May 11, 2008

Providing legal resources and election news to California election officials and the attorneys who represent them.

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January 30, 2006

"Validity of signatures scrutinized in recall effort"

From the San Bernardino Sun:

"An effort to recall City Councilman Paul Luellig could still be alive despite being ruled unsuccessful two weeks ago by the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters.

An analysis of a petition to remove Luellig for allegedly deceiving voters has tentatively determined that 464 signatures ruled invalid by the registrar might be valid, a political consultant said.

If the ongoing analysis finds them valid, those signatures combined with 1,685 approved signatures could surpass the 2,047 names needed to put the recall measure on the ballot.

''We believe there are 2,149 valid signatures,'' said Michael Arno, a Sacramento-area political consultant hired by a citizens' recall committee.

After tabulating the 3,420 names on the petition, the Registrar of Voters ruled in mid-January that 1,735 signatures were invalid.

"There could be a variety of reasons, including improper signatures or addresses, for the signatures to be ruled invalid," said Greg Bennett, voting services manager for the registrar's office.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:57 AM | Permalink. . .

"Bruce McPherson requests voting system contingency plans"

"Humboldt County election officials could see longer hours come election night if the Independent Testing Authority decides to issue an unfavorable review of a component found inside Diebold Inc.’s AccuVote-OS voting machine. In anticipation of the results, expected to be received by Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Tuesday, local election officials are crossing their fingers.

“There’s always hand counts, but I don’t see that, (considering) the time involved, as a desirable alternative at all,” Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich said.

On Tuesday, the day after McPherson paid a visit to Humboldt County election officials and the Board of Supervisors, a memo from the secretary of state’s office was sent to all registrars of voters throughout the state with a questionnaire attached designed to gauge what sort of contingency plans counties will adopt if the ITA does not recommend certifying Diebold’s machine for the upcoming elections.

The request for a contingency plan came as a surprise to election officials, considering that the county is being forced to troubleshoot a problem that the federal and state guidelines have only recently created.

Up until now, Crnich has assumed that the only ramifications of the ITA results would be to cause an extended delay in the certification of Diebold’s AccuVote-TSX system."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:56 AM | Permalink. . .

January 27, 2006

Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute Launch Joint Election Reform Project

"The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) are launching a joint effort to monitor the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and encourage constructive changes to the law. The Brookings-AEI Election Reform Project will synthesize election- related research and strengthen the link between the research and policy communities by improving the basic understanding of the law and informing additional policy-making. To emphasize the importance of this partnership and its impact on HAVA, Sen. Barack Obama will open the discussion with a keynote address."

You can find more information about this event here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 03:36 PM | Permalink. . .

"Disabled try out voting machines for accessibility"

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Jerry Daniels cast fake votes in a phony election Thursday and was delighted to have the chance.

"This is the first time I've used a voting machine in eight or 10 years, and it just feels great," said Daniels, a Santa Rosa man who's legally blind.

Daniels was joined by about two dozen other disabled voters as Sonoma County asked three voting-machine companies to demonstrate how their systems make it possible for people with physical and mental disabilities to cast ballots.

"This is a real exciting time," said Vaughn Held, who works with the disabled at the Community Resources for Independence in Santa Rosa.

"Someone who's blind or deaf or physically impaired just wants a level playing field. They want the same access to voting as an able-bodied person," said Held, who uses a wheelchair and has limited use of his arms.

Beginning in June, disabled voters in California will have that access. Under the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, every polling place in the nation must have at least one accessible voting booth by this year.

California counties, which also face new state laws requiring all touch-screen voting machines to provide a way for voters to verify that their ballots have been tallied correctly, are scrambling to find and purchase the new voting machines for the June 6 primary.

"We're going to have to buy machines for 335 precincts," said Janice Atkinson, assistant registrar of voters in Sonoma County. "But before we do, our goal was to get as many people (with disabilities) here as possible."

The county wanted to watch how the machines worked with people with different types of disabilities: the blind, the deaf, the physically disabled and those with other impairments.

There wasn't any shortage of volunteers, said Held, who helped find people to test and evaluate the voting systems.

"I told them that they were going to have a chance to make a change in the community," he said. "Having the county listen and hear what we were talking about -- that was the exciting part."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:06 AM | Permalink. . .

