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Down Times For Diebold On E-Voting
by Michael Martinez
California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson on Tuesday delayed his approval of e-voting machines until a federal evaluation of the equipment is completed.
For the second time in two years, McPherson delayed the certification of touch-screen and optical-scan voting machines made by Diebold Election Systems, an Ohio-based company. He said there is sufficient cause for an additional evaluation of the equipment.
"We are at a critical crossroads for voting system technology," he said in a release. "Therefore, we must take every step to ensure the security and integrity of every vote cast in the new electronic age."
In a letter to Diebold's vice president, California Elections Division Chief Caren Daniels-Meade said "unresolved significant security concerns" prevented the equipment from passing the bar. She said the state would reconsider the machines after further examination of their source code.
It has been an eventful month for Diebold -- and not in a good way. The Miami Herald reported Dec. 15 that two tests conducted by computer experts in Florida this month demonstrated that hackers can manipulate the company's optical-scan machines to change the number of ballots and votes cast in elections.
Election officials in Leon County, where the tests occurred, subsequently announced plans to drop Diebold machines in favor of those made by another company. Volusia County, Fla., also announced plans not to use Diebold machines.
Additionally, Diebold was sued last week by investors claiming that misleading information about the company's business has artificially inflated its stock prices. The class-action lawsuit was filed in a U.S. district court in Cleveland.
Pennsylvania Backs MCI, Verizon Merger
Verizon Communications is now only one state away from finalizing its acquisition of MCI.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission endorsed the deal last week, leaving Washington as the only state still considering the merger. Both the FCC and Justice Department approved Verizon's planned $8.5 billon purchase of MCI this fall.
By a vote of 4-1, Pennsylvania regulators approved the merger without conditions, paving the way for Verizon to acquire its only major residential competitor in the state. Critics said the move would stifle telephone competition in Pennsylvania. Both MCI and Verizon officials have argued that wireless and Internet telephone firms will provide legitimate competition.
James O'Rourke, the president and CEO of Verizon Pennsylvania, said the commission was right to approve a merger that regulators across the country have universally considered to be in the public interest.
But James Cawley, the vice president of the commission and the only member who voted against the merger, said the market dominance of the new partnership is not likely to erode because of the spread alternative service providers and innovative technologies like voice-over-Internet protocol.
"I would have enthusiastically voted to approve the merger if Verizon had voluntarily made reasonable concessions designed to cure Pennsylvania-specific service-quality problems and to accelerate the demise of the 'digital divide' in the rural areas of its service territories," Cawley said in a written statement.
Other states that approved the merger in the past month imposed conditions on the deal. New York regulators demanded that a merged Verizon-MCI not increase existing rates on MCI customers for high-speed Internet access for two-and-a-half years, and that the company offer broadband service without requiring the purchase of other services for two years.
Ohio's utility commission required a 30-month rate freeze for Verizon-MCI's local, interstate and private-line phone customers.
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission held evidentiary hearings on the merger in early November. Terms of a proposed settlement would require Verizon to extend its service to rural areas in Snohomish County, where it previously did not operate. Washington regulators are expected to make a decision within the next month.
The Benefits Of E-Filing Tax Returns
Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer plans to propose legislation in January that would give taxpayers who file income-tax returns electronically 15 more days to pay than those using traditional methods.
The comptroller's office plans to submit a draft bill that would extend the deadline for e-filers from the current April 15 to April 30. The legislation aims to encourage more taxpayers to take advantage of the online system, which officials claim is more efficient and cost-effective.
The bill would "provide an extra incentive for taxpayers to file electronically," said Michael Golden, a spokesman for the office.
Schaefer wrote in the office's newsletter this past spring that he was deeply disappointed by the growth of e-filing in Maryland. In 2004, he challenged professional tax preparers to increase the number of electronic returns by 50 percent.
Golden said he hopes that number can be achieved with the incentive of an extended deadline. He said 1.1 million of the 2.8 million returns received by the state this year were filed electronically.
Several states now require professional tax preparers to file electronically for their clients. Schaefer said he is open to the idea of imposing such a requirement in Maryland but prefers to let market forces boost the numbers.
Ban On Web Printouts In Prisons Challenged
A civil rights organization told a federal court last week that Georgia state prisoners should be allowed to receive in the mail materials that were printed from the Internet.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief in a case on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine that publishes news on legislation and court rulings related to prison systems. The majority of Prison Legal News' writers and subscribers are incarcerated.
A Georgia prisoner sued over a state prison policy that prohibits incoming mail from containing printouts from the Internet, and EFF attorneys argued that the policy is unconstitutional.
"It makes no sense and serves no legitimate interest for a prison to prohibit a prisoner from receiving, for example, a printout of the latest issue of Prison Legal News, or information from the Internet about health issues like AIDS that can be life-or-death issues for prisoners," EFF lawyer Kevin Bankston said.
The case is being tried in a U.S. district court in Macon, Ga.
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