National: Think the Florida Recount Was Bad? Just Wait Until November 6 | The Atlantic The movie Unstoppable is playing this week on HBO, and it’s hard not to watch even just the trailers for the action-adventure film without seeing parallels to the coming election. Folks, we are just a little more than two weeks away from…
National: Despite e-voting improvements, audits still needed for ballot integrity | Computerworld Technology and process upgrades implemented since the controversial 2000 presidential election have made electronic voting machines more secure and reliable to use, the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project said in a report last week. Even so, the only way to ensure the integrity of votes cast…
National: Who Created the Voter-Fraud Myth? | The New Yorker Teresa Sharp is fifty-three years old and has lived in a modest single-family house on Millsdale Street, in a suburb of Cincinnati, for nearly thirty-three years. A lifelong Democrat, she has voted in every Presidential election since she turned eighteen. So she was agitated when…
National: Gains in voting-machine technologies could be cancelled out by errors introduced through mail and Internet voting | phys.org When it comes to the integrity and accuracy of voting systems in the United States, the good news is that widespread technological upgrades have largely eliminated the voting-machine problems that were so evident when Florida’s disputed…
National: Many Strict Election Laws Blocked or Delayed | Associated Press Tough new election laws aimed at forcing voters in many states to show photo identification at polling places have been blocked or delayed, delighting opponents who claim they were among a variety of partisan attempts to keep minorities from voting. Supporters of the measures nevertheless…
National: Supreme Court to rule on voter proof of citizenship | latimes.com The Supreme Court will weigh in on the controversy over voter fraud and decide whether Arizona can require residents to show proof of their citizenship before they register to vote. The justices voted to hear Arizona’s appeal of an anti-fraud provision that was struck…
National: If the Supreme Court cuts early voting in Ohio, it could swing the state from Barack Obama to Mitt Romney | Slate Magazine The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to reverse a federal court ruling requiring the state of Ohio to let its counties decide whether to permit early voting during the weekend…
Editorials: Did Republicans Just Save The Voting Rights Act? | Andrew Cohen/The Atlantic One year ago, maybe even six months ago, conventional wisdom had it that a key provision of the Voting Rights Act was in jeopardy, susceptible to another aggressive ruling by a very conservative United States Supreme Court. The five Republican-appointed justices would…
National: Why can’t you vote online? | The Verge Elections in the United States aren’t perfect. Between rare instances of voter fraud, attempts to make it harder for people to vote, voter intimidation, egregious manipulation of voting districts by major parties, and regularly low voter turnout, there’s plenty of room for improvement — leading governments…
National: Voter ID Foes’ Wins in Pennsylvania, Other States Could be Short Lived | Stateline In recent months, courts have struck down voter identification laws in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, heartening critics who feared the laws would turn away legitimate voters in November. But because the judges declined to reject the laws as unconstitutional, voter…
Editorials: Will Republicans accept if Barack Obama defeats Mitt Romney? | Slate Magazine What if President Obama wins re-election and Republicans don’t believe it? The question isn’t far-fetched. For several weeks, we have seen Republicans challenge the veracity of a number of election-related facts, and the outcome of the presidential election may be no different. First, some…
Editorials: Raise hand if online voting spooks you | Sherwood Park News The City of Edmonton will embark on a online election pilot later this month and Strathcona County will no doubt be watching. Despite my generation’s apparent love affair with everything technology, online voting is one of those things that should forever remain a pie-in-the-sky…
National: As More Vote by Mail, Faulty Ballots Could Impact Elections | NYTimes.com On the morning of the primary here in August, the local elections board met to decide which absentee ballots to count. It was not an easy job. The board tossed out some ballots because they arrived without the signature required on the outside of…
National: Nathan Sproul, A Republican Operative, Long Trailed by Voter Fraud Claims | NYTimes.com For a year, the Republican National Committee has portrayed Democrats as the villains when it comes to voter fraud. In a provocative article on CNN’s Web site, the committee’s chairman, Reince Priebus, said, “Democrats know they benefit from election fraud.” The tables have…
National: Does Your Vote Count? | CBS Miami Ion Sancho is a man on a mission. Just weeks from the presidential election, one of the most veteran election supervisors in the state of Florida, thinks there’s plenty for him and his colleagues to lose sleep over. What keeps him awake at night? Whether you can trust…
National: How Close Are We to Internet Voting? | Mashable You can do basically anything online. From booking a flight to securely transmitting medical records to your doctor, from buying groceries to managing your bank account, the web supports all sorts of complex transactions. But one common task has firmly resisted the lure of online…
National: Voter registration fraud claims singe GOP | CBS News Revelations that the Republican National Committee urged several states to hire a consulting firm that submitted potentially fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida are continuing to cause embarrassment to the Republican Party. RNC spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday his group had cut ties to the firm,…
National: As Election Day looms, voter ID law critics seek out the unregistered | The Sun Herald As legal challenges to voter identification laws slowly wind their way through the courts, opponents of the controversial measures aren’t just sitting around waiting for judicial relief. They’re hitting the streets in a grassroots effort to make sure affected…
Blogs: Which States have the Highest Risk of an E-Voting Meltdown? | Freedom to Tinker Computer scientists, including us, have long been skeptical of electronic voting systems. E-voting systems are computers, with all of the attendant problems. If something goes wrong, can the problem be detected? Can it be fixed? Some e-voting systems are much…
National: Provisional ballots could be hanging chads of 2012 | KNOE New voting laws in key states could force a lot more voters to cast provisional ballots this election, delaying results in close races for days while election officials scrutinize ballots and campaigns wage legal battles over which ones should get counted. New laws in competitive…
National: Challenges to Voting Laws May Play Havoc On and After Election Day | Roll Call Democratic Rep. Mark Critz’s chances of hanging onto his seat representing Southwestern Pennsylvania could hinge on a lawsuit filed by a 93-year-old great grandmother over the state’s new voter identification law. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is hearing Viviette…
Editorials: Easing the burden of voter registration | The Washington Post This month, Ferenc Gyurcsány, the former prime minister of Hungary, and three other members of his political party set up tents in front of the parliament building in Budapest and embarked on a week-long hunger strike. They ended it with a rally before thousands…
National: Voter Harassment, Circa 2012 | NYTimes.com This is how voter intimidation worked in 1966: White teenagers in Americus, Ga., harassed black citizens in line to vote, and the police refused to intervene. Black plantation workers in Mississippi had to vote in plantation stores, overseen by their bosses. Black voters in Choctaw County, Ala., had to hand…
National: Amid court challenges, early voting begins in U.S. election | Reuters The November 6 election is still seven weeks away, but early, in-person voting begins in two states on Friday, even as Democrats and Republicans battle in court over controversial plans to limit such voting before Election Day. Idaho and South Dakota are the first…
National: Electronic voting’s the real threat to elections | USATODAY.com Imagine how easy voting would be if Americans could cast ballots the same way they buy songs from iTunes or punch in a PIN code to check out at the grocery store: You could click on a candidate from a home computer or use a…
National: The Abandonment of the Election Assistance Commission | Steny Hoyer/Huffington Post While the embarrassing debacle of the 2000 election may seem like a distant memory to some, the unfortunate reality is an encore may be on our doorstep. The Election Assistance Commission was created by the bipartisan Help America Vote Act of 2002 in order…
National: Study: Almost 1 Million Minority Voters to be Affected by Voter ID Laws | CBS DC Come the November general election, close to 1 million minority voters under the age of 30 could be affected by voter ID laws implemented in 17 states, according to a new study. Between 700,000 and 1 million minority voters…
National: Conservative Groups Focus on Registration in Swing States | NYTimes.com It might as well be Harry Potter’s invisible Knight Bus, because no one can prove it exists. Teresa Sharp’s right to vote, as well as her family’s, was challenged by the Ohio Voter Integrity Project, which later apologized. The bus has been repeatedly cited by True…
National: Decade-Old E-Voting ‘Wars’ Continue into Presidential Election | Wall Street Journal A decade after Dana Debeauvoir helped change Travis County, Texas to an all-electronic voting system she still expects to be falsely accused of fixing the coming election, just as she had in the last two presidential races. The clerk, who has administered voting…