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Voting machines become a US election issue Financial Times [FT.com] By Henry Hamman in Miami, Florida Published: March 2 2004 21:12 | Last Updated: March 2 2004 21:12 When voters in the 10 Super Tuesday states went to the polls on Tuesday, they were not only picking who they wanted to take on President George W. Bush in November. They were also engaging in the first important test of the US's retooling of its voting system since the debacle of the 2000 presidential election. The new system was highly contentious long before this year's primary season began. At the core...

AS A "COMPUTER guy," I've always doubted the wisdom of purely electronic voting systems, and now that I've tried one, I'm still worried - and not just for the reasons I expected. Yes, I know that handing the future of American democracy over to the Microsoft Windows operating system is lunacy. And any scheme that counts votes with proprietary software that's not open to public inspection is an invitation to misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance and every other feasance. But my experience with the Diebold AccuVote-TS touch-screen voting machine showed that I hadn't thought of everything. In fact, from a purely mechanical...

The world's largest elections: To see article with its proper graphics and data,click link below or open in a new window by holding the shift key down while clicking on the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3493474.stm Technicians are working overtime to make India's first all-electronic general election go smoothly. The task is a challenging one in this one-billion-strong nation - the world's largest democracy - where most voters are still poor, rural workers. Over one million electronic voting machines (EVMs) are required to cover this vast nation, from the Himalayas down to Kanyakumari on the southern tip. India has an electorate of more...

ELECTION 2004 Counties report snafus with high-tech voting Millions of voters use new touch screens, experts question security of technology -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 2, 2004 5:00 p.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com As many counties debuted high-tech touch-screen voting in today's primary elections, citizens in some areas flooded government offices with complaints about malfunctioning machines. In San Diego County, Calif., the touch-screen technology malfunctioned from the get-go. Poll workers who were not trained to deal with the problems struggled, reported KGTV. "We tried to bring up the little computer that authorizes the voter card, so the voter can get onto the...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Electronic voting made its debut in cities and towns from Maryland to California on Tuesday as election officials beefed up security for the record number of voters expected to cast E-ballots for the first time. Scattered technical problems were reported in the early hours as voters in 10 states, including California, New York and Ohio, went to the Super Tuesday polls to choose a Democratic presidential nominee and decide primary contests for congressional and state races. Advocates of electronic voting say paperless ballots save money and eliminate problems common to old systems. But the technology brings...

Note: KFMB AM 760 and KOGO AM 600 in San Diego ARE BOTH reporting this story as well.... this is a disaster if it is of a large scale.Stupid bureaucrats and their anti-punch card reforms!!! Some voters turned away from polls 11:15 a.m. March 2, 2004 SAN DIEGO – An unknown number of voters were turned away from San Diego County polls this morning as poll workers ran into problems starting up elements of a new electronic voting system. Poll workers at many polling places were stumped when they turned on electronic card readers and were faced with an unfamiliar...

PROBLEMS REPORTED WITH NEW VOTING MACHINES (03-02-2004) - Reports of problems with the new touch-screen voting machines began flooding the Registrar of Voter's office Tuesday within an hour of the polls opening, officials said. Voters experienced problems with the cards used in the voting process, said Monique Roberts, an employee at the Registrar's office in Kearny Mesa. When the card was inserted, a different screen popped up on the computer than the one voters should have been using, Roberts said. Problems were reported in El Cajon, Scripps Ranch, Del Mar, Golden Hill and other communities throughout the county, where...

KFI's reporter Eric Leonard was reporting various problems at polling places around CA, this morning. San Diego county, which invested millions in the Diebold touch screen computer system, is having problems with screens freezing up or computers being completely inoperable. In Westminister and other parts of Orange County, voters are typing in the voting pin numbers and ONLY Democrat ballots are popping up. Los Angeles County, which could not afford computer touch screen systems at this time (fortunately) is using the Inka system, which marks ballots with an ink mark in a circle. Someone who voted today told me his...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - With a record number of voters casting electronic ballots on Super Tuesday, election officials from California to Maryland are beefing up security to prevent problems ranging from software glitches to hackers. In California, new security measures range from random tests of touch-screen machines by independent computer experts to a recommendation that poll workers prevent voters from carrying cell phones or other wireless devices into voting booths. At least 10 million people in at least two dozen states are expected to cast primary ballots on machines built by Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, Electronic Systems & Software...

