An exhaustive, year-long study of Florida's undervotes in the 2006 general election is now available

Sarasota's Vanished Votes - An Investigation into the Cause of Uncounted Votes in the 2006 Congressional District 13 Race in Sarasota County, Florida
http://www.floridafairelections.org/reports/Vanishing_Votes.pdf

Florida Fair Election Center researchers spent a full year conducting an examination of public records in Florida. The iVotronic voting system failed to count over 100,000 votes in various races across the state of Florida in the November 2006 election.

The Florida Fair Election Center study completely refutes the theories that substantial numbers of voters intentionally withheld their votes in the CD-13 race or that so-called "poor ballot design" was responsible for the uncounted votes. By process of elimination, the only possible cause of the high undervotes is the catastrophic failure of the iVotronic voting system, and this report details the ways in which this catastrophic failure occurred.

The study found a badly designed, shoddily-built, poorly maintained, aging voting system in a state of critical breakdown.

The examination of records from Florida ES&S iVotronic counties proves that machine malfunctions and software problems caused the Sarasota undervotes.

The study found serious procedural and substantive flaws in the audit conducted and commissioned by the Florida Department (FLDoS), which omitted essential areas of investigation that would have provided evidence that large-scale machine malfunction contributed to the unusually large undervote and noted that the three entities that claimed the voting system had functioned correctly—the Florida Secretary of State, the Sarasota Supervisor of Elections, and ES&S—were defendants in two lawsuits seeking to overturn the results of the CD-13 race. The Florida Secretary of State, through the Division of Elections, was responsible for having certified this faulty voting system to begin with. The Sarasota Supervisor of Elections had defended the iVotronic system since its inception and continued to do so following the election—in many ways she had tied her reputation to the purported reliability of the iVotronic machines. ES&S, as the supplier, had nothing to gain and everything to lose by admitting that its voting system had failed, not only in Sarasota but across the entire state of Florida.

Read the full study here:
http://www.floridafairelections.org/reports/Vanishing_Votes.pdf

voting: Map according to various machines in use

voting: Map: "Voting in Your County

Select the county you will be voting in by using the map or the list of County links below. This will give you information on what voting system your county is using."

Live WTP New Hampshire Recount Video Coverage

http://forum.w4sp.com/

http://www.wethepeople.com

As we previously announced, following the discovery of large statistical anomalies indicating possible evidence of voter machine fraud, WTP is headed to New Hampshire to help witness the recount of its primary ballots.

Live Interactive Video Conferencing from NH

To broadcast its recount coverage, WTP is making available a state-of-the-art Internet video conferencing system so that our supporters can be kept abreast of the developments as they unfold live.

Witnesses to the very first parts of the recount have already reported broken ballot-box seals and recounts exposing significant discrepancies between the reported machine totals and the recount totals.

We urge everyone to help stand watch over the recount by subscribing to WTP's video Recount Forum.

Forum participants will be able to have unlimited, LIVE video/interactive access to the WTP Recount Forum for a donation of only $15.

REMEMBER - you must manually register (STEP #2) to obtain your password after donating to the Congress.

Click here to DONATE & REGISTER to join the forum: http://forum.w4sp.com/

IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DONATED but failed to register to obtain your password on STEP #2, Please click on the link above and do so ASAP!

Even if you have little interest in joining the live interactive NH video conferences, please help support our efforts by making a separate donation today.

Many thanks in advance for your generous support.

South Carolina primary plagued by bad voting machines, snow - CNN.com

South Carolina primary plagued by bad voting machines, snow - CNN.com: "Malfunctioning voting machines plagued Horry County, which contains the cities of Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. 'Human error' put the machines offline in 80 percent of the county's precincts during Saturday's voting, according to county spokeswoman Lisa Bourcier

By 4 p.m. ET, only about four of the county's 118 precincts were without a working machine, Bourcier said. Polls closed at 7 p.m. ET.

One person, one vote -- except for those in the legislature

The Ballot dot Org

Remember how good it felt to waltz into the polls with your very own voter guide in hand? :)

A lot of other people felt it too. Back in 2006, over just two days, over 20,000 people came to theballot.org! And those people used your guides, printed them out, and forwarded them to friends. We heard tons of great feedback about them.

It's only gonna get crazier in 2008, and the primary elections are upon us! Can we count on you to make a guide again this year? Let me know. Sometimes newbies are hesitant to post guides until they see others on there, so we're hoping you voter guide veterans will get us started this weekend.

Hop onto http://theballot.org to get started. As usual, feel free to hit me up with questions or whatever.

-Sam D.

Triblocal - St. Charles Story / Local athlete needs your votes

Triblocal - St. Charles Story / Local athlete needs your votes: "Local athlete needs your votes
Triblocal 01/15/08 09:19 AM 127 hits

Voting will continue through Jan. 25 for the January Sports Person of the Month."

