Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org
‘Hey! Let’s take all of our polling sites and consolidate them into a few large, super poll sites. Then we have thousands of voters vote in the same location on the same machines. We will save all kinds of money.’ That’s Denver Colorado and everything worked great until the machines began to fail and the process to get voters in and out slowed to a crawl. Result: Lines 4 blocks long. Day After Result: “Denver Auditor Dennis Gallagher today asked that Denver’s two elected voting commissioners resign and that the mayor fire Clerk and Recorder Wayne Vaden as well as the entire senior staff of the election commission.” / Over 18,000 under votes were recorded in the FL-13 CD. In a race that has less than 500 votes difference. Unfortunately most of the votes were cast on paperless ES&S voting machines. The software needs to be removed from the machines and closely inspected by experts. This race will not be decided for awhile….
NAtional: FBI probing reports of dirty tricks as poll workers struggle with machine problems LINK
NAtional: Lawmakers among those snagged by voting problems LINK
NAtional: Blogs Take Lead in Reporting Polling Problems, With Supporting Evidence on YouTube LINK
NAtional: Glitches made voting tough for some LINK
NAtional: Problems Lead 8 States to Extend Some Voting Hours LINK
NAtional: ‘Vote flipping’ emerges as continuing problem in e-voting LINK
NAtional: FBI probing complaints in 2 states
Intimidating calls, misleading ballots among ‘dirty tricks’ reported. LINK
AR: Benton County – Printers Jam Some Voting Machines in Benton County LINK
AR: Clark County – Wieman: software ‘not functioning as it should’ LINK
CA: Polling Glitches Plague Voters Throughout California LINK
CA: Absentee ballots flood offices LINK
CA: Bay Area – Snafus, irregularities at Bay Area polling stations LINK
CA: Contra Costa County – Some East Bay voters might have used wrong ballots LINK
CA: San Bernardino County – Broken machines frustrate Barstow area voters LINK
CA: San Diego County – Polls Close; Voting Problems Reported LINK
CA: San Diego County – Balky machines frustrated some county voters LINK
CA: San Mateo County – Ballot scanners jam at Bay Area polling places LINK
CO: Denver – Voting computers overwhelmed early, late LINK
CO: Denver – Voters face long wait as polls close LINK
CO: Denver – Voters wait in the dark for a chance to vote in Denver, suburbs LINK
CO: Denver – Common Cause reports e-voting snafus nationwide
Coast-to-coast problems involve flipped votes, machine failures LINK
CO: Denver – Inquiry into vote glitches LINK
CO: Douglas County – Shortage of voting machines blamed for Douglas County delays LINK
FL: Sarasota County – Dozens of voters complain about glitch LINK
FL: Sarasota County – Democrat disputes Republican win of Harris’ seat; recount likely LINK
FL: Sarasota County – Jennings lawyer expects ‘unprecedented’ challenges in recount LINK
FL: Sarasota County – Dent planning for recount; Jennings exploring legal avenues LINK
FL: Sarasota County – Sarasota congressional race heads to recount LINK
IA: Voting snags are resolved quickly, Iowans report LINK
IL: Cook County has another rocky day at polls LINK
IL: Cook County – Stroger leads in Cook board president race LINK
IL: Kane County – Voting problems plague Kane LINK
IN: Machine problems, ballot probe mar voting in Indiana counties LINK
IN: Delaware County – County Leaders Must Decide on Provisional Ballots LINK
IN: Marion County – County searches for misplaced voting machine memory cards LINK
MD: TrueVoteMD Reports Problems on Election Day LINK
MI: Michigan GOP Sues Democrats Over Poll Watchers LINK
MO: Some voting problems reported in Missouri LINK
MO: St. Louis County fails to avoid ballot, voting machine problems LINK
MT: Software flub leads to county recount
Problems delay results elsewhere in the state LINK
NJ: New Jersey Voters Have Trouble At The Polls LINK
NM: County results await hand count LINK
OH: Blackwell orders election results under wraps until 9 p.m. LINK
OH: Cuyahoga County – Ohio embarrassed by Cuyahoga again LINK
OH: Delaware County ballots mistakenly include campaign slogan LINK
PA: GOP official reports glitches LINK
PA: Lancaster and Lebanon Counties – 2 Pa. counties extend voting due to machine glitches LINK
PA: Lancaster County – Human error blamed for eScan problems LINK
PA: Montgomery County – Some electronic voting machines not ‘up to date’ LINK
PA: Westmoreland County – E-voting not easy in Westmoreland County LINK
TN: Knox County – Technical glitch stalls count on more than 2,500 votes LINK
TX: Glitch forces manual tabulation for U.S. House race LINK
TX: Human error to blame for wrong vote tally in south Texas LINK
TX: Programming error miscounts votes in south Texas LINK
TX: East Texas county uses blank paper after ballots run out LINK
VA: ELECTION TROUBLES AND TURNOUT: Voter fraud complaints escalate
In Maymont area, confusion the result of mistake by Democrats LINK
VA: Virginia Senate Recount — Frequently Asked Questions LINK
**”Daily Voting News” is meant as a comprehensive listing of reports each day concerning issues related to election and voting news around the country regardless of quality or political slant. Therefore, items listed in “Daily Voting News” may not reflect the opinions of VotersUnite.Org or BradBlog.Com**
John,..
Thanks for hunting this stuff down and keeping us posted. Someone mentioned yesterday,.. your like a busy little beaver toiling away in the background,.. but your one who receives few of the accolades that you deserve for your hard work.
John, or anyone –
Can someone explain the UNDERVOTE issue to me? Please? I need to get the information to an election supervisor from my precinct.
