And for a change, it’s not all bad! It even made a mainstream paper:

his Guest Editorial was published in The Iowa City Press-Citizen. It is reposted with permission of the author.

The June 6 primary election has come and gone, but it should not be forgotten. A problem that has marred elections across the United States came to Pottawattamie County and offered our state an unforgettable lesson in the need for verifiable and auditable elections.

On election night, as county election workers watched absentee ballots tabulate, they noticed odd results in the race for Pottawattamie County recorder. John Sciortino, the popular incumbent of 23 years, was losing to a 19-year-old college student named Oscar Duran. Auditor Marilyn Jo Drake quickly suspected something amiss, and ordered a manual check of the paper ballots. Her suspicion proved correct: The ballot scanners had not been programmed to recognize that in different precincts the paper ballots rotated the candidates’ positions. Ballot rotation is a measure commonly used to reduce the chance of voter fraud.  Read more