Election Reform, Fraud and Related News. Sunday 01/20/08

Horry County Has Vote Machines Problems

The Associated Press

Sun, Jan 20, 2008 (5:21 a.m.)

As many as 90 percent of the electronic voting machines in one coastal South Carolina county did not work when polls opened in Saturday's Republican primary and officials also worried that snow forecast for the northern part of the state could impact voter turnout.

Lisa Bourcier, a spokeswoman in Horry County, which is home to Myrtle Beach, said 80 percent of the roughly 400 machines that failed to function were up and running by noon and that technicians were working on the rest. She said officials had heard reports of voters being turned away because of machine failures, but had no idea how many.

"There could've been some poll workers out there that probably didn't know what to do," Bourcier said.

Polls were open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jan/20/horry-county-has-vote-machines-problems/

Election Reform, Fraud and Related News, Sunday, January 20, and counting!

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Clinton, Romney win Nevada caucuses
West Central Tribune
Published Sunday, January 20, 2008

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Nevada caucuses Saturday, powering past Sen. Barack Obama in a hard-fought race marred by late charges of dirty politics. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney coasted to an easy win in the Republican contest.

The victory marked a second-straight campaign triumph for the former first lady, who scored a New Hampshire primary upset last week and is locked in an historic, increasingly tense struggle with Obama.
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. speaks to supporters after being declared winner of the Nevada Caucus in Las Vegas Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. speaks to supporters after being declared winner of the Nevada Caucus in Las Vegas Saturday, Jan. 19, 2008. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)
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Clinton was gaining roughly half the vote in a three-way Democratic race, with Obama at about 45 percent and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards placing a distant third.

Romney said Republicans had cast their votes for change — and that he was the man to provide it.

http://www.wctrib.com/articles/rss.cfm?id=29890

Wilms Notes Wikipedia: Fizzbin

Fizzbin is a fictional card game created by Kirk in the original series episode "A Piece of the Action". While being held hostage on Sigma Iotia II with Spock and McCoy, he spontaneously invented a confusing card game to distract the henchmen guarding them.

The rules were intentionally very complex. Each player gets six cards, except for the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven. The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays. Kirk dealt the henchman two jacks, which are a "half-fizzbin." When the henchman said he needs another jack, Kirk warned that a third jack is a "shralk" and is grounds for disqualification. With two jacks, one wants a king and a deuce, except at night, when one wants a queen and a four.

At this point, Kirk dealt a third jack, but to keep the ruse going, he ignored the disqualification rule he had just made up. He explained that, had a king been dealt instead of a jack, the player would get another card, except when it's dark, in which case he'd have to give it back. The top hand is a "royal fizzbin," but the odds of getting one are "astronomical": when Kirk asked Spock what the odds are, Spock truthfully replied that he had never computed them.

Caucuses are like Fizzbin

by robbedvoter

snip

Oh, look what you got, twojacks.
You got a half fizzbin already.
I need another jack.
No. If you got another jack,
why, you'd have a sralk.
A sralk?
Yes. You'd be disqualified.
You need a king and a deuce,
except at night, when you'd need a queen and a 4.
Except at night.
Right.

snip

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4126987

LOL

No "perfect" voting solution for county
BY DAVID SINGLETON
STAFF WRITER
01/20/2008

There would be no eureka moment, no bolt-out-of-the-blue revelation.

As Lackawanna County officials shopped for a new voting system at a vendor fair last week in Easton, Commissioner Mike Washo hoped one product would jump to the fore, so vastly superior to its competitors that its selection would be a no-brainer.

“That’s the hard thing,” Mr. Washo acknowledged as he and Commissioner Corey O’Brien tried out each of the voting machines on display at the Northampton County Courthouse. “At the end of the day, all of us agreed there is no perfect solution.

“None of us will be able to walk away and say, ‘Wow. I know I nailed it.’ It’s not going to be that way.”

The knowledge that whatever voting system the commissioners choose is likely to come with some baggage — deserved or not — is complicating the search for new electronic machines or an optical-scan system to replace the county’s decertified Advanced Voting Solutions touch-screen devices.

http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19215186&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6

Officials expect few problems with electronic voting in Feb. 5 primary
Sunday, Jan 20, 2008

By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau


LITTLE ROCK - Nearly two years after their disappointing debut in the May 2006 primary election, Arkansas' touch-screen voting machines are expected to perform much better in the state's Feb. 5 presidential primary, state and county election officials.

Early voting for the primary begins Jan. 29.

"We've had five statewide elections since the implementation of this new equipment, and every election is better and smoother than the one before," said Natasha Naragon, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Charlie Daniels.

Forty-seven of Arkansas' 75 counties are expected to use touch-screen machines as their primary method of voting in next month's election. The remaining counties will have at least one touch-screen machine at each polling place but will give voters the option of using paper ballots which will be tabulated using optical scanning machines.

The technology was implemented statewide to comply with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which required states to revise their election systems to meet federal directives. The legislation was a response to election problems involving punch-card ballots that occurred in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2008/01/20/News/344945.html

Abbeville workers keep election running smoothly

By JENNIFER COLTON/Index-Journal staff writer
Saturday, January 19, 2008 11:55 PM EST

ABBEVILLE -- More than 2,000 people turned out to cast their ballots for the Republican primary Saturday in Abbeville County.

Nynita Paul, poll manager for Abbeville Precinct 4, said Saturday’s voter turnout was about what workers expected.

With the primary elections in consecutive weeks, four Abbeville precincts combined Saturday, including Abbeville 1 and Abbeville 4 voters visiting the Abbeville Civic Center.

snip

“I saw in the newspaper where the ballot machines we use here had not been approved in other states, but I thought it was very easy to use,” Rusty Carroll said after casting his vote. “I was really impressed that even when you confirm your vote, it still made you confirm it again.”

http://www.indexjournal.com/articles/2008/01/20/news/news03.txt

Note: There were no problems yesterday in Abbeville. Everybody got that?

Kings Co. counts on a difficult vote count
By Susie Pakoua Vang / The Fresno Bee
01/19/08 22:58:36

HANFORD -- Kings County officials are bracing for what might be a long, exhausting presidential primary election night.

Last August, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen restricted the use of touch-screen voting after a security review found that some machines are susceptible to hacking.

Kings -- among the 21 counties most severely affected by Bowen's decision -- will now return to paper ballots. Kings County has about 44,500 registered voters.

"We haven't done this for a while," Ken Baird, Kings County's assessor-clerk-recorder, said about paper ballots. "We're going back to about 20 years."

http://www.fresnobee.com/local/sv/story/335612.html

:nopity:

Democrats concerned
Party hopes machines ready for Saturday
By Robert Morris - The Sun News

As members of an opposing party, Democrats may have a natural tendency to titter at the Republicans' misfortunes, but in this case local Democrats are truly concerned, said Sally Howard, a former chairwoman of the Horry County Democratic Party.

"These are the same voting machines we're supposed to use a week from now," Howard said.

"How that many machines could malfunction is really amazing to me. How do we know that next week, they're going to work next Saturday morning?"

The electronic voting machines have already been a concern to the state Democratic Party, said Joe Werner, its executive director.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/news/local/story/321111.html

Poll workers spend the day helping residents record their votes
Published Sun, Jan 20, 2008 12:00 AM
By JEREMY HSIEH jhsieh@beaufortgazette.com
843-986-5548

They chat about the morning's Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast event, the rain outside, the snow upstate, rising prices and their families.

They talk about all manner of local goings-on, everything, it seems, except what's brought them all together this dreary Saturday: presidential politics.

At the Greene Street Gym on Saturday, eight men and women spent about 13 hours of their weekend making the Republican presidential primary possible for three Beaufort voting precincts.

Trained poll workers are paid $60 a day, less than minimum wage. Clearly, they're not in it for the money.

snip

"You've used one of these electronic voting machines before, right? I thought I've seen you before," Masters said to several familiar faces as he prepped ballots for them, his job for the day.

http://www.beaufortgazette.com/local/story/144314.html

(Why was prepping ballots for touchscreens his job for the day? Any guesses?)

No centralized ballot counting in Ohio this year
By JOHN McCARTHY, Associated Press Writer

COLUMBUS – Changes are planned for Ohio voting procedures in the presidential election this November, but requiring precincts to send ballots to central locations before tallying them won’t be one of them, Ohio’s chief elections officer said Friday.

The boards will have enough on their hands in a statewide switch from touch-screen machines to machines that electronically scan paper ballots cast by voters, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said.

Currently, 57 of the state’s 88 counties use electronic touch screens to record votes, but Brunner said an independent study released last month found the touch-screen systems could be more susceptible to tampering. She wants the switch to the optical-scan systems by November in a state that was crucial in President Bush’s victory over Democrat John Kerry in 2004.

Making a second change this year – from counting votes at each precinct site to tallying several precincts’ ballots at central locations – could put too much of a burden on local elections officials already coping with other changes, Brunner told a statewide meeting of those officials on Thursday.

http://timesreporter.com/index.php?ID=78250&r=5

Voting Prolems (More Horry Co.)
By Octavia Mitchell

Along with the rainy weather, major voting problems in Horry county put a damper on the republican primaries for some voters.

The biggest election problem occurred in Horry county. Nearly half of the county's 400 voting machines did not work at the start of primary voting. Some voters had to use paper ballots, and precincts turned people away because they ran out of paper ballots. Steve Rabe was one of them. He says, "We actually went back and sent some emails to some of the campaigns because I think Horry county's very important, that everybody gets a chance to vote and we weren't sure if we would be able to vote, or if people had tried and especially in this weather. If they would come back and attempt to do so again."

Horry county officials say electronic machines in about twenty precincts were not properly re-set after they were tested. Horry county public information officer Lisa Bourcier says, "Most of the poll managers only have a certain amount of paper ballot for the day, so we were sending a lot of our sheriffs deputies to the locations to deliver more paper ballots for the citizens."

However, it was a different story in the Tri-county area. Berkeley, Dorchester, and Charleston counties report minor or no problems. Dan Martin, chair of Charleston County Board of Elections and Voter Registration says, "We had a couple of polling places that were not open immediatly because of custodians that came in late, but good thing it was a Saturday morning, no one went to work earlier, no one saw it. There were no big problems at all. We were very pleased with the workers and pleased with the voters."

http://www.wcbd.com/midatlantic/cbd/news.apx.-content-articles-CBD-2008-01-19-0015.html

NAACP Holding Voter Registration Drive
Reporting
Gigi Barnett
BALTIMORE (WJZ) ― With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both running for president, it seems the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is becoming a reality.

Gigi Barnett reports, members of the NAACP say that's cause to get more minority voters to the polls.

The live jazz at Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore draws music lovers by the dozen.

It's the type of honey the Baltimore City NAACP needs to turn those music fans into voters.

http://wjz.com/local/naacp.voter.registration.2.633846.html

Note: This editor regrets the demise of paragrahing.

TX: Martin Luther King Jr. Will Be Remembered with Parades & Marches

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - While many Texans are looking forward to a three-day weekend, organizers of Martin Luther King Jr. Day events across the state are hoping people make Monday a "day on" by turning out for parades and marches.

At least six major parades or marches are planned in the state's largest cities, including a 3-mile march in San Antonio on Monday that traditionally draws large crowds.

This year's march will end with a speech by Terrence Roberts, a member of the "Little Rock Nine," the group of black students who integrated Arkansas' Central High School in 1957.

"Our primary focus this year on the march is education," said Gloria Ray, chairwoman of the 2008 MLK Commission. "Dr. Roberts is also a university professor. We want him to come and share with us his experiences."

http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=c1c72167-5af2-4b90-80df-4830f32059fe&rss=68

Computer security expert who testified to NH Legislature, holds State accountable

By Bruce O'Dell

http://www.democracyfornewhampshire.com/node/view/5362

Let me recap: first, Harri Hursti personally explained to New Hampshire officials how their specific election equipment could be manipulated by insiders...in such as way as to change the outcome of an election, while at the same time producing fraudulent poll tapes that confirm the mistabulation...Second, New Hampshire also chose to not hand-count a statistically valid sub-sample of ballots in-precinct on election night - a technique that can detect accidental or deliberate mistabulation of 1% or more, of both hand-counted and optical scan ballots, with greater than 99% confidence....Had New Hampshire simply chosen to count a 10% sample of their ballots in precinct on election night, they could almost certainly have avoided the need to recount all the Republican and more than half of the Democratic primary ballots by hand - a week later, in adversarial circumstances, and under a cloud of suspicion about chain of custody and the legitimacy of secret vote counting.

It's disturbing but hardly surprising to hear that LHS, the vendor that runs New Hampshire elections, took custody of the Diebold optical scan memory cards after the 2008 primary election. In New Hampshire, LHS uses the notorious GEMS central tabulator software to program individual memory cards for each optical scan device that will be counting votes in each voting location.

The memory cards contain ballot definition files that are used by the optical scan software to interpret which marks on the ballot correspond to which candidates on the ballot at that location. The memory card also contains software, but of course, we know that software is perfectly benign... if you believe the vendor, because of course no one is allowed to independently examine those cards before or after the election. Oh, yes, the memory cards also store the "results" of the election.

After the election, each optical scan machine prints out a "poll tape"which reports the vote totals by race and candidate for that machine at that location. The poll tapes are signed by local election officials and couriered to the Secretary of State by NH state troopers.

Computer security expert who testified to NH Legislature, holds State accountable

January 19, 2008

Democracy that Works: Citizen Oversight, Checks and Balances, Hand Counts

By Nancy Tobi

Originally posted at DemocracyForNewHampshire.com

The New Hampshire recount is revealing many significant flaws in ballot security in the Granite State. We wouldn't even be here if not for the state's shameful disposition of vote counting to a private corporation using secret vote counting software for 81% of New Hampshire votes.

This is a dark and shameful and wholly unnecessary period in New Hampshire history. New Hampshire has a long and proud tradition of grassroots democracy. We have laws supporting grassroots democracy. But our state officials and legislators have forgotten that we need to protect this heritage.

But anyone who says New Hampshire doesn't know how to conduct clean elections ought to watch this video of Wilton, NH conducting their hand count election in November 2004. Using teams of four people, Wilton makes sure that every ballot and every vote counted on the tally sheet is observed by at least two sets of independent eyes.

That's citizen oversight. That's checks and balances. That's democracy that works.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_080119_democracy_that_works.htm

January 19, 2008

"...the ballots shall not be counted in secret." -- South Carolina Constitution

An Appeal to John Edwards to Take a Stand for Voting Rights

Michael Collins
"Scoop" Independent News
Washington, DC

Media, election, and judicial reform advocate Mark Adams, JD, MBA of Tampa, Florida discovered something very important in the South Carolina Constitution. It provides for secret voting but bans secret vote counting.

All elections by the people shall be by secret ballot, but the ballots shall not be counted in secret. The right of suffrage, as regulated in this Constitution, shall be protected by laws regulating elections and prohibiting, under adequate penalties, all undue influence from power, bribery, tumult, or improper conduct. South Carolina Constitution, Article II, Section 1

The South Carolina primary occurs Saturday Jan. 19th for Republicans and the following Saturday the 26th for Democrats. With a recount in New Hampshire and the questions about that outcome, we may be looking at a series of questionable results in subsequent primaries. U.S. meddling in elections overseas has blown back to "the homeland." Secret vote counting is one of the key elements driving questions and forms a core criticism of the various state election schemes.

In a Zogby Poll in August 2006, 92% of the respondents said yes to the question: "Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes." In the same poll of over 1000 registered voters, over half expressed little to no confidence in the 2004 elections.

Welcome to 2008.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__080119__22___the_ballots_shal.htm

January 19, 2008

'Daily Voting News' For January 19, 2008

By JGideon

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Voters went to the polls in Horry Co South Carolina this morning in hopes of casting their vote in that state's Republican primary. Unfortunately testing of the voting machines had not been completed by the county and ES&S so poll workers were not able to start the machines. Over 80% of the machines used in the county sat dark until technicians could be sent out to get them cleared and ready for the voters. While county election officials were telling the media that no voters had been turned away, voters were telling the media the truth. Voters were sent away without voting.

Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner has moved back a bit from her plans for November. Gone are her demands for vote centers and gone is her mandate for only central count. Now she will allow counties to use precinct based optical scan to unofficially count the ballots at the precinct level so they can compare those numbers to the official centrally counted tally. There is still no mention of accessible voting for voters with disabilities or federally mandated over vote protection. ...

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jgideon_080119__daily_voting_news__.htm

(So much going on, check behind me!)

:kick:

Thanks, sfexpat2000. :hug: