Ohio: Lucas County elections board plagued by problems | Toledo Blade

The Lucas County Board of Elections stayed up all night, through 9 a.m. today, to finish tabulating the May 6 election results — pushing through multiple problems that included missing data cards, an accidental deletion of a computer file containing votes, and tension between two board members that prompted a sheriff’s deputy to intervene. Trouble with the election, which was being tabulated at the board’s early vote center, became apparent at 11:30 p.m. Tuesday. At that point, less than 73 percent of the results were posted online and had not been updated for about an hour. Board member Jon Stainbrook told The Blade just before midnight that six data cards were missing, which was holding up the election count. The board didn’t finalize the primary election count until 9:28 a.m., after completing all-night count of the votes. Final election turnout was 10.15 percent, with about 31,695 of Lucas County’s 312,412 registered voters casting ballots. The turnout in Ohio’s last gubernatorial primary, in 2010, was about 17 percent in Lucas County. The election was wrought with problems, the most grievous being the missing cards.

Tennessee: New Voting Machines Unveiled in Hamilton County | WTVC

It’s election day in Tennessee, and in Hamilton county, new voting machines make their debut. “I thought it went through fine,” said one of the first voters on Tuesday Morning. For the first time in 15 years there’s a new voting machine at each of the 75 polling locations in Hamilton county. “We have multiple audit features to the system as well as multiple reconciliation and security features as well,” said Mark Beckstrand, with Dominion Voting Systems. He says the machines meet the highest standards set by the federal government.

Texas: Day before final election contest trial, Hidalgo County to hire voting machine expert | The Monitor

An investigation into criminal vote tampering took a step forward Tuesday as the Hidalgo County Commissioners Court approved a $110,000 appropriation for a grand jury to hire an election machine auditor. Commissioners approved the payment, which came from seized gambling funds at the District Attorney’s Office, to go toward a grand jury investigation. The grand jury is expected to hire a Chicago-based forensic analyst to investigate possible tampering with electronic voting machines used in the March 4 Democratic primary, said Murray Moore, a DA’s Office attorney supervising the case. The impact of the investigation on the six election challenges filed by unsuccessful primary candidates could be null. Some of the election contestants filed motions to have their trials delayed pending the grand jury-ordered analysis. But five cases have already been denied, and the sixth — that of Paul Vazaldua in the justice of the peace Precinct 2 Place 2 race — is set for trial Wednesday. “Basically, this is for the grand jury investigation only,” Moore said. The grand jury will hire Data Defenders, a Chicago-based election auditing firm, to conduct the analysis, Moore said. A man who answered the phone at the number listed on Data Defenders’ website declined comment Tuesday, saying he was too busy.

District of Columbia: Fixing election night delays could cost millions | WTOP

Potential remedies for election night delays in D.C. might cost millions of dollars, according to elections leaders who spoke at a public hearing Tuesday. Most recently, there was an hours-long delay in tallying votes after polls closed in the April 1 Democratic primary in D.C. The public and the media waited well into the night to learn that D.C. council member Muriel Bowser had defeated Mayor Vince Gray. Earlier this month, D.C. elections officials said some problems with electronic voting machines may have led to the delay in reporting results.

Kansas: Clay County to return to paper ballots | Center Dispatch

Those fancy voting machines with touch-pad screens will no longer be used in elections in Clay County. County Clerk Kayla Wang, also the county’s election officer, recommended that the county follow what other counties are doing and return to voting on a paper ballot, according to the meeting minutes. The recommendation is based on presentations commissioners and the Clerk;s Office attended on new voting equipment, which included two demonstrations over the last couple of months. Expense is part of the reason the county is returning to paper ballots. The main reason is that the current election equipment that Clay County uses is no longer being made or supported, Wang said. Most of the state of Kansas is going back to voting on a paper ballot and using a precinct counter at each polling place to tabulate the votes.

India: Election ‘well-managed’ despite alleged voter fraud | The Globe and Mail

As marathon national elections in the world’s most populous democracy head into their final phase, the Election Commission and local media are reporting dozens of cases of alleged vote fraud, and tens of thousands of names missing from voter lists in the country’s biggest city. But officials say that over all, with more than 815 million eligible voters casting ballots over a five-week period that began April 7, the elections are remarkably trouble free. “Certain questionable practices and people are expected to show up during elections,” said T. S. Krishna Murthy, former chief election commissioner who was in charge of the 2004 parliamentary elections. “But the Election Commission has managed to deal with them well. By and large, the elections are well-managed.” Still there have been complaints of proxy voting and of political parties using money and muscle to rig the outcome of elections, as well as regular reports that thousands of names are missing from the voters’ lists.

India: Chaos in India after rats chew electronic vote-counting machines | CITI

Rats have caused chaos in the latest round of voting in elections in India after they destroyed dozens of  electronic vote counting machines  by eating the cables. With more than 800 million voters, India uses the machines to reduce the time in declaring results compared to the old paper ballot system. But voters in Ghaziabad, a town close to the capital New Delhi, were furious when told that rats had  ruined the machines, which were stored in a strongroom near a wholesale wheat market. The voting machines were attacked by rats in Ghaziabad, which is on the outskirts of New Dehli.

District of Columbia: Elections officials change story on lags in April 1 primary tally, say big upgrade is needed | The Washington Post

D.C. elections officials offered an entirely new explanation Tuesday for the major vote-counting delays that plagued the city’s April 1 Democratic primary: The issue was not five mishandled electronic voting machines, but a broad computer network failure. The network failure was a mystery to elections officials as it unfolded, said Clifford D. Tatum, executive director of the Board of Elections. But its effect was abundantly clear to all involved on election night, when vote-counting — including ballots the city had accumulated during weeks of early voting — did not begin until almost 10.  Deborah Nichols, chairwoman of the elections board, said that at least $2 million in new electronic voting machines and server upgrades — and perhaps another $2 million in computers and other office improvements — would be needed to ensure timely reporting of results in future citywide elections.

India: Missing names, faulty Electronic Voting Machines criticised | Deccan Chronicle

Voters lamenting that their names were missing from the electoral rolls was again a common sight across many polling stations in the city. Several people who had voted in the last election found their names missing from the voters’ list for no apparent reason. V. Ramesh, an APSRTC employee in Khairatabad constituency said, “I was out of town for a brief period and now my name is not there.” Engineering student Meghna wrote to this newspaper claiming, “I was unable to vote because of the sheer negligence of the government officers. Polling stations don’t have the list of newly registered voters.” Even IAS officer T. Radha found his name dropped from the list. Several people tried calling the toll free number of the Chief Electoral Officer, but it was unreachable. Some 300 voters from Pedda Bazaar, Chinna Bazaar and Veerabhadraiahnagar could not vote as their names were not there on the list, though they have cards.

India: Electronic voting machine slip will help verify your vote | The Times of India

This time, voters in Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency will be able to verify if their vote has been cast right. Once they press the button of their choice, a slip will be generated which will indicate the vote that has been actually cast by the EVM when the voter pressed the button. On a pilot basis, the Election Commission of India (ECI) is introducing ‘Voter Verifiable Paper Auditor Trail’ (VVPAT) system in eight Lok Sabha constituencies across the country and Gandhinagar is one of them. The VVPAT machine will be attached with the EVM and will generate slips like the receipts one gets at ATMs.

India: Election Officials Brave Hungry Crocodiles to Reach Voters | Wall Street Journal

The midday sun was blazing when Biswajit Roy, a middle-aged Indian high-school teacher, gingerly pulled himself, and two voting machines, into a modified dugout canoe. His mission: Traverse crocodile-infested mangrove swamps, cross a stretch of open sea and then hike through a jungle to the remote village of Hanspuri so its 261 voters could cast ballots in India’s national elections. “When I got my orders, I was thunderstruck,” said Mr. Roy, 41 years old, an election officer in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. India is the world’s largest democracy, with 814.5 million registered voters. When election time rolls around, the government and its foot soldiers go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that citizens in this largely rural and infrastructure-challenged country can participate. Put another way, the national elections trigger the world’s biggest obstacle course for some Indian election officials.

India: 10 Facts You Must Know About Electronic Voting Machines In Elections 2014 | MensXP

If you didn’t know already, electronic Voting Machines (or EVMs) are the technology that registers our votes. If you are a first-time voter, you might be naturally curious about these machines. Even for an experienced voter, knowing what goes behind the working of an EVM is essential knowledge. Here are a few things you must know about EVMs.

1. An EVM consists of a Control Unit and a Balloting Unit joined together by a cable. The Control Unit belongs to a polling officer while the Balloting Unit is kept in a compartment to cast votes. This basically indicates that unless the polling officer validates your identity, you will not be able to cast a vote .

