Entries tagged as voting machines
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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Tuesday, November 4. 2008
When a touch screen voting machine tried to steal Oprah Winfrey's vote for President last Thursday, the public and media noticed. Oprah was voting on a touchscreen voting machine paid for by funds from ironically named "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA). This week, Tim Robbins found to his shock and anger that his name had been purged from New York's voter rolls. His right to vote was being stolen by the voter registration databases - also required by HAVA. Robbins refused to vote an "affadavit ballot" or similarly named provisional ballot, because he felt that (rightly so) such a ballot might not be counted. Robbins went to court, and after a few hours obtained a court order stating that he was indeed a registered voter. Robbins had voted regularly and at the same location for years, and had not changed residence. Robbins was then able to cast a regular ballot. Most of us would not be able to do this. "This is just one example of how difficult it is to vote in the United States," he said. There seems to be a common thread in these federal laws with the catchy names, like the "Clean Skies Act", "No Child Left Behind Act", and others. The common thread - these acts do the opposite of what their name says.
Tonight's blog is a last minute reminder to voters everywhere in the United States. Voters, please be prepared before you go to the polls. If you want to make sure your vote counts, then go to the correct polling place. Know your state's voter ID requirements, and if your state doesn't require ID, you might want to bring some anyway, in case there are voter roll problems. If you have a problem voting, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. They have trained staff to answer your questions, supply help, and document the problems. You can see those reports as they happen, at OURVOTELIVE.
Saturday, October 25. 2008
Is there a "party default" setting for these machines? Laugh or cry. You know how in Texas ,and WV the touchscreens are flipping votes from Obama to McCain? Well, in Tennessee there were reports of touchscreens flipping from McCain to Obama. Today I read that in Guilford County some machines were flipping from McCain to Obama. Surprised? It happened before in Oct 2004, in Craven County NC some votes saw their votes switched from Bush to Kerry Perhaps TX and WV have a republican default, and NC, and TN have a democratic default? Anyway, isn't it time to ditch these touchscreens now that we are all pissed off, in a bi partisan way? Some machines scramble voter choicesBY DAVID NIVENS dnivens@hpe.com Oct 25,2008 GUILFORD COUNTY - Laurie Edwards of Thomasville heard a strange voting story from her mother this week.
Turns out it's a fairly widespread problem with touch-screen voting machines.
Edwards said her mother, Liz Odom of Greensboro, had problems getting a voting machine in Jamestown to accept her presidential vote on Friday. She cancelled the vote until the machine accepted it.
"I have had several complaints of this happening, with the machines giving the Democratic vote when the Republican was selected," Bill Wright, chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, told elections officials Friday. "These machines should be calibrated every day so this does not happen."
Election officials agreed to check the iVotronic machines more carefully and urged voters to study the review screens to make sure all their selections are correct before casting the electronic ballot.
"We know not everyone is pushing that review screen button," Wright said.
West Virginia voters have reported similar problems with touch-screen machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software, which is North Carolina's only machine vendor. Experts acknowledge that the machines can scramble vote selections if they are uncalibrated, causing a touch in the wrong place and an incorrect vote selection.
"Voters should tell us if they are having any problems," said Guilford County Elections Director George Gilbert. "If they don't tell us, then we can't know. I don't know how many of these are calibration problems. Some people touch the wrong spot."
Gilbert said older machines present the most problems. Election workers test voting machines before deploying them to voting sites.
"The new ones do not get out of calibration in two weeks of use," he said. "We will find the ones that are out of calibration."
dnivens@hpe.com
Thursday, October 23. 2008
This is taking software independence to an all new level. There's a surprise ending to this movie but you'll just have to watch it yourself.
Friday, October 17. 2008
Straight Ticket Confusion causes North Carolina voters to throw away tens of thousands of presidential votes away every four years. Our state has one of the highest undervote rates for President in the Country because of this. In 2004 our state through away 92,000 votes for president. I am writing to ask you for your help in making more votes count. NC is one of two states in the country where straight ticket voting does not count for President. This unusual exception trips up tens of thousands of voters every 4 years. Voters have very little reason to know about this exception, since it is not intuitive, and it was not even mentioned in the 3 million + voter guides mailed to households all over North Carolina. Now I am getting feedback from poll workers and observers that we still have voters who do not understand NC's straight ticket voting exceptions. How to make your vote count if you choose the straight ticket option
Continue reading "Confused North Carolina Voters Throw Votes Away - Straight Ticket Voting Warning"
Thursday, October 16. 2008
Here is a list of amusing security maxims from the website of Argonne National Lab's Nuclear Engineering Division. These are tongue in cheek, but bear much truth. See how many you think apply directly to election security. A special favorite: Mr. Spock Maxim: The effectiveness of a security device, system, or program is inversely proportional to how angry or upset people get about
the idea that there might be vulnerabilities.
