Voters can expect a lot of changes in the election process over the next several months, said Connie Parnell, regional coordinator for the Oklahoma Election Board.
Parnell also serves as Cherokee County Election Board secretary. She visited the Muskogee County Election Board last week to go over the changes with local officials.
MPs want the electronic voting system put in place in readiness for the 2012 general election. Several MPs yesterday supported a motion by Karachuonyo MP James Rege for the government to facilitate the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to develop an electronic system for collection, collation, transmission and tallying of electronic data.
Cabinet minister Otieno Kajwang rooted for the passage and adoption of Rege’s motion which he said will help weed out electoral malpractices. He said an electronic voting system will facilitate the release of instant results after an election.
For the first time in Peru electronic voting will be part of the June 5 presidential election, reports La Républica. This marks the beginning of the new electoral era in Peru and the district chosen to start this new experience is Pacarán, located in Cañete.
“We already have a team in place and have installed the hardware and software to be used in Pacarán, which has 1,350 voters,” said Ricardo Saavedra, head of IT Projects for the national elections office.
After the revolution in Tahrir Square, Egyptian authorities consulted India’s Election Commission for help in conducting parliamentary polls in the country, only to get cautious advice from chief election commissioner (CEC) SY Quraishi. He asked his Egyptian counterpart to not import electronic voting machines (EVMs) from anywhere and get these manufactured domestically. Imported machines, however faultless they are, could be deemed suspect, he warned.
“The validity of any election lies in the fairness of the process, if the machine is imported from somewhere, there is always a possibility that the election will be questioned as being rigged through the machines,” he said, in an interview to FE. The recent campaign against the use of EVMs in Indian elections, Quraishi said, hinges on the chip, “which is manufactured outside the country and is therefore supposed to be suspect”.
A Central Election Commission (CEC) official yesterday said it will take more time for Taiwanese people to accept and trust digitization before the government decided to ultimately replace the traditional ballot system with an electric-voting one.
“E-voting is technically feasible but the problem lies on whether or not citizens can put their trust in the system,” said Liu I-chou (劉義周), CEC vice chairman yesterday in Taipei City.
North Carolina currently ranks high in election integrity, but it wasn’t always so. Prior to 2000, we had no uniform standards for voting systems and election administration. Our 100 counties used 18 different types of voting machines, some nearly 40 years old. Four suppliers of the machines were no longer in business, maintenance was limited, vendor support was sparse and security was a joke.
Training for poll workers and election staff was disjointed and incomplete. All counties did their own thing with ballot printing, and few complied with federal laws and standards. So, in 2004, we had a Florida-style meltdown, with the loss of nearly 5,000 votes in Carteret County, machines crashing, votes missing or counted twice by accident, etc. These were largely systemic problems that came from not having or complying with standards for election integrity.
Butler County election officials are shopping around to replace their problematic six-year-old touch screen voting machine system. But where the money will come from is a multi-million dollar question.
Elections Director Tippi Slaughter said one thing is for sure: The $3.4 million touch-screen machines that are favored by voters are out. “There’s been enough of a question,” Slaughter said about dumping the user-friendly touch screens for an optical scanning system. “We want the best voting system for the voters.”
The Omaha World-Herald Co. has sold its minority interest in Election Systems & Software Inc., an Omaha company that is the world’s largest election technology company, to McCarthy Group of Omaha and the election company’s management.
Terms of the private sale were not disclosed. McCarthy Capital, a private equity investment company, already was a minority stockholder of Election Systems’ stock and is now the majority stockholder, said Michael McCarthy, chairman of McCarthy Group. Election Systems’ management and another independent investor are minority stockholders.
Lawmakers yesterday debated two bills that could affect future island elections — ending the recently approved process for early in-office voting and paving the way for the return of controversial electronic voting machines. Lawmakers debated another election bill by Respicio, which would allow for the use of electronic voting machines, provided the machines print a “voter-verified paper ballot” which the voter can double-check before placing into a ballot box.
Respicio in 2006 wrote a law banning the use of electronic voting machines until several conditions are met, including training and safeguards for accuracy. The Election Commission spent nearly half a million dollars in federal election assistance funding to buy 116 Ivotronic electronic voting machines, according to Pacific Daily News files.
After a Senate panel heard testimony on April 14 from a handful of election watchdogs critical of the state’s system of electronic voting machines, a rather testy exchange took place in the hallway. “You guys have a tough job,” said USC computer scientist Duncan Buell to Chris Whitmire, the spokesman for the South Carolina State Election Commission. “You have a really tough job, but you’re in deep denial about reality.”
Buell has blasted the state agency in charge of South Carolina’s voting machines for some time. In February, after an independent audit he conducted with another computer expert, the two compiled a report that illustrated how the agency failed to count more than 1,000 votes in the November elections in Richland County alone.
