Sticky Postings
If you are looking for her company you can find it at www.blackboxvoting.org.
This site is not associated with Ms. Harris. We in no way speak for her, nor she for us.
Sunday, June 28. 2009
Pierce County Washington could save $600,000 next year if the county ditches Instant Runoff Voting, says Auditor. 63% of Pierce County Voters polled said they did not like IRV, and the County Council voted to amend the county charter to repeal the mandate for RCV. The voters will make the final decision in November. Why is instant runoff voting so costly? See June 27, 2009 May 6th, 2009 Pierce County auditor sees savings from scrapping ranked choice voting David Wickert
...So where might Pierce County Auditor Jan Shabro’s quest for cost savings eventually lead? Think ranked choice voting. ...In November voters will consider an amendment to the county charter repealing ranked choice voting.
...56,751 of 90,738 Pierce County Voters polled said they did not like IRV ... more details at the link
IRV is also called Rank Choice Voting or RCV in Washington. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DIGG THIS ARTICLE
Tuesday, June 23. 2009
San Francisco's Chamber of Commerce discussed Instant Runoff Voting. At issue - whether the members should support an effort to ditch IRV. After 5 years of use, IRV has tied the city to a complicated election process requiring the use of expensive uncertified voting machines, and annual costs have gone up, not down. Time Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian reports Will downtown go after IRV? Interesting meeting at the Chamber of Commerce office yesterday.
... Among the topics: A campaign to repeal the city's Ranked-Choice Voting system. Downtown has never liked RCV, also known as Instant Runoff Voting. ...the Chamber had polled this year on both district elections and IRV... And while support for IRV was also strong, the voters, according to the Chamber poll, would be willing to consider direct runoffs between the top two finishers if the voting were all done by mail....
At his blog on the Huffington Post, RR complains that it is business groups want to ditch IRV, and that a poll shows that voters are agreeable: Lessons from downtown business attacks on instant runoff voting in San Francisco June 22, 2009
...A Chamber executive said that its recent polling had found that after five annual elections with IRV in 2004-2008, support for IRV was strong, but potentially vulnerable to the right combination of attacks.
The Chamber's representative was revealing in explaining his opposition to IRV. "The Chamber has always been in favor of direct runoffs" because "it allows the top two candidates to directly address their differences on the issues."
Well, the Chamber's reasoning makes sense, considering that with IRV voters have to choose from a slew of mostly vanity candidates. Narrowing the field and forcing candidates to stand behind their issues is a great value to the voters, and it doesn't happen with IRV. In fact, since the implementation of IRV, San Francisco's voter turnout has dropped drastically. Where is the enthusiasm of the voters that was experienced in the the 2003 Newsom/Gonzalez runoff? In the 2007 mayoral/municipal election, turnout was only 35.61%, with 100,000 fewer voters than in the mayoral runoff in 2003 where 54% of the voters turned out to vote: Lets compare the results for the Mayoral Contest in 2007, with Newsome verses "progressive" Mecke to the 2003 Mayoral Contest between Newsom and Gonzalez (Green): GAVIN NEWSOM . . . . . . . . . 105,596 73.66
QUINTIN MECKE . . . . . . . . . . 9,076 6.33 2003 Results With Traditional Rnoff
GAVIN NEWSOM. . . . . . . . . . 133,546 52.81
MATT GONZALEZ . . . . . . . . . 119,329 47.19
Regular voters in San Francisco aren't that attached to IRV: In 2007, many SF Voters did not utilize the option to rank choices. There was confusion over ranking. According to a Nov 8, 2007 Electionline report , "Voters also questioned the value of ranked-choice voting." "There are a lot of people who only mark one [candidate] or the same person three times," "I don't want to vote for a second one, I want this one." Instant runoff voting is not working in San Francisco. It has not improved the pollitical climate, candidates are not cooperating, nasty politics and whispering campaigns continue, election costs are increasing, and the city is tied to an unreliable voting system solely to accommodate IRV. The Chamber of Commerce SHOULD help the taxpayers and the voters get rid of this not so instant runoff voting mess.
