Voting Blogs: Pennsylvania County Begins Exam of Failed ES&S Touch-Screen Systems; Will Vote on Paper Instead in November | The Brad Blog

“What is a vote worth?” Venango County, PA Election Board Chairman Craig Adams asked last week. “If the vote is counted it is priceless. If it is not counted, I don’t care what it costs. Let’s get a right.”

“After months of legal wrangling,” Marybeth Kuznik of the non-partisan Election Integrity advocacy group VotePA told The BRAD BLOG last week, Venango County’s landmark independent forensic examination of the notoriously unreliable and 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, most often touch-screen) e-voting system finally got under way. Kuznik explained that the study comes in the wake of the county having experienced “numerous reports of vote-flipping, candidates missing from screens, write-ins missing, and high undervote rates in their May 17 Primary.”

South Carolina: Audits spotlight 2010 election problems | TheState.com

Two audits of South Carolina’s November 2010 general election found scores of human errors that led to incorrect vote counts and other problems. None of these errors were large enough to have changed the outcome of a election or referendum, but they were significant enough to prompt the State Election Commission to make several procedural and policy changes. The problems also emboldened the chorus of critics questioning the accuracy, reliability and accountability of the state’s iVotronic voting machines.

And they could prompt the Legislature to lengthen the time period between Election Day and when counties meet to certify the results. That added time would give counties extra time to audit their data before formalizing their tallies. State Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, has chaired a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee looking at elections and has reviewed the audits’ results. “The problem is these problems were uncovered after the election was certified,” he said. “Once an election is certified, it can’t be undone.”

Barbara Zia, co-president of South Carolina’s League of Women Voters, said the scrutiny of the state’s election system was triggered in part by the June 2010 Senate Democratic primary in which an unknown candidate who didn’t campaign won handily with 60 percent of the vote. The league’s recent audit — which requested information from all 46 counties under the state’s Freedom of Information Act — was an outgrowth of that.

Ohio: Butler County settles voting machine lawsuit | Middletown Journal

Butler County’s lawsuit with Diebold Inc. and Premier Election Systems regarding faulty voting machines has been settled with the board of elections receiving equipment and services worth $1.5 million, which Director Tom Ellis said will be a “boost in the arm for the voting experience.” The suit was over a glitch in the system during the March 2008 primary election that early caused 200 votes to go uncounted.

Provided to the county at no cost as part of the suit are 400 electronic poll books, bar scanners, signature pads, and printers supported by seven years of software and hardware maintenance. The equipment and on-going maintenance support will be provided by Election Systems & Software, Inc.

“The Butler County Board of Elections is very satisfied with the terms of the settlement and enthusiastic about the new relationship with an industry leader such as ES&S and the use of the company’s well-regarded Express 5000, electronic poll book,” Ellis said.

West Virginia: County to refuse maintenance contract for voting machines | The Charleston Gazette

Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said he will refuse to sign a maintenance contract for the county’s electronic voting machines. Earlier this month, Carper and county commissioners Hoppy Shores and Dave Hardy reluctantly agreed to pay a contract to Election Systems & Software to provide maintenance for the county’s electronic voting machines. The maintenance contract would have cost the county $56,000 a year for four years.

In 2005, under former secretary of state Betty Ireland, state officials negotiated a sole-source contract with ES&S to provide touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines all over the state. State officials told county election officials earlier this year they would be passing on responsibility for maintaining the voting machines to county government.

The state contract gave ES&S a virtual monopoly on voting machines in West Virginia and a monopoly on fixing the machines if they break. In the past, Kanawha County officials have had trouble getting in touch with ES&S representatives and finding qualified technicians to work on the machines.

Editorials: Independent vote audit needed in South Carolina | The Post and Courier

During the last legislative session, a Senate judiciary subcommittee heard testimony from the State Election Commission and its critics about problems in the 2010 elections. The committee suggested that the two sides work together to recommend improvements to the process.

So far that hasn’t happened. Critics of the system, including the League of Women Voters, contend that the state’s electronic voting system is inherently flawed. The State Election Commission says the system is functional and that problems experienced in the last general election can be fixed.

