Florida must fix voting system flaws. NY 1 Person No Vote? SC must ditch e-voting

Florida Voters urge Secretary of State to address threats to next month’s elections: 14-17 Counties have defective firmware chip that causes errors in results reports. 16 Counties have problem causing optical scan machines to freeze or shut down...New York -One Person, No Vote?...Time for South Carolina to adopt paper ballots says Eleanor Hare, Assoc Prof , Computer Science at Clemson U: "As long as we use these unverifiable voting machines, we can neither confirm nor invalidate unexpected election results with certainty." ..Possible boycott of India EVMs...

All this and more in todays' voting news below...


CO: Denver rolls out ballot-tracking program for mail-in primary votes
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_15444918

CO: Colorado's 2010 primary election voting-service centers
http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15445006
The Aug. 10 primary will be a mail-in ballot election, but there are 13 voting-service centers, where voters can drop off their ballots and the disabled can vote on touch-screen machines

CT: Secretary of State Has No Business Doing This
http://blog.ctnews.com/kantrowitz/2010/07/07/secretary-of-state-has-no-business-doing-this/ Urging people to join only 2 of the many parties in Connecticut, just because those 2 are the only ones having primaries, is just, in my humble opinion, wrong, wrong wrong for an official elected to uphold the integrity of elections for all parties and participants.

FL: Florida Voters Urge Secretary of State to Address Serious Threats to Next Month’s Elections http://www.floridavoters.org/downloads/FVF%20to%20SoS%20Threats%
20to%20FL%20Elections%20-%202010-07-07.pdf http://is.gd/dkIbw
Voting System Defects, Lax Cyber Security and Administrative Procedures & Inadequate County Funding Threaten to Undermine Upcoming Florida Elections

FL: Judge throws out Legislature’s redistricting amendment
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2010/07/judge-throws-out-legislatures-redistricting-amendment.html A Leon County circuit judge today struck from the ballot Amendment 7, the Legislature’s redistricting amendment aimed at undermining the Fair Districts proposals to create standards in drawing legislative and congressional lines.

FL: Legislature's redistricting amendment declared misleading
http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/07/legislatures-redistricting-amendment-tossed.html The Legislature's decision to counter the Fair Districts Florida redistricting amendment with its own was declared misleading by Judge James Shelfer, who tossed it off the ballot. His ruling is sure to be appealed.

Shelfer said it took him three days to understand the meaning of Amendment 7 and that he couldn't foresee how an average voter would grasp its description during a few minutes in the voting booth.

FL: Where's my absentee ballot? Floridians can find out online
Voters can also check their registration status, polling location
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/state/os-track-absentee-ballot-20100707,0,5561499.story

FL: Military voters to get earlier ballots this year
http://www.bradenton.com/2010/07/07/2414273/military-to-get-earlier-ballots.html
MANATEE — Deployed military and overseas voters should be among the earliest voters in Florida primary election history starting Friday when absentee ballots are expected to be distributed.

GA: Paulding voters face changes
http://neighbornewspapers.com/detail/161253.html When the polls open on Election Day, July 20, there will be a few changes for Paulding voters.

Deidre Holden, supervisor of the Election and Registrations Department, said the changes include moving 53,000 of the 78,996 registered voters into new precincts, as approved by the United States Department of Justice.

The changes to the precincts were triggered by the reduction from 28 to 14

NY: More Voices for a Better Overvote Procedure in New York
http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/more_voices_for_a_
better_overvote_procedure_in_new_york/ http://is.gd/dkIfO A panel of leading computer scientists wrote to the Boards of Elections yesterday to emphasize that “[t]he most obvious solution to this problem is to set the voting machines to reject overvoted ballots… Because no software would be modified, testing of the change can be expected to be simple, straightforward and efficient, and to take no more than a day.”

NY: One Person, No Vote?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/opinion/06tue4.html?_r=1 As the machines now work, if a voter inserts a flawed ballot into a scanner, with, say, more than one candidate marked for one office, the screen simply announces that the person has “overvoted.” It will then offer two options. The green one means you are casting your ballot with errors and any race with too many votes won’t count. The red ballot means the voter wants to go back and make a correction.

