Governmental changes and upcoming legislation from the new Congress may bring an end to “paperless” electronic voting, The New York Times reports in its Friday edition.

“By the 2008 presidential election, voters around the country are likely to see sweeping changes in how they cast their ballots and how those ballots are counted,” write Ian Urbina and Christopher Drew, “including an end to the use of most electronic voting machines without a paper trail.”

Quoting federal voting officials and legislators, the Urbina and Drew report that new government guidelines and bills in Congress “will probably combine to make paperless voting machines obsolete.” (more…)

The United States warned people to stockpile food, water and medicine in Venezuela in case a vote on Sunday sparks public disorder as anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez seeks reelection.

In a warning to Americans living in Venezuela, which provides about 12 percent of U.S. oil imports, the U.S. Embassy said on Tuesday it had no information Venezuela would slip into lawlessness.

But it warned on its web site that the measures would be a sensible precaution in a polarized nation where politics often stokes violent street protests and strikes.

Chavez says he is running against the United States, which he accuses of trying to destabilize his government. (more…)

After six years of technological research, more than $4 billion spent by Washington on new machinery and a widespread overhaul of the nation’s voting system, this month’s midterm election revealed that the country is still far from able to ensure that every vote counts.

Tens of thousands of voters, scattered across more than 25 states, encountered serious problems at the polls, including failures in sophisticated new voting machines and confusion over new identification rules, according to interviews with election experts and officials. (more…)

OAXACA, Mexico — Protesters shot fireworks at riot police and burned down government buildings in Mexico’s colonial city of Oaxaca on Saturday, days before President-elect Felipe Calderon was to take office.

At least nine of the demonstrators, who are demanding the resignation of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz, were injured in skirmishes with police wearing body armor and lobbing tear gas, a government news agency said.

Other protesters threw gasoline bombs into at least four government buildings, including a museum and court, starting blazes that spread to nearby shops. (more…)

As elections officials continue their post-mortems on last Tuesday’s race, another irregularity in electronic voting machine tallies has surfaced.

In Williamson County, Texas, located just north of Austin, elections officials are blaming a software glitch in the region’s touch-screen machines for counting each electronically-cast vote not just once, but three times, the Austin American-Statesman (registration required) reported in its Wednesday edition.

County officials uncovered the hiccups on the day after the election, when they found that the number of reported votes was higher than the number of people who signed at their polling places. (more…)

Citing the disputed vote in a Florida congressional district, a Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday urged Congress to approve his measure requiring a paper trail for electronic voting.

Rep. Rush Holt, sponsor of the bill, said the inaccuracy of electronic touch-screen voting machines “poses a direct threat to the integrity of our electoral system.” The New Jersey congressman argued the Florida district, in which more than 18,000 votes have gone uncounted, has exposed the system’s flaws. (more…)

WALDENBURG, Arkansas — Randy Wooten figured he would get at least one vote in his bid for mayor of this town of 80 people — even if it was just his own.

He did not. Now he has to decide whether to file a formal protest.

Wooten got the news from his wife, Roxanne, who went to City Hall on Wednesday to see the election results.

“She saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did,” said Wooten, owner of a local bar. (more…)

SEOUL — North Korea’s news media on Saturday reported with unusual speed the mid-term election results in the United States, with which the Stalinist nation has been involved in a stand-off over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the Republicans suffered a “crushing defeat” in the elections, in which Democrats won control of both chambers of the US Congress and triumphed in races for state governorships.

“The mid-term elections, which were hotly contested by the Republicans and Democrats, ended in a crushing defeat for the Republicans,” KCNA said. (more…)

Forget political correctness. The revolution has NOT arrived! Bush is still president. The corporate state is safe. The Upper Class has little to fear. Lobbyists will be writing different names on checks. Winning Democrats will entertain more than they will produce historic restorative reforms. Did Republicans deserve to lose? Of course!

However, Americans who thought their votes would bring much needed change to our political system also lost. They just don’t know or admit it yet. As usual, the third-party movement lost, because the two-party duopoly maintained its stranglehold on our political system. Populists and true progressives lost. Who or what was the biggest winner? The short-term and delusional tactic of lesser-evil voting won big. (more…)

Not surprisingly, there’s been cases of voter fraud reported across the country today, with more pouring in by the hour. Here’s a rundown of the reports gathered so far, with the states appearing in alphabetical.

Of note are problems in tight races such as Corker vs. Ford in Tennessee, Stabenow vs. Bouchard in Michigan, and Talent vs. McCaskill in Missouri.

State-by-state breakdown: (more…)

Vote machines crash in Ohio

EAST CLEVELAND — Early trouble with crashing electronic voting machines sparked immediate problems in some areas as US elections again went ahead amid fears of delays and polling irregularities.

In one elementary school in the predominently black district of East Cleveland, Ohio, all 12 machines went down when voting opened at 6:30 am (1130 GMT), according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.

The machines were not started up until two hours later and poll officials refused to hand out paper ballots until a lawyer for the watchdog group Election Protection showed up. (more…)

Harris tells Alex Jones Show she has acquired software for big three companies, stories of mass voter intimidation, arrests, machine meltdowns proliferate

Vote fraud crusader and rights activist Bev Harris has told the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show that she is in possession of voting software used by the big three voting systems companies and is now in a position to completely expose the true scale of electronic vote fraud, as a cascade of stories about voter intimidation, arrests and machine meltdowns arrived on election day.

“They aren’t even being sneaky about it now,” said Harris in summarizing the widespread voting machine failures and election fraud that unfolded throughout the day, referring to policies whereby voting precincts have imposed complete blackouts on any indication of their results until the official confirmation from headquarters is given. (more…)

As FireDogLake has been reporting, right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham today urged her listeners to obstruct efforts to protect voting rights by jamming a free voter protection hotline.After playing a recording of DNC Chairman Howard Dean promoting the line to voters, Ingraham suggested her listeners call en masse:

INGRAHAM: Tell me if you think I’m crazy. This is what I’m thinking. I think we all need to call 1 888 DEM VOTE all at the same time.

The DNC has released audio recordings of some of the prank calls to the hotline. Listen to one call here.

Speaking of dumb, does Ingraham know she just committed a felony on the radio by urging her listeners to obstruct efforts to protect voting rights by jamming a free voter protection hotline?

Source: Think Progress

Two-by-two, polling specialists from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and the Associated Press will go into rooms in New York and Washington shortly before noon Tuesday. Their cellphones and BlackBerrys will be confiscated; proctors will monitor the doors; and for the next five hours, these experts will pore over exit-poll data from across the country.

If all goes well, only when they emerge from their cloisters will the legions of ravenous political bloggers have any chance of getting their hands on the earliest indication of which party will end up controlling Congress.

The major networks don’t want a repeat of that embarassing situation in the 2004 election when exit-polls were almost the exact opposite of the election results. They’re going to keep those exit-poll numbers quiet until they know what the election results are going to be so they can fudge the numbers to ensure they match this time. Heaven forbid those pesky bloggers do the media’s job (again) and uncover widespread elections fraud. (more…)