Issues with flushend (last citation cut, etc.)

Question

I've been having issues using the flushend package to balance the last page's columns. I'm using it to balance bibliographies mainly. Flushend tends to (1) cut the last citation, (2) result in uneven spacing, and/or (3) repeat the citation at the end of the first column. This seems to be installation dependent as colleagues of mine do not run into these issues. I am using pdflatex in TexLive 2013 (full install) on Windows.

Here is an MWE with issues (1) and (2) appearing:

\documentclass[conference, 9pt]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{flushend}
% \usepackage{balance}

\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
% \balance

\begin{thebibliography}{1}

\bibitem{test1}
J.~Doe and J.~Doe, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a
  paper title, this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere,
  Somewhere, 2014.

\bibitem{test2}
------, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a paper title,
  this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere, Somewhere,
  2014.

\bibitem{test3}
------, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a paper title,
  this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere, Somewhere,
  2014.

\bibitem{test4}
------, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a paper title,
  this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere, Somewhere,
  2014.

\bibitem{test5}
------, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a paper title,
  this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere, Somewhere,
  2014.

\bibitem{test6}
------, ``This is a paper title, this is a paper title, this is a paper title,
  this is a paper title,'' in \emph{Some Proceedings}, Somewhere, Somewhere,
  2014.

\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}

Here is how the output looks:

Here is the output using the balance package (not ideal but better):

Answer 1

The bugfix flushed.sty, v3.1 2015/04/14, package version has some extra improvements.

Here is how the output looks now:

To correct indent on the last line use package option keeplastbox:

To suppress extra glue spread on the right column additionally use package option nospread:

To make right column shorter use \atColsEnd{\vskip10pt}:

To make right column longer use \atColsEnd{\vskip-20pt}: