Voting News: Hasta La Vista Transparency, Absentee ballot blues, E-voting spreads in Texas
Posted: 14 Oct 2009 05:11 PM PDT
Schwarzenegger Vetoes Election Integrity Bills...Absentee Ballot Blues: Santa Barbara Mayor warns of lost ballots in
Vote-by-Mail election, and 800 Franklin County OH voters told to redo absentee ballot requests... Panel to evaluate
Hawaii elections chief's work...Bo Lipari report on New York’s Voting Machine Pilot Part 1...Paperless voting spreads in
Texas...Wisconsin Lawmakers approve plan to study email balloting...High turnout, violence and damaged voting machines
at the polls in India... Systest chosen to test Philippines voting source code...
All of that and more in today's Voting News below...
CA: Schwarzenegger Vetoes Election Integrity Bills.
CA SoS Bowen 'laments' rejection of 'common-sense election bills aimed at enhancing government transparency' So do we.
Please help demand Bowen now take corrective action on her own.
...
According to a press release from CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen [PDF] today, CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed one bill for improvement to state election law, while using his
veto pen to terminate three other "common-sense elections bills ... aimed at enhancing government transparency."
CA: New law allows emergency crews to vote where they are serving
October 13, 2009. Public safety workers will be able to vote wherever they are serving in a government-declared
emergency. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed AB 1440, closing out the 30-day session.
CA: Santa Barbara, Mayor Warns of Lost Ballots in Vote-by-Mail Election
Tangled Up In Ads Oct 13. ...Ballots have been sent out for the city’s first vote-by-mail election, but some ballots
destined for apartment complexes may have been misplaced, resulting in their being delivered to wrong addresses, or
tossed as junk mail, or both.
HI: County officials blast state elections chief
Oct 13, 2009. Four county clerks that help implement statewide elections are criticizing state elections chief Kevin
Cronin. The clerks of Honolulu, Maui, Kauai and Hawaii counties testified before the state Elections Commission today.
They said Cronin is not collaborating with them enough. They warned that could impede the smooth conduct of two major
elections next year.
HI: Panel meets to get a grip on elections
Oct 13, 2009 With less than a year before the primary election, the state Elections Commission will discuss today the
troubled preparations for that event and the performance of the state's chief election officer.
Kevin Cronin, the Elections Office chief, has been under fire from legislators for weeks over his handling of election
equipment contracting, his leadership skills and for not providing sufficient information about his agency's budget
woes.
KY: Mercer gets 19 new eScan voting machines
October 14, 2009 HARRODSBURG..At its meeting Tuesday the court approved the purchase of 19 new eScan voting machines.
MN: Legislature may address proposals for early voting in ’10 session
Oct 14. WILLMAR — With memories of a long Senate recount still lingering, and a lively governor’s race looming, the
Legislature is expected to take up a variety of voting issues in the 2010 session.
MN: Times editorial columnist
Oct 13. Ranked-choice voting has appeal, but it's too complicated
In Pierce County, Charter Amendment 3 seeks to repeal ranked-choice voting, also called instant-runoff voting. It's a
system with some very good points, but it's too complicated for the public to trust it.
NJ: "Will Chris Daggett Fall Victim To The Ballot Order Effect?"
NY: New York’s Voting Machine Pilot, Part 1
October 14 2009 ... Of the 47 participating counties, 18 chose to use the scanners county wide. The remaining counties
chose a limited number of polling places to roll out the new systems, deploying them in anywhere from 1 to 248 polling
places. 15 counties chose not to participate in the pilot at all, including the state’s largest Boards of Elections in
Westchester, Nassau, Suffolk, and New York City...
OH: FRANKLIN COUNTY 800 told to redo absentee ballot requests (3.8% of requests!)
Tuesday, October 13. Nearly 800 residents will have to submit new applications to vote by mail because they did not
provide all the required information, Franklin County Board of Elections officials said yesterday... About 21,000 people
have requested mail-in ballots for the Nov. 3 elections.
OH: Brunner denies request to speed up Cuyahoga vote counting
October 13, 2009. Brunner’s office denied the request because it might have constituted a voting system modification,
according to a letter sent in late September from a member of Brunner’s staff to a manager with Election Systems & Software, the maker of the county’s voting machines
....
More than 1,060 memory sticks will be used in next month’s election. So with a single computer to read them, it could
take about 5 hours to tally the votes.
PA: Straight-party instructions added again
Written directions had been on electronic ballot. Two commissioners decided to restore the notice.
Instructions for straight-party voting have been added back to Luzerne County’s electronic voting machine election
ballots, despite opposition by minority Commissioner Stephen A. Urban.
TN: Sullivan Co. Elections administrator says felons are registered, have voted; wants DA to prosecute
October 13th, 2009...about 100 felons fraudulently registered, are registered still, and voted in the county — some
going back as far as the early 1960s.
TX: County to streamline election process (Walker County buying paperless e-voting machines and e-poll books)
“These machines have three independent memories to insure that no votes will be lost or altered,” McRae said. “As far as
a recount goes, we’re able to replicate each vote that goes into the system, which means we can print out a ballot image
for every single vote.
TX: Texas law, NAACP at odds in Orange council revision
October 14, 2009. Orange City Council Tuesday began the process for a May charter election to change the makeup of the
council, but the president of the local NAACP chapter said the process isn't quick enough.
The Rev. Raymond Young, president of the Orange Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, said after the council meeting that he wants single-member district representation in place for the May council
election.
VA: New Rules For Early Voting In VA
New this year for voters in Virginia, emergency workers can now vote absentee. This includes firefighters, paid and
volunteer, search and rescue crews, and EMS workers. The deadline to apply for a ballot by mail is October 27 and the
deadline to vote in person is October 31. Election day in Virginia is Tuesday, November.
VA: Military voters still left without a voice
WI: Panel approves election plan; balks at voter ID
Oct. 13, 2009. Madison — Lawmakers approved a five-year election plan Tuesday that will study changing the date of the
September primary, permitting absentee ballots to be returned by e-mail, implementing elections that are conducted
entirely by mail - but not requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls. http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/64096112.html
International
Afghanistan: Mathematical Proof of the UN Coverup of the Afghan Election Fraud
India: Repolling in 28 Arunachal booths
14 October 2009, ITANAGAR: A day after the Assembly elections, the Election Commission (EC) has decided to conduct
repolling in 28 polling booths of Arunachal Pradesh
...
Elections at these polling stations spread across 13 Assembly constituencies had to be suspended following incidents of
damage and snatching of electronic voting machines (EVMs).
India: 60-72 % voting in Maharashtra, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh assembly polls (Update)
A 48-year-old polling agent of an independent candidate was killed in a clash with supporters of a Congress nominee in
Gulha assembly constituency in Haryana’s Kaithal district.
Despite the massacre of 17 policemen five days ago and poll boycott call given by naxals in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli
district, an estimated 55 per cent of electorate cast votes while neighbouring Gondia, also hit by Maoist menace
recorded a 68 per cent turnout.
Also, stray incidents of firing were reported from Gadchiroli district where polling could not take place at 22 polling
station as the staff failed to reach the destinations because naxals put up obstacles...
Philippines: Voting machine source code testers chosen
10/14/2009 OUT of four accredited testing and certification laboratories in the US, Systest Labs has been chosen by poll
body to certify the source codes of the voting machines to be used in the 2010 elections.
Russia: FACTBOX: 30 million Russians to vote in regional elections
Sun Oct 11, 2009 MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev faces a test of his pledge to boost democracy on
Sunday when polls open for 30 million voters in regional elections. Here are some facts about the vote...
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Voting News by Joyce McCloy.
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