Voting & Elections

Greg Gordon (McClatchy Washington Bureau) today had a story that actually made it into the front section of my local paper:

Texas-based Premier Elections Solutions last week alerted at least 1,750 jurisdictions across the country that special precautions are needed to address the problem in tabulation software affecting all 19 of its models dating back a decade.

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We hope that you can take the time to become informed on these issues, and inform others.

Contents:

• Our Voting Security Issues page
• Resources for studying the electronic voting machines issue, websites devoted to the issue, and other collections of links.

Note - We consider these articles, reports and other resources thought-provoking and worth reading. Our recommendation does not imply that we necessarily agree with all the perspectives presented, nor does it imply that we have checked the articles for factual accuracy.

Articles and reports discussing problems with electronic voting machines:

Voter News Service: What Went Wrong?
Larry Barrett , Baseline Magazine, January 13, 2003
and Sideshow's essay linking to this.

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Part of "Electronic Voting Machines Project"

The security of elections and the ability of citizens to participate in the political process by voting are fundamental to our democracy. However, the history of elections has shown that when there are opportunities for fraud and deception, there will almost certainly be individual and organized efforts to exploit them. Various forms of disenfranchisement and voter intimidation have also long been a feature of elections.

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 Black Box Voting

Beginning with the swing states, and then proceeding to counties whose election officials have been secretive, members of BBV’s Clean Up Crew make formal requests of public records under FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act) to force officials to disclose their electoral procedures, and take them to court if they refuse. Headed by e-voting activist Bev Harris, Black Box Voting has been a leader in documenting investigations, exposés, whistle-blower accounts, and many examples of flawed elections. Currently BBV has a Help America Audit campaign and is drawing attention to VoteHere’s  cryptographic “solution” that would make a farce of voter verifiable paper trails.

California Voter Foundation

Active lobbying in California and at the national level on voting issues. CVF has a good list of the types of errors that were reported with electronic voting machines in Nov 2004 election.    

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A number of states provide for a manual recount of a small sample of the ballots cast as a way to detect voting system errors. In California, although there is a requirement for a one percent manual recount, there are no rules on how this should be carried out. If not done carefully, however, the recount will not accomplish the task assigned to it. In particular, it may fail to detect election fraud committed by hackers inside or outside of the elections department.

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SINCE the 2000 election, those who have been close to voting issues have been intensely concerned about the integrity of the vote. However, there has been scant coverage of this issue in the major media and, perhaps reflecting this, little interest by the broad public. Moreover, few elected officials of either major party are willing to address what is, without a doubt, the major political issue of the day.

During the Florida recounts in 2000, voter disenfranchisement and voting improprieties occurred on a large scale. C-SPAN broadcast the investigation by the NAACP that presented testimony on voting irregularities. These "irregularities" included such things as throwing away ballot boxes, voter intimidation of many sorts and illegal identification requirements.

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SINCE the 2000 election, those who have been close to voting issues have been intensely concerned about the integrity of the vote. However, there has been scant coverage of this issue in the major media and, perhaps reflecting this, little interest by the broad public. Moreover, few elected officials of either major party are willing to address what is, without a doubt, the major political issue of the day.

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This concise summary regarding recommended election procedures is based on the Commonweal Institute's testimony at the Election Assessment Hearings in Houston, TX, on June 29, 2005.  The testimony itself was developed by Dennis Paull and Katherine Forrest.

View the summary.

The Preliminary Report of Findings: Vloice of Election Customer Surveys, was published on September 22, 2005, at http://www.ElectionAssessment.org.

Few Americans know about the historic event that happened on January 6, 2005, the official date for counting electoral votes. For the first time since 1877, congressmembers challenged the electoral count. Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones of Ohio, accompanied by the lone senator, Barbara Boxer of California, led the challenge to the Ohio vote count. Although massive fraud was reported around the country, only Ohio was officially cited.

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