Free Republic

KENNER, La. -- Folks in Kenner who hoped to avoid the lines by voting early have been waiting up to an hour due to internet issues.The early voting location on Minor Street near Rivertown started experiencing issues with the machines as early as 8:55 a.m. this morning, according to a voter in line.The Jefferson Parish Registrar of Voters staff is being forced to manually verify voters.Eric Miller, owner of Miller Foto in Harahan, was waiting in line when the internet error occurred."Typically, voting at the Kenner location is smooth, but today they were totally unprepared for the computer outage," Miller...

More and more governments are introducing tools to have citizens vote electronically and via the internet in elections. The next step, according to the e-democracy entrepreneur, Antonio Mugica, is creating tools for people to engage with lawmakers on a daily basis. Antonio Mugica is the CEO of Smartmatic, a London-based company working in the field of electronic voting and internet voting. …

Democrats are thinking about using Internet balloting in 2016 to expand their voter base and select a president -- prompting Republicans to consider such a strategy to keep from losing ground. Iowa Democrats proposed the idea and several others during a recent Democratic National Committee meeting, saying Internet balloting could expand access to their unique caucus process to overseas military personnel, absentee voters and others. -SNIP- “I think it’s a very bad idea,” says the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, who thinks computer-based voting will never happen, or at least not in the “foreseeable future.”

Leftists Stealing Votes That Don't (Really) Count? In a matter of only hours, two left wing blogs - Kos and Atrios - went from the bottom of the pack of blogs and suddenly pulled ahead by a pretty fat margin in the Best Overall Blog category in the Wizbang Weblog Awards. I have a deep suspicion that (ahemm) someone rigged the poll. There is a huge possiblity that someone could have nixed the system, and after roaming at Kos and Atrios, Atrios hasn't even advertised himself in the Weblog Awards! I humbly ask that Mr. Alyward, chairman of the Election...

John Kerry is fond of touting the number of people who attend his campaign events and likes to crack, "And that's not a Katherine Harris count." But Kerry and other Democrats never mention when they whine about the 2000 election that ballots from America's military -- 75 percent of whom vote Republican -- were disqualified in greater numbers than ever before in history. Unfortunately, things aren't looking any better for the disenfranchised military voters this year, Human Events reports. An Internet absentee voting system was cancelled due to security concerns. And it takes sometimes up to four months for our...

It started out as a joke from a friend and ended with fame. Alyona Pisklova, who would ordinarily never be confused with Miss Universe, nearly made the trip to Quito, Ecuador, as Russia's representative in this year's international competition. The 15-year-old from the Moscow region turned the Miss Universe competition upside down for a few weeks as she swept ahead of all the long-legged favorites in an Internet poll designed to select Russia's delegate. Instead, Alyona won't be among the 12 finalists competing this week in the final round of Internet voting. Voting for Alyona quickly became a movement against...

The Defense Department is deep-sixing an Internet voting program over concerns about security, a Pentagon spokeswoman said today. The Federal Voting Assistance Program, which aids Americans serving overseas in the voting process, will not use the SERVE system in November. The acronym stands for Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment. "The department has decided not to use the SERVE program in the November elections because of our inability to ensure the legitimacy of the votes," the spokeswoman said. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz signed the memo on SERVE Jan. 30. The cancellation follows a report by four of the 10...

The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday backed off plans for a large-scale test of a voting system designed to let Americans who are overseas cast ballots in the coming election over the Internet. The Pentagon will scrap the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) until the current system can guarantee the security of the voting process or a new system is designed, a Defense Department spokesperson said. "The action was taken in view of the inability to ensure the legitimacy of the votes cast," the spokesperson said. The decision follows a January report by four experts--three computer science...

Citing security concerns, the Department of Defense canceled a $22 million project today that would have allowed Americans overseas to vote over the Internet. The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department. The decision was announced in a memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Paraphrasing the memo, a department of defense spokeswoman said "the department has decided not to use Serve in the November 2004 elections. We made this decision in view of the inability to ensure...

Groups Fear Citizens Abroad Will Be Compromised In a highly unusual pairing, the Republican and Democratic party organizations for citizens living abroad have banded together against the Pentagon's Internet voting program for the presidential election. Concerns about the security of the online ballots could cast the entire election under a cloud of suspicion, they said in a joint letter urging a halt in the program. The letter released yesterday is being sent to several congressional committees. "We do not want to undermine confidence in our system of voting by discovering some real or imagined fraud in the November balloting," wrote...

Report Finds Risks in Internet Voting by Americans Overseas A $22 million system to allow soldiers and other Americans overseas to vote via the Internet is inherently insecure and should be abandoned, according to a report by computer security experts asked to review the new program. The system, the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or Serve, was developed with financing from the Defense Department and will first be used in the primaries this year. Advertisement The review, requested by the government, noted that experts had voiced increasingly strong warnings about the reliability of electronic voting systems. It said the...

A new $22 million system to allow soldiers and other Americans overseas to vote via the Internet is inherently insecure and should be abandoned, according to members of a panel of computer security experts asked by the government to review the program. The system, Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, was developed with financing from the Department of Defense and will first be used in this year's primaries and general election. Advertisement The authors of the new report noted that computer security experts had already voiced increasingly strong warnings about the reliability of electronic voting systems, but they...

DETROIT, Jan. 7 — The virtual ballot box has arrived in Michigan. Democrats in this state are the only voters in the country who have the option of voting online in the presidential primaries this year. Since New Year's Day, voters have been allowed to apply for ballots and vote by mail or Internet in advance of the Feb. 7 caucuses. Or, on Feb. 7, they can go to one of 576 caucus sites and vote the old-fashioned way. By Thursday night, 11,000 people had applied for ballots, three-fourths of them over the Internet, according to the Michigan Democratic Party....