BYE BYE TO "BALLOTS FOR BUSH" OHIO-ELECTION CHAIRMAN - Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 4/18/07

Election Reform, Fraud & News Wed 4/18/07 BYE TO "BALLOTS FOR BUSH" ELECTION CHAIRMAN






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Docs Point to E-Voting Bug in Contested Race
By Kim Zetter, Wired News
April 17, 2007



Symptoms consistent with a known software flaw in a popular electronic voting machine surfaced widely in a controversial election in Sarasota County, Florida, last November, despite county officials' claims that a bug played no role in the election results, according to documents obtained by Wired News.



Activists say the flaw might have contributed to the high number of lost or uncast votes in a now-contested congressional race.



Incident reports from the election reveal Sarasota County poll workers from at least 19 precincts contacted technicians and election officials to report touch-screen sensitivity problems with the I-Votronic voting machine. In those incidents, voters were forced to press the screen harder and repeatedly to register a vote. The complaints mirror the symptoms of a bug that the machine's maker, Election Systems & Software, revealed prior to the election in a warning unheeded by the county.



Additionally, the documents -- obtained through public records requests by Wired News and the Florida Coalition for Fair Elections -- show the problems also appeared on a smaller scale during the primary election in Sarasota County two months earlier. This contradicts statements by Sarasota supervisor of elections Kathy Dent, who told Wired News last month that no such problems happened during the primary, and that she only learned voters were having problems with the touch screens after the November election was over and votes were counted.

more:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2392&Itemid=51

With GOP on board, FL-13 task force moves forward in election dispute
By Aaron Blake
April 18, 2007

House Republicans yielded their protest yesterday and sent two members to the first meeting of a task force assigned to look into the contested House race in Florida’s 13th district, setting in motion a legitimized process for the House to review the contest.

The task force met in private to gather information in the case but made no decisions. Lawyers for both sides made presentations about how they think the task force should move forward, and it is set to meet in one or two weeks to deliberate publicly about whether to proceed or dismiss the case.

If the case proceeds, the panel must then decide what course of action to take in its investigation. Members declined to speculate much about what the final recommendations of the task force could be, but possibilities include changing the seated member and vacating the seat. The full House would have to approve any decision.

The task force, chaired by Rep. Charles Gonzalez (D-Texas), was created by the House Administration Committee last month to look into the 18,000 ballots in Sarasota County that did not include a vote for the 13th district race.

more:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/with-gop-on-board-fl-13-task-force-moves-forward-in-election-dispute-2007-04-17.html

Brennan Center Calls for Greater Transparency and Accountability of the EAC
By Brennan Center of New York University
April 17, 2007

Last week, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced that it will review its internal processes for releasing research and reports to the public and for awarding research contracts, and yesterday it asked its inspector general to review its procedures. We hope that these announcements signal the agency’s willingness to embrace greater transparency and public accountability—qualities that have been lacking from many of its operations to date.

The EAC’s announcements come on the heels of intense pressure from the Brennan Center and other advocates, members of Congress, and the media for the EAC to release two reports on important voting issues that the agency had commissioned from expert consultants with taxpayer dollars: a report on voter identification, and a report on voting fraud and voter intimidation. Despite the fact that both reports were completed by the summer of 2006, the EAC did not release the voter identification report until March 30, 2007, and it has never released the voting fraud and voter intimidation report (the latter report, however, was leaked to the New York Times last week). (The EAC did, however, produce its own report on election crimes based in part on the consultants’ research.) The Brennan Center had requested both reports in October 2006 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the EAC denied our request and our subsequent appeal.



The Brennan Center has consistently denounced the EAC’s decision to suppress or delay the release of these expert reports. There is simply no legitimate reason for a public agency to withhold research on matters of public concern, particularly in this instance, when the research was commissioned with taxpayer dollars from established experts in the field pursuant to a statutory mandate that the agency make studies on election administration issues available to public. The duty to disclose is especially strong with respect to a public agency whose primary purpose is to serve as “a national clearinghouse and resource” on election administration information and procedures.

Worse yet, the EAC withheld these reports at a critical time when the issues addressed in the reports were the subjects of debate and decisions at all levels of government. During the period in which the reports were suppressed, the legislatures of more than half of the states considered and voted on bills to impose more restrictive voter ID requirements on citizens; a number of federal and state courts – including the United States Supreme Court – heard and decided lawsuits challenging restrictive voter ID laws; and the U.S. House of Representatives debated and passed a bill that would have imposed requirements on all voters. All of these debates and decisions took place without the benefit of the reports’ findings on the significant impact of voter ID laws in reducing voter turnout and the low prevalence of the kind of voter fraud targeted by ID laws.

more:

http://www.newsnet5.com/news/11627158/detail.html

Bennett was all full of bluster but when it came to a public hearing
@ which his "crimes" would have been outed he quit and ran.

