Justice to monitor voting in 25 states
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The Justice Department yesterday said it will send out 1,090 federal poll watchers to monitor elections in 25 states, three times as many as in 2000, as Democrats and
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With 137 cases in 25 states, including one death, here are some tips for staying healthy and safe
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A look at a number of states where poll monitors are massing for Tuesday's election. Authorities worry they could confuse or intimidate voters, particularly where races are close.
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Urged on by Democratic lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office plans to investigate the way votes were counted in the presidential election. The office cautions, however, that it is powerless to act if irregularities are found.
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About 46,000 people are registered to  vote in two states, New York and Florida, a violation of both  states' laws that could affect the outcome of the November  presidential election, according to an investigation by the  Daily News.
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In November, 12 states will vote on initiatives on protecting private property from seizure and regulation.
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Florida set new guidelines for recounting touch-screen ballots in close elections, but voter-rights groups said the court-ordered decision doesn't go nearly far enough to ensure a fair election.
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The state has placed four counties on an election watch list because of serious voting problems in November and will seek court permission to directly supervise their next elections unless they fix the deficiencies, The Associated Press has learned.
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November 6, 2004 â An  Open Source web based Survey tool is playing a key role in keeping track of voting irregularities in todayâs US Presidential Elections. PHPSurveyor (http://phpsurveyor.sourceforge.net), a PHP based online survey tool, is being used to gather data across the United States about all voting irregularities. In the first 10 hours of voting alone, over 13500 incidents had been recorded using the software. The tool was selected by the Verified Voting Foundation as part of their Election Incident Reporting System (http://www.verifiedvoting.org/eirs/) as one of three major system components â all of which are Open Source.    The Advokit tool provides a structure within which campaign leaders can match volunteers to tasks, and manage task completion. The MapServer tool displays clickable maps. PHPSurveyor is used to allow Verified Votingâs thousands of volunteers across the United States to enter voting irregularities and incidents online as the day progresses. Researchers can view the collected data in real time by mining down through a map of the US, viewing incidents at a Nationwide, Statewide, or County level.  PHPSurveyor developer Jason Cleeland said âIâm very excited that my tool is being used for a project of this scale and importance. Itâs an indication both of the success of Open Source as a development strategy, and itâs flexibility in allowing organizations to freely bend an existing project to new uses.â  âWhile PHPSurveyor is generally a tool for simple development and collection of survey responses online, the Verified Voting Foundations âTechWatchâ group of technologists have been able to integrate it with realtime reporting mechanisms that allow legal teams and press across the United States, and the world, to respond immediately to any problems in the Presidential elections as they occur.â  PHPSurveyor was first developed in 2003 by Jason Cleeland in response to his organisationâs need for a better way to run and record surveys. âPaper based surveys were effective, but required a large commitment in terms of staff resourcing,â Mr Cleeland said. âFor a non-profit organisation, finding the time for staff to perform the required data entry was a real problem. Yet at the same time, we had a constant need to run surveys of our members. Writing an online survey tool solved these problems. It eliminated the double-handling of the respondent completing the survey, and a data entry operator transferring that response to computerâ said Mr Cleeland. âInstead, the respondent completes the survey online, and the data is immediately available for review.â  From a relatively basic system, the tool quickly grew a wider feature set. âIt was the release of the software on Sourceforge as an Open Source GPL product that really broadened PHPSurveyors outlookâ said Mr Cleeland. âWithin a matter of weeks some IT developers from a public non-profit TV station in Dallas, Texas had started adding code and providing improvements. And since then, more ideas, suggestions, and improvements have flowed from all over the world on a constant and sometimes overwhelming basis.â  At the time of writing PHPSurveyor had collected over 23500 incident reports on the US Presidential election, with 13500 being entered in the 10 hours since voting commenced. âI expect that by the close of polls there will be around 30 to 35,000 entriesâ Mr Cleeland said, âand that by the time all the paper reports have also been collected the tool will have collected at least 40,000 responses. This is very exciting to watch â to see a tool that was intended to handle around 1000 survey responses, to one that can collect - in a very short time frame â over 40,000 indicates to me the benefits of opening source code to the world.â
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Many states are facing legal challenges over possible voting problems Nov. 2. A look at some of the developments Friday:
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The Justice Department is sending out three times as many poll watchers on Election Day as it did in 2000, assigning some to Florida and other closely contested states in the presidential election.
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New laws, new voting procedures and court fights that have changed the rules in some states may mean added confusion at the polls on Tuesday. With memories of deadlocked Florida still fresh, the lawyers are plentiful and busy this year. Here is a voter's guide to ways the partisan legal skirmishing could affect voters on Election Day.
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WASHINGTON - Call it the law of unintended consequences. A new national backup system meant to ensure that millions of eligible voters are not mistakenly turned away from the polls this year, as happened in 2000, could wind up causing Election Day problems as infamous as Florida's hanging chads...
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A national voting rights group says it documented hundreds of voting irregularities affecting poor and minority voters in seven Southern states &#151; from long lines and faulty equipment to deliberate voter intimidation.
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A team of international observers will travel to five states beginning Friday to monitor preparations for the Nov. 2 presidential election.
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Efforts are intensifying in Congress to pass legislation that would require electronic touch-screen voting machines used in federal elections to provide paper trails that could be checked in the case of a recount.
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As the November presidential election nears, several groups are mobilizing to monitor the voting process -- including a group of observers from across the globe and over a thousand techies who will help evaluate voting machines. By Laila Weir.