Wednesday, October 22. 2008
Google announces their US Voter Info Site today, on Google Blog. Google recognizes a niche. Information. When voters want information about voting, they are not likely to find it easily. Many top state election officials ignore the task of voter education, leaving voters to fend for themselves. So, Google invested some of its brain power to set up a US Voter Info Site. And you can find it by - googling - just type in "where do I vote". Greater access to voting information 10/22/2008
...It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we've released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize voting locations and registration information.
The New York Times says today that: "The U.S. Voter Info site was developed in partnership with with several state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project." So have no fear, you can find it here. Thank you Google!
Tuesday, September 30. 2008
The great thing about the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline is that you will get a live person to help you on election day. This hotline also coordinates with many others, so there is no need to worry about duplicate efforts. All you need to remember is 1-866-OUR-VOTE and www.866OURVOTE.org . You can get help at the hotline, and you can share your voting experiences at the website. This helps identify problems and trouble spots. Nation's Largest Election Protection Coalition Launches Hotline, Website By Kat Zambon, electionline.org. Posted September 29, 2008. More than 100 partner organizations prepare to help voters for November With record voter turnout expected at the polls this November, the Election Protection coalition, which includes the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Rock the Vote say they have prepared the largest and most comprehensive election watch effort ever undertaken. "We’re confident that we can help millions of Americans overcome obstacles to make sure their votes count," said Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections, part of the Lawyers’ Committee. The primary tool will be a toll-free phone number, 1-866-OUR-VOTE (and its Spanish counterpart 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA), a nonpartisan confidential voter services hotline.... more at the link
Thursday, September 11. 2008
1st, only certain people could vote, then, some people only had 3/5 of a vote, next, came poll taxes, then, came literacy tests. Folks in Michigan who lost their homes haven't suffered enough, figures the Michigan GOP party. They lose their vote, too! This will affect more than 62,000 households in the state. Here comes Jim Crow to Michigan! Lose your house, lose your vote By Eartha Jane Melzer 9/10/08 Michigan Republicans plan to foreclose African American voters The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day. ...One expert questioned the legality of the tactic. “You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington D.C.-based public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”
Guess who was the biggest victim of the sub prime loans? The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth....
D.C. Election Glitch Blamed On Equipment
Washington Post
D.C. election officials blamed a defective computer memory cartridge yesterday for producing what appeared to be thousands of write-in votes that officials say did not exist. Ah, the return of the "glitch".
As I have stated before, "glitch" is a word the press likes to use anytime they discuss computer failures. The word conveys a problem, but doesn't assign blame to anyone. Things just mysteriously happen.
I wonder if they would refer to the collapse of the bridge in Minnesota as the result of a "glitch".
No, of course not. The bridge collapsed because people failed to perform the proper maintenance on it, and allowed serious structural failures to go untreated.
Same with computers. Recovering from a hardware failure is the acid test of a well written program. In this case, the software failed the test, since it allowed phantom votes to register.
"It was determined that one defective cartridge caused vote totals to be duplicated into multiple races on the summary report issued by our office. The Board immediately caught and addressed this error, as is reflected in the last unofficial results report issued on Election Night," Murphy said in the statement. This is the hallmark of bad software. A good programmer anticipates errors, especially hardware failures, they even have a name for it, they call it "error-trapping".
He refused to answer questions from reporters, and no members of the election board appeared. Of course, this assumes that the cause of the problem is being accurately reported to the press, which is a risky bet most of the time, especially since election boards seldom have their own programmers of techs on staff. The usual routine is to repeat whatever the vendor told them happened, and not answer questions which would reveal that they are simply reading lines from a script and have no clue what they are talking about.
I am not the only one who is skeptical.
"That press release is a model of obfuscation," said Henry E. Brady, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied voting systems extensively, including in the deadlocked 2000 presidential contest.
The explanation that a defective cartridge caused tallying errors across multiple races "is what throws me off," Brady said. "It is hard to know what that means. I'm having trouble figuring out how that happens."
Thursday, August 14. 2008
In Ballot Stuffing Holes, Illegal USB Ports Add to Sequoia/Dominion Voting System Flaws By Rady Ananda and Andi Novick, they describe the new Sequoia's brand new "Image Cast" voting machine. You can stuff these voting machines just like a Thanks Giving Turkey. Sequoia has produce a combination optical scanner with DRE interface for disabled, similar to a combo TV/VCR. Talk about combo, this is a perfect combo for fraud, with handy slots for stuffing paper ballots and USB ports ready to install whatever you choose.
Continue reading "New Sequoia Voting Machine - Stuff it, Just Stuff it Like a Thanksgiving Turkey!"
Thursday, March 15. 2007
Sarasota officials ignored warning about voting machines
St. Petersburg Times
The maker of the voting machines used in last fall's disputed Sarasota area congressional race warned state and county officials that voters might have trouble recording their votes but the company's advice for fixing the problem went unheeded.
And as the controversy swirled into another national debate about another troubled Florida election, state and county officials never told anyone about the company warning that some of its touch-screen machines could produce a seconds-long delay before recording votes.
An Aug. 15 letter from Election Systems & Software told state and county officials about "slow response times" in recording votes on some of its machines. The company said an "update to the firmware" was required and also suggested counties post signs and train poll workers and voters about the need to press firmly for several seconds to ensure that the machine properly recorded the vote. Such is the level of arrogance of some election officials.
I have certainly been sympathetic to the problems faced by election officials in trying to do their jobs. They lack the expertise, have lots of people yelling at them, and while they get lots of grief if there is a screw up, they endure little praise when things go right.
But there is a group of election officials who ruin it all for the rest of them, and we see such a group in this story. Election officials who have nothing but contempt for voters, who worship at the altar of BBV and ignore all evidence, no matter how compelling, that the system has problems. And even when palliative measures are available, refuse to implement them since they believe doing so would imply admission of error.
ES&S told Sarasota they would have problems. They told them how to deal with the problem to insure accurate elections. But...
That never happened in Sarasota County.
And although state, county and company officials insist the accuracy of the vote counting was not in jeopardy, Pasco County got the same letter and chose not to use the 40 affected machines on Election Day in November.
"It wasn't any big deal," Sarasota Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent said Wednesday. There you have it, straight from the horse's ass' mouth!
In all probability the wrong person was "elected" to office, but this is not a "big deal". Sit down and shut up, and take the congressmen WE decide you should have.
But the arrogant contempt isn't just found with one person, it is endemic in Florida.
County and state officials said Wednesday they did not question the company when it failed to bring forward an upgrade before the election because, despite the response delay, the machines were working properly.
"We weren't experiencing a problem," Dent said.
"There was no need to go to the vendor to change the systems that close to the election," said Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the state Division of Elections. "The elections were not in jeopardy." I think the MASSIVE undervote proves your WERE experiencing problems, specifically your system was BROKEN and you were too intoxicated with your own magisterial superciliousness to be concerned with quaint customs like "fair elections".
A question for Sarasota voters: Why does this woman still have a job?
Monday, March 5. 2007
Diebold Weighs Strategy for Voting Unit
Associated Press
Diebold Inc. saw great potential in the modernization of elections equipment. Now, analysts say, executives may be angling for ways to dump its e-voting subsidiary that's widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation.
Though Diebold Election Systems - the company's smallest business segment - has shown growth and profit, it's faced persistent criticism over the reliability and security of its touch-screen voting machines. About 150,000 of its touch-screen or optical scan systems were used in 34 states in last November's election.
The criticism is particularly jarring for a nearly 150-year-old company whose primary focus has long been safes and automated teller machines.
"This is a company that has built relationships with banks every day of every year. It pains them greatly to see their brand tarnished by a marginal operating unit," said Gil Luria, an investment analyst who monitors Diebold for Wedbush Morgan Securities Inc. They have no one to blame but themselves for this. And if I were a bank, I'd be damned leery of anything Diebold told me or promised me about their products, given the blizzard of lies and criminal deceptions the company has engaged in.
The major challenge that Diebold faces now is that no one is going to buy a company so totally discredited as this one. It would be easier to sell Titanic brand cruise ships, or Hindenburg brand zeppelins than a Diebold voting machine company. Diebold's name has become synonymous with deceit, inaccuracy, and corrupt politics, and rightly so.
