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Afghanistan election run-off will be logistical nightmareGrowing Taliban power, inaccessible terrain and non-existent infrastructure makes the Afghan run-off a huge logistical challenge. By Ben Farmer in Kabul Published: 9:22PM BST 20 Oct 2009 A fleet of 3,500 trucks will be needed to carry voting materials to the polling stations and 3,000 donkeys to get people to remote areas. Afghanistan's 94,000 soldiers and 84,000 police, backed by 100,000 Nato-led forces, will be on duty to protect polling stations, but hundreds more will be judged too dangerous to open. Around 6,500 polling stations were opened for the Aug 20 poll, but many...

Some scholars squabble about the particulars, but there is no question that democracy's roots go back at least 2,500 years to practices developed in the Greek city-state of Athens. But the adoption of a key pillar of democracy — the secret ballot — came far more recently. In England in the 1830s, disenfranchised working-class men and sympathetic members of Parliament launched the Chartist movement. The most crucial of its six objectives was universal suffrage for all men over 21, but not far behind was the secret-ballot provision. It took decades, but eventually the secret ballot became the democratic norm —...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The judges in the Minnesota Senate trial have identified the first of what could be many wrongly rejected absentee ballots that they say must be included in the final count. The judges' order Tuesday means that 24 supporters of Democrat Al Franken whose absentee ballots were rejected will see their votes counted. Republican Norm Coleman wants the judges to count about 4,700 other rejected absentee ballots, and his lawyer says their decision means they're more likely to take that step. Franken has a 225-vote lead over Coleman, not including the 24 votes at issue Tuesday.

In a ruling that keeps alive Republican Norm Coleman's chances of overturning Minnesota's U.S. Senate recount, a three-judge panel on Tuesday allowed him to bring evidence to trial that as many as 4,800 absentee ballots were wrongly rejected and should now be counted. The decision expands the evidence that can be considered in the recount trial

Master Sgt. Louis Carter, 321st Air Expeditionary Airlift Squadron combat aviation advisor, performs a pre-flight inspection on an Iraqi C-130E here Feb. 2. The C-130 was one of two aircraft on its way to pick up Iraqi election ballot boxes. Sergeant Carter is deployed from the 550th Special Operations Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Photo by Staff Sgt. Tim Beckham. SATHER AIR BASE — Members from the 321st Air Expeditionary Airlift Squadron did their part in assisting Iraq in the election process Feb. 2. While many service members were watching the final moments of Superbowl XLIII, Maj. Scott...

Minnesota State Canvassing Board review of challenged ballots in the U.S. Senate race HERE

Tomorrow the Canvassing Board presiding over the recount convenes to consider challenged ballots that were excluded because of their disputed status from the recount. At the urging of the Canvassing Board, both the Coleman and Franken campaigns are reducing the number of ballots they have challenged. The Canvassing Board consists of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie -- the Man from ACORN and George Soros -- and four judges (including Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Associate Justice G. Barry Anderson). Last week the Canvassing Board unanimously adopted Al Franken's playbook for the recount, taking action that threatens...

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- We're nearing the end of the historic Senate recount between Senator Norm Coleman and challenger Al Franken. Election officials are now turning their focus to the absentee ballots. Starting this morning, volunteers will begin to count how many absentee ballots were wrongly rejected due to an administrative error. Then it will be up the state canvassing board to decide whether or not to include those ballots into the recount. The board is scheduled to meet on Friday. For the moment, Coleman leads Franken by 687 votes.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday threw out about 1,000 provisional ballots that had been improperly filled out by voters in a tight congressional race. In a 4-2 decision, the court struck down Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's directive that said the votes should be counted. Voters had improperly filled out the outer envelope on the disputed ballots, which had been among about 27,000 left to be counted in the undecided 15th district congressional race between Republican Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy. The decision allows Franklin County voting officials to count the other remaining...

The search party looking for 133 missing ballots in the Minneapolis elections warehouse found some ballots all right, but not the ones they wanted. This morning, an envelope of 12 unsealed but apparently uncounted absentee ballots were found in a box filled with stacks of plastic-wrapped unused ballots. Minneapolis elections director Cindy Reichert speculated they were put there by a confused elections judge on Election Day and undiscovered until now, the final day of the historic U.S. Senate recount. The ballots will be submitted to the state Canvassing Board, said city spokesman Matt Laible. Still eluding the searchers was their...

