Alaska Judge Orders Ballots Reprinted
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A Superior Court judge on Wednesday ordered the state to rewrite, reprint and redistribute all its ballots for the Nov. 2 election, saying the wording of a ballot initiative was inaccurate and biased...
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A judge ruled Friday that a lawsuit demanding that Florida's touch-screen voting machines produce a paper record will not be heard until Oct. 18 &#151; too late, perhaps, to affect the November presidential election.
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DENVER, Sept. 22 -- A judge on Friday chastised state officials for botching efforts to ensure that electronic voting machines are tamper-proof, but he cleared them for use in the November election, saying it is too late now to change course.
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An Oregon judge on Thursday ordered the state to put independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the November ballot, reversing a decision by officials in the swing state that had disqualified him on technicalities.
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By KAREN LEE ZINER  Journal Staff Writer  Question 2 on the November ballot would amend the state Constitution and allow felons to vote after they are released from prison.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ordered on  Monday further consideration of a challenge by Democrats and  minority groups to a controversial Republican-backed  congressional redistricting plan in Texas.
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The state will not be forced to create a paper record in case of recounts in elections on touch-screen voting machines, a federal judge ruled Monday.
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The state Supreme Court today promised a speedy decision after hearing arguments over the fate of hundreds of mistakenly rejected ballots in Washington&#39;s incredibly close governor&#39;s race.
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A federal judge scheduled a hearing next week to hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by Republicans aiming to block the recount of some ballots in the cliffhanger governor's race.
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By John Stark, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.  Sep. 17--The courtroom battle over the fate of the Healthy Bay Initiative will be heard Monday before Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Ira Uhrig.
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A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily stopped hearings on Republican challenges of thousands of voter registrations, ruling in favor of Democrats who alleged the challenges were an attempt to keep legitimate votes from being counted.
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Democrats in Washington state, fearing  their candidate may lose a governor's race as ballot counting  continued 10 days after the vote, got a court order on Friday  to stop the state's largest county from discarding hundreds of  ballots.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska  - A federal judge issued a   preliminary ruling on Thursday that temporarily blocks the U.S.   administration's plan to allow oil development in the sensitive   wetlands near vast Teshekpuk Lake in Arctic Alaska.
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Democratic observer Noel Frame, second left, goes over the tally of recounted ballots from King County with Superintendent of Elections Bill Huennekens, at an elections tabulating center in Seattle Wednesday, Nov. 24, 2004.
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A federal judge Sunday denied the state Republican Party's bid to force Washington's most populous county to stop counting some ballots in the recount of the governor's race.
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(InfoWorld) - A California judge is likely to order a Berkeley city initiative back on the ballot because of local officials' mishandling of electronic voting machine data, a public-interest lawyer arguing the case said Friday. In a preliminary ruling Thursday, Judge Winifred Smith of the Alameda County Superior Court indicated she would nullify the defeat of a medical marijuana proposal in Berkeley in 2004 and order the measure put back on the ballot in a later election. A hearing on Friday morning in advance of a final ruling brought out nothing that indicated Smith would deviate from her preliminary decision, said attorney Gregory Luke, who is representing Americans for Safe Access. The medical-marijuana advocacy group is suing the county, assisted by the technology rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation. The case points to the dangers of electronic voting systems, which make it harder to ensure fair elections, Luke said. Electronic voting machines have been widely adopted in the U.S. since the disputed presidential election of 2000. Laws in California and some other states now require paper records of all votes, but the California law wasn't in place for the Berkeley election. Both sides argued their cases before Smith on Friday in a last-ditch hearing on the proposed sanctions, according to Luke. The hearing brought out nothing new that suggested Smith would change direction, he said. Americans for Free Access sought a recount of the vote on Measure R, which would have established procedures for opening marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley. It lost by fewer than 200 votes. A recount wasn't possible because the city didn't share the necessary voting records, in violation of election laws, Judge Smith ruled in April. In May,Â the county agreed to share some data. The county reused voting machines from Diebold Election Systems without saving sufficient data to carry out a recount or review the election process, Luke said. Officials failed to save key evidence even after the suit was pending, he said. Data from the vote in question has only been found on 20 of the hundreds of machines used in the election, according to Luke. In addition to ordering another vote on Measure R, Judge Smith's preliminary ruling called for the county to pay the $22,604 cost of the recount as well as attorney's fees and the cost of a trip to Diebold offices in Texas. Ordering a new vote is a rare move for a court, Luke said. "This is a very severe sanction. ... and it's warranted," he said Friday. Luke expects a final ruling in the case within two weeks. The county could appeal to a higher court if the ruling goes against it, he said. Attorneys for the county were not immediately available for comment.
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The governor's race is still undecided in Washington state, and Democratic Party volunteers are frantically calling voters with disputed provisional ballots after a judge orders officials to release the names. Republicans are miffed.