Voting Blogs: SaveOurVotes: Flawed Wisconsin Race Proves Need for Transparency, Accountability in Election Procedures

When Wisconsin voters flocked to the polls on April 5, one of the factors driving the high turnout was the State Supreme Court contest between incumbent Justice David Prosser and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg. Prosser, whose term ends July 31, often casts the deciding vote on the seven-member court. He is a conservative Republican former Speaker of the Assembly seen as closely allied to Wisconsin’s controversial Gov. Scott Walker.

Kloppenburg, a virtual unknown who was given little chance of success when she entered the race several months ago, was buoyed by the high passions stirred by Walker’s actions to strip government employees of their collective bargaining rights. Though the race is officially nonpartisan, it was seen as both a referendum on Walker and a chance to affect the Supreme Court’s ruling on Walker’s actions, which are likely to be reviewed by the Court in its next term.

Election night results were considered too close to call, but the next day when seemingly all the votes had been tallied, Kloppenburg claimed victory with a margin of 204 votes of the more than 1.4 million total votes cast. A recount seemed inevitable.

Full Article: SAVE our Votes: Flawed Wisconsin Race Proves Need for Transparency, Accountability in Election Procedures.

Voting Blogs: OSDV Responds to FCC Inquiry about Internet Voting | OSDV

The OSDV Foundation and TrustTheVote Project are pleased to have an opportunity to provide comment on an increasingly vital aspect of broadband in the United States: its use in civic participation and the processes of democracy.  We encourage the Commission to develop a comprehensive national broadband plan that particularly includes a plan for the use of broadband infrastructure and services to advance civic participation. To the extent this Plan includes consideration of broadband infrastructure for election processes and services, we advise careful consideration of what the architecture for a broadband‐based voting system should look like and call upon experts and stakeholders to facilitate that understanding.

Clearly the digital age and increasingly mobile society can benefit from digital means for such civic participation services. However, the extent to which the challenges discussed herein can be adequately addressed remains unclear. However, any such Plan should consider the possibility that broadband infrastructure may be called upon in the future to support and sustain elections services in some capacity, whether strictly for back‐office functions or all the way out to ballot casting and counting services. We do not recommend reliance on home or personal broadband connected digital devices for citizen‐facing voting services for the foreseeable future or until such time as the challenges discussed herein are resolved to the satisfaction of the public.