Daily Voting News For September 7, 2008

Today’s featured article is, again, from Palm Beach Co Florida. The quotes in this article make it clear that failing elections supervisors are going to blame the transition from DRE voting systems to optical-scan voting systems for any failures they encounter this election season.

“It was extremely challenging to make the transition" from touch screens to optical scanning of paper ballots in just three months, Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said”. Yes, I’m sure it was a challenge. Just as much a challenge as the successful move from DRE to Optical-Scan accomplished by the state of New Mexico a couple years ago or the same change made by Cuyahoga Co. Ohio prior to this year’s presidential primary. New Mexico and Cuyahoga Co didn’t seem to have anywhere near the problems that Palm Beach Co had.

“[County Judge Barry] Cohen said there were no numbers on the documents he signed to certify the judicial race on Tuesday. County Commissioner Addie Greene said she didn't notice whether vote totals were listed.” This judge has now admitted to signing legal documents without having all of the numbers filled-in. Now, I’m not an attorney but this seems to me to be an admission of misfeasance on the part of a county election official and probably the whole canvassing board on which Mr. Cohen serves.

And then there is this gem; "I decided whatever system (Palm Beach County) buys next time, I'm not buying it," joked Kay Clem, elections supervisor for Indian River County, the only other county in the state with Sequoia equipment. "I feel bad for them, it's tough. I can't imagine dealing with all those paper ballots. It must be a nightmare." This quote from an elections supervisor who allowed an experiment to be done with real votes in a real election and that resulted in over 10,000 votes being mis-reported....

**"Daily Voting News" is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in "Daily Voting News" may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or Scoop.**

--
John Gideon
Co-Executive Director
VotersUnite.Org
www.votersunite.org

"To encourage citizen ownership of transparent, participatory
democracy." The Creekside Declaration March 22, 2008

© Scoop Media