All the NH ballots are paper ballots, but about 80% are counted by Diebold optical scanners, while the rest are counted by hand. Now here is the oddity: percentagewise, obama does much better on the hand counted ballots and Hillary does much better on the machine counted ballots. The percentage discrepancies for other candidates are all smaller. Similarly, on the Republican side, Romney does much better on the machine counted ballots, while Huckabee, McCain, and Paul all do better on the hand counted ballots.

Is it just coincidence that the two machine candidates, Hillary and Mitt, got a little boost from the machine counters?

On December 17, Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified election equipment used by 64 Colorado counties, including machines made by Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems. A report issued by the Secretary of State's office details a myriad of problems such as lack of password protection on the systems, controls that could give voters unauthorized access, and the absence of any way to track or detect security violations. Manufacturers have 30 days to appeal the decertification.

Local mirror of Colorado 2007 post-election audit

A judge in the case covering the nature of the database used in Diebold Gems software during Pima County, Arizona elections has ruled the DB is not a computer program (pdf). The result is that the Arizona Democratic party will have the chance to review previous elections for transparency and accuracy. ''The Pima County Democratic Party sued the county this year for the electronic databases from past elections. The party requested the databases and passwords be released according to Arizona public-records law. Pima County denied that part of the request, while turning over other records the party asked for. In closing arguments of the four-day trial that began Dec. 4, Pima County argued the databases meet the definition of a computer program, which is protected by state law, said Deputy County Attorney Thomas Denker.

Local mirror of judge's ruling that a database isn't a program

A new study (PDF) on the security of voting machines was released in Ohio on Friday. The report, one of the most comprehensive and informative that I've seen yet, contains some pretty astounding information about the security of voting machines that hasn't been revealed before. Unfortunately, the report isn't receiving the kind of attention it deserves.

It's the first independent study to examine machines made by Election Systems & Software, the largest voting machine company in the country -- the company's machines are used in 43 states. (A similar study of voting systems done in California earlier this year did not examine ES&S machines.)

Local Mirror Of EVEREST Report

A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices.

Local Mirror Of EVEREST Report