In this most electorially messed-up of counties in the most electorially messed-up of states, getting rid of the voting machines was a good first step. But the job isn't yet complete—and the human factor also needs fixing.

Two reports today worth reviewing, both of which indicate that the accuracy of electronic voting leaves enough to be desired that anyone who wants their elections to be honest and accurate, whatever side they are own, might want to support the drive to restore paper ballots that can be audited and read by human beings.

I went in to vote this morning and when I got there, I chose to use the electronic machine because the line was much shorter than the paper ballot.  I wanted to vote before I went in to work, so waiting in line wasn't much of an option.  

I was issued a card and when I inserted it into the machine, the first thing that popped up was "Please contact a pollworker, Your card has been removed too quickly or inserted incorrectly".  At this point I contacted a poll worker who told me I was doing something wrong.  I made a fuss and finally another poll worker came over and realized that there was something wrong with the machine.  I asked for a paper ballot and was initially denied because they said there was no way of telling if I had already voted on the electronic machine or not.  I told them that it should have been obvious that I hadn't voted since I was talking to poll workers the whole time I was at the machine.  After about 10 minutes of arguing, I was allowed to cast a paper ballot.

I hope there aren't many problems going on with these machince since they are easily hacked, and obviously don't work very well.  I am encouraging as many people out there to vote with a paper ballot as possible or able to.  I don't want to see any more election fraud.

OK, I don't really write diaries (It has been nearly a year since my last one), and until a few days ago I didn't really comment either.  My connection to DailyKos has always been a very interested reader.  I am not sure what stirred my passion the past week, but if I had to venture a guess, it has been the excitement around the Democratic nomination process.

The past couple days I have found myself in some diaries challenging the assertions of people claiming, both passively and directly, the New Hampshire vote is unreliable because the Diebold OS results were in direct contrast to all the available polling and the results of the hand counted ballots.  Therefore suggesting that Barack Obama could well be the victim of vote fraud.  I found myself writing long comments that ultimately get buried in the avalanche of comment debate, leading me to try to make my point with a diary.

More after the flip.

Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results By Lori Price 09 Jan 2008

2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008
Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%
Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%
Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%
Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%
Machine vs Hand:
Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes)
Obama: - 2.308% (-6,604 votes)

Updated below:

We all suspected it could would happen again but if any of you are like me, I just sort of dismissed the possibility as being remote. I mean, come’on, after Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, someone should have fixed the electronic voting thing by now... right? RIGHT?

Voters from Florida in the southland to Washington in the Pacific northwest have been experiencing direct challenges to the voting process because names or numbers on their voter’s registration forms did not match up exactly with other government databases, including Social Security and motor vehicle agencies.

Five years after passage of a federal law to create electronic registration databases to deter voter fraud, the new technology is posing hurdles that could disenfranchise thousands of legal voters, a USA TODAY investigation finds.

"We know that eligible people have been thrown off the rolls," says Justin Levitt, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Here we go again!

ELECTION REFORM and John Edwards

Cross-posted from John Edwards for 2008 Blog, Still in Queue

http://blog.johnedwards.com/...

Karita Hummer in Quick Posts Feed of
11/17/2007 at 1:36 AM EST

The consequences of voter disenfranchisement, strange voting anomalies, vote suppression, and seeming fraud of the election of 2004 have had enormous consequences, with a full-scale diminishment of our democratic form of governance.

Senator Edwards statement for "Why Tuesday" demonstrates fully his grasp of the need for major reform of our electoral system.  His is a bold call for ensuring the fullest realization of our aspiration for a full-bodied democracy for America. He advocates for paper ballots, tougher laws to fight voter suppression and intimidation, disenfranchisement of former prisoners, elections on non-work days, and same day registration. Further, he advocates for public financing of national elections, thereby, reducing the influence of lobbyists on elections and giving more power to people through Citizenship Congresses.

Once again John Edwards is the most direct and on-point--this time with America's profound need to return to paper ballots so that elections can be verified and recounts can accurately reflect voters' true intentions when voting machines and ballot counting machines fail, are misprogrammed, or, as in the Florida US House District 13 race, when thousand of voters say they tried to vote for a candidate but were foiled by the voting machines' misprogramming.

Here's a blurb from BradBlog.com. Go see for yourself what each of the candidates has to say about how to preserve our sacred votes.

"John Edwards: 'We Need Paper Ballots'
"First Democratic Candidate to Answer Directly on the Issue, in Response to Why Tuesday's Candidate Challenge...
"Blogged by Brad from the road...

"What we need, is we need paper ballots, so votes can be verified," says John Edwards directly in response to Why Tuesday's video Candidate Challenge. He says a bunch of other good stuff on the topic as well in his brief response...

http://www.bradblog.com/...

It ultimately comes down to "who will pay for the new voting machines"?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team is being put to the test over a major election bill that has significant opposition within the Democratic Party.

The bill (HR 811), due on the House floor this week, would require a paper record of every vote cast nationwide beginning in 2008.

Passing it would allow the leadership to tick a big item off the party’s to-do list: Correcting ballot-counting issues that may have contributed to their presidential losses in 2000 and 2004.