“At a time when these young people are defending our country and its free institutions, the least we at home can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve.” These words were penned to members of the United States Congress during the Korean War when then President Harry S. Truman was expressing his discontent that the votes of active duty soldiers in theater overseas were in jeopardy of their votes not being counted in the Presidential election of 1952. And although the Presidential election of November 4,...

On Dec. 8, 2000, supporters of Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush burst into cheers in the rotunda of the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla. They had just learned of a judge's ruling that absentee ballots cast in pro-Bush counties would not be thrown out. They taunted supporters of Democrat Al Gore with the song that baseball fans sing when an opposing pitcher is knocked out of the game. "Na-na-na-nah, hey hey, good-bye!" they chanted. Bush was pronounced the winner of the state of Florida, and the presidency, four days later, and the preservation of those "absentees" was a...

Things may not be going as well as Al Franken hoped in the recount, but don't tell that to Nate Silver. The numbers junkie behind FiveThirtyEight.com predicts that Franken will win the recount — once all challenges are resolved — by 27 votes. (Related: Franken losing ground to Coleman on DFL turf How'd he come up with that number? It's little complex — OK, that's an understatement — but Silver basically did a regression analysis using recounted precincts where there were few or no challenged ballots (Franken has done well there) and projected it across the rest of the state....

A correspondent writes: Just returned [from Crystal]. We counted the last three precincts without incident. Then the City Clerk made the announcement that she had found some absentee ballots that had not been processed yet from another previously closed precinct, Ward 4 Precinct 2. Apparently Friday afternoon she was given the order by SOS [the Secretary of State] to release the names of voters who had their ballots rejected. While canvassing the absentee ballots she found 8 ballots bound together that had not been processed on election night. She claimed they were valid ballots that had been filled out by...

After local county elections officials verified 2.9 million votes in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's lead over DFL challenger Al Franken shrank to a whisper, the difference settling Monday at a mere 206 votes. Elections officials in Minnesota's 87 counties had until Monday to finalize their results, which will now be forwarded to the state for approval. After that, one of the most closely watched recounts in state history will get under way, even as maneuvering over the recount — and the rhetoric surrounding it — continues to escalate. The Coleman campaign on Monday accused Franken...

One thing is certain: the final margin in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race is not certain. On Wednesday morning Sen. Norm Coleman led Al Franken by 725 votes. By Wednesday night the lead was 477 votes. By Thursday night it was 336. As of Sunday night, it's 221. Coleman's campaign manager has called the changes "statistically dubious and improbable." But Hamline University professor David Schultz says the changes are not unusual because counties are double checking for errors right now. "If you look at past elections in Minnesota, the difference of what happens on election day and what's eventually certified can...

A Ramsey County judge has denied a bid by lawyers representing Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to delay the opening of 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis. Last update: November 9, 2008 - 7:31 AM A Ramsey County judge on Saturday denied a bid by lawyers representing U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign to delay the opening of 32 absentee ballots from Minneapolis. The request touched off a fresh war of words in a Senate race where 221 votes separate Republican Coleman and DFLer Al Franken in unofficial tallies. The 32 Minneapolis ballots were part of the normal delivery of absentee ballots late...

My husband and I have been trying to get my husband's missing absentee ballot for weeks now. His home town is in the tank for Obama (city in Michigan) my husband usually votes Republican and his hometown is so small they know the absentee voters by name. Can you believe they finally sent my husbands ballot 10/31 and we received it today 11/3/08. I called the Clerk's office and she said it had to be there by 8pm 11/4. I gladly paid $16.50 to send my husband's ballot by 12pm tomorrow someone will have to sign for his mail and...

Think hanging chads, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and insecure voting machines are bad? The New Yorker looks back at how we used to vote back in the good old days: 'A man carrying a musket rushed at him. Another threw a brick, knocking him off his feet. George Kyle picked himself up and ran. He never did cast his vote. Nor did his brother, who died of his wounds. The Democratic candidate for Congress, William Harrison, lost to the American Party's Henry Winter Davis. Three months later, when the House of Representatives convened hearings into the election, whose...

