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 [...]
Read Full Post »
It should come as no surprise that this month’s election activities included claims of voting machine malfunction and related investigation and litigation. In many parts of the U.S., the voting systems used this month are the same flakey systems that in the past have created controversy and legal wrangling. (I promise to define “flakey”.)
But are [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Commentary, Open Source on Aug 17th, 2010
A couple of weeks ago I presented at OSCON and during the conference had an opportunity to sit down with Mac Slocum, Managing Editor for the O’Reilly Radar. We had about a half an hour conversation, for which we covered ~20 minutes of it on camera. You can find it here if you want to [...]
Read Full Post »
(Part 2 of 2: What’s My Ballot?)
Today, I’m continuing on from a recent post, which compared my in-person voting experience with one method of Internet-based voting: return of marked ballots by fax or email. Next up is a similar comparison with another form of Internet-based voting: Internet voting from home using a PC’s Web browser.
Let’s [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
[Today's guest post is from election technology expert Doug Jones, who is now revealed as also being an encyclopedia of U.S. elections history. Doug's remarks below were in a discussion about how to effectively use post-election ballot-count audits as a means to gain trust in the correct operation of voting machines -- particularly timely, given [...]
Read Full Post »
Tomorrow night starting at 4:30PM the San Francisco Voting Systems Task Force is holding a Public Hearing to intake testimony and public comment on its draft prospective recommendations topics. [Disclosure: I am a member of this Task Force, appointed by the S.F. City & County Board of Supervisors.]
We encourage everyone who can make it to [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Uncategorized on Feb 3rd, 2010
Gregory Miller of the OSDV Foundation will be provide testimony during State of California Hearings on Future of Elections Systems next Monday, February 8th.
CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen requested elections and voting systems experts from around the country to attend and testify, and answer questions about the current election administration landscape and how California [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Open Source on Jan 3rd, 2010
I came across an interesting article in Network World, “Open Source: How e-voting should be done”, by Paul Venezia of InfoWorld. It’s a good survey and review of some of the arguments in favor of Open Source in the management, conducting and tallying of elections, so I recommend reading it.
A couple of thoughts. Paul says:
“Another [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in Voting System Technology on Dec 9th, 2009
Thanks to erstwhile election texpert Dan Wallach for bring attention to the burglary of an early voting center in Houston, and to the Houston Chronicle’s Chris Moran for coverage of the story including good quotes from Dan! But I have to add that in addition to theft of computers containing voter records, there were also [...]
Read Full Post »
