The company has changed its name from Diebold Election Systems to Premier Election Solutions, but the problems with these paperless, completely unverifiable machines continue. A judge in Colorado impounded one of the machines after reports of vote flipping, and a judge in Northumberland County in Pennsylvania impounded 185 of the machines after complaints from both Democratic and Republican officials there. These are the same machines that were used throughout the state of Georgia. There are also reports that Diebold's central tabulating system is dropping thousands of votes. The full story is reported by Brad Friedman at BradBlog.com.

Excerpts:

All 185 of the completely unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting machines used in Northumberland County, PA's election were ordered impounded by a judge Tuesday night after complaints from both the Republican and Democratic parties. Officials from both parties had filed requested action following reports from voters that straight-party ticket votes were not showing voters the names of their selection for President on the summary screen near the end of the 100% faith-based touch-screen voting process.

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While one Diebold AccuVote touch-screen machine was impounded by an official in Colorado following reports of votes flipping on the screen from Democratic to Republican candidates in early voting --- and even with hundreds of similar startling problems reported directly to the Obama campaign as The BRAD BLOG reported exclusively on Monday --- no other action was taken on or before Election Day to remove these wholly unverifiable systems from use until Tuesday night's court-ordered quarantine of the Northumberland County machines.

The same unverifiable machines made by Diebold were used in a number of states, including the entirety of Georgia where a run-off has been scheduled following a tight race for the U.S. Senate there. The same models were also found, by a landmark Princeton study in 2006, to be easily susceptible to malicious viruses that could result in a flipped election which would be difficult, if not impossible, to discover...

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To make matters worse this year, Diebold admitted in late August of this year that their GEMS central tabulator system routinely drops thousands of votes from uploaded totals without notifying the system administrator that there was an error.

That failure, first discovered by election officials in Ohio, and originally denied by the voting machine company, exists on Diebold tabulators used in 34 states on Tuesday. The problem affects all votes cast on both optical-scan paper ballot systems (such as those used in several counties in the razor-thin Franken/Coleman U.S. Senate race, now set for a manual recount in Minnesota) and touch-screen systems manufactured by the company.

The critical programming flaw which causes the problem has been in the GEMS systems for some 10 years before they finally admitted to the problem just over two months ago while being sued by Ohio's Sec. of State Jennifer Brunner, after the failure was confirmed by election officials in Hamilton County, Ohio.

Is it too much to ask for an election that can be verified with paper receipts? Whatever the Obama administration has on its to-do list, I hope that this is one of the priorities that is right at the top. 

Have we ever had a state to equal the corruption in Alaska? Where the governor was found guilty of breaking ethics laws, a senator was convicted of felony corruption charges, and the state's sole congressman was currently under investigation, also for ethics and corruption issues? Does anyone trust the Alaska state government to run a clean election? There are so many irregularities that it is hard to keep track, but Shannyn Moore has a done a pretty good job of creating a summary:

ANCHORAGE - Something stinks. Not just an ordinary low tide smell. Not like something you'd blame on the dog. It smells like an infection. For me to plug my nose, I'd have to overlook some curious facts.

In Alaska, more people voted for George W. Bush in 2004 than for Sarah Palin on Tuesday despite an identical 61-36 margin of victory. Yes. Only four years ago 54,304 Alaskans got off their sofas and voted for Bush, but decided to sit home and not vote for Palin in 2008.

In turn, I have to ignore the 30,520 Alaskans who felt progressive enough in 2004 to vote for John Kerry, but weren't inspired enough to get out and vote for Barack Obama.

I would have to glance past the 1,700% increase in the Democratic caucus in February, the 20,991 newly registered voters, and the three largest political rallies in Alaska's history.

I would also have to forget the people I stood in a long line with to early vote. It would be helpful not to know every other presidential election since Alaska began keeping records has had a larger turn out than the one we just had with our own Governor on the ticket. Try not to remember 12.4% more Alaskans showed up for the August primary as compared to four years ago, before the Palin nomination. Don't think about the Lower 49's record voter turn out this year either. Try to delete the memory file, though difficult, that 80% of us approved of Sarah Palin just two months ago.

There is so much more, and I highly recommend reading her entire report here:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6644

And yes, Alaska is a Diebold Touch-Screen "Faith-Based Voting" state.

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Original post:

ABC News is reporting that there are still a lot of ballots to be counted in Alaska:

Shelly Growden, Alaska's elections systems manager, tells ABC News that the current vote totals don't tell the full story. At least 70,000 absentee and provisional ballots have yet to be counted, she said.

The state won't know for several days even how many absentee and provisional ballots were issued, or many of those will be received in time to counted. In Alaska, absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can arrive as many as 10 days after the election if mailed domestically, and 15 days if sent from overseas, Growden said.

She said she expects final 2008 turnout to have exceeded the 60.1 percent recorded in the 2000 election, though it still probably won't approach the numbers reached in 2004.

"We were preparing for it to be higher," Growden said.

Pollster.com indicates that 96% of Alaska's precints have reported, leaving 4% to go. While there is no chance that the 62/36% split is likely to change in Obama's favor, there is still the issue of the Begich/Stevens race to be decided. According to Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count.

This of course means that it is still possible for Begich to catch up and turn one more Senate seat blue. Hope!

As far as concerns about voting irregularities, there is an excellent, detailed diary up at Daily Kos that addresses a number of issues:

Stolen election in Alaska? 5 reasons why that accusation is premature.

From Wikipedia:

Swahili (called Kiswahili in the language itself) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands.^[2] Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language,^[1] Swahili is a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.

"Hussein", by the way, is Arabic for "good" and "small handsome one."

And we might as well complete the etymology:

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF OBAMA

Obama is a name from the Luo ethnic group of southwestern Kenya, where Barack Obama Sr. was born. It was originally the given name of Barack Obama's great-grandfather. It is based on the Luo (technically, Dholuo, the name of the language of the Luo) word bam, which means "crooked, slightly bending" . The prefix O- means "he", and many Luo male names begin with it. Since most traditional Luo names were given by the baby's mother referring to something about the child's birth, the best guess is that when Obama's great-grandfather was born one of his arms or legs looked slightly bent.

So no, that doesn't mean "crooked" as in Richard Nixon crooked! Let us think of it in terms of Taoist philosophy, as in the "reed (or bamboo) that bends in the wind, but isn't broken", a symbol of strong character in Chinese philosophy. 

Obama has been declared the unofficial winner of North Carolina. From the Raleigh News-Observer and the North Carolina State Board of Elections:

Democrat Barack Obama is the unofficial winner in North Carolina, but the victory over Sen. John McCain won't be sealed until provisional ballots are counted and certified next month.

Unofficial returns show Obama ahead by 13,746 votes.

Trends over the last 14 years point to Obama having a wider lead after the provisionals are counted, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections.

http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1283680.html

And now, some 18 hours later, the Associated Press confirms:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- President-elect Obama has won North Carolina, a symbolic triumph in a state that hadn't voted for a Democrat in more than a generation.

The Associated Press declared Obama the winner Thursday after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots.

That survey found that there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican John McCain to close a 13,693-vote deficit.

North Carolina's 15 electoral votes brings Obama's total to 364 - nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call.

Obama's win in North Carolina was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976.

Next stop: Missouri!!!