Almost 1.5 million Ohioans request absentee ballotsPosted by Reginald Fields/Plain Dealer Columbus Bureau October 27, 2008 14:56PM COLUMBUS -- Amid predictions that next week's election could draw among the highest voter turnouts in Ohio history, an unprecedented number of Ohioans have elected to vote absentee. Nearly 1.5 million voters through Oct. 24 requested an absentee ballot either in person or by mail, according to the Ohio Secretary of State's Office. Voters can still request an absentee ballot from their county board of elections through Saturday and must postmark their ballots by Monday, Nov. 3 or the ballots can be dropped...

Gwinnett County elections officials will have to hand-copy votes from at least 10,000 absentee ballots onto new ballots that can be read by a machine. The original ballots, designed to be filled out by hand, are flawed because of a printing error. The circle beside the candidate’s name is too thick and somewhat misshapen, and consequently an optical scanning machine won’t be able to read the votes on Election Day. The county discovered the problem last week during routine testing. Gwinnett had already mailed out 19,700 flawed ballots before it realized the problem. Of those, 10,000 have already been marked...

HARRISBURG, Pa.,, Oct 22, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Even though Election Day is less than two weeks away, Pennsylvania residents living overseas or serving in the military have been voting for several weeks as 11,071 absentee ballots have already been returned. In 2004's General Election, 30,042 Pennsylvania residents voted via military or overseas absentee ballot, but Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro A. Cortes said he hopes to exceed that number this year as a result of new initiatives that have expanded access and increased options for these voters. To date, counties have received more than 36,000 absentee ballot applications...

Missing Miltary Absentee BallotsPosted By: Mike Igoe 10 hrs ago Election Day is just a few weeks away now. And people who can't make it to the polls, such as those serving in the military, have the option of using an absentee ballot. Darelene Hedges of Depew called 2 On Your Side on behalf of her son who discovered there was a problem with his. Her son Joshua is serving with the National Guard in Afghanistan. He was told the absentee ballots for his overseas base had been lost. Darlene tells us her son, and the people serving with him,...

Are absentee voters receiving extra ballots?October 21, 2008 Virginia's State Board of Elections is looking into concerns some Virginians voting absentee are receiving more than one ballot. The Republican Party of Virginia is calling on registrars to stop tabulating absentee ballots until the state can look into the issue. According to the party, duplicate mailings have been confirmed in five localities.

In Ohio, Charges Fly in Fight Over Absentee BallotsBy Mary Pat Flaherty Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 21, 2008; Page A05 Ohio Democrats and Republicans traded accusations yesterday as they continue to battle over absentee ballots and other voting issues. The charges came after a county prosecutor in Cincinnati subpoenaed the Hamilton County Elections Board for the records of 266 new voters who cast absentee ballots during a week-long period in September and early October, when Ohio residents could register and vote on the same day. County prosecutor Joseph T. Deters said he subpoenaed the records because a preliminary...

Employee Free Choice Act: A Democrat ACORN in the SideBy Brad O’Leary Speaking of organizers coercing people to sign cards to subvert an election, there is another group of organizers attempting to do the same thing with American workers: unions. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was passed by House Democrats last year and blocked in the Senate. Union leaders are intent on a Democrat-run Senate and White House to make the bill law in 2009. Currently, union organizers are required to submit signed cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) showing at least 30 percent of employees...

<p>Poll workers from opposing sides in the presidential race apparently clashed in a physical altercation Friday at a Cuyahoga Falls nursing home when one accused the other of improperly marking a ballot.</p> <p>George Manos, the 75-year-old Republican, told police that Edith Walker, the 73-year-old Democrat, jumped on his back and struck him in the head three to four times with her fists. Manos said two other elections workers had to pull Walker off his back, according to a report filed with Cuyahoga Falls police.</p>

My parents always voted, and they emphasized that voting was important. My dad was a staunch “decline-to-state.” In California, you could choose many parties or be independent, nonpartisan or “decline-to-state.” Dad was a political cartoonist with definite liberal tendencies. Around the house he complained about Gov. Reagan and the Republicans. But though he expressed stark political opinions at home, he declined to state his party at the polls. As soon as I could vote, I declined to state, too. I learned from my parents to have strong opinions and to be independent. So the first presidential candidate I voted for...

OH Secretary of State fooling around with GOP absentee ballotsRick Moran September 24, 2008 This is pretty brazen even for a Democrat. It appears that Ohio's Secretary of State doesn't like Republicans very much. In fact, Jennifer Brunner has been referred to as the "most partisan" official in the state. That must explain why she is disqualifying thousands of Republican votes through some arrogant chicanery that would make Mayor Daley in Chicago proud as James Bronson of the Cincinnati Enquirer reports: * The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had...

In Palm Beach County it goes from missing ballots to too many ballotsBy Mark Hollis | South Florida Sun-Sentinel 6:13 PM EDT, September 12, 2008 It's no longer a missing ballots problem in Palm Beach County. Now there are too many ballots. After a cumbersome resorting and recounting of ballots from the Aug. 26 election, investigators produced two new troubling findings Friday. First, auditors have discovered electronic evidence that 110 ballots from voters at a Delray Beach precinct weren't included in election night results. Those votes also weren't included in totals from a recount. Second, auditors verified that there are...

In yesterday's mail at my house I recieved a summons for jury duty addressed to some guy I never heard of. THAT MEANS THE GUY IS REGISTERED TO VOTE AT MY ADDRESS. Checked with the condo manager who has lived here forever. No one by that name EVER LIVED HERE. I intend to find out which precinct this phantom is supposed to be voting in and lay the trap for the perp who comes in to cast a ballot for said phantom. Last November when I was an Election Judge I recognized one of the voters because he had voted...

(English-language translation) After hearing the pertinent parties out, Federal Judge José Fusté ordered that the ballots for the November 4 general elections [in Puerto Rico] be printed in English and Spanish. Fusté ordered the parties to begin to join efforts "immediately" towards having ready any changes to the ballots by September 5, so that they may be submitted to the Olés of Puerto Rico print shop on September 6. The ballots will begin to be printed on September 10. Olés of Puerto Rico owner Angel Figueroa pointed out during a hearing to show cause that printing the ballots in both...

(English-language translation) Two [mainland-born] Americans who live in [Puerto Rico] asked Federal Court to order the Commonwealth Elections Commission (CEE) to print in English [in addition to Spanish] the ballots for the November 4 general elections [in the island]. Once the suit was filed, Judge José Fusté, who presides over the case, scheduled a hearing for August 27 in which the defendants, CEE Chairman Ramón Gómez and the election commissioners [representing the island's four registered political parties], must provide the judge reason why he should not meet the plaintiffs' demands. Plaintiffs Sylvia Diffenderfer and Robert McCarroll are requesting that the...

"...vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers..."

"...E-voting systems have to be completely redesigned with security in mind, McDaniel says. In the short term, this means adding more thorough vote-auditing capabilities so that discrepancies can be investigated. "The elections systems should have the same quality, the same reliability, the same testing and the same certification requirements as financial systems," he says. "If the systems used by banks, which have to report to the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], had this level of quality, no one would put their money in the bank."..."

"A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections."

"Malicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives. In fact, such incidents happen more often than generally perceived, though very few of them get the same kind of public attention that the Citibank breach attracted..."

In 2000, the Democrats in Florida fought to keep out military absentee ballot sent in by mail from determining who would be the next President. Eight years later, Florida Democrats want to conduct an entire primary by mail. What’s changed? Oh, yes — their own incompetence: [T]he disqualification of Florida and Michigan has created a headache for the Democratic party due to the unexpected closeness of the race between Obama and Clinton. Officials from both states are trying to figure out how best to resolve the issue before the national convention in August.DNC Chairman Howard Dean said a mail-in primary...

"...The results produced some remarkable anomalies, such as 21 counties showing no Republican voters and three counties showing no Democratic voters..."

Mock ballot to prepare county for May primary Elections - The March 11 nonbinding ballot in Yamhill County mixes silly questions with serious policy issues Wednesday, February 27, 2008 ABBY HAIGHT The Oregonian Staff Over the next few days, Yamhill County voters will open ballots asking them whether they prefer Paul Newman or Garth Brooks as "Director of Entertainment" and if the United States should purchase the Louisiana Territory. The silly questions have serious intent. County elections officials are using the mock ballot for training on a new by-mail voting system. Rather than have elections workers simply watch the system...