We've come a long ways in 5 years of e-voting activism, but still have more work to do. The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting Foundation today issued a 50 state report card today grading states on their preparedness for the November election. States were graded by four criteria: procedures for issuing emergency paper ballots, reconciling ballot tallies, providing paper records of votes cast, and post-election audits. I am proud to say that North Carolina ranked in the "most prepared" in all four categories, and partly because of an improvement this week in post election audit procedures. The owner of this website, David Allen, deserves high praise and thanks for North Carolina's high grade because he actually wrote parts of NC's Public Confidence in Elections Law, which has improved our elections so much. So, thank you David. Here's the press release and I recommend you click on the link to the report, it provides details and maps of states color coded by their grade of readiness States Get Mixed Reviews on Readiness for Voting Machine Problems Citing Improvements, Election Experts Call for Backup Measures to Secure the Vote on Nov 4th |
Continue reading "50 State Report Card on 2008 Election Readiness - How did your state do?"
Wednesday, October 15. 2008
Disaster averted. West Virginia found an error in how their machines counted certain straight ticket voting choices just in time to correct it. ...County Commission President Kent Carper said the problem is in the section for Supreme Court candidates. If a person votes a straight party ticket, then deviates from the party in the Supreme Court section, the machine still counts the vote as a full straight ticket, Carper said...
Commissioner Dave Hardy said that the pre-election testing did its job: "The system worked," Hardy said. "We did the test, it was timely reviewed by the Secretary of State's office and they identified the problem and we're fixing the problem."...
Straight ticket voting complicates elections around the country. The risk of increased miscounts is greater. The failure of voters to follow states' specialized instructions can result in huge undervotes. Both North Carolina and South Carolina historically suffer unusually high undervotes in presidential elections because, by state law, voters who mark the "straight-party-ticket voting" option must also vote separately for president. Every four years, tens of thousands of voters in both states apparently forget to do this. A simple mistake can flip the results of the election. It all has to do with the way the ballots are set up for the computers that count them. Its all about checks and balances, and having the public come to pre-election testing to make sure many different ballot styles are tested. Now that we are past that point in many states, we will have to rely upon voter education (for instructions), for activists to check polling place results against reported results, and for post election audits. Just get involved and learn what your state does.
Will your vote count in 2008? Find out by listening in on the conference call with some of the top national experts on the US voting issues. Thursday, October 16, at 12 PM eastern you can dial in and join the conference call lead by Lawrence Norden, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Susannah Goodman, Common Cause, director of election reform and Pamela Smith, Verified Voting Foundation, President. # Watchdogs Ask: Is America Ready to Vote?
Last update: 2:23 p.m. EDT Oct. 14, 2008
WASHINGTON, Oct 14, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Report
Assesses 50 States on Ability to Address Voting Machine Problems on
Election Day
With millions of Americans expected to confront an array of voting
technologies on Nov. 4, election experts from the Brennan Center for
Justice, Common Cause and Verified Voting will release on Thursday a
50-state report card that grades every state on its preparedness to
respond to Election Day voting system problems like broken machines,
software malfunctions, or long lines that result from voting equipment
breakdowns or misallocation of machines.
As the authors will explain in a conference call on Thursday, October
16, 2008 at 12PM EDT, some states still have not adopted laws and
procedures to effectively address an election system meltdown, even as
the country has invested billions of dollars to improve its voting
technology.
Continue reading "Is America Ready to Vote? Join Watchdogs Thurs Conference Call"
Monday, October 13. 2008
The Connecticut Secretary of State requested that the UConn VoTeR Center perform a pre-election audit of the memory cards for the Diebold Accu-Vote Optical Scan tabulators used in the August 2008 Connecticut Primary Elections The audit found that of 185 Diebold voter cards, 175 were found to be properly programmed, the rest contained junk data. The machines are supposed to be able to detect this, so supposedly the cards could not be used in an election. 5.4% is a high failure rate when trying to prevent chaos on election day. The cards were shipped to UConn directly from the vendor, LHS. This failure rate doesn't surprise me at all. Just look at Voters Unite's llong laundry list of problems with Diebold (that we know about) over the past several years. Standards for voting vendors are terribly low, they've been given a free pass for too long.
Friday, October 10. 2008
John Gideon has been putting out a newsletter of voting machine and election problems for nearly 5 years now. Thanks to John's daily news, many of us from different states learned that we shared similar problems with faulty voting machines and irresponsible voting vendors. Thanks to John's daily news - activists from different states began to find and share solutions, and ways to create solutions. Together we face the 2008 election, and wonder if our work has made any difference, or enough of a difference, and whether our votes will count. Today John gives an overview of what he has seen: For those of you who don't subscribe to "Daily Voting News" below is my rant for today: I'm 61 years old. I've been doing this work full-time for nearly the last five years. I long for the days, before I learned so much, when I was ignorant about dirty tricks, phony voter fraud accusations, voter list purges, voter suppression, poorly designed and inaccurate voting machines, absentee paper ballots that have the voters political party on the mail-in envelope (Yes, Broward Co Florida does that and strips privacy away from the voters and state law allows them to do it), long lines at the polls, and every other attempt to keep voters from voting and votes from being counted accurately, if at all. It was kinda nice not knowing about all of those issues. Oh, maybe someone would bring up the old story about ballot boxes floating in the bay. What bay was that? San Francisco? Lake Michigan off of Chicago? The Hudson River? The location seems to have changed with the person telling the story. It was nice thinking our democracy actually worked the way our founding fathers envisioned it would. It was nice thinking that, no matter for whom I voted, the majority voice was heard. Now, it just feels dirty and somewhat depressing. I know way too much. It was nice being ignorant. -- John Gideon Co-Executive Director VotersUnite.Org
# # I saw this quote somewhere, and it is something that we all need to remember when we feel like we are just putting a thumb in a broken dam: John Bartlett (1820-1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919. NUMBER: 10431 AUTHOR: Appendix QUOTATION: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. ATTRIBUTION: It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.-John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) If John Gideon's Daily News has made an impact on you, you may wish to tell him that.
