All this and more in today's voting news below...
AZ: U.S. District Court in Arizona Grants Injunctive Relief, Lets Voter Wear a Tea Party T-Shirt http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/10/21/u-s-district-court-in-arizona-grants-injunctive-relief-lets-voter-wear-a-tea-party-t-shirt/
CO: Ballots Disqualified After Voting System Glitch*
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/25464786/detail.html
Thousands Affected During Early Voting In Routt County
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. -- An encryption error resulted in thousands of ballots in Routt County to be null and void during the early voting period for November's general election.
Kay Weinland, Routt County Clerk and Recorder, said her department has fixed the problem but as a result, 5,772 ballots that were mailed out to voters are no longer good.
"We have 3 ECM keys, which are the encryption code keys," she said. "We broke one of them. While we were working on fixing that, we then discovered the other two had basically been corrupted."
The problem was spotted in the middle of last week.
The office worked on remedying the problem before coming to the conclusion that the early ballots were no longer good.
"Because we had to re-create the database," Weinland said. "The system will not recognize the ballots we initially scanned."
CO: Routt County must copy mailed ballots after error*
http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2010/oct/20/error-causes-security-issue-mail-ballots/?breaking Steamboat Springs -- A coding error in the Routt County Clerk and Recorder's Office means the 5,773 ballots mailed to voters before Tuesday will not be recognized by election databases and will have to be replicated by election judges who will work in teams of four under video camera surveillance.
...
The 5,773 ballots mailed to all voters who had requested mail-in ballots no longer will be recognized by the election database.
Every completed ballot already mailed back to the county -- about 500, Weinland said -- will be counted for the election. But they will be copied onto a new ballot first.
CO: Marks appeals court ruling in Aspen election suit
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20101021/NEWS/101029964/1077&ParentProfile=1058
DENVER -- Local elections activist Marilyn Marks sent her lawsuit against the city of Aspen over its refusal to release ballot images from the May 2009 election to the Colorado Court of Appeals, just short of Tuesday night's deadline.
CO: Fight for election transparency
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/143182
Secretary of State Buescher, the current Democratic SoS candidate, and the state's top election official, has recently issued opinions to attempt prevent such public and press efforts, proclaiming, as Aspen city officials do, that our region's voted ballots are "secrets" to be known only by local government officials and hand-picked Republican and Democrat election judges.
IL: Some preprinted absentee ballot forms inaccurate* (request forms)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-absenteeballotpro,0,5499569.story
this week's Chicago Reader is aimed at encouraging younger city voters to fill out a preprinted, mail-in request for an absentee ballot. But the form contained the wrong address for the Chicago Board of Elections.
IL: No evidence of big overseas military problem in Illinois, despite GOP claims
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/10/no_evidence_of_big_overseas_mi.html
IL: Illinois Absentee Voters Only Get One-day Extension
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/10/20/illinois-absentee-voters-only-get-one-day-extension-0
NC: Run-off system draws fire
http://www.yourdailyjournal.com/view/full_story_news_sports_opinion/9986842/article-Run-off--system-draws-fire?instance=newssecondary_stories_left_column
NY: Absentee Ballot Deadline for Military/Overseas Voters Extended
http://www.madisoncountycourier.com/veterans-corner/absentee-ballot-deadline-for-militaryoverseas-voters-extended-19313/
OH: Election expert weighs in on good, bad, ugly of 2010 elections in Ohio, nation
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6791
But some problems still require fixing. Among them, Hoke said is that a majority of Ohio voters still cast ballots on insecure DREs [Direct Recording Equipment].
...
While other states are dabbling in expanding absentee voting by mail, Hoke argues that doing so raises the prospects of vote buying and fraud, and increases the possibilities of duress and coercion within the home or nursing homes.
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