Election Reform, Fraud and Related News Sunday 03/02/08

[EFerrari]

Election Reform, Fraud and Related News Sunday 03/02/08

OHIO PRIMARY

State of confusion

A projected record turnout Tuesday and voters' option to use paper ballots rather than touch-screens could delay results deep into the night and deepen mistrust of Ohio elections around the country.

Sunday, March 2, 2008 3:48 AM
By Mark Niquette

It's 11 p.m. Tuesday, and Wolf Blitzer is standing in front of a big electronic Ohio map on CNN. Viewers nationwide have tuned in to see who won the critical Democratic presidential primary in the Buckeye State.

The only problem: Blitzer can't tell them. The race is too close to call, and the results aren't in -- and won't be ready until early Wednesday or even later because Cuyahoga County and other counties still are counting ballots.

That might not happen, of course. Ohio's primary could go smoothly, and a winner could be declared long before anyone goes to bed Tuesday.

But election experts warn that with the combination of a possible record voter turnout, the competitive Democratic campaign and the introduction of more paper ballots, potential election problems loom.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/03/02/ARE_WE_READY.ART_ART_03-02-08_A1_JQ9GC7D.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

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.

[EFerrari]

1. National.

[EFerrari]

15. Pesky Details with Getting a Voting System Correct

Pesky Details with Getting a Voting System Correct
By Dan Wallach, Rice University
March 01, 2008


Today was the last day of early voting in Texas’s primary election. Historically, I have never voted in a primary election. I’ve never felt I identified enough with a particular political party to want to have a say in selecting their candidates. Once I started working on voting security, I discovered that this also allowed me to make a legitimate claim to being “non-partisan.” (While some election officials, political scientists, and others who you might perhaps prefer to be non-partisan do have explicit partisan views, many more make a point of similarly obscuring their partisan preferences like I do.)

In Texas, you are not required to register with a party in order to vote in their primary. Instead, you just show up and ask for their primary ballot. In the big city of Houston, any registered voter can go to any of 35 early voting locations over the two weeks of early voting. Alternately, they may vote in their home, local precinct (there are almost a thousand of these) on the day of the election. There have been stories of long lines over the past two weeks. My wife wanted to vote, but procrastinating, we went on the final night to a gigantic supermarket near campus. Arriving at 5:50pm or so, she didn’t reach the head of the queue until 8pm. Meanwhile, I took care of our daughter and tried to figure out the causes of the queue.

There were maybe twenty electronic voting machines, consistently operating at between 50-70% utilization (i.e., as many as half of the voting machines were unused at any given time). Yet the queue was huge. How could this be? Turns out there were four people at the desk in front dealing with the sign-in procedure. In a traditional, local precinct, this is nothing fancier than flipping open a paper printout to the page with your name. You sign next to it, and then you go vote. Simple as can be. Early voting is a different can of worms. They can’t feasibly keep a printout with over a million names of it in each of 35 early voting centers. That means they need computers. Our county’s computers had some kind of web interface that they could use to verify the voter’s registration. They then print a sticker with your name on it, you sign it, and it goes into a book. If a voter happens to present their voter registration card (my wife happened to have hers with her), the process is over in a hurry. Otherwise, things slow down, particularly if, say, your driver’s license doesn’t match up with the computer. “What was your previous address?” Unsurprisingly, the voter registration / sign-in table was the bottleneck. I’ve seen similar effects beforehand when voting early.