BACKGROUND: NEW HAMPSHIRE'S UNAUDITED DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

The analysis of the National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/DemPrimary2008-PairedPrecinctStudy.pdf

"The Diebold Effect": Hillary's Votes Higher From Diebold Machines
Even Controlling for Demographics (education, income, population, etc)
http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2008/01/the_diebold_effect_hillarys_vo.php

NEW HAMPSHIRE RECOUNT SO FAR - FINDS ERRORS IN INSUFFICIENT AMOUNTS TO
REVERSE THE OUTCOME

NH Recount Finds Vote Count Errors, by Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet.
January 17, 2008.

So far the errors highlight problems with electronic voting, but don't overturn Clinton's surprise victory.
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/74102/

To see the discrepancies between machine and hand counts - the NH SOS recount page:
http://www.sos.nh.gov/recountresults.htm

RECOUNT OF THE 2008 NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY ELECTION

Kucinich has decided to ask for a partial hand recount of New Hampshire's machine counts. My analysis shows that to confirm New Hampshire's close margin (less than 3% difference between Obama and Clinton) Democratic primary election results, a partial hand count would need to randomly select and hand count from 34% to 45% of New Hampshire's precincts - from 61 to 178 precincts - to give 95% confidence-level in the New Hampshire outcomes, depending on initial assumptions. The reason that this New Hampshire race requires such a large audit is due to the small race margin and the extreme variation in precinct sizes in New Hampshire - from 5,542 votes to 1 vote cast in each precinct. See the worksheet "95%Confidence-Level-Amt" in
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/Primary2008/NH2008Primary.xls

U.S. Representative Kucinich asks for a Recount of NH machine counts in the interest of election integrity
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/kucinich-asks-for-new-hampshire-recount-in-the-interest-of-election-integrity/

Kucinich is asking for donations to pay for the Democratic Primary recount
http://www.usalone.com/kucinich_constitution.php

A place to donate for the Republican Primary recount (Albert Howard) Nearly $60,000 isbeing charged to Howard who is a Black-American limousine driver and father of eight from Ann Arbor.
http://grannywarrior.chipin.com/recount

Recount cost could climb to $125,000 - New hand tally would start tomorrow
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/FRONTPAGE/801150398

QUESTIONS THE PRESS COULD ASK DURING EACH ELECTION ARE:

Does this state conduct any publicly observable post-election independent manual counts to check the accuracy of machine counts? (This would require voter-created, or at least voter-checked, paper ballots.)

Were the detailed vote count data and raw polling data made publicly available immediately after the election for analysts to detect any possible suspicious patterns?

Were the invisibly-machine-counted vote counts checked? Are the machine counts provably correct?

Is there public oversight over chain of custody procedures for election records and ballots?

What are the state's procedures for securing paper ballot and election records; and how may the public participate?

DATA AVAILABLE FOR ANALYZING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE JANUARY 8, 2008 PRIMARY
ELECTION RESULTS

National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/2008Primary/

SOME NEW ARTICLES ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION

Guest Editorial: Live Free or Diebold
by Julian Davis‚ Jan. 14‚ 2008
http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Guest_Editorial_Live_Free_or_Diebold_5264.html

Recounts good test of voting integrity, Editorial in Nashua Telegraph
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080114/OPINION01/609682470/-1/opinion

Silvestro the cat [who programs NH voting machines]/ NH voting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs

New Hampshire Exit Poll, LA Times, January 14, 2008
http://www.latimes.com/la-exitpoll-nh-graphic,0,7161708.htmlstory?coll=la-home-center

Chris Matthews Reported Mid-day polls put Obama ahead
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jo4pwCG23c

New Hampshire Recount Information
http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/5344

Ron Paul's campaign is finding suspicious discrepancies in the counts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV6qAGigGYY&eurl=http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=120&topic_id=3779

Candidates say they can pay for recounts
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/NEWS08/383047012/-1/news

Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount in the Interest of Election Integrity
By Dennis Kucinich Media Release January 10, 2008
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2711&Itemid=94

Let recount show N.H. gets its vote tallies right, Jan. 17
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080117/OPINION/801170392/-1/NEWS19

Correction re: NH recount, HOW DOES NEW HAMPSHIRE'S RECOUNT CULTURE
FACILITATE RATHER THAN DETER ELECTION RIGGING? by Mark Crispin Miller
http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2008/01/correction-re-nh-recount.html

FYI: MOVING ON TO MARYLAND (WHICH, LIKE SOUTH CAROLINA, USES PAPERLESS
E-BALLOTS)

Company Connected to GOP and Romney Delivers Diebold Machines to Maryland Polls by Kim Zetter Email January 17, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/company-connect.html


PLEASE DONATE

US Count Votes, DBA National Election Data Archive urgently needs your donations if it is to continue its work to try to obtain public oversight over the integrity of election results via mandatory routine vote count audits and public access to election records and election data, and public oversight over ballot security procedures. Donating money to get out the vote efforts, to political candidates, or to efforts to educate voters on issues, makes little difference if votes
are not accurately counted. NEDA can not continue its efforts without funding.

http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/donate.html

THANK YOU. PLEASE PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

CONTACT: Kathy Dopp kathy@electionarchive.org 435-658-4657

--

Kathy Dopp, Executive Director, The National Election Data Archive

P.O. Box 682556
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

Watch via Technorati

Yep, it is mine.

RELEASE: NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY – WERE VOTES COUNTED ACCURATELY?

http://electionarchive.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=149&Itemid=84

Park City, UT January 14, 2008

CONTACT: Kathy Dopp kathy@electionarchive.org 435-658-4657

NEW HAMPSHIRE'S DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS ARE SUSPICIOUS

Pre-election polls projected that Barrack Obama would win the New
Hampshire Democratic primary election. An average of seven opinion
polls predicted that 38.8 percent were going to vote for Obama, while
30 percent would vote for Clinton. The opinion polls came close to
predicting the final results for New Hampshire's hand-counted votes -
39.2% for Obama and 34.9% for Clinton - but New Hampshire's
Diebold/Premier machine-counted votes reversed the outcome.

The reversal of the machine and hand counts is consistent with
programming errors counting votes cast for Obama, for Clinton and
votes cast for Clinton, for Obama.

To see this consistency of New Hampshire's election results with
programming error, analysts examined Clinton and Obama vote shares out
of votes cast only for Obama and Clinton. Overall, Clinton's hand
count share of such votes is 47.07% to Obama's 52.93% share and a
virtually exact reverse pattern occurs with machine counts where
Clinton's share is 52.95% to Obama's 47.05%.

A statistical analysis of New Hampshire's Democratic primary by the
National Election Data Archive rules out precinct-size and seems to
rule out demographic factors as possible causes for the reversal of
Obama and Clinton's machine and hand-counted results; and shows that
the pattern is consistent with vote miscount favoring Clinton.

The National Election Data Archive's New Hampshire analysis and raw
data is posted on the Internet at ElectionArchive.org

http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/DemPrimary2008-PairedPrecinctStudy.pdf
and
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/

About 80% of New Hampshire ballots were counted by Diebold/Premier
optical scanning machines without any post-election manual audits to
verify the machine count accuracy.

Press reports hypothesized theories for why Clinton beat Obama in New
Hampshire including:

1. the "Bradley effect" (closet racism) that white voters lie to
pollsters and "say" they'll vote for a Black, but given a secret
ballot don't,

2. the "damsel in distress" theory that Clinton's tears brought women
voters out for her,

3. the "good weather" theory, and

4. the "economy was key" theory.

It would be interesting to know why these effects would only occur
when ballots are counted by Diebold/Premier voting machines but not
when ballots are counted in public view by hand.

The "electronic miscount" theory could be a more plausible explanation
for the discrepancies between the opinion polls and the
machine-counted results.

Could someone have mis-programmed – by accident or on purpose – the
optical scan machines such that Hillary's votes went to Obama and
Obama's votes went to Hillary?

UPCOMING RECOUNT OF THE TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008 NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIMARY ELECTION

The Secretary of State (SOS) of New Hampshire announced that there
will be a statewide recount of the paper ballots beginning on
Wednesday, January 16, because presidential candidates Democrat Dennis
Kucinich and Republican Albert Howard requested it.
http://www.sos.nh.gov/recount%20press%20release.pdf


It is imperative that, not only ballots, but poll books and absentee
and provisional voter records are inspected for a representative
sample of recounted precincts. Post 2004 election investigations of
"recounted" (and non-recounted) precincts in Ohio discovered large
numbers of "phantom" ballots for which no voting records could be
found, and disenfranchised voters for whom no ballot could be found -
see http://baiman.blogspot.com/

U.S. Representative Kucinich asks for a Recount of NH machine counts
in the interest of election integrity
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/kucinich-asks-for-new-hampshire-recount-in-the-interest-of-election-integrity/

Kucinich is asking for donations to pay for the Democratic Primary recount
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/homepage-items/help-defend-the-integrity-of-our-voting-system/

CONCLUSION:

Is the suspicious pattern in New Hampshire's Democratic primary
results caused by voting machine counting? We have no clear idea,
because we have no confidence in the unaudited machine vote counting
process. Knowing how easy it is to corrupt machine-counted election
results, it is appalling that New Hampshire and other states do not
routinely conduct post-election manual checks of the accuracy of
machine vote counts. Human mistakes and worse are inevitable, and
without routine post-election measures to detect and correct mistakes,
and without public oversight over security and chain of custody of
ballots, inaccurate vote counts and incorrect election results are
inevitable.

The full analysis of the National Election Data Archive is available
at ElectionArchive.org
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/DemPrimary2008-PairedPrecinctStudy.pdf


QUESTIONS THE PRESS COULD ASK DURING EACH ELECTION ARE:

Does this state conduct any publicly observable post-election
independent manual counts to check the accuracy of machine counts?
(This would require voter-created, or at least voter-checked, paper
ballots.)

Were the detailed vote count data and raw polling data made publicly
available immediately after the election for analysts to detect any
possible suspicious patterns?

Were the invisibly-machine-counted vote counts checked, audited,
provably correct?

Is there public oversight over chain of custody procedures for
election records and ballots?

What are the state's procedures for securing paper ballot and election
records; and how may the public participate?


DATA AVAILABLE FOR ANALYZING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE JANUARY 8, 2008 PRIMARY
ELECTION RESULTS

Another Statistical analysis which reaches the same conclusions as the
National Election Data Archive, with links to vote count data
http://call-with-current-continuation.blogspot.com/2008/01/statistical-exploration-of-new.html

New Hampshire Secretary of State Web Site
http://www.sos.nh.gov/presprim2008/index.htm

2008 New Hampshire Republican & Democratic Primary Results
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=REPUBLICANS
http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS

The type of voting method each town uses:
http://www.bbvdocs.org/NH/state/Jan-08-votingsystems-NH.txt
http://www.sos.nh.gov/voting%20machines2006.htm

National Election Data Archive
http://electionarchive.org/ucvData/NH/

Pre-election opinion polls:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_primary-194.html

Note: No exit poll data was publicly released after the election
unless it had been adjusted to match the final unofficial vote counts.
I.e. No public exit poll data is available to use to judge the
accuracy of the election results as occurred after the 2004
presidential election.

CNN Exit poll info:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#val=NHDEM

FOX News Exit Polls: Women and Seniors Like Clinton
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/01/08/fox-news-exit-polls-independents-like-obama-mccain/


SOME OTHER ARTICLES ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY ELECTION

NY Times on the planned NH recount on
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/11/candidates-push-for-a-nh-recount/

Keith Olberman Covers the Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJB4OCE1fo

Diebold Again: Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire?
by Dave Lindorff
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/011108Lindorff.shtml

New Hampshire to Recount Ballots in Light of Controversy
by Kim Zetter January 11, 2008
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/new-hampshire-t.html

Do NH Primary Statistics Show Election Fraud?
http://salonesoterica.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/do-nh-primary-statistics-show-election-fraud/

Informative article w/ good links to exit poll info
http://www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2008/1/9/3455407.html

Diebold favors Hillary, hand count for Obama
http://presscue.com/node/38034

Election Integrity Questioned in New Hampshire - Dennis Kucinich
formally requests recount
By Michelle Wolski, Epoch Times Florida Staff
http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-1-11/63935.html

Electronic voting machine results questioned in New Hampshire primary
Dan Kaplan
http://www.scmagazineus.com/Electronic-voting-machine-results-questioned-in-New-Hampshire-primary/article/104145/

Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/73551/

Primary Concerns - Hoisting a few red flags about the elections
by Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services, January 10, 2008
http://www.commonwonders.com/archives/col429.htm

Ben Mosley's Blog
http://benmoseley.blogspot.com/2008/01/do-nh-primary-statistics-show-election.html

Analysis of Hand-counted versus Diebold-counted Precincts
http://i4.tinypic.com/823g1mt.gif

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rahmainepugh/CWg

Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results, By Lori Price
http://www.legitgov.org/nh_machine_vs_paper.html

PLEASE DONATE

US Count Votes, DBA National Election Data Archive urgently needs your
donations if it is to continue its work to try to obtain public
oversight over the integrity of election results via mandatory routine
vote count audits and public access to election records and election
data, and public oversight over ballot security procedures. Donating
money to get out the vote efforts, to political candidates, or to
efforts to educate voters on issues, makes little difference if votes
are not accurately counted. NEDA can not continue its efforts without
funding.

http://electionarchive.org/fairelection/donate.html

THANK YOU. PLEASE PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

CONTACT: Kathy Dopp kathy@electionarchive.org 435-658-4657

--

Kathy Dopp, Executive Director, The National Election Data Archive

P.O. Box 682556
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Vote Yes on HR811 and S2295
http://electionmathematics.org/VoteYesHR811.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Fox is still lame

Let the recounting begin

Press release indicates that state-wide recounts will begin in New Hampshire on Wednesday, January 16, 2008, for both the Democratic and Republican parties.

http://www.sos.nh.gov/recount%20press%20release.pdf

Boston.com really screwed up the vote totals -- Is this fraud video

Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount in the Interest of Election Integrity

DETROIT–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, the most outspoken advocate in the Presidential field and in Congress for election integrity, paper-ballot elections, and campaign finance reform, has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesdays election because of unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.