We use the Diebold AccuVote Touchscreen voting machines.
Thanks!
There’s something going on in OH-02, where Mean Jean Schmidt is 2,323 votes ahead in the House race. The Democrat, Dr. Victoria Wulsin, has not conceded and the race has not been declared. OH-02 includes Warren County – yes, that Warren County:
11/10/2004 Warren County officials, facing scrutiny of their decision to lock down the administration building on election night, say they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a “10” on a scale of 1 to 10.
The information, which Commissioner Pat South said was previously deemed confidential, is coming out a week after the public was barred from viewing the Warren County vote count. The Ohio Secretary of State’s office doesn’t know of any other county in the state to impose such a restriction.
County officials initially said they feared that having reporters and photographers present could interfere with the ballot counting. They subsequently cited homeland security concerns.
Now, they say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a “10” on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.
This is what they’re up to today:
Warren delay raises eyebrows”
11/08/2006 The way Warren County is handling some of its absentee ballots is not unheard of, but is raising some eyebrows.
The county board of elections is waiting until Nov. 21 to count 2,000 to 3,000 absentee ballots.
Board Director Susan Johnson said it is standard procedure to hold off on counting the ballots because they were voted Friday or Saturday or were received at the board office by mail Monday or Tuesday. Ballots received that close to Election Day typically aren’t counted right away because there is no way to verify that the voters didn’t also vote at the polls, she said.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s [yep – Ken Blackwell] office said today that the procedure is not unheard of.
“I’ve heard of other boards doing what you’re describing and I’d have to check with our legal council to find out if that is in compliance with state regulations,” said spokesman James Lee. “It very well may be.”
But elections lawyer Cliff Arnebeck said waiting that long to count those absentee votes could be trouble.
“I don’t think that is reasonable,” he said. “Our concern is if you create that kind of delay you’re inviting potential manipulation. In absentee ballots, those are supposed to be counted the same time (as regular ballots.) A day would be reasonable to count the rest of them. But the idea of counting them on the same scale as provisional ballots is problematic.”
Provisional ballots ““ in which the person’s vote is questionable because of issues like arriving at the wrong polling place ““ do not have to be counted until Nov. 21.
Johnson said the county also received 1,850 provisional ballots.
The delay leaves several issues with margins fewer than 3,000 votes in limbo, including the Kings school levy which failed by 284 votes.
Reported votes for all of Warren Co’s 84 precints:
Schmidt – 16,102
Wulsin – 11,246
And then there’s this:
Warren’s absentee count problematic
11/08/2006 Warren County officials had difficulty scanning in absentee and mailed-in ballots, Warren County Administrator David Gully said. Warren County received about 10,000 mail-in ballots this year, which are “way more” than past elections, Gully said. The scanning machines had trouble reading ballots that were crumpled or wrinkled in the mail-in process, Gully said. Although machines are designed to be fed several hundred ballots at a time, election workers here have to feed them individually, Gully said. In some cases, election workers transcribed votes to fresh ballots when individual ballots were not scanning correctly. Gully did not know how many had to be transcribed. Two people scanned ballots into machines while two women were handed ballots to be transcribed. Barbara Sizemore, Warren County Board of Elections board member, said there is one Republican and one Democrat. One person calls the votes aloud, the other marks it. Sizemore said they were being monitored.
Yup – Warren County still STINKS.
Thanks for the articles, Herekitty.
Kira-
PeterB discusses the undervote in the 13th Florida Congressional district when comparing the nearly 88,000 that voted for governor in a county in that district vs. the 76,500 that voted in the congressional race in that same county. That would be an undervote of about 11,500 in that county alone. Hope that helps if you are still perplexed.
Thanks Steve!
Actually I have been worried since reading something months ago regarding Diebold & undervotes. I was afraid if I didn’t mark a vote for every race (i.e. in the case of a Repub. candidate running unopposed I was going to not vote for him/her in a statement of my disgust with the current admin) my entire ballot would be “tossed.” Hehe – of course this is all kinda silly to worry about knowing what WE know. But … I brought it up with an Election Supervisor at my district and she nearly had a fit. So I promised I would get the answer and let her know what I found out.
In the meantime I did locate something that might be what confused me at the time … I was probably rushing & reading too much at once 🙂 as usual.
New Chads
So – In my haste I think I translated that to mean my vote wouldn’t register if it was an undervote.
What I think it means is that Diebold redefined the term UNDERVOTE. They deviated from the standard term in order to conceal their true undervote rate so they can say their undervote is LOW — a marketing scheme.
If you’re interested you can read more about that here
(look for entry #3)
So – does that answer my question?
John,
How do we get summaries of reported voting irregularities for our states FAST? Our TN media is (finally) all over the story of voting problems here, but I can’t seem to be able to get any info on whether these problems have been reported to any of the toll-free hotlines set up for this purpose. Your help, as always, would be appreiciated. Bernie Ellis
Bernie,
You can send them to the VotersUnite data bank of problems taken from the media. We are still wading through articles and getting data posted.
I’ve also sent your request to the EIRS and other groups who fielded calls to help them to expedite getting their reports so they can be used by the public.
(NOTE: Sent by email also)
Did Ohio’s Ken Blackwell share real-time election results with the RNC/KKKarl Rove,.. and this enabled them to determine how much the election result had to be tampered/manipulated/rigged during 2004 election to return GWB to the White House ?
Click link to article
Many thanks to John Gideon and all the others who will do their best to reconstruct what actually happened in 2006! I’m sure the Democrats won by much wider margins then we’re told!