Estonia: Centre Party: e-voting should be banned | Baltic Business News

Estonia’s largest opposition party Centre Party is requesting to ban e-voting in the upcoming European Parliament elections, reports ERR. The request signed was addressed the letter to Estonian President Toomas-Hendrik Ilves, Prime Minister Taavi Rõivas, Secretary of State Heiki Loot, Chairman of the Electoral Committee Alo Heinsalu, Estonian Parliament speaker Eiki Nestor, Chairman of the Supreme Court Priit Pikamäe, Law Chancellor Indrek Teder and State Auditor Alar Karis. Copies of the letter were also addressed to the European leaders Martin Schulz, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso. In its request the party refers to the findings published yesterday by a group of international experts who claim that the Estonian Internet-based e-voting system is extremely vulnerable and should be banned.

India: The Device that Runs the World’s Biggest Election | New York Times

Thanks to a device that is the size and shape of a mini piano keyboard, India can boast that the country’s voters, all 814.5 million of them in 543 constituencies, can cast their ballot electronically, even in areas that have just one person. The 1.8 million electronic voting machines being used in this year’s elections, manufactured by Bharat Electronics and Electronic Corporation of India, both government companies, have been designed to adapt to the logistical challenges in India, where roads can be nonexistent and the electricity supply erratic. The machines are small enough to carry by hand and require only a six-volt alkaline battery. With one-third of India’s adult population illiterate, the voting machines feature both a list of candidates’ names and their party symbol. “The introduction of electronic voting machine was India’s biggest electoral reform,” said Manohar Singh Gill, India’s former chief election commissioner who supervised the 1999 election, the last one that used paper ballots. “The biggest disputes in paper ballots used to be on which vote is invalid and which is not. Recounting used to take days, and more disputes would emerge.”

India: India’s Briefcase-Sized Voting Machines | The Atlantic

Holding India’s titanic general election is no simple task. Voting is broken down into nine phases—the fifth and largest of which is scheduled for this Thursday—that are spread over six weeks. Over the six weeks, an army of 11 million election officials and security forces will staff and operate more than 935,000 polling stations in India’s 543 electoral constituencies, where they will serve almost 815 million registered Indian voters. Central to this undertaking are India’s 1.7 million electronic voting machines, or EVMs, the portable, affordable, and highly durable systems that help this massive exercise in democracy run smoothly. Each EVM comes in two parts. The control unit remains with election officials at each polling place and connects by cable to the balloting unit. When a voter enters a polling booth, an official activates the balloting unit. The voter then presses one of up to 64 blue buttons next to each candidate’s name and political-party symbol to cast his or her vote. … EVMs help India overcome a number of electoral challenges. The machines are compact and portable, in contrast to bulkier booth-sized voting machines in the United States and elsewhere. They are also built to withstand India’s diverse and sometimes-harsh climate. Since they run on two 6-volt alkaline batteries, EVMs can be readily used in rural India, where two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens live, and other areas with limited or no electricity.

Missouri: Legislators Could Change the Way Missourians Vote | CBS

The Senate has endorsed legislation by Republican Senator Brian Nieves that could possibly change how Missouri voters cast their ballots. The legislation has been given first-round approval, but needs one more Senate vote before moving to the House. The law will require local election authorities to phase out the use of electronic voting machines. The touch screen method would be gone. The bill says when the current machines break, they can’t be repaired or replaced.

Illinois: Democratic ballots being recounted over ‘undervotes’ | News-Gazette.com

Every Democratic ballot cast in Champaign County in last week’s primary is being recounted after irregularities were discovered in the results of several races. Election authorities began a machine recount Tuesday afternoon. The errors occurred in the vote tabulations for 13th and 15th Congressional District committeeman; the 13th and 15th Congressional District committeewoman; and all precinct committeeman races. All were at the bottom of the ballot — but only the Democratic ballot. In every case, the candidates were unopposed. In one instance — the race for 15th Congressional District committeewoman — Jayne Mazzotti of Taylorville was credited with only 450 votes in Champaign County, while there were 7,325 “undervotes” (ballots where no vote was cast). But a Tuesday morning handcount of Mazzotti’s votes in the city of Champaign’s Precinct 19 found she got 40 votes — despite being credited with none a week ago. County Clerk Gordy Hulten acknowledged the mistake, which Democratic Party chairman Al Klein highlighted as a reason Hulten — who for now is unopposed in November’s general election — should face competition.

