3/31. Aspen ballot image kerfuffle. Microvote vs Indiana. Dont eat your ballot

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Aspen ballot image kerfuffle. Microvote vs Indiana. Dont eat your ballot.

March 31 2010.

Aspens ballot images are secret depending on who asks for them. Marilyn Marks sued Aspen CO for public release of ballot images from Aspen's May 2009 election and was told the images were "secret". In turn the city sued Marks for frivolous litigation. There is a double standard here: "The judge, newspapers, Internet, GrassRoots and citizens have pictures of ballots the judge says must be preserved and locked in old ballot boxes...TrueBallot claimed having a disk marked 'Aspen image files' in late January..."~ Andy Lang, Jackson, Miss...“Mail-ballot elections cannot match the security of voting on paper in a polling place on Election Day,” ~ Margit Johansson of Coloradoans for Voting Integrity - about Bolder Co decision to have mail only primary...Open Election Data Project in the UK...Sarnia Ontario CA City Council considers adopting internet voting while technicians warn against it....Problems with Philippines brand new voting machines....Venezuelan military to voters: Don't eat your ballot...

...All this and more in today's voting news below.

AK: State Affairs - Division of Elections Overview
http://bit.ly/9sunQb

AL: Baldwin County election officials report few problems*
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/03/baldwin_county_election_offici.html
"but we also had to deal with an error by the state registrar that put a large number of people across the state on the inactive voter list, including many in Baldwin County."
...
County officials said several people in the Fish River area mistakenly went to the Marlow Volunteer Fire Department to vote after a county notice...

CO: We have a problem
http://bit.ly/9Jucm5
Is The Aspen Times in violation of the court's order that ballot images be locked away as city “secrets?” I found this ballot image from the May election in your online version —

CO: Commissioners: August primaries will be mail-ballot only
http://longmontledger.com/news/commissioners-august-primaries-will-be-mail-ballot-only/
...“Anyone who wants to vote by mail can; they have that choice,” said Yvonne Iden, of Longmont. “I don’t want to be forced to vote by mail.”

IA: Auditors eye precinct alternative
http://bit.ly/97pyS6
Voting centers are allowed under state law, but only in city and school elections. Fitzgerald and other county auditors want to lobby state lawmakers to make the voting center system available for primary and general elections, as well.

IN: MICROVOTE GENERAL CORPORATION v. INDIANA ELECTION COMMISSION
No. 49A02-0910-CV-975. Court of Appeals of Indiana. March 29, 2010.
http://www.leagle.com/unsecure/page.htm?shortname=ininco20100329174

LA: Voting machine inspection confirms Donald Villere's four-vote win in Mandeville mayor's race
http://bit.ly/cbZvRT (the machines are direct record machines)

ME: Clerk Accused Of Violating Secret Ballot (absentee ballot)
http://wbztv.com/wireapnewsme/Town.clerk.accused.2.1603484.html
...
Bowdoinham Town Clerk Pamela Ross is accused of unfolding the ballots when she removed them from envelopes, allowing her to see how individual voted.

MI: New Albany man faces perjury charges
http://bit.ly/9AszcB A Benton County grand jury has indicted a 45-year-old New Albany man on perjury charges involving a voter fraud case, announced Attorney General Jim Hood today

MN: Give legislators credit for increasing election integrity
http://bit.ly/bGEymR ...Moreover, after the experience in the Senate recount, stakeholders from across the political spectrum agreed that recounts should include only ballots counted on Election Day. The 2008 Senate recount was flawed because...

OH: ACORN Is Gone, but the Struggle Remains
http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-20274-acorn-is-gone-but-the-struggle-remains.html

OH: Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorializes Against Ohio Secretary of State’s Last Minute Effort to Require Party Loyalty Oaths
http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/03/31/cleveland-plain-dealer-editorializes-against-ohio-secretary-of-states-last-minute-effort-to-require-party-loyalty-oaths/

PA: Pa. judge charged with forging petition signatures
http://www.ydr.com/ci_14779561
MEDIA, Pa.—A suburban Philadelphia district justice is facing charges for allegedly forging 64 signatures on nominating petitions filed for last year's election

SC: Clemson professor’s voting system to be used in engineer society’s election
http://www.clemson.edu/media-relations/article.php?article_id=2635
The machine allows people to vote by touch or voice. The team conducted studies with blind and deaf people as well as senior citizens and concluded Prime III is the world’s most-accessible voting technology.
...
The society will use Prime III for its national elections this week in Toronto, Canada.

TX: OUR OPINION: All-electronic voting not likely anytime soon
http://bit.ly/a9Z8B4
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Tom Green County commissioners last week held a discussion about doing away with paper ballots that for many years is likely to be only theoretical

TX: Dallas judge, commissioner head to Austin for alleged voter fraud case
http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/Dallas-County-Commissioners-to-Meet-with-the-AG-89608592.html

VT: Instant Runoff Voting To Be A Thing Of Past
http://www.wptz.com/news/23005278/detail.html
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The Vermont House of Representatives gave final approval Tuesday to making Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, history.

Internet Voting Watch

Alabama: Voter bill stuck in committee (in Sen Rules Committee)
http://www.clantonadvertiser.com/news/2010/mar/30/voter-bill-stuck-committee/
The most widely publicized of the bills would allow members of the military to vote online while overseas...

Canada: Andy Wolff Takes Aim at Electronic Voting
http://bit.ly/bidxki THUNDER BAY...The meeting will be held on April 1st at 7:00PM ..."The History of Election Fraud and Overall Integrity of Democracy"
...
Wolfe contends that electronic voting and electronic voting systems do not allow for proper recounts or election audits...

Canada: Sarnia City Council investigate possibility of Internet Voting (short video Sarnia Ontario) http://www.tvcogeco.com/sarnia/gallerie/videos/2254-march-videos/16434-internet-voting

UK: Electoral Commission Chair re-opens the e-voting question
http://www.jasonkitcat.com/2010/03/electoral-commission-chair-reopens-evoting-question/
It’s extremely disappointing to hear the Chair of the Electoral Commission, of all people, promoting this kind of view. These kind of facile arguments were being made by Labour ministers 3-4 years ago.

National

EAC public meeting is April 8, 2010
http://www.eac.gov/blog-postings/eac-public-meeting-is-april-8-2010

International

Indonesia: Constitutional Court Clears Way for Electronic Voting
http://bit.ly/boKR2D

Philippines: ‘Wrong’ ink used in printing ballots’ UV security markings
http://www.gmanews.tv/story/187441/wrong-ink-prompts-use-of-uv-lamps-to-verify-ballots This has forced the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to use handheld UV lamps to verify ballots’ authenticity, thereby introducing another process in the automated polls that may confuse voters further.
...
Both the Comelec and Smartmatic failed to inform the advisory council when they discovered the problem last January, Casiple added.

Philippines: Hitch in ballot reader forces lease of portable verifiers
http://www.malaya.com.ph/03312010/news7.html
THE Commission on Elections was forced to do away with the ultraviolet (UV) reader feature of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and bid out a supply contract for some 76,000 portable UV readers after the UV marking on officials ballots were found to lack the required density.

Philippines confident in looming e-elections
http://www.futuregov.net/articles/2010/mar/29/Philippines-election-jitters/
A recent poll found that half of Filipino voters do not know how the voting machines work, and half expect people to take to the streets if the elections fail in under two months’ time

Venezuelan military to voters: Don't eat your ballot
http://bit.ly/bxcFR8 Rebellious voters could go to jail if they protest leftist President Hugo Chavez by munching on paper voting machine receipts in a referendum on Sunday on allowing him to run for re-election.

UK: OPEN ELECTION DATA A new project to help local government open up their election results http://openelectiondata.org/
...This project offers an opportunity to: Substantially enhance public access to local-election-result data in a very flexible form through an easy technical fix

Governments Large and Small Use Facebook to Share Election Information
http://bit.ly/adtoRn

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[OnTheOtherHand]

1. wow, that Kent Kaiser (MN) op-ed is freaky

Readers might recall there was great consternation over the way vote totals changed in the aftermath of the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota — almost entirely in Al Franken’s favor. Some changes in the numbers are perfectly normal, as election officials correct math and transcription errors. Yet, after the 2008 election, the numbers seemed to change wildly compared to previous statewide elections.

Meanwhile, in real life, the vote totals hardly changed at all -- and in the few places where Franken picked up more than a handful of votes, it's really pretty obvious that he deserved them.

And so on. Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and Common Cause Minnesota wrote a great response to the report on which Kaiser's op-ed is based. It can be found here.