'Daily Voting News' For July 16, 2007

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org My turn to rant: Over five months ago Florida State University put out their report on what they found when inspecting the Sarasota Co. voting system that had not recorded over 18,000 votes for congress. FSU researchers found a serious security vulnerability in the voting system. I took it upon myself to try to get people in positions of responsibility to do their jobs and to warn counties that their voting machines may be vulnerable and that there were mitigations that could be used. Numerous emails to the Election Assistance Commission resulted in nothing happening because, according to them, they did not qualify it for use so they couldn't do anything about any problems. NASED qualified the system and after five months of also talking with them a response was received yesterday: "I can assure you that we are aware of the importance of your issue. NASED will be discussing this issue at our next meeting." "Next meeting"? Five months of no action while counties, cities, towns, hold their elections on these machines without any idea that they are vulnerable to attack. Next meeting? What was wrong with sending an email to those who use those systems and include a copy of the report and ask them to read the damn report? And these people expect us to have confidence in the election system. Not hardly.... **"Daily Voting News" is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in "Daily Voting News" may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or OpEdNews.Com**