Paper Vote Canada

Missouri's Secretary of State Matt Blunt (who also happens to be a candidate for the Governor of Missouri in the November election) has announced plans to allow Missouri voters in the military to send in their ballots by unencrypted e-mail. A supposedly trusted third party (Omega Technologies) will handle the unencrypted ballots and redistribute them to the appropriate ballot counters. Apparently North Dakota is also contemplating a similar scheme. Those voters will have to sign a waiver acknowledging that their votes need not be kept secret.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:20 pm (0) comments /

The [California] Senate on Wednesday revived an effort to require a paper trail to ensure that electronic voting machines aren't tampered with and accurately record voter preferences.

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The [California] Senate ... approved a bill by Assemblyman Tony Strickland, R-Westlake Village, that would require all touch-screen voting machines used after Jan. 1, 2006, to give voters paper receipts verifying how they voted.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:39 pm (0) comments /

To summarise the responses to this item, I have now been able to confirm the story [4100 votes given to candidate in local Brussels election by computer error due to cosmic ray]. It was of course actually 4096 = 2^12 votes, as correspondent Robson and I expected.

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The event occurred in the election held on 18 May 2003. An expert review determined that as no software defects had been found on inspecting the source code and no test had been able to reproduce the error, it was probably attributable to a spontaneous inversion of a bit in the RAM of the PC (no explicit mention of cosmic rays). However the report concluded that even if the voting system under review was not perfect the totality of controls was sufficient to be confident in the overall result. I wonder.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 3:28 pm (0) comments /

Miami-Dade County elections officials said Friday they have found detailed electronic voting records from the 2002 gubernatorial primary that were originally believed lost in computer crashes last year.

Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the Elections Supervisor office, said the records were found on a compact disc in the office. "We are very pleased," he said.

A group of election-reform activists are demanding a Department of Justice investigation into the viability of touch-screen voting machines, after it was discovered that logs of votes cast on the machines in Miami-Dade County in a 2002 election were lost.

Elections supervisors blamed the loss on bad management, not on the machines. But the activists are nevertheless furious that the loss occurred eight months after the 2002 election, but was not publicized until after an audit was requested. Now the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition is demanding an investigation.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 3:23 pm (0) comments /

It was the biggest split between 'experts and the public he'd ever found. For example, 83% of the experts said e-voting is less or much less secure against election tampering than paper ballots, compared with just 19% of the general public.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:46 pm (0) comments /

Anne Delaney: Why wasn’t the emphasis simply just put into getting the electronic system right and verifiable?

Bruce Bimber: This is a classic case in my view of enthusiasm for technology and in particular enthusiasm for the notion that whatever technology is the latest must be the best. When we went through the crisis here in the United States in 2000 that was such a traumatic jolt to the political system that people rushed for what is best and the idea they had in mind is that surely the newest technology, the latest technology, must be the greatest.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:28 pm (0) comments /

An embarrassed state Republican Party apologized Thursday for a GOP campaign brochure that urged voters to use absentee ballots, undermining efforts by Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood to inspire confidence in new touch-screen voting machines.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:20 pm (0) comments /

US Democrats are piling on the pressure to make electronic voting machines accurate, secure and independently auditable.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:18 pm (0) comments /

On the floor of the Democratic convention, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Florida Senator Bob Graham if the state had solved the problem of hanging chads and punch-card ballots, which had caused such havoc in the last presidential election.

Graham noted that those problems had been solved, but pointed to another problem: about half of Florida voters will use electronic voting machines in November, even though "(We) do not have any verifiable backup in case one of those machines malfunctions or there's a challenge to the accuracy of the machines."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:58 pm (0) comments /

Some states, worried about the potential for abuse with voting machines that leave no paper trail, have banned their use this November. But Florida, which may well decide the presidential race, is not among those states, and last month state officials rejected a request to allow independent audits of the machines' integrity. A spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush accused those seeking audits of trying to "undermine voters' confidence," and declared, "The governor has every confidence in the Department of State and the Division of Elections."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:37 pm (0) comments /

RIVERSIDE – Late Monday, word came that Mischelle Townsend, Riverside County’s Registrar of Voters, had abruptly quit her job mid-term. She said she wanted to spend more time with her family, and nurse her father-in-law through his impending knee surgery. Worthy sentiments, for sure. But she didn’t mention anything about a controversial March 2 election for county supervisor that was still being contested, and the recount that had become entangled in problems attributable, in part, to the county’s electronic voting machines. Nor did she mention anything about potentially explosive new details regarding the possible manipulation of those machines. Likewise, no mention of the big list of questions to this effect from Los Angeles CityBeat sitting on her desk since last Saturday.

Instead, the state’s most outspoken champion of e-voting machines, who was leading a lawsuit against Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to try to revoke a list of 23 improved voting security measures imposed last month, is stepping down and vanishing. Townsend leaves not only a mass of unresolved questions about the contested supervisor seat, but also about the fate of e-voting in this state.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:34 pm (0) comments /

CNN has posted a story to their site about electronic votes from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines that were lost due to a computer crash

A computer crash erased detailed records from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines, raising again the spectre of election troubles in Florida, where the new technology was supposed to put an end to such problems.

The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and other elections, elections officials said Tuesday.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:21 pm (0) comments /

As voters continue to express concerns about possible problems with November presidential election procedures, members of Congress are asking Secretary of State Colin Powell to make an official request for United Nations election observers, particularly for swing states.

Last week, a group of thirteen Congress members, headed by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), sent a letter to Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, asking for observers. "As legislators, we should guarantee the American people that our country will not experience another nightmare like the 2000 presidential elections," Congresswoman Johnson said.

The letter also pointed out the "dangers" of paperless, electronic voting machines, saying that they "could become a standard to be exported and emulated [and] should be of concern to the United Nations and the international community as a whole."

The United Nations, however, turned down the request. "The policy and practice is that the United Nations responds to requests made by national governments, and not the legislative branch," said UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe, according to the Trivalley Herald.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:19 pm (0) comments /

California elections officials are poised Monday to approve a new Diebold electronic-voting system for Alameda, Los Angeles and Plumas counties that still leaves some published security holes unplugged and the fix for a troubling vote-counting problem unproven.

Electronic-voting critics wonder whether the state has become so eager to clear the three counties' use of the touchscreens for November that officials are overlooking potential flaws.

"These concerns are just completely glossed over," said Lowell Finley, an Oakland election lawyer handling two lawsuits that target Diebold e-voting machines. He discovered them Friday after filing public-records requests for testing reports on the new Diebold system.

"This thing is so fundamentally flawed that it can't be fixed by November," Finley charged.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:12 am (0) comments /