“The perception of our elections is at stake,” said Tanya Clay House of People for the American Way, which has been pressing for a law that makes sure every vote cast leaves a paper trail for recounts.

The bill’s backers say a new federal law should be expedited so that the 2008 elections do not produce results like the disputed 2006 congressional race in Florida’s 13th District, where Democrat Christine Jennings says malfunctioning electronic voting machines might have contributed to her loss.

But local and state governments are not eager to be forced to make expensive purchases, with little money expected from Washington. Currently, 27 states have paper-trail requirements.

The CBO has been unable to calculate just how much this would cost local governments -- a legitimate concern, but it's likely to be less than a few days of the Iraq War. Funny how we can't afford to secure our democracy at home because we're trying to impose it by the barrel of a gun elsewhere.

The Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, of which I am one of the most senior members, today voted unanimously to support Rush Holt's bill to require paper trails and, in some cases paper ballots, in order to increase the chances of honest elections.  Nearly 30 Democratic state committees have now passed similar resolutions.

The issues of computerized voting machines have been kicking around for decades now.  In the late 1970's I was one of the members of a House State Government Committee majority that killed consideration of computerized voting on the grounds that it was too complicated for many citizens and the technology was too new to ensure the integrity of the ballots counted.

Originally blogged at:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/...

By Dave Berman
8/12/07

At the risk of being immodest, what I'm about to describe has the potential to greatly advance the hand-counted paper ballot (HCPB) movement in every community.  Credit where it is due, let me first say that last November the Voter Confidence Committee (VCC) began working on the recently published Report On Election Conditions in Humboldt County, California.  In the course of researching this report, I came in contact with Nancy Tobi of Democracy For New Hampshire (DNH).  She is an amazing resource and an effective advocate for HCPB.

Dubbed "the gold standard" in ballot integrity since its first version was introduced in 2003, Rush Holt's HR-811 "voter verified paper audit trail" bill has always had some opposition.  With that opposition recently becoming more heated, the debate may leave some confused about an issue that is very dear to the hearts of all democracy-loving citizens.

One key to unlocking the dynamics of the debate is that much of the criticisms leveled by a core group of HR-811 opponents are directed at the bill's failure to prevent computerized voting equipment from generating faulty - possibly fraudulent - tallies.

Many would be surprised to learn that Holt's three VVPAT bills (2239, 550 and now 811) have never sought to fully address the prevention of inaccurate electronic voting tallies.  Their primary goal is auditing, a generally passive - inherently longer-term - form of control.

If that's not ironical enough, it just may be that an enacted HR-811 would be the best friend the loftiest goals the bill's harshest critics put before us (e.g. "Canadian-style" elections) could ever have.

Courtesy of BradBlog: Researchers at the University of Connecticut have concluded that the VVPAT, heralded by supporters of the Holt Bill, is meaningless as verification of a voter's selection. Using only information available to the public, experts at the University of Connecticut were able to change a voter's selection within the Diebold computerized voting machine, while presenting a paper trail which gave the voter the false impression that his vote was recorded correctly. Here is the report.

1. Electronic Voting machines in California proven vulnerable

2. John speaks on Affirmative Action at Urban League Democratic forum

3. Edwards opens a can of whupass

4. Elizabeth Edwards interview in The Progressive

5. Elizabeth in New Hampshire yesterday

6. John and Elizabeth Edwards trivia contest

As gravitylove predicted last week in Holt Bill losing support, any hope of getting paper ballots mandated for the 2008 election went poof.

CNET news has the story.

WASHINGTON--Democratic senators on Wednesday made another push for banning electronic voting machines that lack paper trails, but they've backed away from doing so in time for next year's presidential election.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chief sponsor of a contentious bill called the Ballot Integrity Act that proposes such changes, said she fears requiring all states to employ so-called voter-verified paper records in their systems, with some primaries only six months away, "could be an invitation to chaos." Earlier this year, she called for enacting such changes by 2008.

Hello all,

 I saw something about this on Mydd and I clicked the link that was provided. In the link I found a few disturbing things. If this is how this legislation works, it is all the Repubs/corporations needs to control 2009 and future elections.

Blogged at We Do Not Consent:
http://wedonotconsent.blogspot.com/...

I won't say it is the only reason I have so few blog posts in the past eight months, but the Report on Election Conditions in Humboldt County (.pdf) just released by the Voter Confidence Committee is something significant I have to show for that period of time.

The press release below says it (almost) all.  The image below it is something I've had in my head for more than two years.  I could never find anyone willing to do the graphic design work.  What I always imagined as a flier or poster is now a powerful diagram that simplifies several pages of text in the report.  Regardless of what else happens, I hope this image is picked up and used around the country wherever people are organizing on behalf of hand-counted paper ballots.  Huge thanks to HSU student John Carter for helping breath life into this vision.

This was a significant week in Bill Richardson's campaign for President, with a major address on climate change and how to end the bloodshed in Iraq.  

It was also a significant week for peace and stability in Korea and Asia - which highlights Richardson's expertise in foreign affairs and his diplomatic skills. With Richardson as President we get two for the price of one - a can-do leader on domestic issues and an experienced diplomat that knows how to bring people and nations together.