49 QuickLinks

Monday, December 11, 2006
The EAC Has Failed To Meet Its Own Mission Statement
(3 comments) The EAC was established by HAVA to oversee the implementation of HAVA. Their oversight has been minimal and irresponsible. Instead of providing the informed leadership and guidance the states needed as they purchased and deployed new voting systems, the Commissioners have deferred to the wishes of vendors, propagated preconceived notions of election officials, and acceded to popularly-disseminated misinformation.

Monday, October 23, 2006
EXCLUSIVE: ELECTION SECURITY BREACH - CHICAGO'S ONLINE VOTER REGISTRATION DATABASE DISCOVERED VULNERABLE TO HACKERS!
(3 comments) Personal Information, Social Security Numbers, Birthdates of 1.5 Million Voters Exposed to Online Tampering, Downloading, Identification Theft! Breach Discovered, Video-Taped by Illinois Election Integrity Organization...

Sunday, October 1, 2006
'Pollworkers for Democracy' is Looking for a Few (Thousand) Good Citizens
(3 comments) Pollworkers for Democracy (P4D) is a non-partisan, direct citizen action campaign built in response to broken elections and plummeting voter confidence. P4D taps into widespread election integrity concerns to recruit a new wave of informed - and observant - American pollworkers in the 2006 elections.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Cuyahoga Co. OH: ESI Report Bastardized By Anti-VVPAT Pundits
(3 comments) Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco California was hired to investigate and report on problems with the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The 240-page report was just released this month (August), and some in the elections community have ignored a large majority of the report.

Saturday, August 12, 2006
New Election Auditing Protocol Proposed
(3 comments) A newly released paper, "Random Auditing of E-Voting Systems: How Much is Enough?".

Wednesday, August 9, 2006
Fraud Vitiates Everything it Touches: Why Diebold DRE's Have No Valid NASED Numbers
(3 comments) The centuries old legal principal, Fraus omnia vitiate, "Fraud vitiates everything" renders the Diebold federal certification null and void.

Thursday, June 8, 2006
Soaries to Rolling Stone: Where are the Standards?
(3 comments) As Robert F.Kennedy Jr.'s recap of the events in Ohio in 2004 gains readership, we find that Rolling Stone's National Affairs Daily has interviewed the Rev. DeForest Soaries, the former Chairman of the Election Assistance Commission who resigned in frustration a year ago.

Friday, February 17, 2006
California: Secretary of State Bruce McPherson Grants Certification to Diebold with Conditions
(3 comments) Secretary of State Bruce McPherson (pictured at right) today announced his decision to certify with conditions the Diebold TSX and Optical Scan (OS) voting systems for use in California’s 2006 elections. The decision comes after months of thorough review of both voting systems, their compliance with both state and federal laws and the completion of an additional security analysis by independent testers from computer labs at the University of California, Berkeley.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
PAPER: Ann Coulter Commits Vote Fraud Felony!
(3 comments) According to the Palm-Beach Post, it looks like Ann Coulter, everyone's favorite hate-monger, may now be facing felony charges. For Voter Fraud!

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Maryland: Governor Ehrlich's Letter To State Board of Elections
(3 comments) The following letter from Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich (pictured below at right) to Gilles Burger, Chairman Maryland State Board of Elections was released on February 15, 2006.

Sunday, February 12, 2006
Illinois Violates State Law In Desperate Effort To Certify Sequoia
(3 comments) According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, the Illinois State Board of Elections in an eleventh hour decision on Friday approved five voting syustems that will be used in Chicago and suburban Cook County in early voting for the March primary that starts in just over two weeks. The Board granted two-year interim certification to the Sequoia 400-C ballot scanner, the Insight in-precint optical scanner, WinEDS central count system and the Card Activator which also combines the totals of the DREs and optical scanners. The article also noted that The Chicago and Cook County are “Sequoia's biggest piece of business in the nation.”

Friday, February 10, 2006
Maryland Moving Toward Reliable Voting System
(3 comments) On February 7, SB 713, a Senate companion of the 'paper trail' bill was introduced by Maryland State Senator Paula Hollinger (pictured at right) along with with 22 co-sponsors of both parties. The bill will require only 24 to pass when it reaches the Senate floor. All the members of the Senate Committee responsible for election issues support the bill. On the House side, Delegates are expressing confidence that HB244 will pass in a near unanimous vote. Civic organizations covering a wide range of interests support voter verified paper ballot legislation. Hollinger's bill is a companion to HB 244, introduced by Delegate Sheila Hixson last week.

