The nation's clearinghouse for election audit information! |
|
|
 California 
|
|
California
|
|
By Caren Daniels-Meade, Chief of Elections, State of California
|
|
December 15, 2005 |
<>Secretary
of State Bruce McPherson hosted a Voting Systems Testing Summit on
November 28 and 29 to bring together experts from state and federal
elections administration to discuss testing as it applies to state
certification processes for voting equipment. Several panels of
nationally recognized experts will share their expertise, from which we
hope to develop a best practices model that all states can use in their
examination of voting equipment. Please see the agenda and remarks linked to this page for additional information.
Materials and Presentations
Session 1 - The Federal Role - Where Things Stand Today and Where They're Headed, HAVA and Voting Systems, Accessibility
Session 2 - Demystifying the ITA's
Session 2.5 - A Vision for Testing Election Systems
Session 3 - National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
|
|
Read more...
|
|
California
|
|
By Dave Berman, Guvwurld.blogspot.com
|
|
December 13, 2005 |
This article appeared in GuvWurld on December 12, 2005. It is reposted with permission of the author.
 A recently released report by the non-partisan watchdog arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), has laid bare the unsecure and unreliable conditions of U.S. elections. Beyond just what could happen, the GAO has meticulously documented what has happened in the past few years, concluding: Nevertheless, there is evidence that some of these concerns - including weak controls and inadequate testing - have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes. (p.38) When votes are lost and miscounted, there is no way to be certain what the true outcome should be from an election. We can thus say that current election conditions ensure inconclusive outcomes, and provide no basis for confidence in the results reported. Among the many citations, the GAO report refers to an April 20, 2004, Staff Report from the California Secretary of State's office which reported that Diebold had admitted to violating state law in each of its 17 client counties (listed below): |
|
Read more...
|
|
California
|
|
By Dave Berman, GuvWorld
|
|
December 07, 2005 |
This article was originally published in the author's GuvWorld blog  For the past week and a half I've been studying the GAO report condemning the conditions under which our elections are held. Last Tuesday I posted this searing analysis
of the report's implications on Humboldt County, which I also
circulated as a Media Advisory to Humboldt press outlets. So far the
Humboldt Advocate and Eureka Reporter have expressed interest in the
story and I consider this very encouraging. On the other hand,
it is perplexing to have to tell of the response from the Eureka
Times-Standard. Before issuing the Advisory I contacted editor Charles
Winkler with a head's up just to check out the GAO report. He always
seems pleasant enough in greeting me. Then comes the confounding
factor. Winkler tried to tell me the GAO report was only about Ohio.
Knowing that I could show him otherwise, I let it go. After receiving
the actual Advisory, Winkler e-mailed saying "we don't have these
machines here, as far as I know..." He copied that fantasy to Dave
Rosso. I spoke with Rosso on Friday when he repeated the delusion that
"we don't have these machines here." I asked then what software counts
votes in Humboldt? Silence. I want to say that I don't know what to make of this contrary behavior. But it is strikingly similar to what I've been describing recently in more abstract terms. And it is not isolated. |
|
Read more...
|
|
California
|
|
By Debra Bowen, California State Senator
|
|
December 02, 2005 |
<> It's time to restore the public's trust in how our votes are
counted here in California. But, if Secretary
of State Bruce McPherson has his way, that may not happen. With a January 1, 2006 deadline looming, Secretary of State
McPherson is considering recertification of Diebold electronic
voting machines for use in California elections -- even though
recent studies have shown failure rates of up to 20% on some
Diebold systems.
That's outrageous! The very integrity of our
elections is on the line -- and the people of California deserve
a thorough, rigorous testing of these Diebold voting machines
before they're used in our state ever again.
Unfortunately, these Diebold electronic voting machines have
shown themselves to be extremely vulnerable to hacking.
Last May, computer expert Harri Hursti from Finland successfully
hacked into a Diebold machine in Florida, flashing a message
that read "Are we having fun yet?" across the screen. |
|
Read more...
|
|
California
|
|
By Ian Hoffman, Staff Writer, Oakland Tribune
|
|
December 01, 2005 |
Despite movement toward new standards for machines, change may be years away
This article appeared originally at InsideBayArea.com. It it reposted here with permission of the author.
