Free Republic

The Venezuelan government has a 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to help deliver voting results in future elections. Chávez opponents claimed the deal to scrap the country's 6-year-old machines was a maneuver to manipulate votes amid growing political turmoil.CARACAS -- A large and powerful investor in the software company that will design electronic ballots and record votes for Venezuela's new and much criticized election system is the Venezuelan government itself, The Herald has learned. Venezuela's investment in Bizta Corp., the ballot software firm, gives the government 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to...

(NOTE: We are reprinting this editorial by The Hindu, an Indian daily, citing the success of that populous country’s use of electronic voting in the recent elections. It took India more than 20 years to automate election, but its recent exercise -- involving 668 million voters in 800,000 polling stations, with the count over 2 days -- shows it can be done; more so for a country with 43 million voters.) It is clear that the Election Commission of India’s bold and progressive decision to shift exclusively to the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) across the length and breadth...

Today: May 24, 2004 at 17:16:39 PDT Judge Dismisses Florida Voting Lawsuit ASSOCIATED PRESS FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - A federal judge Monday threw out a Democratic congressman's lawsuit demanding that Florida's new touchscreen voting machines issue a paper receipt. It was the second time Rep. Robert Wexler was turned back in his legal challenge of the machines. A lawsuit filed in state court was dismissed in February, and Wexler has appealed. In dismissing the federal complaint, U.S. District Judge James Cohn said he cannot get involved because the issue is being considered by the state courts. Also, Cohn said...

<p>Last month Democrats on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights claimed electronic voting machines meant "we're ending up in '04 with the very same problems and issues that were there before."</p> <p>Yet, these horror stories have one major problem: None of the electronic voting machines is hooked up to the Internet. The machines are stand-alone units. It would be like someone trying to hack into your computer while it wasn't hooked up to the Internet. Impossible.</p>

How votes in the November 2004 general election will be counted broke into the news recently when California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned the use of 14,000 touch-screen voting machines because of security and reliability concerns. He "decertified" 28,000 others until steps are taken to upgrade their security. Shelley declared all touch-screens "defective or unacceptable" because they provide no "meaningful recount of the vote" and are unsecure, unstable and technologically demanding for poll workers. That's quite a slap at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that ruled 3-0 in 2003 that the California recall election...

NORTH CANTON, Ohio (AP) - After the Florida punch-card debacle hurt the credibility of the last presidential election, ATM maker Diebold Inc. (DBD) decided it should expand into electronic voting. But Diebold has yet to realize large rewards for its shift into electronic voting. Instead, it has reaped a storm of criticism and even a call for a criminal investigation by California's top election official, who banned the company's newest touchscreen voting computers April 30, citing concerns about security and reliability. "In November of 2000, I was embarrassed for this country," said Walden W. O'Dell, Diebold's chairman and chief executive....

WASHINGTON -- A computer science expert criticized electronic voting systems planned for the November election as highly vulnerable and flawed, saying today a backup paper system is the only short-term solution to avoid another disputed presidential election. "On a spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible," Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. "Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy." Other experts said electronic voting offers advantages over paper balloting,...

Claiming that fraud threatened the upcoming presidential election, California's Secretary of State Kevin Shelley dropped a bombshell last Friday. Just six months before a presidential election, he banned counties from using 43,000 electronic voting machines this fall unless paper receipts are provided and a long list of other conditions fulfilled. County registrars were in a state of shock predicting that the move this late in the year spelled chaos. The momentum behind Shelley's decision has been building for some time. Last month Democrats on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights claimed electronic voting machines meant: "We're ending up in...

California has banned the use of more than 14,000 electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. in the November election because of security and reliability concerns, Kevin Shelley, the California secretary of state, announced yesterday. He also declared 28,000 other touch-screen voting machines in the state conditionally "decertified" until steps are taken to upgrade their security. Mr. Shelley said that he was recommending that the state's attorney general look into possible civil and criminal charges against Diebold because of what he called "fraudulent actions by Diebold." In an interview, Mr. Shelley said that "their performance, their behavior, is despicable," and...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The state's top elections official called for a criminal investigation of Diebold Election Systems Inc. as he banned use of the company's newest model touchscreen voting machine, citing concerns about its security and reliability. Friday's ban will force up to 2 million voters in four counties, including San Diego, to use paper ballots in November, marking their choices in ovals read by optical scanners. Secretary of State Kevin Shelley asked the attorney general's office to investigate allegations of fraud, saying Diebold had lied to state officials. A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said prosecutors would review...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned touch screen voting Friday in four California counties in the November election, saying the lack of a paper trail makes them unreliable and he threatened to block computerized voting in 10 other counties. Shelley cited concerns about the security and reliability of new computerized voting machines manufactured by Texas-based Diebold Election systems, many of them used for the first time in the March election. "We are acting boldly and responsibly to improve the system in time for November," Shelley said. The decision means as many as 2 million voters in San...