I am not making this request in the expectation that a recount will significantly affect the number of votes that were cast on my behalf, Kucinich stressed in a letter to Secretary of State William M. Gardner. But, Serious and credible reports, allegations, and rumors have surfaced in the past few daysIt is imperative that these questions be addressed in the interest of public confidence in the integrity of the election process and the election machinery not just in New Hampshire, but in every other state that conducts a primary election.

He added, Ever since the 2000 election and even before the American people have been losing faith in the belief that their votes were actually counted. This recount isnt about who won 39% of 36% or even 1%. Its about establishing whether 100% of the voters had 100% of their votes counted exactly the way they cast them.

Kucinich, who drew about 1.4% of the New Hampshire Democratic primary vote, wrote, This is not about my candidacy or any other individual candidacy. It is about the integrity of the election process. No other Democratic candidate, he noted, has stepped forward to question or pursue the claims being made.

New Hampshire is in the unique position to address and, if so determined, rectify these issues before they escalate into a massive, nationwide suspicion of the process by which Americans elect their President. Based on the controversies surrounding the Presidential elections in 2004 and 2000, New Hampshire is in a prime position to investigate possible irregularities and to issue findings for the benefit of the entire nation, Kucinich wrote in his letter.

Without an official recount, the voters of New Hampshire and the rest of the nation will never know whether there are flaws in our electoral system that need to be identified and addressed at this relatively early point in the Presidential nominating process, said Kucinich, who is campaigning in Michigan this week in advance of next Tuesdays Presidential primary in that state.

New Jersey Passes Groundbreaking Election Reform Legislation

Kathy Dopp of Utah reports:

Great News. New Jersey is the first state whose legislature has passed a scientifically-minded vote count auditing bill. As Fritz Scheuren, President of the American Statistical Association states,

"The key contribution of this legislation is to correct a common design flaw in the audit or verification of votes cast that calls for a fixed percent of the precincts to be recounted. The fixed percentage approach is just wrong, wasteful on the one hand and insufficient on the other."

However, despite its improved approach, the NJ audit bill contains some loopholes which could allow NJ's audits to be manipulated; and its language will have to be rewritten eventually because it does not allow for increased efficiency of auditing in the future as voting systems become more auditable.

An even better model vote count audit bill is being offered in the Utah legislature this session which has been reviewed and contributed to by county clerks and election auditing experts alike:

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/UT/VoteCountAudit-UT.pdf


The Utah bill language (above link) contains a new section which permits a two-stage audit. Stage one, would audit all vote counts except for provisional and absentee ballot counts, and stage two, after all provisional and absentee ballots are counted, then takes these new counts into account.

The Utah bill also will include a section requiring public access to and oversight over election records and ballot security procedures as described here:

http://utahcountvotes.org/legislature/PublicAccess2ElectionRecords4Utah.pdf


The final version of the Utah vote count audit bill, after it is drafted by expert legislative legal counsel, will be available soon.

---

New Jersey Citizens' Coalition on HAVA Implementation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 8, 2008

Contact: Renee Steinhagen, HAVA Coalition Coordinator and Executive Director,
New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center

NEW JERSEY PASSES GROUNDBREAKING ELECTION REFORM LEGISLATION
Bill Combats Fraud by Requiring Random, Mandatory Audits of Election Results

Newark, NJ - Just after 1:00 a.m. this morning, voting on its last bill of the session, the New Jersey General Assembly passed legislation that will require random, mandatory audits of election results designed to detect outcome-reversing miscounts. Once signed by the governor, the provisions will take effect immediately, which will require all absentee ballots in the February primary to be subject to auditing. Once the voter-verifiable paper record is implemented, all ballots will be subject to audit.

The bill, which was sponsored by Senator Nia Gill (D-Essex), is being hailed as model legislation for election integrity. It was designed by the New Jersey Citizens' Coalition on the Implementation of HAVA (Help America Vote Act) with the assistance of a Ph.D. political scientist, experienced election integrity advocates from two states that have election auditing laws, Ph.D. statisticians from the American Statistical Association, and other voting rights advocates, all of whom worked pro bono.

One of the bill's most innovative features is that the margin of victory in a race will determine the extent of the audit. In closer races, more districts will be scrutinized, and the districts to be audited will be chosen at random. The process is transparent, nonpartisan, and completely independent of software. As a result, it provides a certified outcome that citizens can trust. With the passage of this bill, New Jersey is fast becoming a leader in election administration reform.

"This bill increases the transparency, security, and integrity of ballot counting and reporting in New Jersey, and moves us further toward the ultimate goal of fair and inclusive elections," said Renee Steinhagen, Coordinator of the Coalition and Executive Director of New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center.

"This bill marks the beginning of the end of our world of demon-haunted elections. It's the first post-election audit law to require electoral outcomes to be confirmed by a statistical audit, independent of software. This is a model for the nation. Even now the key provisions of this bill are being copied and tailored to meet other states' requirements," said Howard Stanislevic, Computer Network Engineer & Founder, E-Voter Education Project, who also worked on the bill.

Under the new legislation, the Attorney General will appoint an independent professional audit team of at least four members to supervise the audits conducted by election officials. Members will not have potential conflicts of interest (such as employment by the Attorney General, a political party or candidate, or a voting machine company or contractor). At least one member of the team will have verifiable expertise in the field of statistics, and another will have expertise in auditing. The audit team will develop a set of scientifically reasonable assumptions that will determine the size of the initial audit in each race on the ballot in question. Those
assumptions will be subject to public comment. The scientific framework will be designed to deliver the statistical power necessary to detect outcome-altering miscounts. If the results of the initial audit raise concerns, then the audit will be expanded until a truly accurate outcome can be determined.

The auditing process will be done by hand. Hand-counted totals of voter-verifiable paper records will be compared to the corresponding electronic vote counts in a minimum of 2% of the election districts in each county in which the audited election appears on the ballot. This procedure requires all counties to share the burden of audits proportional to their populations. Absentee ballots will be divided into audit units approximately equal in size to the average election district in each county in terms of the number of ballots cast, but will not be associated with any particular election district.

Fritz Scheuren, President of the American Statistical Association and one of the conceptual architects of the bill, stated, "The key contribution of this legislation is to correct a common design flaw in the audit or verification of votes cast that calls for a fixed percent of the precincts to be recounted. The fixed percentage approach is just wrong, wasteful on the one hand and insufficient on the other." He added, "The legislation achieves its ends by laying out a flexible process that should work well for all stakeholders. It does not attempt one-size-fits-all conformity. Given this recognition of the need for flexibility, the emphasis on using experts and on full transparency is just right."

For more information, contact Renee Steinhagen, Coordinator of the NJ Citizens' Coalition on the Implementation of HAVA and Executive Director of New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center at: New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center, www.njappleseed.net.

The bill is available for immediate download as a PDF at: http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/A3000/2730_R1.PDF

New Hampshire District Admits Ron Paul Votes Not Counted

Carrie Hahn, Market Coordinator, Mt. Lebanon Uptown Farmer's Market, 412-337-1671 sent along this in an email to a public list:

Sutton township reported Congressman had zero votes, actual number was 31

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, Wednesday, January 9, 2008

The head clerk of the New Hampshire town of Sutton has been forced to admit that Ron Paul received 31 votes yet when the final amount was transferred to a summary sheet and sent out to the media, the total was listed as zero. The fiasco throws the entire primary into doubt and could lead to a re-count.

As we reported earlier today, an entire family voted for Ron Paul in Sutton, yet when the voting map on the Politico website was posted, the total votes for Ron Paul were zero.

Vote fraud expert Bev Harris contacted the head clerk in Sutton, Jennifer Call, who was forced to admit that the 31 votes Ron Paul received were completely omitted from the final report sheet, claiming "human error" was responsible for the mistake.

Two or three votes not counted could be a plausible mistake - but 31 votes for one candidate?

"The classic method for rigging a hand count is to write the wrong number on the form," Harris told the Alex Jones Show.

"They are counting everything in public real nice, they fill out a form in public real nice and then they transfer it to another form and they call that a summary sheet and then that is the one they send in," explained Harris.

"What happened is she said they did not transfer the number correctly and put zero instead of 31 - that is unacceptable as an answer."

With 100% of precincts now reporting, the map originally listed zero votes for Ron Paul as you can see below. It has now been updated to reflect the 31 votes Paul actually received.

The remainder of the 31 people in Sutton who voted for Ron Paul need to go public immediately with the charge of vote fraud and make it known that they were cheated out of their right to vote.

Harris estimates that it could cost the Ron Paul campaign as much as $67,000 dollars for a recount, but such a move could throw the entire primary into doubt, especially in light of the fact that Barack Obama appears to have been cheated out of a win by Hillary Clinton.

I'll try to contact her in the hours and days to come to hold a telephone conversation.

MoveOn.org Political Action: Paper ballots for the 2008 election

MoveOn.org Political Action: Paper ballots for the 2008 election: "Paper ballots for the 2008 election"

MoveOn asks folks to sign petition in the wake of the NY Times article

Dear MoveOn member,

This Sunday's cover story in The New York Times Magazine makes plain the threat: The winner of the 2008 presidential election could be decided by flawed, insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines.¹

This is the most prominent news coverage this issue has ever gotten, so it could be our one last chance to get this right before the election in November.

Congress is poised to consider a new emergency paper ballots bill next week—but we'll have to convince them to act right away.²

Can you sign this urgent petition asking local, state, and federal officials to require paper ballots for our votes? Clicking here will add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11873-6716194-SvU6bu&t=3

The petition says: "We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and audits before November."

Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature and comments to local election officials in addition to members of Congress.

Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we might elect the wrong person president in 2008. As The New York Times Magazine reports:

[Voting machines] fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November 2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race decided by fewer than 400 votes.³

You can read more from this scary report at the end of this email—and forward it along to your friends and family. It's really compelling.

Congress hasn't been able to solve this problem yet, but there's one more chance next week. Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey is expected to introduce an emergency bill to offer funding to states who switch from unreliable electronic voting machines to paper ballots and audits.⁴ We'll ultimately need a mandate for these things, but this bill would be a crucial first step to prevent some of the most dire threats to the 2008 election.

But to pass the bill in time, we'll need to light a fire under Congress. At the same time, we'll have to urge local election officials to read The New York Times Magazine story—and replace electronic voting machines with paper ballots and audits before November.

Sign this emergency petition to stop the threat from electronic voting machines right away. Click here to add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11873-6716194-SvU6bu&t=4

Thank you for all you do.

–Noah, Jennifer, Laura, Carrie, and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

P.S. Here's more from this week's disturbing New York Times Magazine story. Please forward this along to all your friends and family.

Can You Count on Voting Machines?

By CLIVE THOMPSON, The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2008

Jane Platten gestured, bleary-eyed, into the secure room filled with voting machines. It was 3 a.m. on Nov. 7, and she had been working for 22 hours straight. "I guess we've seen how technology can affect an election," she said. The electronic voting machines in Cleveland were causing trouble again.

For a while, it had looked as if things would go smoothly for the Board of Elections office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. About 200,000 voters had trooped out on the first Tuesday in November for the lightly attended local elections, tapping their choices onto the county's 5,729 touch-screen voting machines. The elections staff had collected electronic copies of the votes on memory cards and taken them to the main office, where dozens of workers inside a secure, glass-encased room fed them into the "GEMS server," a gleaming silver Dell desktop computer that tallies the votes.

Then at 10 p.m., the server suddenly froze up and stopped counting votes. Cuyahoga County technicians clustered around the computer, debating what to do. A young, business-suited employee from Diebold—the company that makes the voting machines used in Cuyahoga—peered into the screen and pecked at the keyboard. No one could figure out what was wrong. So, like anyone faced with a misbehaving computer, they simply turned it off and on again. Voilà: It started working—until an hour later, when it crashed a second time. Again, they rebooted. By the wee hours, the server mystery still hadn't been solved.

Worse was yet to come. When the votes were finally tallied the next day, 10 races were so close that they needed to be recounted. But when Platten went to retrieve paper copies of each vote—generated by the Diebold machines as they worked—she discovered that so many printers had jammed that 20 percent of the machines involved in the recounted races lacked paper copies of some of the votes. They weren't lost, technically speaking; Platten could hit "print" and a machine would generate a replacement copy. But she had no way of proving that these replacements were, indeed, what the voters had voted. She could only hope the machines had worked correctly.

Click here to keep reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html

Then sign our urgent petition for paper ballots before the November election. Just click here to add your name:

http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11873-6716194-SvU6bu&t=5

Sources:
1. "Can You Count on Voting Machines?," The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/magazine/

2. "Rep. Holt To Offer New Election Reform Proposal," National Journal Tech Daily, December 10, 2007
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3310&id=&id=11873-6716194-SvU6bu&t=6

3. "Can You Count on Voting Machines?," The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/magazine/

4. "Rep. Rush Holt to Push for Paper Ballots and Vote Count Audits for 2008," AlterNet, December 27, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/democracy/71608/

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.2 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions. Our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://political.moveon.org/donate/email.html?id=11873-6716194-SvU6bu&t=7

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

---

Join our TalkCast

Podcast Announcement:

Join our PodCast Tue, January 8, 2008
Time: 10:00 PM EST

You have been invited to join a live Talkcast.

Listen to or Join a Talkcast - Episode: Electronic Voting Machines
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=3181&cmd=tc
Host: Rauterkus - Mark@Rauterkus.com

The article in the NY Times magazine asks: Can You Count On These Machines?

By CLIVE THOMPSON, Published: January 6, 2008 is required reading
before the discussion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/magazine/06Vote-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp
http://tinyurl.com/37y4yj

We'll talk about that article in this talkcast, hosted by Mark
Rauterkus, with a special guest from Utah, Kathy Dopp. Kathy Dopp's
fact-finding and investigative efforts puts her at the head of the
class nation-wide. Dopp is a Mathematician and expert in election
audit mathematics and procedures. She resides in Park City, Utah and
has sites on the web: http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org http://utahcountvotes.org

Local Pennsylvania experts have been invited as well. Open to all
citizens, voters, advocates, candidates and even our friends in New
Hampshire.

