Category: National

TalkNationRadio.org Part 3 of 4 <read>

It’s not in LHS’s interest to have their machines viewed as failure prone and I don’t think that they should be in the pipeline between the moderator and the registrar on the one hand and the SOS on the other. So I think the whole flow of information that has been set up is wrong. — Prof. Michael Fisher, TrueVoteCT

Another “Good News” Press Release (press release)
(see other “Good News”)

“The initial recount results confirm that the optical scan machines performed well and that every vote was recorded accurately,” said Bysiewicz. “…Together, these post election procedures should send a strong and simple message to voters – your vote will be counted, we’ll make sure of it.” – Secretary of the State, Susan Bysiewicz, Press Release

When one truck from one trucking company goes down Avon Mountain and does not crash once, it is proof that Avon Mountain and can work as a truck route, but not close to proof that Avon Mountain is generally safe for every truck and driver, almost every time. At CTVotersCount we agree that the Diebold AccuVote-OS can count elections accurately. The fact is that no electronic voting machine can be proven reliable, the Diebold AccuVote-OS is far from secure, the Diebold AccuVote has been proven to be easily compromised, and Connecticut adds to that vulnerability by outsourcing the coding of each election to our vendor, LHS. What we do claim is that elections can be incorrectly decided electronically by error or fraud. The only solution we support is sufficient random audits of each race and question.

What’s the difference: Alderman or Selectman?

Shelton Weekly: Candidates question registrar’s position

A letter drafted by two candidates for city aldermen was sent to the secretary of state’s office questioning incumbent Alderman John “Jack” Finn’s dual roles as registrar of voters and his candidacy for alderman…

Continue reading “CT News Roundup”

Doubts Cast On Voting Machines. Westport News – An excellent summary of the concerns with the AccuVote-OS in Connecticut.

Cromwell Vote To Be Audited. Middletown Press – “Town officials learned of the audit in a telephone call from a reporter Thursday night.” I wonder what the official plans are to notify registrars that their towns have been chosen and the municipal clerks who will need to randomly select offices for audits?

N.J. To Miss Voting Deadline, Cherry Hill Courier Post – Optical Scan will not be certified to meet Jan 1 deadline: “The New Jersey Institute of Technology conducted its first round of testing this past summer on three of the machines. Although the machines received a ‘good bill of health,’ Milgram said the results did not meet the criteria the office set in the spring.” More details in the NY Times and the blog from Larry Norden of the Brennan Center.

Dori Smith aired the second segment of a four part series on voting integrity, yesterday at 5:00 PM on WHUS. Once again, I highly recommend listening to the audio and reading the transcript while also marking your calendar for next week. Also review segment one.

This segment has further interviews with John Silvestro, President of LHS, our voting machine vendor and Professor Michael Fisher of Yale University and President of TrueVoteCT.

Mr. Silvestro suggests that the problem of ignored or violated procedures, like the one in the 2nd District in November, 2006, can be handled by auditing fully the machines involved:

Then automatically in my mind that precinct should come into the post election audit OK? And that you know although you are going to select 10% that one precinct may end up being, and it should, end up being one of the automatic entries into that 10% post election audit. And that’s the beauty of post election audits is that you can take situations that arise on election day and say OK. We want to do 10% of 793 with whatever that comes to, 79 or let’s call it 80 precincts. But we had problems in precinct you know A, B, C and D or E and F and whatever. Eight precincts? Those eight are already included and the other 72 are going to be randomly withdrawn. And that’s how I believe you would do this. – John Silvestro

I agree that Mr. Silvestro has a basically good idea, yet I also have three concerns:

Continue reading “Voting Vendor and Yale Professor – Suggest Changes To Election Procedures”