SACRAMENTO — For 11 years, most states have relied on voting systems
tested to minimal federal standards, the results withheld from public
scrutiny and given the green light by a nongovernmental agency working
on a shoestring budget.
The era of approving tools of democracy on the cheap is coming to an
end, and judging by talk at a national gathering of voting experts here
this week, few will be sorry to see it go.
 Carnegie
Mellon University computer expert Michael Shamos, a state
voting-systems certification official for Pennsylvania, is one of the
staunchest advocates for new, fully computerized electronic voting
systems.
But judging by what he has seen emerge from secretive, private labs
known as "independent testing authorities" and approved by the National
Association of State Elections Directors, Shamos said, "There's stuff in there that's so horrible, I can't understand it."
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Miriam Raftery, The Raw Story
|
|
December 01, 2005 |
Panels Appear Stacked With Electronic Voting Proponents
This article appeared originally on The Raw Story and
is reposted here by permission of the author. VoteTrustUSA's Director
of Legislative Issues and Policy was similarly not invited and received
the same form email mentioned below.
A California summit on voting equipment, where many of the speakers had
apparent conflicts of interests, barred entry to consumer groups
calling for election reform, RAW STORY has discovered.
California Election Protection Network,
a nonpartisan coalition representing 25 California election integrity
groups held a press conference Monday outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel
in Sacramento, where the "Voting Systems Testing Summit" was convened
by Republican California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.
The State appears to have skewed presentations in favor of electronic
voting, with advocates far outnumbering critics. Some panels contain
exclusively vendors of electronic voting equipment and representatives
of testing labs chosen by these vendors. |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Bard Friedman, The Brad Blogged
|
|
December 01, 2005 |
Orginally posted on Brad Blog.
Reposted by permission of the author. VoteTrustUSA's Director of
Legislative Issues and Policy was similarly non-invited and received
the same form email copied below.
State Stacks Panels, Invitees With E-Voting Proponents!
RAW STORY Report Confirms, Adds Many Details to Information Previously Reported by BRAD BLOG
RAW STORY's Miriam Raftery opens up on the scam
apparently being perpetuated by California Sec. of State Bruce
McPherson in what appears to be a last-minute effort to quickly
re-certify Diebold's TSx touch-screen voting machines in California as
the Jan 1, 2006 deadline for the Help America Vote Act looms.
A recent "Voting Systems Testing Summit" convened last week by
McPherson in Sacramento appears to have been purposely rigged by the
SoS's office to tilt strongly towards the presentation of information
that supports the return of Diebold's buggy and unsecured voting
machines to the state.
As reported by Raftery...
"This smacks of Dick Cheney meeting with the energy
companies and locking out opposing interests of environmental groups,"
Sherry Healy, a member of the California Election Protection Network
steering committee, told RAW STORY. "Diebold and other vendors selling
electronic voting equipment have been invited to attend, along with all
400 members of the California Association of Election Officials," she
said. "It costs one hundred and seventy five dollars a ticket and will
be picked up by the state."
A massive public test of the machines held over the summer by
Republican McPherson revealed that 20% of the Diebold machines had
failed to perform properly (RAW STORY lists the number as 30%). But a
subsequent test held privately, using machines specially prepared by
Diebold gave only a reported 3% error rate.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Brad Friedman, The Brad Blog
|
|
November 30, 2005 |
With Additional Reporting by John Gideon, VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA
Mainstream Media Reports Indicating Scheduled Attempt to 'Hack' Voting Machines Appear to Be Incorrect
State, Activists Still Negotiating Paramaters, Scheduling of Test as State and Federal Deadlines Draw Near…
 On
Friday, November 25, a news story appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle by political writer John Wildermuth reporting that the
California Secretary of State's office would be allowing Election
Reform activists to perform an attempted hack of voting machines on
Wednesday, November 30th. That report was soon picked up by the
Associated Press and other outlets where it was repeated, in part, in
newspapers, radio and television across the nation. Headlines along the
line of "Hacker to try to attack state voting machines" were blared
across the media throughout the holiday weekend.
