EU Profiler: the authors of Kieskompas, a "Vote-O-Mat"-style tool for the undecided Dutch voter, following up on their adaptation for the US Presidential election (previously on MeFi), will launch an EU-wide version for the European Parliament elections upcoming in June. So Europeans, urge your political parties to register! The tool itself will launch in May.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 29, 2009 - 6 comments

Election Fraud in Kentucky. "I think this is the first documented case of election fraud in the U.S. using electronic voting machines (there have been lots of documented cases of errors and voting problems, but this one involves actual maliciousness)."
posted by chunking express on Mar 24, 2009 - 36 comments

Today, we Americans exercise one of our most sacred rights - the right to free stuff. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot on Nov 4, 2008 - 40 comments

Do you know what to do if your vote is suppressed?
GOODVOTE.ORG is a group of volunteers from the technology community and blogosphere who simply want the will of the voters to be reflected in the result of the 2008 election. Our only purpose is to make sure that when legitimate voters are challenged they know who to turn to for help.
posted by mecran01 on Oct 27, 2008 - 36 comments

Bother Voting doesn't care who you are going to support this election, as long as you get out and vote. Now all you have to do is use their creative e-cards and banners to convince your friends to hit the polls.
posted by misha on Sep 30, 2008 - 87 comments

“I’m an old computer nerd,” Diener said. “I can do anything with computers. Nothing’s wrong with computers. But this is the worst way to run an election.” NYTMag piece on electronic voting, voter confidence, and the impact of old-fashioned problems like printer jams, befuddled voters and volunteers, and interface design flaws. By Clive Thompson.
posted by Miko on Jan 5, 2008 - 46 comments

Glassbooth connects you to the presidential candidate that represents your beliefs the best. Too busy/lazy/etc. to research the candidates on your own? Let web 2.0 tell you who to vote for.
posted by allkindsoftime on Nov 2, 2007 - 83 comments

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]
posted by homunculus on Aug 29, 2007 - 68 comments

Today the DNC voted "to strip Florida of all its presidential convention delegates, threatening to leave the state without a vote for the party's 2008 nominee unless it delays the date of its presidential primary election." [More Inside]
posted by Avenger on Aug 25, 2007 - 63 comments

Diebold Election Systems is no more (at least in name). Taking a page from the cigarette companies, Diebold is changing their name and hoping to reverse the downward spiral after their recent news.
posted by mathowie on Aug 17, 2007 - 46 comments

In honor of tomorrow's Freedom Day (April 27), please enjoy these tales from elections past...
posted by loosemouth on Apr 26, 2007 - 15 comments

Fixavote.com Election Consultants "provides unparalleled results by focusing on the outcome rather than the process. Using state-of the-art technology, we overcome the challenges of competition and ensure election results for our clients." (To make it even more evil, it's Flash-based) A food-for-thought satire or something more? When A reporter called the site's 800 number, the person who answered "said that he had been contacted by representatives of about 30 political campaigns to date." (I'm thinking sting operation to catch dishonest idiot politicians. Whad'ya think?)
posted by wendell on Oct 29, 2006 - 14 comments

A manual for electoral apocalypse in America. Quite a bit's been written both on MeFi and other places about how bad Diebold machines are. Rolling Stone wrote an article about election fraud in 2004 that was discussed here on MeFi. Tonight, Ars posted a very thorough, very clear article about how we are completely screwed if we do not enact expensive, fundamental changes in how we handle elections in America. It's too late to do anything about the elections in a couple weeks, but perhaps steps can be taken to fix things before 2008...
posted by sparkletone on Oct 25, 2006 - 45 comments

MySpace has started a voter registration drive. MySpace has a ton of users, so this could be huge. Could this get young Americans to vote? I'm going to guess no, but you never know.
posted by chunking express on Sep 27, 2006 - 29 comments

[O]ne muggy day in mid-August [2002], [Diebold consultant Chris] Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Will the Next Election be Hacked?
posted by Saucy Intruder on Sep 22, 2006 - 111 comments

Diebold boss resigns pending fraud investigation
posted by Protocols of the Elders of Awesome on Dec 13, 2005 - 164 comments

Georgia wants to charge people to vote, having chosen to implement "a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses...to pay $20 or more for a state ID card." Adding insult to injury, the number of ID centers in Atlanta is currently ZERO.
(disclaimer: I don't know how to get a subscription-free link to NYT articles- sorry!)
posted by elisabeth r on Sep 12, 2005 - 77 comments

20 Amazing Facts About Read this and cry. Or move to another country.
posted by Postroad on Dec 31, 2004 - 76 comments

Nader Challenges Black Box Voting in NH
posted by snakey on Nov 5, 2004 - 50 comments

Over 125 voter guides, sorted by city and written collaboratively by Indyvoter's network of members are now on-line. This is social software with a purpose - members of the network form voting blocs to swing close elections, from city council members up to the national level.
posted by djacobs on Nov 1, 2004 - 1 comment

Racially-Based Suppression of the African-American Vote: The Role It May Play in the Upcoming Presidential Election What exactly is racially-based vote suppression? Simply defined, it is the targeting of potential voters, based on their race, in an attempt to suppress the exercise of their right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
posted by y2karl on Oct 30, 2004 - 34 comments