January 26, 2006

"Md. Official Wants Details About Calif. Voting Machine Problems"

"Maryland's top elections official is monitoring concerns about Diebold electronic voting machines used in another state.

State elections administrator Linda Lamone wrote a letter to Diebold's top executive last month after California's secretary of state declared that some of that state's voting machines were susceptible to errors and would not be certified.

Lamone tells The (Baltimore) Sun that she sent the letter so that Maryland stays updated on tests being done on the California machines. But she says the similar Diebold touch-screen machines used in Maryland are secure and that she expects this year's elections to go smoothly.

Critics of the machines pounced on the letter as evidence that there are doubts about the security of the machines in Maryland.

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:45 AM | Permalink. . .

"New voting technique makes it 'simpler' for some"

"It's a whole new way of voting. It's simpler. It's tactile. It's something that we can feel," said Woodland resident Lucinda Talkington, who is a legally blind senior who saw Vote-PAD for the first time Tuesday.

Vote-PAD is based on a plastic sleeve with voting positions marked by tactile bumps. Next to the bumps are small, precision cut holes correspond to the voting position. An ordinary ballot can be slipped into the sleeve and voters with vision problems can listen to a variable speed audio script them through the ballot. Votes are indicated by filling in the appropriate holes.

After voting, voters can confirm that their choices were correctly recorded by using a light sensing shivering pen that stops shivering when it hits the dark spot created by the voter's mark.

Vote-PAD will be used through out the country, however, the only California county that will use it is Yolo County, though it will be used in a mock election in Alameda County. It still needs approval from the Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

Freddie Oakley, county clerk, said she received inquiries from Los Angeles. "If it works for Yolo, others will follow," she said.

She feels assured that because of her friendship with McPherson, Vote-PAD will pass state inspection.

Though there have not been any accuracy problems in Yolo County, Oakley said, "we have to go to a new system. We are going to an optical scan."

Oakley calls Vote-PAD the perfect solution for counties who don't want to spend a fortune on fancy black box machines and who want to keep the control of elections close to home and open to the public. "Jurisdictions are begging for solutions to this problem," she said."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:29 AM | Permalink. . .

January 25, 2006

"San Mateo County seeks OK for all-mail voting"

From the San Jose Mercury News:

"San Mateo County leaders Tuesday began pushing for emergency legislation to allow the June primary election to be conducted strictly by mail because the secretary of state's office hasn't certified an electronic voting machine the county had planned to use.

Under current law, counties can offer absentee ballots, but cannot conduct an entire election by mail.

But faced with mounting pressure to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act -- which requires at least one electronic voting machine at each polling place for disabled voters -- the county wants the backup option of using mail ballots, which could prevent lawsuits.

About 20 counties have expressed interest in the legislation, said Warren Slocum, San Mateo County's chief elections officer.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:26 AM | Permalink. . .

January 24, 2006

"State rebuffs raw vote demand"

"The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can't be made public.

The Alaska Democratic Party says the information is a public record essential for verifying the accuracy of the 2004 general election and must be provided.

The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of, the Democrats said Monday. A detailed analysis of the underlying data could answer lingering questions about an election many thought was over more than a year ago, they say.

"Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don't want to give us the file itself. It doesn't enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know," said Kay Brown, spokeswoman for the party.

At this point, it's impossible to say whether the correct candidates were declared the winner in all Alaska races from 2004, Brown said.

The private contractor hired to provide Alaska's electronic voting machines is Diebold Election Systems. It has told Alaska officials it owns the "structure of the database" though the data itself is public."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:41 AM | Permalink. . .

From the Calaveras Enterprise:

"During the June election, Calaveras County residents will have a new voting system on which to cast their votes.

This week, the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the purchase of a new voting system which will bring the county into compliance with new federal and state mandates.

The punch card system that has been used for many years in the county has been decertified by the federal government, said Karen Varni, county-clerk recorder.

The county is contracting with Election Systems & Software (ES&S) for the voting system and the AutoMARK voter assist terminals which will allow the county to meet Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requirements along with meet requirements to provide an equal opportunity to vote for disabled voters."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:34 AM | Permalink. . .

