Industry First, Sequoia Voting Machine Company to Publish Source Code: “Security through obfuscation and secrecy is not security,” said Eric D. Coomer, PhD, Vice President of Research and Product Development at Sequoia Voting Systems. This ought to be against the law: Indiana County palms off 600 old Microvote machines to West Africa...Absentee ballot blues: Hamburg NY finds missing absentee ballots just in time...In India, losing candidates allege tampering of e-voting machines, but whether they are right or wrong, no one can prove the validity of a paperless computerized election...Ireland's storage bill for e-voting machines still rising as Govt stalls...The news is short today, will have much more tomorrow... Reminder, if you have a news article or great blogged article, send it to us and we will use it if we can...
All of that and more in today's Voting News below..
CO: Aspen withdraws
marketing district
ballot question
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Amid revelations of inaccurate voter rolls, Aspen City Council voted unanimously Monday night to withdraw a ballot question that would have increased local lodging taxes
http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/home/137345
CO:Snafu jeopardizes fate of Aspen's ballot question 5A *(voter reg. database error)
The City Council is expected to decide Monday night what to do about a snafu that resulted in some voters receiving a ballot that includes Referendum 5A even though they don't reside in the district and aren't supposed to vote on the measure, while others who should be able to vote instead received ballots without 5A on it.
...
The city clerk certified the list of 700-plus voters who were to get ballots that included Referendum 5A, but she was working with data base and mapping errors provided to her, Ireland said in an email sent out on the heels of Braun's missive.
...
County Clerk and Recorder Janice Vos Caudill said Monday morning she would not attempt to reprogram the statewide voter registration system at midstream in an attempt to correct the problems.
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20091026/NEWS/910269991/1077&ParentProfile=1058
CO: Clerk asks for ballots' early return
Only 13,000 of the 84,000 ballots mailed out have been returned.The ballots have been mailed to voters . . . and Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert "Bo" Ortiz is encouraging voters to mail them back, or hand deliver them earlier than Election Day on Nov. 3.
http://www.chieftain.com/articles/2009/10/27/news/local/doc4ae68487041bd874229499.txt
CT: Connecticut submits election audits to EAC Voting System Reports Clearinghouse
http://www.eac.gov/blog-postings/connecticut-submits-election-audits-to-eac-voting-system-reports-clearinghouse
FL: Voting machines for disabled could cost $3.5M
Oct 27, 2009 5:17 LEE COUNTY: Lee County leaders say they can't afford to buy new voting machines for voters with special needs, despite the fact they are required to have accessible machines with a paper trail by 2012
...
Lee County estimates the new machines would cost at least $3.5 million.
And they're not sure it's money well spent. Of the 340,000 registered voters in Lee County, only 58 with special needs came to the polls in 2008.
http://www.nbc-2.com/global/story.asp?s=11394401
IN: Voting machines destined for West Africa
26 October 2009 Around 600 voting machines from Allen County will begin a journey to West Africa on Monday, where they will be used to assist the Benin republic in implementing a new voting system.
The MicroVote voting machines have been in storage at the County Election Board barn since 2006.
http://www.fwdailynews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5503:Voting-machines-destined-for-West-Africa&catid=61:times-online2&Itemid=6
MI: Hamburg Towsnhip's Missing Absentee Ballots Finally Found
October 27, 2009- An oversight by the Livingston County Clerk’s Office is to blame for the delay in several hundred absentee ballots being mailed out to voters in Hamburg Township.
...
Approximately 475 of 1300 ballots were unaccounted for.
http://www.whmi.com/news/article/9097
NY: Paper ballots unfunded by Suffolk exec, who blasts forced expense
October 26, 2009 Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy may have ambitions for statewide election, but he won’t get very far if his home county does not have the money needed to print next year’s ballots.
http://www.newsday.com/blogs/politics/spin-cycle-1.812042/paper-ballots-unfunded-by-suffolk-exec-who-blasts-forced-expense-1.1550389
NY: Troy Democrats want Mirch probe
Candidate on ballot says he didn't know he was running
October 27, 2009
TROY -- City Democrats said Monday they have asked a special prosecutor to investigate city Public Works Commissioner Robert Mirch's role in putting a candidate for Rensselaer County Legislature on the ballot who didn't know he was running.
