Collected voting articles from yes!- Whose Voting Machines?: About ES&S, Diebold, and SAIC, the web of ties between them and the politicos, with even a nod towards Howard Ahmanson's money. (See "From Genesis To Dominion". Excellent.)
- Young, Righteous - and Voting: Not about BBV issues at all, but still important. Most of us are not strangers to voting, many of us are familiar with activism, but few of us are familiar with turning activism into real electoral politics. One woman's story of turning that corner.
- Getting Out the Vote: A list of "get out the vote" activist organizations, most of them progressive.
- Clean Elections - Making a Difference: Maine started. Full public funding for candidates who refuse other funding. It worked there, and now it is spreading.
- Every Neighborhood Counts: A Green knocks an incumbent Democrat off and the reprisals.
- fighting for the soul of the democratic party: Back in 1964:
So long as klansmen and the police could attack black people with impunity, it would be impossible for activists to organize local communities. After Allen’s murder, “We were just defenseless,” SNCC leader Bob Moses recalled. “There was no way of bringing national attention. And it seemed to me that we were just sitting ducks. People were just going to be wiped out.”
- Visualize a Fair Election in 2004: By Greg Palast. Need I say more? About "Voting While Black" and his alliance with Martin Luther King, III to prevent another Florida-style scrubbing of black voter rolls.
- Build from the Grassroots: You don't need to go outside of your party. You only need to build your movement with it.
- Stand Together:
“During the next year, I will be there at least five times for someone else’s fight, as well as my own. If enough of us are there, we’ll all start winning.”
- Update Voting Rules: We are a two party system and will stay that way until we adopt new ways of counting votes. Some ideas.
- how to change the world in three easy clicks: A brief history of MoveOn.org from grassroots to major political mover.
- 2004 Survival Guide: How you can get involved in transforming U.S. politics: The title says it all. Check it out and get involved. Somewhere!
I've also got an older web page out with dozens of links to articles of interest to Black Box Voting folks that you can find here. It's about a year old, but still has some very good links on it. In paricular, read "A primer on understanding conspiracies", an enlightening and perhaps the best article on this subject.
But I thought I'd mention it. It's my intention to keep Black Box Notes as non-partisan as possible. Clean elections should be everyone's desire, and black box voting is simply not a partisan issue.
That said, I myself am highly partisan, and I do write in that fashion over at my other blog, Benedict@Large. As we approach the 2004 elections, I'll be looking increasingly for "out of the way" stories about voting issues beyond the "black box" and campaign strategies not relating to the issues, but rather towrds manuvering blocs of voters, and I will be cross-linking to them from here. My feeling is that most people "into" the black box issue are so because they are also politically-motivated and interested especially in "dirty tricks" (voter abuse) campaigning.
My first cross-post is to Election Strategies, an article that links to two others.
The first is about Katherine Harris' possible run for the US Senate. It looks quite likely that she will, but there is a lot going on in the background here. The White House is saying "no", while the President's brother is saying, "Bug off." Here's why.
The second article addresses an announced GOP strategy to gain 25% of the black vote. It's by The BLACK CoMMentator, who claims this to be a manipulative fiction. If you've ever read them before, you'll know that they back up their claims with a lot of solid research.
So drop by if this stuff meets your tastes.
I usually like to write commentaries on the articles I post, but I have a great many stacked up that I never got to, so allow me to just list them out for you. Some of these are no doubt a bit dated, but I have not posted them before. I am merely dumping my collected archives of previously unposted articles. Some will be of interest to anyone concerned about e-voting, a few are simply multiple citations of the same story, and others may concern only those with a special focus. The newest articles are first:
January, 2004
- Doubts will Persist until Secure, Accurate Elections Become a National Priority, From the Baltimore Sun, January 7, 2004.
- Group plans to protest Diebold, From the Daily Republic, January 6, 2004
- Many States Face Mess at Polls, From the Orlando Sentinel, January 5, 2004
- Oliphant Turns to Florida Attorney General To Argue Against Her Suspension, From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, January 3, 2004
- Electronic Voting Firm Site Hack, From Wired News, December 29, 2003
- VoteHere reports computer break-in, From MSNBC, December 29, 2003
- Electronic Voting Security Firm Hacked, From YahooNews, December 29, 2003
- Voting machine maker dinged, From YahooNews, December 17, 2003
- E-Voting Undermined by Sloppiness, From Wired News, December 17, 2003
- Con Job at Diebold Subsidiary, From Wired News, December 17, 2003
- Critics: Convicted felons worked for electronic voting companies, From San Jose Mercury, December 17, 2003
- Group Seeks E-Voting Standards, From Wired News, December 16, 2003
- Criticism of Electronic Voting Machines' Security is Mounting, From IDG News Service, December 12, 2003
- Follow the Money: Why the Best Voting Technology May Be No Technology at All, From Robert X. Cringely, December 11, 2003 (This was preceded by my previously posted article, "No Confidence Vote: Why the Current Touch Screen Voting Fiasco Was Pretty Much Inevitable")
- For Sale: The American Voter, From Wired News, December 11, 2003
- Bill to Give Receipts for E-Voting, From Associated Press, December 11, 2003
- Voting Machines Gone Wild!, From InTheseTimes, December 11, 2003
- For Sale: The American Voter, From Wired News, December 11, 2003
- Editorial: An electronic democracy . From the San Francisco Chronicle, December 11, 2003
- Statewide electronic voting delayed, From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 3, 2003
