10/3 A Citizen's Audit of S.Carolina's Voting System. Is there 'a ghost in the machine?'

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

A Citizen's Audit of S.Carolina's Voting System. Is there 'a ghost in the machine?'

Oct 3 2010

The results of Frank Heindel's FOIA: "Citizen's Audit of South Carolina's Voting System October 2010"...The Aspen Times has one of best articles I've ever seen on e-voting issues in "Unlocking IRV in Aspen"...Florida Case Puts Focus on Issue of Absentee Ballot Fraud...Hawaii's eGov website listed wrong date for Nov General Election...2nd-tier parties sue New York State Election Board...Reminder-Monday is last day for half the states to register, visit Rock the Vote for help..India EVMs-"Is there a ghost in the machine?"..

All this and more in today's voting news below...

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AL: Autauga Co: convicted felon can't serve, but can't be removed from ballot
http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/006446.html The Prattville Progress reports: Former Autauga County Coroner Willie Mack "Billy" Brown III, who was convicted in July on theft and ethics charges, cannot legally serve as county sheriff. But that doesn't mean he couldn't be elected to the office.

CA: CalVoter.org Delivers Nonpartisan Election Information to California Voters
http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/kim-alexander/7954-calvoterorg-delivers-nonpartisan-election-information-california-voters

CA: A higher standard sought: New law to require elections equipment vendors to report flaws, errors and malfunctions
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_16235064?source=rss

CO: Unlocking IRV in Aspen (comprehensive report & timeline)
How instant runoff voting turned the May 2009 election into a 15-month fight
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20101003/ASPENWEEKLY/101009972/
1001&parentprofile=1058 http://tinyurl.com/287vdmu ..they discovered that the vote-counting technology is actually a lot more complicated than it appeared at first glance, that they were deploying a system that few really understood — or seem to understand now.

CO: Legal wrangling over Aspen's IRV
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20101003/ASPENWEEKLY/101009967/1077&
ParentProfile=1058 http://tinyurl.com/23l6nfb The arguments are ongoing, as Marks, former Election Commissioner Elizabeth Milias, El Jebel resident Harvie Branscomb and Aspen attorney Millard Zimet have all maintained that the city's continued effort to convince the public that nothing went wrong with the election is a cover-up.

FL: Florida Case Puts Focus on Issue of Absentee Ballot Fraud*
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/01/absentee-ballot-fraud-daytona-beach-florida-derrick-henry-vote-fraud/ The Daytona Beach probe started when an elections supervisor noticed that as many as 90 absentee ballots had been requested from two e-mail addresses, and that they came from a single computer
...
“Electronic requests mean that people don’t have to show up, don’t have to provide phone numbers and are easier to abuse,” she said.

Perhaps her biggest concern is that voting records in Florida make birth dates publicly available. “It makes requesting absentee ballots by people other than the voter easy.

HI: State's posting of wrong date for election not a voter concern
http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20101002_states_posting_of_wrong_date_
for_election_not_a_voter_concern.html http://tinyurl.com/26somfg The state's eGov website mistakenly listed the general election date as Nov. 4 before correcting it to Nov. 2.

IN: Special Prosecutor to Look Into Candidate's Alleged Voter Fraud
http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?id=1288264 Hamilton County Prosecutor Sonia Leerkamp plans to appoint a special prosecutor to look into alleged voter fraud by the Republican candidate for Secretary of State, Charlie White. And her chief deputy says that appointment will come soon.

IN: Tully: Should this voter be in charge of state elections?
http://www.indystar.com/article/201009290245/NEWS08/9290315 That essentially sums up the controversy surrounding Charlie White, the Republican candidate for secretary of state. White, who hopes to be the state's next chief elections officer, now acknowledges he continued to serve on the Fishers Town Council for months after moving out of the district he represented.

NC: Counting, 1, 2, 3
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/10/02/714757/counting-1-2-3.html
It's now one month, precisely, to the general election - a general election that also contains what amounts to a primary election. That's North Carolina's first-ever, cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best experiment with statewide instant runoff voting for one of the five available seats on the state Court of Appeals.

ND: North Dakota Libertarian Party Appeals Ballot Access Case to 8th Circuit
http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/10/02/north-dakota-libertarian-party-appeals-ballot-access-case-to-8th-circuit/

ND: VOTE-BY-MAIL: Lack of polling sites scrutinized
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/177819/ Rep. Jim Kasper, R-Fargo, is asking North Dakota’s Legislative Council to draft a bill that would require polling places to be open on Election Day in most cities — those with populations of at least 100 or 200. The 2011 Legislature likely will debate the exact threshold.

NY: Remember to vote twice, at least in the 29th Congressional District election
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20101001/NEWS01/10010353/Remember-to-vote-twice-at-least-in-the-29th-Congressional-District-election

NY: 2nd-tier parties sue elex board
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/nd_tier_parties_sue_elex_
board_mPiFc7Y1sfBXGU7oPvD1PP http://tinyurl.com/2fvncdh They agree on virtually nothing in politics, but the Conservative Party and the Working Families Party nonetheless joined forces yesterday -- to sue the state Board of Elections.

NY: Today's NYS Election Law Lesson: Listen To Frank Lombardi (the actual complaint)
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/10/todays-election-law-lesson-lis.html
As our City Hall Bureau's Frank Lombardi reported right here on the Daily Politics a few weeks ago, two very different ideological camps have teamed up to sue over "double-voting" problems with the state's new electronic-scanner election system.

SC: Citizen's Audit of South Carolina's Voting System October 2010
http://www.scvotinginfo.com/index.html

SC: Democracy Under Assault
http://www.columbiacitypaper.com/2010/09/29/democracy-under-assault/
Frank Heindel is a computer-savvy, tough-minded Charleston commodities trader. When he is not buying and selling corn and wheat, he makes himself a holy terror to the folks at the South Carolina and Charleston County election commissions.
...
Over the next two months Heindel barraged the Charleston County and state election commissions with dozens of emails and shelled out more than $300 for staff and copying services, trying to obtain public records which should be easily accessible. For two months Bowers offered excuses for her failure to deliver. Most alarmingly, she claimed she could not comply with Heindel’s FOI request without surrendering proprietary information, which belongs to the machines’ manufacturer, Election Systems & Software.

TX: Some ballots reprinted after name problem
http://seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ewcd=8df5f44f64d6e12c
SEGUIN — The county will reprint Precinct 2 ballots for the coming Nov. 2 general election because the names of two candidates were printed smaller than those of their opponents.

TX: As Kaufman retires, 3 running for county clerk
Loss of voting machines in fire inspires debate
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7228124.html

US Virgin Isles: Senators look for solution to paper-ballot controversy
http://virginislandsdailynews.com/news/senators-look-for-solution-to-paper-ballot-controversy-1.1040940

VA: Law adds protections for troops voting overseas
http://hamptonroads.com/2010/10/law-adds-protections-troops-voting-overseas
Among other things, the new law requires states to provide absentee ballots by e-mail upon request and to set up an online tracking system so voters can follow the progress of their ballot.

National

CNN Declares BRAD BLOG 'Squeakiest Wheel on Subject of Voting' - So How About Some Grease?! http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8102

Rock the Vote Last call to fix the world! Monday is your last chance to register to vote in almost half the states for the November election. Get registered to vote by clicking this link: http://bit.ly/c7DyEg

Following the Money Behind Mystery Attack Ads
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130291350

International

Brazil starts to distribute voting machines
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/7156922.html
Some 23,000 machines will be distributed from the capital to 2,000 polling stations, and in all 467,000 will be delivered across the nation.
...
In a separate report, Globo said that four of the machines selected at random would be used to test the whole system.

India: Is there a ghost in the machine? Neeta Lal (Issues)
http://articles321.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-there-ghost-in-machine-neeta-lal.html
The looming Bihar assembly polls, the controversial arrest and release of a Hyderabad-based researcher who had demonstrated the alleged “tamperability” of electronic voting machines (EVMs) earlier this year on TV and a raft of pending petitions in high courts have collectively re-ignited the contentious debate on EVMs in India

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[CurtEastPoint]

1. Campaign finance reform and voting reform are jobs 1 and 2 to ensure

the continuance of our democracy.

I hate those damn machines because you have no way to tell if your vote was correctly registered. Do away with them

[molly77]

2. If elections aren't honest and transparent , there is no democracy

Ours would not pass the sniff test if Jimmy Carter and the crew could or would monitor elections in the US like a third world country.

Good case in point is the black guy who won the dem. senate race in SC. Sometimes I think the powers that were like to thumb their noses at US.

[diva77]

3. RE: New law to require elections equipment vendors to report flaws, errors and

Who is going to enforce this new law? There is already a shortage in the enforcement department with the election code as it is.

I'm all for the law, but really, who is going to enforce it?

[Wilms]

4. Prolly the same folks that policed the salmonella egg corporation.

Maybe we should hard-boil the computerized voting equipment.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

5. it is a deterrent, SOS can enforce it. We already have similar law in NC

The vendor runs a big risk if they don't tell.

In NC, vendor learned there was a quality control problem with the memory cards for optical scan.
They learned this in March 2006 just as machines were about to roll.

They reported it to NCSBoE and recalled the cards that had gone out, did testing on replacement cards and sent out new ones.

Thats how it works.

Now, they could be silent on known problems, but given that we'd find out eventually,
they would be wise to avoid the civil and criminal penalties for not telling us.

[Wilms]

6. That's sort of cool, despite my snarkyness.

Which vendor was it.

In the case you cite, they didn't have to reveal much...just that they needed to replace memory cards. What, I wonder, would happen if the flaw was in software.

[diva77]

7. All computerized voting should be reported as flawed since it is inherently

non-transparent -- easter eggs in the software. Will the SOS take that into consideration?

[Wilms]

8. I think that's referred to as rhetoric.

Of course, it's inherently flawed. But I haven't called 911 to report war crimes the Bush administration. That ain't how it works.