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=857731
OH: Mahoning County elections director and clerk suspended
October 26, 2009 YOUNGSTOWN — Failure to send ballot language to any political entity with an issue on the Nov. 3 ballot led to the unpaid suspensions today of the Mahoning County Board of Elections director and a clerk.
http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/oct/26/mahoning-county-elections-director-and-clerk/
WA: County to decide fate of ranked choice voting
Election: Three-year-old ‘instant runoff’ system to be put to test next month
To its supporters, ranked choice voting gives voters more choices and improves democracy. To its detractors, it’s costly and confusing.
Now, even as Pierce County voters prepare to use it a second time on the general election ballot, they must decide whether to keep or scrap ranked choice voting.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/government/story/929645.html
WA: Machines help some to vote
10/25/09 Voters with visual impairments can use “AutoMARK” voting machines to mark their Nov. 3 voting selections in private, and the machines will be available in select Thurston County locations in the next week
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/928710.html
National
In Industry First, Voting Machine Company to Publish Source Code
Wired News. Sequoia Voting Systems plans to publicly release the source code for its new optical scan voting system, the company announced Tuesday — a remarkable reversal for a voting machine maker long criticized for resisting public examination of its proprietary systems.
The company’s new public source optical-scan voting system, called Frontier Election System, will be submitted for federal certification and testing in the first quarter of next year. The code will be released for public review in November, the company said, on its web site...
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/sequoia/
Press Release: SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS ANNOUNCES THE FIRST TRANSPARENT ELECTION SYSTEM WITH FULLY DISCLOSED, FREELY AVAILABLE SOURCE CODE AND OPEN ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPED TO MEET FEDERAL VOTING SYSTEM GUIDELINES
Sequoia’s Frontier Election System Source Code will be available for public download through the company’s website beginning November 2009; System slated to enter the Election Assistance Commission’s Federal Voting System Certification Program in mid-2010
DENVER, CO. – October 27, 2009 – Today, Sequoia Voting Systems officially introduced its latest revolutionary new offering – the Frontier Election SystemTM – the first transparent end-to-end election system including precinct and central count digital optical scan tabulators, a robust election management and ballot preparation system, and tally, tabulation, and reporting applications based on an open architecture with publicly disclosed source code developed specifically to meet current and future iterations of the federal Voting System Guidelines.
http://www.sequoiavote.com/press.php?ID=85
Statement from Sequoia Voting Systems regarding Source Code Claims by the Election Defense Alliance
10/21/2009
We issued the following statement today areter receiving a few questions on this matter so I wanted to highlight it on our blog so it would easily be seen by all who are curious
http://www.sequoiavote.com/blog.php?ID=69
Why doesn’t open source government take off?
Champaign County Clerk
If I’m correct that open source software is such a winner for the government, why hasn’t it taken off? There are a number of reasons, not all of them pretty.
http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2009/10/27/why-doesn%e2%80%99t-open-source-government-take-off/
Amend and Pass HR 1719
Champaign County Clerk
But there are plenty of concerns with HR 1719. First, it’s less than apparent as to whether these updates would come with a mandate to verify information against driver’s license and social security databases. It’s also unclear as to whether first time registrants would somehow be enabled to use the system. Further, there is a mechanism within the law to have emails as a substitute for regular mail.
...
As compared to the radical proposal put forward by the Committee to Modernize, the online registration updates as proposed in HR 1719 are proven and don’t change the “opt in” nature of our registration system. It takes the best of what we have now, and improves it.
http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2009/10/26/amend-and-pass-hr-1719/
International
India: Puglia, Ramteke demand re-poll
TNN 25 October 2009,CHANDRAPUR: Losing Congress candidates from Ballarpur and Chandrapur constituencies have alleged of tampering of electronic voting machine (EVM) and have demanded re-poll in the complaint lodged with chief election commissioner.
...
Puglia alleged that the technicians of EVM manufacturing companies, who were sent for maintenance of the EVMs, are involved in the tampering. "These fraud technicians had approached us through some agents for EVM manipulation and pre-setting against hefty amount, but we refused trickery and ignored the offer. The technical staff of the company was here much before the poll date for this purpose," alleged Puglia.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nagpur/Puglia-Ramteke-demand-re-poll/articleshow/5157606.cms
Ireland: Storage bill for e-voting machines still rising as Government stalls
THEY are the great symbol of waste from Celtic Tiger Ireland.
And it seems, despite the ongoing storage costs, the Government is still trying to decide what to do with the €55m e-voting machines, six months after the controversial scheme was scrapped.
http://www.herald.ie/national-news/storage-bill-for-evoting-machines-still-rising-as-government-stalls-1924596.html
Voting News by Joyce McCloy.
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