These updates to stories previously covered at Homeland Stupidity focus exclusively on election and voting issues, a major issue with the 2004 elections still in doubt and the 2006 elections fast approaching.

• The Federal Election Commission really didn’t want to regulate political campaign speech on the Internet, but the courts forced them to. So they did as little as possible, regulating only paid advertisements on Web sites. This will likely kill the Online Freedom of Speech Act.
• If you’re in Washington this Thursday or Friday, consider lobbying Congress to pass H.R. 550, which would require voter-verified paper records among other voting reforms. The lobbying, sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, follows a similar effort last summer.
• Burlington, Vermont, has figured out how to run free election software on old Diebold equipment. While the software is only free as in beer right now, the company plans to fully open source it and make a Linux version.
• And finally, Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell, who was proud to have delivered the 2004 election to Bush and mandated that the state use Diebold equipment in 2006, actually owns Diebold stock. Way back when, I was among the first to break the story of his gubernatorial bid.