There may be lot of debate in India over efficacy of the Electronic Voting Machines but Egypt, which is holding elections after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, is willing to try the “wonder machine — the EVMs” — in the country wide polls later this year. Egypt will not be the first country to use Indian
EVMs. They have been successfully deployed in Afghanistan general elections. The Election Commission has also provided inputs to Nepal, Bhutan, Ethopia and Mexico on use of EVMs in making the election process more fair and transparent.
The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board asked a judge to allow the use of electronic voting memory cartridges to speed the recount in a contested Supreme Court election, even if that use might erase the voting data.
The nonpartisan agency filed the lawsuit today in state court in Madison, naming as defendants incumbent Supreme Court Justice David T. Prosser Jr. and his challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg.
Maged Osman, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, today denied reports Egypt is seeking technological support from abroad to conduct electronic voting in the country’s upcoming elections.
He stressed that the Egyptian government and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has full confidence in the ability of local companies to carry out the task, but admitted there may be teething problems when applying the new methods.
Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, is visiting Egypt to apprise the top officials in the country about the electoral system in India and the usage of EVMs, as it prepares itself for democratic process after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak regime.
Quraishi is accompanied by a 5-member team from the Election Commission of India which is on a five day visit to Egypt from today. The visit ends on April 23. Egypt’s military rulers had last month announced an interim constitution and said presidential elections would be held by November after Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolution.
A growing number of counties are removing the outside printers from touch screen voting machines because of problems that delay voting.
Madison County is now seeking to join 15 other counties that have received permission from the U.S. Department of Justice to detach the plastic modules. The printers are not used by election officials when counting votes but are included as a back-up record of votes cast.
There have been ongoing complaints about supposed problems with the state’s electronic voting machines since last year’s Democratic primary election, and now the local Council of Governments has taken up the drumbeat.
It’s time to resolve the matter. The Legislative Audit Council is the obvious choice to investigate performance and security questions raised about the machines, which are used statewide.
The Electoral Commission (EC) has announced it would not introduce the electronic voting system in the 2012 elections. According to the EC, unlike the ballot paper; the processes of vote counting and tabulation in the e-voting system are often invisible which does not satisfy the curiosity of the voters as to whether their votes have been counted or not.
The electronic voting system is expected to help curb cases of double registration, vote rigging, ballot box snatching as well as end the perpetual claim and counter claim of rigging by the parties who take part in elections in the country. The Danquah Institute (DI), a policy think tank, proposed a switch from the manual to the electronic voting (e-voting) system for the 2012 election because they believe it could be the best solution to end not only systemic electoral fraud, but also post election violence in the future.
The Hampden Board of Selectmen has voted unanimously not to seek funding from Town Meeting to purchase voting machines this year. Selectmen’s Chairman John D. Flynn said a study committee, with Registrar Arthur Booth as a member, recommended against seeking funds from Town Meeting to purchase voting machines this year.
Booth said he did not believe the town would have excess funds to purchase a voting machine in the fiscal 2012 budget. Voting machines cost between $10,000 and $12,000. The town has one voting precinct and would need one or two machines.
A constitutional petition was filed on Thursday in the Supreme Court, seeking direction to the Election Commission (EC) to introduce electronic voting machines in the future general elections. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan filed the petition under Article 184(3), making the EC, National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), and the Federation of Pakistan through the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry secretary respondents.
The petition filed through Advocate Hamid Khan further prayed to direct the EC to prepare fresh electoral rolls, eliminating all bogus votes, and introducing and incorporating the new eligible voters that can be verified from the database and record of Nadra.
With election day approaching, it is the right time to discuss digital voting. Traditionally, millions of Turkish citizens go to a physical location where they stamp their votes on paper, enclose it within an envelope and drop it in a closed box, which is later opened and counted by previously assigned people.
They also get their fingers painted with a permanent ink and go around with a stain for days. This type of voting causes hours of lost time, a nationwide expenditure on gasoline that is more than usual, a stain for a week and suspicion as to whether the ballots are really being counted correctly or not. It is a customary sight to find uncounted ballots in the garbage. Ideally, electronic voting would end all of these troubles if you trust your government.
The Electoral Commission of Queensland will forgo electronic voting for the next state election, sidelining plans to develop a system as a result of legislative restrictions in the state.
The commission allocated $960,000 in funding late last year for research into technology to assist voting for the blind and vision impaired, following similar projects in NSW and Victoria ahead of their respective elections.
Egypt’s ambassador to India Khaled el Bakly met chief election commissioner (CEC) S Y Quraishi recently, seeking assistance in conducting elections after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster. Parliamentary elections will be held in Egypt in September, followed by presidential polls in November.