How could you solve this problem? You could have an explicit “fast path” for voters who match quickly versus a “slow path” with a secondary queue for more complicated voters. You can have more registration terminals. You could have roving helpers with PDAs and battery-powered printers that try to get further back into the queue and help voters reconcile themselves with their “true” identity. There’s no lack of creativity that’s been applied to solving this class of problems outside of the domain of election management.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2762&Itemid=26

[EFerrari]

16. Verified Voting; March 4 Snapshot: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermon

March 4 Snapshot: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont

By Verified Voting Foundation
March 01, 2008

Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont hold Presidential primaries on March 4. Ohio and Texas will also hold state primaries. In all four states, turnout is expected to increase substantially from 2004. The March 4 states use a mix of voting system types. Ohio has a mix of counties useing direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail, and counties using only optically scanned paper ballots. Texas has a very wide diversity of voting systems, including many paperless DREs. Rhode Island and Vermont use paper ballots exclusively. None of these states require manual post election audits of their inital, software-generated, results. In all four states, the primaries are under the jurisdiction of the state election officials, rather than of the political parties.

http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2768&Itemid=26

[EFerrari]

2. States.

[EFerrari]

6. CO: Clerks worried about election costs, new voter database

Clerks worried about election costs, new voter database

Associated Press - March 2, 2008 10:34 AM ET

DENVER (AP) - Even though most of the state's electronic voting and counting machines have now been certified, county clerks are still facing some uncertainties as they prepare for this year's elections.

Questions surrounding the touch-screen voting machines led lawmakers to push for paper ballot elections this year, a proposal (Senate Bill 189) that will get its first hearing at the Capitol on Monday.

However, Rio Blanco County clerk Nancy Amick said her county and some others switched entirely to the computerized machines. They were seen as the answer to the voting problems in the 2000 presidential election.

Others, like Mesa and Jefferson counties, rely heavily on the ATM-like voting machines. Now she said they face the prospect of buying scanners to count all the paper ballots just for this year's primary and general election.

http://www.kjct8.com/Global/story.asp?S=7953062

[EFerrari]

7. CO: Garfield County voting machines OK'd

Garfield County voting machines OK'd

Phillip Yates
Glenwood Springs correspondent
Aspen, CO Colorado
March 1, 2008

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Garfield County Clerk and Recorder Jean Alberico is now breathing a sigh of relief.

That’s because Secretary of State Mike Coffman on Thursday announced that Hart InterCivic’s eScan, which is used by Garfield County to tabulate election results, has been conditionally certified for use in Colorado. The company’s Ballot Now system, a ballot printing and counting machine the county has purchased but not used in an election, was also conditionally certified Thursday.

The state’s election system was thrown into chaos last month when Secretary of State Mike Coffman announced in December that he was decertifying several electronic voting machines, including Hart’s eScan and Ballot Now systems, across the state
based on accuracy and security problems.

“We are in great shape,” Alberico said. “We are set. We are excited. We now have
the OK to use our optical scanners. ”

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20080301/NEWS/974559518/-1/rss02

[EFerrari]

8. OH: Key Ohio county has new voting system

Key Ohio county has new voting system

The Democratic primary could hinge on a huge Ohio county with a history of election problems.
Posted on Sun, Mar. 02, 2008
BY JOE MILICIA
Associated Press

CLEVELAND --
The largest concentration of Democrats in swing-state Ohio will cast presidential primary ballots Tuesday in a county fraught with election problems, on a voting system just 74 days old.

Election watchdogs are worried that votes in Cuyahoga County, the Cleveland area, with more than 250,000 Democrats among its one million registered voters, will be lost because of a hurried switch from electronic touch-screen voting to paper ballots and a new vote-counting system.

Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign could be at stake. She has lost a string of 11 presidential contests.

Yet it might take well into Wednesday to get results in Cuyahoga County, which is making its second change since ditching punch-card ballots in 2005, a year after President Bush won reelection by winning Ohio.

Merle King, executive director of the Center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, said it's not the best time to introduce a new system.

http://www.miamiherald.com/campaign08/story/440902.html

[EFerrari]

9. OH: Voter protection group sets up hot line

Voter protection group sets up hot line

By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer

Sunday, March 02, 2008

DAYTON — Voters who have questions or problems on primary election day, Tuesday, March 4, can call a toll-free hot line number set up by Election Protection, a nonpartisan voter protection coalition, according to Ellis Jacobs, senior attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality.

The phone number is [phone] and will be available all day for voters to call in with questions or issues. It will be staffed by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, Jacobs said.

In the local area, attorneys working with the Miami Valley Protection Coalition will help resolve problems, Jacobs said.

A similar effort was launched during the 2006 election and resulted in the local group identifying problems that caused some electronic voting machines to improperly record votes. As a result, the Montgomery County Board of Elections instituted new calibration and transportation procedures and other changes to try to avoid those problems in the future.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/03/01/ddn030208elexprotection.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=16

[EFerrari]

10. OH: Voting machine worries

Voting machine worries
Even Ohio's secretary of state is unwilling to use touch-screen

Sunday, March 02, 2008
By Jim Provance, Block News Alliance

COLUMBUS -- Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner isn't telling voters what to do, but when she walks into her polling place on Tuesday, she will not use the touch-screen voting machine.

"It's up to individual preference, but I myself will be asking for a paper ballot," she said on Friday. "I am more comfortable with a paper ballot."

Ohio voters who haven't already taken advantage of early voting or no-fault absentee ballots will have the option of requesting paper ballots if they prefer not to stand in line for voting machines or don't trust the devices.

Ms. Brunner has ordered county boards of elections to have enough paper ballots on hand for 10 percent of all registered voters. The ballots could serve as an emergency back-up in case machines malfunction and lines back up as occurred last November during a special election in the 5th Congressional District.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08062/861865-176.stm?cmpid=elections.xml

[EFerrari]

11. FL: Obsolete Indian River voting machines to be recycled

Obsolete Indian River voting machines to be recycled

By Elliott Jones (Contact)
Originally published 06:08 p.m., March 1, 2008
Updated 10:18 p.m., March 1, 2008

VERO BEACH — Obsolete voting machines in Indian River County now are destined for a Tampa electronic recycler for resale — but no money is expected to return to the county.

That's because any income to the state will go towards paying $33 million some other counties still owe on the touch-screen machines. Indian River County already has paid for its machines.

"That really hurts Indian River County taxpayers," Indian River County Supervisor of Elections Kay Clem said Friday.

In 2002, Indian River County paid $2 million for the voting equipment, using $382,000 from the state. It was one of 19 counties that began using the machines. Nearby Martin County is one of them — it still owes $1.1 million for its equipment.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/mar/01/30gtobsolete-indian-river-voting-machines-to-be/?partner=yahoo_headlines

[EFerrari]

12. TX: More voting machines in place to meet demand

More voting machines in place to meet demand
By John Tompkins
The Facts

Published March 2, 2008
ANGLETON — Standing at the edge of a box truck outside the Brazoria County Elections Officer, Jason Thomas gets ready to load a rack of gray voting machines.

Thomas ordinarily is a dump truck driver for the Precinct 2 Road and Bridge Department, but Thursday he was loading up the voting machines to help deliver them to the 34 voting sites for Tuesday’s primary election.

“It’s a change of pace,” Thomas said. “We’ll be driving up at the north end.”

After long lines and increased interest during early voting — the likes of which elections officials said they have never seen — 38 additional eSlate electronic voting machines were dispatched Thursday in anticipation of heavy turnout Tuesday.

http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=68ce5e2eaead90cd

[sonias]

19. Yes for increased Texas voter turnout

Boo for electronic voting machines - I hope we don't become the new problem child ala Florida 2004 / Ohio 2004.


Sonia

[EFerrari]

17. CT: Ten Myths About Electronic Voting In Connecticut

CTVotersCount.Org: Ten Myths In The Nutmeg State

Ten Myths About Electronic Voting In Connecticut

Myth #1 - Connecticut has the toughest and strongest audit law in the country because we audit 10%.