"Yolo rejects electronic voting machines"

"Yolo County has chosen to reject electronic voting machines in favor of a "zero-tech" ballot upgrade for the 2006 elections.

Local officials said concerns about security and verifiability of votes are what led to the decision to pursue the new voting system, which involves paper ballots.

Yolo County Clerk Recorder Freddie Oakley said an investigation of electronic machines for the ballot upgrade revealed its shortcomings.

"It is a huge nightmare," Oakley said. "I was in negotiations for about a year before I said 'I'm done.'"

Oakley said problems arose when Elections Systems and Software, the only manufacturer certified to sell electronic voting systems in California, would not allow the county to monitor or investigate its maintenance technicians.

Oakley also noted that the technology was generally too susceptible to tampering and hacking, and therefore was not ideal for use in the county.

"This is an industry where there have been convictions for bribery," Oakley said. "This is also an industry where one line of code can change outcomes."

Oakley said she knew early on that California's move toward electronic voting systems would not sit well with some voters, but she would never have predicted so much opposition."

You can read the story here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:25 AM | Permalink. . .

January 22, 2006

"As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security"

From the Washington Post:

"As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.

Sancho's most recent demonstration was last month. Harri Hursti, a computer security expert from Finland, manipulated the "memory card" that records the votes of ballots run through an optical scanning machine.

Then, in a warehouse a few blocks from his office in downtown Tallahassee, Sancho and seven other people held a referendum. The question on the ballot:

"Can the votes of this Diebold system be hacked using the memory card?"

Two people marked yes on their ballots, and six no. The optical scan machine read the ballots, and the data were transmitted to a final tabulator. The result? Seven yes, one no.

"Was it possible for a disgruntled employee to do this and not have the elections administrator find out?" Sancho asked. "The answer was yes."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 07:55 AM | Permalink. . .

January 19, 2006

"Most of State's Vote Machines Not Ready for Primary Time"

From the LA Times:

"Only five of California's 58 counties have electronic voting systems ready for the June primary, state election officials told a state Senate committee hearing Wednesday.

"While we're moving as fast as possible, much of the time needed for each system is out of our control," said Bill Wood, undersecretary of state.

To be ready by June, manufacturers must apply for state certification by Jan. 31, he said. Officials have not said what will happen to counties whose systems are not certified.

Election officials with the secretary of state's office were grilled about their progress by Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey), chairwoman of the Senate committee charged with overseeing election laws.

A county's voting system must be certified by the state in time for counties to comply with state and federal mandates that voters be able use the machines and verify their choices from a paper printout.

The counties with systems already certified are Contra Costa, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Stanislaus.

The rest have urged Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to speed up testing and approvals.

"Obviously, if a county is relying on certification to be done in time and it doesn't happen, it's going to be a hell of a scramble," Bowen said at the conclusion of the four-hour hearing in Sacramento.

"We have a very big task ahead of us," said committee co-chairman Sen. Jim Battin (R-La Quinta)."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:08 AM | Permalink. . .

"California legislators evaluate e-voting"

"As virtually every county in California scrambles for new voting machinery to use in the June elections, the last thing elections officials want to talk about are flaws.

But the warts were on parade Wednesday:

- Sequoia Voting Systems' computers don't reliably add in certain rare primary votes.

- Election Systems & Software's computers sometimes count more ballots than voters and can record the wrong choice for voters with long fingernails.

- Optical scanners made by Diebold Election Systems can be hacked (and so possibly can scanners sold by other vendors).

Unlike in years past, the difference is that lawmakers and state elections officials are airing those problems, if grudgingly and with some protests from local elections officials.

"These meetings are tearing the (voters') confidence apart. They're saying every system is bad,"complained Debbie Hench, San Joaquin County registrar of voters, in a legislative hearing.

"I'm sorry you feel scrutiny and transparency is bad," said Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, chairwoman of the Senate Elections and Reapportionment Committee. But, she said, making a clean breast of voting problems is essential for fixing them and regaining the voter trust that has been in decline since the 2000 presidential elections.

"If you just tell people, 'Trust us, we'll make it all go away,' that's not the way you establish confidence," said Bowen, a Democratic contender for secretary of state.

