Election Reform, Fraud and Related News. Sunday 03/23/08 - Open Thread.

[EFerrari]

Election Reform, Fraud and Related News. Sunday 03/23/08 - Open Thread.



WASHINGTON: Eight years after glitches marred the 2000 presidential elections, Americans are still struggling over voting machine technology amid growing concerns about the reliability of electronic systems.

Many jurisdictions are reconsidering new technology and moving away from paperless and touch-screen voting machines -- systems which had been seen as a cure for the problems of punch cards that notably failed to correctly tally votes in 2000 in Florida.

A growing movement of activists, including many computer scientists, are leading calls to shift away from paperless systems, saying they are vulnerable to software and hardware glitches or manipulation by hackers or others.

About 80 per cent of Americans use systems where votes are cast or tabulated by computer including 38 per cent who used so-called direct recording electronic voting machines (DRE), according to a study by John McCormally of the University of Iowa.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/USA/Americans_still_wary_of_voting_machines_for_2008_polls/rssarticleshow/2891732.cms

Please post Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News on this thread. If you can:


1. Post stories and announcements you find on the web. Here's the link to the News Directory:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x407240

2. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

3. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.


Recommendations are much appreciated.


(My dears, my godfather is in the hospital and the situation is not good.)

[EFerrari]

1. National.

[EFerrari]

10. MD: Elections Official Admits Mistake at Annapolis Precinct

Elections Official Admits Mistake at Annapolis Precinct
posted 9:15 am Fri February 15, 2008 - ANNAPOLIS, Md.

Anne Arundel County elections chief Joseph Torre says election judges at an Annapolis precinct mistakenly required voters to fill out cards with their personal information for the first six hours of voting during Tuesday's primary.

The mistake occurred at Mills-Parole Elementary School, a precinct where most voters are black. Torre says the chief judge at the polling place directed voters to fill out "contingency voter authority cards," which are supposed to be used only if electronic poll books are unusable

The problem was corrected after Democratic officials received complaints and went to the school. Torre says he has not heard reports that voters were disenfranchised, but acknowledges that voters might have believed they were illegally asked to show identification.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0208/496314.html

[EFerrari]

12. Voter Registration Discrepancies May Result in Voter Suppression

March 22, 2008

Voter Registration Discrepancies May Result in Voter Suppression

By Project Vote

Cross-posted at Project Vote's blog, Voting Matters
Weekly Voting Rights News Update

By Erin Ferns

In recent weeks, two Congressional hearings examined hot button voter suppression issues, voter fraud and voter caging, that have the potential to "taint the November election." These major voting rights issues have moved into broad public consciousness thanks to the 2007 exposure of the U.S. Attorney scandal in which nine federal prosecutors were fired for alleged lack of zeal in pursuing partisan accusations of widespread voter fraud. Now, two states with upcoming primary elections, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, have made local headlines for voter registration discrepancies, creating openings for confusing and discouraging voters and possibly even allowing those with voter suppression agendas to make an impact.

Just one month before the state's presidential primary, Pennsylvania "pulled the plug on a voter registration Web site," on Tuesday. A Web programming error allegedly exposed voter registration forms filled out by state residents online, including personal information such as name, birth date, driver's license and party affiliation, according to International Data Group News Service. "About 300,000 voter registration records appeared to be available on the site."

Typically, voter registration data is accessible - excluding private information that could be 'misused' - so that voters can check their registration status. This is an appropriate practice that helps promote transparency in the electoral process. However, poorly conceived systems can have grave consequences.

The governmental use of "'sophisticated technology in thoughtless ways'" is "'alarming,'" according to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a group that examines voting technology issues. "All kinds of dirty tricks could be played...In heated campaigns, we've seen cases where someone will call a whole bunch of voters and tell them that the election date has been changed."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_project__080320_voter_registration_d.htm

[EFerrari]

2. States.

[EFerrari]

5. NJ: What it means: N.J. voting machines

Sunday, March 23, 2008
Last Updated Sunday March 23, 2008, EDT 8:31 AM


New Jerseyans were supposed to have paper verification for their electronic voting machines in January 2007. Now, because of testing, a dispute with a manufacturer and two extended deadlines, paper ballots won't be available until January 2009 — two months after the presidential election.

New Jerseyans were supposed to have paper verification for their electronic voting machines in January 2007. Now, because of testing, a dispute with a manufacturer and two extended deadlines, paper ballots won't be available until January 2009 — two months after the presidential election.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/njpolitics/What_it_means_NJ_voting_machines.html

[EFerrari]

6. CO: Clerk confident in election results

Clerk confident in election results

Debbie Bell
The Daily Record

Controversy swirling over “paper vs. machine” balloting throughout Colorado has not ruffled Fremont County’s most senior election official.

“Colorado clerks do their best to conduct the best, most accurate elections they can,” said Clerk and Recorder Norma Hatfield.

Secretary of State Mike Coffman kicked off the debate last December, when he decertified most of the electronic voting equipment used in Colorado. In 2006, Fremont County alone purchased 13 new handicapped voting machines to comply with Help America Vote Act requirements.

Those machines were among thousands of others throughout Colorado that were decertified by Coffman, who cited accuracy and security concerns. However, faced with mounting costs and lawsuits, Coffman’s office since has recertified all of the voting equipment with a lengthy number of specific conditions and restrictions on their use.

http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/default.aspx?tabid=71&pDesc=2995,1,1

[EFerrari]

8. TX: Grayson County commissioners scrap voting booths, lawnmower

Grayson County commissioners scrap voting booths, lawnmower

Mar 17, 2008 - 16:37:06 CDT
By Jerrie Whiteley
Herald Democrat
SHERMAN — The conversion to electronic voting has left Grayson County with a number of the older, manual voting booths. Monday, county commissioners declared those booths as surplus so they could be given away to schools, cities and museums.

Grayson County Clerk Wilma Blackshear Bush said the county has approximately 400 of the booths and she wants to be able to donate them to entities that can use them. She suggested that some schools might like them to use during mock elections. John Ramsey, county tax assessor collector, suggested that a few of the machines be earmarked for display at Frontier Village.

Commissioners agreed to both request and declared the items surplus to be disrupted as needed. They also declared a lawn mower as surplus. It will be sold at auction.

In addition, commissioners approved a request to purchase an air card for commissioner’s Precinct 2. David Whitlock, commissioner for that precinct, said the card is the only way his staff can communicate, via the Internet, with the county.

http://heralddemocrat.com/articles/2008/03/23/local_news/doc47decc94228f1368643651.txt

[sonias]

16. They should have kept their booths

GRAYSON COUNTY is using ES&S
DRE ES&S iVotronic 8.0.1.0
Optical Scan ES&S Model 650 1.2.0.0
Software ES&S Election Reporting Manager (ERM) 6.4.3.3

:shrug:


Sonia

[EFerrari]

3. International.

[EFerrari]

7. Bhutan to vote in world’s newest democracy

Bhutan to vote in world’s newest democracy
(DPA)

23 March 2008


NEW DELHI - Bhutan is all set to emerge as the world’s newest democracy with the conduct of the first-ever parliamentary polls in the Himalayan kingdom, officials said on Sunday.

Monday’s general elections for the 47-member National Assembly or lower house of parliament, will mark the transformation of a century-old monarchy to democracy in the largely Buddhist nation.

In all, 865 polling stations have been set up across the country and 318,465 registered voters are eligible to exercise their franchise. Bhutan’s Election Commission expects a voter turnout of more than 70 per cent across the country’s 20 districts.

”People are enthusiastic and are in a mood to come and cast their votes which is evident from the passenger traffic throughout the country. We are prepared for the elections and hope to conduct them in a free, fair and peaceful manner,” Bhutan’s chief election commissioner Dasho Kunzang Wangdi told reporters.

[EFerrari]

4. Opinion.

[EFerrari]

9. E-voting is good for you - but only if it's open to scrutiny

E-voting is good for you - but only if it's open to scrutiny

John Naughton
The Observer, Sunday March 23 2008

As the US presidential election approaches, minds are again being concentrated on the electronic voting machines on which the American electoral process largely relies. You may recall that in 2000 and 2004 there were widespread concerns about the reliability and security of the technology. Voting machines lost votes, subtracted votes instead of adding them and even doubled votes. And because many machines have no paper audit trails, a significant number of votes in both elections went uncounted - or were wrongly counted.

But it's not just the accuracy of the machines that is questionable, it's also their security. Several projects have demonstrated how voting machines from all the major makers can be hacked into with comparative ease. This is not an argument for not using machines: who would want to replicate the 'hanging chads' fiasco of the 2000 election? But before a society entrusts its central democratic process to machines, it ought to take reasonable steps to instil public confidence in the technology.

This requires only two very basic provisions: all machines must leave a paper trail that can be independently audited after the election; and software used in voting machines must be open to public scrutiny to allow any interested party to examine it and find bugs, which can then be corrected. This will increase public confidence in the voting process because, as one security expert puts it, 'if the software is public, no one can insinuate that the voting system has unfairness built into the code'.

