Thread: Computer related voting problems

Copied from comp.risks newsgroup

Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:20:51 -0400
From: technews@HQ.ACM.ORG
Subject: Thousands Face Mix-Ups in Voter Registrations

[Source: Mary Pat Flaherty, *The Washington Post*, 18 Oct 2008, P. A1,
from ACM TechNews, Monday, October 20, 2008]

New state voter registration systems across the U.S. are incorrectly
rejecting voters and threatening to disrupt the election process. The
problems are occurring in states that switched from locally managed lists of
voters to statewide databases, a change required by the Help America Vote
Act. Although the switch is supposed to be a more efficient and accurate
way to keep lists up to date, the transition is causing the systems to
question the registrations of thousands of voters when discrepancies occur
between their registration information and other official records. In
Alabama, for example, dozens of voters are being labeled as convicted felons
due to incorrect lists, and Michigan is scrambling to restore thousands of
names it illegally removed from voter rolls due to residency questions. In
Wisconsin, tens of thousands of voters could be affected, as officials admit
that their database is wrong one out of every five times it flags a voter,
often due to data discrepancies such as a middle initial or a typo in a
birth date. Herbert Lin, who is studying the issue for the federal Election
Assistance Commission, says that states are not using the "best scientific
knowledge known today," as required by law. One of the problems with
Wisconsin's database, which has been in place since August, is that 95,000
voters are incorrectly listed as being 108 years old. If no birth date was
available when names were moved into the electronic system, it automatically
assigned 1 Jan 1900. By federal law, anyone whose name is flagged must be
notified and given a chance to prove his or her eligibility, but voting
rights experts say voters are not always alerted, and some, even if they are
notified, may simply decide to skip the election as a result.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03360.html

Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:23:53 -0700
From: Steve Kelem <steve@kelem.net>
Subject: From BBV: Two-Minute warning on voting machines

This message is from Black Box Voting, a non-profit that monitors voting
irregularities and fraud. Steve Kelem, Los Altos Hills, CA

- ------ Original Message --------
Subject: From BBV: Two-Minute warning on voting machines [...]
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:55:21 -0700
From: Black Box Voting <blackboxvoting@worldnet.att.net>

TWO-MINUTE WARNING ON VOTING MACHINES: Welcome to "SPEED VOTING"

Permission to reprint or excerpt granted, with link to blackboxvoting.org

Diebold/Premier says it's too late to fix a new voting machine 2-minute
warning and "time-out" feature, which can kick voters off the machine,
forcing them to accept a provisional ballot. At least 15 voters were booted
off the machine in Johnson County, Kansas recently, and Diebold/Premier says
this is due to a software upgrade which sets a timer on voter inactivity.
According to the company, the machines receiving the upgrade are used in 34
states and 1,700 jurisdictions.*

* This seems inflated, though. Unless the optical scan machines are also
outfitted with a 2-minute warning, which doesn't make sense, it would seem
that this should only apply to the DRE states and locations.

It is beginning to sound like the Supreme Court will again be called to duty. I plan to be sound asleep election night, as I will probably wake up and listen to all the lawsuits being threatened for faulty voter registration and faulty voting machines, plus suits over no paper trails, and don't forget the pregnant and hanging chads.
This time, we may not find out who is supposed to be president until 2019.

I wonder how many of these rejected voters aren't US Citizens? Of course, they won't tell us. How any are first time voters?

I have had no problems with being current on any voters registration list, got married, name change, moved to an apartment in another state, then moved to our first house. Each time I moved I knew I had to change my voter info. I was able to make the changes easily and this was all BEFORE the motor voter laws passed.

Seems to me Motor Voter has not worked for the best. Makes people complacent. Changing your address on you license, will not send a message to your local elections board. You have to do it separately.