International: Electronic voting is failing the developing world while the US and Europe abandon it | Quartz

It was supposed to be the most modern election in Africa. Kenyan authorities, hoping to avoid the chaos of the 2007 election, decided that this time the country would use a tamper-proof, state-of-the-art electronic voting system where voter IDs would be checked on hand-held devices and results transmitted to Nairobi through text messages. But everything that could go wrong did. The biometric identification kits to scan people’s thumbs broke down; a server meant to take in results from 33,400 voting centers sent via SMS became overloaded; and some election operators forgot the passwords and PIN numbers for the software. Polling centers went back to hand counting ballots and results were delayed almost a week, until March 9 when Uhuru Kenyatta’s win was announced. And every day before that people feared a repeat of 2007 when results were delayed and violence erupted, killing 1,200 people. Kenya’s troubled electronic voting experiment is part of a strange dichotomy where electronic voting is on the way out in most Western countries, but taking hold in emerging economies, possibly to their detriment. In the US and Western Europe, more states have been opting out of electronic voting systems and returning to paper out of worries over the number of glitches and, as we’ve reported before, the inability to verify that electronic votes or the software on machines have not been manipulated.

Editorials: We’ve Known How to Fix Voting Since 1975—We Don’t Need Another Panel | J. Ray Kennedy/The Atlantic

Many Americans learned a valuable lesson in 2000: The technologies that emerged over the previous century for casting and counting votes are not always as reliable as they need to be, especially in close elections. Those tools — mechanical lever machines, punch cards, optical-mark readers and, most recently, touch-screen and push-button electronic units — emerged as urban populations grew and as pressure intensified for rapid tallying of results, largely from candidates and broadcasters. For years, they were widely accepted as accurate. But as early as 1975, Roy Saltman, an engineer at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology), undertook a privately funded study of voting and vote-counting technology and recommended that punch-card systems be dropped as soon as possible due to problems like hanging chads. Alarm. Yawn. Hit the snooze button. A 1988 update had the same reaction. In 1990, after extensive public hearings, the Federal Election Commission’s Office of Election Administration issued voluntary guidelines regarding the testing and certification of voting and vote-counting technologies. America was beginning to wake up. Around the same time, the House Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on Administration held hearings on emerging voting technologies. The report of those hearings was a cornucopia of information. Another sign of awakening. Yet in 1994, one of the first actions of the new Republican majority was to eliminate the Subcommittee on Elections. Big yawn. Hit the snooze button.

Kenya: Computer bug behind the many spoilt votes | nation.co.ke

A bug which multiplied spoilt ballots was responsible for the high number of spoilt votes reported through the electronic tallying system. The chairman of Kenya’s electoral commission, Mr Ahmed Issack Hassan has attributed the reduction of rejected votes in the on-going tallying process to a bug in the commission’s database. Addressing a news conference at the Bomas of Kenya in Nairobi last evening, Mr Hassan said the software bug in the system developed in-house by the Independent Boundaries and Electoral Commission kept on multiplying the rejected votes by a factor of eight.He said, the error was as a result of a programming conflict between the IEBC server and the database. “There was an error in the way the programme was written… For any rejected vote for any candidate, they were being multiplied by eight,” said the IEBC chairman.

New Jersey: Voting machines vulnerable, groups tell judges | NorthJersey.com

The state’s voting machines are so vulnerable to tampering and error that it’s impossible to tell whether ballots are counted properly, a coalition of civil rights groups told an appellate panel Tuesday in a long-running case that has drawn national attention from computer security experts and voting officials. The three judges must decide whether to order the state to replace tens of thousands of electronic voting machines with newer technology designed to be more secure. The problem, advocates say, isn’t just theoretical: Voting machine irregularities caused a Superior Court judge to throw out a South Jersey election in 2011. Critics say it’s impossible to determine whether that was an isolated incident.