Editorials: Whose election is this, anyway? | Times Union

In our republic, there is little as fundamental — as sacrosanct, really — as the voting process. To retain the public’s faith, it must be transparent. So it’s troubling that the Rensselaer County Board of Elections has refused to let the public see the electronic ballot images from last November’s election. These are the digital images taken of the paper ballots that voters fed into machines. Since 2010, in compliance with the Help America Vote Act, three versions of each vote are kept — the paper ballot, which is preserved for two years and only opened if ordered by a judge, and two digital images, the “official” record and a “redundant backup.”

Virginia: Registrars prepare for recount in attorney general’s race | News & Advance

The Lynchburg region cast just over 3 percent of the votes that will be counted — again — next week to determine who will be Virginia’s next attorney general. Each of the localities gave Republican Mark Obenshain a healthy majority over Democrat Mark Herring, ranging from 53 percent of votes cast in Lynchburg to 75 percent in Bedford and Campbell counties. Obenshain, who lost by 165 votes out of 2.2 million cast in the Nov. 5 election, asked for a recount. It will be conducted Monday and Tuesday in each city and county, at local-government expense. Voter registrars said the recount will take roughly half a day in the four counties surrounding Lynchburg, because they use touch-screen voting machines that recorded vote totals on printed tapes. Those tapes can be tabulated again in just a few hours, according to the registrars in Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell counties. But in the Hill City, where two-thirds of the voters chose to use paper ballots, election officials are preparing for an all-day job requiring them to run 13,000 paper ballots through a scanning machine again. A few hundred ballots, mostly absentee ballots sent by mail, will be counted by hand.

Virginia: Chesapeake must recount 61,000 ballots by hand | Virginian Pilot

In the upcoming recount of Virginia’s attorney general election results, Chesapeake’s 61,000 paper ballots must be tallied manually, the state Board of Elections has told city officials. The reason, according to Chesapeake General Registar William “Al” Spradlin, is that the city’s optical scanning equipment cannot segregate ballots that were undervoted – didn’t vote in all races – or overvoted – voted for too many candidates. Instructions from a three-judge panel overseeing the recount indicated those ballots must be singled out for examination, Spradlin said. Democrat Mark Herring was certified with a victory of 165 votes out of 2.2 million cast in the Nov. 5 election, close enough for his opponent, Republican Mark Obenshain, to request the recount.

Maryland: State prepares move back to paper ballots for elections | Maryland Reporter

Local election officials are already expressing uncertainty about what could go wrong when the state switches from an electronic voting system to using paper ballots in the next two years. By the 2016 presidential elections the state will replace touch-screen machines and make a fundamental shift to the way voters cast ballots. “This is a big transition for us,” said Montgomery County Board of Elections Deputy Director Alysoun McLaughlin. “Everything from set up, to warehouses, to the voting experience is based around touch screen [voting] machines.” McLaughlin attended a demonstration last week in Baltimore where Dominion Voting Systems showcased a paper ballot scanning unit to local elections officials that the state will consider purchasing for use in 2016. … State election officials would not provide an estimate of the cost to transition the state to the new paper voting system. Instead, the state board referred to a 2010 study conducted for the state by RTI International which estimated that initial implementation would cost approximately $37 million. The initial implementation costs would include optical scan voting units, ballot marking devices for the disabled, ballot on demand printers and booths and carts.

Mississippi: Lowndes County to buy new voting machine system | The Commercial Appeal

Lowndes County supervisors plan to seek bids to buy new voting machine system that scans paper ballots. Supervisors on Monday approved a request by county purchasing clerk Terry Thompson to solicit bids, The Commercial Dispatch newspaper reported. The equipment would replace a TSX electronic voting system that has been used since 2005 to process votes digitally. Mississippi received federal funding in 2005 for TSX systems as well as maintenance and technical support. County circuit clerk Haley Salazar said in September that money for support and upkeep will not be provided after this year and that going back to paper ballots would be more efficient for voters, poll workers and election commissioners.

