It was a busy week for us behind the scenes at Why Tuesday?, and in the world of election reform. What is election reform exactly? And who is the guy in the photo? Get the answers, and much more election reform news, by clicking below. Photo by Cheryl Senter for the New York Times.

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Posted in New Hampshire, Indiana, Michigan, Colorado, Arkansas, Election Reform, West Virginia, Election Day registration, Election 2006, Audits, Roundups, Existing laws, Legislation, Iowa, Election 2008, Election administration, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Journalist and programmer Declan McCullagh has a longish piece up at ZDNet about how a legal loophole in Ohio allows anyone to figure out who voted how. Because ballots are a part of the public record in Ohio, and ballots cast on some ES&S voting machines used in Ohio are time stamped, if someone were to merge a time-stamped list of votes with a list of voters in the order they cast their ballots (as compiled by poll workers), they could, McCullagh writes, probably figure out who voted how.

There are arguments for and against this theory in the article, which you can read by clicking here.

Posted in Election Reform, Ohio, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Voting machine manufacturer ES&S has some explaining to do. They may have sold uncertified voting machines in the state of California. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who has been in the news recently because of her decision to decertify and require increased security measures on voting machines in her state, just distributed this press release:

SACRAMENTO – Secretary of State Debra Bowen today announced she has set a public hearing for September 20, 2007, to examine whether Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) sold uncertified voting machines to as many as five California counties.

“ES&S sold nearly 1,000 voting machines in California without telling the counties that bought them that they had never been certified for use in this state,” said Secretary Bowen, the state’s chief elections officer. “Given that each machine costs about $5,000, it appears ES&S has taken $5 million out of the pockets of several California counties that were simply trying to follow the law and equip their polling places with certified voting machines.”

More from the release after the jump.
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Posted in Election Reform, Electronic voting | Comments Off

This morning, Diebold, Inc. - which manufactures ATM machines and other security-related software and hardware - announced they are spinning off Diebold’s election division and renaming it Premier Election Services. Diebold Election Systems says it has 25,000 optical scan and 126,000 touch screen voting machines “deployed” in the United States.

Diebold wanted to sell its elections division, but couldn’t because of “the rapidly evolving political uncertainties and controversies surrounding state and jurisdiction purchases of electronic voting systems,” they said in a prepared statement. Just last weekend, Diebold machines were involved in a delayed vote count at the Iowa Straw Poll.

A quick overview of Diebold’s controversial history as a voting machine manufacturer, courtesy of the Associated Press:

Diebold Election Systems has had steady growth in sales and profits, but has become a lightning rod for critics of the reliability of e-voting devices. Critics [link inserted by Why Tuesday?] questioned whether Diebold software running those devices could be manipulated.

Diebold often defended its voting machines and its own business intentions, even after its former chairman and chief executive, Wally O’Dell, sought with little success to convince critics his Republican politics and fundraising for President Bush were not the motive for the company’s involvement in elections.

What does this mean for election reform? Or voting more generally? Stay tuned for updates.

Posted in Election Reform, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Just finished watching Dan Rather’s “The Trouble With Touch Screens” on HDNet. Frazier Moore at the AP has filed this summary of the piece without repeating any of the names of the companies Rather and his team investigated. From Moore’s article:

[The report explores] the very paper from which punch-card ballots were made and glaring shortcuts in how certain touch-screen voting machines were produced.

“Our story is not that the election would have turned out differently in 2000 if certain things hadn’t happened. No one can know that,” Rather said Monday. But his eight-month investigation has “dug down vertically as deep as we were capable of doing” to probe the brewing problems — including on-camera interviews with workers who had a front-row seat.

As soon as I get a hold of the episode transcript I’ll post bits from the report here.

* Late Tuesday night update: WIRED’s Threat Level blog does look into some of the companies that Rather named in his investigative report, and finds that voting machine manufacturer ES&S didn’t disclose a Manila manufacturer of its voting machines to the appropriate government agency. Rather’s crew visits that factory to interview workers who speak about poor wages, working conditions, and flaws in the design of the voting machines. ES&S contacted Threat Level to respond to the post. Kim Zetter writes:

After this post was published, ES&S responded to my query about why the Manila factory didn’t appear on its list of manufacturers by saying that it was an “unintentional oversight” and that the company would promptly update the list it had sent the EAC and “ensure future reports contain all information required.”

Posted in Election Reform, Electronic voting | 3 Comments »

The case for election reform is making its way onto the airwaves of two major television networks this summer. Tonight at 8pm eastern time HDNet premieres Dan Rather’s hour-long report called “The Trouble with Touch Screens.” There is a sneek preview of Rather’s report on HDNet’s website. At Why Tuesday? we’re working furiously to schedule a time to talk to Rather about his piece. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, over on PBS David Iglesias, one of the U.S. Attorneys fired amid controversy in 2006, raised the possibility that partisan politics were involved in “voter caging” - the process of systematically purging large numbers of voters from the rolls by using “junk mail” - before the 2004 elections. The episode of NOW aired July 27th and is available online.

Posted in Election Reform, Voter intimidation & deception, Electronic voting | Comments Off

This morning on NPR member station KPCC, local officials from Los Angeles, Riverside and Orange counties discussed California Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s decision to decertify a specific voting machines and place further restrictions on others.

The audio, from AirTalk with Larry Mantle, is available here (RealPlayer).

Posted in Election Reform, California, Electronic voting | Comments Off

A recent study from New York University and the University of California at Berkeley declares that states’ efforts to count every vote by producing paper trails for electronic voting machines may be less important than another election reform: performing post-election audits. The report calls the value of having a paper trail a “highly questionable” method of ensuring voting security.

The NYU/UC report applauds North Carolina for being the only state which “has collected and made public the most significant data from post-election audits for the purpose of improving future elections,” and the North Carolina media has taken notice.

Text from the press release announcing the findings, and an interesting chart from the study is after the jump.
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Posted in Election Reform, North Carolina, Audits, Electronic voting | Comments Off

Following a study by University of California voting security experts during which they were able to hack into electronic voting machines, Friday California Secretary of State Debra Bowen put into place new security procedures for electronic voting, and decertified the use of a certain type of voting machine used in Los Angeles County. She issued the order just minutes before a midnight deadline in order to ensure the changes to go into effect before the February 5 California presidential primary election. From LA Times:

[Bowen] withdrew state approval of the InkaVote Plus machines used in Los Angeles County, saying that the machines’ maker, Election Systems and Software, had failed to submit its equipment to her office in time to analyze its vulnerability to hacking.

She said her office would examine the InkaVote machines and expressed optimism that they would win approval in time to be used in next year’s elections, but did not say what would happen if the machines failed her tests.

“When NASA discovers a flow or a potential safety concern in the space shuttle, it doesn’t continue launching the missions…,” Bowen said. “It scrubs the missions until the problem is fixed.”

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Posted in Election Reform, Optical scan machines, California, Electronic voting | Comments Off