Diebold has always defended its voting machines and its own intentions, even after its former chairman and chief executive, Wally O'Dell, sought with little success to convince critics his strong ties with Republican politics as a fundraiser for George W. Bush were not the motive for the company's involvement in elections. See what I mean?
Might Diebold choose to keep the voting business and grow it?
"It's a possibility, but I'd assign it a very low probability," Luria said.
Voting machine makers such as Diebold; Election Systems & Software, of Omaha, Neb.; Sequoia Voting Systems, of Oakland, Calif., and Hart InterCivic, of Austin, Texas have had the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 as a sales catalyst. HAVA, with $3.9 billion of funding, urged the nation to move past punch card voting and hanging chads that delayed the conclusion of the 2000 presidential election.
ES&S, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic declined comment on a possible Diebold Election Systems sale. The other companies have no reason to buy even Diebold's customer list, since they are going to get the customers anyway once Diebold bails out of the business. And they are hardly likely to invest in Diebold's universally reviled hardware/software.
Diebold may literally have to pay someone to take the company, otherwise they will be facing law suits from orphaned customers.
Douglas E. Rodgers, managing partner and chief executive officer of Washington-based investment banking firm FOCUS Enterprises Inc., said he has worked with Diebold executives on recent acquisitions. He could not comment on Diebold's intentions for voting systems.
Kimball Brace, who closely tracks voting system vendors as president of Washington-based Election Data Services Inc., said there is uncertainty now in the elections market, a result of possible legislation setting new requirements with no promise there will be additional funding.
He couldn't say what Diebold will do.
"If I were in these guy's shoes, I'd be looking close and hard at what I'm doing in this marketplace," Brace said. "But given the uncertainty, who would buy it?" Indeed!
And when all is said and done, it will be BBV - 0, anti-BBV activists - 1
Wednesday, February 21. 2007
Feinstein seeks GAO investigation of e-voting machines
Computer World
An influential U.S. senator last week called on the federal government to find out why electronic voting machines have caused problems in some recent elections.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last Wednesday asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct an investigation of electronic voting machines -- especially those that fail to produce a paper receipt of the ballots cast. Feinstein, who chairs the senate Rules and Administration Committee, called on the GAO to complete the investigation before the 2008 presidential election.
Feinstein is asking that the GAO investigate claims by e-voting critics that some new machines are prone to error, can be easily hacked and altered, and can be secretly reprogrammed to change the outcome of a race. This is WAY overdue. This should have been done years ago, or at the latest after the Diebold emails were leaked.
It should be followed up with a criminal investigation (with emphasis on the RICO statute) into every vendor and "certification" lab, as well as efforts by ITAA and to "lobby" those certification labs and government agencies to set standards which were favorable to the BBV vendors, at the expense of accurate and secure election equipment.
While they are at it, they should look into The Election Center and the money it received from vendors which appear to have influenced its recommendations on voting equipment.
Tuesday, February 6. 2007
Cuyahoga Co. Elections Director Resigns
WEWS News (Cleveland) NewsChannel5 has confirmed that embattled elections chief in Cuyahoga County has resigned.
Executive director Michael Vu's ouster marks the end of a tense term that thrust Cuyahoga County and its voters in the national spotlight. Under Vu, the county weathered a botched primary election and convictions of two workers who mishandled the 2004 presidential recount.
At age 28, Vu was hired in 2003 to take over the largest and arguably most problematic elections board in the bellwether state during a hard-fought and close presidential campaign.
In November 2004, Cuyahoga, which has more than 1 million registered voters, was among the counties with long lines and complaints over provisional ballots. The election ended with Ohio giving President Bush the electoral votes needed to narrowly win the White House over Democratic U.S. Sen. John Kerry.
Before Vu's appointment, the county had a history of troubles, including absentee ballots invalidated because they were counted twice, shortages of ballots, misplaced ballots, votes cast by unregistered voters and voters who were not told of a change in their polling places.
Under his watch, problems continued.
Last May's primary, the first attempt at electronic voting in the county, was marred by poll workers who were not prepared to operate the machines, some poll workers who didn't show up to work and vote-holding memory cards that were misplaced or lost.