This is needlessly complicated. The dusty old machines would not permit more than the allowed number of votes. The instructions on the new machines should be simpler and clearer. State elections officials argue that it is too late for a thorough fix like the one used, of all places, in Florida.

PA: Election Integrity--An Update on the Lack of Progress toward Accurate, Verifiable Elections http://coalitionforvotingintegrity.blogspot.com/2010/07/election-integrity-update-on-lack-of.html Electronic voting machines are outlawed in Germany, but Pennsylvania voters have to vote on them here

SC: State should examine voting machines
http://www.pickenssentinel.com/view/full_story/8397363/article-State-should-examine-voting-machines-?instance=secondary_opinion_left_column Voting results from our discredited voting machines are neither recountable nor verifiable and the so-called “recount” is an illusion.

SC: Two legislators, others named in $20 million federal lawsuit*
http://www.examiner.com/x-56451-Horry-County-Elections-2010-Examiner~y2010m7d7-Two-legislators-others-named-in-20-million-federal-lawsuit
State Rep. Tracy Edge and state Sen. Dick Elliott, both of Horry County, are among a long list named in a $20 million federal lawsuit claiming an array of charges ranging from election fraud, to impersonating federal agents to trying to get rid of the town of Atlantic Beach.
...
The suit claims the town’s election commission disregarded state election laws in deciding which ballots to accept or reject. It also claims that voters were intimidated and threatened when it came time to cast their ballots, either in person or absentee.

One allegation involves someone who claimed to be a private detective that followed Price and Cole to check on their residency within the town. The suit says the same person later presented himself as an FBI agent and threatened residents with voter fraud.

SC: SLED investigates voter fraud in Dillon Count *
http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=480104
A 29-year-old Dillon woman, who asked that she not be identified, told us and police a man gave her $20 and a brand new dress in exchange for her vote by absentee ballot.
...
a voter by the name of Willie Ruth Rowland says when she went to vote in the primary, voter registration officials told her she'd already voted. After some checking, Rowland learned her name had been forged on an absentee ballot.

TX: Trial begins over mail-in votes in JP election
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/local/stories/DN-sepulveda_07met.ART.State.Edition1.29ced16.html
Wyde said he has found about 65 votes that were unlawful because proper procedures were not followed. There are also cases, the lawsuit says, in which absentee ballots were cast by people who are not U.S. citizens, weren't registered or didn't live in the precinct.
...
Sepulveda said in his lawsuit that all of the 606 mail-in ballots cast for Medrano during early voting were collected with the help of vote harvesters, people who assist the elderly and others who can't make it to the polls.

Doing so is legal as long as campaign workers don't try to influence a person's vote.

WV: West Virginia Attorney General Says Special Election for U.S. Senate OK for November 2010 http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/07/08/west-virginia-attorney-general-says-special-election-for-u-s-senate-ok-for-november-2010/

Internet Voting Watch

Oregon's Independent Party launches the state's first online primary
Voting begins today in Oregon's first online primary election.
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/07/oregons_
independent_party_laun.html http://is.gd/dkIlM
Nearly 55,000 members of the Independent Party of Oregon are receiving notices in the mail that allow them to log on to the Internet and cast their votes in what is also the state's first primary election for a minor party.

Canada: Pantalone’s e-voting proposal dangerously clueless
http://spacing.ca/votes/2010/07/06/pantalones-e-voting-proposal-dangerously-clueless/
Pantalone curiously slots the online voting proposal under the heading of “Accountable – 21st Century Democracy.” Online voting might be 21st century, but it ultimately prevents voter accountability.

National

Brad Guest Hosts the 'Malloy Show' Tonight (Thursday)!
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7934 BREAKING NEWS, You'll have to tune in tonight to hear about some rathering disturbing new news in a long-running election fraud case in a specific county, in a specific state. It's one we've been following for some time, and tonight there's breaking news in the case. We'll talk about it with one of the key players in the long running investigation!

International

India: TRS’s Boycott of EVMs in Telangana Bypolls: EVMs would be gone (Part 3)
http://www.indianevm.com/blogs/?p=305
The unending controversy over electronic voting machines (EVMs) has acquired a fresh thrust from the state of Andhra Pradesh where by-elections are scheduled later this month. These developments take the fight against the EVMs to a new level of political protest and are fast forwarding the exit of EVMs much sooner than expected.


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