Namibia: Electronic Voting Machine glitches slowed voting across Namibia | New Era

Hundreds of thousands of Namibian voters joined long queues when voting started on Friday from seven o’clock in the morning but were slowed by technical problems ineptly handled by nervous-looking polling officials. Officially polling was supposed to start at 07h00 and close at 21h00 for the over 1.2 million registered voters among them first-time voters or so-called ‘born frees’ but at some polling stations voters only cast their votes on Saturday morning at around 03h00. The ‘born free’ generation comprising of people born after Namibia’s independence in 1990 constituted 20 percent of the over 1.2 million registered voters across Namibia. Voting was expected to start in the morning at 7:00 but some of the polling stations could not start on time because of glitches with some of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) being used for the first time in any African presidential and parliamentary elections. By early Friday morning hordes of Namibians could be seen congregating at the polling station at Dagbreek Special School in Klein Windhoek. But by 08:45 some of these potential voters among them senior officials left the polling station in frustration because the EVMs were not working at the polling station. Other potential voters could be seen still milling around. One of the potential voters said he had heard that at least five other nearby polling stations had similar problems.

Namibia: Election first in Africa to use electronic voting machines | ABC

Namibians voting in their presidential election will become the first in Africa to use electronic voting. It has been 25 years since Namibia’s first democratic elections, and for the first time 1.2 million people are expected to cast their votes electronically in the country’s fifth election since independence. “The decision to consider acquiring electronic voting machines was primarily based on some challenges and experiences that we have had in the manner and way we manage our elections,” the electoral commission’s Theo Mujoro told China’s CCTV. The voters will cast their ballots for presidential and parliamentary candidates on separate machines, chunky slabs of green and white plastic with the names and images of candidates and their party affiliation that make a loud beep after each vote. “The younger people get it first time, but the older ones you have to explain a little,” said presiding officer Hertha Erastus.

Kansas: Malfunction results in missing votes | Salina Journal

A malfunction of electronic voting equipment left 5,207 votes out of the original Nov. 4 Saline County vote total, but no election outcomes were affected, according to the Saline County Clerk’s Office. What was affected was a change in the percent of voter turnout, from 35.47 to 50.47 percent, and the total number of votes, 17,532 out of 34,735 registered voters. “That’s a huge difference,” county Chairman Randy Duncan said when notified by the Journal of the error. “That’s scary. That makes me wonder about voting machines. Should we go back to paper ballots?” Saline County Clerk Don Merriman said after the meeting that four of the 34 PEBs, or Personal Electronic Ballots, were not reading correctly on election night, which left the votes out of the original count. The problem has been fixed, he said. He said the missing votes weren’t discovered until after votes were canvassed on Nov. 10. Merriman said he learned of the error during a “triple check” with flash cards from the PEBs.

Namibia: Namibia gets e-voting | iafrica.com

Voting began Friday in Namibia’s presidential and legislative elections, in an election that is expected to see the ruling SWAPO party retain power in the country it has run since independence 24 years ago. Voters at Katutura township, outside the capital Windhoek, formed long lines before daybreak, including some first-time “born free” voters – those born after independence in 1990. “It’s a rich country with poor people, so I hope there is more balance,” said 43-year-old Elias while waiting to cast his vote. Although he expects the ruling South West People’s Organisation (SWAPO) to win, he wants to see a more opposition parliamentarians challenge the long-party’s 24 year grip on power. Polls opened at 7am local time and will close around 14 hours later in the latest closing stations.

Namibia: Landmark e-voting to go ahead in Namibia after court challenge fails | Mail & Guardian

Namibia is to become the first African country to use electronic voting machines in a general election, after the Windhoek high court dismissed a legal challenge by an opposition political party. The Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) filed an urgent court application to seek the annulment and postponement of the presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for this Friday, arguing that the machines violate Namibia’s newly amended Electoral Act because they leave no paper trail. The party was joined in its high court application by the African Labour and Human Rights Centre’s director August Maletzky and the Workers Revolutionary Party. But on Wednesday the high court rejected the claims that the use of the e-voting machines was unconstitutional and a breach of the Electoral Act. The Act stipulates that use of the machines in polling should be “subject to the simultaneous utilisation of a verifiable paper trail for every vote cast by a voter and any vote cast is verified by account of the paper trail”. It continues: “In the event that the results of the voting machines and the results of the paper trail do not tally, the paper trail results are accepted as the election outcome for the polling station or voting thread concerned.”

