For those of you who have been following the recount saga in Wisconsin, here is a bit of news, and a reflection on that.
So, the news from a couple of days ago (I’m just catching up) is that the process of re-counting is complete, but the resolution of that close election may [...]

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More tabulator troubles! In addition to the continuing saga in New York with the tabulator troubles I wrote about earlier, now there is another tabulator-related situation in Colorado. The news report from Saguache County CO is about:
a Nov. 5 “retabulation” of votes cast in the Nov. 2 election Friday by Myers and staff, with [...]

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Behind the election news in Buffalo, NY, there is a cautionary tale about voting system complexity and confidence. The story is about a very close race for the state Senate’s 60th district. One news article includes a reference to “software problems with the new electronic voting machines in Erie County.”
The fundamental issue here is [...]

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Here is some interesting news from Spokane WA, where ballot counting has been seriously delayed because election officials are hand copying tens of thousands of ballots. It’s an interesting lesson in how vote-by-mail (Spokane is an all-VBM county in WA) creates higher operational requirements for accountability, transparency, and election integrity.
Some readers may not be familiar [...]

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I just finished voting in CA’s primary — whew! 47 contests, 76 candidates total, and for on-paper voters, 4 sheets! But today, instead of hand-marking a ballot (my preference explained in an earlier posting), I used a DRE. This voting machine is part of the voting system that San Mateo County purchased from Hart Systems, [...]

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I have to admit, I like paper ballots. But it wasn’t always that way. As a small child, I remember going into the voting booth with a parent, and watching them use those fine old lever machines. They were cool. The curtain made it seem like something both secret and important was happening. The little [...]

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I was very encouraged by recent election news from Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, reported in the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper: Reason for election machine glitch found, officials expect things to be OK for the primary. At first blush, it might seem like bad news:
All told, 89 of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections‘  1,200 machines powered [...]

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I wrote before that this month’s re-count activity in Pennsylvania was notable because of the variety of voting methods used there, and hence the variety of recounting methods needed. In contrast to the Lackawanna county that I mentioned specifically, there are many counties in PA that use completely paperless DRE voting machines. In these cases, [...]

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Pennsylvania has ordered a statewide recount of the race for Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge – a recount that is similar in scope and significance as the Minnesota Franken/Coleman recount (though one hopes less acrimonious), as the result will decide who will be making durable rulings in law for the whole state.
It’s an interesting story, for [...]

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I’m hearing lots of fascinating stuff at the NIST Common Data Format Workshop, but a couple of items really struck me this morning: the contrast between a presentation by a voting system vendor, and a developer of an open source balloting device prototype. Neither of them explicitly asked a very good question about central or [...]

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