02.23.08
Posted in Elections, New Jersey primary, paper ballots, politics, voting, voting machines tagged Elections, New Jersey primary, Sequoia, voter verified paper ballots, voting, voting machines at 11:23 am by bluebanshee
The numbers from the cartridges that print out vote tallies and the paper-tape backup didn’t match. http://tinyurl.com/2odsco
This is the dilemma faced by election officials in several New Jersey counties including Union, Bergen, Gloucester, Middlesex and Ocean counties during the recent Presidential primary. The voting machines in question are paperless DRE’s from Sequoia. Not machines that have paper for voters to check to see that their vote was recorded correctly but machines where votes are recorded invisibly somewhere in the depths of the machine’s memory.
Now they (and we) find out that even the computer speaks with forked tongue when asked what the election results are.
The discrepancies involved the political-party turnout reporting. Sequoia Advantage machines in several counties showed different figures between the result tape from the machine and the records of a secondary memory cartridge, for the number of Democratic and Republican voters. http://tinyurl.com/269edr Read the rest of this entry »
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02.18.08
Posted in Elections, Voter ID, Voting Rights, politics, voter registration tagged ACORN, voter registration drives, Voting Rights at 5:54 pm by bluebanshee
A federal judge Monday permanently blocked several voter registration requirements that raised a furor before the 2006 elections because many felt they unfairly hindered voter registration drives.
http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2008/02/voter_registration_drives_will.html
This ruling might be misunderstood as relating to voter ID requirements but actually it pertains to rules that affect the ability of third-party groups like ACORN to conduct voter registration drives.
They required registration drive workers to register and to undergo training, to list detailed information on each registration form they help with and for every gatherer to turn in forms in person, not through an organizer.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen O’Malley blocked those rules permanently, agreeing with several voters rights groups that they go against the country’s desire to let as many people vote as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Barack Obama, Elections, Hillary Clinton, voting, voting machines tagged Clinton, Elections, New York primary, Obama, politics, voting, voting machines at 5:23 pm by bluebanshee
Looks like the election results in New York will be revised with Barack Obama possible gaining in his delegate count.
Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.
That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district. http://tinyurl.com/38a6r5
The above report in the NYT caused much alarm across the country — with many folks suggesting that there was some chicanery on the part of Clinton supporters in her home state. In fact, the explanation offered by Doug Kellner of the New York State Board of Elections is much more plausible: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in ES&S, Election fraud, Elections, election audits, voting machine certification, voting machine testing, voting machines tagged CA SOS Debra Bowen, election audits, ES&S, Top to Bottom Review at 4:35 pm by bluebanshee
ES&S is the target of the latest T2B report
California SOS Debra Bowen has issued the latest in her studies of voting systems used in California. This time round it is ES&S in the dock and found guilty of general incompetence in designing the software and security for its voting equipment.
More disturbing is the fact that the machines in this latest part of the Top to Bottom Review (T2B) are widely used optical scan machines that count paper ballots. So even jurisdictions which have paper ballots and use these scanners should consider putting additional safeguards in place and instituting post-election audits. Especially since these are the same machines that were recently decertified by the SOS in Colorado. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Barack Obama, Double bubble, ES&S, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Voting Rights, Washington Republican caucus, paper ballots, politics, voting, voting machines tagged California primary, Double bubble, Elections, ES&S, politics, vote counting, Washington caucuses at 3:28 pm by bluebanshee
Making ‘one person one vote’ a reality in this country
In the rush-rush hurry-hurry to announce election results there have already been some miscounts and uncounted ballots this primary season. This should not happen. If we are going to truly be a democracy of “one person one vote” we need to be sure that all ballots cast by eligible voters are counted.
For example, there’s the recent example in the Washington state Republican caucuses where the winner was declared in a close race before all the votes were counted. Entire counties did not have their results included in the tally: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Barack Obama, Elections, Maryland voting, Voter ID, Voting Rights, election day registration tagged Barack Obama, election day registration, Elections, Maryland primary, Maryland voting, Voter ID, Voting Rights at 12:06 pm by bluebanshee
Eliminating unnecessary barriers for young voters
Word came recently from Maryland that one barrier to voting by young citizens had been removed — at least in that state. The Washington Post headline says it all: “One Teen’s Campaign to Restore Voting Rights.”
Last month, Boltuck, along with her father and a sympathetic state senator, persuaded Maryland’s top legal minds to restore the right of suffrage to at least 50,000 teens who will turn 18 between the Feb. 12 primary and the Nov. 4 election. http://tinyurl.com/2pp3fl
Sarah Boltuck fought all the way to the state election board and then the attorney general’s office to attain the right to vote in the February Maryland primary. The problem that caused all the controversy was that the high school senior had not yet attained the age of 18 by the February primary date. But Boltuck would be 18 in time to vote in November and felt she should be able to participate in the process of selecting the candidates whose names would appear on the general election ballot come November.
“I thought that was one of my rights as a citizen of Maryland,” said Boltuck, who will be 18 in July. “I had assumed that when I registered to vote, it’d be no problem.”
She called attention to a little-noticed change in interpretation of state law. Maryland was one of nine states, including Virginia, that allowed 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they reached 18 by the general election. (The District does not.) But the Maryland State Board of Elections quietly halted the practice in December 2006 in response to a state court ruling. http://tinyurl.com/2pp3fl Read the rest of this entry »
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