Namibia: Namibia prepares for Africa’s first e-vote | AFP

Namibia will vote in Africa’s first electronic ballot Friday, a general election that will usher in a new president and quotas to put more women in government. Opposition parties had launched an 11th-hour challenge to the use of the Indian-made e-voting machines, claiming the lack of a paper trail could open the door to vote rigging. But the Windhoek High Court dismissed the application on Wednesday, leaving the door open for the election to go ahead as planned. Namibians will choose 96 members of the national assembly and one of nine presidential candidates, ranging from the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters to the white minority Republican Party. Around 1.2 million Namibians are eligible to cast their ballots at nearly 4,000 electronic voting stations across the vast desert nation. But there is only one likely winner. Current Prime Minister Hage Geingob of the ruling SWAPO party has run on a platform of “peace, stability and prosperity” and is sure to become the new president.

Namibia: Polls face legal challenge by opposition | News24

Three opposition parties brought an urgent application before the Windhoek High Court on Tuesday requesting it to postpone Friday’s parliamentary and presidential elections. “We ask the court to direct the electoral commission to stop the use of electronic voting machines [EVMs] as they do not produce a verifiable paper trail for every vote cast by the voter,” the first applicant, August Maletzky, asked Judge Kobus Miller. “We further ask the court to declare a section of the recently promulgated new elections act, which allows to suspend certain clauses of the new act and to direct the commission to conduct free and fair elections in February 2015,” Maletzky added. Elections are slated for this coming Friday, when 1.24 million eligible voters will elect a new government.

Namibia: Ready to vote | News24

Namibia’s election commission says preparations for next week’s national elections are going well as the country becomes the first in Africa to use electronic voting machines. “We will deploy 2080 teams to the 121 constitutions in the 14 regions of the country to operate 1255 fixed and 2711 mobile polling stations,” electoral body chair Notemba Tjipueja told reporters on Thursday. There are 1 241 194 eligible voters on the final voter’s roll. Namibia has a population of 2.1 million. Parliamentary and presidential elections will take place on Friday, 28 November. It will be the first time the country votes in one single day. During the previous five elections two days were set aside for voting, which opposition parties criticised.

Australia: Politicians unanimously vote down online voting | Government News

The prospect of online and electronic voting at Australian federal elections has officially had its plug pulled for the foreseeable future. The Parliamentary Committee tasked with investigating the feasibility of digitising Australian ballots has unanimously found that a high-tech solution is still too risky, complicated and expensive to make it a reality in the near term. The probe came after the now infamous Western Australian vote counting bungle that forced the state back to the polls after ballot papers were somehow mislaid. Now in a second interim report issued by the Electoral Matters Committee, federal politicians have concluded that although there is a raft of technological improvements that could be made to the running of elections, a fully digitised solution is still a long way off. “After hearing from a range of experts, and surveying the international electoral landscapes it is clear to me that Australia is not in a position to introduce any large – scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity,” said the Committee’s chairman, Tony Smith MP. The Committee’s main beef with online and electronic systems – aside from the obvious threat of hacking – is that the confidentiality of how people vote could be undermined or compromised. At the moment voters physically front-up at polling booths and have their name crossed off a roll before being given two ballot papers, or more in the case of a referendum.

Australia: MPs reject e-voting over cost, integrity fears | iTnews.com.au

A committee of Australian MPs has firmly staked its opposition to the large-scale implementation of electronic voting, pointing to expensive and embarrassing failures of the technology worldwide. The House of Representatives electoral matters committee today rushed out an interim report hosing down suggestions Australia should move to electronic polls, following the controversial loss of WA senate ballots in the 2013 federal election. The panel of MPs concluded there was no feasible way of rolling out electronic voting in Australia without undermining the integrity, security and civic importance of the process – and incurring a massive cost to the Commonwealth. The committee pointed to expensive and embarrassing mishaps across the world as other nations experimented with different versions of electronically enabled polls, from static and isolated machines to full web-based voting.

Australia: Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters rules out move to electronic voting in elections | ABC

The days of voters lining up to use a pencil and paper to cast their ballot will continue, with a federal parliamentary committee ruling out a move to electronic voting. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has released an interim report which finds there are too many risks associated with the move. It said shifting to electronic voting for federal elections was not feasible before the next election or in the near future without “catastrophically compromising electoral integrity”. The committee found machine electronic voting was vulnerable to hacking and measures to mitigate that risk would be costly and would still require voters to visit a polling booth. The prospect of voters being able to cast their ballot on the internet also seems a long way off, with questions about privacy for individual voters, security and potential coercion of voters.