Given the continuing disagreement over the electronic voting system, which is used throughout the state, an independent look at the situation is in order. The Legislative Audit Council ought to be given the task. A column on our Commentary page from former Clemson computer science professor Eleanor Hare cites problems with verifying data from the 2010 election.

South Carolina: Votes were miscounted, laws ignored | The Post and Courier

Thousands of votes in the 2010 general election were counted incorrectly in South Carolina. Not only were these votes counted incorrectly, the State Election Commission (SEC) is ignoring state law that requires a recount and federal law that requires that the entirety of the data files from an election be retained for 22 months.

These reasonable obligations were not followed despite concerns raised by the League of Women Voters of South Carolina (LWVSC) about potential problems with our voting machines. The League has not detected any corrections that would have overturned election results, but the audit of the results is not complete.

Given the large number of votes incorrectly recorded and the pervasiveness of errors, it is entirely possible that some close elections have been decided incorrectly in the past.

West Virginia: Kanawha County opts out of state contract for voting machine maintenance | Charleston Daily Mail

Kanawha County Commissioners opted not to go with a statewide contract for maintenance of electronic voting machines and instead struck their own agreement with Electronic Systems & Software.

Commissioners discussed at Thursday’s meeting whether to get in on the statewide contract, which was negotiated between ES&S and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office. Chief Deputy County Clerk David Dodd said that although he hasn’t yet read the entire contract, he believes it would be cheaper to sign an individual contract with the company.

The county will pay ES&S $56,269 a year for four years to maintain the 374 electronic voting machines and two tabulators. Dodd said the county saved $800 for maintenance on just one tabulation machine by going with the individual contract instead of the statewide agreement. “Going with the state contract would have definitely cost us more money,” Dodd said.

Colorado: Aspen woman sues Mesa County elections officals over voting records | nbc11 news

An issue of voter secrecy or government transparency in elections? That’s the question at the center of one woman’s lawsuit against Mesa County elections officials. Following the 2010 elections, leaders in Saguache County came under heavy scrutiny when it was discovered there were several problems with the counting of ballots there. Their county uses the same voting system used in both Mesa County and Jefferson County.

“As we have uncovered a number of problems with the ES&S product in Saguache County, I became curious about how it operated in Mesa and Jefferson,” said Marilyn Marks, an elections activist who lives in Aspen.

When it comes to ensuring fair and accurate elections, Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner says her elections department is among the best. “Here in Mesa County we pride ourselves on being leaders in security, accuracy, and transparency,” said Reiner. But it’s the transparency piece where Marks says Mesa County is among the worst.

Ohio: Voting in Mahoning County to return to paper ballots | Youngstown News

Nine years after switching from paper ballots to electronic touch-screen voting, the Mahoning County Board of Elections plans to return to paper for the November general election. The new, more sophisticated system will have voters complete a paper ballot and feed it into an optical-scanner machine.

The machine would keep track of the vote totals with the paper ballot dropped into a sealed box. State law requires all ballots have paper backups. It would cost $684,000 to buy the new machines from Election Systems & Software, the same company that sold the electronic voting machines to the county, said Joyce Kale Pesta, the board’s deputy director.

The county may not have the money to purchase the machines so leasing them is an option that would cost less than $100,000 a year, she said.

South Carolina: Audit of 2010 South Carolina Elections Shows Widespread Problems | Free Times

The State Election Commission is auditing voting data from the 2010 statewide elections, and as it does, critics of the state’s iVotronic touch screen voting machines say the government audit is proving there are problems with the system — problems the agency doesn’t dispute.

“They’re admitting that there’s holes in the data,” says Frank Heindel of Mount Pleasant, who runs the watchdog website SCvotinginfo. He adds that the elections agency also admits that there are counties where auditors haven’t been able to obtain proper election data. Emails and comments from agency officials back that up.

“We never received complete data from Charleston … No data is available for Lancaster and Orangeburg,” wrote Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire in one email to Heindel about the ongoing audit. The reason no information was available for Orangeburg was because a computer with the audit data on it there crashed, Whitmire said.

Voting Blogs: Still Clueless About Touch-Screens in South Carolina | The Brad Blog

Yesterday, The Post & Courier of Charleston, South Carolina reported that a local “Council of Governments [COG] approved a resolution…asking for the state to audit how its voting machines are working.” The “machines” are the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems.

The Post & Courier not only mentions the fact that state election officials insist that the “iVotronic machines reliably tally votes,” but buys into the canard that “increased skepticism” is based upon [emphasis added] “human errors made during last year’s elections.” It adds that the COG resolution expressed “a concern [that the] voting machines…do not incorporate a ‘paper trail’ that could facilitate unequivocal confirmation of election results.”

If there is any state in the nation that should realize that casting a vote on the ES&S iVotronic amounts to an exercise in blind-faith, with or without a so-called “Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail” (VVPAT), it would be South Carolina.

Voting Blogs: Wisconsin Recalls Come to a Close…For Now | The Brad Blog

The final round of state Senate recalls in Wisconsin, brought on in response to anti-union legislation by Gov. Scott Walker and state Republicans, have completed today. AP is reporting tonight that the two Democrats up for recall in the state’s 12th and 22nd have each retained their seats. TPM has thenumbers by district here.

By way of reminder, in Wisconsin most votes are cast by hand-marked paper ballot though tallied secretly by optical-scanners made by Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S. The state does not examine any optically-scanned ballots to assure the machines have tallied accurately after they’ve already been scanned, other than in the even of a recount if permission is granted by the courts to hand-count ballots. I’m told, but haven’t been able to confirm today, that some of the municipalities in the two districts where elections were held today, may have been hand-counting ballots, though centrally, after they’ve been transported, rather than at the precincts.

South Carolina: Local Governments wants an audit of State’s ES&S iVotronics | The Post and Courier

The Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments approved a resolution Monday asking for the state to audit how its voting machines are working. The proper functioning of South Carolina’s machines has drawn increased skepticism following human errors made during last year’s elections.

The council’s resolution noted, “a concern frequently expressed about voting machines is they do not incorporate a ‘paper trail’ that could facilitate unequivocal confirmation of election results.”

The action Monday did not come as a surprise. Council members, who represent most local governments in the tri-county area, agreed in April to draft such a resolution.

Colorado: Myers says SOS would ok ES&S M650 use for recall | Center Post Dispatch

According to an article on the BOCC recall petition hearing in the Pueblo Chieftain last week, Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers says the Secretary of State’s (SOS) Office would permit the use of the M650 to tabulate recall election results.

The recall committee for Myers represented by former commissioner’s candidate Steve Carlson requested Aug. 2 that Saguache Commissioners appoint an official other than Myers to conduct the recall election and asked that the votes in the election be counted by hand.

Commissioner Sam Pace announced that Saguache Treasurer Connie Trujillo had been appointed to oversee the recall election and would be assisted by a retired Colorado county clerk or other individual familiar with election processes. The decision to hand count the ballots would need to be made by Trujillo and her assistant, Pace said.

Colorado: Elections System and Software could face contempt charges | Alamosa Valley Courier

District Judge Martin Gonzales ruled Wednesday that Elections System and Software (ES&S), who failed to appear for their depositions in the Marilyn Marks v. Melinda Myers Colorado Open Records Act suit could be held in contempt of court. Denver attorney Robert McGuire, on behalf of his client, Aspen election integrity advocate Marilyn Marks filed the suit to force Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers to turn over voting records and related documents Marks requested beginning last November. ES&S provided Saguache County with their M650 voting device and accompanying software used in the contested Nov. 2, 2010 election.

Gonzales ordered that the election firm appear in court to show cause why they should not be held in contempt for failing to appear for the scheduled depositions in June after he approved the issuance of a subpoena for the depositions. Marks later filed a motion with the court to hold ES&S in contempt unless they could show sufficient cause for refusing to honor the deposition subpoena. ES&S made no motion to file a protective order, protesting appearance on the grounds that the deposition would violate trade secrets and/or force the production of proprietary information. Nor did their attorneys move to quash the subpoena, court records show.

Indiana: Election challenge dismissed in Clarksville clerk race | News and Tribune

Clark Circuit Judge Daniel Moore dismissed a case that had been filed by Clarksville Clerk-Treasurer Gary Hall, which claimed Election Day irregularities due to a lack of handicap accessible voting machines at the polls on May 3.

Moore’s decision was a win for Bob Leuthart, who defeated Hall in the Democratic primary by 24 votes. Hall was challenging the results of the election because handicap accessible machines around the county were out of commission on Election Day. A bench trial, which took only about an hour, took place on Friday morning.

John Vissing, Hall’s attorney, based his case on the fact that federal laws passed as a part of the Help America Vote Act require such machines at each polling location. The Clark County Election Board conceded that the machines were not functional.

New Jersey: Payment to ES&S delayed over vote count bug | New Jersey Herald

Sussex County freeholders are withholding payment to the company that provides and services the county’s election computers until the board can get a face-to-face meeting with company representatives.

“Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no bugs in election software,” Freeholder Philip Crabb said during Wednesday’s meeting. “It just can’t happen.”

Crabb was the one who suggested pulling Elections Systems and Software from the list of bills for the freeholders to authorize payment. The amount of the bill was about $31,760 and is a regular payment under a maintenance and service agreement.

New Jersey: Vote count bug found; county blames software – ES&S iVotronic | New Jersey Herald

Primary Day problems in Sussex County were not a matter of the votes counting, but of counting the votes. Computer experts have traced the problem with Sussex County’s election results on Primary Day to a bug in the software used to tabulate votes.

Marge McCabe, administrator for the county Board of Elections, said Friday that she received a verbal report from Elections Systems and Software that the problem had been traced to programming. “I’m relieved there was no problem with the voting machines nor our procedures,” she said. “The problem was not in voting, but in tabulating.”

A full written report on what the ES&S experts found is expected soon.

Colorado: ES&S representatives fail to show for ordered depositions | Center Post Dispatch

Election Systems and Software officials failed to appear for depositions earlier this month after Saguache District Judge Martin Gonzales ruled that the firm could be deposed for a Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) suit filed in February.

Denver attorney Robert McGuire, on behalf of his client, Aspen election integrity activist Marilyn Marks, filed the suit to force Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers to turn over voting records and related documents Marks requested beginning in November 2010. McGuire waited for officials from the Nebraska firm for nearly an hour, he said, before deciding they would not appear.

Marks later filed a motion with the court to hold them in contempt unless they could show sufficient cause for refusing to honor the deposition subpoenas. ES&S made no motion to file a protective order (if their appearance would violate trade secrets and/or force the production of proprietary information) nor did their attorneys move to quash the subpoena, court records show.

Colorado: Stagner files affidavit with Saguache court | Center Post Dispatch

Republican Linda Stagner filed an affidavit last week with Saguache County Court protesting County Clerk Melinda Myers’ testimony May 31 during Sec. of State Scott Gessler’s suit to review ballots from the 2010 election. Following publication of a letter to the editor in last week’s issue of the Center Post-Dispatch, Stagner followed up with the following statement in her affidavit.

“At no time on election day or any other time was I told by an SOS official or county clerk staff that covering the over-votes on the ballots was a violation of law or to stop that practice.

“I want the court to know that testimony given in this case was inaccurate at the very least. Again, at no time was I told that the instructions given by ES&S to cover over-votes was illegal and that we were to ignore it. There were four election judges. Why would only one judge be told something this important? All judges were in the counting room during counting and each judge signed every ballot on which adjustments had been made.

Colorado: Saguache clerk cleared in election investigation | The Pueblo Chieftain

A statewide grand jury cleared Saguache County Clerk and Recorder Melinda Myers of any criminal wrongdoing in the November election, according to a report released through the Colorado Attorney General’s Office Tuesday.

“The results of the 2010 general election were a product of the votes of the citizens of Saguache County and were not affected by individual violations of the procedural rules by the clerk and others,” the report concluded.

Myers said in a written statement she hoped the findings would put the election controversy to rest and provide citizens with confidence that the will of the voters was reflected in the election.

Colorado: No indictments issued in Saguache election | Valley Courier

The grand jury report on the Saguache County 2010 General Election was released Tuesday afternoon by the State Attorney General’s Office but no indictments were returned in the investigation.

The report relates that Saguache County Clerk Melinda Myers did admit during her testimony that she failed to follow the Secretary of State (SOS) rules during the election.

In commentary submitted to the grand jury following its decision, Myers stated that she was “encouraged to see the conclusions so well explained and hope that we can finally put this election to rest.”

New Jersey: Vote count glitch probed in Sussex County – ES&S iVotronic | New Jersey Herald

The unofficial results from Tuesday’s primary election are in, again, and there are no official winners, yet, but the numbers all match up, unofficially. The computer problems that shut down the counting of votes were solved the next day when a consultant from Elections, Systems & Software, the software provider for the county’s election board, suggested the board should just start over. And that is just what it did.

… The number of voters matched the number of voters recorded on the paper records that poll workers keep at each polling place, McCabe said. And there were no surprises or recall of winners with Wednesday’s tabulations, now unofficially being reviewed by the Sussex County Clerk’s Office, which must confirm the totals before they become official.

The one thing that was officially confirmed Tuesday is that the county has a glitch in the election process, and no one knows what causes it.

New Jersey: Technical glitch shakes up Sussex County New Jersey election results – ES&S iVotronic DRE | New Jersey Herald

Past Cinderella’s curfew and beyond the target deadline for the Sussex County Board of Elections, a small gathering including Freeholder Rich Vohden, freeholder candidate Dennis Mudrick, acting County Clerk Jeffrey Parrott, Sheriff Michael Strada and two of Franklin Mayor Paul Crowley’s children waited for results of the Tuesday primary election. The unofficial results that never came.

Numbers appeared to be coming in smoothly for the first half of the evening. However, as charts displaying unofficial results flashed on the wall via a projector, watchers noticed the number of reporting districts changed, and not always in an upwards direction. According to the results, the number of districts reporting numbers were decreasing, and the number of Walpack votes totaled   61, though only 22 registered voters reside in the community.

West Virginia: Candidate alleges election fraud in Charleston West Virginia Mayoral contest | Charleston Daily Mail

Janet “J.T.” Thompson, who waged an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Charleston, has alleged that officials tampered with election equipment to guarantee incumbent Danny Jones’ victory. Thompson filed a complaint with the city clerk’s office Friday. She didn’t return calls Monday seeking comment.

Thompson alleges that officials in the Kanawha County Clerk’s office allowed “certain persons to manipulate the Electronic Voting System in the general election of May 17, 2011,” according to the complaint on file at the city clerk’s office.

Colorado: Saguache County Clerk Myers produces ES&S M650 audit logs | Center Post Dispatch

Assisted by two election judges, County Clerk Melinda Myers supervised the printout of 49 pages of audit logs from the M650 voting machine last Thursday, covering machine operation records from Oct. 25 to April 13.

Judge Jessica DuBoe printed out the logs while a second judge, Peggy Godfrey, stood watch. The operation took just about an hour.

“ES&S [the machine’s distributor] first said we couldn’t do it,” Myers said. “It would have been nice to know Nov. 3.”

Colorado: Judge hears Colorado Secretary of State Gessler ballot request | Center Post Dispatch

Few surprises were in evidence Tuesday at the hearing on Sec. of State Scott Gessler’s request that he be allowed to obtain the ballots for the 2010 Saguache General election to conduct a hand review with citizens present.

… Hagihara told Knaiser that the logic and accuracy pre-election test was run properly except for the fact that test ballots were used. He also said Myers asked the SOS to come to Saguache to review the November 2010 election after discovering “votes cast didn’t match votes counted.”

According to Hagihara, when the SOS came Nov. 15-16 to run the ballots back through the M650 (only the number of ballots, not the votes themselves were counted), the totals that were recorded were the correct totals, even though a commissioner’s and the clerk’s race were overturned. This determined that the Nov. 5 retabulation, not the Nov. 2 totals was the correct result.