Thursday, February 9, 2006
Washington Elections Division Ignores Voting Systems Test Failures In Other States
(3 comments) Most election officials are competent and hard working, and they truly care about the voters in their states and jurisdictions. On a state level they have to make tough decisions on what voting systems will serve their state the best. On the other hand there are some who are incompetent. They don't seem to want to do any more than is absolutely necessary to gather the information to make decisions. They would prefer to just talk to the vendors, naively expecting to get accurate information from those who stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of their systems. If these officials have a chance to check the accuracy of what the vendors say, they ignore that chance and simply believe the vendors.

Thursday, February 9, 2006
New Jersey Appeals Court Reinstates E-Voting Lawsuit
(3 comments) In its decision, the Appellate Division reinstated a lawsuit filed by the clinic in 2004 that challenges the ability of New Jersey’s electronic voting machines to count votes accurately, in compliance with voting rights laws. The Court reinstated the lawsuit even though, as a result of judicial and legislative efforts led by the clinic, all voting machines in the state must be equipped with a voter verified paper ballot component by 2008. The Court was concerned with protecting the hundreds of millions of votes that would be cast on voting machines between now and 2008. The Court also expressed its concern that the Attorney General’s office would use a loophole in the statute and issue waivers to the 2008 voter verified paper ballot requirement – further jeopardizing the franchise.

Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Florida Grasps At Straws To Prevent Paper Ballots
(3 comments) The Florida Division of Elections is determined to thwart counties in the state that want to retain paper based voting. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel, David R. Drury, chief of the state's Bureau of Voting Systems Certification, sent an e-mail to all 67 election supervisors Wednesday saying his agency "cannot recommend certification at this time" for the Automark ballot marking device. Marketed by Election Systems and Software, the Automark is an assistive device that provides an interface that allows disabled voters to mark an optical scan ballot. The device, which is federally certified to the current voting system standards and will be used in well over half the states has been languishing at Florida's Division of Elections for a full year. Meanwhile, the Diebold TSx was certified in just 29 days (application on March 1, 2005; certification on March 29, 2005), despite numerous problems that showed up during testing, none of which have ever been addressed.

Monday, February 6, 2006
Bradbury and McPherson Call For Non-Partisan Election Administration
(3 comments) Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, a Democrat, and California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, a Republican, today responded to public demand for greater integrity in elections administration by signing a five-point pledge to remain neutral, independent and fair in their oversight of elections. "When public confidence in elections suffers, our democracy suffers," said Bradbury. "It is our responsibility as Chief Elections Officials to restore that confidence and to conduct our elections with the highest level of integrity."

Monday, February 6, 2006
Questions for The Election Assistance Commission
(3 comments) The following letter was delivered to the Election Assistance Commission at the joint NASS/NASED meeting on Monday, February 6, 2006.

Monday, February 6, 2006
Revote in Ohio After More Votes Than Voters Recorded on Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machines!
(3 comments) Diebold Inc., one of America's largest voting machine companies, likes to claim that there's never been any substantial problem with their touch-screen machines in any election in America. You may not be surprised to hear that claim is patently untrue.

Wednesday, February 1, 2006
Vote-PAD Approved for Use by State of Wisconsin after Conferring with U.S. Dept. of Justice!
(3 comments) Vote-PAD, the simple plastic and paper voting device meant to assist voters with disabilities and provide a countable paper ballot as an alternative to the expensive, insecure, un-recountable, hackable Electronic Voting Machines made by companies such as Diebold and ES&S, has just been approved for use by the state of Wisconsin!

Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Wisconsin Approves the Vote-PAD Assistive Device
(3 comments) After meeting with U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, Kevin Kennedy, Executive Director of the Wisconsin State Elections Board, announced the state’s approval of the Vote-PAD. Mr. Kennedy said the attorneys spent considerable time looking at the device and asking questions about its use in the voting process. It was indicated, he said, “that they did not see anything that should stop Wisconsin from proceeding with approval.”