Australia: Risks of e-voting outweigh benefits – for now | Computerworld

An interim report of a parliamentary committee tasked with examining the 2013 Senate ballot in Western Australia has concluded that the nation is not yet ready for the widespread use of e-voting in federal elections. In December last year the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters was given the job of examining the fiasco which saw Western Australian voters return to the poll after ballots were lost in the state’s tightly contested 2013 Senate race. “Ultimately, the committee has concluded that electronic voting can’t be introduced in the near future without high costs and unacceptable security risks,” the chair of committee, Liberal MP Tony Smith, said in a statement. “The Committee believes that it is likely that technology will evolve to the point that it will be possible to vote electronically in federal elections,” the interim report states. “At that stage the question for a future Parliament, and the voting public, will be whether the convenience of electronic voting outweighs the risks to the sanctity of the ballot. “The view of this Committee is that the answer to this question at this time is that no, it does not.”

Poland: Opposition Calls for Local Vote Rerun After Tally Glitch | Businessweek

Poland’s political opposition called for a repeat of Nov. 16 local elections and for the State Election Commission to be fired after its new computer system prevented it from tallying the ballot on time. Voting results for Poland’s 16 regional assemblies can’t be determined within three days of the vote after a technical error prevented the printing of totals from individual precincts, the commission said late yesterday. Exit polls by Warsaw-based researcher Ipsos showed the opposition Law & Justice party took 31.5 percent of the vote, compared with 27.3 percent for the ruling Civic Platform, scoring its first victory since 2005.

Poland: Vote returns delayed by computer glitch | Associated Press

A computer system failure is delaying returns from Poland’s local elections while exit polls suggest the nationalist opposition winning in the countryside and the ruling party taking the big cities. Based on exit polls, Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz has congratulated the opposition Law and Justice party for its apparent victory before the 2015 general election. The State Electoral Commission said Monday that the computer problem has been fixed, but it wasn’t clear when the full returns would be known.

Pakistan: Election Commission says it cannot give final opinion on electronic voting | Dawn

The Election Commission of Pakistan told the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms on Monday that in the absence of a permanent Chief Election Commissioner it cannot give a final opinion on whether the electronic voting machines (EVMs) should be used or not to make the electoral process transparent in future. Briefing reporters after a meeting of the sub-committee of the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms, its convener Minister for Science and Technology Zahid Hamid said the meeting had been informed that the use of EVMs would not alone ensure a perfect and transparent election. He said about 270,000 EVMs would be required for a general election and each would cost between Rs60,000 and Rs70,000.

Namibia: Africa’s first to use e-voting | AFP

In a first for Africa, Namibians will cast their ballots electronically in this month’s presidential and legislative polls, the election commission said Friday. Over 1 million voters, or just about half of the nation’s 2.3 million people, are due to vote on November 28. “I think it’s a big achievement for Namibia and the African continent at large,” Nontemba Tjipueja, chairwoman of the Electoral Commission of Namibia told AFP. She said the voting machines, imported from India, will help improve accuracy, speed up counting, eliminate human interference and cut down on spoiled ballots. “Results will come through the same day just after the closing of the polls,” she said, adding that final results will be announced within 24 hours.

Pakistan: Detailed plan sought: Panel asks for demo on voting machines | The Express Tribune

A sub-committee of the parliamentary committee on electoral reforms has asked the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to provide a practical demonstration of electronic voting machines (EVM) on November 17 before these can be woven into the country’s electoral laws. ECP officials on Thursday gave a briefing to the sub-committee on merits and demerits of using EVMs — an idea that the commission wants to implement in the next general elections due in 2018. The panel, holding its in-camera session, asked the ECP to bring the vendors who have prepared these machines for a practical demonstration in the next meeting scheduled on Monday. It has also asked ECP officials to come up with a detailed plan that should include the cost to implement electronic voting method and also a time-frame to implement the proposed system.

Indonesia: Calls mount for e-elections with available technology | The Jakarta Post

More people are calling for the implementation of an electronic voting system (e-voting) in next year’s concurrent regional elections. The Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) said on Wednesday that holding electronic-based elections (e-elections) was actually feasible and that they could begin as soon as next year. “If the General Elections Commission [KPU] gives the green light, e-elections can start [in 2015],” BPPT researcher and former chief Marzan Aziz Iskandar said during a discussion on e-voting at the agency’s headquarters in Jakarta. He said that the BPPT had conducted research on the feasibility of e-elections. “The research and the development [of the technology for e-elections] is complete and the needed equipment is available,” Marzan said. He said that the technology had been demonstrated and tested during some gubernatorial elections. “We have already used the technology in some village head elections,” said Marzan.

National: Voting glitches hurt Texas, Georgia | The Hill

Texas and Georgia struggled the most with glitchy electronic voting machines on Election Day, according to an analysis by watchdog Verified Voting. Some machines simply wouldn’t boot up, and others unexpectedly shut down. Faulty touch screens were another issue — some registered a vote for the wrong candidate, while others just went blank. Pamela Smith, the group’s president, said poor machine management and outdated equipment is likely responsible for the malfunctions, which were seen nationwide. U.S. electronic voting machines are rapidly aging. Just over a decade ago, an influx of federal funds allowed many states to buy up electronic voting machines. Since then, budgets have dried up and more than half of those states have taken steps back toward paper ballots as electronic fallibilities increase. Given those trends, glitches are expected, Smith said. Verified Voting runs call centers around the country on Election Day, fielding reports of voting difficulties. “Some of the problems that we saw in the early voting period, we also saw on Election Day,” Smith said. “Most of the issues we heard about were not enough equipment or equipment breaking down.”

National: States ditch electronic voting machines | The Hill

States have abandoned electronic voting machines in droves, ensuring that most voters will be casting their ballots by hand on Election Day. With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace. Nearly 70 percent of voters will be casting ballots by hand on Tuesday, according to Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting. “Paper, even though it sounds kind of old school, it actually has properties that serve the elections really well,” Smith said. It’s an outcome few would have predicted after the 2000 election, when the battle over “hanging chads” in the Florida recount spurred a massive, $3 billion federal investment in electronic voting machines. States at the time ditched punch cards and levers in favor of touch screens and ballot-scanners, with the perennial battleground state of Ohio spending $115 million alone on upgrades. Smith said the mid-2000s might go down as the  “heyday” of electronic voting. Since then, states have failed to maintain the machines, partly due to budget shortfalls.

Texas: Jefferson County Clerk blames faulty voting equipment for delay | KBMT

Jefferson County Clerk Carolyn Guidry seemed pleased at voter turnout for the 2014 mid-term elections in Jefferson County. She says 37% of the county’s 146,039 registered voters cast ballots, that’s 53,710 voters who participated. However Guidry, who won re-election herself, was not pleased at how the county’s electronic voting system performed. Malfunctions caused the vote count to be delayed, and final results were not available until 4:00 a.m. the day after the elections. Guidry said, “It’s very frustrating when I have employees working 24 hours on elections, because of the flaws of a system.” Guidry blames ES&S voting equipment the county purchased in 2006.  Tuesday’s flaw was with the scanner that counts mail-in ballots, forcing Guidry to call for a technician to fix it, the closest one was in Tyler. It would take until 4 a.m. the next day to count all 3900 mail-in ballots, and when they were all counted some Republicans who had been in the lead, ended up losing.  Guidry says that’s because two-thirds of the mail-in ballots favored Democrats. But the mail-in ballot scanner was not the only problem of the night, not all voting machines had been shut down which made it impossible for votes in those machines to be counted.

National: States ditch electronic voting machines | The Hill

States have abandoned electronic voting machines in droves, ensuring that most voters will be casting their ballots by hand on Election Day. With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace. Nearly 70 percent of voters will be casting ballots by hand on Tuesday, according to Pamela Smith, president of election watchdog Verified Voting. “Paper, even though it sounds kind of old school, it actually has properties that serve the elections really well,” Smith said. It’s an outcome few would have predicted after the 2000 election, when the battle over “hanging chads” in the Florida recount spurred a massive, $3 billion federal investment in electronic voting machines.

Kansas: Electronic voting machines may soon phase out, but not in Sedgwick Co. | KSN-TV

New national data released Monday indicates that nearly 70 percent of American voters will cast their ballots Tuesday by hand, using paper ballots. According to Verified Voting, an election watchdog, the growing trend of return to paper ballots is due to a “deterioration of voting machines.” KSN News reached out to Sedgwick Co. elections officials to learn more about the use of electronic voting machines locally, as well as in counties across the state, to find out why a majority of counties across the nation are turning back the clock and opting for paper ballots instead. In the 2012 general election, voters in Sedgwick Co. experienced their fair share of blunders at the ballot box. “We do have one polling place that their ballots would not read and this one precinct they would not read on our machines, as well,” said Tabitha Lehman, the Sedgwick Co. Elections Commissioner, in 2012.

Canada: Close race leads to recount request | Napanee Guide

Greater Napanee mayoral candidate Robert Dorey is asking council to consider a recount of the municipal election results announced on Oct. 27. Dorey said in a statement issued to media and supporters that he has been “inundated with requests from supporters that I demand a recount of the votes cast.” Incumbent Mayor Gordon Schermerhorn regained the mayoral seat on Monday night with 2,907 votes — only three votes more than first-time candidate Dorey, who received 2904. While he doesn’t believe a recount will come up with a different outcome, Dorey does think that there are some major flaws with the electronic voting system that Greater Napanee adopted for the first time this election. “I don’t think that the results will change, but I think that it’s important that we use this opportunity to examine electronic voting in a way that really matters,” Dorey said in an interview with QMI Agency on Wednesday. “I’m doing this to draw attention to the flaws in the voting process. They were obvious to me, and to other candidates and residents in this election.”

Editorials: A 21st century voting system for Los Angeles | Los Angeles Times

It sounded like a good idea at the time: modernizing elections with touch-screen voting and instant tabulation. Enough with the punch cards and the ink dots, and enough with the endless waits for election results when helicopters carrying paper ballots from far-flung precincts are grounded due to fog. Why should people who do their shopping and banking online be stuck in the dark ages when they vote? But early electronic voting systems proved vulnerable to error. And worries about fraud persisted. Even absent verifiable evidence that election results were changed by hackers or by politically motivated voting-machine makers, the mere belief that such meddling was possible was enough to undermine confidence in elections. So there is some comfort in the fact that the consulting contract adopted this week by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors calls for a modernized system based on some very old-school elements. The proposal emerged after careful vetting from an advisory panel that included election experts and voting rights advocates.

Arkansas: State Representative Wants Answers On Washington County Ballot Glitch | KXNW

A local state representative says he wants answers to how candidates’ party affiliations were left off of Washington County digital ballots Monday, the first day of early voting for the November general elections. Rep. Justin Harris (R – West Fork) is afraid some voters’ voices may not be properly heard because of the electronic ballot glitch. Harris said he may file an official complaint if election officials do not remedy the issue. County election commissioners met Tuesday morning to address concerns over the ballot problem, after voters and officials noticed Monday morning electronic voting machines did not include party affiliations. The problem was noticed within the first few voters, and officials temporarily fixed the situation by placing paper ballots, which included parties, next to electronic voting machines for reference, said Jennifer Price, Washington County election coordinator. She said the problem was fixed in time for the second day of early voting Tuesday.

Brazil: Court dismisses hacker threat at presidential vote | BBC

On the eve of Brazil’s presidential election, the Superior Electoral Court has dismissed reports that the country’s electronic voting system is vulnerable to hacking. The court’s president, Jose Dias Toffoli, has acknowledged that hackers make frequent attempts to break into the electronic ballots. But the system was “safe and fraud-proof”, Mr Toffoli said. More than 142 million Brazilians will go to the polls on Sunday. … O Globo newspaper has reported that the voting machines were the target of 200,000 cyber attacks per second two weeks ago.

Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device.

Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device. “Brazilians unconditionally believe the [security of the] country’s electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks,” says Unicamp professor and encryption specialist, Diego Aranha.

National: Why Voting Machines Are About To Wreak Havoc On Another Election | ThinkProgress

In 2012, hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. waited, at first patiently and then with growing frustration, in lines that ventured out the doors and wrapped around street corners. They weren’t waiting more than seven hours in line to buy the new iPhone — they were waiting to vote on an electronic touch-screen machine. Technology has made life easier, simplifying common tasks such as banking, publishing a book, talking to friends and paying for things online. But when it comes to voting, technology is stuck in 2002. And with the decade-old electronic voting machines that states use falling apart — creating long lines that cause some not vote at all — voters are slowly losing access to their voting rights. There’s been renewed emphasis on voting rights in the last year, since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act. … But even without ID laws, voters face obstacles at polling centers having to wait hours to vote in some regions partly because of outdated and too few electronic voting machines.