DOJ: Voting Firms Cant Merge. Internet Voting Utopianism. Hawaii finds $1.3 M election funds it forgot

"The nation’s two primary electronic voting machine manufacturers cannot merge their operations, the Justice Department announced on Monday"...How did the merger ever get so far so fast? The NY Post reports that critics believe the DOJ didn't give this as much attn because of the anti trust head Christine Varney recusing herself. Varney's former election firm was hired by ES&S.

Hawaii officials "found" the $1.3 M needed to run the special election to fill Neil Abercrombie's seat in a "forgotten account"...

Internet voting utopianism: "This inconvenient truth exposes the lie of Internet voting as being an easy, cost-saving citizen convenience, and so in most cases what I see is Internet voting advocates who are either ignorant of these issues, ignoring these issues, or deliberately trying to spin them" - Richard Akerman writing for PaperVoteCanada....

All this and much more in today's voting news below...

CA: Fisher: Many hats, many contributions
http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_14632307
San Mateo Co. ...Slocum, 62, recently announced that he won't run for re-election...
...
When counties converted to electronic voting after the 2000 hanging-chad fiasco, he pushed for paper records of all votes cast....

CA: More Spanish-speaking voters sought
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_14524934
As San Bernardino County's Latino population increases, election officials are going to great lengths to reach out to Spanish-speaking voters.

FL: Despite law, some elections officials want to keep touch-screen voting
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/article1077763.ece
It looks like the Legislature is about to grant their wish, much to the frustration of Secretary of State Kurt Browning, the state's chief elections official.
...
"They're whining," Browning said of elections supervisors. "They've known this law has been on the books since 2007, and they will have had five years to comply with this change."

HI: Abercrombie: Money's there to fill vacant seat
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/global/story.asp?s=12097495
But a special election to fill his congressional seat will cost nearly $1-million. Abercrombie says the state already has the money, when the office of elections found $1.3-million in a forgotten account.

IN: Vote centers remain in question at Statehouse
http://www.jconline.com/article/20100306/ELECTION01/100305035
The most contentious part of legislation that affects the future of vote centers may be dropped as negotiations continue into next week.

KS: Kan. House to weigh voting rights, mentally ill
http://www.nebraska.tv/Global/story.asp?S=12088799
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A Kansas House committee is considering a proposed change in the state constitution to protect the voting rights of the mentally ill

OH: ACORN joins Browns on PD Front page (video)
http://bit.ly/b6DjFX

MO: Financial statement details county spending for 2009
http://bit.ly/ciLKp0
Another election expense from the general revenue fund was $8,134 to Sequoia Voting Systems for maintenance of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines and optical scan machines.

NH: New Hampshire House Sets Floor Vote on Ballot Access Bill
http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/03/08/new-hampshire-house-sets-floor-vote-on-ballot-access-bill/

NM: Despite voting centers, turnout disappointing
http://bit.ly/ce2ImS

OR: Oregon 4th State to Offer Online Voter Registration
http://bit.ly/cRVM0C

TX: Upton Co. Election Mess Reported to State Officials by Rankin Voters 3/5/10 *
http://www.cbs7kosa.com/news/details.asp?ID=18308
Some Upton County Residents are still wondering what’s going on, three days after the primary election, where 600 extra votes were counted that did not have matching signatures.

TX: Texas primary turnout is highest in 20 years
http://bit.ly/aEr3BU

TX: Herman: The truth about early voting (opinion)
http://bit.ly/djlTNu
Texas elections, it seems, go to the early voters' favorite candidates.

VT: IRV repeal expected to sail through legislature
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=12104156

WA: Pierce County mail-in ballot effort dies again
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/03/06/1098221/mail-in-ballot-effort-dies-again.html
Pierce County last in state with polls

WI: Prosecutor says police dragging feet on voter fraud cases
http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/86776512.html

WV: W.Va. getting attention for election funding bill
http://bit.ly/bkvxDu

National


DOJ: Voting Firms Can’t Merge
http://www.rollcall.com/news/43949-1.html

Diebold deal faces DOJ snag
http://bit.ly/bZMnMb
ES&S is in talks with one of its competitors, Austin, Texas-based Hart InterCivic, about co-owning the voting machines. Hanging over the negotiations is a threat the DOJ will sue to undo the Premier acquisition if ES&S does not reach a deal soon, a source close to the situation said.

DOJ: Voting machine maker must sell some assets
http://bit.ly/9b34Vp
Under a proposed settlement, ES&S would sell voting equipment system assets it bought from Premier Elections Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Diebold Inc. The proposed settlement, to which both sides have agreed, must be approved by a federal judge before it becomes final

National Academies Press Final Report on Improving State Voter Registration Databases
http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12788
Improving State Voter Registration Databases outlines several actions that are needed to help make voter registration databases capable of sharing information within state agencies and across state lines.

Public Meeting EAC will hold a public meeting Thursday, March 11.
http://www.eac.gov/News/meetings/03-11-10-public-meeting
Topics: election operations assessment, update on Wyle Lab re-accreditation. The meeting will be webcast live and an on-demand archived version will be posted within 24-hours.

International

Australia: Victorian Electoral Commission to further roll out electronic voting
http://bit.ly/aPWFzg
Linux-based touch screen kiosks to underpin expansion of electronic voting in Victoria
...
The pilot electronic voting systems are designed by HP and Scytl Secure Electronic Voting.

Canada: urban renewal, greenwashing, technoyouth, and Internet voting utopianism
http://bit.ly/9uNSbR
This is in reaction to the Elections Canada Internet voting event, some of the followup to it, and the ongoing trend for Canadian municipalities to adopt Internet voting (as well as the announcement that the province of Alberta will investigate it as well).
...
Oh look how much we save if we don't provide paper ballots - as long as we ignore the ongoing costs of data centres, legal challenges, and fundamentally undermining trust in our democracy.
...
Internet voting is a lose-lose situation. The easier you make it to vote online, the more convenient, the less complicated, the less encumbered by multiple steps and complexity, the easier you make it for a hacker to steal the election...


Canada: London council to discuss online election voting
http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2010/03/07/13144021.html
Nancy Branscombe wants to bring online voting to London's municipal elections.
The city councillor will raise the notion tomorrow at city council that the next time Londoners head to the polls, they should do it in front of a computer screen as more communities are embracing online voting.

Iraq: Iraqi Elections: Live-Blogging Election Day
http://nyti.ms/cVULJH

2010 Iraqi Elections: Why I Will Vote
http://nyti.ms/cfM6dL

Netherlands: U of GRONINGEN: PHD position Quantum Electronic Voting
http://bit.ly/aQ71jR

Sri Lanka voices: 'Fractured democracy'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8534089.stm

Voting News by Joyce McCloy.
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