Voting News: Tennessee judge denies injunction
Tennessee judge denies injunction, Election pilots crash, Sarasota ballot disinfo
Posted: 05 Nov 2009 01:04 PM PST
Many states run elections as if they are beta tests. An prime example are the Vote Centers in Galveston County Texas. Officials ran into surprises when all vote centers tried to start up at beginning of day, causing the state's voter registration database to crash. And since these vote centers are dependant on the online database, voting was held up 30 and 40 minutes.Another surprise - firewalls blocking access to the county central voting system. So much for the "convenience" of Vote Centers, never mind the other problems with them but the media says it was all good....
...Brad Friedman reports:
Sarasota Sample Ballots Urged Voters to Use Blue Ink, Though
New Op-Scan Systems Can't Read It. Another screw-up for
notorious Election Director Kathy Dent...
...Update on
Tennessee Paper Ballot Law! Judge Denies Injuction In Paper
Ballot Case
Secretary Of State Should Begin To Implement
Voter Confidence Act, Recommends Judge...
...A few South Carolina races trigger an automatic recount but SC uses paperless voting so if there's a programming flaw nothing will change....Texas finally pulls IBM off voter reg database project, 13 day system outage in Aug final straw...
What Sequoia’s Source Code Publication Means...Joe Hall has more on EAC testing and Top To Bottom Review...
....There's too many glitches, snags, snafus and meltdowns for me to do summarize, so please read about those and more in the news below...
CA: Hawthorne used car
dealer turns polling place workers, voters away
*
11/03/2009 ..Saunders said Finance Auto Sales workers
also called police to try to get the volunteers to leave
after they set up voting booths on the sidewalk in front of
the dealership at 11604 Prairie Ave.
Police allowed the
workers to stay on the sidewalk for several hours until a
nearby business agreed to let them set up inside. Hi Tech
Auto Collision and Glass Centers allowed voters to use their
office until polls closed.
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_13707170
CT: A Day As Absentee Ballot Moderator
November
4, 2009 This election day was spent as moderator for central
counting of absentee ballots, once again, in Vernon,
CT.
http://www.ctvoterscount.org/?p=2542
CT:
Reporter's notebook: Brooklyn voters complain about ballot
layout*
...St. Jean said because there were three
candidates on the ballot for first selectman, many residents
voted for two candidates rather than just one.
When that
happens, the voting machine returns the ballot and an
election moderator gives the voter a new ballot to fill out,
she said.
http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x1156075453/Reporters-notebook-Brooklyn-voters-complain-about-ballot-layout
FL: Sarasota Sample Ballots Urged Voters to Use Blue
Ink, Though New Op-Scan Systems Can't Read It
*
Another screw-up for notorious Election Director
Kathy Dent...
On October 17th, we reported that
World's Worst Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent of
Sarasota, FL had discovered in pre-election tests that her
new Diebold/Premier optical-scan voting systems failed to
properly read paper ballots marked with blue ink.
http://www.bradblogcom/?p=7502
IN: For voters, county maps were a source of
confusion *
...St. Joseph County provided a map to
help voters find their special election polling place. The
information was on WSBT.com as well.
In the hours that
followed, emails and phone calls flooded our newsroom from
voters who said they were turned away and sent to another
location to vote.
http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/69206847.html
KS: Tough time voting* (registered voter not in
laptop/pollbook)
Voting shouldn't be so difficult -
especially when only one issue is on the ballot
http://voices.kansascity.com/node/6447
MA: Dispute erupts over ballot in Lawrence
*
...a man came to the polling station in the morning
attempting to vote.
Because his name was on the inactive voter rolls, poll workers asked for his ID.
He didn't have it, so he left, and returned around 1 this afternoon.
He
showed an ID, but a police officer at the polling station
recognized him from the morning and thought he was unable to
vote, according to Romero, who said a police report is still
being written on the incident.
http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_307152911.html
MA: Election notes: Sass in the city * (ballot
design, influencing voters)
...whoever designed the
ballots that relegated district councilors’ names to a
corner of the ballot and made them hard to find.
...
A
Vietnamese-speaking election worker was tossed from a
Dorchester polling place after the Menino campaign accused
him of telling voters to back Flaherty.
The man was
dismissed for the voting-booth infraction, according to Paul
Afonso, a Menino attorney.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view/20091104election_notes_sass_in_the_city/
MD: Maryland Testing E-Voting System That Lets People
Verify Their Votes Counted
from the
experimenting-away dept (comments are interesting)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20091104/1339256801.shtml
MI: Printing woes plague poll workers * (printer
problems, poll worker cards stuck)
NATCHEZ — Printing
woes on voting machines across the county delayed election
results a bit Tuesday night, election officials
said.
While poll worker cards got stuck in a few machines,
Election Commissioner Larry Gardner said one of the
night’s main delays was due to the printers attached to
the voting machines being overtaxed and
paperless.
...
Gardner said the printers were running
out of paper and stalling due to all of the information
passing through machines.
Gardner said the printers were
not built into the polling machines, but were given to the
county at no additional charge
http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/nov/04/printing-woes-plague-poll-workers/
MN: Election judges take matters in hand to determine
close races
Though sometimes called instant-runoff
voting, it's anything but. Votes are being counted by hand
in cases where no one won 50 percent plus one
vote.
...But the answers won't come soon, even though
some 125 election judges began the painstaking hand-sorting
of ballots Wednesday at the city's northeast Minneapolis
election warehouse. Interim Election Director Patrick
O'Connor said he's disappointed by the turnout of 45,964
voters -- the lowest in at least 20 years for a city
election -- but it means counting should go
faster.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/69250382.html?elr=KArksD:aDyaEP:kD:aU2EkP7K_t:aDyaEP:kD:aUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU
or
use this http://tinyurl.com/irv-count
MN: St Paul. Ranked-choice voting opponents have day
in court
A group opposing ranked-choice voting has
alleged that the group that pushed for the new voting system
in St. Paul used deceptive campaign practices.
November
4, 2009 ..The essence of the complaint, he said, is that the
Better Ballot group didn't get specific endorsement from
groups or signatures of support from people whose
credibility could sway voter opinion.
http://www.startribune.com/politics/local/69250617.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUF
NY: Mixed Reviews For New Voting Machines*
(privacy, data disks forgotten)
Chautauqua County ..."As
you walk up to the privacy booth to look for an open spot,
you can see who people are voting for, if you wanted to,"
she said. "When I was filling out my ballot, I noticed there
was someone behind me and it crossed my
mind."
...
Abram said there was "some human error and
some technical errors" with the new machines, but that the
problems were corrected quickly and without long-term
effects. Green said the results were coming in slower than
planned because some election inspectors didn't return the
data disk necessary to process the election
results.
http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/544174.html?nav=5018
NY: Problems Seen with New Voting Machines Are Tip of
The Iceberg
...Breakdowns of new electronic voting
machines have already made news in St. Lawrence, Fulton and
Lewis Counties. Official results in some races may not be
known for a week or more, frustrating NY voters accustomed
to results on election night
http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/2009/11/problems-seen-with-new-voting-machines.html
OH: UPDATE: Five Summit polling sites run out of
ballots *
Nov 03, 2009 Polling places in at least
five Summit County communities -- Green, Norton,
Springfield, Tallmadge and Twinsburg, ran out of ballots
Tuesday evening as voter turnout was much higher than
expected.
Would-be voters said they left sites without
voting, not knowing when additional ballots would be
delivered.
...
Elections board member Wayne Jones said
this evening that about 30 polling sites ran out of ballots
for some period of time. These sites are among 100 that
called the board office today saying they were running
short.
...
The Ohio Secretary of State's Office said
this evening that at about 5 p.m. it authorized the Summit
County Board of Elections office to photocopy dwinding
ballots.
About 19,000 additional ballots were printed with
the board's four ''ballot on demand printers,'' the
Secretary of State's Office said.
http://www.ohio.com/news/break_news/69002322.html
OH: Mostly glitch-free election day, officials
report * (paper jams & calibration prob)
...There
were no voting problems in Miami County, other than some
sporadic paper jams that were quickly resolved, he
said
...
Llyn McCoy, Greene County Board of Elections
deputy director, said they had minor calibration issues with
voting machines this morning at a couple of polling places.
The machines ran slow when a person touched it, but once the
machines were calibrated correctly they worked better, she
said.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/election/mostly-glitch-free-election-day-officials-report-380697.html?showComments=true
SC: Council election recounts to be held (with
paperless touchscreens)
November 5, 2009 Mandatory
recounts will be held today in the Mount Pleasant and Isle
of Palms municipal elections, but the county's director of
elections does not expect the outcomes to change.
http://www.postandcouriercom/news/2009/nov/05/council-election-recounts-to-be-held/
TN: Judge Denies Injuction In Paper Ballot
Case
Secretary Of State Should Begin To Implement Voter
Confidence Act, Recommends Judge
NASHVILLE, Tenn -- A
Nashville judge on Thursday denied at temporary injunction
regarding paper ballot voting machines, which won't force
the secretary of state to buy the new
machines.
However, Davidson County Chancellor Russell
Perkins said he recommended Secretary of State Tre Hargett
to start implementing the Voter Confidence Act, which was
passed by the state Legislature in 2008 and mandated every
voter cast his or her ballot using an optical-scan machine
by November 2010.
http://www.wsmv.com/news/21528405/detail.html
TN:
Enforce the TVCA!
Providing a paper trail protects
voters' rights; it's also the law.
by Gerard Stranch and
John Bonifaz
...
Since then, a few election officials
have done their best to stonewall this reform, refusing to
implement it, calling for its repeal, and using misleading
information as ammunition.
http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/enforce-the-tvca/Content?oid=1771951
TX: No ‘super’ glitches reported for new
voting system* (Vote Centers, voter registration
database problem, firewalls and results wrong)
November
4, 2009 Galveston County....Computer problems and a crash of
the state’s voter registration database were blamed for
delays in Galveston and League City, the county’s election
coordinator said.
