Update on Still-Undecided ‘Top-of-Ticket’ Races…They had ballot shortages: Auburn Lake Trails, CA & Ellsworth village,WA insufficient paper ballots created lines & long waits.. MN Recount to start Nov. 29 & end Dec. 14..Columbia County New York began a full hand count of ballots yesterday. Election Commissioner Virginia Martin wants independent check against machine tally…ES&S sofware failures in Sumter SC were blamed on “human error” but no evidence cited. On Tuesday ALL Diebold touch-screen voting machines across Utah County, Utah failed. There were no paper ballots so no voters couldn’t vote until officials got the machines working…
All this and more in today’s voting news below…
AZ: Law broken when voters went unidentified
http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/state/law-broken-when-voters-went-unidentified
CA: Lack of ballots, power outage present unique Election Night*
http://auburnjournal.com/detail/164128.html (El Dorado County)
Residents of the Auburn Lake Trails subdivision in Cool weathered hours of waiting and a power outage in order to vote Tuesday night.
…
Liz Hanley, a Gold Country Media employee who lives in the area, said she returned to the polls at 7:45 p.m. to see if the ballots had been delivered, but wasn’t able to vote until 9:15 p.m.
CA: Registrar defends speed of vote tally (Riverside)
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20101105/NEWS0301/11050316/Registrar-defends-speed-of-vote-tally “Would I like to not be in last place? Definitely,” Dunmore told The Desert Sun on Thursday. “But the most important thing to me is that the votes we counted are accurate, and that the integrity of the election is maintained.”
CA: Harmer Sues Over Vote Counting in CA-11
http://calitics.com/diary/12820/harmer-sues-over-vote-counting-in-ca11
Now Harmer has filed a lawsuit against the Contra Costa County election officials claiming the right to challenge the signatures on absentee ballots, even as those voters are not present to respond.
CA: Stolen ballots recovered; update on supervisor, school board races
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/cityinsider/detail?entry_id=76376
The 75 San Francisco ballots allegedly stolen on Election Day Tuesday by a poll worker in the Excelsior District were recovered across town Thursday in the pond at the Palace of Fine Arts. “They’re very soggy,” said city elections chief John Arntz.
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Still missing is the memory pack that electronically records the votes. The elections worker suspected of taking off with the ballots and memory pack, Karl Bradfield Nicholas, 50, of San Francisco, faces felony counts of burglary and two election code violations.
CT: Cops Hand-Deliver Bungled Tally
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/foley_lets_just_take_our_time/ Cops drove from Bridgeport to Hartford Friday afternoon to deliver hard-copy results from a vote count that kept getting revised up until the last minute—and that purports to give Dan Malloy the margin of victory to become Connecticut’s first Democratic governor elected since 1986.
CT: Bungled To The End, Tally Goes To Malloy
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/malloy_wins_bridgeport_–_state/
An all-night recount in Bridgeport gave Democrat Dan Malloy a 13.000-vote lead in Bridgeport in the election for governor and 5,000 statewide—enough to give him the job. Yet even after an “official” announcement Friday morning, voting registrars were still making adjustments to the tally.
CT: ‘Found’ Bag Of 335 Ballots Opened, Counted
http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/itll_be_officialany_minute_now/
FL: Voting glitches like St. Lucie’s miscount not uncommon, expert says*
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/nov/04/voting-glitches-like-st-lucies-miscount-not-says/
Local officials and a political expert say voting issues — like the one that caused 6,330 county ballots not to be totalled Tuesday — happen frequently and there are checks in place to catch errors before the votes are finalized.
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Walker said the office has 15 computer memory cards that keep separate vote totals. When those tabulate, they show green arrows. But when a computer server rebooted Wednesday morning, five red arrows showed that 6,330 ballots were not in Tuesday’s totals. The office plans to reboot the server before the end of counting at the next election.
MA: Taunton not the only city with Election Day ballot mix-ups: Winchester ballots cast in Melrose* http://www.wickedlocal.com/rehoboth/newsnow/x1951112240/Taunton-not-the-only-city-with-Election-Day-ballot-mix-ups-Winchester-ballots-cast-in-Melrose
The vendor that inadvertently delivered the wrong ballots to Taunton and Marlborough for Tuesday’s state election mistakenly sent a packet of Winchester ballots to Melrose, the Secretary of State’s office said on Thursday.
MA: Anatomy of an election
http://www.wickedlocal.com/framingham/features/x782435894/Anatomy-of-an-election
MN: Recount to start Nov. 29, scheduled to end Dec. 14
http://www.startribune.com/politics/blogs/106766053.html
MN: Hennepin County officials: vote count accurate
http://www.startribune.com/politics/recount/106784098.html
MO: My Election Day Story, or Why Poll Workers Need to Know the Rules
http://northparkstreet.com/2010/11/my-election-day-story-or-why-poll-workers-need-to-know-the-rules/
NC: Etheridge can ask for recount*(Sampson Co didnt report 3 of 4 early voting sites)
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/05/782263/etheridge-can-ask-for-recount.html
A State Board of Elections review Thursday of vote totals in Sampson County left incumbent U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge close enough to challenger Renee Ellmers to seek a recount in the state’s 2nd Congressional District race.
Ellmers, a Republican from Dunn, led by 2,099 votes Tuesday night, but the next day, Sampson County elections officials discovered they hadn’t reported totals from three of the county’s four early-voting sites, said Johnnie McLean, deputy director of the State Board of Elections.
NC: Judge’s race in limbo until Nov. 29
Turns out the instant runoff in this year’s state Court of Appeals election isn’t so instant. http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/11/05/782133/judges-race-in-limbo-until-nov.html
NJ: Hudson County Board of Elections to make criminal referrals of some 4th Ward mail-in ballots http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ssf/2010/11/hudson_county_board_of_electio_1.html
NY: BOE begins hand count of ballots today
http://www.registerstar.com/articles/2010/11/04/news/doc4cd21ff841fa8107904710.txt
Martin said there are at least 22,614 votes to be counted. “We’re bringing back the ballot counters,” she said, referring to humans who count ballots. She favors hand-counting over machine counting, she said, because she knows it’s more secure.
…
There’s a chain of custody: Ballot bags, used to transport ballots, and poll bags, used to transport other materials, from the polling places to the county offices…always have to be watched over by one person from each of the two major parties.
…
“Some of them had lines 30 or 40 minutes long,” Martin said. “People went to vote, saw the lines, came back, the lines were just as long, came back and had to wait a long time.”
NY: Glitch holds up Genesee County vote tally*
http://rocnow.com/article/local-news/201011050339
Genesee County hasn’t publicly reported a full tally of election results yet, thanks to a data storage card from a new voting machine whose results cannot be read.
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Genesee used a different approach — gathering data cards from every voting machine on election night and pulling results from them in the central elections office. But the system couldn’t read a card from a LeRoy polling place that housed four election districts.
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At midday Thursday, Siebert said officials may have found a way to recover data from the card. If that doesn’t work, results will be pulled from the tape, entered in a computer system by hand and posted on the county website in coming days…
NY: Senate race now a recount drama
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/city-hall/article242593.ece
Prospect of tallying votes by hand could mean months of delay
NY: The Issues With the New Voting Machines
http://www.antonnews.com/greatneckrecord/news/11400-the-issues-with-the-new-voting-machines.html
NY: New York’s Voting System Doesn’t Get Mine
http://www.crn.com/news/client-devices/228200282/new-yorks-voting-system-doesnt-get-mine.htm?itc=refresh
NY: New Voting System Earns a Passing Grade
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704462704575590810462827920.html
Nearly two months after widespread problems plagued New York City’s new computerized voting system, voters and observers reported a far smoother process Tuesday with sporadic cases of machine failures and jammed ballots.
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“Over the past six weeks, we retrained poll site coordinators, improved pre election logistics, and increased our voter education efforts,” spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez…
NY: New York state must help counties with voting problems
Tallying votes was a slow and laborious process http://rocnow.com/article/editorials/201011050319
SC: Screwy straight-ticket voting
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/nov/05/screwy-straight-ticket-voting/
According to the S.C. Election Commission, about 325,000 of Mr. Greene’s voters went the straight-party route.
SC: Human error possible cause of voting machine problems *
http://www.theitem.com/news/article_3db83a1f-0378-5d6a-be6c-b4a837a25231.html
On Tuesday, the program “froze, locked up and shut down” for unknown reasons during vote tallying at the Sumter County Election Commission, said Director Pat Jefferson. The program also produced erroneous results when it was up and running again, but the errors were corrected and the final results, which will be certified today, were made available about 4 a.m. Wednesday.
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In the wake of Tuesday’s malfunctions, local officials are questioning whether it is possible to change the state-standardized voting systems and whether there’s any way a new system could be implemented before the elections in 2012.
TN: Nashville Scene – “Democratic Underground: Election Integrity? What Election Integrity?” http://www.nashvillescene.com/pitw/archives/2010/11/04/democratic-underground-election-integrity-what-election-integrity
UT: All Diebold Touch-screen Voting Systems Fail on Election Day at 110 Polls Across Utah County, UT
Voters forced to wait up to an hour to vote, others simply left…
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8180 It was also in Utah County were, as we reported a week before Election Day, the easily-manipulated Diebold voting machines had been found left unattended in the lobby of an office building.
VA: Voter problems at the polls?* (Voter registration not updated at DMV)
Board of Elections calls it “minuscule”
http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/politics/voter-problems-at-the-polls Virginia Beach resident Lori Lincoln voted at Pembroke Elementary, and she claimed the poll worker told her she may have to vote on a provisional ballot because her address was wrong.
“She asked me ‘where did I fill in the change of address?’ I said at the DMV, and she said we have had a number of people with the same problems today,” said Lincoln.
VA: Montgomery Co. voting problems on election day*
http://www2.wsls.com/news/2010/nov/05/montgomery-co-voting-problems-election-day-ar-634624/ A log in computer glitch caused the board to make a quick decision that would allow people to continue voting.
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They plan to have paper poll books at the precincts in case this does happen again, have a technician i the area in case something goes wrong, and are looking to revise instructions given to the officers of elections during their training.
WI: Ballot shortage causes lines in Ellsworth (in Pierce County)
A mix-up in an order of ballots helped to cause a long late-morning line of voters and a late night counting votes at the Ellsworth village polling station Tuesday.
http://www.piercecountyherald.com/event/article/id/30320/
When the opti-scan ballots ran out, voters could only use the touchscreen as paper versions of the opti-scan ballot were being photocopied to be used as soon as the regular ballots were gone.
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This caused as much as a two-hour delay for some voters waiting in line outside the Village Hall. Others left the line to vote later in the day. The photocopied ballots had to be counted by hand that evening, delaying the final tally. Nelson said she began to run off copies of the paper ballots around 11 a.m. using the copier in the courthouse.
Internet vote watch
Canada: Mayor unhappy with electronic voting service provided by Intelivote
http://www.emcarnprior.ca/20101104/news/Mayor+unhappy+with+electronic+voting+service+provided+by+Intelivote
Switzerland: E-voting trials extended but progress is slow
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/swiss_abroad/E-voting_trials_extended_but_progress_is_slow.html
In the November 28 nationwide ballot, up to 190,000 citizens – 4.1 per cent of the potential electorate – can participate over cyberspace rather than casting a postal vote or going to the polling booth.
National
Update on Still-Undecided ‘Top-of-Ticket’ Races
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8181
Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA Performed Strongly
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quinnipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/
International
British election overturned for racing-baiting ‘false statements’…
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8182
The specially-convened election court had heard that Mr Woolas stirred up racial tensions in a desperate bid to retain his seat in Oldham East and Saddleworth.
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