Why Barbara Boxer Would Crush Bill Jones When I first heard that Bill Jones was running with the endorsement of the CAGOP establishment, I had the same reaction as most of you probably did. I remembered his feckless support for McCain, his critical vote in raising taxes for Pete Wilson, that he is a farmer, pro-life, and seemingly a nice guy. That's it. It was enough to get me to support Kaloogian instead. Well, unfortunately, my common understandign was not the whole story. The tipping point came with Arnold Schwarzenegger's endorsement. It was curious that Arnold chose to support Bill...

California's headlong rush into electronic voting met a judge last week who apparently doesn't give much weight to a mountain of expert evidence against the use of machines still vulnerable to malfunction. From lack of convincing protections against software and hardware tampering, to impacts of standard computer tasks like upgrades, preventive virus scanning and an almost constant need for the installation of patches and service packs, it would appear that touch-screen voting machines are less than ready for prime time. Judge Raymond M. Cadei of the Sacramento Superior Court was appointed by former Gov. Gray Davis in May 2002. On...

<p>Despite the Help America Vote Act signed in 2002 to improve the electoral system, 32 million registered voters still will be using punch cards in the November presidential election, according to a report released last week.</p> <p>Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Utah will have the largest number of counties planning to use punch cards. Florida, where the election system created the 2000 presidential election stalemate, has replaced all its punch-card machines with either optical or electronic equipment.</p>

Two leading American experts on computer voting have warned that the forthcoming US presidential election could be more chaotic than the last. They told a Seattle conference that the new systems may be less reliable than those used four years ago. The issue of voting systems came to the fore during the controversy over ballot papers in the crucial state of Florida. The question of what really counts as a vote - a clear hole in a ballot paper, or a bulge? - was hotly debated. About 25% of the US electorate is expected to vote electronically in this...

As we near the Feb. 10 Democratic presidential primary in Virginia, it seems an appropriate time for me to update voters in Fairfax County on my experiences investigating the problems with the new voting machines that were used for the first time in the November 2003 general election. As many of you may recall, there were numerous complaints about these machines. Reported complaints included removal of ballots and/or voting machines from polling places, machine malfunctions, touch-screen irregularities (e.g., highlighted names did not correspond with buttons pushed), precincts falling short on votes, complaints about privacy while voting, no paper ballot trails...

<p>California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley on Thursday announced measures to improve election security in the wake of a report describing how votes can be easily manipulated by hacking into an electronic voting system used across California.</p> <p>One in four California voters, including those in Alameda County, are expected to cast ballots in next month's presidential primary on electronic voting systems made by Diebold Election Systems. Last week, computer scientists hired by the state of Maryland to hack its Diebold voting system announced they had successfully changed vote tallies on touch-screen voting machines, altered ballots and seized control of a central vote-counting computer.</p>

Councilwoman Mary Alice Brennan of Drexel Hill . . . warned that a new federal initiative to improve the federal election process - the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of October 2002 - could mean a significant cost to county taxpayers in unfunded mandates. HAVA says the only acceptable voting apparatus are touch screen or optical scan systems, not the lever voting machines currently in use in Delaware County.

<p>Poll workers in Alameda County noticed something strange on election night in October. As a computer counted absentee ballots in the recall race, workers were stunned to see a big surge in support for a fringe candidate named John Burton.</p>

How to Hack an Election Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails. When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which...

<p>WASHINGTON -- A company developing security technology for electronic voting suffered an embarrassing hacker break-in that executives think was tied to the rancorous debate over the safety of casting ballots online.</p> <p>VoteHere of Bellevue, Wash., confirmed Monday that U.S. authorities are investigating a break-in of its computers months ago, when someone roamed its internal computer network. The intruder accessed internal documents and may have copied sensitive software blueprints that the company planned eventually to disclose publicly.</p>

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Maryland's new electronic voting system has many potential security flaws that must be corrected but is nevertheless "worthy of voter trust," a technical consultant told legislators. Michael Wertheimer, who worked on a report presented Thursday to the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, said a team that simulated an election as a test found several ways vote totals could be changed. He said touch-screen machines could be disabled simply by repeatedly jamming a voter card into a terminal or lifting it up and pulling out wires. But Wertheimer, who works for RABA Technologies, added that "we...