The New York Times has an oped on how ES&S’s near total domination of the voting systems market in the US will impact voters and taxpayers…The Iowa Senate has halted an election audits bill, House File 682… Some Canadian municipalities have already adopted internet voting. Now the province of Alberta is considering testing it. Brian…
Maryland might not have enough money to conduct the November election?…..Upshur Co TX will pay $30K to Hart InterCivic program machines, print ballots and tally results for the March 2 primaries. The county clerk would have charged $2K…Wisconsin U state senate rejects internet voting, cites i-vote fiasco in 2008… Sean Flaherty asks fellow Iowans, and…
No mulligan rule in elections – The wrong name will be on a ballot for a school board race in St Louis MO and can’t be corrected because the voting machines are already programmed and ballots printed..…The Georgia bill to have troops vote over the internet has passed the house and heads to the senate…
Distrust of paperless voting is a bi-partisan issue in Georgia with Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) introducing HB 1215 to ban paperless voting and in favor of an optical scan system with ballots that can be recounted by hand in any dispute.Other signers of the bill include Karla Drenner (D-Atlanta); Bobby Franklin (R-Cobb County); and…
Election Equipment Certification Delivers Poor Results says the Champaign County Clerk, Mark Sheldon. Sheldon says: “If we want a system that earns the trust of every voter we need to institute post election audits, more extensive testing, and a certification process that is more open and flexible.” In Washington State, two bills of note: a…
GA state Rep. Tim Bearden has introduced paper ballot law HB 1215… Clay Co KY poll worker says it was easy to steal more than 100 votes in one election…See the court docs for Dominion’s suit to stop NY City purchase of ES&S voting machines over at Bo Lipari’s blog…Over 75,000 systems compromised in cyberattack……”Internet…
Just in from Verified Voting: “Responsible Use of Technology for Overseas Voting”. From the report- “The security challenges posed by the electronic transmission of voted ballots are too formidable to allow the use of such systems at present. Before experimenting with voted ballots transmitted through cyberspace, we must together create a transparent public process to…
The news is fairly light today so be sure to read the public comments on the Future of Voting in California now posted at the CA SOS website. The comments come from experts, advocates, interested citizens and also voting vendors including internet voting vendors…ES&S Diebold Purchase: Groups Endorse Remedies for Unlawful Concentration of Market Power……
A Reminder: You Don’t Want Voting Controlled By One Company…Kansas SOS Issues New Instructions About Interestate Database Matching…The 49th District Court in Texas ruled that only disabled voters will use the touchscreen voting machines….Election integrity expert Dr. Charles E. Corry hopes to administer elections and is running for El Paso County Clerk and Recorder. Corry…
The cost of transparency: The lawsuit to force release of ballot images from Aspen Colorado’s May 2009 election is set for March 22-23. By that time, the plaintiff’s legal fees are expected to total $75,000. The city of Aspen has moved for a protective order to disallow testimony from voting vendor True Ballot’s staff… Witness…
A candidate for Webb County, TX Judge has filed a lawsuit to stop the use of voting machines except for disabled voters…. The Champaign County IL Clerk shares results of post election audits… …When you read articles promoting internet, email or fax voting, be sure to keep in mind the risks inherent to the internet.…
Congratulations to the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections – the Florida Supreme Court upheld two amendments to Sarasota’s county charter, one requiring voting systems to have a voter verified paper ballot and the other requiring a manual audit….In New York – “Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into how the city’s Board of Elections awarded…
Some Virginia Registrars are pushing state lawmakers to let them keep buying touchscreen voting machines. This goes against the 2007 law meant to phase out touchscreen voting machines and replace them with paper ballot systems… Hawaii considers law to keep voting vendors lawsuits from delaying next voting machine purchases…How will Citizens United affect your state’s…
At today’s public hearing about the future of voting in California, when the issue of new voting machines was brought up, some citizens urged the officials to get rid of electronic voting, period. Tom Courbat with the Sacremento group “Save Our Vote” said: “We’re not convinced there is enough security in these voting systems to…
New York’s new optical scan machines, the ES&S DS200 and Dominion ImageCast will treat overvotes in a way that threatens the voting rights of millions of New Yorkers. The machines do not automatically return overvoted or otherwise erroneous ballots to the voter for correction. A recent Florida study showed that “the ES&S DS200 (the only…
The S.D. Legislature eyes pilot of ‘precinct-less’ voting for school board elections…A Technologist in Philippines considers the impact of Murphy’s Law on the Voter Interface of the Automated Election System and how to avoid problems…The Champagn County Clerk in Illinois writes about automatic voter registration and what goes on behind the scenes… “Understanding Citizens United:…
In Washburn’s World, Election Records Would Be Public…In Palm Beach FL, cartridges for some machines used in Fl District 19 GOP primary special election could not be read and the paper ballots were later counted at a tabulating center….In an Illinois Primary Race, Victory Is Self-Declared… Hawaii to consider 3 election bills – vote by…
Opposition to emailing and faxing ballots builds – See Jason Osgood’s letter to Washington state representatives in opposition to email and fax voting that would be made legal by the Overseas and Service Voters bill (HB 2483 / SB 6238)… Lots of news about the Illinois primary, with some reports of machine malfunction and some…
McHenry Co. IL. Clerk Kathy Schultz discovered that a state mandated software “undervote warning fix” can sometimes cause the county’s voting machines to forget all the preceding votes they’d recorded… New Jersey judge orders re-evaluation of voting machines by experts, says disconnect machines and tabulators from internet as well, but stops short of decommissioning them….Pam…
Editors Note: Today’s voting news is dedicated to my mother who passed away on January 21, 2010. She is sorely missed but is at peace now. A big thanks goes out to Sean Flaherty of Verified Voting who has been publishing the Voting News in my absence, from January 18- 28. Without Sean, the voting…
The New York Times weighs in on Internet voting with a strong editorial, legislatures in South Carolina, Virginia, and Utah consider voter ID legislation, and Maryland’s transition to optical scan voting generates debate over cost estimates. This and more in today’s Voting News below… AZ: New technology planned for poll consolidationhttp://verdenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=34762 GA: Election suit appeal…
Today the Maryland House of Delegates’ Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on the funding of optical scan equipment for the 2010 elections. Governor Martin O’Malley has not included funding in his recently released budget. The Illinois undervote warning law inspires a few Clerks to refuse to implement it, and Russia looks at electronic…
In Oregon, voting ends today in a statewide election today on two tax measures. Turnout is expected to be high. Oregon elections are all vote by mail. NPR’s Fresh Air does a program on cyber-crime; hopefully at least some who are interested in the Internet transmission of secret, voted ballots listened to the show. Internationally,…
Election costs were a common theme in voting stories today. Illinois jurisdictions continued preparation for the Feb. 2 primary. An cyber-attack on U.S. oil companies offers another reminder of the vulnerabilities of even more secure computer systems. All this and more in today”s Voting News below… CA: Court tosses challenge to San Diego polling policieshttp://www.courthousenews.com/2010/01/25/24009.htmA…
Ireland’s voting machines are likely to be scrapped, discussion of the Massachusetts Senate race continues. All this and more in this weekend’s Voting News below…IL: Early voting in Primaries ends Thursday at numerous locations in Cook Countyhttp://www.examiner.com/x-34720-Cook-County-Elections-2010-Examiner~y2010m1d23-Early-voting-in-Primaries-ends-Thursday-at-numerous-locations-in-Cook-County KS: Thornburgh: Voter access is goalhttp://cjonline.com/news/legislature/2010-01-23/thornburgh_voter_access_is_goalMA: Mack Urges Mass. Secretary of State to Quickly Certify Brown Election Resultshttp://www.bignews.biz/?id=836694&keys=Congressman-Mack-Connie-Massachusetts…
Alabama’s House of Representatives approved a bill allowing Internet voting for overseas and military voters today. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the case Citizens United vs. FEC naturally dominated today’s media coverage of election issues. There is too much reporting, analysis and commentary of the decision to summarize here. Election Law Blog (http://electionlawblog.org/) is…
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission signs an agreement with the Organization of American States that, among other provisions, calls for cooperation on “the standardization, testing, auditing and implementation of electronic voting initiatives,” Finland becomes the latest country to put the brakes on electronic voting, and Illinois election officials prepare optical scan and DRE equipment to…
The Massachusetts special election dominated discussion of voting issues today, and the Google hack continues to make news. As of just before 9pm EST, the Massachusetts election is too close to call. Results can be viewed at these sites:http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2010/senate_race/ http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2010/by_county/MA_US_Senate_0119.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS http://www.thebostonchannel.com/index.html http://wbztv.com/ All this and more in today’s Voting News… AL: Military voting bill gets…
The Google e-mail hack continues to make waves: today a New York Times feature quotes security experts as saying “the ideal approach [to Internet vulnerabilities] is to carefully identify a corporation’s most valuable intellectual property and data, and place it on a separate computer network not linked to the Internet, leaving a so-called air gap.”All…
Alabama House considers military internet voting bill today. Meanwhile Google disclosed significant attacks on their servers…Project Vote’s releasing election recommendations for 11 states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada,New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia… Should voter history be private or public information?…EAC Certifies Third Optical-Scan Voting System….Election tension mounts as Ukraine PM cries…