[lotuseclat79]

Ohio 'paper' vote system debuting with flaws, researchers say
Article here.

The new voting system that Cleveland and its suburbs will use in tomorrow's primary election has serious flaws that risk greater voter error, say members of a research team from the Universities of Maryland, Rochester and Michigan who conducted a comprehensive analysis of the technology over the past several years.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Sequoia warns Princeton professors over e-voting analysis
c|netNews.com article here.

...because Sequoia may have grounds to threaten a suit (and, remember, we don't know) doesn't mean it should. Felten and Appel are careful and diligent researchers. Instead of threatening them, it would make far more sense to hire them to conduct a security evaluation--one presumes that Sequoia would actually want to know if serious vulnerabilities exist. Legal bluster signals that Sequoia has something to hide.

...Sequoia may have the legal ability to shut down any Princeton research. But the better question is: why would it want to?

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Ohio seizes voting machines in criminal investigation
Article here.

At the request of election officials, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation has seized voting machines for forensic analysis and has launched a criminal investigation into the Franklin County Board of Elections.

-- Tom

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

Ohio seizes voting machines in criminal investigation
Article here.

At the request of election officials, the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation has seized voting machines for forensic analysis and has launched a criminal investigation into the Franklin County Board of Elections.

-- Tom

That's why Mulder says Rep's don't have a problem, they know whatever they click will vote GOP!

[lotuseclat79]

Evidence of New Jersey Election Discrepancies. With discussions here.

According to the paper record, the vote tallies don't add up — the total number of Republican ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Republican primary and the total number of Democratic ballots does not match the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

E-voting vendor blocks security audit with legal threats
Article here.

New Jersey election officials have scrapped plans for an independent audit of Union County voting machines because the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, says that unauthorized third-party security reviews would violate the county's license agreement. Sequoia threatened the county with legal action when it learned that election officials were planning to send the machines to a respected Princeton University computer scientist for analysis.

-- Tom

[bassetman]

Originally Posted by lotuseclat79

E-voting vendor blocks security audit with legal threats
Article here.

New Jersey election officials have scrapped plans for an independent audit of Union County voting machines because the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, says that unauthorized third-party security reviews would violate the county's license agreement. Sequoia threatened the county with legal action when it learned that election officials were planning to send the machines to a respected Princeton University computer scientist for analysis.

-- Tom

What do they have to hide?

[lotuseclat79]

Whistleblower: Voting Machine Company Lied to Election Officials About Reliability of Machines
Article here.

A former technician who worked for Hart InterCivic -- a voting machine company based in Texas -- has alleged that his company lied to election officials about the accuracy, testing, reliability and security of its voting machines. The whistleblower says the company did so because it was eager to obtain some of the approximately $4 billion in federal funds that Congress allocated to states in 2002 to purchase new voting equipment under the Help America Vote Act (aka HAVA).

They lied! Don't election officials get any training at all in "CAVEAT EMPTOR" , and even if they did are there any out there that can be trusted with the public trust to not be on the take with the machine distributors - you know, for the good of the voting public???

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Turns Out New Jersey E-Voting Problems Even Worse Than Originally Thought
Article here.

Ed Felten has received a bunch of "summary tapes" from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

PA primary will be unauditable; GOP blocks e-voting reform
Article here.

On the eve of tomorrow's hotly contested and relatively close Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania, a number of voting activists are sounding the alarm one last time about the state's election systems. Over 85 percent of PA voters will vote on paperless touchscreen machines that are hackable, failure-prone, and fundamentally unauditable.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Electronic voting system tested by Newcastle University
Article here.

An electronic vote capture and counting system, designed to overcome the problems which have dogged computerised voting systems throughout the world, notably the touch screen voting machines in the US and pilot schemes run in the UK , was given its first major test at Newcastle University on Tuesday, 13 May 2008.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Review of NJ e-voting approved; won't be in time for election
By Ryan Paul | Published: April 29, 2008 - 06:25AM CT
Article here.

In a decision issued last week, superior court judge Linda R. Feinberg ruled that a technical review of voting machines used in New Jersey may proceed despite the objections of the manufacturer, Sequoia Voting Systems.

The review is scheduled for September, which means that the court will not rule on whether or not the machines should be scrapped until it is too late to prevent them from being used in the November election.

The wheels of justice turning ever so slowly - ugh!

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Sequoia voting machines debacle in New Jersey: unguarded machines and broken tildes
Article here.

Unguarded voting machines just waiting to be compromised!

-- Tom

Reference: BoingBoing.

[lotuseclat79]

Open-Source e-Voting Gets Linuxworld Test Run. (2 web pages)

The system runs on Ubuntu Linux

Looks like an open source solution to the problem. Since it won't be adopted as a standard before this year's Presidential election, it won't have an impact, but it does point the way forward - away from the current voting machines.

-- Tom

[lotuseclat79]

Ohio Sues (Premeir Election Systems formerly Diebold) Over Missing Electronic Votes.

The touch-screen voting setup used in half of Ohio's 88 counties doesn't work properly, and the former Diebold Election Systems should pay as a result, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in a court filing yesterday.

The move comes fewer than 90 days before Ohio voters go to the polls in an election that could decide the presidential race, but Brunner says safeguards will be in place by then in the affected counties to mitigate any risks.

Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages.

-- Tom