Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News MONDAY 12/05/05

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The Elections Forum Daily News
salutes DUer Angry Girl for all she
does to fight election fraud. Stay
angry!

Main Site:
http://nightweed.com/angrygirl.html
The classic, “20 Amazing Facts about Voting
In the USA.”
http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

Angry Girl

”Question authority!
They're coming next for you and me....”

Never forget the pursuit of Truth.
Only the deluded & complicit accept election results on blind faith.

Election Reform, Fraud, & Related News MONDAY 12/05/05

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.

2. Post stories using the "Election Fraud and Reform News Sources" listed here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x371233

3. Re-post stories and announcements you find on DU, providing a link to the original thread with thanks to the Original Poster, too.

4. Start a discussion thread by re-posting a story you see on this thread.

If you want to know how post "News Banners" or other images, go here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=371233#371391



All previous daily threads are available here:
http://www.independentmediasource.com/DU_archives/du_2004erd_el_ref_fr_thr_calenders.htm

Please

"Recommend"

for the Greatest Page (it's the link just below).

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1. NY: Citizens Thrash State Board of Elections for Lax Regulations

When you live in a city with a paper called “The Freeman” you better walk the walk. Of course the regulations are lax. It’s Patakiville USA. Why should they care, they have all the vendors in their hip pocket. Good for Rhinebeck, NY, a great place to visit, btw.

http://www.midhudsoncentral.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15688867&BRD=1769&PAG=461&dept_id=74969&rfi=6



12/04/2005
Proposed election reforms draw criticisms
By Patricia Doxsey , Freeman staff

Advertisement
RHINEBECK - Advocates for voters' rights say regulations put forth by the state Board of Elections to guide companies that want to supply new voting machines to New York are "terrible" standards that will fail to ensure the integrity of the system.

Local elections officials, meanwhile, say they are less concerned with the regulations themselves that with what they will mean to their counties.

The proposed standards released last week are intended to provide guidance to companies interested in designing new voting machines to replace the state's current machines, in which voters pull levers next to the names of candidates.

The new machines are required under the Help America Vote Act, which was passed by Congress in 2002 in response to the contested Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election. As part of the legislation, which was adopted by New York in June, all lever-action voting machines in the state must be replaced in time for the 2006 election.

Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voters, said not only are the regulations technically deficient, but they seem to favor a direct-recording electronic voting system over the precinct-based optical scan system supported by his organization.

"We think they're terrible," Lipari said. "They're actually really poor."

Miriam Kramer, a government policy analyst with the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the state Board of Elections "failed the voters by passing weak and incomplete regulations about how (existing voting machines will be) replaced."

Lipari said his organization is still conducting a technical review of the standards, but that, at first blush, the regulations seem to give "far too much latitude" to companies to define and satisfy accuracy testing requirements and what can be considered proprietary information.

He also criticized a section of the new rules that would allow the state Board of Elections to waive some standards and said the regulations, as written, contain vague definitions of "crucial terms."

"There should be no reason that any part of the test or any other regulations can be waived by the state Board of Elections because that would make the regulations meaningless," Lipari said.

Kramer said the regulations proposed by the board reflect a disregard for

voting integrity.

"They don't care about lost votes or if somebody 'undervotes,'" she said. "There's nothing to notify voters if they missed voting in a particular race."

She said the board should have recommended the state Legislature eliminate its demand for a full-faced, instead allowing the use of a two-sided ballot, and should have gone farther to accommodate voters who don't speak English.

"The regulations are weak and need to have significant changes before they're adopted," she said.

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2. VA: More Citizens Kicking Ass,Read this from the Commonwealth of Virginia

This is a text book LTTE. It rocks and it lays out the facts in a tone that is appropriate to the situation. Watch for issues to arise in my great state because of an absence of paper trail. This one’s a keeper for local efforts.

http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/columns/forum/wb/43263

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Digital voting fears are grounded in facts

I wanted to comment on two articles I have seen on your Web site, both concerning the WINVote machines specifically and paperless electronic voting in general.

The first, "Voter paper trail might be a blind alley," contains a relatively standard defense of paperless machines from Registrar Randall Wertz, based on security steps the state and localities take against tampering.

All of these steps are useful and necessary, but in the grand scheme they are nothing more than a sugar pill. The software that collects and tallies votes is complex, written to meet poor standards and has a history of failure. We, as computer scientists, know how to write good code -- it runs our airplanes, our pacemakers and our military equipment -- but we don't know how to do it on the cheap. Boeing spent $2 billion over five years to write the control software for the 777, and the final product contains less than one-fourth of the total amount of software that runs on your voting machines.

If airplane code were written to the same standards of reliability as voting machines, every day about 10 planes flying out of Baltimore/Washington International would experience a software failure during flight.

Testing can only reveal the presence of problems, not their absence. Otherwise, automakers and other companies would never have to issue a recall; their testing would be sufficient.

Hacking is not the primary threat. Failure due to an honest mistake is, such as the one in the 2004 general election in North Carolina. Election officials carried out all the steps Wertz described, but a single mistake led to the permanent loss of 4,500 votes, throwing two statewide races into disarray for nearly a year.

"I know we'll always have conspiracy theorists," he said. "They're sure the government people are out to get 'em."

Do these "conspiracy theorists" include the Association for Computing Machinery, the largest and most prestigious organization for professional computer scientists? The ACM supports strong development standards combined with a non-electronic (i.e., paper) record of every vote. This position is supported by more than 95 percent of its members: www.myacm.org/opinion/poll.cfm.

Again, honest mistakes have been far more damaging than the bogeyman of "hackers" that election officials mock and use as a strawman argument.

The second article, by Dave Price titled "Voters need not fear the digital age," contains chest-thumping bluster, but few facts. I -- and the other members of the ACM -- do not fear the digital age. We just understand the limitations of the technology.

Price wrote, "I have a degree in information systems management, a national certification in computer repair and am fluent in several computer programming languages. The one thing I am sure of is that once you write a program and extensively test it, as Advanced has done, the darn thing works the same way every time."

For this statement alone, his certificates should be revoked. Program correctness depends on how well it was written and if the programmers considered every possible event, along with the correct way to respond. What if someone mashes the screen too hard and holds his finger down? What if the disk is full? Will it tell the voter to come back, or will it just throw his vote away? There are literally millions of "what ifs," and unless the programmers have the correct course of action for each, the machine will fail.

Price asserted that "Without a connection to the Internet, or a place to insert a floppy disk, they can never be subject to the horrors of identity theft, Trojan horses or e-mail phishing ... ."

This statement would be comforting if it had any basis in reality. Every WINVote machine has a wireless connection that it uses to get ballot layout information and report final results (WIN stands for "Wireless Information Network"). A van parked out of sight of election officials and protective procedures could connect to these machines, or at the very least observe the traffic between them, unnoticed.

Price referred to a summary screen as a way for voters to check accuracy. The machines in Carteret County, N.C., showed that kind of screen, too. Right before they discarded the electronic copy because there was no room on the hard drive, and flashed a message to the voter saying, "Thank you. Your vote has been successfully recorded."

"No identity theft, no Trojan horses, no e-mail phishing, no fraud. I made sure of that," Price wrote.

It's a relief to know he performed a source-code audit and confirmed that the code was written to military standards, checked the audit logs and did a forensic analysis on every machine to ensure that no tampering or errors occurred, and did extensive usability testing to ensure that no voter was confused by the interface on the machine. Perhaps Price could share his techniques with the rest of the computer science community, which has struggled to understand how to do these things in a quick and reliable way for seven decades.

Unless he didn't do all of those things, in which case this final statement is meaningless bluster, akin to kicking a car's tire and -- assuming it fails to explode -- declaring it a well-engineered piece of equipment.

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3. MA: Round Up of Rush to Bad Judgement to Meet HAVA Deadlines

MA: Round Up of Rush to Bad Judgement to Meet HAVA Deadlines
What do you expect? Organization? Of course this is going to happen, counties and states going nuts trying to meet deadlines. This is an artificial crisis. We do NOT need voting machines. Canada just had elections and counted 13 million ballots across the country in about 4 hours…proportionately, we could do the same, it’s just a matter of people per precinct. Shame on HAVA! and the people who fell for it.



http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/12/04/via_computer_a_vote_counting_headache/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+National+News

Via computer, a vote-counting headache
States are working to iron out wrinkles before New Year's

By Brian Bergstein, Associated Press | December 4, 2005

NEW YORK -- 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."

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4. Youngstown, OH: Don't theyhave better Things to do with $865,000

Youngstown is hard hit, has been hard hit, for as long as I can remember. The Federal HAVA share for Youngstown is about $3.0 million. Wouldn’t this be better spend providing industrial incentives or job training. Just asking?
http://www.vindy.com/content/local_regional/297200025713129.php

Board to upgrade voting machines
Friday, December 2, 2005

Recounts for three races will be done next week.

By DAVID SKOLNICK

VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Board of Elections approved spending $864,063 to upgrade its electronic voting machines, primarily to add a paper trail that board members don't believe is necessary.

Board Vice Chairman Mark Munroe said the county is being forced by state law, passed last year, to add a paper trail.

"I continue to be skeptical of this requirement," he said. "I'm concerned there is more of an opportunity for error and delay."

Also, the retrofitted electronic voting machines are larger and less sturdy than what the county has used since 2002, elections board employees said. Because of that, curb-side voting for those with disabilities will be discontinued beginning with the May 2006 election, Munroe said.

The board approved the $864,063 expense at its Thursday meeting.

Deal struck

The county struck a deal for the state-required improvements with Election System & Software, the Omaha, Neb., company that sold the electronic voting machines to the county in 2001 for $2.95 million.

ES&S is selling 142 machines, one for every voting location in the county, to the election board. Those machines comply with provisions in the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Thomas McCabe, election board director.

The 142 ADA machines cost $377,720. With those, the county will have 1,001 electronic voting machines for the May 2006 election. Each of them needs a paper trail add-on. That add-on costs $640,640, or $640 a machine. The county used ES&S paper ballots for 18 years before going electronic.

Federal help

As part of the federal Help America Vote Act, Mahoning County will receive $2.8 million in federal funds Jan. 9, McCabe said.

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5. MS: Kinder Gentler Voter Suppression

Closing precincts in MS…why? Because they have to be “barrier free.” These people have the unmitigated gall to write this time-honored voter suppression tactic off because of the legitimate needs of the handicapiped for barrier free access to voting areas. Well, since they’re usually in schools, that shouldn’t be a problem should it? See the last section where the Stennis Institute is working on the problem. What next, the Diebold School of Advanced Studies and Computer Repair.


http://www.meridianstar.com/articles/2005/12/04/local_news/news_stories/kemper.txt

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Kemper County also working on precinct reduction

By Austin Bishop / contributing writer
Sunday, December 4, 2005 1:14 AM CST


DEKALB - It hasn't been easy, but the Kemper County Board of Supervisors has almost completed the process of eliminating eight of the county's voting precincts.

The board voted 4-1 this summer to move to three precincts per supervisor's district.

<snip>

Part of the problem the county faces is that each precinct needs to be upgraded to be handicapped-accessible.

That means that the parking lots have to be wheelchair-accessible, as do the buildings, which includes constructing ramps. The doors have to be certain widths, and the bathrooms have to be handicapped-accessible.

The county has applied for grants to help with the improvements. County Administrator Tommy Key said the county has requested $84,000 for temporary improvements and $140,000 for permanent improvements.

<snip>

OTHER COUNTIES

Several other area counties have considered consolidating election precincts.

Neshoba County Administrator Benjie Coates said Wade White, attorney for the Neshoba County Board of Supervisors, is working with the Stennis Institute for Government at Mississippi State University and the state's election commissioners to come up with optimum precinct lines.

Meanwhile, Newton County Administrator Steve Seal said his county's supervisors have discussed the idea but ultimately decided not to do it.

“They just didn't think the general public would be in favor of it, as it could possibly cause a lot of confusion,” Seal said.

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6. DC: Human Rights Watch Scolds Condi for Supporting Crooked Egyptian Elect

I’m shocked, shocked that the Bush administration would support election fraud.


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0512/S00077.htm

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0512/S00077.htm

US Admin's Bizarre Comments on Egyptian Elections

Monday, 5 December 2005, 2:45 pm

Press Release: Human Rights Watch
Letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice about Department of State Comments on Egyptian Elections
December 2, 2005

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520


Dear Secretary Rice,

We are writing to express our astonishment at the statements yesterday by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack regarding state-inspired violence and irregularities in Egypt’s parliamentary elections. Mr. McCormack’s statements, including his assertion that the State Department has “not received, at this point, any indication that the Egyptian Government isn’t interested in having peaceful, free and fair elections,” are utterly disconnected from the reality of what is happening in Egypt today. They make a mockery of the policies you and President Bush have articulated on numerous occasions this year regarding the importance of respect for democratic freedoms in the Middle East generally and in Egypt in particular.

We have received numerous reports from Egyptian human rights groups that have been monitoring the three rounds of elections that began on November 9 concerning serious irregularities in the voting, including consistent and credible reports of ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, and the like. Increasingly, during the second and third rounds of mid-November and this week, we have received reports of violence by security forces and by partisans of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) to intimidate supporters or presumed supporters of independent and opposition party candidates and to prevent them from casting ballots against the ruling party. Since voting began the government has arrested more than 1600 political activists, mainly supporters of independent candidates associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Violence associated with the elections has resulted in at least three deaths, including one person who was killed yesterday when police reportedly opened fire on a crowd outside a polling station in the Nile Delta town of Baltim, north of Cairo.

These reports are readily available to the administration as well. U.S. Embassy staff who monitored some of the polling stations told us privately that they witnessed such irregularities themselves, and presumably their reports have reached the State Department. In any event, Egyptian, Arab, and international media have provided detailed reporting on such incidents. The accounts of election violence and other state efforts to ensure the ruling party’s continued monopoly on power, in other words, are available to anyone with even a passing interest in developments in Egypt. Presumably even Mr. McCormack has read, for instance, about men with machetes and knives chasing voters away from polling stations as police stood by.

Indeed, these media reports were the basis for the reporters’ persistent efforts to get the Department on the record regarding the administration’s response to these incidents. Just as persistently, Mr. McCormack asserted again and again, against all evidence to the contrary, that the administration is “sure” that the Egyptian government wants “an environment where everybody can express their peaceful free will through the ballot box.” As Mr. McCormack is not a spokesman for the Egyptian government, it is hard to see why he or anyone in the administration would speak with such certainty of that government’s good intentions. We trust you will agree that the Egyptian government should be judged by its actions, not by statements it may have made to the United States.

When you were last in Egypt, you rightly said: “We are all concerned for the future of Egypt’s reforms when peaceful supporters of democracy – men and women – are not free from violence. . . . Egypt’s elections, including the Parliamentary elections, must meet objective standards that define every free election.” The administration’s failure to criticize the Mubarak government’s subsequent conduct in these elections – and, indeed, the Department Spokesman’s effort to shield that government from criticism – badly serves those many Egyptians who have voted or attempted to vote in the face of this pattern of violence, intimidation, and fraud. In addition, it badly undermines the administration’s credibility, including your own, when it speaks of its commitment to democratic freedoms in Egypt and the region.

Sincerely,


Tom Malinowski
Washington Advocacy Director


Joe Stork
Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division

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7. Kazakhstan: Sending Refugees to Usbekistan to Get Killed in Election

Yep, that’s the deal. We have election fraud here but they’re not “disappearing” the critics yet.


http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0512/S00076.htm

Monday, 5 December 2005, 2:40 pm
Press Release: Human Rights Watch

Kazakhstan: Uzbeks Sent Back At Risk of Torture
Abuses Mount Ahead of Kazakh Elections

Kazakh authorities have forcibly returned ten persons who had fled persecution in Uzbekistan, in violation of Kazakhstan’s international commitments, Human Rights Watch said today. A second group of Uzbeks missing in Kazakhstan are feared to be at risk of “disappearance” and forcible return. The forcible returns took place days before Kazakhstan is scheduled to hold presidential elections on December 4. The men were sought by Uzbekistan on charges of “religious extremism.” Human Rights Watch called on Kazakhstan to stop the forcible return of Uzbeks who face a risk of torture in Uzbekistan.

<snip>

Kazakhstan’s arrest of Uzbeks seeking protection from repression at home comes as Kazakhstan’s own rights record is under scrutiny. Ahead of the December 4 elections, the government has cracked down on independent media and the political opposition. The pre-election environment has been marred by the detention of opposition activists on trumped up charges, violations of freedom of assembly, and allegations of physical attacks on relatives of opposition leaders. Local groups charged that the Nazarbaev government has illegally seized opposition newspapers and denied the opposition equal access to the media.

“The government of Kazakhstan had an opportunity with these elections to prove that it was prepared to be a rights-respecting member of the international community, but it has failed miserably,” said Cartner. Human Rights Watch expressed its concerns to the Kazakh government about repressive trends in advance of the vote.

The December presidential election has been widely seen as a test of Kazakhstan’s commitment to human rights standards and fitness to head up the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a position sought by the government. In its preliminary report on the lead-up to elections, the OSCE noted violations of the rights to freedom of expression by the media, and freedom of assembly and association by the political opposition.

“With such widespread rights violations surrounding the election, the government of Kazakhstan has essentially forfeited its bid for the chairmanship of the OSCE in 2009,” said Cartner. “The international community should make clear to the government that flagrant disregard for its rights obligations will carry serious consequences.”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights upholds the right to seek asylum from persecution. As a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, and the Convention against Torture, Kazakhstan cannot return a person to any country where he or she would face a risk of torture. In a 2003 report on Uzbekistan, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture found that torture was “systematic” in Uzbekistan. Torture of religious detainees has been particularly severe.

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8. Angry Girl: A Must See, Bookmark--20 Amazing Facts about Voting USA

http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

Please distribute the following facts about voting in the United States.

And tell your friends, because their TV won't....

20 Amazing Facts About
Voting in the USA

http://nightweed.com/usavotefacts.html

[Wilms]

9. Protecting election integrity

A Repub that gets it.



Dec. 04, 2005

Protecting election integrity

MARY KIFFMEYER (R-Big Lake Township, is Minnesota's Secretary of State)

Recently, an article appeared in the Pioneer Press regarding Minnesota's rejection of certification of an election system called a Direct Recording Electronic voting system, which is ballot-less, produced by Diebold ("Kiffmeyer, counties at odds over voting equipment," Nov. 30). This system failed certification in California because of receipt jams and computer crashes. This system is not good enough for Minnesota, either, and I'd like to tell you why.

Minnesota has a paper ballot tradition — a well-established and well-functioning tradition. Most voters agree that changing to some kind of "electronic" ballot that you can't see would be unsettling. Especially in election recounts, we like to have actual paper ballots, marked by voters, to verify the validity of elections.

A "receipt" of an electronic transaction like that produced by a DRE voting machine is not a ballot. It's like when you go to the cash machine: the receipt you get is not the $20 bill you requested, no matter what the receipt told you the machine produced. On the topic of DRE voting systems, the League of Women Voters has written, "Simply because a voter verifies their vote on a piece of paper does not guarantee the same results have been recorded within the machine and vice versa."

The bottom line: Paper ballots are better than DRE vote receipts.

snip

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/editorial/13314351.htm

[Wilms]

10. More Concern About Justice

December 4, 2005

by Dan Tokaji

More Concern About Justice

On Friday, the Washington Post reported on another leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Justice, this one concerning a controversial 2003 redistricting plan drawn by Texas Republicans. The 73-page memo concludes that the redistricting plan violated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, but the Department nevertheless precleared the plan. The release of this memo heightens concerns arising from the preclearance of Georgia's recently enacted voter ID law, also over staff objections, that the Department is placing partisan politics above the protection of minority rights.

Speaking of which, Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) have written this letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, expressing "serious concerns" regarding the decision to preclear Georgia's ID law. Their concerns arise from the fact that Justice precleared Georgia's plan the day after the staff's thoughtful memo explaining why it shouldn't be precleared.

Although the Dodd-Obama letter was apparently written before release of the Texas memo, the Senators say they're concerned that the Georgia ID preclearance appears to be the "latest example of trend within DOJ in which political appointees have ignored the decisions and recommendations of career attorneys in voting rights cases." This follows a letter to Gonzales from Senator Arlen Specter, which also raised concerns about lax civil rights enforcement by Justice.

snip/lot's of related links

http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/blogs/tokaji/2005/12/more-concern-about-justice.html

[Wilms]

11. FL: Stand ground - Don't give in to state's dawdling for Diebold

Stand ground

Don't give in to state's dawdling for Diebold

Last update: December 05, 2005

snip

There's a case to be made for defying federal and state mandates and taking the matter to court. The county stands to lose $700,000 in federal money if it doesn't meet the deadline set by the Help America Vote Act, but it's less than the county would spend to buy any handicapped-accessible system. The next election will be nine and a half months away by the time the council meets to discuss elections equipment, so there's time -- just barely -- to seek an injunction forcing the state to approve a paper-ballot system.

A lawsuit would force state officials to explain why they're forcing counties to buy non-verifiable and four-times-more-expensive touch-screen systems. Respected experts like long-term Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho say they have no doubt that state officials dragged their heels approving a paper-ballot system, and they should be required to justify their reluctance.

snip

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/03OpOPN42120505.htm

[Wilms]

12. New research paper on ballot design

Election Updates Blog

Monday, December 05, 2005

New research paper on ballot design

by Michael Alvarez

There is an interesting new research paper by David Kimball and Martha Kropf, recently published in Public Opinion Quarterly. Those of you with research university access can get the full text of the paper. Otherwise, here is the abstract of the paper:


"The 2000 presidential election focused attention on the problem of unrecorded votes, in which a person casts a ballot but fails to record a valid vote for a particular contest. Although much recent research has evaluated voting technologies and their effects on unrecorded votes, there has been little research on the effects of ballot design. We argue that the same theories used to design and evaluate self-administered surveys can be used to analyze ballot features. We collect and code paper-based ballots used in the 2002 general election from 250 counties in 5 states. We code the ballots in terms of several graphic design elements, including the content and location of ballot instructions and the layout of candidate names and office titles. Our analysis suggests that several ballot features are associated with unrecorded votes (both overvotes and undervotes) in the gubernatorial contests. We also find that ballot design features exacerbate the racial disparity in unrecorded votes. Ballot design can be an important factor in determining whether voters are able to cast a ballot accurately, which can influence the legitimacy of elections."

snip

http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2005/12/new-research-paper-on-ballot-design.html

[Wilms]

13. CO: State's eye on vote scanners

12/05/2005

State's eye on vote scanners

Secretary of State Gigi Dennis might seek new machines in 10 counties after hand recounts changed two results last month.

By Karen E. Crummy and Michael McCollum

Denver Post Staff Writers

After a hand recount changed the outcome of two elections last month, the Colorado secretary of state may order 10 counties to get new voting machines before next year's high-stakes gubernatorial election.

Secretary of State Gigi Dennis wants "assurances from the manufacturers that there won't be any problems next year," said Dana Williams, a spokeswoman for Dennis.

The state will "then decide if we should continue using the machines," Williams said.

At issue are the Optech III-P Eagle machines, sold by Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_3279155