Happy Independence Day! We're taking the weekend off.

As the continuation of John Gideon's valued creation, The Daily Voting News, nears its two-month anniversary, those of us who have been fortunate enough to carry on John's work are beginning to understand what will be necessary for its existence to continue into the indefinite future. At this point, we need to create a "budget" of the potential resourcesvolunteer time, computer resources, or direct financial donationsthat can be devoted to continuing DVN.

Please respond to our survey to help us determine how to proceed. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=uE7EmPVpo79LsZd7Xe8UNg_3d_3d . Based on the responses we received from DVN subscribers, the resources we could expect would support a drastically minimized form of DVN, if it were able to continue at all.

Smartmatic still hasn’t submitted its incorporation papers to the Philippines Comelec, and its local partner, TIM, has pulled out of the joint venture.

Internet voting is now being considered in Canada and Nova Scotia. Is there no end to the wack-a-mole of unobservable ballots? Prove in one place that Internet ballots are an exercise in unjustified trust, and the idea pops up its head in another.

Today's articles about the Voting Rights Act deal with how to minimize future challenges.

No it's not a typo, ACORN brought a lawsuit and won.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning and ES&S have both responded to the report from Florida Fair Elections Center.

Comelec says: We're ready to go forward with the automation. The Philippines Senate is asking: Who exactly is Smartmatic and are they really able to do the automation? And Business World responds with "A recipe for disaster."

“Why did Florida have high "invalid votes" in 2008? An important new report from Florida Fair Elections Center (FFEC) finds that certain optical scan voting systems contributed significantly to Florida's high invalid vote rate in the 2008 election, while other optical scan systems did not. Invalid votes, which are the combination of overvotes, undervotes and invalid write-in votes, were expected to with the statewide use of paper ballot optical scan voting systems. Instead, they increased.” Thus begins the press release for today’s featured item.

The situation in Iran is demonstrating that the true measure of an election is its legitimacy – legitimacy of the results and legitimacy conferred to the government, both of which depend on the extent to which the results are believed by all parties.

Nearly seven years ago, the federal government provided billions of dollars for states to use to among other things make voting in every polling place accessible to people with disabilities. States rushed to purchase now-discredited electronic voting machines that the vendors claimed allowed people with disabilities to vote privately and independently. States put the machines in every polling place, but what did they do to make the polling places physically accessible? Very little, according to a new report from the GAO. 73% of the nation's polling places remain physically inaccessible to many voters an improvement of 11% since 2000.

Advocates say they field complaints from around the country from disabled people who have problems getting into polling places or can’t independently and privately cast their votes. T.K. Small, who doesn’t have the use of his hands because of a neuromuscular disorder, said a 2002 law mandating access to voting for the disabled feels like a broken promise.

Correction: An article from yesterday, "Witness says commissioners report that Bob Goldsack helped reprogram party ID card encoder on primary election day" was from PA, not DE as we mistakenly reported.