Voting irregularities for March 7th - they've already started

[sonias]

Below is an official memorandum produced by our Secretary of State's office. This is for this current primary election where early voting is already underway. These black box voting systems are a total disaster! Yet our SOS is out there touting how safe an secure these e-voting systems are.

Who can't see the kind of ballot stuffing that might occur with printing emergency ballots, which the clerks number at the top themselves. Any candidate who might be involved in a close race, better be on the alert right now. Those candidates better get their lawyers lined up ready to file those lawsuits, in a close election. I'm especially concerned about that race between Ciro Rodriguez and Henry Cuellar. There were more than enough voting irregularities the last go around.

ES&S DRE counties require the services of ES&S for their ballot programming, but ES&S requires more than a month to get the programing job done. Due to several lawsuits challenging ballot access, the final official ballot got delayed. Printed paper ballots can also take up to a month to print as well. The TX-SOS then issues this urgent memo to the county clerks & registrars on the Feb. 16th. If anyone here on this board knows your county is using ES&S, you better be extra careful if you see these emergency ballots show up. I know that Bexar County in San Antonio uses ES&S. Here is a list of systems used by county from the SOS web site The ES&S systems that are impacted are the DRE systems.

URGENT MEMORANDUM
http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/urgent.shtml
Status of Ballot and Programming Card Orders
To: County Clerks / Election Administrators, County Chairs
From: Ann McGeehan, Director of Elections
Date: February 16, 2006
RE: Status of ballot and programming card orders

I want to thank many of you for contacting our office regarding your ballot status, letting us know that you have still not received your programming media or in some cases, your ballots, for the March 7, 2006 primary elections. Please be advised that the Secretary of State's office is communicating with the vendors about the situation and we regret that you are experiencing this problem. We have been assured that all counties will at least have optical scan ballots in time ot start the early voting period. Please be advised that early voting must begin next Tuesday, February 21, 2006, and we authorize the following procedure to ensure that early voting begins timely.

If you are one of the counties affected, the Secretary of State's office authorizes you to create emergency ballots . If you do not receive your ballots in time to properly prepare for early voting, the vendors should have sent you via e-mail your different ballot styles in a PDF format. You will be able to open that file, and print a copy of the ballot for a particular precinct from that format.

After you print a copy of the ballot, you will need to put a ballot number at the top of the ballot beginning with the next ballot number of the last number of your original ballot order. In other words, if you ordered 15,000 ballots numbered 1-15,000, any ballots you print from the PDF would be numbered beginning with the number 15,001. You will need to put your initials on the back of the ballot so you can determine it was an official ballot provided by you.

If you do not receive your ballot programming in time to conduct your required Logic and Accuracy tests, you will have no option but to begin early voting using the emergency paper ballots. Once you have received your programs and have conducted a successful L&A test, you must begin using the electronic voting equipment. Guidelines for conducting Logic and Accuracy testing will be posted on our website later today.

Once you have prepared the emergency ballots, you will handle the voter in the regular manner as if paper ballots were being regularly used. If you intend to use optical scan ballots for election day, then the emergency ballots can either be hand counted by the ballot board or the manager of the central counting station can decide to have them duplicated for counting at the central counting station. There are no special lists or other record keeping you need to keep, except to adjust your ballot distribution form.

If you only use a DRE system, you will have to manually count the paper ballots and add your manual totals to the electronic count produced from your DRE central tabulating system. Of course, you will also need to secure ballot boxes for the placement of these paper ballots for the beginning of the early voting period. You may need to hire additional clerks to assist with any hand counting.

Once you have received your programming materials and have conducted a successful Logic and Accuracy test, you must begin to use your electronic systems during early voting. In light of the extraordinary situation, only two logic and accuracy tests are required, before voting begins and after voting.

If a voter with disabilities attempts to vote while using the optical scan ballots, please advise them of the assistance procedure available and advise them of when the accessible voting system will be available in their respective precinct in the event they choose to wait until the machine's are available. We would also recommend that you contact your local disability groups, AARP chapters and Area Agencies on Aging and ask them to advise their service populations that they might want to vote later in the early voting timeframe or on Election Day. Assure them of your county's and the state's commitment to the Help America Vote Act principles and that every effort is being made to make the accessible voting systems available as soon as possible.

Finally, we need to know if you were able to mail your military and overseas ballots by February 11, 2005 . Please let our office know immediately if you were NOT able ot mail your military and overseas ballots by this date. Please call our office of e-mail Kim Thole at [e-mail] with your response to this question. Based on your responses to this question, we will need to determine a plane of action to ensure that all military and overseas voters are not adversely affected.

We know how hard all the counties have been working, and we thank you for your effort. We will work through these challenges together to ensure that all voters have an equal opportunity to participate in the March 7, 2006 primary elections.

If you have any questions about this memorandum, please call us at 1-800-252-2216.

File under holy crap!
:mad::mad::mad:

Sonia