While the story seems to be based in some reality, reporting by The
BRAD BLOG over the last several days has revealed that the matter seems
to be a far cry from the way it has been reported by the Mainstream
Media. In fact, while negotiations for such a test are ongoing, the
parameters to be used are still being hashed out, no definite schedule
has yet to be determined, and Finnish computer scientist Harry Hursti,
who created this particular method for hacking into Diebold voting
machines has made no plans at this time to travel to the United States
to perform the hack attempt.
Such a test, if performed, could be crucial to a decision soon to be
made by California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson about whether to allow
various Diebold voting systems in the state. That decision, in turn,
will likely effect decisions by other states and counties around the
U.S., all of whom are facing a January 1, 2006 deadline set by the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA) to be met if jurisdictions are to receive
millions of dollars in Federal money to help pay for "upgraded"
Electoral Systems.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Sherry Healy, California Election Protection Network
|
|
November 23, 2005 |
 November 21 was an exhilarating day in Sacramento. Deja vu of the last
Diebold hearing, this new attempt to certify Diebold wares once again
raised the near-unanimous ire of concerned citizens. The passion and
dedication of the people attending was palpable. To witness more than
125 citizens, journeying great distances - on short notice and on a
short holiday week - who all came together to defend the integrity of
our democratic processes, was to witness the real "Patriot Act."
Without the dedication and vigilance of these activists, other
concerned citizens would never have known that behind closed doors, the
machinery of the Secretary of State’s office was in high gear ready to
certify Diebold.
Testing Diebold
Diebold suffered some setbacks earlier this year trying to meet the new
state requirement for a voter verified paper audit trail. In its
initial test this summer, the AccuView printer attachment to the TSx
model touch screen voting machine had a staggering 30% performance
failure rate. Diebold made adjustments, resubmitted, and reportedly
passed a second test in September, clearing the way for rectifying the
Tsp machines in four counties where they've been suspended since spring
2004.
Test Results: Passing With a Weak Thumb’s Up
California's official voting equipment certification tester, Steve
Freeman, issued a slightly qualified "thumbs up" for Diebold. Freeman
applied his stamp of approval despite the fact that he did not run
tests on the specific security holes revealed by computer security
experts Avi Rubin, Herbert Thompson and Harry Hursti, which
Blackboxvoting.org later applied in demonstrations of undetected
vote-switching conducted under simulated election conditions. As one
election official (who asked not to be identified) said of the State’s
passing grade on the testing results, “Isn’t it like examining a
patient for small pox and proudly announcing that their teeth are
clean?”
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Sherry Healy, California Election Protection Network
|
|
November 18, 2005 |
California Election Protection Network Protests Secretary of
State Bruce McPherson’s Decision
On November 21, 2005, citizens may voice their concerns about what
voting system will record their votes, but thanks to a decision by
Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, there’s no guarantee that anyone
with the authority to certify voting systems in California will hear
those voices.
California law requires the Secretary of State to conduct a public
hearing as a condition of certifying any voting systems in the state.
The Secretary of State has scheduled a hearing for November 21, 2005 on
the question of whether certain Diebold voting systems should be
re-certified before the end of the year.
Te Secretary of State has disbanded the Voting Systems Panel that’s
supposed to conduct these hearings and has replaced it with one person,
a stenographer, and a tape recorder. This defies the notion of 'public
input'.
Jody Holder, a long time election reform activist, summed up his
concerns by saying “What Bruce McPherson, the chief elections officer
of our state, is trying to do is to prevent people from using their
right to influence the process for approving the voting systems. It’s
these people’s votes these machines are counting! Time and time again,
this administration has arbitrarily disregarded all established
precedents on how public’s voices can be heard.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Warren Stewart, Director of Legislative Issues and Policy, VoteTrustUSA
|
|
November 10, 2005 |
 Elections
take place in polling places and it is in polling places that an
individual informed citizen, concerned about the accuracy and security
of the election process, can make a difference. I served
proudly as poll inspector for Precinct 204300 in Berkeley (Alameda
County), California on November 8th. Alameda County was one of nine
counties in the state that used paperless DREs one more time before the
requirement for a voter verified paper audit trail goes into effect
next year. But my precinct was not entirely paperless.
We had a
strong turnout given the fact that it was a special election with no
candidates - just eight statewide ballot initiatives - and a high
number of absentee voters. Official ballots were cast by 323 voters and
31 additional provisional ballots were cast, most by voters who had
applied for absentee ballots and either lost or failed to receive them.
What
made this polling place different from most was that every voter, after
signing the roster, was given the option (by me) of voting on an
optical scan paper ballot or on a Diebold touch screen machine. This
option, available to every California voter in counties that use DREs,
came as a surprise to most and the range of responses was informative.
Many made their decisions immediately (almost a third chose paper), but
many asked questions. Most importantly, every voter was in the precinct
was presented with the issue of voting technology.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Sherry Healy, California Election Protection Network
|
|
November 06, 2005 |
 Officials in the nation's largest county appear to be laboring under an alarming
misinterpretation of the state's venerable mandatory random audit
provision. According to an email
from Conny McCormack, Registrar/Recorder of Los Angeles County has
asserted that “early voted ballots on DREs…are not required to be a part of
the 1% manual tally.” Subsequent correspondence with the Registrar’s
office revealed that neither absentee ballots nor early vote ballots
are audited and that the county apparently intends to violate the state
election code by reporting those votes by ballot type rather than by
precinct.
The One Percent Recount is detailed in California Election Code 15360
which states that “during the official canvass of every election in
which a voting system is used, the official conducting the election
shall conduct a public manual tally of the ballots tabulated by those
devices cast in 1 percent of the precincts chosen at random by the
elections official.” Nowhere are early votes, which are considered a
subset of absentee votes, nor any particular type of voting system
excluded from this 1% recount. If McCormack has been routinely
excluding absentee, early votes, or votes on DREs from the recount in
her county, the selection of precincts can hardly be considered to have
been “random”.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By from California Voter Foundation
|
|
October 28, 2005 |
Voters in Nine Counties Urged to "Get It On Paper"
Davis, CA -- With the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot fast
approaching, the California Voter Foundation is urging voters in nine
electronic voting counties to "Get it on paper."
That's because these nine counties - Alameda, Merced, Napa, Orange,
Plumas, Riverside, Santa Clara, Shasta, and Tehama -- will be using
paperless, electronic voting machines in polling places on November 8.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By John Gideon, Information Manager, VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA
|
|
October 19, 2005 |
 Updated: October 20, 2005.
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to allow the
County Clerk, Gail Pellerin, to enter into contract negotiations with
Sequoia Voting Systems, a recently purchased subsidiary of Smartmatic,
Inc. which is a Florida-registered, Venezuelan-owned, company. Pellerin
recommended a blended system using Sequoia optical scanners and one
Sequoia Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting system with
voter-verified paper audit trail in each polling place.
The
94-page report Pellerin presented to the Board contains 69 pages of
information supplied by citizen opponents of the purchase, including
documented failures of Sequoia DRE systems in past elections, analyses
showing the higher operating cost of DREs, and testimony by disabled
individuals explaining the difficulties they had using Sequoia voting
machines. Read the report here.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
California
|
|
By Evan L. Goldberg, Chief of Staff, Senator Debra Bowen
|
|
October 08, 2005 |
Press Release
Governor Signs Two Election Reform Measures and Vetoes Two Others
 SACRAMENTO
– “People need and deserve to know their votes have been counted
accurately, and the best way to ensure that happens is to use the paper
printout that the voter has already verified as being accurate and
check it against the results tallied by the electronic machine.”
That’s
how Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach), the chairwoman of the Senate
Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee
responded to the Governor’s decision to sign SB 370 into law tonight.
“This
isn’t complicated, either you care about whether the election results
are accurate or you don’t,” said Bowen. “I don’t see how the
Secretary of State, who led the opposition to the bill, could say with
straight face that he’s for fair elections, he’s for having a paper
trail on electronic voting machines, yet he’s against using that paper
trail to ensure the accuracy of the vote count.”
|
|
Read more...
|
|
| | << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next > End >>
| | Results 101 - 120 of 120 |
|
|
California Resources |
| Election Administration
|
| Diebold Tests 2005
|
| Get Involved
|
:
mosShowVIMenu( $params );
break;
}
?>
|
|
State Pages |
|
:
mosShowVIMenu( $params );
break;
}
?>
|
|
|