Thursday, January 26, 2006
Rep. Fitzgerald (R-PA) To Introduce Bill To Delay HAVA Deadlines Until November
(3 comments) Congressman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA) has announced his intention to introduce legislation that would adjust the deadlines of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Currently states are required to meet numerous requirements for voting system upgrades and statewide voter registration databases in time for the "first election for Federal office held after January 1, 2006”. Fitzgerald’s bill would amend the HAVA to push the deadlne back until “the regularly scheduled general election for Federal office held in November, 2006”.

Thursday, January 26, 2006
New Mexico: County Clerks Balk As Paper Ballot Legislation Moves Forward
(3 comments) Following Governor Bill Richardson's Lead, legislation has now been introduced in both in the the New Mexico House and Senate that would establish a uniform statewide paper based voting system. Rep. Mary Helen Garcia (D-Las Cruces, photo at right) introduced HB 430, which is identical to SB 295, submitted earlier this week by Sen. Linda Lopez (D-Albuquerque). The bills would require that all voting systems use "a paper ballot marked by the voter".

Thursday, January 26, 2006
Georgia: Concerned Voters Call For State To Fix Voting System
(3 comments) In Atlanta today, voters concerned about the integrity of Georgia’s elections marched the capitol and demanded that the state’s chief election official, Secretary of State Cathy Cox, back her words on paper trails with immediate action. At the same time, they asked for an opportunity to prove the vulnerability of the system and show how the machines themselves were illegal, contradicted federal standards and are easy to corrupt.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Touchscreen Voting Increases Election Costs in North Carolina
(3 comments) A Comparison of Total Annual Expenditures for TouchScreens and Optical Scanners. Not only have computer scientists advise the North Carolina Legislature that touch screen voting machines are less reliable and accurate than optical scan equipment, we find that they are more costly to own and operate. Clearly, this is no way to run an election.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
New Mexico: Not Paper Trail, Not Paper Record - Paper Ballot!
(3 comments) Just over a week ago, Governor Bill Richardson, Attorney General Patricia Madrid, and State Election Director Ernest Marquez held a press conference to call on the legislature to establish a statewide paper ballot optical scan voting system. At the conference Richardson explained that his plan "makes the most sense and resolves many of the problems that have plagued New Mexico elections for far too long."

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Maryland: In Response to Florida Diebold Hack, Lamone Expresses ‘Great Concern’ about Threat to Maryland
(3 comments) A successful mock election hack in Leon County, Florida in December 2005 caused election officials across the nation to suspend, review or withhold certification of Diebold Elections Systems voting equipment, designating Diebold as unacceptable for use. Maryland Elections Administrator Linda Lamone also responded with a strongly worded letter to Diebold demanding immediate and daily briefings. This letter recently came into the hands of TrueVoteMD.

Sunday, January 22, 2006
Making Diebold "Okay" For Pennsylvania
(3 comments) Last week the Department of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania released a report confirming the certification of the Diebold TSx touch screen voting machine and reversing an earlier decision to deny certification for the Diebold OS central count optical scanner. The state continued to deny state certification of the Diebold precinct count optical scanner. The report reveals how the Department of State of Pennsylvania and their expert consultant worked together with Diebold to fabricate a justification for certifying machines in the state that contain prohibited code and have the same potential of being hacked undetectably that was demonstrated in a well publicized test in Florida last month. The report refers to this test as the “Hursti Exploit”.

Sunday, January 22, 2006
Diebold's Letter To Pennsylvania: A Rebuttal
(3 comments) On January 3, 2006, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Pedro Cortes and his consultant Dr. Michael Shamos submitted a series of questions to Diebold Elections Systems regarding the AccuBasic (which Diebold also calls ABasic) reporting scripts used by their AccuVote TSX touchscreen voting system. Diebold responded in a letter dated January 5, 2006. While Diebold's answers in this letter apparently met with "the statisfaction of the Secretary and his consultant", they are wholly unsatisfactory to the voters in Pennsylvania whose democracy is being entrusted to Diebold's equipment.