Both New Hampshire primary elections are going to be recounted, since Dennis J. Kucinich has put up $27,000 to get the Democratic recount started, and Albert Howard (who was on the New Hampshire Republican ballot) has donated $56,000 to re-tally the Republican vote. But the only reason these elections can even be recounted is because voting precincts in New Hampshire use paper ballots. And now some folks on Capitol Hill want to make it easier for other states to switch to non-electronic voting systems before the November election.Rush Holt, a Democratic representative of New Jersey, introduced new legislation today that...

PITTSBURGH -- They went to the polls and their votes were counted even though they’d been dead for years. Target 11 investigator Rick Earle pored through mounds of data and discovered that thousands of dead voters are still on the Allegheny county election rolls. There are nearly a million people registered to vote Allegheny County, but we discovered that thousands of them aren't even living. So what's the big deal? Well, someone could walk into a precinct and cast a ballot in that person's name and we discovered that it has already happened. Charles Beck voted in the May primary.John...

Voters have a chance on Tuesday to return this northern Alabama city to the days of Prohibition. A measure to end the sale of alcohol in Athens is up for a citywide vote, a rare instance where voters could overturn a previous vote to allow sales. Business interests are against repeal, but church leaders who helped organize the petition drive that got the measure on the ballot are asking members to pray and fast in support of a ban. Christians who oppose drinking on moral grounds believe they have a chance to win, however small. "If it can be voted...

A victory for disfranchised Mississippi voters--and they happen to be white. Last week a federal district judge found direct evidence that the political machine in Noxubee County, Miss., had discriminated against voters with the intent to infringe their rights and that "these abuses have been racially motivated."

BOSTON (AP) - Mitt Romney's been called many things as he runs for president, but chances are "Sticky Rice" isn't one of them. That's how his name might be read on some ballots, according to state Secretary William Galvin. Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations. But there's more than a little lost in translation, according to Galvin. Since there's no Chinese character for "Romney," translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in the name....

Diebold Inc. saw great potential in the modernization of elections equipment. Now, analysts say, executives may be angling for ways to dump its e-voting subsidiary that's widely seen as tarnishing the company's reputation. Though Diebold Election Systems - the company's smallest business segment - has shown growth and profit, it's faced persistent criticism over the reliability and security of its touch-screen voting machines. About 150,000 of its touch-screen or optical scan systems were used in 34 states in last November's election. The criticism is particularly jarring for a nearly 150-year-old company whose primary focus has long been safes and automated...

LARGO - A veteran Gibbs High School teacher with a long history of work troubles had falsified hundreds of student ballots in an attempt to get her niece elected homecoming queen in September. A wave of chuckles rose during Tuesday's School Board meeting, where Lerner and other board members were asked to approve a 25-day unpaid suspension for the teacher, Sharion Thurman, 56. So why not fire the teacher, who earns more than $50,000 a year? Her 20-year record includes numerous reprimands for poor judgment, insubordination and misconduct. Superintendent Clayton Wilcox said firing was an option. But he looked at...

Denver election workers were still counting votes Sunday. They have about 18,000 absentee ballots to count as a result of computer and equipment problems from the election. They also have 3,000 provisional ballots that won't be counted until Monday. More than 49,000 absentee ballots have been counted so far. About 3,000 provisional ballots won't be counted until Monday. Provisional ballots are usually cast by voters whose eligibility is in question. Denver police have been helping sort the ballots because of tighter new election security rules. The Denver Post reported the Denver Election Commission's technology chief Anthony Rainey has been placed...

Defeated U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., refused to concede Wednesday saying there remain votes yet to be counted in his tight race against the declared winner, Democrat Jon Tester. Burns, who has not commented to reporters on the race since the votes were counted Tuesday night, released a statement at 1:47 p.m. “Jon Tester ran a good race and has the lead right now, but it is extremely close,” Burns said. “The state of Montana has a process in place, and it is our obligation to see it through. There are still votes out there that deserve to be counted....