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted by troutfishing on Oct 22, 2004 - 37 comments

Blackbox Voting, take 6. While lawsuits elsewhere seek to require paper trails or block e-voting altogether, early voting in some states is already using the controversial machines. Take New Mexico, for example: "I voted for Kerry and a check mark for Bush appeared." It's not that funny anymore — especially when most of the fears aren't about what you do see, but what you don't.
posted by rafter on Oct 22, 2004 - 15 comments

An Election Lottery?
We've had decades of handwringing and civics lectures while voting continues to plunge. This is America, dammit. If everything else pays, why shouldn't voting?
posted by amberglow on Oct 19, 2004 - 23 comments

Illegal RNC trashing Democratic registrations in Vegas -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash. ... The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations. Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats. ... The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.
posted by amberglow on Oct 12, 2004 - 165 comments

Was your voter registration form thick enough? Ohio's republican secretary of state has issued an order (three days before the registration deadline) to throw out all voter registration forms printed on paper less then 80lb. Coincidence that dem-leaning areas have seen a 250% rise in voter registration, with tens of thousands of new voters in a race expected to be closer then FL 2000?

Oh yeah, the state sent out 40lb forms to those requesting them. Cute, huh.
posted by delmoi on Sep 27, 2004 - 82 comments

Monkey hacks Diebold voting machine. Really.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Sep 23, 2004 - 68 comments

Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs If you support the Dems, you might want to pass this on!
"This morning we awoke to the startling news that despite a flurry of different polls this week all showing a tied race, the venerable Gallup Poll, as reported widely in the media (USA Today and CNN) today, showed George W. Bush with a huge 55%-42% lead over John Kerry amongst likely voters. The same Gallup Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get discouraged by these results, you should be more upset that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these polls and present a false, disappointing account of the actual state of the race. Why?"...
posted by Postroad on Sep 17, 2004 - 58 comments

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location in the Diebold voting machine, a second set of votes is created. "This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."
posted by mr_crash_davis on Aug 31, 2004 - 75 comments

indian electronic voting vs. diebold
"Reading this article, some of you might remember that Cold war era joke, about NASA and its multi million dollar experiment with a pen that can write in micro gravity to solve the writing problems of astronauts, and the Russian solution of using a Pencil to solve the same problem."
posted by quonsar on May 14, 2004 - 29 comments

2000 Election results ranked by avg statewide IQ. Shame on me for even posting this here in this slavering den of liberal fervor, but if it's true, it certainly is kinda fascinating.
posted by jonson on May 6, 2004 - 75 comments

Anthony Argyriou uncovers what seems to be a serious problem either with California voting machines or the vote tallying system: The Secretary of State's summary of votes on the Davis recall shows three counties--Alameda, Kern, and Plumas--that apparently had zero voters who didn't vote on the recall. Not one. All three counties used Diebold machines. Other counties ranged from 0.5% to 10.3% of voters not voting on the recall. More from Rick Hasen, a top election law scholar. [Via Volokh.]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Nov 16, 2003 - 41 comments

Important expose and interview runs on Salon today. "This evening the site the aritcle features is shut down. As soon as we get that new server up we'll host the materials (yes, we have a copy) that Diebold doesn't want the public to see. Diebold cannot silence everyone. " The links (2) for this piece can be found at URL given here. "If you're not outraged you are not paying attention. " The Agonist, as usual, is both outraged and paying attention.
posted by Postroad on Sep 24, 2003 - 47 comments

9th Circuit Court blocks California Recall Election because six counties would be using outdated punch-card ballots. Perhaps the court should have paid a visit to the Black Box Voting web site to look at all the problems surfacing with the Electronic Voting machines.
posted by thedailygrowl on Sep 15, 2003 - 42 comments

No winner in MoveOn primary... but Dean places first, with 4387%. No candidate getting over 50% means no endorsement for now. But more people voted in this virtual Democratic primary than voted in the New Hampshire, Iowa, and North Carolina Democratic primaries/caucuses in 2000.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Jun 27, 2003 - 67 comments

Who would you rather vote for - Frankenstein, Hitler, or Tony Curtis? That's the decision facing some voters in India ... Have you ever run across other 'repurposed' names?
posted by Jos Bleau on Feb 27, 2003 - 6 comments

Who Counts your Votes? This book published back in 1992 is a good launching pad to begin the quest regarding elections and election fraud in America. Joseph Stalin had a saying: ``Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.'' When I voted on November 5, I was handed a little card stuck it in to a Diebold voting machine and presto all the votes I submitted were counted correctly right? Well I'm not sure after I read the article Diebold: The face of modern balloting at http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm and some of the articles at http://www.votefraud.org/. Perhaps we Americans have handed a bit to much over to computers and the people who own the companies that make the computers and that write the code. Perhaps to restore faith in our Democracy its time to to go back a simple hand counted system, with observers from multiple parties stationed in the local precincts counting the paper ballots.
posted by thedailygrowl on Nov 9, 2002 - 3 comments

