Brazil: Fraud possible in Brazil’s e-voting system | ZDNet

Flaws found in the Brazilian electronic voting system could open up the possibility of fraud as more than 140 million people go to the polls in the general elections taking place on Sunday. E-voting was introduced in Brazil in 1996 as a means to ensure secrecy and accuracy of the election process, as well as speed: the system underpinned by about 530,000 voting machines currently in place enables results to be processed within a matter of minutes within closing of the ballots. However, a public test of the equipment conducted by security and encryption specialists from Unicamp and Universidade de Brasília, two of the top computer science universities in Brazil, suggests that it is possible to easily break the secrecy of the machine and unscramble the order of votes recorded by the device. “Brazilians unconditionally believe the [security of the] country’s electoral authority and processes. The issue is that common citizens actually have no other option because of the lack of independent checks,” says Unicamp professor and encryption specialist, Diego Aranha.

Ohio: Supreme Court grants Ohio’s request to shorten early-voting period | Los Angeles Times

e Supreme Court ordered a halt Monday to early voting in Ohio that was scheduled to begin this week, clearing the way for the state to close polls on the Sunday before election day, when African American turnout has been heaviest. The emergency order, approved 5 to 4, is a victory for Ohio Republicans and a setback for civil rights lawyers who had challenged a law that shortened the early-voting period by about a week. Several other election-year disputes could reach the high court before November. Wisconsin, Texas and North Carolina also face pending court challenges to Republican-sponsored voting restrictions that take effect this year. Ohio had adopted one of the nation’s most generous early-voting policies after what was widely considered to be an election day debacle in 2004, when voters waited hours in long lines to cast ballots and many cities did not have enough voting machines to accommodate the turnout.

Namibia: Electoral commission quashes fears of vote rigging | GlobalPost

The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has moved to allay fears of vote rigging and corruption after opposition parties raised alarm about the use of electronic voting machines without a paper trail. Namibians are set to go to the polls in November to elect the country’s third democratically elected president as well as members of the National Assembly. The November plebiscite will for the first time make use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) that were purchased from India, but the absence of a paper trail to be used in conjunction with the voting machines has seen members of the opposition crying foul. Despite the use of the voting machines in regional by elections held recently that were declared free and fair, the opposition feel that the absence of a verifiable paper trial will see results of the November election being manipulated in favor of the ruling party South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO).

Editorials: Long Lines at Minority Polling Places | New York Times

Some of the longest lines on Election Day occur at polling places in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. A new report says that’s not a coincidence. In the three states with the longest lines in 2012, precincts in minority neighborhoods were systematically deprived of the resources they needed to make voting operate smoothly — specifically, voting machines and poll workers, according to the report by the Brennan Center for Justice. The report’s data show the growing need for federal supervision of voting rights, though ensuring supervision is harder than ever since the Supreme Court removed the teeth from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 last year. The report looked at Maryland, South Carolina and Florida, where many voters waited for hours to cast a vote in the 2012 presidential election. In all three, minority precincts were more likely to have had long lines. In South Carolina, the 10 precincts with the longest waits had more than twice the percentage of black registered voters, on average, than the rest of the state.

Namibia: Prime Minister questions reliability of electronic voting machines | The Namibian

Prime Minister Hage Geingob yesterday asked the electoral commission whether the electronic voting machines are reliable if there are still questions about the paper trail option. The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) paid a courtesy call on Geingob to explain and clarify to him the use of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) Geingob said there are questions being asked and requested that the ECN should provide comprehensive answers. “If the machines are so good, why do we still have the option of a paper trail?” Some political parties have questioned the voting machines’ reliability, saying there is a possibility for the machines to be tampered with or pre-programmed to favour a certain political party.

Namibia: Half of electronic voting machines yet to arrive | The Namibian

Two months before Namibians head to the polls, the Electoral Commission of Namibia has only half of the electronic voting machines required to hold successful elections. The Namibian reported in May this year that the ECN had planned to purchase 3 500 additional EVMs for the national and presidential elections at the cost of N$30 million, in order to supplement the current 3 500 EVMs. However, this has not happened. ECN director of operations Theo Mujoro yesterday said they are aware that the current number of machines would not be sufficient to cover the elections and therefore there is a need to purchase more. “The machines will be available by mid-October to supplement the current number that is in our possession, “ said Mujoro. He added that for each polling station, there will be two ballot units connected to a control unit which allows the voter to cast their vote like in a ballot election and in this way to replicate the manual election process. The EVM consists of a ballot unit, a control unit and a tabulator with printers.

National: Voting’s ‘impending crisis’ | Al Jazeera

A recent presidential commission report on election administration characterizes the state of U.S. voting machines as an “impending crisis.” According to the report, created in response to a presidential order, existing voting machines are reaching the end of their operational life spans, jurisdictions often lack the funds to replace them, and those with funds find market offerings limited because several constraints have made manufacturing new machines difficult. On Election Day, these problems could translate into hours-long waits, lost votes and errors in election results. In the long term, such problems breed a lack of trust in the democratic process, reducing the public’s faith in government, experts say. According to Barbara Simons, a member of the board of advisers to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the problem can’t be avoided any longer. “People died for the right to vote as recently as the civil rights movement,” she said. “The American Revolution was all about being able to control our own democracy, and that means voting … We know that a lot of machines were breaking in the 2012 election. It’s not that it’s an impending crisis. This crisis is already here.” Also, outdated voting machines can present security risks both in hardware deficiencies (some machines use generic keys to protect sensitive panels) and in software flaws that are difficult if not impossible to detect when compromised, according to security audits. Assessing the security of many of these systems is difficult, however, since companies insist proprietary software and hardware may not be disclosed to third parties. Government audits are often not fully public. The current problem is rooted in the short-term fixes that were implemented to solve the last major voting crisis, in 2000, when unreliable punchcard machines led to ambiguous ballots in Florida, putting the presidential election into question. After further issues in the 2002 midterm elections, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that fall. HAVA gave states millions of dollars to replace punchcard machines and created the EAC, charged with establishing standards for voting systems.

District of Columbia: Elections officials ‘cannot guarantee’ a smooth Nov. 4 general election | The Washington Post

Top D.C. election officials said Thursday they have fixed problems with computer switches and servers that caused a four-hour delay in reporting results of the city’s April 1 primary. But in sometimes contentious testimony before a D.C. Council committee , the city’s elections chief said he cannot ensure a smooth night on Nov. 4. “While we have resolved the technical issues . . . I cannot guarantee” there won’t be “more glitches,” said Clifford D. Tatum, executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections. Tatum also refused to make any promises about what time the vote tallying would be finished after the close of polls in the city’s general election. “We will plan for every reasonable contingency,” Tatum said, “but we cannot make any guarantees to when the election night process will be complete.” Tatum said that on Nov. 4 the board would have 45 “roving technicians” to deal with any issues that arise at polling places.

Editorials: Open Source Fix For US Voting System? | InformationWeek

The last surge of investment in voting technology happened a decade ago. Since then the regulatory apparatus for election reform has broken down, and voting machines themselves are starting to fail as well. Every election shines attention on a different bit of dysfunction, from long lines at polling places to cyber security risks. Open source to the rescue? Maybe, although probably not in time to have much impact on the 2016 election. Silicon Valley’s Open Source Election Technology Foundation (OSET) is methodically chipping away at the problem, building credibility with software for voter registration and election-night reporting while also working on the more challenging problems of improving the casting and counting of votes. Meanwhile, a few brave — and impatient — county election officials are embarking on their own voting technology design and development projects, which may or may not intersect with OSET’s work. The bottom-line goal of these initiatives is the same: to move away from reliance on proprietary technology while boosting transparency and leaving a reliable audit trail — making it clear that the victor in any contest really is the candidate who won the most votes.