Blackwell, Bennett, Noe, Mrs. Noe, Nathan Sproul, Matt Damnschroder
(head of the Franklin County B.O.E.), and many county B.O.E. employees
along with poll workers must be sweating it out.

Case Moves Forward Against Pennsylvania Voting Machines
April 16, 2007 News Release

Last August, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was served with a legal action that seeks to prevent the use by 57 counties of direct recording electronic voting machines that allegedly do not create a permanent record of each vote. The action specifically asks the court to direct the secretary to decertify seven systems and to "declare that the use of various auditable and non-auditable voting systems in Pennsylvania violates the uniformity provisions of the Pennsylvania Constitution." The lawsuit claims the certification of the systems violates the Pennsylvania Election Code, as well as the Pennsylvania Constitution.

In response to this action, the commonwealth filed a preliminary objection asking the court to end the lawsuit because it failed to have any basis under existing law. On April 12 the court overruled those objections, allowing the case to move forward.

Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortés Friday issued the following statement about the Commonwealth Court's decision to not dismiss the case.

"In a divided opinion, Commonwealth Court narrowly decided that there is a basis for proceeding further with the lawsuit. The court's decision was not a final determination of the facts of the case," Cortés said.

more at:
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=104978

Electronic voting under legal scrutiny in the USLawsuits and judicial reviews ago-go
By Lucy Sherriff → More by this author
Published Monday 16th April 2007 15:36 GMT

Voting activists have been given the go ahead to proceed with a legal challenge to the certification of the touch-screen voting machines used in 57 of Pennsylvania's counties.

Pennsylvania's Department of State had been opposing the suit, but its objections were dismissed by a Commonwealth Court on Friday last week. The state argued that the suit is based on allegations that had failed to win over other courts, and that it was only "speculation" that the machines could be tampered with, and errors otherwise occur.

But in a 4-3 majority decision, the Commonwealth Court overruled the objections and allowed the case to proceed.

Meanwhile, in Harrison County, Mississippi, the Board of Supervisors voted to switch away from touch screen systems and return to the older scanner systems, but has been told that it must have approval from the Department of Justice before the switch can be made.

more at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/16/evoting_scrutiny/

Monday, April 16, 2007
Academics Call Foul On Florida Test of Voting Machines

Two academics say that tests run by the state of Florida to determine what went wrong with e-voting machines in the disputed Congressional District 13 race were badly designed, and the results are essentially useless. They've released their response (.pdf) detailing problems with the tests -- which some have touted as evidence that there was nothing wrong with the machines, made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).

For those who haven't been following the issue closely, a little background: Some 18,000 ballots cast on the touch-screen machines didn't record a vote in the CD-13 race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan. Buchanan won the race by fewer than 400 votes and was sworn into Congress. Jennings is calling for a re-vote because hundreds of voters claimed they had problems with the machines -- although they voted for Jennings or Buchanan, when they reached the review screen at the end of the ballot it showed no choice selected in the CD-13 race. These are the voters, of course, who caught the problem. The Jennings camp says there are likely voters who never looked at the review screen or didn't look closely enough to see that no vote appeared on the review screen before casting their ballot.


So Florida conducted two tests -- a mock election on ten machines (five used in the election and five set up for the election but never actually used) and a review of the source code. According to the reports the testers released in January, they found nothing wrong with the machines in either the hands-on test or the source code review to account for the high undervote rate in that race.

Now David Dill at Stanford and Dan Wallach from Rice University have released their response to the Florida reports. Among the problems:



You'll find the state's two reports here http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/auditReportSarasota.pdf(.pdf) and here http://election.dos.state.fl.us/pdf/FinalAudRepSAIT.pdf(.pdf).
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/academics_call_.html

SACRAMENTO
Redistricting without politicians
Citizens measure would face uphill battle with legislators
John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer

Wednesday, April 18, 2007


A showdown is looming between a quartet of public interest groups who have put together a "politics-free" plan for redistricting and state legislators over who should redraw California's political boundaries.

The "Citizens Fair Districts'' ballot initiative, put together by the League of Women Voters, AARP, People's Advocate and California Common Cause, would strip the Legislature of its long-held power to draw the lines every 10 years for Assembly, state Senate and congressional districts and give it to a randomly selected panel of California voters.

The initiative is expected to clear the secretary of state's office and be ready for sponsors to gather signatures this week or next. Backers of the measure are calling it a "gold standard" initiative, one that includes everything good-government groups want to see in a new redistricting law.

"These groups are clearly staking out a ground where redistricting reform can occur,'' said Barry Fadem, a Lafayette attorney who worked on the initiative. "They want to take proactive steps and not rely on what the Legislature will do.''

more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/18/BAGQ3PAKKU1.DTL