Brad: TX SoS Office Advises Creaton of '06 "Emergency paper ballots"

[Amaryllis]

EXCLUSIVE - ES&S MELTDOWN: Texas SoS Office Advises Election Officials to Create 'Emergency Paper Ballots' for Upcoming Elections!
Director of Elections Sends Letter Authorizing Measure in Light of Latest Failure by Electronic Voting Machine Vendor
Says Company's Performance in Most Recent -- of Many Similar Incidences Around the Country -- is 'Completely Unacceptable and Disturbing'

On Monday, Texas Director of Elections Ann McGeehan sent a letter to all state Election Officials authorizing them to create "emergency paper ballots" in light of statewide failures by Election System & Software, Inc. (ES&S) to provide ballots in time for the state's upcoming May 13 Runoff Elections, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

Early voting begins on Monday for those elections and counties across the state do not yet have ballots and, in many cases, programming for their optical-scan and touch-screen voting machines. ES&S has contracts with more than 140 Texas counties.

McGeehan has instructed officials to create and number their own paper ballots, secure boxes to store them in, and hire additional workers to manually hand count ballots as an emergency procedure to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation.

The letter from McGeehan (posted in full exclusively at the link below) -- which does not mention ES&S by name, but refers to the Omaha, Nebraska-based company only as "a certified voting systems vendor" -- was sent in response to complaints from officials around the state that "programming media or, in some cases, your ballots" had not been received yet by officials.

The BRAD BLOG has also received statements from officials in other states who were much more direct in expressing their frustration with the company's business practices now being described by some as including "coercion" and "threats."

Our breaking report this morning documents similar meltdowns and failures in Ohio, Indiana, West Virgina, California and more as ES&S failure to meet contractual obligations has left voters in the dark, and Election Officials scrambling for back up solutions.

And that's just the jurisdictions dealing with ES&S as the other vendors are all have similar problems to disastrous effect...

COMPLETE STORY, FULL LETTER FROM TEXAS SoS OFFICE...
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002742.htm

[babylonsister]

1. How I wish this applied to November! With any luck... nt

[crispini]

2. WTF is this about? There ARE no Runoff Elections on May 13th in Texas!

May 13th is a municipal election, not a runoff election. I'm confused.

[babylonsister]

5. I'm glad you said that! I'm also confused. nt

[sonias]

9. Brad got the runoff part wrong but the rest is correct

I was at an elections committee hearing on Wednesday and got the report from the SOS Ann McGeehan Elections Division director. This is mainly related to a specific vendor ES&S. They have told many TX counties they are overextended and don't have time to program their machines for the May elections.

They were also the vendor involved in the huge problems in Jefferson County and basically extorted money from that county. Their county commissioner's had refused to pay ES&S due to the problems during the primary, but they still needed programming assistance. ES&S refused to fix or program any future elections until Jefferson paid up. Essentially extortion by my view.

Here's the notice of the emergency ballots on the SOS web site

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/statusofballot.shtml
Status of Ballot and Programming Card Orders for the May 13, 2006 Elections
TO: Election Officials
FROM: Ann McGeehan, Director of Elections
DATE: April 24, 2006
RE: Status of Ballot and Programming Card Orders for the May 13, 2006 Elections

We have heard from many of you that you have not received your programming media or, in some cases, your ballots, for the May 13, 2006 elections. We recognize that this kind of service from a certified voting systems vendors is completely unacceptable and disturbing. We will be pursuing all appropriate remedies from a state level that are available to us.

In the meantime, if you are one of the entities 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, you may create your own paper ballots or, if you received a proof from your vendor, you may use PDF format to print copies of the ballot.

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 create 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 were mailed out to county election officials in Election Advisory 2006-05 dated February 21, 2006, and are posted on our website at http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/advisory2006-05.shtml.


More at link above.

Disturbing is an understatement.

Sonia

[kster]

3. KnR.....nt

[Roland99]

4. I'll 5th that!

[nicknameless]

6. Excellent!

K&R

[FogerRox]

7. KNR-- good to see someone has a plan "B".

[flyingobject]

8. making Diebold look good