Internet Voting, totally owned. TX Court hears evoting lawsuit

New: radio interview with Dr. David Jefferson, Livermore Natl Laboratories, computer scientist and cyber security expert and VerifiedVoting.org's Internet Voting expert with NEW UNREPORTED BOMBSHELLS on breath-taking D.C. Internet Vote Hack. Iranian, Chinese Computers tried to hack D.C. Board of Elections...NY BOE survey finds thousands of voters have 'major issues' with new machines...Paper Trail for E-Voting Machines Goes Before TX Supreme Court...

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

Find voting news on the internet at http://votingnews.blogspot.com


CA: Candidates exploit ranked-choice endorsements
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/11/BA2M1FQEAC.DTL

CA: Voters again having trouble sealing absentee ballot envelopes
http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/politicsanyone/62032
Voters are, again, improperly sealing their absentee ballot envelopes and it’s causing problems at the Kern County elections division, Chief Deputy Registrar Karen Rhea said.

FL: Wrong Absentee Ballots Sent To Voters*
http://www.wftv.com/countybycounty/25361496/detail.html
SANFORD, Fla. -- The Seminole County Supervisor of Elections admitted Monday that his office made a mistake, sending the wrong absentee ballots to an entire district of Sanford voters.
“It’s only 89 voters, but for those 89 voters it’s, you know, it’s the most important ballot they’re going to get for this year, so we need to make sure that they get it right,” said Michael Ertel, the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections.

Guam: GEC prepares for day in federal court
http://www.kuam.com/Global/story.asp?S=13305521 The agency as we reported violated federal law when it didn't send absentee ballots to uniformed and overseas voters 45 days prior to the election. As a result the U.S. Department of Justice took GEC to court.

IL: Email No Panacea for Our Military
http://blog.champaigncountyclerk.com/2010/10/12/email-no-panacea-for-our-military/
For military voters, we emailed 42 ballots and just a single one has been returned. A rate of 2.4%. On the other hand, we have mailed 204 ballots, and already 33 have been returned. A rate of 16.2%.

Now other factors certainly enter into this. Many of these military ballots are sent within the country. The final determination of the effectiveness of this method will be decided two weeks after the election when we do our final canvass.

IN: Early Voting Begins, But Not Without Glitches* (video available)
http://tristatehomepage.com/fulltext?nxd_id=206425
A line of voters had to wait several minutes for machines to get up and running.
County Clerk Susan Kirk says the system must have lost connection over the weekend, but a computer tech was fixing the problem.

IN: 2 special prosecutors chosen in Charlie White investigation
http://www.indystar.com/article/20101011/NEWS05/10110389/2-special-prosecutors-chosen-in-Charlie-White-investigation?odyssey=tabtopnewstextIndyStar.com
White, a Republican, used his ex-wife's address to vote in the May 4 primary election. Initially, he said his actions were a mistake and didn't warrant a criminal investigation. He's maintained his actions were legal.
...
White already has left his seat on the Fishers Town Council as a result of the residence change that led to questions about the legality of his actions.

MO: Royster Claims New Proof Of Voter Fraud
John Joseph Rizzo Bested Will Royster In House Race By 1 Vote
http://www.kmbc.com/news/25359417/detail.html

NC: New online absentee voting ballots ease process for local troops
http://www.jdnews.com/articles/voting-83379-absentee-online.html

ND: Spirit Lake takes Benson County polling dispute to court
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/178891/
Spirit Lake wants Election Day voting site on reservation
The Spirit Lake tribe is asking a federal court to stop Benson County from closing voting sites on its reservation during the November election.

NY: BOE survey finds thousands of voters have 'major issues' with new machines
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/10/11/2010-10-11_boe_survey_finds_thousands_of_voters_have_major_issues_with_new_machines_bigtime.html
Still, 6% of those surveyed reported having "major issues" - potentially a whopping 20,700 of the 345,000 voters who participated in the primary.

NY: Election chiefs fumble, get raises (LTE)
http://www.lohud.com/article/20101011/OPINION/10110312/1016/OPINION01/
Election%20chiefs%20fumble+,%20get%20raises http://tinyurl.com/2agoowt
Re "Westchester election chiefs get longer, 4-year terms," Sept. 23 article:Looks like the taxpayer, voting public, got the shaft once again courtesy of government bureaucracy. We were told that the new voting machines were more efficient and would make voting easier.

NY: EXCLUSIVE: Feds to Sue New York Board Over Military Voting Violations, State Official Says http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/11/exclusive-feds-sue-new-york-board-military-voting-violations-state-official/ The consent order, Kellner said, would give the federal authorities power to ensure MOVE Act compliance in New York City and four counties — Putnam, Erie, Niagara and Westchester — which still hadn't mailed out their absentee ballots as of their latest deadline.

The legal action would mark the most aggressive federal intervention yet amid an ongoing debate over how to enforce compliance with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voters Empowerment Act, known as the MOVE Act. The Department of Justice is expected to intervene in several New York counties that missed deadlines intended to ensure that overseas ballots are sent, received and counted on time.

NY: Elections Officials Blamed for Bungling Military Ballots*
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/10/11/elections-officials-blamed-for-bungling-military-ballots/ At issue is a new law requiring states to mail ballots to troops 45 days before a general election. Because the New York’s primary is relatively late — it came this year on Sept. 14 — that state received a deadline waiver. Yet New York City and several counties’ boards of elections still failed to meet that new deadline of October 1.

According to a letter sent to the Pentagon last week by state board of elections officials, New York City, Erie, Niagara, Putnam and Westchester counties all failed to get all their ballots in the mail to military personnel and Americans living abroad.

NV: Secretary of state challenger files lawsuit against Miller
Claims official violated law on absentee ballots
http://www.lvrj.com/news/challenger-files-lawsuit-against-miller-104758669.html
CARSON CITY -- The Republican challenger announced Monday that he filed a lawsuit charging Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller with violating a federal law requiring election ballots to be sent to service members at least 45 days before elections.

Rob Lauer, said 51 absentee ballots requested by service members from Elko County were sent as many as 15 days late. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Las Vegas.

NV: Ballot Glitch Fixed for Elko County Voters
http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=13305145
Nevada election officials have fixed a delay that left dozens of voters from Elko County without ballots.

The U.S. Department of Justice says a private vendor failed to deliver printed ballots on time to 34 military members and their spouses living overseas.

NV: Candidate wants party names spelled out on voting machines
http://www.lvrj.com/news/candidate-wants-party-names-spelled-out-on-voting-machines-104744819.html?ref=819 CARSON CITY -- Scott Ashjian, the Tea Party of Nevada candidate for U.S. Senate, asked the secretary of state Monday to reprogram voting machines so that abbreviations for party names are eliminated.

TX: Paper Trail for E-Voting Machines Goes Before TX Supreme Court
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/dpp/news/local/paper-trail-for-e-voting-machines-goes-before-tx-supreme-court-10122010-ktbcw
Austin, TX - The Texas Supreme Court began hearing arguments Tuesday morning on a lawsuit that could pull the plug on electronic voting in the state.

The case was filed in 2006 by NAACP and voters in order to block Texas Secretary of State from using electronic voting machines in future elections. The Austin Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in favor of NAACP and that they could proceed with their lawsuit.

TX: County accidentally displays flag of Chile on ballot
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/county-accidentally-displays-flag-of-chile-on-ballot-966779.html Atascosa County officials say they fixed the mistake.

TX: Ballot a mile long? No, but it's lengthy
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7242415.html
Harris County voters face a daunting list with an avalanche of names
...
No Harris County voter has all 252 candidates and 142 election contests on his individual ballot, but every one starts with 72 judicial contests.

Internet Voting Watch

DC: Net ballots a no-go
U-M students show why online voting vulnerable
http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20101012/OPINION01/101011011
D.C. officials said they intend to move forward and allow overseas voters to cast ballots via the Internet in a 2011 election. However, we think they should carefully consider the words of J. Alex Halderman, the computer science professor at U-M who helped thwart the test and who predicted it would be decades – if ever – before voting over the Internet is safe.

DC: PREVIOUSLY -- More about vote-hacking incident revealed at council hearing.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/debonis/2010/10/demorning_debonis_oct_11_2010.html

Iranian, Chinese Computers Also Discovered to Have Been Hacking D.C. Internet Voting System http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8118

NEW D.C. Internet Vote Hack BOMBSHELLS (listen to the podcast)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=8115 Brad Friedman Guesting for Malloy Show
DR. DAVID JEFFERSON, Livermore National Laboratories computer scientist and cyber security expert and VerifiedVoting.org's Internet Voting expert with NEW UNREPORTED BOMBSHELLS on the already breath-taking D.C. Internet Vote Hack that we learned about earlier this week. Seriously. NEW BOMBSHELLS. Ds, Rs and everyone else should tune in for this. For rils.
...
The White Hat hackers from U. of MI weren't the only ones who hacked the system. David Jefferson gives us the chilling inside scoop on who else was visiting the D.C. Board of Election over the Internets...Don't miss this hour!...

Internet Voting, totally owned
http://rop.gonggri.jp/?p=380 Alex Halderman and his students have surpassed themselves in a pilot that was organized by the U.S. District of Columbia. Officials there had set up a system for voters abroad to vote over the internet. But before they went live they allowed people to hack the system, so they could proudly show that the system was secure. To make extra sure nobody would get in, they announced this only three days in advance.

The system was so completely owned that I would spoil the fun by telling you exactly what happened.

India: E-voting glitches: 16 cr goes down the drain*
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/-E-voting-glitches-16-cr-goes-down-the-drain/articleshow/6726382.cms These e-votes have proved to be the costliest 'duds' in state election history. A rough estimate suggests that the state election commission spent Rs 27.42 lakh on each of the 124 voters who cast his or her vote on Sunday as the SEC invested Rs 34 crore on implementing the e-voting system.

Almost 183 voters had registered with the SEC for the e-voting facility, of which only 124 voted across the state. One cannot blame the apathy of the voters to be the sole reason but some who lost out on a chance to vote blamed software glitches.

India: E-voting debuts with mixed response, glitches*
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/evoting-debuts-with-mixed-response-glitches/695553/
In Vadodara, BJP MP and mayor Balkrishna Shula could not vote online due to a technical snag. Vadodara city had only three online voters — Shukla, his wife and a VMC employee.

India: They voted but not for any candidate
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/They-voted-but-not-for-any-candidate/articleshow/6725754.cms VADODARA: These voters did walk up to polling booths. They also cast their votes, but not for any candidate. This was only to register their votes to ensure that no one else voted on their behalf. These voters were exercising their right that allows voters to vote for no candidate but to get their votes registered. And many in the city used this voting right in the municipal elections held on Sunday by filling form 17A in register of voters.

International

Majority in favour of forced vote
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/majority-in-favour-of-forced-vote/story-e6frg6nf-1225937354970 A NEW opinion poll has found a large majority of Australians support compulsory voting.

And more than half would prefer first-past-the-post voting to the preferential system, the survey showed.

Voting News by Joyce McCloy.
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