New Mexico: Judge: Rio Rancho residents lost right to vote | Albuquerque Journal

Calling the 2012 general election in Sandoval County “a debacle,” a federal judge has ruled in favor of three Republicans who claimed actions by the Democratic county clerk and elections director deprived voters of the chance to cast ballots. There were problems administering the election in Rio Rancho, which resulted in voters standing in long lines and waiting in some instances for more than five hours to exercise their right to vote, according to the order by District Judge William P. Johnson. Johnson had granted a preliminary injunction ordering Election Bureau Director Eddie Gutierrez and Sandoval County Clerk Eileen Garbagni to comply with a resolution passed by the County Commission in October 2013 pertaining to the number of voting machines and distribution of polling places in Rio Rancho. The resolution establishes 17 voting convenience centers in Rio Rancho and two in Corrales.

Texas: Wichita County Commissioners Approve New Election Equipment | Texoma

Wichita County Commissioners are saying yes to the purchase of new election equipment, and for a high price. The commissioners voted to spend $1 million dollars on the equipment, which will include 210 new voting machines. This comes after county officials learned last month the new election equipment system would operate on more current Windows operating systems. While it comes at a high price, commissioners feel the county needs that equipment before election season. Wichita County has used it’s current election equipment, by the company Election Systems and Software for 10 years. This system operates on Windows XP and Microsoft no longer provides security updates for that operating system, which is why commissioners have decided the county needs a change. “The security could be compromised. It’s not as secure, there’s not security patches being put into it. And it’s on the internet, so we had had some vulnerability to it, and it didn’t work very well for us,” Judge Woody Gossom says.

Pennsylvania: State Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Electronic Voting Machines | The Legal Intelligencer

The state Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments as to whether electronic voting machines that do not produce simultaneous paper records of each vote cast violate the Pennsylvania Election Code. The 24 petitioners in the matter, whose case was argued by Michael Daly of Drinker Biddle & Reath, are seeking a declaratory judgment that would direct Carol Aichele, the secretary of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to decertify the direct-recording electronic voting systems. Before the justices, Daly contended the direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines do not provide a permanent physical record of each vote cast, as the code mandates. Although the machines can print records on request, Daly explained to the court that neither the printed records nor the electronic records satisfied the code’s requirement. Daly highlighted the petitioners’ argument that the digital records couldn’t be considered physical records since they were software-dependent, and the data could be altered or used for a fraudulent purpose without detection. He added that the machines were “utterly incapable” of verifying that a vote was cast the way the voter intended it to be.

National: California, Texas Serve as Testing Grounds for Open-Source Voting Technology | PublicCEO

With counties staring down eventual replacement of their election management systems, some in California and Texas are leading the charge for an alternative that could save counties a lot of money and change an industry.​​ Open-source voting would use software designed by counties, which could run on inexpensive computer terminals to design, print and count paper ballots. All of which purportedly increases transparency and security, Most of the savings would come from eliminating the software license fees charged for management system vendors’ proprietary programs. Twelve years after the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) mandated new voting technology, the machines and software are reaching the end of their usable lives in counties nationwide, and voting officials are feeling pressure. Travis County, Texas’ machines have generally been reliably operational — though a few have begun freezing — but County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir said she is worried they won’t remain in working order for long. HAVA’s $3.5 billion that helped fund the new election management systems will likely not be replenished to help replace them. “It’s the same urgency we all feel in counties everywhere,” she said. “We all bought new voting systems at the same time and now we’re all watching them approach their ends-of-life at the same time. Counties just don’t have multi-millions to pay for new voting systems.”

Canada: New Brunswick voting machines erode secrecy of spoiled ballots | CBC News

New Brunswick’s new voting machines may hinder a person’s right to secretly spoil their ballots in this year’s provincial election, according to a University of Moncton professor.  Elections New Brunswick started using the electronic vote tabulation machines in 2008, but this is the first time the units have been used to count the ballots in a provincial election. The machines speed up the vote-counting process and are intended to be more accurate. However, Denis Duval, a University of Moncton professor, said he has a problem with the machines because they beep when a person selects more than one candidate or no candidates on their ballot. “It not only tells the person working the machine, but the beep also can be heard by people in line waiting to vote,” Duval said. He said it’s a fundamental right for people to cast their votes in secret, so Duval filed a complaint with Elections New Brunswick in 2012.

New Mexico: New voting machines set for Nov. 4 election | Albuquerque Journal News

New Mexico voters in the Nov. 4 general election will cast ballots using new voting machines, which have cost the state nearly $12 million over the past two years to purchase and set up. Secretary of State Dianna Duran’s chief of staff Ken Ortiz said county clerks in all 33 counties have received thorough training on the machines in recent months. “Our office is confident that there is an adequate plan in place for election night,” Ortiz told the Journal in an email. A Legislative Finance Committee report released earlier this month raised questions about relying on the machines’ Colorado-based vendor for oversight and troubleshooting.

India: Protest to Election Commission over electronic voting machines | The Indian Express

A routine administrative move by the Election Commission of India, to shift electronic voting machines (EVMs) from Gujarat to Jammu and Kashmir for the Assembly polls there, has taken a surprise political turn. The controversy started with rumours that the EVMs had been “manufactured” in Gujarat and were programmed to ensure the BJP’s victory in the polls. Despite the EC clarifying that this was not true, and that the machines were only being moved for operational reasons, many in the Valley remain unconvinced. “We have to be doubly sure. The people of J&K are already asking why EVMs are being brought from Gujarat. An NGO created quite a stir by claiming that these machines could be tampered with,” J&K Congress president Saifuddin Soz told The Indian Express.

Wisconsin: State covers touch-screen voting machine costs | The Journal Times

The state will reimburse Racine County municipalities about $42,000 for costs related to touch-screen voting machines. The Racine County Board unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the reimbursement in its meeting Tuesday. The money will extend maintenance agreements on the machines by three years and four months, County Clerk Wendy Christensen said. The county will apply for the reimbursement and then distribute the money to each of the 17 municipalities, Christensen said.

Arizona: Software ‘glitch’ confounds election | The Sierra Vista Herald

The interim county elections director and two independent monitors of the elections office believe they may have narrowed down where things went wrong during Tuesday’s Primary Election, which resulted in erroneous data being added to the Secretary of State’s election results. After the polls close, data is transferred electronically via modem from the ballot counting machines to the elections office. That data is then received and tabulated by an Election Systems & Software program, placed on a thumb drive, transferred from the thumb drive to a server, which then sends the data on to the state. “Somehow, when the information on the server went to the state elections system, that number got corrupted,” said Jim Vlahovich, interim director of the Cochise County Elections Office. … Elections office staff first noticed that something may be wrong on Tuesday night, when the print out of the results reported an abnormally high voter turnout of 62 percent. Then, this morning, calls to the elections office prompted further inspection, resulting in the discovery that the server used to transfer the voting data to the state had crashed.

New Mexico: County invites public to test new voting machines | The Santa Fe New Mexican

Santa Fe County voters will cast their ballots on new voting machines during the November general election.
But voters and any other member of the public can get a sneak peek and even test vote on the new machines starting this week. … The new voting machines replace equipment that Barraza said was becoming obsolete. “They’re not making parts for them anymore,” he said, referring to the older equipment. “We had them since 2006, but they had been around longer than that.”

Texas: Hidalgo council candidates drop election contest | Brownsville Herald

An election contest from losing candidates of the Hidalgo City Council election will end quietly after investigators found no evidence of abuse in county voting machines, a plaintiff said this week. The contest, from former mayoral candidate Guillermo Ramirez and council contenders Guillermo Cienfuegos Jr. and Mario Degollado, centered around the same argument as contests filed in the Hidalgo County Democratic primaries — that someone had tampered with voting machines.

Florida: Sarasota County elections supervisor excited about new sign-in system | Herald Tribune

Faster, cheaper and more accurate. That’s how Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent describes the new electronic sign-in system that county voters will encounter today — many for the first time — during early voting this week and the Aug. 26 primary election. In fact, Dent says voting “will be fundamentally transformed” in Sarasota County. Supervisor of Elections voter services coordinator Tracy Smith calls the system “a game changer.” Those may sound like lofty descriptions for a bunch of tablet computers and some software, but Dent and her team insist the benefits are significant. Kathy Dent, Supervisor of Elections in Sarasota County, with one of the more than 300 mini iPads that will be used to sign people in to vote during the upcoming election in Sarasota County.

Mississippi: McDaniel sues to be declared winner | Clarion-Ledger

Chris McDaniel wants a court to exclude 25,000 Hinds County votes — plus those from several other counties — from the June 24 runoff results and declare him the winner of the U.S. Senate GOP primary.McDaniel filed a lawsuit against incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in Jones County Circuit Court on Thursday, the legal deadline to file.If he’s not declared the winner, tea party-backed McDaniel asks the court to order the state Republican Party to hold a new statewide primary and require it to prevent “party raiding” by Democrats.In a written statement Thursday, McDaniel said his legal challenge details “rampant election integrity problems” including maintenance of ballot boxes, fraudulent votes, insecure ballot boxes and election records, wrongly accepted absentees, loosely documented security of voting machines and other problems.

North Dakota: Results stand in Foster County election | Jamestown Sun

The results of the June 10 election in Foster County will stand after the county canvassing board re-canvassed the results following last week’s recount that falsely showed 300 ballots were missing. “We re-fed all the official ballots that we had in our possession back through the election machine, and those counts matched with what the recount board hand counted last week, which is 1,153 (ballots),” County Auditor Teresa Risovi said. “Taking the official ballot count looking at how many ballots I had ordered, how many official ballots that were left that were never used based off of how many I sent out, how many were received and the difference, we ended up being short six ballots and in the (North Dakota) secretary of state’s mind that is dead on. The company I ordered the official ballots from, ES&S, they have a disclaimer that says their packets could be over or under five ballots each, so as far as the state is concerned, we’re golden.”

Arizona: New Yavapai County equipment improves process | The Prescott Daily Courier

One fun reason not to join Yavapai County’s Permanent Early Voting List is to check out the latest high-tech voting machines. The Yavapai County Recorder’s Office and its Elections Department have brand new touch-screen voting machines that talk to users and let them know if they voted for too many or too few candidates. While that’s the most visible of the new voting equipment, the county also has new ballot scanning machines. They count ballots so fast that poll workers at vote centers will no longer scan and modem results to the main Prescott office from various voting centers around the county. Instead, vote center workers will drive to Prescott with the ballots so they can be scanned and counted on the new high-speed machines. Noting that three-fourths of voters now vote early anyway, Recorder Leslie Hoffman and Elections Director Lynn Constabile think ballot counting will get done about the same time as it has in the past, since they are restricted on when they can start. “I have a feeling it’s going to be the same amount of time,” Constabile said.

North Carolina: Registrars plan to replace voting equipment before it fails | Roanoke Times

Thou shall not be like Florida in 2000. To keep that commandment, state lawmakers want localities to purchase voting machines that leave a paper trail. However without state funds to back up the directive, local registrars must figure out how long they can chance using the old touch-screen machines while they find money to afford new ones. Botetourt County Registrar Phyllis Booze worries touch-screen voting equipment purchased following the Bush v. Gore debacle might not hold up to the demand of heavy voter turnout expected for the 2016 presidential contest. Under state law, she can’t buy replacements for broken or worn machines and she needs hundreds of thousands of local dollars to switch to paper-based optical scanners.