...
Voters who lined up at the
Galveston school district building were delayed when the
district’s Internet firewalls blocked computer access to
the county’s central voting system.
...
There were
similar computer glitches at Bay Harbour United Methodist
Church and Harborview Care Center in League City. Both are
new polling places, and voting was delayed about 40 minutes,
Godinich said.
...
Only when all of the polling places
signed on at about the same time did the connectivity
problems crop up, Godinich said.
There also were problems
when the polls opened because the state’s database of
registered voters crashed.
...
As the votes were
counted, one unexpected glitch occurred when the returns
showed that all the votes had been counted — even though
less than half of the precincts had been counted.
Election
officials said the error occurred because the tally sheet
that totals votes was based on the usual 121 voting
precincts, rather than the 40 super precincts.
http://www.galvnews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=2dfb9d86700788db
TX: Texas withdraws voter registration systems from
IBM contract
Disaster recovery 'problems' tied to
aged SAN equipment, IBM says
...The decision was prompted
by an incident in August when a server being managed by IBM
crashed resulting in a 13-day outage of the office's
business records filing system, a report in the Austin
American Statesman said today.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140358/Texas
_withdraws_voter_registration_systems_from_IBM_contract?taxonomyId=9
or
use this http://tinyurl.com/y8nnv2s
VT:
Burlington IRV repeal picks up momentum
The
controversy over Burlington Telecom finances has energized
the effort to repeal instant run-off voting, say those
involved in the petition drive to put the issue on the city
ballot in March.
...
"A lot of people think the
mayor's race was invalid, that we have an invalid
mayor,"
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20091105/NEWS02/911050309/Burlington-IRV-repeal-picks-up-momentum
OR: Ogden, Weber County pretty sure one of them can't
count ... ballots*
(optical scan system very slow,
automatic feeder kept jamming)
Nov 4 2009 ....However,
because of some programming issues and problems with an
automatic ballot feeder, the city's votes weren't counted
until about midnight Tuesday and results weren't posted on
the city's Web site until about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, Mansell
said.
A large number of ballots slowed the optical scanning system, Berrett said. In addition to counting all of Ogden's ballots, the system was also used to tally absentee votes for South Ogden, Riverdale and Farr West.
In addition, an automatic feeder kept jamming, which
meant ballots had to be inserted into the device by hand,
Berrett said. "Hand-feeding was a slower process."
http://www.standard.net/topics/elections/2009/11/04/ogden-weber-county-pretty-sure-one-them-cant-count-ballots
VA: Payne laughs off poll mixup
November 4,
2009 Lynchburg City Manager Kimball Payne got some
unexpected news when he went to the polls on Tuesday: he was
no longer listed as a valid city voter.
Payne, who has
been the chief administrator of the city government for the
past eight years, learned he had been placed on the
“inactive voters” list at his precinct at Bedford Hills
Elementary School. He cast a provisional ballot until his
legitimacy could be confirmed.
...
Payne — full name
Leonard Kimball Payne III — said he has been a faithful
voter and speculated that he was being mixed up with his
son, Leonard Kimball Payne IV.
http://www2.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/payne_laughs_off_poll_mixup/21076/
National
EAC today released the results of
its 2008 Election Administration and Voting Survey and
the 2008 Uniformed and Overseas Voting Act Survey.
http://www.eac.gov/blog-postings/eac-releases-data-from-2008-presidential-election
Political Foes Team Up To Improve Voter
Registration
Doug Chapin with the Pew Center on the
States says one idea for overhauling voter registrations is
to have an individual's voter record be more portable and be
automatically updated when he or she moves. Chapin says that
could eliminate a lot of confusion at the polls.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120033345
What Sequoia’s Source Code Publication
Means
Champaign County Clerk. In a good first step to
enhancing the confidence of voters in their vote counting
equipment, Sequoia corporation announced that they would be
revealing their source code.
...
I’m very happy that
the code is being released prior to certification. One of
the concerns that I have had with vote counting equipment is
that flaws in the design can’t be changed without
recertification. That is costly, and generally isn’t going
to be done by a company without a glaring need Instead, we
are forced to work around those issues and test and audit to
make sure they are addressed. By allowing the public to see
the logic in the software, these issues can be resolved
early...
http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2009/11/03/what-sequoia%e2%80%99s-source-code-publication-means/
More on EAC testing and TTBR
On October 13,
Aaron Burstein and I sent a letter to the EAC's Director of
Voting System Testing and Certification, Brian Hancock,
signed by many of the California Top-To-Bottom Review (TTBR)
investigators ("CA TTBR Investigators Send Letter to the
EAC") The letter showed that the EAC had approved a voting
system test plan after a testing laboratory misunderstood
the results of the California TTBR.
On October 21, The EAC
replied. Today, Aaron and I responded (on behalf of
ourselves).
http://josephhall.org/nqb2/index.php/2009/11/05/cattbreacrep
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