Mississippi: Tempers flare amid Hattiesburg mayoral election vote count | The Clarion-Ledger

The counting of paper ballots in the special mayoral election continued to move at a glacial pace, as Dave Ware clings to his 32-vote lead over Mayor Johnny DuPree. But Ware vs. DuPree took a backseat to Jones vs. Perry on Thursday, as the brewing battle between Election Commissioner Turner Jones and Ware election observer Pete Perry erupted into a heated verbal exchange at City Hall. “Either he goes or I go,” Jones said angrily as he stormed out of the council chambers during the early afternoon. Despite threats of quitting punctuated by a dramatic exit out the front door of City Hall, Jones stayed to continue the vote count.

New York: Mayoral race narrows as Thompson cedes to De Blasio | Los Angeles Times

The race to become New York City’s next mayor narrowed Monday as the runner-up in last week’s Democratic primary ended his campaign and endorsed Bill de Blasio, the liberal public advocate who has cast himself as the anti-Michael Bloomberg. But Bill Thompson, who captured just over 26% of the vote in the Sept. 10 primary, did not go out with a whimper as he announced his withdrawal at a news conference outside City Hall. Thompson, facing his second failed attempt at the mayor’s office, lashed out at the Board of Elections for taking days to count all the primary ballots, saying it made it impossible to campaign for what might have been a Thompson-De Blasio runoff on Oct. 1. “In the greatest city in the world, in the greatest democracy on Earth, we ought to be able to count all the votes,” said Thompson, who ran against Bloomberg in 2009. Tens of thousands of votes — including absentee ballots and paper ballots cast by voters who encountered malfunctioning voting machines — have not been counted and are not expected to be tallied until next week.

New York: BOE: 78K Paper Ballots To Be Counted In Democratic Mayoral Primary | CBS New York

The Board of Elections says there are 78,000 paper ballots across the five boroughs that still need to be counted from Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Bipartisan teams across the city are unsealing and opening more than 5,000 lever voting machines Friday. BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan said the process is expected to wrap up by Sunday. “There’s always the potential for human error and that’s why New York has one of the most extensive recanvassing procedures in the country, to make sure that every vote is counted and every vote is counted accurate,” Ryan said. Bill de Blasio has slightly more than the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid an Oct. 1 runoff. If de Blasio dips under 40 percent, he’ll face runner-up Bill Thompson. The outstanding ballots make up more than 11 percent of votes cast.

New York: Election Math Works in Favor of de Blasio | New York Times

It is not rocket science. The odds favor Bill de Blasio. With tens of thousands of votes from the Democratic mayoral primary still to be counted, Mr. de Blasio needs only about one in three of them to remain above the 40 percent threshold he passed in the unofficial count to avoid a runoff against the second-place finisher,William C. Thompson Jr., on Oct. 1. The math will not be lost on Mr. Thompson as he mulls whether to remain in the race. Based on the preliminary count from lever voting machines and emergency ballots cast where machines were not working, about 645,000 votes were cast in the election on Tuesday. Mr. de Blasio received 260,000 votes, or about 2,100 more than he needed to surpass 40 percent.

Editorials: Elections fixes for the next mayor | New York Daily News

The Election Day scene on Tuesday was all too familiar to lots of New Yorkers. Just one example among many: Early morning, voters at a downtown Brooklyn polling site were told they would have to cast their votes on paper ballots because its voting machines were broken. “We’re going back to paper ballot? You’re kidding,” said one disbelieving voter at the site — who just happened to be Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota. Over the years, many New Yorkers have suffered problem-plagued elections, with broken machines, long lines, chaotic poll sites and inadequately trained polling inspectors who unintentionally disenfranchise voters.

