Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

The voter ID debate continues in Texas. Tennessee lawmakers are attempting to resurrect an old bill that would require a photo ID to vote and proof of citizenship to register, and would allow deployed troops to fax or e-mail their absentee ballots. ...

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Government-issued photo ID requirements for voters have passed in some states and are being debated in several others (SC, TX, and WI in today’s articles). The debate centers on ensuring that only eligible voters can vote (pro), vs. concerns about disenfranchising eligible voters (con). But today’s two featured articles, when taken together, suggest that other important questions need to be asked. The first article tells of the breach of the UC Berkley computers and the possible loss of identity information for 16,000 students and alumni. The second tells of a proposal in the Philippine legislature to require fingerprint data (AFIX biometric information) for every voter to be stored in the voter registration database.

Is it far-fetched to speculate whether voter biometrics is the logical outcome of a drive for "strict voter ID"?

Other unasked questions in the U.S. Voter-ID debate are: What kind of identity information is or will be collected and stored as part of the election process? For how long? Under what safe guards? With the move to create centralized, computerized government-issued identities for people and require that identity be presented in order to vote, access to that identity and impersonating that identity are only going to grow problematic over time....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

If you find yourself skimming through DVN and skipping articles that don’t sound relevant or interesting, you’re doing exactly what I did. But now that I’m reading almost every one while reviewing their suitability for inclusion, it’s become clear that headlines can be deceiving.

And not necessarily deceiving in the normal sense of being misleading or wrong. Specifically, in the context of DVN, some headlines have little probative value to assist readers in predicting their interest in the full story. We are therefore exploring different ways to better communicate the content, some of which you may have noticed (i.e., supplementary parenthetical key words or description). Alternatively we’re trying to draw attention to significant content in this introductory paragraph, such as e-voting being eliminated in Ireland.

But neither of those seems appropriate for the first story below on e-voting, so we now have option three: suggesting you open the link and take a look....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Riverside County, California public servants want to introduce a ballot issue to ask voters their opinion of electronic voting. But the watchdog group Save R Votes thinks it’s a waste of money. “"We don't doubt that people like electronic voting, but it is not safe, transparent or auditable," says Tom Courbat, the group’s founder.

Complaints from Georgia about the new citizenship requirement for voter registration are rebutted by Secretary of State Karen Handel, who argues that the law is necessary to prevent voter fraud. She claims discrimination by the federal government, arguing that it’s not fair that Ohio’s Secretary of State Jennifer Bruner can take actions favorable to her party without federal oversight, but Handel can’t do the same in Georgia. The debate about voter ID continues in Texas and South Carolina with some machine problems from Mississippi, Michigan, and Ohio....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Under the current Voting Rights Act, U.S. Department of Justice approval will be needed to implement a newly passed Georgia law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, a law which "opponents say would keep the poor, elderly and minorities away from the ballot box." Will a Supreme Court decision on the VRA nullify or uphold this law? The anticipated "stricter" Texas Voter ID law appears to be in progress....

Congratulations to the Florida activists who succeeded in killing a really bad bill! The debate on the Voting Rights Act and photo ID continues.

Happy Cinco de Mayo....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

The recent international flavor of the Daily Voting News continues today. India also wrestles with questions of voter ID and accessibility for people with disabilities. In the Philippines, the bidding to select a single vendor for the Election Automation Process, touted to make future Philippine elections “fraud-proof”, began today.

Rest assured not everything is international news; there are domestic election stories as well....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn

Mixed emotions accompanied the release of the first post-Gideon DVN - happiness to see John's important work taking some tentative new steps, sadness that he isn't here to do it. There also comes a profound realization of how much more went into the process than we ever appreciated. It feels like trying cook Grandma's signature dish based on the partial list of ingredients in collective memory. Thus, we're thankful for your encouragement and for those who surreptitiously spit their food into a napkin and convincingly said they were full but it was great.

Today's issue of the Daily Voting News contains some international flavor with thoughts on the Indian elections.

Domestically, the debate over photo ID continues in Texas and Mississippi as does the national debate on the Voting Rights Act....

Co-Editors: Dave Klein and John Washburn.

We are thankful for the opportunity to honor the work of John Gideon by continuing the Daily Voting News. We appreciate the encouragement expressed and patience during this transition under trying times. Because multiple days are covered in this issue of the DVN, news items within a given state are in chronological order; the date of publication appears in headline of the article for this issue only.