When in doubt, blame the software. Who is the governor of Alabama? Both incumbent candidate Don Siegelmand and Republican opponent Bob Riley have claimed victories. The answer lies in the hands of Baldwin County officials, who claim a software glitch "miscounted" almost 7,000 votes. [more inside]
posted by somethingotherthan on Nov 6, 2002 - 18 comments

Are we using the worst voting procedure? "Voting theorists argue that plurality voting is one of the worst of all possible choices." Plurality voting, in which each voter selects one canidate, is vulnerable to a third party spoiler (Nader) or with many canidates can lead to the (near) election of a candidate most voters despise (le Pen). Some alternative voting systems include instant runoff where canidates are ranked by voters, a Borda count where voters assigns points to each canidate, or approval system where voters vote for as many canidates as they like. (via argmax.com)
posted by Quinn on Nov 5, 2002 - 63 comments

We don't need more voters, we need better voters "Far from urging everyone to vote, perhaps the media might better urge those who are going to vote to first make sure that they have heard both sides of the issues at stake, instead of just voting by habit, whim, or according to the image or rhetoric of the candidates. A case could be made that those who have not informed themselves on the issues have a patriotic duty to stay away from the polls on Election Day, rather than mess with something that is too important to be decided by ignorance or prejudice. " Is Tom's suggestion an attack on a civic institution/central tenet of democracy, or a needed improvement? I share the opinion that uninformed voter turnout is a greater problem than low voter turnout, and I know I'm not alone, but I prefer the approach of those who promote use of emerging information resources, especially the incredible Project Vote Smart, rather than simply complaining. Why don't Sowell -- or for that matter, the rest of traditional media -- push these organizations? What can we do about it -- other than posting on Metafilter?
posted by namespan on Nov 4, 2002 - 35 comments

Another election debacle in Florida. One year and $30m in technology later, the Reno/McBride primary is marred by late openings and other assorted and sundry glitches. I know, it's a CNN link, but I can't resist anything that includes someone delivering the grade "F-minus-minus-minus" (later determined to be merely an "F-minus-minus" and some Drambuie). Any personal voting horror stories from our Florida contingent? Will the state become a case study in how "throwing money at the problem" never works?
posted by mkultra on Sep 12, 2002 - 27 comments

Florida to settle 2000 election lawsuit. Major provisions include a promise for massive reforms in voter registration, voter-roll maintenance and polling practices, as part of the lawsuit pushed by the NAACP. Granted, it's good that a large angered group is "getting over it" as many (even on this board) have still been explaining, but should skeptics (read: Democrats) such as myself read the Florida legislature's desire to settle as a sign that they may not have thought they would have won against charges of rigging the election?
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Aug 31, 2002 - 11 comments

Experiences of voting in Zimbabwe - BBC News Online has a forum where it is displaying emails from Zimbabwe about voter's experiences in the current presidential poll. I think the BBC are using their status responsibly in providing direct information about the conditions there.
posted by adrianhon on Mar 10, 2002 - 7 comments

The Web site Registered to Vote or Not? lets you search New York's voter registration database using a last name and birthday to see the address and party you are registered under. It also doesn't do anything to stop you from looking up Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Monica Lewinsky and countless others.
posted by rcade on Aug 24, 2001 - 16 comments

Should Election Day be a holiday? Vote, then do some barbecue and watch fireworks... Will this be the development that could increase voter turnout, or will people just waste the day away? How else could voter turnout be improved?
posted by owillis on Jul 30, 2001 - 63 comments

And I thought Florida only had this problem. The Chicago Tribune reports that nearly 8% of votes in Illinois' 1st Congressional District went uncounted in the 2000 presidential election. It also adds: voters in low-income, high-minority districts nationwide were more likely to have undercounted ballots than were those in affluent, predominantly white districts, the study showed. Is there a nation-wide epidemic of undercounting? Or is it a problem limited to few localized areas? Or is it an underhanded way to deny the underprivileged of their vote? From the looks of it, at least additional investigation needs to be done.
posted by Bag Man on Jul 9, 2001 - 15 comments

Vote early, vote often. (With apologies for sticking this on the front page.) Using your skill and judgement, predict the winning party in the UK general election, size of the majority, and the number of seats won by the Lib Dems. Closest to the actual result gets a gift subscription to Private Eye, the fortnightly antidote to British politics and media, or the equivalent value in that international currency: Amazon vouchers. (And if you've emailed me already, there's no need to post a prediction.)
posted by holgate on Jun 7, 2001 - 16 comments

When you're an aiga member they send you e-mail, I usualy don't read them, because they're accouncements of conferences and such, but this one was about Chicago enlisting the help of AIGA to design new election ballots. 'Some possibilities for making Chicago ballots more user-friendly include enlarging candidates' names, changing the font size, altering the color of pages, making wider ballot booklets.' Since I couldn't find the article on-line, I'll just cut-n-paste the e-mail inside. :)
posted by tiaka on Dec 2, 2000 - 8 comments

Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots. [free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing. Did I just post the twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)
posted by dhartung on Nov 29, 2000 - 24 comments

DISQUALIFY MILITARY VOTES : A how-to.
posted by tiaka on Nov 20, 2000 - 16 comments