During the meeting with Quraishi, Bakly wanted to know about various aspects of election management and electronic voting machines (EVMs). “He asked how fast we can provide EVMs in case they decide to use them,” said a senior election commission (EC) official. The EC has sent Bakly documents on skills, experience and technical know-how in conducting elections in India.
It has been nothing short of astonishing that, within a few weeks, the brave people of Tunisia and Egypt toppled corrupt dictators who ruled for decades. One of the protesters’ key demands was for democratic elections — the right to choose a government that is responsive to the people’s needs. That is also what protesters in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, Jordan and Libya are demanding as they call for the dissolution of their autocratic and oppressive governments.
As the protesters know all too well, voting does not mean that one’s vote will be counted. In Egypt’s 2005 elections, Hosni Mubarak was reelected with 88.6 percent of the vote. In 2009, Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was reelected with an 89.6 percent landslide victory. In both cases allegations of fraud and corruption surrounded the elections.
You really can get anything on EBay, even electronic voting machines proved to be easy to corrupt for purposes of voting fraud. Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog first noticed that “more than 10” AccuVote-TS voting machines, built by Diebold, were being sold on the online auction site for the buy-it-now price of $1,200 (plus $50 shipping and handling).
The machines are used and don’t come with user’s manuals, power supplies, batteries or memory cards, which may explain their discounted price. However, for those who wish to rig elections, machines like these are priceless. Friedman was contacted by the seller, who told him that he had more than 100 of the electronic voting machines that were originally used in Van Wert County, Ohio.
The Election Commission Secretariat estimates that Tk 1,200 crore will be required to hold the next parliamentary elections under electronic voting system. EC Secretary Muhammad Sadiq yesterday said this at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec).
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presiding over the meeting said the government will introduce the system in the next parliamentary elections. She directed the EC to take whatever measures necessary to this end. She also said when the system is in place, results will be quicker and there will be no scope for vote rigging.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has certified the Unity 3.2.1.0 voting system by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to the 2002 Voting System Standards. It is the fifth voting system to achieve federal certification under EAC’s Voting System Testing and Certification Program.
The Unity 3.2.1.0 comprises two precinct-based optical scanners—the M100 and the DS200—and one central-count scanner, the M650. The accessible voting device for this system is the AutoMark. EAC issued federal certification for the Unity 3.2.1.0 system after ES&S demonstrated compliance with the following final certification requirements, which complete EAC’s comprehensive testing process: rebuild the voting system in a trusted environment, known as a “trusted build” (an act performed by an EAC-accredited test lab), provide software identification tools to EAC so that whomever purchases the system can verify its authenticity, provide voting system software for the EAC repository, and agree in writing to comply with all EAC certification conditions and program requirements.
Source: http://www.eac.gov/eac_certifies_ess_unity_3.2.1.0_voting_system/?idevd=4CB7A2A040BA11DFAA6B8BAF55D89593&idevm=ff7112ff248643b79aa443fe72159501&idevmid=334899
A Kanawha County commissioner is upset with the prospect of the state awarding a no-bid contract for maintenance of electronic voting machines. But the Kanawha County clerk believes the maintenance contract, if approved by Secretary of State Natalie Tennant’s office, would be a good deal for taxpayers.
Commission President Kent Carper believes the state giving Electronic Systems & Software a no-bid contract to perform maintenance on the 374 electronic voting machines and two tabulators is just another unfunded mandate placed on the county. The county would have to pay the company $66,000 to $76,000 a year for maintaining the machines, Carper said.
West Virginia election officials are negotiating a maintenance contract for the state’s electronic voting machines. In 2005, under the direction of Secretary of State Betty Ireland, election officials entered a single-source contract with Omaha, Neb.-based Election Systems & Software to provide touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines. The deal gave ES&S a virtual monopoly on voting systems in West Virginia.
The deal also gave ES&S exclusive maintenance contracts to take care of the voting machines. Jake Glance, spokesman for Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, said those maintenance contracts are set to expire in September. Glance said election officials are negotiating with ES&S to renew the maintenance contracts.
Shiv Sena would oppose the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and e-voting system during upcoming polls in 10 municipal corporations and 167 municipal councils in Maharashtra. A delegation of Sena leaders today met state election commissioner Neela Satyanarayan submitting a memorandum opposing use of EVMs and e-voting in the polls.
The commission had earlier said that it will set up a committee before introducing the e-voting system. “The EVMs create confusion in the whole voting process and among voters.
As part of its Quality Monitoring Program, EAC will investigate the EAC-certified ES&S DS200 Precinct Count Optical Scanner (Firmware Version 1.3.10.0) contained in the ES&S Unity 3.2.0.0 for possible non-conformities with the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Download correspondence related to the investigation and a timeline of activities leading up to it. Learn more about EAC’s Quality Monitoring Program.