Texas: Travis County Developing Electronic Voting System With a Paper Trail | Government Technology

Imagine casting your vote on an everyday touch-screen tablet that prints out a paper copy of your ballot, as well as a take-home receipt you can use to verify it was counted. Such a system could be in place at Travis County polls as early as 2017. For the past three years, the county and a group of experts have been designing the specifications for new voting software that would rein in costs while providing what critics of electronic machines have long requested: a verifiable paper trail. “You can never win the argument over black box voting,” said Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir. Under the system being developed, a voter would use a device — likely a tablet — to fill out an electronic ballot and then print out a paper copy for voters to check. The electronic ballot wouldn’t be tallied unless the voter deposited the paper copy into a ballot box that scans a serial number printed on it. The voter would also receive a receipt with a code that can be entered online to confirm the ballot was counted.

Texas: Travis County Forges New Territory in Voting Machines | The Texas Tribune

With the nation facing what a January government report described as an “impending crisis” in voting technology, officials in Travis County are taking matters into their own hands by seeking to create a unique, next-generation system of voting machines. The efforts put Travis County, along with Los Angeles County in California, at the cutting edge of a race against time to create an alternative voting technology system. The new machines would have voters use off-the-shelf electronic equipment like tablets, but also provide them with receipts and printed ballots to allow for easier auditing. The development and implementation process won’t be finished in time for the 2016 elections, though officials hope to have the system ready by the 2018 gubernatorial race. … Some election administrators have said the status quo will likely fall apart within a few years. Across the country, “it’s all just a guessing game at this point: How long can we last?” said Dana DeBeauvoir, the Travis County clerk.

Nepal: CPN-UML faction against electronic voting machines | eKantipur

The CPN-UML faction led by Madhav Kumar Nepal has rejected the party’s decision to use Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) for the Central Committee (CC) election. The Nepal faction has expressed a serious reservation over the effort of the organising committee of the ongoing ninth UML National Congress to use the EVMs for election. Organising a separate press meet on Saturday, UML politburo member, Raghuji Pant, said that a large section of the party representatives are skeptical about the use of EVMs, and demanded the use of paper ballot for the election.

Norway: Internet voting experiment fails | ZDNet

The Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation has put an end to a pilot project allowing voting on the internet. The main reasons cited are a lack of increase in turnout amid concern that the program could damage confidence in the electoral process. A study performed by the Ministry of the test programs run in their 2011 and 2013 elections shows many conflicting results but, at bottom, the benefits were too slight and the problems too great. Only a summary of the Ministry’s study is available in English. The full study is in Norwegian (PDF). One interesting result was evidence that a small number of voters, 0.75% of all voters, voted twice in 2013. They voted once online and once by conventional paper ballot at a polling station. At the same time, convinced that it is necessary in order to increase disappointing voter participation rates, officials in the US and UK still are pushing for internet voting. As I explained several weeks ago, in the US voting over the internet is creeping in from the bottom up with no real thought being put into the process.

Ireland: €50k to end 25-year e-voting contract | Irish Examiner

A businessman who received a lucrative 25-year contract to house Ireland’s ill-fated e-voting machines from a close relative in charge of deciding who won the tender has been given a €50,000 pay-off to cancel the deal. The Department of Environment confirmed the controversial move was agreed in recent weeks in a bid to consign the wider e-voting scandal to history. Speaking at the latest Dáil Public Accounts Committee, new Department of Environment secretary general John McCarthy confirmed that a deal was struck with Martin Duffy earlier this year as part of ongoing attempts to address unresolved issues relating to the project.

Maryland: Elkridge company tasked with statewide shipping, security for voting booths | Baltimore Sun

Early one morning last week, Jack Kane was pacing around a Glen Burnie warehouse, reviewing paperwork and checking equipment to make sure everything was in order to deliver scores of voting machines to regional polling stations. Kane, 26, is the Anne Arundel County project manager for the Kane Co., an Elkridge-based firm that’s transporting some 16,000 voting machines to nearly 1,800 voting centers throughout Maryland. Security is a top priority, and part of Kane’s job involves making sure machines don’t get tampered with. Before trucks are sent out, seals marked with serial numbers are placed on the machines and the truck door latches to note each time they have been unlocked. Those who break the seals must sign off when they do so, and a state board employee later reviews the tags and records.

Virginia: New voting machines to improve voting in Fairfax County | WTOP

Residents of Fairfax County will be able to use a new voting machines in this upcoming November election, the first such comprehensive equipment replacement in more than a decade. The Fairfax County Office of Elections purchased 1,125 voting machines from Election Systems and Software, which includes 525 paper ballot scanning machines and 600 paper ballot generating machines, with the initial price at approximately $6.4 million. The new equipment will provide and scan paper ballots for voters, and will also let voters know if their ballot is blank or they voted for more candidates than allowed in any race.

South Carolina: New election day, more problems in Richland County | Myrtle Beach Online

So much for the smooth start to primary election day in Richland County: Voting machines weren’t working at Ward 14 at Sims Park in Shandon when the polls opened, and voters tweeted that the Mallet Hill precinct at Polo Road Elementary wasn’t open as of 7:40 a.m. Amanda Loveday, former executive director of the state Democratic Party and now spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Clyburn, said voters at Ward 14 were told they weren’t allowed to use paper ballots and would have to wait for the machines to be repaired. Voters reported the machines were up and running by 8 a.m.

South Dakota: Davison County Voting Machine Fails To Read 700 Ballots | KDLT

Davison County has something no other county in South Dakota has: a new up-to-date voting machine that is supposed to count ballots easier and quicker. But the new device didn’t quite do its job last night. It failed to read around 700 ballots, creating some headaches for the County Auditor. The new voter machine in Davison County is supposed to be a big improvement over the equipment it replaced, but during Tuesday night’s election it worked almost too well. “The ballot marks on the back bled through to the front. You can’t see it with the naked eye, only the machine read it,” said Kiepke.

Pakistan: Electronic voting in next general polls | The Nation

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) on Thursday unveiled its plan for next general elections in 2018 promising to introduce biometric voting machines, but rubbished the rigging allegations in last year’s polls. ECP Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan during a news conference held here at the commission’s office said foreign observers and independent election monitoring bodies had expressed satisfaction with election process in country held in May 2013. “Let me make it very clear that anybody who has doubt about rigging in elections, should wait for the Election Tribunals to come up with final judgments,” the secretary told newsmen in apparently pointing to Imran Khan, Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) chief, who has been lambasting the election results.

California: No ballots, no voting machines and other glitches at Los Angeles County polling places | Daily News

With some 5,000 polling places operating throughout Los Angeles County on Tuesday and a shortage of volunteers, some voting locations reported problems such as missing ink and other materials and a lack of staffing. Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles, which had students at polling sites throughout the area, was keeping track of the problems through its Twitter feed, noting issues such as an absence of workers at one site, and voting machines without ink. “Still no ballots at Fire Station 99. Polls have been open for FOUR HOURS,” one tweet noted, referring to a site on the Westside.

Mississippi: Election funds up in the air | Desoto Times Tribune

DeSoto County officials feel they are entitled to receive compensation for ongoing maintenance costs of the county’s fleet of election machines just like other counties in Mississippi, despite the fact the county chose another type of machine a decade ago than the one preferred by the Secretary of State’s Office. DeSoto County is one of five so-called “opt-out counties” that chose to purchase optical scanning machines or M-100s rather than a touch-screen voting machine known as a TSX. Other counties which opted out of buying state-sanctioned machines are Yalobusha, Hinds and Rankin counties. Thompson said she has since been told there is no money for the upkeep and maintenance of the five “opt-out” counties. Thompson said maintenance costs for DeSoto County’s machines top $30,000.

Mississippi: Election funds up in the air | Desoto Times Tribune

DeSoto County officials feel they are entitled to receive compensation for ongoing maintenance costs of the county’s fleet of election machines just like other counties in Mississippi, despite the fact the county chose another type of machine a decade ago than the one preferred by the Secretary of State’s Office. DeSoto County is one of five so-called “opt-out counties” that chose to purchase optical scanning machines or M-100s rather than a touch-screen voting machine known as a TSX. Other counties which opted out of buying state-sanctioned machines are Yalobusha, Hinds and Rankin counties. Thompson said she has since been told there is no money for the upkeep and maintenance of the five “opt-out” counties. Thompson said maintenance costs for DeSoto County’s machines top $30,000. “Why is DeSoto and the opt-out counties not included in the state maintenance plan?” Thompson asked. “I want some money or at least an explanation why?”

South Carolina: Elections oversight begins in fall, as reform passes | The State

Starting this fall, state elections officials will check vote totals in all 46 counties as part of the biggest election reform measure passed in a decade. Disagreements are brewing, meanwhile, among Richland County legislators about whether to retain two long-time election board members when the offices join once again as a result of the new measure. The bill – awaiting the governor’s signature after unanimous approval this week by the House and Senate – requires counties to merge election and voter registration functions. The measure averted possible chaos during upcoming elections in June and November: A lawsuit in Richland County foreshadowed problems with the patchwork of local laws that set up election boards statewide. The General Assembly had to agree on a uniform method to run county election offices.

Belgium: Software bug disrupts e-vote count in Belgian election | PCWorld

A bug in an e-voting application halted the release of European, federal and regional election results in Belgium, the country’s interior ministry said Monday. On Sunday, problems occurred when counting votes made on older voting machines in around 20 of the country’s 209 cantons, the ministry said. The voting machines in question are x86 PCs from the DOS era, with two serial ports, a parallel port, a paltry 1 megabyte of RAM and a 3.5-inch disk drive used to load the voting software from a bootable DOS disk. A bug in the voting software used at canton headquarters where the votes are counted caused “incoherent” election results when it tried to add up preferential votes from those machines, ministry spokesman Peter Grouwels said. The application counted the results in different ways that should always get the same outcome but that wasn’t the case, he said, adding that the release of the results was immediately stopped when this was discovered. The fault appeared in the system despite the fact that the application was especially developed for these elections, was “tested thousands of times” and was certified by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, he said.

South Carolina: Richland County elections officials, pollworkers say they’re ready for June 10 primaries | The State

The addition of precincts, equipment and pollworkers should add up to trouble-free June 10 primaries in Richland County, election officials say. “I feel good. I think it’s going to run well,” said Patrick Nolan, a retired USC professor who runs a Forest Acres precinct. He concurred with the assessment of fellow pollworkers that they are well-prepared for voting in two weeks. Officials at the elections office – still smarting from the fiasco of November 2012, when voters were outraged by long lines, misplaced ballots and a lack of accountability – say they’ve put new safeguards in place. “We have just buckled down and tried to look back – 2012, 2013 – and tried to find those things that did not play so well,” said Samuel Selph, who became Richland County’s interim elections director in February. “So what we’re doing is trying not to repeat the past.”

Namibia: Opposition cynical over electronic voting machines | New Era

Opposition parties are sceptical over the new electronic voting system to be used in the presidential and parliamentary elections in November. Some of the opposition say the electronic voting machines (EVMs) should not be used because they were not previously tested in Namibia and the electorate have not been educated on them, while others propose the ballot and electronic systems be used together. E-voting is a term encompassing several different types of voting, embracing the electronic means of casting a vote, storing the voting record in some database and electronically counting the votes. In interviews on Monday,some parties decried the Electoral Commission of Namibia’s plans to introduce the new system, while others claim the new system can be the panacea for smooth elections if some of the nitty-gritties are addressed.

Kansas: As counties look at new voting machines, paper ballots are returning | Great Bend Tribune

When it comes to elections, the pendulum just keeps swinging. With electronic voting equipment nearing the end of this life expectancy, Barton County Election Officer Donna Zimmerman is eyeing the future and sees a need for a change. This change could include a return to the old-school paper ballots. With such an evolution on the horizon, Zimmerman hosted a voting equipment demonstration in the Barton County Courthouse Thursday morning. Kansas county clerks and election officials joined her staff for the presentations. Participants witnessed demonstrations from multiple voting system manufacturers. ElectionSource of Grand Rapids, Mich., presented Dominion Voting Systems and Henry M. Adkins & Son of Clinton, Mo., presented Unisyn Voting Solutions. “It appears that the trend is to return to paper ballots with equipment only for used by those with disabilities,” Zimmerman said. “This is the yo-yo in elections. It seems really weird that we’re going back to paper ballots,” said Darin DeWitt, Barton County voter registration clerk. “It’s like two steps backward.” DeWitt and Zimmerman were among the handful of election officials huddled around the pricey new equipment in the Barton County Commission chambers to hear the sales pitch for from ElectionSource.

Massachusetts: Governor signs voting bill into law | masslive.com

Massachusetts voters will be able to cast their ballots early beginning in 2016, under a new law signed by Gov. Deval Patrick on Thursday. “Whenever we have a law that expands access to the ballot and makes it easier for people to register and to vote, it makes our democracy better,” Patrick said moments after signing the law, surrounded by legislators and voting reform activists. The election reform law allows for early voting in biennial statewide elections, starting 11 business days before an election and ending two business days before Election Day. The law also establishes online voter registration and requires the Secretary of State’s office to develop a tool that lets voters check their registration status and their polling location online. The law allows 16 and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, although they will not be allowed to cast a ballot until they turn 18.

Editorials: American elections are stuck in the 20th century. Here’s how to change that. | Timothy B. Lee/Vox

In the wake of the disastrous Florida recount in 2000, Congress appropriated billions of dollars for states to upgrade their voting equipment. A lot of states used this bonanza to purchase shiny new electronic voting machines. But those machines haven’t always worked out as well as their backers hoped, and a decade later they’re showing their age. And Congress isn’t expected to provide more billions for states to replace their aging voting systems any time soon. Aneesh Chopra, President Obama’s choice to be the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer from 2009 to 2012, wants to do something about the problem. He is teaming up with a group called the Open Source Elections Technology Foundation to address the problem. Their plan: develop the software necessary to run an election and release it as an open-source project. Chopra and his colleagues believe that could lead to better election systems while simultaneously saving cash-strapped states money. After every national election, you can find media reports of voting machine “glitches.” Common problems include “vote flipping” (where the voter tries to vote for one candidate but the machine registers it as a vote for another), broken machines, and mis-configured ballots. These issues can cause long lines as pollworkers take malfunctioning machines offline or have to spend time trying to fix them rather than checking in voters.

Massachusetts: State Poised To Allow Early Voting, Online Registration | WAMC

Massachusetts, a state with a reputation for liberal politics, has what many consider outdated election laws.  That is about to change as state legislators have approved a compromise bill that includes provisions long sought by advocacy groups. The legislation would authorize early voting up to 11 days before Election Day, create a system for online voter registration, allow 16-and 17-year- olds to pre-register to vote, and provide for postelection audits of randomly selected polling places to assure the accuracy of voting machines. Voting rights groups have long pushed for many of the bill’s provisions according to Pam Wilmot, Executive Director of Common Cause Massachusetts. “The bill is really a terrific step for voters in Massachusetts. It will make it easier and more efficient to vote and encourage people to participate.”

Massachusetts: Voting in Hudson vaults into the 21st century | The Boston Globe

With more than 12,000 registered voters, Hudson is by far the largest community in Massachusetts to count its results by hand each election night. That will soon change. The town’s capital plan for next fiscal year, approved by Town Meeting early this month, includes spending $56,000 to purchase eight electronic voting machines, one for each of Hudson’s seven precincts and one backup. For at least the last 15 years, town officials have mulled switching from hand-crank ballot boxes, which require a crew of vote counters each election night to tabulate the paper ballots. But they’ve been reluctant to switch from a system they know works to one they are not familiar with, according to Town Clerk Joan Wordell. “We’re going to miss it. Tradition, you know?” she said. “What I won’t miss is at 8 o’clock when everyone has to start counting and then people start asking, ‘What time do you think the results will be in?’ ”

Editorials: Rhode Island Master Lever Myths | Rhode Island Public Radio

Eliminating the master lever in Rhode Island elections is picking up steam in the General Assembly. RIPR political analyst  Scott MacKay says getting rid of straight party voting may be much ado about not much. The Rhode Island House of Representatives recently voted unanimously to end the so-called master lever, a relic of the state’s urban political machine past. A conga line of statewide elected politicians, from Gov. Lincoln Chafee down to Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, support this change. Good government groups and Rhode Island’s beleaguered Republican Party have been campaigning vigorously to curb straight party ballots. And many in the media, especially the editorial pages of the Providence Journal, have been on a crusade to scuttle it. The master level isn’t even a lever anymore. It was a dubbed the master lever when voters cast ballots in those big boxy metal voting machines that were enclosed in a thick curtain to maintain privacy. With one flick of a lever at the top of the machine, a voter could cast a straight party ticket, without having to click the levers next to the names of each individual candidate. When the state junked the machines for paper ballots that were counted with supermarket-style scanners, straight party voting survived as a single box at the top of the ballot. Thus, a voter who wanted to vote an all Republican or Democratic ticket could do so by drawing a line connecting one box, which eliminates the need to go all the way down the ballot and checking each individual box next to a candidate name.

South Carolina: Richland County looks to avoid 2012 voter headache remake | WISTV

Samuel Selph, the interim director of the Richland County Elections Commission, says plenty of mistakes were made in 2012 and 2013 when it comes to voting in Richland County, and he says we can’t afford to make the same mistakes in the June 2014 primary less than 30 days away. That’s why the Richland County Election Commission has made big changes by adding 25 more precincts, including one at the southeast branch of the Richland County Library. The 25 extra precincts keep the number of voters at each polling place lower. In a statement, Selph says now there are only two precincts in Richland County with more than 3,000 voters.

Texas: Election machine analysts arrive in Hidalgo County | The Monitor

Voting machine experts arrived in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday and began auditing machines used in the MArch 4 Democratic primary that unsuccessful candidates in that election say might have been tampered with. Three employees of Chicago-based Data Defenders set up laptops and organized some of the equipment from the previously impounded electronic voting machines at the Hidalgo County elections annex building shortly after a 9 a.m. meeting with Hidalgo County elections administration and District Attorney’s Office officials. The Data Defenders scheduled themselves to be in town collecting data for the rest of the week. Then they’ll return to their Chicago facilities for the “analysis part” of the process, said Murray Moore, an assistant district attorney overseeing a grand jury investigation into potential criminal conduct related to tampering with the machines. Moore said she hoped to have results from the analysis next month. “Think of it more like a DNA test, not like an autopsy,” she said, explaining that the process takes weeks instead of hours to complete. The data collection is open to the public, though only three media members and two members of the general public, including Sergio Muñoz Sr., sat in the observation area of the Hidalgo County elections annex to watch the process Tuesday morning.

India: How Secure Are India’s Elections? | Cleo Paskal/Huffington Post

According to exit polls, Narendra Modi is likely to be declared the next Prime Minister of India. The only thing that might stand in his way is an electronic voting machine (EVM). The problems with EVM security have been widely known since the large-scale irregularities in Florida during the 2000 elections. Many countries have moved to get rid of them. In 2006 Dutch TV aired a documentary showing how easy it was to hack the EVMs that were about to be used in their general election. The machines were subsequently withdrawn and the Netherlands went back to paper ballots. Germany has declared EVMs unconstitutional. And, after spending close to $75 million on its EVMs, Ireland found them to be so insecure they literally scrapped them.

Tennessee: MicroVote executive assumes blame for election gaffe | Johnson City Press

The person responsible for a human foible that turned the 6th Commission District results upside down during Tuesday’s Republican primary has claimed full responsibility and absolved the Washington County Election Commission from any wrongdoing. Indianapolis-based MicroVote General Corp. President Jim Ries confirmed in a news release Thursday that an employee error resulted in an inaccurate vote total posted on the Washington County Election Commission website. “Official voting tallies were unaffected by this website posting error, which was unrelated to the official counting of ballots,” Ries said. “We have identified the reason that the website posting error occurred and are putting into place steps to insure that such an error does not occur in the future.” The person directly responsible for the gaffe is Bill Whitehead, MicroVote’s Tennessee project manager. Whitehead emailed Washington County Administrator of Elections Maybell Stewart on Wednesday night to say an exact explanation of what happened was forthcoming. “Not to imply that your local media would misinterpret any information, but we are always cautiously guarded about what the press will receive, as in many cases they are spin doctors and we want to protect you and everyone involved in this process from a misinterpretation,” Whitehead told Stewart.

National: Problem at the polls: Tech stuck in past | The Hill

In the world of iPads, Google Glass and even bitcoin, voting technology remains stuck in a virtual dark age. Nearly 14 years after the 2000 election recount debacle in Florida, election officials now face the challenge of replacing voting machines that are on their last legs in a rapidly changing tech world that’s moved even beyond the changes spurred by that voting mess. Transitioning to modern voting machines, however, won’t be easy due to a lack of advanced machines, small budgets and a burdensome regulatory process. The next frontier to replace aging and unreliable machines should be commercially made and software-only products, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration said in a January report. “Tablet computers such as iPads are common components of these new technologies. They can be integrated into the check-in, voting and verification processes in the polling place,” the report said.

Indiana: Aftermath of vote problems in Elkhart County | WSBT

Elkhart County election officials are dealing with a few problems from Tuesday’s primary election, the first time they have used vote centers. Instead of staffing and equipping 117 precincts with voting machines, 25 vote centers were set up countywide, and voters were able to cast ballots at any one of those locations. County election officials are hoping to learn from a mistake that delayed the final vote count on Tuesday. Election board members and staff reviewed the results. It was a start up process with us,” said County Election Board Chairman Wayne Kramer. “We anticipated that there would be some bumps along the way, and there were a few. None of them affected actually the process.” One did develop, though, at North Side Gym. While polls were set to close at 6 p.m., long lines continued past then. The Election Board saw that coming and delivered two additional voting machines to add to the 10 already there. “As the law permits us to do, (the machines) were ushered inside the shoot, which is the 50 foot area inside the polling place so that (voters) would be permitted to vote, and that took additional time,” Kramer said.

Editorials: Can India Get E-Voting Right? | Bloomberg

Last month, I joined millions of other Indians in voting in our national election, the biggest in history. Was I wrong to feel disappointed? After all, the ritual of the vote — with its emphasis on privacy, silence and secrecy; its underlying political associations of duty, virtue, community, even transcendence — is the one democratic event that resembles a religious experience. The only difference is that the voter is also, in a manner of speaking, the deity being propitiated, the vote being the offering that establishes his or her agency. So I went to the polling booth, a school in my neighborhood in New Delhi, with great expectations. On a sheet outside the polling booth was a list of all the candidates I could vote for: seven or eight from the established political parties, then a slew of independents. Inside, I stood in a line before a table, behind which sat some officials from the Election Commission — a force 11 million strong — to whom I presented my voter identification card to be checked off against the electoral rolls. This done, I moved on to the next step, which was to have the nail of my left forefinger daubed with a stroke of indelible black ink. (This quaint practice, designed to discourage impersonation or double-voting, has led to the mass posting of what’s now called the “election selfie.”)