Brad: OR SOS Bradbury sues ES&S; says "we will not be coerced"

[Amaryllis]

See Bradblog coverage here:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002714.htm

LATEST E-VOTE LAWSUIT: Oregon Sues ES&S for Breach of Contract!
2006 Election 'Train Wreck' Continues as Company Fails to Meet Obligations in Yet Another State

Complaint Latest in Growing String of Legal Battles, HAVA-Related E-Voting Meltdowns Around the Country...

In the latest amongst a spate of lawsuits being filed against Electronic Voting Machine Companies around the country, the Oregon Sec. of State has announced today that they have filed a complaint against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) for breach of contract in failing to provide the state with disabled-accessible voting machines, as promised, in time to meet the January 1, 2006 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) deadline.

<snip>

In a statement just issued by the office of Bill Bradbury, Oregon's Sec. of State, he said, "I'm disappointed in ES&S. They agreed to provide us with voting machines, they didn't follow through on that agreement, and that failure directly punishes people with disabilities."

The press release goes on to explain the history of ES&S's broken commitment to provide disabled-accessible electronic AutoMark voting systems to the state in what seems to echo problems that ES&S and several of the other electronic voting machine vendors are now having in meeting contractual obligations all around the country. The problem in Oregon is just the latest to come to light, as the voting machine vendors have been snatching up any and all available agreements with states, in light of Election Officials' attempts to comply with various mandates set forth, and funded by federal tax dollars, in the disastrous HAVA legislation of 2002. John Gideon, has written several articles on the epidemic recently for BRAD BLOG.

<snip>

The Oregon lawsuit is just the latest in a growing array of suits filed by voters and election officials around the country in light of HAVA implementation that has seen officials scrambling, apologizing, making excuses and, in many cases, left to come up with alternate plans to carry out impending primary elections in 2006. Voters, in the meantime, have been largely ignored, left hanging, and crossing their fingers in hoping that somehow their vote might be counted accurately this year -- or even counted at all. Unfortunately, given the way most of the new voting systems work, there is little or no way for those voters to have even the slightest clue whether or not their vote will be counted at all.

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002714.htm


Vote Trust coverage here:

Oregon: Secretary of State Sues ES&S
By Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury
April 20, 2006

Secretary of State Bill Bradbury (pictured at right) has filed a lawsuit against Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), for breach of contract for failure to deliver the electronic voting machines that would allow people with disabilities to vote privately and independently.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires, among other things, that all states provide people with disabilities the ability to vote with the same privacy and independence as all other citizens by a deadline of January 1, 2006. The federal government can impose penalties on states that fail to meet this requirement, including withdrawal and withholding of federal funds available for elections improvements.

ES&S submitted the winning bid to a request for proposals issued by the Secretary of State in July 2005. In that bid, ES&S agreed to all of the standard state contract terms, and agreed to provide one million dollars worth of AutoMark touch-screen electronic voting machines by the January 1, 2006 federal deadline.

On January 10, 2006, ES&S informed the Secretary of State that it would not agree to the terms of the contract, and would not deliver the voting machines unless the Secretary changed the terms of the contract. Bradbury refused to alter the contract to meet ES&S's demands, which then led to this lawsuit.

"We will not leave our elections in the hands of companies that do not follow through on their obligations, and we will not be coerced into altering our contracts," said Bradbury.

For the rest and a full copy of the lawsuit:
http://votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1211&Itemid=113

[don954]

1. why don't he just hire a open-source programmer to

customize one of the open voting programs and put it on a touch screen tablet computer? Its not like a voting program is all that complex, its only a simple counting program with the need to hook into a simple database. Crap, i did one in high-school comp sci years ago! Then he wouldnt have to screw with the stupid undemocratic companies.

Now that would be just too logical....

[MissB]

2. Because the open source programmer would have to have

submitted the winning bid. That is how government contracts work.

It is a funny suggestion since *the* open source guy, Linus Torvalds, lives in Oregon.

More power to Bradbury for suing them though. :applause:

[nicknameless]

3. Why can't Hand Counted Paper Ballots be the answer here?

:shrug:

K&R

[Amaryllis]

4. Because they dont meet the HAVA disability requirement. OR HAS

all paper ballots. OR went with the Automark because it meets HAVA disability requirements and produces real paper ballots that can be counted. According to OR law, nothing can be used that doesnt have a paper ballot.

[nicknameless]

6. It's my understanding that Diebold, ES&S, and others don't

meet the HAVA disability requirement. Aren't the Feds bending the law for those companies?
Why can't *we* bend it and actually have people's votes count?

:shrug:

[Amaryllis]

7. Very few DRE's actually meet the requirement! Automark is one of

tje few that does.

[Amaryllis]

5. Note: this was a press release from the OR SOS office, and should

not have Bill Bradbury's name as a byline.

[Wilms]

8. Vote-PAD an option for you in OR? n/t

[Amaryllis]

9. They looked at it and didn't go for it. Not sure why. The Automark is

good, if ES&S wouldn't overextend and not be able to serve their contracts, although I hate supporting them. Our SOS is unhappy enough with them at this point that perhaps that will eventually extend to not doing business with them as far as scanners and tabulators that count our paper.

[Wilms]

11. Well, I do like the idea that it's a ballot-marker, and not a DRE.

But...

"When elections staff listened to the ballot styles that were programmed into the machine -- there are more than 1,200 this year -- they noticed that many of the candidate names were mispronounced. Other problems include the machine reading the punctuation off the ballot, not reading all of the ballot or not offering the voter the correct choices."

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002710.htm

[kster]

10. kick.nt

[Bushfire]

12. K & R n/t