Reality

* Connecticut audits a maximum of 3 or 20% of races in 10% of the districts. This is adequate only in the case of state wide races which are selected for the audit.
* In a state representative race or municipal race, the probability of detecting an error or fraud is in the range of 2-4%. This is far from sufficient.
* Towns with only one district would have municipal races audited an average of once in 20 years.
* Districts where there is an automatically recounted race or a contested race are exempt from audits - a state wide recount or contest would block all audits for the election in the entire state.
* Questions, referendums, and special elections are exempt from audits. Centrally scanned absentee ballots and all hand counted ballots also are exempt from the audits.
* Selection of the races to be audited is not required to be public. Audits are public, yet have no stated prior public notification requirement.

http://www.ctvoterscount.org/?p=162

[EFerrari]

3. International.

[EFerrari]

5. Western observers voice concern as Russia votes

Western observers voice concern as Russia votes

By Conor Sweeney

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The small band of western observers covering Russia's presidential poll on Sunday expressed concerns at voting irregularities and the conduct of the campaign in the run-up to the election.


And an independent Russian watchdog said its observers had foiled attempts to stuff ballot boxes in polling stations in the Moscow region before voting commenced.

The 23 parliamentarians from the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly are the only regular Western observation team covering the vast country after two of the three main election watchdog teams declined invitations.

"Our doubts within the Council of Europe delegation are more to do with the campaign, where there was unequal access to the media," Polish parliamentarian Tadeusz Iwinski told Reuters from the city of Yaroslavl, 260 km north of Moscow.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/3/3/worldupdates/2008-03-02T211152Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-322558-1&sec=Worldupdates

[EFerrari]

4. Opinion.

[EFerrari]

13. Las Vegas Sun: Shirking a voting law.

Shirking a voting law

Sun, Mar 2, 2008 (2:06 a.m.)

Low-income people, while visiting offices that offer public assistance, are supposed to be asked if they are registered to vote. If they are not, but would like to be, they are also supposed to be offered assistance.

This service is specified in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Many people know this legislation as the Motor Voter Act, and remember it only for its requirement that voter registration services be available at state motor vehicle departments.

But this requirement alone would not have achieved the law’s goal, which was to increase the turnout at elections by making it more convenient for all people to register to vote. Because many low-income people do not own vehicles, the law also specified that public assistance offices must offer voter registration services.

In 2005, 10 years after the law went into effect, three public advocacy groups — Project VOTE, based in Washington, D.C.; Demos, based in New York City; and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has offices all over the country — began researching public assistance offices to see if they were complying.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/mar/02/shirking-voting-law/

[EFerrari]

14. It Does Happen in America; The Political Trial of Don Siegelman

March 1, 2008

It Does Happen in America; The Political Trial of Don Siegelman

By Paul Craig Roberts

Don Siegelman, a popular Democratic governor of Alabama, a Republican state, was framed in a crooked trial, convicted on June 29, 2006, and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush administration.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration's use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed "60 Minutes" to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental "technical difficulties" caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution's case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for "objective journalism" in their mind.

The injustice done by the US Department of Justice (sic) to Siegelman is so crystal clear that a participant in Karl Rove's plan to destroy Siegelman can't live with her conscience. Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer who did opposition research for Rove, testified under oath to the House Judiciary Committee and went public on "60 Minutes." Simpson said she was told by Bill Canary, the most important GOP campaign advisor in Alabama, that "my girls can take care of Siegelman."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_paul_cra_080301_it_does_happen_in_am.htm

[Wilms]

21. I love sfexpat2000

I love sfexpat2000

by Melissa G

Mar-01-08

I love sfexpat2000 and I also like civilized conversation among people we know are our friends. Beth rocks!

snip

...she is correct to remember that recounts have come more often from interested third party candidates than mainstream Dems.

snip

:loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya: :loveya:

snip

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=498243&mesg_id=498243

[Melissa G]

18. Off to greatest with ya! n/t

[EFerrari]

20. Thanks, Boss.

:loveya:

[Kurovski]

22. K&R.

Thank you, Madam. :hug: