NCVoter's blog

In order to thwart the Winston Salem Occupy Wallstreet group.

Winston-Salem City Council considers changing free-speech ordinance
By: LAURA GRAFF | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: December 20, 2011

With no public notice and no public input, the Winston-Salem City Council on Monday night considered temporarily changing the city ordinance governing free speech and public assembly to prohibit such activities on City Hall grounds

This was proposed by Dan Besse, city council member, who some may remember for his campaigns for Lt Gov.

NC Lawmakers will reconsider PHOTO ID law on SUNDAY Nov 27.(that's HB 351) And other bills. There also have been rumors that fracking would be heard, but there's nothing on the calender for that on Sunday.

HOUSE CALENDAR
101st Legislative Day
Sunday, November 27, 2011
House Convenes at 8:00 pm

Thom Tillis, Speaker
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
RECONSIDERATION OF VETOED BILLS

HB 7 Ingle, Cleveland and McCormick (Primary Sponsors) - COMMUNITY COLLEGES/OPT OUT OF FEDERAL LOAN PROGRAM.
(Vetoed by Governor - 4/13/11) (Ratified Edition)

HB 351 Lewis, T. Moore and Killian (Primary Sponsors) - RESTORE CONFIDENCE IN GOVERNMENT. (Vetoed by Governor - 6/23/11)
(Veto Override Vote Reconsidered - 7/26/11) (Ratified Edition)

HB 482 Burr - WATER SUPPLY LINES/WATER VIOLATION WAIVERS.

Incumbent Judge Cressie Thigpen had a 100,000 vote lead in the statewide IRV contest for NC Court of Appeals. He's lost that lead thanks to IRV votes and now is 6,700 votes behind. Although this was non partisan contest, voter education fell to the political parties mostly, because IRV was touted as a cost saving measure.

Correcting counting error leads to new leader in Court of Appeals race December 06, 2010
...
State elections director Gary Bartlett said Doug McCullough had a roughly 6,700-vote lead over incumbent Cressie Thigpen with counting complete in 99 of the 100 counties. The only one left – Warren County – doesn't have enough votes cast to turn the race back to Thigpen, he said.

If the race stays close, Thigpen would have until Thursday to ask for a recount.

Veteran's Day is a good day to thank the North Carolina State Board of Elections for going the extra mile to help our troops vote. Our troops relocate often and some vote from overseas, so they need more help in updating their registration records and getting a ballot. The State Board of Elections recognized that and asked the Dept of Defense for help. See the request letter below, and DoD press release later.

On Oct 8, 2009 the NC State Board of Elections sent a letter to Robert Gates, Secretary of DOD enlisting their cooperation. They joined Senator Coryn and Senator Schumer in this request. An excerpt:

We may have a voter guide, and we may have an IRV task force, but sorry, no cigar! We still do not have IRV tallying procedures as of Sept 15, 2010. And the voting vendor seems more concerned about obeying the law than anyone else.

I contacted a member of the task force set up to devise procedures, he advise me on Sept 13 that

"there are still several options on the table and I do not know at this point what method we will end up with. I think we need to spend some time testing and evaluating the options before a decision is made. Might as well do it right the first time."

The vendor worries about the legality of using our voting machines for this process. Here's excerpt from Print Elect & ES&S letter to the NC State Board of Elections dated Aug 31 2010:

This November 2010 the election for North Carolina Appeals will be decided by a rarely used election method, instant runoff voting. See 13 candidates file for open NC appeals court job AP News August 31, 2010.

And we still don't know how it will be counted.

There's a huge opportunity for legal challenges with this contest, for many reasons, because IRV has to be centrally tallied, and because of issues with counting on touchscreen ballots v certified systems and no such thing as certified IRV software that can tally a statewide contest. (more on that once procedures are announced).

Its really hard to stop misinformation once it becomes viral, even when the paper originating it later runs your op/ed correcting the misinformation. Even when I called the reporter originating the story but he wouldn't listen to what I had to say. So here's my blog on the issue with detailed documentation:

I blogged this on August 6, and my op/ed "Handle ballots with care" ran in the Raleigh N&O on August 13, the misinformation is still running in some papers today.

NC Ballot Printing mess-politics or excuse to gut Public Confidence in Elections Act?

For immediate release
Joyce McCloy, North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting 336-794-1240

Please join the NC Coalition for Verified Voting
for our
Annual Voting Integrity Meetup
In celebration of the fourth anniversary of SL-323
the Public Confidence in Elections Law

Wednesday August 26, 2009
6:00 - 7:30 PM
at the Busy Bee Cafe in Raleigh
in the upstairs room
225 South Wilmington Street
(plenty of FREE Parking nearby)

The NC Coalition for Verified Voting invites you to join other election integrity supporters in celebrating the fourth anniversary of the Public Confidence in Elections Law, SL 323.

Agenda
Introduction - North Carolina passed one of the strongest verified voting laws in the country four years ago.
"Legislator of the Year" award.
Guest Speaker: David Allen, member of the Joint Select Committee on Electronic Voting will speak

A bold new voting hack uses machines decommissioned by a North Carolina county. This hack demonstrates how important it was for the North Carolina legislature to pass one of the strongest verified voting laws in the country.

August 14, 2009
For immediate release
Joyce McCloy, North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting 336-794-1240

A new voting hack takes over the machine, is practical, and costs only $100,000 to replicate. Computer scientists from three prestigious U.S. universities managed to hack into and steal votes from an electronic voting machine that was designed to resist takeover attempts. The hack comes on the anniversary of North Carolina's law requiring paper ballots and regulating voting machines and vendors.The machines used in the research were decommissioned paperless voting machines from Buncombe County North Carolina.

For immediate release
Prof. Mark Lindeman 845-399-0133
Joyce McCloy, North Carolina Coalition for Verified Voting 336-794-1240
Sean Flaherty, Verified Voting Foundation 319-621-8651

Touch Screens Show High Rate of Unrecorded Votes for President in 2008
Paper Ballots Found More Efficient at Recording Voters' Choices

June 26, 2009 - A professor's study of North Carolina's 2008 Presidential election shows that optically scanned paper ballots were better at registering the intent of the voters than touch screen voting machines.

Mark Lindeman, an assistant professor of political science at Bard College in New York, found that in the 67 North Carolina counties where the voting method is optically scanned paper ballots, 0.78% of ballots failed to register a vote for President last November. The 24 counties where touch screens were the principal method of voting saw 1.36% of ballots fail to register a vote for President, a difference of over 7000 votes in the 2008 election.