Talkcast ID: 3181

Scheduled Time:

Date: Tue, January 8, 2008
Time: 10:00 PM EST

How to participate:

Call in:

1. Dial: (724) 444-7444
2. Enter: 3181 # (Talkcast ID)
3. Enter: 1 # or your PIN

or Join from your computer:
Go to http://www.talkshoe.com and sign up

1. Become a TalkShoe member
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/userCreate1.jsp
2. Download and install TalkShoe Live client
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/login.jsp?pushNav=1&cmd=signin
3. Click here to join the Talkcast
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=3181&cmd=tc

Listen to the Recording:
If you missed this event or want to hear previous recorded episodes click here.
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=3181&cmd=tc

--------------

The NY Times Magazine article heavily quotes Pittsburg Carnegie Mellon
University's Michael Shamos

A rebuttal to CMU's Michael Shamos was written by Arthur M. Keller,
Edward Cherlin, and David Mertz.
http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/keller/2007/shamos-rebuttal-vocomp2007.pdf

As noted in their paper: "During those years he [Shamos] personally
examined more than 100 different computerized voting systems for
certification purposes. In the 2000 election, machines for which he
participated in certification (which did not include Florida) were
used to count more than 11% of the popular vote of the United States".

As David Webber notes, 'One can therefore attribute a large chunk of
the problems with current voting systems to the fact that Shamos
singularly failed to identify those during his "certification".'

Webber adds, "Shamos has all kinds of academic qualifications - but
absent from his resume is actual production implementation of systems.
His comments read like those of someone who has never actually built
real systems himself and deployed them for public use in mission
critical environments."

As the NY Times article notes: "IF YOU WANTED to know where the next
great eruption of voting-machine scandal is likely to emerge, you'd
have to drive deep into the middle of Pennsylvania." and "21
electoral-college votes, a relatively large number that could decide a
tight presidential race" where Michael Shamos has certified
touch-screen voting systems with no paper ballot records.
-------------

Another excellent response to the New York Times Magazine Article on E-voting
January 06, 2008
by Dan Wallach
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1244

--

Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author
Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a
Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in
exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

P.O. Box 680192
Park City, UT 84068
phone 435-658-4657

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://electionarchive.org

History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of
Election Auditing Fundamentals
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf

Vote Yes on HR811 and S2295
http://electionmathematics.org/VoteYesHR811.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body
and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote
Thomas Jefferson in 1816

Voting Machines - New York Times

Voting Machines - Elections - Ballots - Politics - New York Times Can You Count On These Machines?

New vote system funded in Lackawanna County

BY DAVID SINGLETON, STAFF WRITER

Lackawanna County taxpayers will catch a huge break on the acquisition of new voting machines.


The state Department of State agreed Monday to reimburse the county up to $1.7 million to help pay for a new voting system for the April 22 primary to replace the Advanced Voting Solutions electronic machines that were decertified last week.

Similar offers will be extended to Wayne and Northampton counties, which also have the now useless AVS touch-screen devices, Department of State spokeswoman Leslie Amoros said.

The announcement of the state?s decision came late Monday afternoon from the transition office of Democratic Commissioner Mike Washo and Commissioner-elect Corey O?Brien, who will become the majority on Jan. 7, 2008.

"This is a victory for all the taxpayers," Mr. O'Brien said at a hastily arranged news conference, where he and Mr. Washo were joined by attorneys Lawrence Moran and Gerard Karam, who have been working on the voting machine issue for the transition team,.

According to a letter to Mr. Moran and Mr. Karam from Harry VanSickle, who heads the state Bureau of Commissions, Elections and Legislation, the department will reimburse the county for the procurement of a new voting system up to the invoice price of its AVS system.

In 2006, Lackawanna County purchased 500 electronic voting machines from AVS for $1.7 million. The new machines were necessary to bring the county into compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act, which barred the use of the mechanical lever machines voters had used since 1930.

Voters used the touch-screen machines in the 2006 primary and general elections and the 2007 primary. However, the state suspended certification of the machines for the November 2007 general election after AVS failed to gain federal certification, forcing the county to use paper ballots.

The state notified AVS on Friday that it was permanently decertifying the machines.

Mr. Washo said the transition team went to work on finding an alternative voting system immediately after the Nov. 6 election, working with officials in Wayne and Northampton counties, as well as the Department of State.

?They have ensured we are not going to be embarrassed in April,? he said.

The $1.7 million reimbursement from the state will come from three sources: $1.15 million from HAVA funding the state has received from the federal government, $328,000 from the county?s share of HAVA interest, and $231,000 from HAVA money already designated for use by the county.

The next step will be the selection of a new voting system.

The county will send representatives to a voting system vendor fair being hosted by Northampton County on Jan. 15. At least five manufacturers are expected to demonstrate their state-certified systems at the event, Mr. Karam said.

Assuming the county chooses a system shortly thereafter, employees in the Voter Registration Office would be trained on it during the month of February, with training for poll workers and voter education to take place in March and early April, he said.

Wayne County spent $295,000 to buy 100 AVS machines in 2006. Northampton spent $2.1 million to purchase 600 of the machines.