Voter participation issues (such as photo ID and caging) have been much in the news....

John Gideon wanted the stewards of democracy to have a summary of each day’s news concerning a broad range of issues regarding the integrity of elections in the U.S. and elsewhere, so he created and published the free newsletter, the ‘Daily Voting News’ [DVN].

Despite our recent loss of John, the value and need for DVN – his creation – remains unchanged. A working group has been established to determine the best way to continue this service. More information about the effort and opportunities for you to contribute to DVN will be coming.

Until a stable, workable plan is implemented, a few us will produce DVN using John's example as a guide. The first order of business is to produce a DVN covering the news of this latest week. Please bear with us as we assemble both the latest news and the new DVN team at VotersUnite.Org.

I’d like to thank John Washburn and Dave Klein for stepping in quickly to help re-instate DVN in John’s absence.

You can assist by sending suggestions and election-news stories to dvn-tips@VotersUnite.Org.

I'm sure that most, if not all, of you have heard of our loss of John Gideon. I'm also sure that you appreciated his faithfulness in providing you with up-to-the-day information about election issues.

He appreciated your faithfulness, too. Your work and personal engagement with him was a great inspiration to him and provided tremendous motivation for him to continue his work. Some of you expressed your gratitude to him in personal emails, which never failed to delight him. All of you expressed your appreciation by remaining subscribed to Daily Voting News. I don't say this lightly. He experienced your continuing subscriptions as appreciation for his work.

To state the obvious, John cannot be replaced. But DVN, John's personal brainchild and invaluable contribution to VotersUnite.Org, has become an essential resource in the election integrity community and beyond. I want to reassure you that I am working with other colleagues of John to figure out how VotersUnite can continue a form of DVN even in John's absence.
Hopefully, it will not be long.

Many tributes to John and his work have been posted on many sites. I am including links to three. Sharing our memories of John and even our sorrow in losing his active presence is one way to draw strength from this untimely loss.

• VotersUnite.Org: Celebrating the Life Of John Gideon
  http://www.votersunite.org/info/johngideon.asp
• Bradblog: In Memoriam: John Gideon, 1947-2009. Father, grandfather, husband, veteran, patriot, co-director of VotersUnite.Org, democracy advocate, blogger, friend ...
  http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7102
• NCVoters: Tributes to John Gideon, RIP National Election Integrity Hero (A collection of tributes from around the web.) http://ncvoters.blogspot...gideon-rip-national.html

Ellen Theisen
Director
www.VotersUnite.Org

It appears that there may be some good news coming from Florida. The State House Majority Leader has said that the regressive voter suppression bill will be totally rewritten to remove almost all of the provisions that had any controversy.

This change in tone is the result a lot of hard work on the part of advocacy groups. Clearly they made it so uncomfortable for the majority party that the party had no choice but to back-off of their really bad bill. Congratulations on a great job go to all of the advocacy groups and advocates who worked long hours to kill this bill. Of course we now have to see what the changed bill will look like. Fingers crossed here....

Sequoia may have a bit of a legal problem in Washington DC to go with their legal problems in New Jersey. Sequoia was served with a subpoena, last September, to provide certain information, including their source code, to a special investigative committee. It appears that Sequoia has chosen to ignore the subpoena and committee chairwoman Mary Cheh is turning to the Superior Court to force compliance via a motion to compel which will be filed tomorrow. Typically Sequoia’s spokeswoman will post a blog on their website that attacks the character of those who stand against the company. She did this in the case of one New Jersey court witness. This should be interesting as it plays out....

The state of Pennsylvania has announced that they have purged over 200,000 voters from their voter rolls since last November’s election. While we understand that up-to-date voter rolls are important, we also know from past purges that there are mistakes made in the process. It is now important that every voter in Pennsylvania check to ensure they were not purged incorrectly. Don’t wait until it is too late.

The pressure against suppressive voting legislation in Florida is not letting up. Election Integrity groups, Civil Rights organizations, the media, county election officials and maybe even the Governor have all come out against the legislation we have spoken about in this space over the past couple of days. Let’s all hope that the raised voices are heard....

In today’s news we have one of the many articles reporting that Norm Coleman has filed an appeal of his court loss with the Minnesota state Supreme Court. Will this be the final step before the state finally has a second Senator?

We’ve also got a lot more on the voter suppression bill before the Florida legislature. The governor has now said he is not happy with the bill. He wouldn’t use the “V” word but he came awful close....