As previously written, there are serious concerns that need to be addressed re: electronic voting. In addition, there has been litigation in several states that specifically address the issue.
Now, in Colorado, it has been discovered that records consisting of personal information of over 150,000 people are missing. In addition, officials are unsure if the files have been lost, moved or stolen.
According to the Denver Election Commission, officials didn’t know of the records were missing until June 1, but, it is thought they disappeared four months previously. Lisa Jones, a former temporary worker at the election commission, wrote that the files were missing on a weblog. Jones believes that commission officials knew of the lost files in April.
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Alton Dillard spokesman for the election commision,
“We will get to the bottom of it.”
adding that
top officials of the commission are trying to determine whether lower-ranking staff knew about the situation before last week.
In addition, it has also been reported that
Mitch Given, a registered lobbyist for Diebold Election Systems, one of the vendors of voting machines for election boards in Ohio, gave Blackwell the maximum $10,000.00 donation.
In addition, Mitch Given lobbies for other companies and contributes to other GOP candidates.
Blackwell’s office approved Diebold’s selection as a vendor and negotiated the prices. However, the machines were chosen by the counties.
Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo
“It’s important to note that he (Given) did not contribute to Secretary Blackwell during the bidding process.”
Guess it’s all in the timing.
UPDATE:Litigation filed by the League of Women Voters is in U.S. District Judge James Carr’s court in Toledo. Kenneth Blackwell, this year’s Republican candidate for governor, claims that the 2004 election was run fairly.
Daniel Tokaji, an assistant professor of law at Ohio State University,
“I think it’s pretty clear, based on the original evidence, the (2004) outcome wasn’t affected. It’s much less important than focusing on the problems with the election systems … that haven’t been fixed yet.“
However, according to Cliff Arnebeck, a lawyer who was active in some of the lawsuits focusing on the 2004 race,
“The framing I have in mind for litigation is to look at what is being set up for ’06 and say we’re not speculating that people are willing to suppress the vote, we have the proof. It’s a positive view of the evidence of fraud in ’04.“
The League of Women Voters of Ohio is claiming to be challenging the way the way the 2004 election was run, as opposed to the results.
According to Peg Rosenfled, a specialist in elections for the League of Women Voters,
“The whole point of our lawsuit was to look toward the future.”
It has also been claimed that lessons that were learned in 2004 will be an asset, as the state of Ohio (and the rest of the county) moves into the electronic age.