The strange thing - and the reason conspiracy theories about voting machines abound on the net - is that the leading manufacturers have so far fiercely resisted one or both of these reasonable requirements.

Their resistance to providing paper trails, like the Peace of God, passeth all understanding and is enough to turn even a sceptical observer into a conspiracy theorist. The companies' hostility to allowing scrutiny of their computer code is more understandable: it's a by-product of paranoia about intellectual property. An intriguing insight into this mindset was provided by an email published last week by Professor Edward Felten of Princeton, a world expert on voting technology and a penetrating critic of current systems.

The background is that electoral officials in New Jersey were puzzled by discrepancies in the returns obtained from a Sequoia AVC Advantage voting machine when the polls closed at the end of the presidential primary election on 5 February. (This particular machine does produce a rudimentary paper trail, which is how the discrepancies came to light.) The officials decided that they would send one of the machines to Princeton for analysis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/23/usa?gusrc=rss&feed=technology

[Peace Patriot]

13. The Guardian article goes on to say that Sequoia threatened him with a lawsuit.

Just thought DU-ers would like to know where the story (above) is going. Sequoia threatened one of the leading computer voting experts--a Princeton professor--for examining their voting machines at the request of public officials! Jeez, could they get any more arrogant?! Sequoia is one of the big three election theft corporations. The others are Diebold and ES&S. Diebold got so notorious, they recently changed the election theft division's name to "Premier." But all three of them are bad news. And their protection of their "intellectual property" (our votes!) has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with stealing our votes with their insider riggable programming, and the power that this gives these rightwing Bushite corporations over our public officials and our government. These three corps dibby up the 'market.' There is no competition. Their bids are all show--a shuckin jive performance for the corrupt election officials they are heavily lobbying. So there is not even that excuse to treat our elections like their private property!

[Peace Patriot]

14. The Guardian article's conclusion is notable...and rousing!

"Given that the UK cannot make even postal ballots work with any degree of security, it will be a while before some wonk in the Cabinet Office has the nerve to come up with a proposal for e-voting over here. But the proposal will come eventually - wrapped, no doubt, in canting arguments about efficiency, speed, security, social inclusion, 'engagement' of young people in the democratic process, etc. And you can bet that the main contenders for the lucrative contracts to provide the technology to British polling stations will be the same US corporations who are behaving so mysteriously over there.

"We should ensure that the two principles - of in-built paper trails and open software - are non-negotiable terms of trade. And when companies complain about violations of their intellectual property rights, we should show them the door - citing the old adage that 'sunlight is the best disinfectant'." - John Naughton, The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/23/usa?gusrc=rss&feed=technology

[EFerrari]

11. NYTs: Unreliable Voting in New Jersey

Unreliable Voting in New Jersey

Article Tools Sponsored By
Published: March 22, 2008

Voters nationwide have seen that electronic voting cannot be trusted, and New Jerseyans are the latest to learn this unfortunate lesson. It is now clear that the state’s machines produced suspicious results in the Feb. 5 presidential primary. Rather than working to put doubts to rest, the machines’ manufacturer is resisting a proper inquiry. New Jersey needs to quickly get to the bottom of the problem to ensure voters that in November their ballots will be counted accurately.

At least five of New Jersey’s 21 counties have reported discrepancies in the tallies of a small number of their machines. Election officials insist that the inconsistencies, which involve the number of Republican and Democratic voters casting ballots, do not affect the accuracy of the vote counts, but there is no way to be sure.

When the Union County clerk, Joanne Rajoppi, learned of the problem, she did the responsible thing and moved to have a respected independent computer scientist from Princeton University examine the faulty machines. The machines’ manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems, responded by threatening to sue.

Sequoia, which says the discrepancies were because of human error by poll workers, insists that allowing an outsider to access its equipment would endanger its “trade secrets.” Instead, it is hiring its own consultant to assess what went wrong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/opinion/22sat2.html

[Peace Patriot]

15. Thank you, SFexpat2000! I scour these election reform threads for signs of life

in our democracy--and I'm so thrilled when I see citizens fighting back! This is thefight of fights! Is our democracy going down? Or is it going to renew itself? The answer will be found in what we do about the rigged voting machines. Thanks for the news about this! Even when it's bad news, it's useful!

[Mnemosyne]

17. Sending heartfelt good wishes for your godfather, Beth.

I'm sorry things aren't going well. I hope he is not suffering. :hug:

[Kurovski]

18. Kick to the top.

--and sympathy goes to you for this difficult time. :hug:

[tbyg52]

19. K&R. Best hopes and wishes to your godfather. nt