Saturday, January 21, 2006
Virginia: Paper Ballot Bill Scheduled for Senate Hearing
(3 comments) The Virginia Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections has scheduled a hearing on Tuesday January 24 that includes S. 424, and omnibus election bill introduced by Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites Davis (R-Vienna). A similar bill (HB 1243) has been introduced in the Virginia House of Delegates by Rep. Timothy Hugo (R-Fairfax) but has not been scheduled for a committee hearing yet. Virginia Verified Voting and New Electoral Reform Alliance of Virginia have joined with VoteTrustUSA in launching a citizen’s action in support of both bills. Virginia Verified Voting is organizing a constituent lobby day on January 24 as well. For more details visit www.VAVV.org.

Saturday, January 21, 2006
California: How Yolo Citizens Will Vote in 2006 - Vote-PAD
(3 comments) With the federal deadline for independent, private voting for persons with disabilities looming (in Yolo County, the deadline is the June primary election), many voters are asking how Yolo County will meet the challenge.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
Vote-PAD Rocks the Disabled Vote
(3 comments) Touch-screen ballot machines billed as the ideal solution for disabled voters are facing unexpected competition from a newly designed system using inexpensive plastic sleeves and paper.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
The Harri Hursti Hack and its Importance to our Nation
(3 comments) I was one of ten people present at the "hack" of the Leon County, Florida voting system, which took place on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 around 4:30 in the afternoon at the county elections warehouse. Leon County's voting system is the Diebold Accu-Vote OS 1.94w (optical scan).

Thursday, January 19, 2006
Chaos in Connecticut
(3 comments) State Back To Square One But this Time They Have Technology Board's Recommendations For Guidance

Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Ehlers' Chairmanship: An Opportunity for Election Reform?
(3 comments) With the resignation of Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) from Chairmanship of the Committee on House Administration, Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI) will assume leadership of the committee to which most election reform legislation is referred. Election reform advocates are hopeful that under the chairmanship of Rep. Ehlers, the committee will finally consider legislation to ensure the security and verifiability of elections. While evidence of the unreliability and insecurity of electronic voting machines has mounted steadily in the past three years, culminating in reports submitted by the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service, common sense proposals like requirements for voter verified paper records and mandatory audits have languished under the chairmanship of Rep. Ney.

Monday, January 16, 2006
Virginia Voting Rights Groups Launch Legislative Action
(3 comments) Virginia Verified Voting and The New Election Reform Agenda for Virginia together with VoteTrustUSA have launched a citizen action in support of legislation introduced in the Virginia legislature. Concerned citizens in Virginia are urged to visit the Virginia Action Page where you can send a message to your state legislators calling on them to support accurate and verifiable elections.

Sunday, January 15, 2006
Election Center: The Fox Guarding the Henhouse Updated
(3 comments) They are back at it again, the ethically challenged Election Center. They have a new web-page, nice layout, though many of the links still don't work. Amazing that they are first to recommend electronic solutions for voting and registration, yet they can't design a working website. I am sure these broken links are just "glitches" that happen when skeptical computer scientists try to perform time travel! But while the Election Center may have a new website, the mission is the same: promote expensive unreliable and unverifiable voting machines and the vendors that make a profit from them.

Sunday, January 15, 2006
Top five Voting News Stories - January 9-15, 2006
(3 comments) This past week has been full of important stories on voting technology issues. It is hard to choose between the betrayals, the realizations of the truth, and potential decisions to chuck the whole DRE voting issue and go vote-by-mail. This week there are two honorable mention stories to go with my opinion of the 5 top stories of the week

Friday, January 13, 2006
Florida: ES&S Betrays Agreement with Ion Sancho
(3 comments) Election Systems and Software (ES&S) has reneged on its agreement to sell its optical scan voting system and the AutoMark ballot marker to Leon County, Florida. Leon County had planned to purchase the ES&S voting system following two successful, authorized hacks of the county's Diebold AccuVote optical scan voting system.

Thursday, January 12, 2006
New Mexico: Richardson Calls For Paper Ballots Statewide
(3 comments) At a press conference in Santa Fe today, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said that he will propose legislation that requires a paper ballot voting system in all counties and asking that lawmakers allocate $11 million to help pay for needed software and voting machines. According to an Albuquerque Journal article Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and Attorney General Patricia Madrid support the switch to the paper ballot system. The press conference was attended by many election reform activists including representatives of Verified Voting New Mexico and United Voters of New Mexico, two groups that have labored tirelessly for verifiable elections in the state. Richardson generously invited activists, clerks, and legislators to speak at the press conference and their was uniform praise for the Governor's proposal.