Kenya: Anxiety mounts in Kenya as vote results delayed after electronic voting system breaks down | The Globe and Mail

Election officials in Kenya began counting ballots by hand on Wednesday after the electronic voting system broke down, while a top presidential candidate levied charges that Britain is meddling in the vote. The party of Deputy Prime Minster Uhuru Kenyatta – the candidate who faces charges at the International Criminal Court and is the son of Kenya’s founding president – accused the British high commissioner of “shadowy, suspicious and rather animated involvement” in efforts to get the election commission to make a decision on how rejected ballots should be counted in the overall vote total. Mr. Kenyatta’s party also asked the high commissioner, Christian Turner, to explain what it called “the sudden upsurge of British military personnel” in Kenya. British troops attend a six-week training course near Mount Kenya before deploying to Afghanistan. A new battle group arrived the week before Kenyans voted.

New Jersey: Rutgers–Newark Law Professor to Argue Case Against Flawed Electronic Voting Machines | Rutgers Today

On Tuesday March 5, 2013, Professor Penny Venetis of the Rutgers School of Law–Newark Constitutional Litigation Clinic will argue before the New Jersey Appellate Division and ask the court to decertify New Jersey’s insecure computerized voting machines. The case, Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, Stephanie Harris, Coalition for Peace Action, etc. vs. Gov. Chris Christie, will be heard in Trenton beginning at 11:30 am. The clinic filed a lawsuit in 2004 charging that the voting machines violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote, as well as voting rights statutes. New Jersey passed “gold standard” legislation in 2005 and 2008 to require computerized voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot. However, the State has yet to implement these statutes, leaving more than 5.5 million voters unprotected each Election Day. New Jersey is one of only six states that use computerized voting machines which cannot be audited.

Ghana: Illiteracy rate in Ghana will not impede e-voting- PPP | GhanaWeb

The Progressive People’s Party (PPP) has called on the Electoral Commission not to use high illiteracy rate as an excuse not to implement the e-voting system, but immediately begin a nationwide education on possible use of the system. The party had written to the Electoral Commission after the last election requesting the nation uses the electronic voting system. The Electoral Commission (E.C) Chairman, Dr. Kwadwo Afari Gyan yesterday announced that the nation is not ready to go electronic voting considering the high illiteracy rate which persists. But speaking to Citi News, PPP General Secretary, Kofi Asamoah said the EC’s excuse is a poor one.

Kentucky: Military voting bill passes Kentucky Senate | The Courier-Journal

A bill to make voting easier for members of the military passed the Senate unanimously Tuesday with many Democrats saying they hope a provision allowing voting by email is restored to the bill. Senate President Robert Stivers, a Manchester Republican, sponsored the bill as a show of bipartisanship with Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who first proposed the idea. But last week Stivers stripped from the bill a provision that Grimes considers important — wording that would let overseas voters transmit their votes electronically by email or over the Internet. During floor debate Tuesday, Stivers said he deleted the provision because several county clerks had told him “they did not feel they could maintain the integrity of the ballot nor the anonymity of the voters.” He also said Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky, had expressed strong concerns about electronic voting.

US Virgin Islands: Federal funds to buy voting machines depend on compliance with Disablilities Act | Virgin Islands Daily News

The V.I. Elections System must overcome at least two distinct hurdles before it can purchase new electronic voting machines. Board of Elections attorney Kimberly Salisbury told the St. Thomas-St. John Board of Elections at its meeting Thursday that the Elections System must become compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act – and all other federal laws – before the federal government will release the funds to purchase the machines. That means getting the U.S. Justice Department to certify that the new St. Thomas elections office is ADA compliant, according to board members Claudette Georges and Alecia Wells. It also means the board must adopt a new facilities plan – a process that, according to Georges and Wells, requires a public comment period and may take several months. The ADA certification could happen by the end of the month following a planned Feb. 21 visit by Justice Department officials, according to St. Thomas-St. John Deputy Elections Supervisor Mabel Maduro. It is less clear how long it might take to adopt a new facilities plan. No one at the meeting Thursday knew specifically where the last form of such a plan might exist.

Pennsylvania: Voting machine questions explored – Unused ballot design software has cost county up to $45,500 | Times-Leader

Luzerne County has been paying $6,500 a year for ballot design software that was not used, the new election director said, a decision that might have cost the county as much as $45,500. Marisa Crispell-Barber informed the county election board of the expenditure at Wednesday’s board meeting. She believes the software was purchased annually since the county started using the electronic voting machines in the 2006 primary. The board gave her permission to seek county funding to obtain training to fully implement the software and prepare ballots in-house. The training would cost $15,000 but would pay for itself because the county would no longer have to pay the voting-machine vendor to prepare ballots, she said. The county paid the vendor, Election Systems & Software, $33,563 to prepare the ballot in the 2012 primary alone, she said. She wants to secure training to design the ballot for the May 21 primary. Another employee also would be trained, and in-house preparation would gradually build a ballot database that can be used by her successors, she said.

Indiana: Scrapping electronic voting machines proposed | Journal and Courier

Senate Bill 357 would get rid of electronic voting machines by the end of 2015, and its proposal caught Tippecanoe County Clerk Christa Coffey’s eye and her ire. All of those relatively new and expensive electronic voting machines Tippecanoe County taxpayers bought to avoid an incident similar to Florida’s 2000 presidential election would have to be scrapped under the bill, Coffey said. “I have concerns to the cost to change all our equipment to comply with that legislation,” Coffey said. … The bill’s author, state Sen. Mike Delph, said the bill isn’t going anywhere. Its sole purpose was to stir up a debate about electronic voting machines and election integrity. “I’m concerned that election outcomes could be manipulated,” Delph said Thursday afternoon during a telephone interview.

Philippines: Electronic voting for Filipinos expands to UAE | The National

A political analyst in Manila has defended the use of optical-scan voting machines in the upcoming Philippine elections after a migrant-rights group questioned their reliability. Abu Dhabi and Dubai are among five Middle East cities where the automated system will be used by the Philippines’ Commission on Elections (Comelec). The others are Kuwait, Riyadh and Jeddah. Overseas voters have one month to cast their votes from April 13, while those in the Philippines will vote on election day, May 13. Precinct Count Optical Scan machines were first used in the May 2010 national elections.

Editorials: Use your brains, Waterloo: rethink electronic voting | therecord

The city of Waterloo has got to let go of the idea of itself as the world’s most intelligent community. The concept appears to have gone to the heads of city councillors, and they’re making bad decisions as a result. Six years ago, a New York-based organization named Waterloo as the world’s most intelligent community, in part because of its high concentration of research institutions, such as its two universities, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the Centre for International Governance Innovation. … Of course, it’s hard to give back the tiara. Earlier this week, Waterloo city councillors were urged to investigate online voting in local elections. “As the most intelligent community in the world, it’s almost a given that we should be embracing the concept of electronic voting,” said Tim Jackson, a local entrepreneur, community leader and a vice-president at the University of Waterloo.

Australia: Many challenges ahead of Australia’s eVote | SC Magazine

Electronic voting isn’t likely to replace voting at the ballot box anytime soon, according to identity and security experts, despite progress in NSW and Victoria and renewed interest in Queensland. A discussion paper [pdf] on electoral reform released last week by the Queensland Government asked whether electronically assisted voting (conducted online or by phone) should be introduced for all voters in the state. While Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said the government must review rules and processes governing the electoral system to ensure they are “right for modern times”, experts say there is a lot standing in the way of electronic voting.

Ireland: Oscars online voting mess reminds us of a certain electronic voting machine bought by the Irish government | joe.ie

When it comes to voting do any of us really trust machines? We’ve seen so many hacker incidents in the global media, not to mention our own email and Facebook pages, that we don’t really trust our votes not to be tampered with if made electronically. The 85th Annual Academy Awards tried to upgrade their voting system to e-voting this year but has met with nothing but problems. Usually voting for the awards is done via the post. This year, there was a choice of posting the vote traditionally, or voting online. Many users found that they had more trouble trying to get their votes cast online that they would trying to perform an online banking transfer.

National: Concern over glitches with Oscar electronic voting extends deadline | Fox News

Growing concern that problems with the new electronic Oscar voting system could lead to record-low turnout has prompted the motion picture academy to extend the deadline for members to vote for Oscar nominations. But next week’s highly anticipated announcements looming, the extension is only for a day, until Friday. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Monday any votes received after the new deadline will not be counted. “By extending the voting deadline we are providing every opportunity available to make the transition to online balloting as smooth as possible,” said the academy’s chief operating officer, Ric Robertson, in a statement. “We’re grateful to our global membership for joining us in this process.”

Editorials: Answering South Carolina’s Voting Question | MyrtleBeachOnline.com

Coming in 2014 to a theater near you, a hard look at the vulnerabilities and the issues of electronic voting in our nation. At least, first-time documentarian Jason Grant Smith hopes his film will be in theaters then. Even if it’s not, the issue will still likely be apt. Intrigued by the lack of rational explanations for the 2010 primary election win of U.S. Senate candidate Alvin Greene in South Carolina, Smith embarked upon a journey shortly afterward into what he called “the byzantine rabbit hole of election administration in the United States.”

Nepal: Election Commission wants legal hurdles removed by next week to hold polls by mid-May | MyRepublica

At a time when the government has been reiterating that it will conduct fresh Constituent Assembly (CA) polls by mid-May, the Election Commission (EC) has made it clear that it would be unable to hold the polls if legal hurdles, among other concerns raised by the constitutional body, were not addressed by next week. At a meeting with top leaders of CPN-UML held at the EC office in the capital on Monday, Acting Chief Election Commissioner Dolakh Bahadur Gurung and Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav urged political parties to forge consensus on issues related to holding CA polls. “If you want to conduct CA polls by mid-May [as announced by the government], we urge you all to forge consensus at the earliest,” Yadav said at the meeting.

Mississippi: Hinds County supervisors eye purchasing new voting machines | The Clarion-Ledger

Hinds County is poised to purchase an all-new electronic voting system that some supervisors say will be more efficient and less costly to maintain than the decade-old, touch-screen system now in use. The $1 million investment would be paid for with federal Help America Vote Act dollars. Hinds County has about 200 voting precincts and about 146,000 registered voters. Of the state’s 82 counties, Hinds is the only one using its particular type of voting equipment, Advanced Voting Solutions with WINvote. Seventy-six other counties are using the Diebold/ES&S TSX voting machine, which has an optical scanner and its own tabulation system.

Nigeria: NSE ready to partner INEC on e-voting | Business Day

The Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) says it is ready to collaborate with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in perfecting electronic voting for future elections. The NSE President, Mr Mustafa Shehu, said this on Friday while briefing journalists on the communiqué issued at the end of the group’s delegates conference. Shehu said the group successfully deployed the use of e-voting designed by Nigerian engineers to elect officers to run its affairs in 2013. According to him, NSE was able to use the e-voting through the collaboration of NigComSat Ltd, a Federal Government owned company.

Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka to introduce electronic voting | Colombo Page

The Sri Lankan government has taken measures to introduce an electronic voting system to the country, a government minister revealed. Water Supply and Drainage Minister Dinesh Gunawardena has told parliament that the government has taken immediate measures to formulate the relevant legal amendments to introduce electronic voting.

South Carolina: Analysis: Richland had 185 fewer voting machines than 2010 | TheState.com

Richland County had 185 fewer voting machines this November compared to two years ago despite 16,300 more people at the polls, according to an independent analysis from an elections expert released Friday. Nearly three out of four precincts had fewer machines than two years ago, contributing to 12 percent of the 121,200 ballots cast after the polls closed at 7 p.m. this year, according to Duncan Buell, a University of South Carolina computer science professor who specializes in electronic voting systems. Just 2 percent of ballots were cast late in 2010. PDF: Election Report

Israel: Likud party primary extended due to electronic voting machines problems | EJP

The Likud party primary vote to choose the list of party candidates forthe  January 22 parliamentary election, that began on Sunday, will continue on Monday, the Likud Central Election Committee decided on Sunday night. 50 to 60 polling stations will be open to voters from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The decision was made based on problems with electronic polling machines on Sunday. Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the Likud primary elections held Sunday a “farce” because of problems with electronic voting machines and demanded the polls be halted and held again on a later date.

Israel: Likud officials: Netanyahu likely to halt primaries over voting malfunctions Israel News | Haaretz

Likud officials said on Sunday that they believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would accept an offer to halt electronic voting procedures in Likud’s primaries, opting to continue the elections through casting individual ballots. The proposal was raised by Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon, following a day rife with reports of voting computer malfunctions. Problems were reported at locations including Jerusalem’s main polling station — the International Convention Centers, where 80 computerized voting systems were shut down — and at the polling station in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Yad Eliyahu, which was also shut down. Other locations with reported malfunctions were Ramat Gan, Ashdod, Gan Yavne and Mt. Hebron Regional Council.

Hawaii: Honolulu City Council Wants Governor to Investigate General Election | Hawaii Reporter

Public outrage is on the rise after more information about the Office of Elections management failures on General Election Day is documented. Hundreds of people at 24 precincts around Oahu waited as long as three hours to vote because of ballot shortages. In some cases, people left without voting because they could not wait. Callers to local talk shows are demanding a revote. Several note the precincts that ran out of ballots were largely in districts that opposed the controversial $5.2 billion rail project and supported the mayoral candidacy of former Gov. Ben Cayetano. Cayetano lost the election to union-backed Kirk Caldwell after a substantial lead in the polls.

South Carolina: Richland County vote count resumes today | TheState.com

Richland County voters could learn as early as this afternoon what the county’s official results are in the Nov. 6 county elections. Votes will be tallied beginning at 1 p.m. on the fourth floor of the county administration building on Harden Street, Election Commission chairwoman Liz Crum said Tuesday evening. “We will get this done, and we will get it done right,” Crum said. Election observers and news media can observe county officials do the count. “Everybody on hand can watch the canvassing,” she said. “We never finished counting the vote – this is not a recount.”

Canada: Security of e-voting questioned | The Chronicle Herald

At first blush, it appears electronic voting did little to conquer voter apathy in Halifax Regional Municipality. The 37 per cent total turnout in October matched that of the 2008 election. That plateau has prompted several councillors to call for a staff review to gauge how effective the $500,000 spent on telephone and online voting was compared to using paper ballots. Coun. Waye Mason questioned the system’s security and said he doesn’t think it should necessarily be used in 2016.

US Virgin Islands: Thousands of votes will not be counted until Friday | Virgin Islands Daily News

Virtually no race on the V.I. ballot Tuesday could be definitively settled as of Wednesday night because at least 4,319 paper ballots have yet to be counted. The Boards of Elections in both districts have indicated that they likely will not begin tallying the votes until Friday. With the exception of Delegate to Congress Donna Christensen, who won with an 8,000 vote margin; Senator-At-Large Craig Barshinger, who won with a 6,000-vote margin; and Clifford Graham, who topped the St. Thomas-St. John Senate race by a margin of 1,969 votes, the order and outcome of almost every other race could, mathematically, change once the paper ballots are counted.

Virginia: Long voting lines blamed on high turnout, too-few poll workers and voting machines | The Washington Post

In the District, there were technical glitches with equipment at polling places. In Montgomery County, budget constraints led to about 1,000 fewer election judges than during the previous presidential election. But there’s no question about it: Some precincts in Northern Virginia held the dubious distinction of having the most brutally long lines for voters in the Washington region on Tuesday. In Prince William and Fairfax counties, hundreds waited for more than three hours — and long after polls were scheduled to close at 7 p.m. The problems were blamed on high voter turnout, unusually long ballots, a shortage of poll workers and a limited number of touch-screen machines.

National: Voting-machine glitches: How bad was it on Election Day around the country? | CSMonitor.com

Electronic voting-machine jams, breakdowns, and glitches were strewn across the Election Night landscape, creating long lines when machines simply broke down. In at least one case, a viral YouTube video purported to show a Pennsylvania machine “flipping” a vote cast for President Obama into a vote for Mitt Romney. Vote flipping occurs when an e-voting touch-screen machine is not properly calibrated, so that a vote for Romney or Obama is flipped to the other candidate. While the Pennsylvania glitch was reported and the machine reportedly taken out of service and quickly recalibrated, other flipping was reported by news media accounts in Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, and Ohio.