Thursday, October 9. 2008
Oops. He told ya wrong! The Larimer County elections dept has been giving voters the wrong information about postage costs to mail in their ballots. The head elections official, Scott Doyle says he is working with the post office to try to prevent ballots from being returned to sender.  Mail-in ballot postage cost 59 cents, not 42 cents Return to sender ...“It has come to my attention this morning (Oct. 6) that the calculations determining the postage for returning a mail-in ballot by mail to our office were incorrect,” said Doyle. “In fact, the postage for returning a mail-in ballot is 59 cents, rather than the 42 cents stated in our earlier press release. ...This early catch also allows us to work with the post office prior to their receiving any returned ballots, to ensure all ballots are delivered to our office properly.” ...“I regret any inconvenience this may have caused Larimer County voters.” Larimer County Colorado Elections Clerk Scott Doyle on putting wrong postage advisory on absentee ballots.
Wednesday, October 8. 2008
Ohio-duh steals Flori-duh's Butterfly Ballot Design. Ohio may go down in history this November when 12 counties use a butterfly ballot. The design is hauntingly similar to the one that made Florida notorious in November 2000. Recently the Brennan Center for Justice urged Ohio election officials to redesign a ballot planned for 12 counties. The problem - the design is a modern day butterfly ballot, splitting the presidential contest over two columns on their paper ballots for this November's election. The difference between the Ohio butterfly ballot and the Florida butterfly ballot is that Ohio is using optical scanners, and Florida was using punch card. I guess this proves that there is more than one way to spoil an election. Potential Ballot Trouble In OH: Split Contests By Lawrence Norden – 10/01/08 By our count, at least twelve Ohio counties have split the presidential contest over two columns on their paper ballots for this November's election. This "column split" often confuses voters and results in double voting in the presidential race — and an uncounted vote. Today the Brennan Center urged election officials and advocates in Ohio to make sure that voters are aware of the split, and to make sure they vote only once for president. Unfortunately, the design meets legal guidelines and a directive issued by the Secretary of State. The twelve Ohio counties whose ballots spilt the presidential race over two columns are: Ashtabula, Athens, Auglaize, Champaign, Delaware, Lawrence, Logan, Madison, Ottawa, Seneca, Shelby, and Wyandot. A picture of the butterfly ballot and some further comments after the jump
Continue reading "Ohio's Soon to Be Infamous Butterfly Ballot in Nov 2008 Election"
Tuesday, October 7. 2008
Marybeth Kuznik, Executive Director of VotePA warns "Plan On Long Lines In Bucks Co, PA". In her testimony to PA lawmakers, she warned that officials that state there will not be enough voting machines in counties using paperless computerized machines. The state is basing its estimates on the use of lever machines, instead of considering the fact that it takes much longer vote on computerized machines. The Intelligencer backs this up in an article today. Is Bucks County more concerned about their own convenience and budget, instead of making sure that all voters can cast a ballot? Bucks County did not purchase enough machines, probably because they chose the more expensive electronic machines. Buck's electronic machines cost from 5-10 times more optical scanners. Bucks County's Election Director Deena Deen isn't sure how many machines Bucks County will need in November, but thinks the county would need 808 machines. The county currently has 765. But the state Elections Commissioner Chet Harhut recommended that counties using like Bucks that use the Danaher electronic machines should have one machine per 350 voters. Deen plans to allocate half as many machines as that in most cases. According to today's Philadelphia Intellgencier: Dean said polling places with 1,400 or fewer voters need two machines, 1,401 to 1,900 voters mean three machines and more than 1,900 voters require four machines.
Marybeth Kuznik, Executive Director of VotePA issues a dire warning about circumstance on the ground in PA: "Plan On Long Lines In Bucks Co, PA". Yes, we are expecting long lines in a lot of places in Pennsylvania next month. With fifty of our most populous counties are using DREs (all without VVPAT, btw) and with many of these counties having purchased machines based on an excessively high recommended voter-to-machine ratio, we know this will happen. My own county, Westmoreland (suburban Pittsburgh) is likely to be one place this will occur, but there are many more counties that will probably be affected.
Continue reading "Pennsylvania election nightmare: Long lines await voters in several counties"
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