2. Because of the rampant electricity shortage in the country, EVMs are equipped to run without them. EVMs typically run on 6V alkaline batteries to overcome this problem and ensure voting passes peacefully in electricity-scant areas.

Minnesota: Washington County putting 90 new voting machines to work | Star Tribune

The dutiful Washington County voter, having chosen candidates and issues after a few moments of intense concentration in the election booth, steps to the counting machine with ballot in hand only to find a problem. But what? Did the voter “overwrite” the ballot by marking more than one candidate for a race? Or stray across party lines in a primary election? Or fail to mark the vote inside the oval spaces provided, circling them instead? A color screen on the county’s new voting machine indicates an error. Once the nature of the error pops up, the screen gives the voter a simple choice: return the ballot or cast it. In the first instance, the voter could ask an elections judge to destroy the ballot and provide a new one. If the voter chooses to cast the ballot, it would enter the machine and become official, with the part in error discarded.

Editorials: Technology key to improving New Jersey elections | NJ.com

In New Jersey, politics is a contact sport. It should come as a great disappointment that New Jersey was just ranked 37th in the nation for the administration of our elections. The Pew Charitable Trusts assembled a panel of experts to rank each state and the District of Columbia. The newest rankings came out last week. Not only did the experts score New Jersey poorly, but the Garden State was one of only 10 states that saw a decrease in their score from 2008. Worse, the Garden State got mowed by some of its neighbors. Pennsylvania came in 16th, Connecticut was 10th and Delaware was ninth. As a small comfort, the Garden State did beat New York, which came in an abysmal 47th. … So, how can New Jersey improve its ranking? First, the state could implement an online voter registration system. This innovation, which has been adopted in 16 states thus far, has made it easier for citizens to register quickly and securely, while allowing for instant verification of eligibility. Four additional states have recently passed similar measures. New Jersey should follow their lead.

National: Meet TrustTheVote, A Project To Make Voting Open Source And Transparent | TechCrunch

How was your last voting experience? Smooth? Perhaps not. The Open Source Election Technology Foundation wants to change that by making voting simpler and more transparent. Its chief effort, called TrustTheVote, is a push to develop airtight, open-source vote casting and tabulation software that can be paired with off-the-shelf hardware. Open-source code and off-the-shelf plastic mean that TrustTheVote will, if it meets its goals, sell better, transparent voting machines to precincts at a fraction of the current cost. Each major election cycle in the United States brings the same whispers: Irregularities in Ohio counties, odd voting machine behavior in Iowa, and constant fringe intrigue about which candidate is getting a secret electronic bump due to a distant relative’s relationship with a voting machine company. It’s not healthy for our democracy.

Illinois: Solution sought to voting machine issue in Madison County | The Edwardsville Intelligencer

Should a tornado or other catastrophic event cause a power outage during the Nov. 4 mid-term elections, Madison County Clerk Debbie Ming-Mendoza is fairly certain that early voting would proceed without much disruption. That’s not the case now, as the county continues to be in the precarious position of operating with two different hardware and two different software systems for its elections. But Ming-Mendoza is seeking federal Help America Vote Act funds to purchase early voting tabulators and Ballot on Demand printers and software that would bring both systems onto an even platform. The package costs $228,000 though the HAVA grant would cover the cost entirely. Ming-Mendoza said the purchase would also drop the county’s annual licensing and maintenance expenses from $98,000 to $41,000 since the it would be decreasing its election machine inventory from 162 to 17.

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.

Delaware: Pew report praises Delaware voter registration, questions voting machines | Delaware Public Media

The Pew Charitable Trust’s examination of 17 areas such as polling station wait times placed Delaware in the top twenty-five percent of states overall when it comes to “election performance” – so says Pew’s manager of election initiatives Zachary Markovitz. “Delaware really is a pioneer leading the states, especially in improving their voter registration system,” said Markovitz. That improvement comes in the form of the “e-signature” program, which the First State implemented in 2009. The initiative lets Delaware residents complete the entire voter registration process at the DMV, instead of having to fill out paperwork, send it in by mail, wait for a response…. and very possibly, and understandably, have something get messed up along the way. The e-signature program was even praised by a task force commissioned by President Obama after the 2012 elections to find ways to improve election performance around the country. Still, Pew’s report found room for improvement in Delaware. Markovitz points to Delaware’s “residual vote rate” — basically, the number of votes cast in an election versus those actually counted. And when those numbers don’t match up, it could imply that some people’s votes are slipping through the cracks. …

