermore, Los Alamos, etc) had a bunch of people fall for a spear phishing attack (see articles in Computerworld and many other descriptions). For those not familiar with the term, spear phishing is sending targeted emails at specific recipients, designed to…
FL: Election bills rap democracy: Public short-served by GOP legislation – OrlandoSentinel.com Time to stop calling the gang running Florida’s government conservative. They’re busy concocting a liberal dose of new regulations that would serve their fortunes first, and Floridians dead last. It amounts to their ripping apart election laws that have made it easier for…
It’s still a year and a half until the presidential election, but members of Florida’s Legislature are already jockeying over who will be able to vote and how. Republicans — who control both Florida’s House and Senate — are sponsoring bills that would restrict the ability of third-party groups to conduct voter registration drives.…
After a Senate panel heard testimony on April 14 from a handful of election watchdogs critical of the state’s system of electronic voting machines, a rather testy exchange took place in the hallway. “You guys have a tough job,” said USC computer scientist Duncan Buell to Chris Whitmire, the spokesman for the South Carolina State Election…
“It was a valuable experiment. We learned what worked well and what things didn’t,” said Burleigh County Auditor Kevin Glatt about using voting centers for this week’s special election on Bismarck’s smoking ban. One center was placed at the Bismarck Civic Center and one at the VFW Sports Arena. There are now 35 voting precincts and…
The times have changed, but a key part of the state’s election law is still stuck in the past, according to a coalition of students and advocacy groups that filed a challenge to New Jersey’s voter-registration law today. Instead of requiring 21 days to process a voter registration, the state should get with the times…
Un-American, ill-advised and expensive. The Honolulu City Council has a long list of reasons as to why state lawmakers ought to kill a move meant to improve its current voting system. Council members on Wednesday passed a resolution urging state lawmakers not to pass House Bill 638, which would bring instant runoff voting to Honolulu…
The Florida House passed a sweeping overhaul of election laws Thursday that Republicans say will streamline voting machinery and Democrats say will make it harder for people to vote in the nation’s biggest battleground state in 2012. Passage on a 79-37 party-line vote followed two days of intensely partisan debate — a harbinger of next…
When Secretary of State Scott Gessler held his town hall in Saguache March 15, he told county residents that he had requested the distributor of the M650 voting machine to provide him with a report of Saguache election records. On March 28, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) sent Gessler a copy of the M650’s Unity…
Time to stop calling the gang running Florida’s government conservative. They’re busy concocting a liberal dose of new regulations that would serve their fortunes first, and Floridians dead last. It amounts to their ripping apart election laws that have made it easier for Floridians to vote, and replacing them with laws that could stack the…
Returning Officer (RO) for N65 Senadin Chai Ko Het’s rejection of Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR)’s request for a recount after the completion of the official addition of votes at the Centre for the Official Addition of Votes, was in accordance with the law. Chai was right when he acted in accordance with subregulation 23A (1),…
There may be lot of debate in India over efficacy of the Electronic Voting Machines but Egypt, which is holding elections after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, is willing to try the “wonder machine — the EVMs” — in the country wide polls later this year. Egypt will not be the first country to use Indian EVMs.…
House Republicans are seeking to abolish the federal Election Assistance Commission — as if the nation is fully recovered from the hanging-chad nightmare of 2000. The 9-year-old commission was created in bipartisan Congressional resolve to repair the nation’s crazy quilt of tattered election standards and faltering machinery. The commission was charged with upgrading the mechanics…
After announcing she would request a statewide recount in the Supreme Court election earlier this week, challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg and incumbent Justice David Prosser argued in court Thursday to reach a decision as to how the recount would be done. Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Ness approved a recount procedure that would include a hand…
House Speaker Kurt Zellers found himself in a constitutional bind on Thursday after saying that voting was a privilege, not a right. The Maple Grove Republican made the comment Wednesday night during a local radio show, “The Late Debate.” He recanted his words on Thursday, saying he had misspoken. The gaffe came amid a discussion of…
The Indiana Senate has approved a measure that would allow Republican Governor Mitch Daniels to appoint a new secretary of state if current officeholder Charlie White is found to be ineligible. Democrats are calling it a blatant power grab. White, a Republican, is under indictment on voter fraud charges. Democrats are now challenging his eligibility. Current state…