Washington: County dumps controversial ballot-tracker system | Journal of the San Juan Islands

The ballot bar code lawsuit, White v. Reed, is now eight years old and does not appear to be ending any time soon. The lawsuit claims that bar codes on the ballot envelope and on the ballot itself violate the Washington law that states, “No paper ballot or ballot card may be marked in any way that would permit the identification of the person who voted that ballot.” Multiple motions have been filed, briefed and argued, but the only clear result is that San Juan County is likely to save money by abandoning the Mail-in Ballot Tracking system previously used here. County Auditor Milene Henley said that after Superior Court Judge Don Eaton decided that the tracking system violated a state law that requires any voting system to obtain federal certification, she decided not to appeal that decision, but instead to abandon the MIBT system, even though Henley insists that the MIBT system did not in any way compromise ballot secrecy.

Florida: New voting equipment checking in for Brevard County | Florida Today

Brevard County voters will be using new equipment starting in November. The County Commission this week unanimously approved the $1.5 million purchase. Supervisor of Elections Lori Scott said Brevard currently has among the oldest election equipment in the state, dating back to 1999. Brevard was one of the early adopters that year of “optical scan technology” to read the ballots. She says that equipment now is “aging and outdated,” and the vendor that made it is out of business, so spare parts are difficult to come by. “We can’t continue to limp through like that,” Scott said. With the new equipment, voters will continue to mark a paper ballot. But the new equipment that will collect and tabulate those ballots will make it easier for election workers to spot any problems with improperly completed ballots. “This is a much more user-friendly unit,” Scott said.

North Carolina: Paper ballots bill becomes a study committee | News & Record

State Rep. Bert Jones, R-Rockingham, has been pushing this session to force N.C. counties that use electronic voting machines back onto paper ballots. His House Bill 607 initially required this shift, but the bill was amended this week to simply call for a year-long study of the issue, as well as a moratorium on new voting machine purchases in the interim. That bill passed the House last night, with Jones’ support. It moves to the Senate, but House members have said repeatedly this session that the Senate hasn’t been willing to pass study bills. Sometimes these studies don’t accomplish much, but they can cost a little money.

US Virgin Islands: Elections board ends group’s review of ballots | Virgin Islands Daily News

At its monthly meeting Thursday, the St. Thomas-St. John District Board of Elections voted to bar a group of residents from reviewing tally sheets and paper ballots from the last election. The board took the action on the basis that the group – which has alleged irregularities and fraud in the Elections System – is conducting a full-fledged recount. At the meeting, board member Harry Daniel made a motion to “discontinue access for the purpose of counting the ballots.” Board Chairman Arturo Watlington Jr. and board members Lawrence Boschulte and Alecia Wells voted along with Daniels in favor of the motion. Board members Claudette Georges and Wilma Marsh-Monsanto, who herself is part of the group reviewing the documents, voted against the motion. Board member Lydia Hendricks was not present for the vote.

North Carolina: General Assembly bill would require the use of paper ballots in all North Carolina elections | BlueRidgeNow.com

Board of Elections members expressed their opposition Wednesday to a bill in the General Assembly that would require the use of paper ballots in all North Carolina elections, a move that could cost Henderson County half a million dollars to implement. “I’m just amazed by this,” said board member Bob Heltman. “I’m perplexed. (It) sounds foolish as hell to me.” “I don’t think we need to be stepping back in time,” agreed Chairman Tom Wilson, referring to the days when illegibly marked paper ballots had to be hand-examined by elections officials, slowing returns. House Bill 607, sponsored by Reps. Bert Jones (R-Rockingham) and Justin Barr (R-Albemarle), would require that all state boards of elections tally paper ballots using optical scanners and would prohibit the use of touch screen voting systems currently used by Henderson and 35 other counties.

Editorials: One more vote for fixing Philadelphia’s election machinery | Philadelphia Inquirer

As the city kicks off its annual Independence Day celebration, it’s important to remember that there is little freedom without participation. And freedom was threatened last year not only by voter-ID laws, which set up barriers to legitimate democratic participation, but also by confusion at the polls in Philadelphia, where thoughtful revolutionaries once gathered to write the Declaration of Independence. Seven months after the Nov. 6 election, three separate investigations – by Mayor Nutter, City Controller Alan Butkovitz, and the City Commissioners – have examined why more than 27,000 city voters had to use provisional paper ballots instead of voting machines. A little more than half of them weren’t properly registered or had shown up at the wrong polling place, in which case provisional ballots were appropriate. But far too many problems were caused by official incompetence.