- Why Florida Senate race could turn into a comedy drama, From the Independent/UK, November 27, 2003
- G.O.P. worries face from past will haunt Florida senate race, From the New York Times, November 26, 2003
- Lock the Vote: The general presidential election is decreasingly relevant, From Seattle Weekly, November 26, 2003
- Diebold E-Voting Case Page, From Stamford Law School, November 24, 2003
- Terrorist Logic: Disrupt the 2004 Election, From the Washington Post, November 23, 2003
- Democratic panel to decide fate of Web voting plan in Michigan, From USA Today, November 22, 2003
- State Tells Counties to Establish Paper Trail on Electronic Voting, From the LA Times, November 21, 2003
- Suspect Code Used in State Votes, From Wired News, November 6, 2003
- California voting machine called into question, From CNET News, Novenber 4, 2003
- A better ballot?, From the Christian Science Monitor, November 03, 2003
- Diebold vote replacement made Al Gore concede, From Mark Crispin Miller, October 26, 2003
- Black Box Voting Blues, From MSNBC/Newsweek, October 25, 2003
- Commerce's NIST Launches Voting Standards Initiative at December Symposium, From NIST, October 24, 2003
- Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?, From Wired News, October 13, 2003
- Ehrlich Seeks Probe Over Ballot Machines, From the Washington Post, September 28, 2003
- Mixed views on new voting machines, From the San Diego Union-Tribune, September 26, 2003
- Md. to buy controversial Diebolds, From Federal Computer Week, September 25, 2003
- Diebold Election Systems Moves Forward With Maryland Voting Machine Installation, From Diebold Election Systems (press release), September 24, 2003
- How anger over Florida recount still roils politics, From Smirking Chimp, September 19, 2003
- E-Voting Audit Ready for Public, From Wired News, September 18, 2003
But we are getting noticed.
Posted January 9, 2004
National election experts said the cloudy contest in Broward County likely would fuel criticism of new touch-screen machines and add to slowdowns in implementing national reforms prompted by Florida's 2000 election debacle.
They also predicted the mystery will prompt more calls to require a paper-record trail for electronic-vote systems. Broward's system has no such safeguard.
"I think we're in a great stage of uncertainty," especially on touch-screen machines, said Kimball W. Brace, president of Election Data Services, a veteran Washington-based voting-system consultant.
"The move to new equipment is grinding to a halt," Brace said.
In the wake of Florida's election mess almost four years ago, the Fort Lauderdale area led a host of major cities in buying costly new touch-screen machines. Fifteen Florida counties, including large metropolitan areas such as Hillsborough, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, have purchased such systems.
The hope was to avoid controversies caused by dangling chads on punch cards or certain paper systems prone to allow mismarked ballots to be cast.
But this week, Broward County voters proved once more that no system is perfect.
Tuesday's special election was held to replace Connie Mack IV, who resigned to run for Congress. The state House District 91 seat he left runs along the coast between southeast Boca Raton to north Dania Beach, east of Interstate 95.
Before the recount, Ellyn Bogdanoff had 2,816 votes, or 26.3 percent, and fellow Republican Oliver Parker had 2,804 votes, or 26.2 percent, according to unofficial results out of a total of the 10,844 ballots cast.
The rest of votes, a sliver of which were cast in nearby Palm Beach County, were split among five other candidates.
State officials said Thursday that a manual recount of a small number of paper ballots -- provisional and absentee ballots -- would be ordered, to be completed by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
During the recount Thursday, Broward elections officials found 134 cases in which no vote was registered. That same number of "undervotes" was found after Tuesday's election, County Attorney Ed Dion said.
"The machines are doing what the machines are supposed to do. But you never know why people do what they do," said Brenda Snipes, Broward elections supervisor.
Experts said it's not clear why so many voters would boycott the only race on the ballot. Brace said investigation would be needed to find out where those undervotes occurred. If they were concentrated in a small number of precincts, that could signal a problem, he said.
Broward election officials could not be reached for further comment Thursday.
Election Systems & Software, the Omaha, Neb., maker of Broward's voting machines, said in a statement that it was reviewing precinct data to determine the cause of the undervotes.
"We absolutely don't believe this is a case of voters intending to cast a ballot that was not counted," the company said.
But the questions about the computerized-voting systems are delaying voting reforms across the country and perhaps eroding voter confidence in close elections, said R. Michael Alvarez, who helps lead the California Institute of Technology's joint vote-reform group with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Alvarez said that disputed elections like Broward's will ignite more calls for paper records to accompany electronic voting and add to a "political polarization" that signals less confidence in close results.
"There's distrust," Alvarez said, "especially among Democrats."
Washington is largely to blame for the national reform slowdown because of funding delays, Brace said. Of the $3.86 billion Congress and President Bush promised for voting reform in 2002, only $650 million arrived to states so far.
Computer experts are also causing local election officials to pause before buying new electronic machines, saying the systems are vulnerable to hackers. Touch-screen-machine makers dispute those claims.
Still, Congress is considering laws to require paper receipts for touch-screen users.
"Clearly you wouldn't have the problem you're having with a paper record," said Freddy Oakley, the Yolo County clerk/recorder in California and a leading reform advocate.
Oakley is waiting to replace her punch-card system but distrusts an electronic system with no paper trail.
"This is the exact nightmare I'm trying to avoid in my county," Oakley said.