And last month, two elections board workers were convicted of illegally rigging the 2004 presidential election recount so they could avoid a more thorough review of the votes.
Vu defended those workers and their decision to pick ahead of time the ballots they would count in what was supposed to be a random sample. He said the workers followed longtime procedures and did nothing wrong. Just because you have criminal procedures in place for a long time doesn't make them legal.
Wednesday, January 24. 2007
Two Ohio election workers found guilty of rigging vote recount
AP Wire
Two election workers in Ohio have been convicted of rigging the recount of the 2004 presidential tally in one county.
Elections coordinator Jacqueline Maiden and ballot manager Kathleen Dreamer of Cuyahoga County were each found guilty of negligent misconduct of an elections employee. That's a felony that could mean up to 18 months in prison.
The two were also convicted of a misdemeanor count of failure of elections employees to perform their duty. Each was acquitted of five other charges.
Maiden and Dreamer were accused of secretly reviewing pre-selected ballots before the recount in Cuyahoga County to avoid a more costly, time-consuming hand count of all votes.
Cuyahoga is Ohio's most populous county. It was Ohio that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Senator John Kerry. And now we have to wonder...
Wednesday, January 3. 2007
Lab that tests voting machines barred by US
Raw Story/New York Times
A laboratory that has tested most of the nation's electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.
The company, Ciber Inc. of Greenwood Village, Colo., has also come under fire from analysts hired by the state of New York over its plans to test new voting machines for the state. New York could eventually spend $200 million to replace its aging lever devices.
Experts on voting systems say the Ciber problems underscore long-standing worries about lax inspections in the secretive world of voting-machine testing. The action by the federal Election Assistance Commission seems certain to fan growing concerns about the reliability and security of the devices. We have said in the past that since the ITA's (Ciber being one of them) could not be trusted since they refused to disclose their testing methodology and since they actually worked for the e-voting vendors.
How many times must we be right before election officials LISTEN?
Full story now up.
Monday, November 20. 2006
There is a piece in the WAPO today recommending Vote By Mail.
It was written by the Secretary of State of Oregon, where Vote By Mail is used.
The article makes some serious claims -
-"proven to be fraud-free"
-gave Oregon turnout that was "among the highest in the nation"
-is "about 30% less expensive than polling place elections"
A Better Way to Vote
By Bill Bradbury
Sunday, November 19, 2006; Page B07
SALEM, Ore. -- "This month, as controversies emerged in other parts of the
country over polling place problems and malfunctioning touch-screen
machines, we here in Oregon prepared to swear in a new crop of elected
officials with nary a question about the legitimacy of the count or the
functioning of our electoral process. We accomplished this with a turnout
on Nov. 7 that was, once again, among the highest in the nation. How? With
Vote by Mail....
The system has proven to be fraud-free..."
There's a huge difference between "we verify signatures" to "proven to be
fraud-free". Instead, the fraud happens unseen.
VBM is not free from fraud in the form of voter coercion.
VBM uses central count optical scanners - which means all of the eggs are in one basket for each county. More votes in one place = greater risk.
"With voting by mail, Oregon's turnout is consistently among the highest of
any state without same-day voter registration..."
Could the additional turnout really be due to more engaged votes?Or could it be that those same voters who didn't care enough to vote before, who don't watch or read the news, who don't participate in our government - those same "no shows" found that their ballot was worth something to them - maybe a pair of jeans, or $50.00 or a bottle of liquor or a 6 pack of beer?
All the bad guy needs to do is get the person to sign the form and then they can vote the ballot as they choose.
"Voting by mail is also a cost-effective way to run elections, costing
taxpayers about 30 percent less than polling-place elections."
Elections do cost alot of money. But if the best way to vote costs more, than
I am for the best way to vote. VBM lacks transparency and secrecy of the ballot.
I haven't see the cost reports, but I have to say transparency trumps the cost.
"80 percent of voters across the political spectrum prefer it to voting at polling places...
The foundation of our democracy rests upon the administration of free, fair and highly participatory elections.
It's critical that Americans have faith in the security of their vote. Here in Oregon, with voting by mail, we have achieved those things and been able to assure voters that their votes count."
Its important that voters have REASON to have faith in the security of their vote.
That means having a secret ballot and votes counted publicly.
Part of the VBM movement was an effort to starve off the touchscreen/DRE vendors.
Now with all of the blowback against touchscreens this year, we hardly need to sacrifice
precinct style voting. Once the precincts are eliminated, it would be very hard to get them
restored.
Precinct voting allows for us to cast our ballot secretly, have it counted publicly (to a degree that needs to continue to improve) and it reduces the risks to our votes by limiting the number of votes counted in one location.
Lets continue to work towards increased transparency and accountability,
and not solve our problems with another problem.
Lets not lose the gains we have made so far.
Tuesday, November 7. 2006
Voter smashes touch-screen machine in Allentown
The Morning Call
A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today's election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.
Michael Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police.
Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots. This is the first time electronic machines are being widely used in a Pennsylvania general election.
"He smashed it with the cat's ears," said volunteer Jim Govostis, who watched the incident unfold at Raker Center, a nursing home owned by Good Shepherd, around 12:30 p.m.
Young, who brought the paperweight with him, then sat down, hung his head and waited for police, who arrested him without incident.
"He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID," said volunteer Gladys Pezoldt, "then he got on the machine and just snapped…He was immediately remorseful. When the police came, he got up, turned around and put his hands behind his back." Using a metal cat was a nice touch. Bricks and hammers are so unimaginative.
Monday, November 6. 2006
Get Ready for the Glitches
Time
Even before it starts tomorrow morning, the 2006 election is already shaping up as one massive lab experiment in how we cast and count 80 million votes or more. When you figure that most of us will have the chance to make anywhere from 20 to 25 choices at polling stations — on statewide races, local elections, constitutional amendments, local options and your county library and community college board elections — we are talking about tracking and tallying upwards of 2 billion different decisions. It's a wonder we can do it at all.
But it's not the sheer numbers that make 2006 unlike any election in the past. There are new legal and technical requirements this year, which could stretch some parts of this count well into the week.
For the first time this year, nearly 40% of Americans will vote by electronic device; nearly all of us will have our votes counted that way. That alone will cause some delays: voters won't all know how to operate them, poll workers will not be all fully trained, and, if recent primary voting is any indication, there are going to be technical problems. As states and counties certified their new devices in October — and it's not uncommon for multiple types of machines to be used in almost every state — there were reports of glitches, ballot errors, machines communicating in the wrong languages with voters, and continued doubts about chain of custody in the wake of multiple reports that most of the machines can be easily hacked. More than 26 states have adopted some kind of verifiable audit trail so voters can check their choices against the machine, but many states lack a paper trail of any kind, contending that it's not necessary or the printers are too expensive. Guam, at least, isn't taking chances: On Saturday, the American protectorate's governor signed a bill suspending the use of the electronic devices next week. There will almost certainly be dozens of real-time reports from polling places of machine malfunctions; each one will have to be run down and checked. Let the recount begin.
Wednesday, November 1. 2006
E-Voting Still Stirring Controversy as Mid-Term Elections Approach
E-commerce Times
According to published reports, Diebold Election Systems quietly replaced flawed components in several thousand voting machines last year. The repairs were aimed at fixing a so-called "screen-freeze" problem discovered three years earlier. The state's Board of Elections is considering whether Diebold's failure to inform the board of those changes is a violation of the company's contract.
The case involves machines in Maryland, where, according to published reports, Diebold Latest News about Diebold Election Systems quietly replaced flawed components in several thousand voting machines last year. The repairs were aimed at fixing a so-called "screen-freeze" problem discovered three years earlier.
Now, the state's Board of Elections is considering whether Diebold's failure to inform the board of those changes and what brought them about represents a violation of the company's contract with the state. In North Carolina, failure to inform the BoE of bugs or other flaws is a CRIME.
Diebold reportedly replaced motherboards on some 4,700 machines in a handful of Maryland counties. Maryland has been at the forefront of a movement to create broad access to e-voting systems and as a result has found itself in the spotlight of controversy. 4,700 motherboards!
This is a MASSIVE failure.
|
