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(COMPUTERWORLD) - Security experts are substantially more skeptical about e-voting than the public, but their greatest worry is system and programming errors, not malicious hacker attacks, according to a survey released this week by the Ponemon Institute. The study, conducted in July and early August, aimed to measure public opinion about electronic voting systems and then compare the results with those of security experts -- both IT pros and hackers. "The degree of difference was just startling," said Larry Ponemon, adjunct professor of ethics and privacy at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the independent institute bearing his name. The...

Florence County voters will use new machines this fall FLORENCE - Florence County voters will see new electronic voting machines when they go to the polls in November, Florence County Voter Registration and Elections Director Russell Barrett said Thursday. The State Election Commission announced Wednesday it signed a contract with Election Systems and Software for new voting machines in 16 counties, including Florence. State commission director Marci Andino said the state had to pick a vendor quickly so counties can begin receiving their equipment by mid-August and complete training. The state is working to replace punch card equipment similar to...

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Thursday's request by New York senator Hillary Clinton for an independent study of the nation's voting system before the November election comes amid growing fears that the Bush administration may try to fix the vote in a tight election. According to Clinton's press aides, Clinton and a group of other top congressional Dems asked the Government Accountability Office "for a thorough independent review," adding, "We already know of the potentially serious problems posed by the widespread use of electronic voting machines." Clinton's press aides went on, "There are, however, other problems that have received little notice but have great...

Florida GOP apologizes for warning Tallahassee, FL, Jul. 30 (UPI) -- The Florida GOP has apologized for sending out a flier contradicting the views of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush on the upcoming elections. The fliers were sent to Republican voters in southern and western Miami-Dade County advising them to use absentee ballots rather than trust the new touch-screen voting machines, The Miami Herald reported Friday. Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood have been reassuring voters for months that the new voting machines now used in the state's 15 larger counties are reliable.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has tried for months to persuade Florida voters touchscreen voting machines are reliable. His own party apparently hasn't gotten the message. The state GOP paid for a flier critical of the new technology and sent it to some south Florida voters where a primary election is scheduled next month. "The new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," the message states. "Make sure your vote counts. Order your absentee ballot today." That's what Democrats and a coalition of civil rights groups...

Decision means precincts will have to spend millions over the next 18 months AUSTIN - All Texas counties must do away with punch-card voting systems or paper ballots in the next 18 months. Starting Jan. 1, 2006, federal law requires every voting precinct in Texas to have a Direct Recording Electronic-voting machine, which electronically records votes, eliminating the use of paper and punch cards. Upgrading voting equipment will cost Texas counties millions of dollars as the federal government is providing grant funds that just cover about a third of the upgrade cost. Some county officials this week protested having to...

NEW ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM IN FLORIDA: FLAWED... all electronic records from first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost ,,, records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary... Developing NYT PAGE ONE, newsroom sources... MORE

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL Democrats use computer hysteria to get out the vote. BOSTON--You don't have to go far here to find a Democrat who says the 2000 election was stolen. John Kerry is one of them. He claims a million African-Americans nationwide had their votes stolen and he won't let it happen again. On Sunday, he followed that up by saying that his legal SWAT team is looking at "each and every district" with possible voting problems: "We may or may not be bringing challenges publicly in the course of the next few weeks," he said in Ohio....

Florida's relatively new touch-screen voting machines, touted as a solution to the state's 2000 presidential election meltdown, didn't perform as well as machines that use an older technology during a statewide election earlier this year, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis. Records from the March 9 Democratic presidential primary show that votes were not recorded for one out of 100 voters using the new ATM-style machines. That's at least eight times more than the number of flawed votes cast in the same election with pencil marks on paper ballots tallied by an optical scanner. Experts blame Florida's political leaders...

The American Way of Democracy, and secret ballot voting, is faced with a POSSIBLE TERRORIST ATTACK like never before experienced in the history of the United States. During the past year many articles have been written documenting the very real possibility that Electronic Voting Equipment can be rigged. Research will reveal how possible it is to sabotage the November 2nd Presidential Election, House of Representative races, Senate races, or any election race where there is no paper ballot trail for verification. What this means is - - - whether you are registered as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or some other...

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Ambushing registrars and tracking down executives at their homes and offices, a literary publicist has uncovered conflicts of interests and security flaws inside the companies that make electronic ballot machines.Searching the Web and poring over newspaper clippings, Bev Harris has unearthed obscure arrest records, ties to conservative political groups and other embarrassing secrets of senior executives at voting companies. Her conclusion: there will be so many problems with the more than 100,000 paperless voting terminals to be used in the November presidential election that the fiasco will dwarf Florida's hanging chad debacle of 2000."We have...

CHICAGO, July 7 (UPI) -- Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., announced his pick for the Democratic Party's vice presidential nomination Tuesday on the Internet, but how long will it be before voters actually get to choose the president and the vice president with a few keystrokes online? Sooner than many have predicted -- perhaps within four to eight years. "We're one presidential election, or maybe two presidential elections, away from Internet voting," said Ron Klein, a state senator and Democratic Party leader in the Florida Senate, who was involved in the 2000 election recount in Florida. "There's no question that Internet...

U.S. District Judge Refuses to Lift State Ban on Electronic Voting Jim Wasserman/Associated Press Jul 1, 2004 SACRAMENTO (AP) - A federal judge in Los Angeles upheld a partial state ban Thursday on electronic voting in the Nov. 2 election, denying a request by advocates for the disabled. In a tentative ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper declined to overturn an April 30 order by Secretary of State Kevin Shelley to ban electronic voting in 14 counties. Four counties and advocates for the disabled sought a temporary restraining order to block Shelley's order. Riverside County officials sued Shelley in...

<p>Election officials need to have voting machines analyzed, provide more thorough training for election workers and carefully monitor the process to ensure the security of votes in the November election, a report released yesterday recommended.</p> <p>"[Ensuring] the security of every American's vote is no less important than having the right to vote," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, one of the groups that released the recommendations.</p>

VISITORS to Bill Rouverol’s apartment may not immediately see, as he does, that the future of American democracy depends on the gadget sitting by the window. The 86-year-old mechanical engineer has spent much of the past three years designing and building a green plastic box called the VoteSure. "The whole country is waiting for this machine," Mr Rouverol said. "I think it will save democracy." It may save Mr Rouverol’s pride, too, because his Votomatic machine, along with its imitators, was blamed for bringing American democracy into disrepute in the infamous "hanging chads" controversy of 2000. For a generation, the...

League of Women Voters drops support of paperless voting machines By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology WriterLast Updated 6:56 pm PDT Monday, June 14, 2004The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday, after hundreds of angry members argued that paper ballots were the only way to safeguard elections from fraud, hackers and computer malfunctions. About 800 delegates who attended the nonpartisan league's biennial convention in Washington voted to adopt a resolution that supports "voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, recountable and accessible."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Touchscreen voting machines in 11 counties have a software flaw that could make manual recounts impossible in November's presidential election, state officials said. A spokeswoman for the secretary of state called the problems "minor technical hiccups" that can be resolved, but critics allege voting officials wrongly certified a voting system they knew had a bug. The electronic voting machines are a response to Florida's 2000 presidential election fiasco, where thousands of punchcard ballots were improperly marked. But the new machines have brought concerns that errors could go unchecked without paper records of the electronic voting. The...

A Really Open Election By CLIVE THOMPSON Published: May 30, 2004 This fall, as many as 20 percent of American voters will be able to cast their ballots on A.T.M.-style electronic voting machines. But to put it mildly, these machines -- where you simply touch a screen and a computer registers your vote -- have not inspired much confidence lately. North Carolina officials recently learned that a software glitch destroyed 436 e-ballots in early voting for the 2002 general election. In a Florida state election this past January, 134 votes apparently weren't recorded -- and this was in a...

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley had a simple question: Had a new electronic voting machine been approved by an independent testing lab? State law requires such approval before the device could be used by California voters. It guaranteed the machines counted votes accurately and would work reliably during an election. As the state's top election official, Shelley figured he could get a quick answer. He figured wrong. Wyle Laboratories of El Segundo refused to discuss the status of its testing of the AccuVote-TSx machine made by its client, Diebold Election Systems. The information was proprietary, Wyle said, and could...

SAN DIEGO ---- San Diego County's grand jury sharply criticized California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley this week, saying his decision to ban the county from using new "touch-screen" voting machines in November was unsound and undermined voter confidence in the system. A grand jury report issued Thursday said the problems that marred San Diego County's first electronic election in March would not reoccur. Electronic "glitches" caused 36 percent of the county's 1,611 polling places to open late at the March 2 primary elections, cheating an unknown number of people out of their right to vote. Shelley banned San Diego...