[Voterescue] California Sec. of State sued by San Diego Election official

[Vickie Karp]

The BRAD BLOG - http://www.bradblog.com -

CA Sec. of State Sued by San Diego County and Their Former E-Voting Rep
Turned Election Official

Complaint Alleges New Post-Election Audit Requirements in Close Elections
Are Too Expensive,

Create Too Much Work for Them...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 19th December 2007 @ 19:01 In Debra Bowen,
California, Election Reform, Election 2008, San Diego | 4 Comments

[IMAGE]Newly missing e-voting chips [1] isn't the only election news to
break out of the People's Republic of San Diego County today.

The sunny Southern California enclave, which has succeeded in making an
infamous name for itself over the last several years by running some of
the most poorly administrated and least transparent elections in the
nation, is now suing California's Sec. of State Debra Bowen for her new
security mitigation mandate requiring a hand audit of a random 10%
sampling of ballots, in elections where the final result margin is less
than one-half of 1%.

The full complaint may be downloaded here [PDF] [2].

Deborah Seiler, the former sales rep for voting machine companies Diebold
and Sequoia, who was recently named as Registrar of Voters for San Diego
County, believes Bowen's mandate is onerous in that it would "create
extra work and delays" for her office following elections, as the North
County Times described it [3].

Seiler and the county are "alleging that Bowen overstepped her authority
in requiring new recount procedures in close races beginning in
February," according to the paper which quotes a spokesperson from
Bowen's office defending the legal right of the Secretary to issue such
directives as she sees fit.

Bowen's spokesperson, Nicole Winger confirmed to The BRAD BLOG [4] that
the office is confident the Secretary of State may issue such "use
procedures," along with voting system certification, which must be
followed by counties who choose to use those particular systems. She adds
that prior administrations have issued similar use procedures along with
system certification, and that their statutory right to do so has held up
in past court cases.

According to Winger...

California law is very clear about the Secretary of State's authority ---
and duty --- to periodically review voting systems to determined whether
they are defective, obsolete, or otherwise unacceptable. Secretary
Bowen's top-to-bottom review earlier this year was just that: a
comprehensive analysis of the security, accuracy, reliability, and
accessibility of California voting systems. Having gained much more
insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the voting systems,
Secretary Bowen recertified each of them with conditions that shore up
security, accuracy, reliability, and accessibility.

Another point of contention for Seiler and San Diego, apparently, is the
cost of the auditing procedure. Yet, the money for such audits is to be
paid by the voting machine companies themselves, according to Bowen's
mandate, due to the unreliability of their voting systems.

The rightwing San Diego Union-Tribune however, in their coverage of the
story [5] reports that the voting machine companies --- who have taken
California's money, under the clear terms of Bowen's conditional
certification requirements --- may be "balking" at paying up for audits,
as required.

Instead of suing those voting machine companies, in order to require them
to follow the law and pay up, as agreed under the terms of their
contracts, Seiler and San Diego are choosing instead to sue Bowen with
the complaint that, in addition to causing them more work (poor dears),
the hand-count requirement is also too expensive for them.

Bowen's common sense recommendations to improve on the likelihood of
accurately tabulated elections, were made following her landmark,
independent "Top-to-Bottom Review" [6] of e-voting machines in the state.
The study, commissioned at the University of California and released in
August, found that all such e-voting systems were easily manipulated in
seconds time, could result in the nearly undetectable reversing of
election results, and required little more than the aid of common
household objects.

San Diego, and their Voting Machine shill turned Registrar of Voters,
have yet to make common sense recommendations for anything, as we see it.
At least not anything that actually seeks to improve or enhance democracy
and transparency for the benefit of the voters who they (supposedly) work
for.

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Article printed from The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com
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