The Vexations Of Voting Machines Kinks in e-voting systems have given rise to a backlash. Are the machines reliable enough? By Viveca Novak/Washington Jeffrey Liss had finished making his selections on Maryland's Democratic-primary ballot and strolled out of the polling place at Chevy Chase Elementary School on the morning of March 2, Super Tuesday. On the sidewalk, he spied a campaign poster for Senator Barbara Mikulski, who is running for her fourth term. Funny, he thought, he didn't remember voting in the Senate race. Liss went back inside to talk to an election official. And another, and another. He was...

A growing number of federal and state legislators are expressing doubts about the integrity of the ATM-like electronic voting machines that at least 50 million Americans will use to cast their ballots in November. Computer scientists have long criticized the so-called touchscreen machines as not being much more reliable than home computers, which can crash, malfunction and fall prey to hackers and viruses. Now, a series of failures in primaries across the nation has shaken confidence in the technology installed at thousands of precincts. Despite reassurances from the machines' makers, at least 20 states have introduced legislation requiring a paper...

SACRAMENTO – A state panel has recommended banning the use of 15,000 Diebold touch-screen voting machines used in the March primary in San Diego and three other counties, saying malfunctioning computers kept people from casting ballots. Yesterday's recommendation, if approved by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, would force San Diego, Kern, San Joaquin and Solano counties to use a different voting system for the November election. The four counties most likely would turn to optical scanner systems, which they already use to record absentee votes, or rely on a modified system Diebold hopes to get approved by the state and...

Separate City Voting Could Cost Thousands By JAKOB SCHILLER (04-13-04) Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates recently threatened to explore alternative options to touchscreen voting machines if security problems aren’t worked out and the machines cannot ensure a secure and accurate vote. But City Clerk Sherry Kelly says that any switch would be an expensive project that might need approval from Berkeley voters before it could be implemented. On April 5, Bates wrote a letter to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and Alameda County Registrar of Voters Brad Clark asking for a full investigation into the Diebold touchscreen voting machines,...

WASHINGTON - When the nation turns out to cast ballots in this fall's elections, the voting system will be in no better shape than it was in 2000, a panel of voting experts said Friday. Problems with electronic voting machines in this year's primaries illustrated that changes have been slow, despite the implementation of new standards meant to improve the system, panelists told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission, an independent bipartisan agency, has been examining the voting system since the 2000 presidential election, when the Supreme Court decided the outcome after voting problems in Florida and other...

TALLAHASSEE · South Floridians pushing for a touch-screen voting paper trail are steamed about a state Senate proposal that they say runs counter to their cause. Tucked into the 90-page proposal (SB 3004) is a decree that "a manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touch-screen machines," which are used in South Florida's three big counties.

he Florida law that requires a manual recount in close elections would not apply to ballots cast on paperless electronic voting machines under a bill endorsed by a state Senate committee Wednesday. Florida elections officials already interpret the state's recount law that way. The new bill, approved 8-1 by the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee, adds specific language that says a manual recount cannot be conducted on touch-screen machines, which are used by Palm Beach County and 14 other Florida counties. A House subcommittee will consider a similar bill today.U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, who has filed two lawsuits...

Florida's Elections Published: March 26, 2004 To the Editor: A March 14 [NYT] editorial makes references to our elections process that hold Florida to a different and, in one case, impossible standard. You say, "There is still time before the November vote to put printers in place." In fact, no manufacturer has submitted printers for required certification, and the manufacturers of the Florida equipment have testified it would not be ready. Your insistence that Florida employ printers when no other state has ever provided a voter-verified paper trail sets an unfair standard. But when such new technology is fully developed,...

The president of Diebold Election Systems pledged Wednesday to fix multiple problems plaguing its oldest touchscreen-voting customer on the West Coast. Officials in Alameda County, purchaser of a $12.7 million Diebold electronic-voting system in May 2002, reserved judgment on whether the McKinney, Texas, firm is capable of delivering on its promises. "I got the feeling very much that they were committed to making everything right. Of course, our goal is that the presidential election will run smoothly," said county voting Registrar Brad Clark. "We'll see how they follow through on our discussions." Diebold Election Systems President Bob Urosevich brushed aside...