By John Gideon on 4/4/2008, 8:00pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Election officials in Pima Co., Arizona, have been on the wrong side of issues quite a bit lately. Because of this it is surprising that they may ask the Secretary of State to change the “Election Procedures Manual” to disallow tabulation of votes before election day, increase the size of hand-counted audits, disallow the use of modems to transmit results, improve ballot-verification procedures and chain-of-custody records, and other worthy changes. The county also wants to totally get rid of all DREs. It’s amazing what happens at times when a good citizen group stands up and demands that changes be made; people actually begin to listen.

{Ed Note: Yes, and it doesn't hurt that they had to take the county officials to court! Leave them little other option, eventually, but to do the above, or end up in court again. Thus, the actions of the Pima County officials aren't actually that "surprising" after all, given the tremendous work by the citizen advocates there, as John points out. - BF}

Meanwhile, in Georgia, citizens involved in an electronic voting lawsuit have announced they have filed a summary judgment motion seeking to ban the machines. The motion “centers on a lack of equal protection and due process that the plaintiffs claim Election Day voters have when compared to absentee voters who use optically scanned paper ballots. The motion contends that retention of tangible paper ballots is required for voters to verify their actual ballot choices, for election officials to provide true recounts as needed, to investigate voting discrepancies, to prevent fraud and to produce evidence for contested elections.”

Those stories, and the rest of today's notable voting news headlines, all linked below as usual...

**"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**

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