New Mexico: Sandoval County secures more voting machines for shorter waits | Albuquerque Journal News

Sandoval County appears unlikely to see a repeat of the long lines of November 2012, with a large number of voting convenience centers and voting machines lined up for this year’s primary and general elections. In October, the Albuquerque Journal reported, the county commission approved 17 voting centers in Rio Rancho and two in Corrales for the two elections the county’s Bureau of Elections will conduct in 2014. Rio Rancho had just five voting convenience centers in the 2012 general election. Various reports from that night indicated some Rio Rancho residents waited between three and five hours to vote. For the June 3 primary, the bureau expects to have 66 computer stations set up at voting centers to print ballots on-demand as voters check in. The bureau also plans to have two voting machine for counting completed ballots in each voting center, spokesman Sidney Hill said. The voting centers that consolidate the most precincts will receive the most systems for printing ballots on demand, he said.

India: Election Commission’s belated realisation, faulty Electronic Voting Machines waver voters’ faith in fair polls | Daily Bhaskar

Free and fair elections are central to the democratic ethos of any country. This includes fair, accurate and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be independently verified. Behind this gigantic process is a little secret that ensures that the polls are indeed honest. The little white box known as the Electronic Voting Machine or simply EVM is the finest innovation of modern India. But this myth was shattered when last week an electronic voting machine during a mandatory mock poll in Jorhat turned out to be faulty, every time a button was pressed, the vote went in favour of BJP. What happened to the claim that the Indian EVM is one of the most refined systems in the world? It was believed that not even the US elections have been known to be so refined in its ability to gather all the votes in such a clean manner.

Canada: Governments wary of going digital with elections | Montreal Gazette

We use the Internet for just about everything these days. … The concept of e-voting — whether it be casting a ballot via the phone or Internet or using electronic vote-counters at a polling station — is hardly novel. Officials across Canada began experimenting with this kind of technology when computers still weighed 30 pounds and took up most of the space on your desk. But early and repeated failures have made many jurisdictions — including Quebec — wary of handing control of any part of the democratic process over to a machine. “We’re not anywhere near (introducing any form of e-voting) for the moment,” Elections Quebec spokesperson Stephanie Isabel told The Gazette on Friday. “There’s an internal committee here that is doing analysis and studying this, but there is no project envisioned.” The trepidation is perhaps understandable. Even as technology has improved in recent years, the foul-ups have continued. The most recent example came during the NDP’s national leadership convention in 2012, when the Internet-based voting process was marred by allegations of a possible denial-of-service attack, in which a hacker overwhelms a server with requests and causes it to crash.

Editorials: D.C.’s long wait for election results is inexcusable | The Washington Post

As he took to the stage Tuesday night to concede defeat in the District’s Democratic primary, Mayor Vincent C. Gray felt the need to mention the night’s delay in reporting election results. “We’ve got some work to do there,” he said of the D.C. Board of Elections. “We probably have known that for a while.” Indeed. So woeful was the performance of election officials that it competed with Muriel Bowser’s upset of Mr. Gray for the morning’s headlines. Even more distressing is that this was not the first time the District has been embarrassed or its residents inconvenienced by the amateurish operation of its elections office.

District of Columbia: Problems Plague Tallying Of Results On Night Of D.C. Primary | WAMU

A number of technical glitches delayed the posting of full and accurate results of the D.C. primary on Tuesday, leaving voters frustrated and campaign workers unsure of where their candidates stood in relation to the competition. The polls closed at 8 p.m., but it wasn’t until almost 2 a.m. the next morning that full results for the primary were posted on the website of the D.C. Board of Elections. In between, reports provided to media on-site and those posted on the website showed significant discrepancies, while other reports listing results only included paper ballots, not electronic ones. Election officials also reported problems with electronic voting machines at five polling places, though they did not specify what the problems were or where they occurred until after most precincts had reported their results. The problems started at 10 p.m., when the results of early voting were posted. A printed report provided at the board showed just over 10,000 early votes cast, while the same report posted on the board’s website put the number at 9,000. Election officials were unable to explain the discrepancy at the time, nor were they able to say why the numbers were less than the 14,000 early votes announced Monday.