Thursday, January 12, 2006
Department of Justice Threatens To Sue New York State
(3 comments) In a letter to the New York State Attorney General and the State Board of Elections, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has threatened to sue the state for its failure to comply with the January 1, 2006 deadlines of the Help America Vote Act. According to a New York Times article, "New York is behind all other states and territories in deciding how to spend its share of $2.3 billion in federal aid to modernize voting machines and other elections technology." The state has received $220 million for machine upgrades and training but has yet to formulate a plan for how that money will be spent.

Thursday, January 12, 2006
Accessibility For All Voters - Has It Arrived?
(3 comments) Dottie Neely has been visually impaired from birth. She can tell barely tell the difference between dark and light, but she can tell when her kids are smiling. "I would worry about how much less of my children's smile I would see from day to day," she says. "And then I learned that I could tell how much they smiled by listening, and by actually being closer to them."

Thursday, January 12, 2006
New Jersey: Mandatory Random Manual Audit Bill Introduced in State Senate
(3 comments) State Senator Nia Gill (D-Essex and Passaic) has introduced S. 507 (full text), a bill that require mandatory handcounted audits of 2% of election results in the state. Twelve states have similar audit provisions and several others will be considering similar legislation this year. Last summer Governor Richard Codey signed a bill into law requiring that voting systems used in the state produce or require the use of a voter verified paper record of every vote. Like that bill, the provisions of S. 507 would not take effect until 2008.

Thursday, January 12, 2006
PACE New Mexico and others join the Lopategui vs. Vigil-Giron lawsuit.
(3 comments) Six plaintiffs are to be added to the Lopategui vs. Vigil-Giron lawsuit in a motion to amend the complaint to be filed January 12, 2006. The lawsuit seeks to enjoin use of electronic voting systems responsible for inaccurate and unverifiable results in the last election and before.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Connecticut State Officials Attempt To Change the Subject
(3 comments) Is the issue Federal Qualification or Federal Funding? Letter from the Department of Justice reveals more than state officials choose to mention

Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Colorado: County Clerk Postpones Purchase of New Voting Equipment
(3 comments) In a move to assure Boulder County voters that the upcoming 2006 primary and general elections will produce an accurate, timely and secure tallying of votes, the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder’s office decided today to not pursue a Request for Proposals (RFP) for acquiring new voting equipment for Boulder County in 2006.

Saturday, January 7, 2006
Pennsylvania: Westmoreland County Voters Sue For Right To Choose Their Voting System
(3 comments) Ten Westmoreland County Voters, along with State Senator Jim Ferlo, filed suit in Westmoreland County Court today based on the failure of Wetmoreland County to hold a referendum allowing voter to decide whether or not to accept new electronic voting machines. The Pennsylvania Constitution and and out Election Code provide that electors have the right to make this decision at the ballot box prior to moving to electronic voting.

Friday, January 6, 2006
Virginia: Bi-Partisan Legislative Panel Recommends Paper Ballots and Audits
(3 comments) A Virginia Legislature's Joint Subcommittee to Study the Certification, Performance, and Deployment of Voting Equipment voted 6-2 yesterday to recommended that the State Board of Elections develop a pilot program to test the use of paper verification. The directive applied to optical scan systems as well as Direct Electronic Recording (DRE) devices. Under the subcommitte's proposal, the State Board of Elections would set up the program in several precincts across the state, checking vote returns against paper records. If there are inaccuracies, the General Assembly could consider requiring a voter-verified paper record of every vote.

Friday, January 6, 2006
New Mexico: Agreement Reached On Voting Machine Purchase Freeze
(3 comments) New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron announced on January 3, 2006, that she will not, for now, proceed with purchase of millions of dollars worth of Sequoia AVC Edge touchscreen voting machines. She had planned to buy the machines for 14 counties before the end of 2005. This announcement is good news for New Mexico voters.

Thursday, January 5, 2006
New Mexico: State Halts Purchase of Sequoia Edge
(3 comments) Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has delayed the purchase of 800 Sequoia Edge touchscreen machines that some New Mexico counties had chosen to meet federal accessibility requirments. The machines are subject to a pending motion for temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction .