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May 09, 2008 Providing legal resources and election news to California election officials and the attorneys who represent them. |
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« November 2005 | Main | January 2006 » December 14, 2005 Light BloggingI will be out of the office for the next three weeks, and will be posting only occasionally. Happy Holidays. Posted by Randy Riddle at 02:42 PM | Permalink. . . "California Secretary of State Announces Creation of Voting Accessibility Advisory Committee""Secretary of State Bruce McPherson announced last week that he has established the Secretary of State's Voting Accessibility Advisory Committee (VAAC) and named its 10 members. "Ensuring access at the polling place for voters with disabilities is one of my top priorities as Secretary of State," said McPherson. "New federal law requires that all voters be able to vote privately and independently. I want those who understand this issue best to be among those advising me on polling place and voting systems accessibility." The committee will meet regularly and advise the Secretary of State's Office on issues relating to access to the electoral process by voters with disabilities. Issues include access to the polling place, independent and confidential operation of voting systems and voter education for individuals with disabilities." The story is here. Posted by Randy Riddle at 02:40 PM | Permalink. . . December 12, 2005 "S.J. voting machines' fate up in air""A statewide test in which a Finnish computer expert will attempt to hack electronic voting software would have little impact on San Joaquin County, state and county officials said last week. But those cards aren't used in the ATM-like touchscreen machines San Joaquin County bought from Diebold three years ago, said Deborah Hench, the county's registrar of voters. The county agreed to buy 1,625 TSx machines for $5.7 million in 2002, a fact Hench believes is an advantage over other counties rushing to meet a Jan. 1 federal deadline to have voting equipment accessible to people with disabilities. "We're better off than a lot of other counties because we have the units," Hench said. Other counties "not only have to purchase the equipment, but it has to be manufactured and delivered." The federal Help America Vote Act, adopted in 2002, requires counties to have at least one voting system that can be used by people with visual, hearing, mobility or other impairments. Electronic machines are believed to be more accessible than paper ballots, Hench said. The problem is that TSx and several other electronic systems still haven't been certified by the state, said Kim Alexander of the Davis-based California Voter Foundation. Counties are left in a situation where they either own or need to purchase equipment to meet federal standards but aren't guaranteed the ability to use it for elections. "This is a classic example of the federal government putting the cart before the horse," Alexander said last week. McPherson told The Record in November that a decision on TSx certification would likely be made by mid-December. Nghia Ngyuen Demovic, a spokeswoman for McPherson's office, said last week officials are still reviewing the equipment. She couldn't say whether such a decision would be made by the new year." The story is here. Posted by Randy Riddle at 12:23 PM | Permalink. . . December 09, 2005 "Diebold execs gave to GOP despite ban"From the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Money from three Diebold executives began trickling into two Republican campaigns last August, just two months after the voting-machine maker banned political giving by a handful of its top brass. Mike Jacobsen, a spokesman for the manufacturer based in Green, Ohio, expressed regret over the donations, which totaled $1,400 to U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine and state Sen. Kirk Schuring of Canton, according to campaign finance reports. But he said the three officials who gave were not subject to the 2004 ethics policy changes, which applied only to the chief executive, Walden O'Dell; president; chief financial officer; and vice president in charge of Diebold Election Systems. News of the donations came as a voluminous election-reform bill was set to clear a key Ohio Senate committee late Wednesday, bearing evidence of continued political strife over what constituted the worst problems in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004." Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:42 AM | Permalink. . . "Election group challenges certification of 3 vote machine vendors"From an AP report: "A civil liberties group sued two state agencies Thursday, asking a judge to prevent three firms from selling voting equipment because it contends officials failed to properly review and assemble software code from their machines. The California-based Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint on behalf of a Winston-Salem voting reform activist Joyce McCloy in Wake County Superior Court. The lawsuit asks the court to intervene and block the approval of what it called "unqualified voting systems." The State Board of Elections agreed Dec. 1 that Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems met minimum technical and administrative standards to sell their machines to counties in North Carolina. But the foundation argued the board didn't follow a law passed in August that requires state officials to review "all source code" related to voting machines that a firm wants to sell in North Carolina before it can be certified for counties to purchase. The board also failed to require that all software be placed in a safe place so state officials can examine it for problems, according to the complaint. "The Board of Elections has simply ignored its mandatory obligations under North Carolina election law," said Matt Zimmerman, a foundation attorney. "By certifying without a full review of all relevant code, the Board of Elections has now opened the door for North Carolina counties to purchase untested and potentially insecure voting equipment." State elections director Gary Bartlett declined to comment Thursday on the pending litigation and because the voting machine contracts still aren't complete. The state Attorney General's Office, which represents the elections board and another defendant, the Office of Information Technology Service, was reviewing the complaint, a spokeswoman said." Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:18 AM | Permalink. . . December 07, 2005 "U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler in court appealing electronic voting system decision"From the Palm Beach Post: "A year after a federal judge rejected his claim that Florida's paperless electronic voting system is unconstitutional, U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, was in an appeals court Wednesday morning trying to get the decision overturned. A three-judge panel heard arguments that voters in the 15 Florida counties that use touch screens are being denied their constitutional equal-protection rights because their ballots cannot be manually recounted, as is the case with paper ballots in Florida's 52 other counties. Wexler attorney Robert Peck said being able to manually recount some ballots but not others amounts to the same kind of "arbitrary and disparate treatment" that led the U.S. Supreme Court to halt Florida's 2000 presidential recount. But Florida Deputy Solicitor General Rick Figlio said that since Florida scrapped punch-card ballots, both touch screen and optical scan systems are "effective" means of recording votes and the differences between them don't raise constitutional issues. The judges didn't indicate when they would make a decision." Posted by Randy Riddle at 10:53 AM | Permalink. . . December 06, 2005 "Council derails recall attempt"From the Pasadena Star-News: "The City Council on Monday killed a recall challenge against two of its members, but said it would seek a judge's opinion within 21 days as to whether the petition to put the issue on the ballot should have been multilingual. The meeting was contentious, starting with a protest outside of Rosemead City Hall and spilling into the council chambers. At times during the night, audience members of opposing views nearly came to blows. After several hours of debate, the council voted 3-2 to kill the recall. Those in favor included the two council members in question, Rosemead Mayor Jay Imperial and Councilman Gary Taylor, along with Councilwoman Margaret Clark. A judge's review would reduce claims of liability against the city that the petition was unfair to minorities, Clark said. Imperial and Taylor were made targets of the recall largely for their votes in favor of a Wal-Mart Supercenter planned for 24 acres on Walnut Grove Avenue at Rush Street. Clark moved to have a judge look at a Nov. 23 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that a Santa Ana school board recall election was invalid because the recall petition was circulated only in English. The recall petition circulated in Rosemead earlier this year was written only in English, according to the city attorney. Petitioners gathered enough signatures to qualify for a recall election that was scheduled to be held Feb. 7. In a surprise appearance, Nativo Lopez, the target of that Santa Ana recall campaign, addressed the City Council and accused Imperial and Taylor of manipulating the court ruling for their gain. Lopez said the court's ruling vindicated his allegation the petition against him was largely fraudulent and he said it was ironic Imperial and Taylor would use it to overturn the will of Rosemead voters. "Let the will of the people be done," Lopez said. "Proceed with the recall election." A federal consent decree in July found Rosemead violated the Voting Rights Act in the March 2005 elections because, based on its demographics, the city didn't provide adequate information to voters in Chinese, Spanish or Vietnamese. The decree requires all election materials and related election information be written in those languages, in addition to English". Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:01 AM | Permalink. . . December 05, 2005 "Via computer, a vote-counting headache"From the Boston Globe: Even in this election off-year, the potential perils of electronic voting systems are bedeviling some state officials, as a Jan. 1 deadline approaches for complying with new standards for the machines' reliability. Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods to ensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count votes without falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders, or other ills that beset computers. This isn't just theoretical; problems in some states have led to lost or miscounted votes. One of the biggest concerns surrounding computerized ballots -- their frequent inability to produce a written receipt of a vote -- has been addressed or is being worked on most states. Still, a report issued in October by the Government Accountability Office predicted that overall steps to improve the reliability of varied electronic voting machines ''are unlikely to have a significant effect" in next year's elections. This, the GAO said, is partly because efforts to establish and disseminate the certification procedures remain a work in progress. ''There's not a lot of precedents in dealing with these electronic systems so people are slowly figuring out the best way to do this," said Thad Hall of the University of Utah and coauthor of ''Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting." In North Carolina, officials Thursday certified Diebold Inc. and Election Systems & Software Inc. and conditionally certified Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. as voting machine vendors. The state adopted new requirements, which include placing the machines' software code in escrow in case of a problem. Other states have similar rules, but Diebold had argued in court last week that North Carolina's law was too broad. The company said to comply, it would have to disclose proprietary code behind Microsoft Corp.'s Windows CE operating system, which is used in its machines. While rival machine vendors say they can meet those standards, Diebold sought an exemption, asking a judge to protect it from criminal prosecution if it did not disclose the code. The judge declined to issue such a blanket protection. A different kind of showdown is brewing in California, where the secretary of state, Bruce McPherson, said he might force e-voting machine makers to prove their systems can withstand attacks from a hacker. One such test on a Diebold system -- Diebold machines were blamed for voting disruptions in a 2004 California primary -- is expected to happen in the next few weeks. The state has been negotiating details with Finnish security specialist Harri Hursti, who uncovered severe flaws in a Diebold system used in Leon County, Fla. (He demonstrated how vote results could be changed, then made screens flash ''Are we having fun yet?") Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:54 AM | Permalink. . . December 02, 2005 "Uncertainty clouds future of e-vote tests"From the Oakland Tribune: "For 11 years, most states have relied on voting systems tested to minimal federal standards, the results withheld from public scrutiny and given the green light by a nongovernmental agency working on a shoestring budget. The era of approving tools of democracy on the cheap is coming to an end, and judging by talk at a national gathering of voting experts here this week, few will be sorry to see it go. Carnegie Mellon University computer expert Michael Shamos, a state voting-systems certification official for Pennsylvania, is one of the staunchest advocates for new, fully computerized electronic voting systems. But judging by what he has seen emerge from secretive, private labs known as "independent testing authorities" and approved by the National Association of State Elections Directors, Shamos said, "There's stuff in there that's so horrible, I can't understand it." He found a quarter of the voting systems presented to Pennsylvania unsuitable for elections, with such "glaring failures" as an inability to tally votes correctly. A recent study led by the University of Maryland showed all of six voting systems tested did not record 3 to 4 percent of the votes. What does pass state muster often can break down. "I have good reason to believe that 10 percent of systems are failing on Election Day. That's an unbelievable number," Shamos told an assemblage of voting-system makers, elections officials and scientists. "Why are we not in an uproar about the failure of (touch-screen voting) systems?" "Things are getting through the certification process that really shouldn't," said software architect Eric Lazarus of DecisionSmith, a voting-systems consultant for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. But if voting systems testing is as broken as scientists and voting advocates say, there is wide-ranging debate about what the future should look like. For the next year or two, the way that voting systems reach U.S. counties and voters is not likely to change." Posted by Randy Riddle at 01:05 PM | Permalink. . . Padilla v. Lever an issue in local recall"Two councilmen facing a recall campaign may mount a legal challenge on the grounds the petition to put the recall on the ballot should have been multilingual. A three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 23 that recall petitions written only in English are in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. The case stems from the 2003 recall of a Santa Ana Unified School District board of education member. The circuit panel concluded "The purpose of the bilingual provisions of the (Voting Rights) Act is to end the language disability of some citizens to full participation in the electoral process; and to this end the Act requires information relating to the electoral process be brought to their attention in both English and the minority language. "Holding that these bilingual provisions do not apply to recall petitions would deny minority language speakers the right to fully participate in the electoral process by depriving them of the ability to consider the written arguments for and against a particular recall target." Imperial and Taylor said their camps are considering the implications of the ruling upon the recall effort against them. The story is here. Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:15 AM | Permalink. . . "Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal""Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan. The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections. "The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect," the memo concluded. The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options. But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said. The redistricting was approved in 2003, and Texas Republicans gained five seats in the U.S. House in the 2004 elections, solidifying GOP control of Congress." The story is here. Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:57 AM | Permalink. . . December 01, 2005 "A hacker's touch"From a SF Chronicle editorial: "California voting officials are facing a federal mandate to modernize elections. Make it faster, more accurate and easier for the disabled and others. But there's a hidden problem: A new wave of machines and the software that runs them may not be secure or reliable. Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, the state's top elections official, is right to use caution in approving a request by Diebold, a major vote-machine maker, to sell its products in California. McPherson's staff has already done extensive tire-kicking. It's put the Diebold hardware through a second test after an initial dry-run showed problems such as frozen screens and paper jams that block a record of a voter's choices. Now McPherson's taking testing to new heights. He's bringing in a Finnish hacker, whose specialty is voting machines, to see if the Diebold product is tamperproof. The same tester was able to break into another Diebold product in Florida." Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:11 AM | Permalink. . . Connecticut Legislature Passes Campaign Finance Reform Package"The General Assembly approved the nation's most sweeping campaign finance reforms early today, transforming Connecticut into a political laboratory. The House voted 82-65 to give final approval at 2:44 a.m. and sent the bill to Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who set aside minor reservations about the Democratic measure and promised to sign it into law. "This legislation makes Connecticut a national leader on campaign finance reform," said Rell, who called for limits on so-called special interest money in January. "It can't happen soon enough." The legislation bans contributions by lobbyists, their spouses, and state contractors, limits political action committees, closes a loophole that permits corporate donations and creates a voluntary system of public financing. By overhauling campaign laws crafted 30 years ago after the Watergate scandal, the bill upends long-established relationships between power and money, though few would predict precisely what might rise in their place. "It's an exciting experiment, and we'll learn as we go," said Senate President Pro Tem Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn. "What's most important, we're bringing the process back to the grass roots. And we're freeing elected officials from the pursuit of special interest money." The story is here. Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:09 AM | Permalink. . . |
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