Tuesday, June 2. 2009
Election integrity watchdog Brad Friedman has an important warning about Instant Runoff Voting to folks who value democracy and honest elections. We can't even count votes the plain old vanilla way yet, but we are told we should adopt IRV and make elections more complicated. Brad has some sharp words. Blogged by Brad Friedman on 6/2/2009 1:38PM Joins 'Internet Voting' and 'Vote-by-Mail' schemes as the latest bad ideas poised to further cripple American democracyPLUS: IRV count fails in Aspen's first instant runoff election...... As Logan, chief election official of the nation's largest voting jurisdiction (larger than 43 states combined) has had more than enough problems with the current voting system which can't even add one plus one plus one accurately, such that it is virtually impossible for anybody to verify the accuracy of results, the last thing this county needs is to complicate the math even further by confusing matters with IRV's complicate scheme of ranked choice voting where voters are asked to select a first and second place choices, etc. For that matter, unless, and until, we can simplify our election procedures such that any and all citizens are able to oversee and verify the accuracy of their election results, no jurisdiction in this country should employ schemes like IRV, no matter how well-meaning supporters of it may be in hoping to allow a broader range of candidates and parties to have a shot at winning an election. Along with the emerging nightmares of Internet Voting and Vote-by-Mail, IRV is yet another one of the horrible wack-a-mole schemes being endlessly advanced by advocates and profiteers who put winning elections and making money off them, over the idea of transparent, verifiable, secure democracy and self-governance expressed of the people, by the people and for the people.... more at the link, including Aspen's recent instant runoff election meltdown...please stop by and post a thank you to Brad in the comments section of the article.
Wednesday, May 27. 2009
EPIC FAIL. Honolulu Hawaii outsourced their local election to the private company "Everyone Counts" . Apparently "Everyone Counts" is certainly not the same as "Everyone Votes". Besides the outrageously dangerous risks inherent in internet voting, it turns out it is bad for voter turnout. Another idea that sounds great academically, yet fails epically. Shamefully, this "news" article interviews an executive with the internet voting corporation but not any computer scientists. People Could Vote Online, On Phone For Neighborhood BoardPOSTED: 3:49 pm HST May 26, 2009 HONOLULU -- Officials saw an 83 percent drop in the number of voters participating in the Honolulu Neighborhood Board's recent election that is the nation's first all-digital election, where people could vote over the Internet or by phone. For the first time, Oahu voters had to use computers or the telephone to vote for their neighborhood board candidates and many people did not bother. About 7,300 people voted this year, compared to 44,000 people who voted in the last neighborhood board race in 2007. ...The city cut its expenses in half by using computers and phone technology by Everyone Counts. It cost about $95,000. The question is whether the state and the counties will use the new voting technology to reach out to overseas voters, people who are not able to walk into voting booths like these to vote. "This is the future for presidential elections, general elections, primary elections, all the way," Everyone Counts consultant Bob Watada said. Watada is the former Campaign Spending Commission director. "(It) gives access to a lot of people who haven't had the access, and you don't have the hanging chads, you don't have the miscounted absentee ballots, you don't have the ballots lost," he said.....
Internet voting makes elections accessible to anyone with a computer. That is not a good idea. Maybe the government is too embarrassed to publicize ciber crime, especially when government is the victim. There would be a huge payoff to someone who could rig a statewide or national election. Or even a local one. Elections are high stakes, big money. Yes, internet voting gives access to alot of people. People you don't want to have access like these folks: Hacker High: 10 Stories of Teenage Hackers Getting into the SystemStudent at Downingtown High School West — Downingtown, Pa.
A 15-year-old student was arrested and charged with felonies in May 2008 for stealing personal data from the Downingtown School District's computer system and downloading files that contained the names and Social Security numbers of more than 41,000 of district residents (including 15,000 students). The unnamed student allegedly accessed the files, which were located on the district’s server, through a school computer during a study period, and officials believe that he copied the files to his home computer. This is the second time in the 2007-2008 academic year that a student has broken into the Downingtown School District’s computer system; another student was arrested for hacking into the system in December 2007. ... Jeanson James Ancheta — Los Angeles In 2005, the FBI nabbed 20-year-old Jeanson James Ancheta, a reported member of the "Botmaster Underground," a group of script kiddies known for their bot attacks and spam inundation. His sinister cyberscheme infected computers at the United States Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Divistion in China Lake, Calf. and the Defense Information Systems Agency, a component of the United States Department of Defense. In the first prosecution of its kind in the U.S., Ancheta was arrested and indicted on 17 federal charges for profiting from the use of "botnets." Aaron Caffrey — Britain
Aaron Caffrey 19, was accused of almost destroying of North America's biggest ports, the Port of Houston in Texas, by hacking into its computer systems. Computers at the port were hit with a DoS (denial of service) attack on Sept. 20, 2001, which crashed systems at the port that contained data for helping ships navigate the harbor. The prosecution said that the Brit’s computer contained a list of 11,608 IP addresses of vulnerable servers, along with malicious script. The attack on Houston was apparently tied to a female chat-room user called Bokkie, who had made anti-U.S. comments online. Still, a jury found Caffrey not guilty in October 2003. Raphael Gray — Wales
Raphael Gray, 19, became the subject of an international investigation after he got his hands on 23,000 Internet shoppers' details and posted some of them to Web sites. The scheme, which Gray claimed was an attempt to expose security weaknesses in Internet shopping, cost users hundreds of thousands of pounds. Gray was been sentenced to psychiatric care and told reporters that he felt no regret for what he’d done c0mrade — Miami
In 2000, a 16-year-old from Miami known on the Internet as "c0mrade" became the first juvenile to go to jail on federal computer-crime charges for hacking into NASA. The boy admitted to attacking a military computer network used by the DTRA (Defense Threat Reduction Agency) from Aug. 23, 1999 to Oct. 27, 1999. The youth installed a backdoor access on a server that intercepted more than 3,300 electronic messages to and from DTRA staff. The backdoor also accessed at least 19 usernames and passwords of DTRA employees, including at least 10 usernames and passwords on military computers. The unnamed juvenile was sentenced to six months in a detention facility. Mafiaboy — CanadaOver a five-day period in February 2000, Yahoo! Inc., CNN, eBay Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. became victims of the largest DoS attack ever to hit the Internet. The attacker? A 14-year-old Canadian named Mike Calce, who went by “Mafiaboy” online. He became the most notorious teenage hacker of all time, causing millions of dollars worth of damage on the Internet. Calce initially denied responsibility for the assault but later pled guilty to most of the nearly 50 charges against him. On Sept. 12, 2001, the Montreal Youth Court sentenced him to eight months of "open custody," one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet and a small fine. Calce later wrote as a columnist on computer-security topics for the French-language newspaper Le Journal de Montréal. Ehud Tenenbaum — Israel Computers at the Pentagon were targeted in an attack called "Solar Sunrise" during a tense time in the Persian Gulf in 1998. The attack led to the establishment of round-the-clock, online guards at major military computer sites. At the time, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre called the attack "the most organized and systematic attack" on U.S. military systems. While officials initially pointed fingers at two American teens, 19-year-old Israeli hacker Ehud Tenenbaum, who was called "The Analyzer," was identified as their leader and arrested. Tenenbaum later became the CTO of a computer-consulting firm. Richard Pryce and Matthew Bevan — Britain
Two teens touched off one of the biggest ever international computer crime investigations in the U.S. when, for several weeks in 1994, they attacked the Pentagon's computer network and tried to get access to a nuclear facility somewhere in Korea. The cyberculprits were identified as 16-year-old music student Richard Pryce (known as "Datastream Cowboy") and Matthew Bevan (known as "Kuji"), who was arrested two years later at age 21. Conspiracy charges against both Pryce and Bevan were later dropped, though Pryce was ordered to pay a small fine. 414s — Milwaukee They may sound like a cheesy '80s band, but the 414s were actually a band of youthful hackers who broke into dozens of high-profile computer systems, including ones at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Later uncovered as six youths ranging in age from 16 to 22, the group met when they were members of a local Explorer Scout troop. These Scouts-turned-cybercriminals were investigated by the FBI in 1983. The media took to the story of the youths, who met the somewhat sexy profile of early '80s computer hackers as established by Matthew Broderick's character in "WarGames," which was released the same year that the 414s rose to glory. In fact, 17-year-old Neal Patrick got more than his 15 minutes of fame when he appeared on the Sept. 5, 1983 cover of Newsweek. Most of the members of the 414s were not prosecuted, but their cybershenanigans lead to government hearings on hacking, as well as the introduction of six bills concerning computer crime in the U.S. House of Representatives. http://www.itsecurity.com/features/hacker-high-061008 /
Saturday, May 16. 2009
Sadly, there are people gullible enough to think that Internet Voting can be made secure. I hope these people haven't sent their banking account information to any Nigerian Princes lately. HuffPo is running a piece promoting internet voting, written by an actual executive of a company that sells Internet Voting services. For some awful reason, Huffington Post is running this as if it is objective reporting rather than advertising for a commodity, written by someone with a vested financial interest in said commodity. HuffPo is acting so Fox news like, eh?
Thursday, May 7. 2009
Yesterday was the deadline for any North Carolina jurisdictions to volunteer for the Instant Runoff Voting Pilot. Cary, North Carolina will not a volunteer for IRV this year. After experiencing instant runoff voting (IRV), plurality elections and traditional runoffs, the Cary Town Council decided to stick with the non-partisan traditional runoff election method. There were two volunteers for IRV in 2007, this time there will only be one. Hendersonville will be the only volunteer for IRV. This is a blow to lobbying groups -who had set their hopes on persuading Cary volunteering for the instant runoff pilot.
According to the NC State Board of Elections, May 6, 2009 was the last day a city could volunteer for the instant runoff voting for this years' elections:
"At this time, Hendersonville is the only municipality that has decided to participate in the IRV pilot project this year.
There had been inquiries from Cary in addition to Hendersonville.
Because the statutory start of filing (first Friday in July at noon) falls on a legal holiday, filing (this year) starts Monday morning July 6 when county offices open. That would make May 6th the deadline for a municipality to make a decision to use IRV." - email from Don Wright, General Counsel for the NC State Board of Elections, dated 5/04/2009. On April 30, 2009, council members voted to stick with traditional runoffs. Cary North Carolina participated in the first Instant Runoff Voting pilot in 2007. While instant runoff voting was NOT on the Cary Town Council agenda, last week, it was mentioned during the hearing. The meeting can be viewed and listened to here at the Cary Town Government website. The discussion and vote regarding adopting the plurality election method began around 1:20. Here are some excerpts from comments made by Council Members Don Frantz and Jack Smith: 1:26 Don Frantz
"One of the reasons I called for change to plurality is because we’d have a public hearing and hear what citizens had to say about it. … Most people said they preferred that we stick with what we’ve got. … Stick with our traditional non partisan… I highly agree that if we pursue change in our election, that we do it in a non election year. Number one, just to avoid any perception issues...
When our town agreed to IRV in 2007, it was kind of rush job..There was a lot of pushback, the public wasn’t involved ...
We’re on a deadline now, I think this is something we’ve got to study
When we look at doing something differently, there has to be a reason… whats Cary going to get…how is this going to make things better, Regarding plurality, IRV… I can’t see how it makes our elections better other than saving money
I hope all of us don’t mind paying more to get a little better product..
I like the fact that that traditional elections, no matter how many candidates you have in the race, the top two have a month to go at it. You might have your favorite, it doesn’t make the instant runoff… you didn’t know who to rank… but once you know who the top two candidates are… I don’t think it’s that broke… I don’t’ think we really need to focus on fixing it…" 1:35 Jack Smith:
"...I thought that the feedback was pretty balanced .. I didn’t see it overwhelming one way or the other… when you considered Cary citizens.. The important point is that.. we have two years to do some real in-depth studying…get some legitimate polling that’s not biased by out of city groups…get some feedback on our surveys, and do this in a calm reasonable manner, Yes there may be cost issues but is a practice that we’ve been doing this for many years, it does determine a clear winner, a 50%+1 winner….and I think it’s the right thing to do at this time…" Don Frantz, council member who blogs about council meetings after each meeting, mentioned the April 30 decision in his blogSunday, May 3, 2009
Week in Review 4/26/09 - 5/1/09
"...This was council meeting week. There wasn’t much on the agenda as there aren’t many development projects taking place these days. Council did however make a decision on whether or not to change the method of elections in Cary. After exploring the possibilities of instant runoff voting (IRV) and plurality elections council decided to stick with the non-partisan traditional runoff election method. I am pleased. If you have been reading my blog youknow my thoughts regarding IRV – I don’t like it (and that’s putting it nicely). I was genuinely interested in hearing citizens thoughts regarding the switch back to plurality elections (Cary utilized this method until 2000 when we switched to runoff elections). Unfortunately I didn’t get a lot of feedback regarding plurality (until I stated such at a council meeting – then I received a few emails). Most folks I heard from were special interest groups and politicos both in support and in opposition to IRV. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate any and all feedback, I just wish more “average citizens” had taken the time to weigh in on the topic. I would like to thank Chris, Joyce, Perry, and Andrew for all their help." Hendersonville City Council think that IRV was a success when they tried it in 2007, because it didn't blow up in their faces, there was no runoff election, they didn't have to count the IRV votes, and they also ignored the comments of some of the voters: Oct 19, 2007 Voter finds new system frustrating By Harrison Metzger Times-News. Hendersonville: Bill Modlin wasn't happy with his first experience with the new"instant runoff" voting when he cast his ballot for Hendersonville City Council on Thursday. ..."It doesn't make any sense to me, and I can guarantee you because of the way they have it set up there are people in this town that are going to lose their vote," he said. ..."I call it instant confusion," he said. (Cached) The Hendersonville Council's measure of success was whether they avoided runoff, not that voters got to pick 3 more choices. Further, Hendersonville is not using a real instant runoff system, but a made up method. IRV is a single seat election method, but Hendersonville is using it for a multi seat contest. Voters are asked to "pick two" then rank three, in order to elect 2 choices for the seat. With candidates only needing to obtain 25% of the votes, it is unlikely the additional votes will be needed. Worse, this made up election method will thwart bullet style or single shot voting, making it harder for some groups to elect their candidates. The idea to consider switching to plurality came after the Durham County Board of Elections approached their City Council with the recommendation to switch to plurality. They advised the council that: "The Non-Partisan plurality method is the only method that ensures only one election/voting process." This is true - if saving money is the primary objective, only plurality elections can guarantee a savings and one election only, while IRV might save some money, but would provide a plurality result and possibly some messy recounts or questionable results. On April 7, 2009, Durham community leaders urged the city to keep traditional runoffs and oppose IRV.. the council voted unanimously to keep the traditional runoff system. So there you have it, Cary, a city that has tried plurality, instant runoff and traditional elections has chosen traditional elections with the 50%+1 majority requirement. This is Cary, the city with the most Ph.D.s per capita in the U.S. for towns larger than 75,000 people. This time, the council had time to weigh their options and consider the facts. Cary has seen the front end and back end of IRV, and based on the results - did not choose IRV again.
Thursday, April 9. 2009
The state of California has made allowances for Instant Runoff Voting Software three times. First the state allowed San Francisco to knowingly purchase uncertified software for the sake of instant runoff voting, and then the state went on to grant 2 exemptions to use that uncertified software. And the vendor, Sequoia still hasn't gotten its crappy software certified yet. Then the hippocracy and irony come to play. California sued ES&S for selling a new version of the Automark ballot marking device, a federally certified machine but not yet examined by the state of California. Voting-machine company settles suit with state Wire Report 3/20/09 ...A voting-machine manufacturer has agreed to pay California $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it sold unauthorized machines to San Francisco and four other counties. ...In a statement, ES&S said the A200 had been approved for federal use and was “inadvertently deployed” in California. The machines have since been authorized.
ES&S must have really sorry lawyers if they can get beaned for $3.2 million for machines the state ultimately certifies and that were already federally certified. Especially when the state knowingly and deliberately allowed the city of San Francisco to purchase and then use uncertified software to tally highly complex elections such as instant runoff voting. Why did California allow all of the exceptions for San Francisco's new Sequoia software? Because its so darn hard to count IRV ballots, especially if you have a few hundred thousand. For Instant Runoff Voting, the standards suddenly don't matter: election integrity, requirements for voting systems, and transparency all get thrown away. Because its more important to give the image that IRV "is as easy as 1-2-3" than it is to hold all voting systems to high standards and protect all votes equally. Another waiver issued for voting system New voting equipment The City is using under a $12.6 million, four-year contract has yet to be fully certified by the state, which nonetheless gave San Francisco a waiver to use the system again in May. San Francisco is the only municipality in California that uses ranked-choice voting, so the software it is using, from Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, has been modified. San Francisco previously used machines from Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software, which never received certification, only waivers. It was later determined that the most recent version of the equipment was unauthorized. With the Sequoia equipment, Secretary of State Debra Bowen issued a one-time waiver last year that allowed San Francisco to use the modified version of the software for the November election. However, the Secretary of State’s Office issued another one-time waiver March 5 allowing The City to use the modified software in May. Although there are no local races on the spring ballot, voters will use the Sequoia system, according to Elections Department Director John Arntz. “We’re confident that the system is counting votes accurately,” he said. — John Upton
Ah yes, there's that old saw - "We're confident... blah blah blah... " thanks, I've heard that crap before, and finally, after the debacle where 4,400 votes were lost on machines that officials were oh so confident in, we in North Carolina passed a law. We passed a law that sets high standards for ALL voting systems and to ALL voting vendors to protect ALL of the votes.
Wednesday, April 8. 2009
The EAC has been audited and deficiencies found. The US EAC Office of Inspector General has issued a scathing report of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The Election Assistance Commission is charged with serving as a national resource for administering Federal elections and establishing standards for State and local governments. Keep in mind that the The EAC has impact on setting standards, providing guideance to states and auditing the use of Help America Vote Act funding to states. An excerpt from that report dated March 31, 2009 "...We contracted with Clifton Gunderson LLP (Clifton Gunderson), an independent certified public accounting firm, to audit the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's (Commission) financial statements as of September 30, 2008 and for the year then ended. In conjunction with its audit, Clifton Gunderson noted certain matters involving internal control and other operational matters that should be brought to management's attention. These matters, which are discussed in the attached letter, are in the addition to those reported in Clifton Gunderson's audit report on the Commissino's financial statements. (Assignment No. I-PA-EAC-01-08) and do not constitute significant deficiencies as defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
The EAC gets audited - maybe now they will understand why we want our elections audited. Someone? Buehler. Buehler?
Thursday, March 19. 2009
Diebold KNEW about this flaw and said nothing until caught red handed. The latest flaw - the audit logs on Diebold voting systems do not work all of the time. So in effect they are useless, because you cannot trust them. The shame of it is that Diebold will keep doing this over and over again until states toughen up their laws, as we in North Carolina did. You see, in North Carolina, Diebold would have faced criminal and civil penalties for hiding this. By Kim Zetter March 17, 2009 | 6:29:04 PMCategories: E-Voting
 SACRAMENTO, California — Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) admitted in a state hearing Tuesday that the audit logs produced by its tabulation software miss significant events, including the act of someone deleting votes on election day.
The company acknowledged that the problem exists with every version of its tabulation software. ...The GEMS software is used to tabulate votes cast on Premier/Diebold touch-screen and optical-scan machine, and is used in more than 1,400 election districts in 31 states...
But to know Diebold is to not trust Diebold anyhow. Personally I think Diebold Voting Systems is the scum of the earth, especially after Diebold tried to gut North Carolina's Public Confidence in Elections Law. When Diebold couldn't gut our law, they packed up their little briefcases and left. In North Carolina we took measures to deter this dishonest, unethical and shady behavior by making it ILLEGAL. Friday, December 23. 2005 David Allen at BlackBoxVoting.com Yesterday was the deadline for signing the affidavit mentioned here:
§ 163‑165.9A. Voting systems: requirements for voting systems vendors; penalties.
...
(3) The chief executive officer of the vendor shall sign a sworn affidavit that the source code and other material in escrow is the same being used in its voting systems in this State. The chief executive officer shall ensure that the statement is true on a continuing basis.
...
b) Penalties. - Willful violation of any of the duties in subsection (a) of this section is a Class G felony. Substitution of source code into an operating voting system without notification as provided by subdivision (a)(2) of this section is a Class I felony. In addition to any other applicable penalties, violations of this section are subject to a civil penalty to be assessed by the State Board of Elections in its discretion in an amount of up to one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) per violation. A civil penalty assessed under this section shall be subject to the provisions of G.S. 163‑278.34(e)."
Who do we owe for this section of the Public Confidence in Elections Law? David Allen of High Point and owner of this blog! Wouldn't these be good federal standards?
Along with this tough section of law, we also tip our hat to the many activists (and some computer scientists) around the state who lobbied their County Commissioners and county Boards of Elections as well as attended many of the public demos for Diebold. Very few counties were willing to purchase Diebold as a result so it just wasn't worth the hassle and the potential lawsuits for Diebold. I am proud to guest blog here for David from time to time when not doing other things.
And the Minnesota Voters Alliance would be happy to take this to the US Supreme Court as well. Seems that next court could consider the many flaws and paradoxes that Instant Runoff exhibited in the recent Burlington Vermont Election would be proof in spades that IRV is not fair to voters, does not provide a majority supported win, harms certain vulnerable, and just isn't democratic. more at the link
Wednesday, March 11. 2009
Instant runoff voting in Burlington Vermont: 71% of voters voted against Bob Kiss but Instant Runoff Voting re-elected the Burlington Vermont Mayor. According to Garrison Nelson, a University of Vermont political science professor, incumbent Bob Kiss won with an "artificial majority" cooked up by instant runoff voting. Nelson questions the point of instant runoff voting since many voters did not mark a second or third choice. One of Kiss's opponents, Republican Kurt Wright has requested a recount in response to some voters lack of confidence in the election results.
Runoff sealed Kiss victoryThird-choice IRV ballots helped make Kiss a winner
By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • March 8, 2009
The votes that sealed Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss’ victory Tuesday came from people who had marked Kiss as their third choice for mayor, according to a review by The Burlington Free Press of the city’s instant-runoff vote system data.
...• Kiss won 51.5 percent of the votes in the third round of instant-runoff tabulation, but overall he won only 44.7 percent of the 8,980 votes that were initially cast. Just 29 percent of the voters made him their first-choice selection.
“It’s an artificial majority cooked up by the mechanics of IRV, not by the voters,” said Garrison Nelson, a University of Vermont political science professor and longtime observer of city politics. “The fact is, 71 percent of the voters voted against Kiss.”
Nelson said the data showing that so many people chose not to mark second and third choices in the contest raise questions about whether instant-runoff voting is a better way to elect someone than having a traditional runoff election at a later date.
Thursday, November 13. 2008
Just wanted to say a proper good bye, I had been blogging here regularly (at least 5 days a week) since August 14th. Before that I only blogged here once in a while. I will be focusing on my work in North Carolina, and those efforts can be found at my website www.ncvoter.net , the home of the NC Coalition for Verified Voting. I am resting a bit after the hard work leading up to the election, and will start updating NCVoter more often in a few weeks. I also have a blog with updates showing on NCVoter's news page. This year, I will be focusing on the black box that online voter registration databases are. Too many people went to the polls only to find that they weren't on the voter list. We can do better. So, for now, so long, but if you want to see what we're doing in NC, you know where to visit. Thanks for your readership.
Friday, November 7. 2008
Numerous incidents of vote flipping, voter purges, and voter supression were reported during the 2008 Presidential election. And of course the "experts" say that the same old thing - that " the outcome of the election was not affectee" (by inaccurate counting?). Psych! But a group of 60 international observers have monitored our elections and found that US Democracy is basically in good health. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had an election observing mission to the United States. Press release US elections showed all fundamentals of a democratic vote, but electoral reform efforts should continue WASHINGTON, 5 November 2008 - Yesterday's elections in the United States demonstrated the essential principles of a pluralistic democracy characterized by transparency and the respect for fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, but efforts to enhance public confidence in the election process should continue, the observer mission deployed by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) concluded in a statement released today. Voters were able to make informed choices in a competitive and vigorously fought election. Free and pluralistic media and extensive campaign activities provided voters with a wealth of information about the candidates, their platforms and the election process. These elections generally met OSCE commitments. But the observers also said that the concerns that arose during previous elections have not been fully addressed in some states. "We have seen an election that displayed all the fundamentals of a genuinely democratic vote," said Ambassador Audrey Glover, the Head of the OSCE/ODIHR Limited Election Observation Mission....
Thursday, November 6. 2008
Its time to bring out that old photo of a Florida voting machine, because Florida still can't count votes: 
2 days after election Diebold still "counting" votes in Florida County. The governor of Florida has been asked to intervene in Hillsborough County Florida's elections. Election officials in Hillsborough County Florida are having to feed 80,000 ballots into optical scan machines made by "Premier Election Solutions" (Diebold). The election also didn't go so well for Hillsborough Election Supervisor Buddy Johnson, whose election was tied to those uncounted ballots. Johnson ended up conceding the election and county officials are considering a lawsuit against Diebold er I mean "Premier". (We're supposed to be fooled by the name change.) Oh, and isn't it time that Florida started hiring or appointing election directors, instead of creating the conflict of interest of running their own elections? Governor asked to intervene in Hillsborough elections Thursday, 06 Nov 2008 TAMPA – Two state senators are calling on Governor Charlie Crist to get involved in Hillsborough County’s election mess. Senator Charlie Justice, District 16, and Senator Arthenia Joyner, District 18, sent a letter to the governor Thursday requesting he intervene since there are still thousands of uncounted votes and unresolved issues with the optical scan machine software-- two days after the election. ... Elections workers began re-entering nearly 80,000 two-page ballots into the machines Thursday morning. It’s expected to take at least ten hours to complete, then another two hours to upload the results into the system....
An election in Florida without major screwups is like a day without sunshine.... |
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