Texas: Hidalgo County grand jury to hire forensic analyst for voting machines | The Monitor

An Hidalgo County grand jury Thursday took a step toward investigating possible criminal tampering with voting machines in the recent Democratic primary, District Attorney Rene Guerra said. The grand jury signed an order to hire a forensic analyst to inspect the voting machines used during early voting in late February and Election Day on March 4. The order is “requesting that experts be hired to look at the machines and determine if they were properly functioning during the primary election,” Guerra said. “I think it’s necessary and I think we can do it real quick-like,” he added.

Voting Blogs: Richland County South Carolina elections still in turmoil | electionlineWeekly

In the heart of South Carolina lies Richland County. Home to the University of South Carolina, the second largest county in the state is celebrating its 215th anniversary. By all accounts, it’s a nice place to live and work. Recently though, it has not been a good place to vote. The Richland County Board of Elections and Voter Registration has been under a cloud of controversy since 2011 when the General Assembly passed a law merging Richland County’s elections office and voter registration office. During the 2012 presidential election, voters in Richland County faced some of the longest lines in the country. Some of the problems were blamed on a lack of poll workers, malfunctioning machines and that in many cases there were simply too few voting machines at precincts. There were anecdotal reports that hundreds of voters ultimately gave up and never cast a ballot.

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.

Texas: Electronic voting flash drive prompts re-tally of March Primary | Pleasanton Express

A recount of the Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 Republican Primary race between Debra Ann Herrera and Michael Pascarella revealed 73 votes had not been counted during the March Primary election. In that race Herrera had received 141 votes and Pascarella had received 144. The three-vote difference prompted Herrera to ask for a re-count. After the recount, Herrera picked up 33 votes and Pascarella received 40 more votes. The disparity alerted the officials and those sitting in that something was definitely off. It was discovered that a MBB drive from one of the electronic voting machines used in early voting had not been downloaded in the March 4 tallying of votes.

Texas: Commissioners Court drops Hidalgo County voting machine investigation; DA’s probe to continue | The Monitor

Hidalgo County commissioners will have no more official involvement with an investigation into irregularities in voting machines, they decided Tuesday morning. Instead, they’ll leave the investigation in the hands of state District Court judges and the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office. DA Rene Guerra will continue a criminal investigation into possible tampering with electronic voting machines, starting with asking a grand jury to hire an expert to analyze the machines’ logs.“We’re going to present to a grand jury asking them to assume the jurisdiction of the machines through a proper court order so that they, the grand jurors, with the court’s assistance and disposition with proper orders, will be able to look into the allegations as to the election machines and help us hire an expert or two to investigate,” Guerra told reporters at the Hidalgo County Commissioners Court on Tuesday.

National: Long lines, disputed counts: Why U.S. elections stumble | Detroit Free Press

In the 2012 election, Robert Bauer was President Obama’s campaign counsel and Benjamin Ginsberg was the top lawyer for Republican opponent Mitt Romney. Now they have joined forces to co-chair the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, studying the problems elections face. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity. Q: Long lines, unreliable voting machines, disputed ballots: Why don’t elections in the United States work better?

Ginsberg:There are 8,000 different jurisdictions that are responsible for putting on some part of our elections. It is a process largely fueled by volunteers. They don’t have adequate training in most cases. So uniformity among our elections because of the way our system has been for 200 years is proving pretty difficult.

Bauer:We don’t commit nearly the resources that we need to, to the election administration process. Our administrators, who are generally overlooked when things go well and harshly criticized when they don’t, by and large have to deal with very tight budgets in which the priority is never very high for the work they have to do.

Texas: Hidalgo County voting machines seized; tampering investigation to follow | The Monitor

A state District Court judge on Wednesday ordered the impounding of all voting machines used in the Hidalgo County Democratic primary this year. Voting machines and other materials used in the primary during early voting in late February and Election Day on March 4 were impounded Wednesday afternoon following an application the District Attorney’s Office filed in the morning in the 398th state District Court alleging possible criminal vote tampering. “Upon review of information received by the Hidalgo County District Attorney’s Office, regarding the forenamed election, criminal conduct may have occurred in connection with said election, therefore requiring impoundment of all the election returns, voted ballots, signature roster and other election records and equipment for an investigation and ultimately a determination of whether or not criminal conduct occurred,” the application states.