Editorials: Sheldon Silver and Assembly must okay return to lever voting machines | New York Daily News

New York’s mayoral candidates on Tuesday began collecting the petition signatures needed for their names to appear on the September primary ballot — for an election that promises to be a botch of infamous proportions. This, right now, is the moment for the Legislature to rescue the city from a near-certain nightmare by authorizing the Board of Elections to press the old, clunker, mechanical voting machines back into action. At Washington’s orders, the board mothballed the contraptions in favor of electronic ballot scanners. But these devices are functionally useless up against the quick succession of elections that are likely this fall: first a primary, then a runoff if no candidate gets more than 40%, then the November general election.

Editorials: How Iranians Vote | Christopher Bollyn/Iran’s View

The Islamic Republic of Iran will have a presidential election on June 14, 2013. As an observer of elections in different countries I find that Iranian election procedures are very similar to those of the most democratic elections held in European nations, such as France. Iranians vote on paper ballots that are counted openly in each polling place in the presence of observers. The tally from each polling station is then verified openly and published by the government after the election. These are the most fundamental and essential elements of a transparent and democratic election, and these are exactly the elements that are sadly missing from elections in the United States. It may come as a surprise but Iranian elections are much more transparent that elections in the United States. The voting process and the counting of the votes in Iran are transparent processes, while most votes in the United States are cast and counted on electronic voting systems run by private companies. The use of computer voting systems in the United States has actually allowed our elections to be stolen because the citizenry has lost its oversight of the crucial vote-counting process entirely. Today, there is virtually no open counting of the votes in polling stations in the United States because nearly all voting “data” is processed in computerized systems – not counted by citizens.

North Carolina: Bill would do away with touchscreen voting machines | WRAL

A bill filed by Rep. Bert Jones, R-Rockingham, and Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, could force roughly 25 counties to do away with their voting machines.  House Bill 607 would require that all ballots cast in North Carolina be paper ballots. That would not change voting procedures in Wake County, where voters fill out bubble-sheet ballots with pen on paper. But counties like Guilford and Cumberland use touch-screen devices that record votes electronically. Those touch-screen machines would be outlawed by the bill.  “Paper ballots give an accurate record of the vote,” Jones said Monday night as he left the House chamber. “There were some concerns during the last election.”

India: At last, Electronic Voting Machines will have a paper trail | Jagran Post

After standing on false prestige and even becoming vindictive against those who suspected the integrity of electronic voting machines, the Election Commission has finally acceded to the demand that the machines must issue a paper receipt to voters. The commission’s decision – made known to the Supreme Court last month in response to the plea by Dr.Subramanian Swamy, President, Janata Party that EVMs be scrapped – is a major victory for all those who were campaigning against electronic voting machines because they lacked transparency. Dr.Swamy had argued that EVMs must be scrapped because they are not tamper-proof. They could be retained only if there was transparency via a paper trail, so that every voter knew that his vote had been registered correctly. Even Japan, which started the process of electronic voting had now reverted to paper ballots. Many other countries had also fallen back on paper ballots for the same reason.The commission, which had stubbornly resisted the demand for either scrapping EVMs or introducing a paper trail, began to display some reasonableness in the matter after Dr.Swamy moved the Supreme Court and a Bench comprising Justices P.Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi declared that it would hear the matter on a priority basis, so that the proceedings concluded before the next parliamentary election.

Missouri: Senate Panel Considers Paper-Only Ballots | Associated Press

A Missouri Senate panel is considering a measure to phase out electronic voting machines. (The voting measure is SB375) The committee heard testimony Monday from some former poll workers who say the machines now used in Missouri malfunction and miscount votes. The legislation would require voters to use either paper ballots or certain ballot-marking devices to help people with disabilities. An electronic machine could still be used if it has an independent paper record of votes cast on the device.

Virginia: Touch Screen Voting ‘Unreliable,’ Commission Says | McLean, VA Patch

Last November, some Fairfax County residents reported long lines and wait times of more than three hours to cast their vote at the polls; some abandoned voting all together. But some 50 recommendations from Fairfax County’s new election commission — many of them focused on technology that will speed up parts of the voting process — could solve the problem. How quickly changes are made, though, depends on how much room officials can find in this year’s budget to implement new programs in time for the next presidential election. …  The commission, which Chairman Sharon Bulova formed in December 2012,  also recommended officials make electronic scanning voting machines – which scan paper ballots – available countywide. The commission argued the optical scanning machines were both faster and more reliable than the county’s touch-screen voting machines. Virginia’s General Assembly placed restrictions on the touch-screen voting machines in 2007 because of performance issues, and the commission noted in ots report that vendor has since gone under. “The [touch screen machines] are old and sometimes unreliable, taking time to reboot frequently or to get a replacement machine,” the report reads. Read the Report

New Jersey: Lawyers: Voting machines could be hacked, should be replaced | NJ.com

Voting rights lawyers said today some of New Jersey’s digital voting machines must be replaced because they are vulnerable to hackers who could change the outcome of elections. “We are in a state that values and prizes the right to vote,” Penny Venetis, a law professor at Rutgers University-Newark, told a three-judge appeals court panel in Trenton. “We believe that this court should review the record anew and look at the science very carefully.” Continuing a fight that has lasted nearly a decade, Venetis wants the appeals court to overrule a lower court judge who allowed counties across New Jersey to continue using the computerized voting systems. Venetis said the systems leave no paper trail, complicating recounts in any instance where fraud or mistakes happen. She said it would not be difficult for a computer hacker to gain access to a machine and change its software to register votes for one candidate over another. “You can press what you think is candidate A’s button and it registers a vote for candidate B,” she said. But the state argued that there is no perfect system, paperless machines do not present “a severe restriction on the right to vote” and replacing the equipment will simply cost too much.

Vatican City: How secure is the papal election? | Bruce Schneier/CNN.com

As the College of Cardinals prepares to elect a new pope, security people like me wonder about the process. How does it work, and just how hard would it be to hack the vote? The rules for papal elections are steeped in tradition. John Paul II last codified them in 1996, and Benedict XVI left the rules largely untouched. The “Universi Dominici Gregis on the Vacancy of the Apostolic See and the Election of the Roman Pontiff” is surprisingly detailed. Every cardinal younger than 80 is eligible to vote. We expect 117 to be voting. The election takes place in the Sistine Chapel, directed by the church chamberlain. The ballot is entirely paper-based, and all ballot counting is done by hand. Votes are secret, but everything else is open. First, there’s the “pre-scrutiny” phase. “At least two or three” paper ballots are given to each cardinal, presumably so that a cardinal has extras in case he makes a mistake. Then nine election officials are randomly selected from the cardinals: three “scrutineers,” who count the votes; three “revisers,” who verify the results of the scrutineers; and three “infirmarii,” who collect the votes from those too sick to be in the chapel. Different sets of officials are chosen randomly for each ballot. Each cardinal, including the nine officials, writes his selection for pope on a rectangular ballot paper “as far as possible in handwriting that cannot be identified as his.” He then folds the paper lengthwise and holds it aloft for everyone to see. When everyone has written his vote, the “scrutiny” phase of the election begins.

Georgia: Fulton County disputes vote tampering allegations | www.ajc.com

Fulton County’s interim elections director denies her staff tampered with polling records by adding dozens of voters’ names to tally sheets last year. It wasn’t fraud, Sharon Mitchell says, but correcting mistakes. But Secretary of State Brian Kemp maintains the county’s actions were likely illegal. Not only did the department’s missteps cause more people to use paper ballots than the entire rest of the state combined, Kemp says the county also mishandled those ballots in the aftermath and may have counted some votes twice. Documents unveiled by a state investigator last week showed someone used a red pen to add more than 50 names to the list of people using paper ballots at one precinct and five names to the list from another precinct.