US Virgin Islands: Voters embrace new machines | Virgin Islands Daily News

The new approach to casting ballots seemed to be a hit with the territory’s voters during the primary election on Saturday. Voters, many of them for the first time, familiarized themselves with the DS 200, a product of Elections Systems and Software, or ES&S. The machine allows voters to fill in a paper ballot so that there is a lasting record of the vote, but it also has the speed and convenience of an electronic voting machine. “It was just inserting a paper,” said Courtney Reese, a voter at Charlotte Amalie High School poll location. “You didn’t really even interact with the machine. It was like scanning or faxing something.” The V.I. Elections System purchased the 43 machines from Elections Systems & Software for $646,480 in 2013, and since has been organizing public demonstrations of the machines and how they work. The machines have been certified by the Election Assistance Commission, which is not required under federal law but is required under Virgin Islands law.

Utah: State committee studying feasibility of extending online voting to more Utahns | Deseret News

Utahns file their taxes, bank and shop online all the time, says state Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, so why shouldn’t they also be able to vote on their laptops? “It seems reasonable that we have a discussion — a serious discussion — about how you would set up a secure, auditable system to vote online,” Bramble said. “Personally, I’m going to be pushing the envelope.” But Bramble, appointed to a new committee put together by Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox to study online voting, said he’ll wait to see what members come up with by the end of the year before deciding whether to introduce legislation next session. … Another member of the new committee, Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen, also questions whether Utahns will be voting online anytime soon. “I hope that sometime in the future it will be something that happens,” Swensen said. “I admire the lieutenant governor’s office for wanting to explore this and be progressive, but I think there’s a lot to overcome before we get to that point.”

Tennessee: Shelby County Democrats call for federal monitors after glitch | The Commercial Appeal

Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Bryan Carson said Thursday he will ask for federal monitors to oversee the county election after a glitch that he claimed caused problems for early voters during the day. But Election Commission chairman Robert Meyers said the problem should not have impacted votes being cast. Meyers said a construction crew dropped a load of rocks over ground near the early voting location at the Agricenter that was on top of a fiber-optic line. The line was used for precincts to access the registration database when voters check in, he said, and the glitch impacted more than just the Agricenter site. “That’s really kind of a back-of-the-house operation,” Meyers said. And that’s separate from the actual voting machines, which store votes on memory cards.

Virginia: Voter Registrars Tackle New Voter ID Law | Charlottesville Newsplex

Registrars spent two days in Richmond this week at an annual training session put on by the Virginia Department of Elections. They discussed changes they are making to the voting process, and looked at the how those changes will impact voting experiences come November. “The system for creating photo ID’s at voter registration offices seems to be working very well. There haven’t been a great flood of people who have come in and asked for them,” said Albemarle County General Registrar Jake Washburne. … Another law now in effect for exactly a year is getting positive reviews.The Department of Elections says statewide voter online registration has been a success with tens of thousands of new voters signed up.

Mississippi: Flaws in How Mississippi Reports Elections Add to Its Problems | New York Times

Amid the allegations of fraud and the legal wranglings over the Mississippi Republican primary and runoff elections last month, one thing is clear: The lack of timely, useful election results has not helped assure citizens the election was fair. The process of publishing certified election results in Mississippi is long, sometimes complicated and filled with opportunities for delay and mistakes. The confusion and errors in the results of June’s primary and runoff elections for the United States Senate underscore the vulnerabilities of a system that is antiquated compared with most other states. Mississippi is the rare state in which the state agency in charge of elections does not offer live election night reporting. Some counties, like DeSoto in the north of the state, provide unofficial results on election nights, but not at the precinct level. Other counties have no website or no election results posted at all. Contrast that with states like West Virginia, which offers unofficial results on election nights and precinct-level results soon after, or South Dakota, which had live maps with precinct-level results for its own primary election on June 3.