Daily Archives: June 12, 2011

Tuesday’s primary in New Jersey witnessed numerous voting machine reporting problems on both Sequoia Advantage and ES&S iVotronic DREs. It appears unlikely there will be any independent review as local election officials are relying on the vendors to investigate themselves. After GOP officials were caught on tape last week scheming to burden Democratic challengers with ‘spoiler’ primary candidates that would require primaries before this summer’s recall elections, ‘fake’ candidates, mostly GOP operatives have dutifully filed papers. Not to be outdone, Democrats have followed suit and it looks like taxpayers will fund, and election officials will administer, a whole round of charade elections for the political benefit of the parties. After staunchly defending their internet voting platform, the Estonian parliament has bowed to pressure from OSCE observers and computer security experts and formed a task force to review the security of the system. Earlier this month the capital city Talinn moved to abolish e-voting in their municipal elections. Pauline Hanson’s challenge to her narrow loss in the New South Wales parliamentary elections in March took a bizarre turn with the revelation that several key player were in fact the same person. Voter ID proposals moved forward in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Alabama and Pennsylvania. The GOP effort to end Maine’s 40 year tradition of Election Day Registration elicited heated debate with the State Republican chairman shocking even members of his own party with accusations that Democrats “steal elections.” The ruling party’s plans to use electronic voting machines has met with fierce opposition from several other parties in Bangladesh and led to a nationwide general strike. The New York Times questions GOP efforts nationwide to make voting more burdensome and Politico posted a comprehensive review of the potential impact of state election code changes on the 2012 election.