California's chief elections officer, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, opened his administration last year with promises of transparency. His office has posted a broad array of reports on voting systems on the Internet, and he has spoken openly about some of the more serious problems.

But Bowen and others were annoyed last month to learn through news reports that McPherson's staff had written a leading vendor, Election Systems & Software, threatening to withdraw approval of its equipment after problems cropped up in three counties in the 2004 and 2005 elections.

McPherson's chief counsel, Bill Wood, said the letter wasn't publicized because state officials first wanted to hear what the firm had to say.

"I don't think it serves the public to put a letter out when we don't have answers so we can go forward," he said.

You can read the story .

Posted by Randy Riddle at 08:06 AM | Permalink. . .

January 18, 2006

"Florida county e-voting system deal nixed"

"Elections officials in Leon County, Fla., are scrambling to find a way to comply with state and federal voting laws now that the vendor from which they had planned to buy handicapped-accessible optical scan election equipment is walking away from the deal.

The Leon County Commission last month voted to scrap its investment in 160 AccuVote optical-scan voting machines from Diebold Election Systems and had planned to swap in new devices from Election Systems & Software Inc. (ES&S) (see ”Diebold Machines Voted Out by Florida County”). Leon County intended to use ES&S’s AutoMark optical scan gear to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and Florida election laws. According to HAVA, by this month, every precinct must have a touch-screen or specially equipped optical-scan device for handicapped access. The ES&S AutoMark system has an audio component that lets the blind vote.

However, in an interview with Computerworld, Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said that Omaha-based ES&S, for reasons that are unclear, decided not to go through with what would have been a $1.8 million deal. That decision has forced election officials to search for another way to meet the HAVA compliance deadline. If the county remains a Diebold customer, it will have to purchase that vendor’s touch-screen e-voting systems to comply with the handicapped accessibility laws. That is something Sancho has been reluctant to do because of concerns that the touch-screen machines lack the necessary security and don’t create paper receipts for voters. Leon County had planned to have paper-receipt verified voting systems in every precinct in time for the fall elections.

Standardizing on ES&S would have simplified things, allowing for one set of devices and a single data format for tallying votes. Sancho said Diebold won’t allow its products to be used with any other vendor’s gear because that would violate copyright laws protecting its proprietary technology. What’s next for the county is uncertain.

“At this point, it’s not clear what we’ll do,” said Sancho, who has been talking with lawyers about the county’s options. “I’ve got two major entities in the elections business that simply don’t have the time to deal with Leon County.”

The story is .

Posted by Randy Riddle at 04:59 PM | Permalink. . .

"Balloting systems still await decision"

From the Contra Costa Times:

"Local election officials around California are getting more antsy each day that the state has failed to certify the electronic voting machines they are expecting to use in June.

Counties that do not use the machines, according to a new federal law, are prone to lawsuits by disabled voters.

In a rare holiday news conference Monday, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson sought to quell the concerns of registrars, assuring them -- and voters -- that the process is moving forward and that his office would stand behind any county sued over failing to meet federal standards that take effect this year.

"We will have an election, there will be an election," McPherson said. "Whether these requirements are met or not, California voters will vote on June 6, and they're going to vote on Nov. 7 as well."

He said the state was "90 percent" in compliance with the federal act, and that his office has "looked to do everything that we can" to fully abide by the law. He gave no timeline of when the state would be able to certify the machines because vendors -- including a firm that provides equipment for Alameda and San Luis Obispo counties -- are still in the application or testing stages."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:05 AM | Permalink. . .

New Frontier: DNA Testing in Election Disputes

"In a town election where some votes were reportedly bought and others were stolen, whoever licked the envelope containing a disputed absentee ballot might also have sealed his own fate.

Authorities have obtained a saliva sample from a supporter of one of the candidates for Appalachia Town Council in May 2004. They hope to use DNA testing to determine whether the man sealed an absentee ballot that was reportedly taken from a voter's mailbox, filled out and fraudulently submitted in her name.

The sample was taken from the man late last year, according to a search warrant filed in Wise County Circuit Court.

The warrant details an encounter between the man and Christina McKinney, the resident of a government-subsidized apartment complex whose allegations of vote buying and ballot theft launched a state police investigation nearly two years ago."

You can read the story here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:00 AM | Permalink. . .

January 12, 2006

"ES&S Efforts Ease Calif. E-voting Concerns

"So far, the California secretary of state's office is satisfied with the efforts of electronic voting systems maker Election Systems & Software Inc. to address concerns about its machines.

The state had notified the Omaha-based company last November that unease about the accuracy of the voting machines may force a decertification of the units.

In a letter sent to the manufacturer, Assistant Secretary of State for Elections Bradley Clark cited a problem encountered during a Nov. 8 test of the system, when a vote was apparently displayed inaccurately.

The state's certification proc-ess requires testing of voting system vendors.

ES&S has been working with the state to address issues that were raised by the test, said a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

"At this point, they've been very responsive to our needs," the spokeswoman said.

She said that shortly after the letter was sent, ES&S officials "came in and addressed each issue point by point. Each one has either been resolved or they will be required to find a solution."

She was unsure when ES&S will complete the compliance process."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:57 AM | Permalink. . .

"Down the stretch toward a vote?"

"The legal definition of "registered voter" is breathing new life into Friends of Bay Meadows' fight against the track's future development.

The Friends group, pushing for preservation of the 83-acre venue, which the City Council approved for redevelopment in November, has been combing through petition signatures rejected by the county. They say the county might have broken the elections code by discounting the signatures of people who weren't registered voters when they signed, but had turned in their registration cards before the petition was submitted to the city.

Depending on how you interpret election law, those signatures could count.

"It looks like (a signature) counts as long as the registration is received on or before the date the petition is filed," said Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

The group turned in nearly 5,700 signatures from residents supporting a referendum recalling the council's unanimous vote on the redevelopment.

But the county and city, citing various problems with the signatures, announced in late December that the effort came 136 valid signatures short.

County Elections Manager David Tom said two of the biggest problems werethat the signers failed to re-register to vote after moving, or that they weren't registered voters at the time they signed the petition."

The story is .

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:56 AM | Permalink. . .

"Feds threaten to sue state over voting machine delay"

From the AP:

"New York is in danger of being sued by the federal government over continuing delays in bringing new voting machines to the state and complying with other requirements of the Help America Vote Act, officials said Thursday.

And a spokesman for the state Board of Elections said New York is so far behind in meeting the federal requirements that localities across the state may have to trot out their old lever-action voting machines this year for at least one more election cycle.

The HAVA legislation was adopted by Congress in the wake of the vote-counting fiasco in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. The legislation requires states to modernize voting systems and provides funding for such things as new voting machines. New York has trailed behind all other states in meeting HAVA deadlines.

In a letter received this week, New York officials were told by Wan Kim, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, that the state was lagging behind every other state in complying with the HAVA requirements.

Lee Daghlian, the spokesman for the state Board of Elections, said it is not certain New York will be able to have new voting machines in place and workers trained to operate them in time for the September primaries or the November elections. Failing that, Daghlian said counties across the state would have to use their old machines."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:49 AM | Permalink. . .

January 11, 2006

"Enthusiasm swells for all-mail vote"

"Even as Alameda County decided Tuesday to lobby for an all vote-by-mail primary in June, local elections officials in a dozen other California counties were talking about the same thing.

Voting-reform advocates in Alameda County largely favored the move, and county supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to seek emergency legislation as a way out of a chaotic market in voting machinery.

By late afternoon, local elections officials in at least 12 counties, all in Northern California and including San Mateo, Marin, Solano and Sonoma, had signaled an interest in perhaps joining Alameda County's legislation for much the same reason.

But the swell of enthusiasm for abandoning polling places and conducting an election by mail could get a chillier reception in Sacramento, where Democrats and Republicans alike have blocked all previous attempts at voting entirely by mail.

Lawmakers contacted Tuesday declined to weigh in on Alameda County's effort, saying they hadn't seen the bill yet. But politicians have been wary of changing the dynamics of the campaigns that got them elected, and as recently as last year, they rejected six counties' effort to try an all-mail election.

"It hasn't happened yet; I can't imagine it'll happen now at the last minute," said one Democratic staffer.

Still, Alameda County's effort comes at a time of surging popularity for voting by mail, with 40 percent of voters in the last statewide election casting absentee ballots. Mail-in balloting is even more popular in the Bay Area at 45 percent of the turnout in the November special election, with Alameda County at 47 percent and counties such as San Mateo and Solano at or above 50 percent."

You can read the article here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 12:21 PM | Permalink. . .

January 10, 2006

"Paper trail law for e-voting has fans, foes"

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

"California will require all electronic voting machines to produce a printed record of votes in the June election, but there are still concerns that the expensive overhaul may cause more problems than it solves.

The Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank, has called the paper trail requirement one of the state's top 10 policy blunders of 2005. The new law "may force California to relive the mistakes of America's punch-card voting past,'' the group said, and will make voting "increasingly difficult and negate the original virtues of e-voting: speed, cost-savings and efficiency.''

"We're moving in the wrong direction,'' said Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies for the institute. "The whole point of e-voting is to move away from paper.''

In a briefing paper written last year, Arrison and Vince Vasquez, a fellow at the institute, argued that a system of printouts that allows voters to verify their choices and election officials to do a physical recount to confirm the results is not the perfect solution its supporters proclaim.

"Passing sweeping laws ... to require voter-verified paper trails for touch-screen machines, though well-intentioned, could bankrupt cash-strapped counties and may erode the efficiency of electronic voting management,'' they said in the paper.

Arrison and the institute are swimming against the tide. Growing concerns about the vulnerability of the complex electronic voting systems to hacking, electronic glitches and simple errors by local election officials have persuaded an increasing number of states to require paper backups for election results.

In California, support for a paper voting trail was one of the few recent bipartisan efforts in the Legislature. In 2004, SB1438, which required electronic voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper trail in the coming June primary, passed the Assembly on a 73-t0-0 vote.

"Without a paper trail, you don't have hard copy to show voter intent,'' said Pamela Smith, national coordinator of VerifiedVoting.org, a group concerned about electronic-voting problems. "Instead, you have electronic copy, which may or may not reflect voter intent.''

Without a paper printout, election officials are at the mercy of the electronic voting system, with little or no recourse if something goes wrong, Smith said."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 09:46 AM | Permalink. . .

January 09, 2006

Secretary McPherson's letter to Diebold.

In case you missed it, here is Secretary McPherson's letter to Diebold requiring federal source code review for Diebold's TSx system and related components. From the Secretary's letter:

"Unresolved significant security concerns exist with respect to the memory card used to program and configure the AccuVote-OS and the AccuVote-TSX components of this system because this component was not subjected to federal source code review and evaluation by the Independent Testing Authorities (ITA) who examined your system for federal qualification. It is the Secretary of State's position that the source code for the AccuBasic code on these cards, as well as for the AccuBasic interpreter that interprets this code, should have been federally reviewed."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:32 AM | Permalink. . .

"Registrar proposes all-mail vote"

"In the chaotic marketplace for voting equipment, California counties are scrapping their vendors, dumping one machine for another and experimenting with new kinds of voting.

The boldest move yet could come in Alameda County, where if the elections chief has her wish, there would be no polling places, no voting machines in the June primary — just a straightforward, all-mail election like the entire state of Oregon has held for years.

Almost half of Alameda County voters in November — 47 percent — mailed their ballots anyway for a 10 percent increase in two years. But the big reason that acting Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold wants an all-mail election is that virtually every major voting system she might buy lacks state or national approval or has some other major problem.

"This doing things in a hurry with millions of dollars in voting equipment, you want to make sure you get it right," Ginnold said. "With all of the uncertainty in voting equipment right now it just doesn't make sense to spend all that money on it."

Federal law says every polling place in the country must have at least one handicapped-accessible voting machine available, yet only one — featuring Election Systems & Software's AutoMark ballot marker — has national and state approval.

Yet California elections officials are threatening to withdraw their approval for ES&S, citing problems that thesystem has shown correctly tallying and reporting votes. The other big vendors — Diebold Election Systems, Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart/InterCivic — are scrambling to get national and state approvals.

It's the same situation nationwide, and in California local elections officials are dealing with their frustration either by criticizing the secretary of state's office, taking a gamble on new equipment and new vendors or trying workarounds.

San Francisco is ditching Omaha-based ES&S, which not only supplied the city's voting machines but helped run its elections, for Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems and its machines. A few other counties are talking of going with new vendors as well.

Panic is running high especially in the 17 counties running Diebold equipment. All of them need at least one part of Diebold's latest system to comply with federal law, as well as a state law requiring paper printouts for all electronic votes. But the firm's optical scanners have been successfully hacked to produce fraudulent vote totals, and they include a kind of software that is forbidden under federal voting system rules. As a result, California state elections officials forced Diebold to send that software back to a testing lab for examination."

You can find the article here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 11:17 AM | Permalink. . .

January 06, 2006

"Sacramento County Meets HAVA Deadline"

"Sacramento County Registrar of Voters Jill LaVine announced last week that Sacramento County has met the January 1, 2006 deadline set by HAVA (Help America Vote Act) that requires at least one voting system in each polling place be accessible to persons with disabilities.

"All Sacramento County polling places will have an AutoMARK voter-assist terminal for the June 6, 2006 Gubernatorial Primary Election," said LaVine.

The AutoMARK allows most voters with disabilities to vote privately and independently. Some of the available features include audio ballots in English and Spanish, and zoom and contrast features for the touch screen display."

The article is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 02:17 PM | Permalink. . .

"Yorba Linda clerk challenges initiative"

From the Orange County Register:

"Attorneys for City Clerk Kathie Mendoza have filed papers asking an Orange County Superior Court judge to invalidate the Right-to-Vote initiative and remove it from the June 6 ballot.

The initiative, put together by the Yorba Linda Residents for Responsible Redevelopment, seeks to give voters final say over major land developments that require changes to key city planning documents.

The legal papers repeat Mendoza’s September assertion that the initiative petition was flawed because it did not include the full text of the city’s general plan and other documents affected by its passage.

The papers name the Orange County Registrar of Voters and the Yorba Linda City Council. The council certified the initiative with the expectation that it would be challenged."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 01:35 PM | Permalink. . .

January 05, 2006

"Redistricting backers renew effort to change process"

From the AP:

"Two months after voters rejected Proposition 77, supporters of the redistricting measure announced a new initiative campaign to take the power to draw legislative and congressional districts away from lawmakers.

"I think there is broad agreement across the political spectrum that our current political system is broken, and that one of the reasons it is broken is that we have politicians drawing their own political boundaries," Derek Cressman, director of TheRestofUs.org, a political watchdog group, said Wednesday.

"Democrats, Republicans, independents - everyone agrees that is an inherently corrupt process and it must be changed."

The new initiative would create an 11-member commission made up of registered voters picked at random by the secretary of state to draw new districts after each national census.

The panel would be composed of four Democrats, four Republicans and three independents or members of minor parties. It could not include anyone who had run for public office, been a political appointee or aide, worked for a political party or been a lobbyist in the previous 10 years."

Posted by Randy Riddle at 03:19 PM | Permalink. . .

"Deadline passes for compliance with voting act as primary nears"

From the Contra Costa Times:

"Mikel Haas is running out of time and patience, but he says he'll give it one more month before he really starts to panic.

With an April 11 special election fast approaching, the San Diego County registrar of voters still doesn't have any California-certified machines to meet the requirements of the 2002 U.S. Help America Vote Act.

Most counties in California -- and many across the country -- officially fell out of compliance Sunday with rules mandating that election systems be accessible to voters with disabilities. But the San Diego County special election puts Haas at the head of the line when it comes to compliance.

Although the legal deadline has passed, Secretary of State Bruce McPherson has tried to assure county officials and voters that California will resolve its Help America Vote Act issues by the June primary, the first statewide election with federal races.

But McPherson has not certified any new accessible voting machines since August, making some registrars nervous and others downright angry.

"He says we'll be ready by June, but I think there's a lack of understanding that June is here now," said Conny McCormack, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials. "It takes months to prepare for an election. We don't have equipment in our offices because it hasn't been ordered or can't be ordered."

For his part, McPherson said at a conference last month that he does not want to sacrifice testing of elections equipment for the sake of meeting a deadline.

McPherson's spokeswoman, Jennifer Kerns, said that at least six election systems are "in the pipeline" and that McPherson is confident multiple options will be available for the June primary.

Posted by Randy Riddle at 03:15 PM | Permalink. . .

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