Guest Blogged By John Gideon

Vote-PAD is a low-tech, voting assistive device that was developed with input from the disabilities community. Because it is inexpensive to purchase and maintain, Vote-PAD is a threat to electronic voting systems. Vote-PAD also makes voting a possibility for a wider range of voters with disabilities than do almost all of the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) or touch-screen voting systems.

Even though some northern California counties had already purchased Vote-PAD for use in their elections as their HAVA compliant voting system for voters with disabilities; the Secretary of State decided that they would have to certify Vote-PAD for use with the optical-scan systems that are in use in each of the user counties.

The state then wrote a test plan that was totally unfair to the voters with disabilities who were expected to test the Vote-PAD. The state did not use a Human Factors Usability Testing Expert, an expert in writing test procedures for disabilities access. Instead they wrote a procedure that would have been better suited to testing a computerized voting system and they appear to have done this without really understanding how voters with disabilities actually use the device.

It is important to note that the state of California has certified for use many voting systems produced by Sequoia, Elections Systems and Software, Diebold, and Hart Intercivic. These devices have been certified by the state as being HAVA compliant and usable by voters with disabilities. Yet, not one of the electronic voting systems has been tested specifically by the disabilities community or even advocates for that community. Instead, a cursory inspection was made by unqualified staff and/or unqualified consultants and they were all accepted for use.

Blogged by Brad on the Road from Minneapolis/St. Paul...

Just a quick personal blog item to touch base from out here on the road. I'm currently in St. Paul for just a few more moments. We drove up Friday (from St. Louis) to tape two episodes of John Forde's Mental Engineering for PBS. Not certain when these episodes will air (some time this fall, I believe) but I'll try to let you know when I find out.

I was honored to sit on a four-person panel with the brilliantly hysterical comedian Tom Rhodes, the delightful and smart media literacy professor Renee Hobbs from Temple University and the lovely and deviously clever actor Desi Doyen (DISCLOSURE: Desi is also my girlfriend)...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Matthew Cardinale has the details:
BREAKING: Donzella James Contesting Primary in Georgia

A few choice excerpts:

And:

Please read the entire article.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Jan BenDor, a Pittsfield Township Michigan deputy clerk, is so concerned about the Diebold machines used in her township that she filed a formal complaint with the Washtenaw County Election Commission on Monday. Ten percent of machines failed in a recent test, she claimed. She also cited changes Diebold made to the machines, including installing modems, without providing written documentation of the work. "I'm a voice in the wilderness," she admitted, saying that some have accused her of paranoia. "I'm more concerned about normaloia than paranoia. That's when you think everything is OK, no matter what." / Washington Co. Arkansas has decided to put ES&S out the county's ballot programming business. They will buy their own equipment and do the job themselves. / Ohio is holding special elections in 27 counties, including Cuyahoga, on Tuesday....

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

A few days ago, on a long and very interesting thread, texaslady wrote:

Thank you WP and Brad for sacrificing time and careers to keep those who want to learn informed.

This was a strange and difficult comment for me to read. I was reluctant to accept the obvious truth behind texaslady's kind words. Ever since I started working with Brad, I have known that he walked away from a successful career in order to do what he does now --- investigating, blogging, keeping VR running, and many other things that we don't usually notice.

So I didn't have any trouble with texaslady's comment as it applies to Brad. But I had a lot of trouble with it as it applies to me. Apparently I've been blocking out the fact that my career is gone, too.

We love what we do, we would do it for free, and we often do so. But that's not always enough.

Now Brad and I are both up against the wall, and that's why we are turning to you --- again --- and asking for help.

If you can make a contribution --- large or small --- please do so! Find the blue box near the top of the right sidebar and follow the instructions from there.

We will appreciate it immensely. And even more important, we will use the money to keep the blog running, to keep the truth flowing, and in my case at least, to keep my little guys eating.

We really couldn't do this without you. But that's ok. Because without you, it wouldn't be worth doing!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Lord, we don't need another mountain,
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb
There are oceans and rivers enough to cross,
Enough to last till the end of time.

A hat tip to Burt Bacharach, and Hal David, and I hereby declare this thread OPEN!

[And a hat tip to "middleworld" for making us check. --99]

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Carteret County, North Carolina is selling their old Unilect Patriot voting machines back to the vendor for $3000 total for over 200 machines. / Tennessee counties faced an overly long ballot of up to 21 screens and a projected large turnout of voters yet many polling places had as few as two DREs resulting in two hour waits to vote. / Next Tuesday is Primary Election Day in Colorado, Connecticut, Michigan and Missouri. / Pima Co. Arizona Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 1 to use Diebold TSx machines for accessibility along with a 100% hand count audit of the vvpat / It looks like Williamson Co., Tennessee may have gotten bit by the ES&S Ballot Programming bug where votes swapped between candidates....

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I've been reading the most incredible editorial, from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
THE LAME VOTE-RIGGING CRIES RETURN

It's also available here and probably elsewhere too.

Here's how it starts:

Well, I for one did see this coming, but I don't think this means we all should have.

You can see right away how "clever" Jay Bookman is! He admits that the result was "surprising" and that the explanation posed by her campaign was a "likely" one. It almost seems he's interested in telling the truth ... but not really.

Even on the cold hard web-page, Bookman's words are clearly dripping with sarcasm. And, in an era when unintended irony is all the rage for supporters of the current corrupt bunch of war-criminals posing as statesmen, I am not shocked to see a true statement such as this one, disguised as ... um ... listen: this is a family blog, for the most part, so let's just continue.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

USA Today has the "latest":
U.S. commander expresses fear about possible civil war in Iraq

Much as I hate to disagree with the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, I have to question this assertion. Waddaya mean: "move toward civil war"? How many civilians have to get blown to bloody smithereens every day to qualify this mess as a civil war? How many death squads have to roam the country simultaneously before we can all just can the sleazy rhetoric and admit that the Iraqi Civil War is here now?

And as the Washington Post reported recently, some of our guys are starting to get the impression that they are simply 'Waiting to Get Blown Up'.

Did you ever wonder why they can't live in unity now even though they could live in relative peace before the Americans came to destroy their country?

Did you ever wonder why American soldiers in Iraq are considering the possibility that maybe the country "needs" a civil war?...

Motel Blogged from the road by Brad...

In addition to the previous article mentioned in Florida, more Voting Machine 'Sleepover' coverage today, this time from Marc Songini in ComputerWorld...

Blogged hastily by Brad from the road...(I think I'm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa...though not actually running for anything)...

From an article in today's Daytona Beach News-Journal...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Things have begun to stink so badly in Alabama that even the New York Times has noticed.

An unsigned editorial titled Strong-Arming The Vote ran on Thursday. And we have some excerpts from it here:

Seems to have been a driving force, indeed!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From Larisa Alexandrovna of RAW STORY:

UN report a 'moral indictment' of US

Anybody surprised? I didn't think so.

I can't quote the whole article but I can encourage you to read it!

Guest Blogged by Steve Huff

Theodore Robert Bundy, one of the most infamous serial killers of the last half-century, was a Republican activist while studying law at various universities in the west and northwest.

John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer who equalled Bundy in viciousness and notoriety, was very active as a Democrat in his Chicago neighborhood --- even had his photo made with former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Politics and sex crime. Sometimes, they go together. Perhaps because both deal with dominance, and power. Bundy and Gacy would simply be two of the most extreme examples.

Of course, both sides of the aisle get hit, but lately, it is Republicans who are taking a consistent battering in this arena.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Chris Zachmeyer, executive director of the Catskill Center For Independence, said Tuesday that voting-machine manufacturers have tried to contribute money to her organization, which has given testimony on which voting machines Otsego County should buy. / The final results of the Connecticut primary, on Aug. 8, may not be reported until Aug. 25 depending on how close the races are. The reason is an agreement between the state and the DoJ over late mailing, or lack of mailing, of ballots to the military voters. / A federal judge agreed with the DoJ and stripped voter registration duties from the Alabama SoS and gave them to the Gov. This was done because the state does not yet have a viable voter registration data base. When will the same happen in other states where there is no viable data base, i.e. Washington, California, Maine, New York? / Tennessee Governor Phil Brednesen when asked about the new voting machines he used for the first time today, "I'll probably hear about that from whoever makes the machines, but I voted this morning. I have to be honest, I didn't care for it that much. The machines were complicated. I'm fairly computer-literate, and there were a couple issues that I found confusing, and I think there's going to be some elderly people who have trouble with it. More than that, I didn't like the lack of privacy. I was just standing there, kind of in the middle of the floor voting at my voting place. At one point, one of the poll workers walked behind me and certainly could see whatever I had on the screen at that point. I really believe in the secret ballot, and people are entitled to that. I think that's very fixable, but something I didn't like about it this morning"....