Elections: San Diego Emerg Townhall Meeting Report 6/28/06

[lindisfarne]

I didn't take notes and am recalling this from memory so if I missed something or got something wrong, correct me. I was a little late and missed Marcy Winograd (CEPN & Chair of PDA) if she spoke.

Brad Friedman (of bradblog.com) is a pretty good speaker and of course, is well-informed of the issues with the San Diego County elections seeing as he was one of the first to cover it (since he used to be a computer programmer, he understands the technology issues better than most). The focus was on two main ends: 1) the currently used voting machines are extremely insecure on so many fronts and that needs to be addressed; and 2) the San Diego situation
of sending highly tamperable voting machines home with temporary poll workers needs to be changed before November. I'm not so certain it's going to happen because the Registrar of Voters of SD County and the CA Secretary of State are just blowing everything off, but people need to speak out about these issues and demand it if it's ever going to happen. It's possible Atty Gen Lockyer could become involved - that's being looked into.

Also, he went into the whole issue of how Diebold memory cards contain interpreted code (not allowed under federal recommendations) and the fact that CA law requires election machines to meet federal recommendations. Apparently, the machines were certified at the federal level (by people chosen and paid by Diebold, and Diebold told them specifically what to look at), and then were *DE-CERTIFIED* after it turned out that they did not meet federal recommendations (the interpreted code was one issue). CA Secretary of State was then in a bind: the machines did not meet federal standards, and thus, under CA law could not be certified. So he did a *temporary* certification (ignoring the fact that the machines weren't certifiable under CA law), with all sorts of extra requirements, including a "chain of custody" requirement to ensure the machines and their memory cards were kept completely secure -- which was completely broken by sending machines home with temporary poll workers. (Vote Debra Bowen for Secretary of State in November).

The Brennan Center of NYU just issued a report outlining a lot of the issues regarding electronic voting machine security and why these machines are so insecure (see http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf); the Washington Post also had an article discussing the report

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062701451.html

Progressive Democrats of America (http://www.pdamerica.org/)were there; Mimi Kennedy spoke for them and she was a great speaker. PDA is planning on pursuing this business about poll workers taking home the machines until federal and state laws are met. They may need donations if they have to pay for a (partial) recount; right now, the approach is to try to argue that the machines being sent home decertified them and thus, a hand recount is necessary. But there's a good chance the SD Reg of Voters Mikel Haas will do nothing, at which point they may decide to ask for a recount of the Busby-Bilbray run-off election as that's the election which was most likely to be tampered with (most of the contests were primaries, so it was within a party).

Someone who used to be Chief of Finance or something like that for Orange County was there and he laid out the problems in Orange County (with Sequoia voting systems), including the fact that 17 memory cards went missing for several days after the election and then turned up (and were counted).

Also, Rob Cohen, the guy who made the short documentary film VoterGate a few years ago (30 minutes) is making it into a longer film which will be released this fall, possibly under the name "Hacked" or "De-Voted". We saw a clip which was an interview with a woman who worked the March 2006 special election (for the 50th district (Busby's)) as a temporary poll worker. Not only did the electronic voting machines sit in her house for days, there was a problem at the poll with votes getting lost. The touchscreen voting machine had one set of numbers on the screen, while the printer count had higher numbers. In other words, votes were lost by the touchscreen machine (which was the "official" total). She called the Reg. of Voters office and asked what to do; the ROV people said "Don't worry". She emphasized that the totals were different and since the touchscreen number was lower, that it appeared votes had been lost. Again: "Don't worry".

Jeeni Criscenzo, the 49th District Democratic candidate for House (against Issa - Repub.) was also there - the only congressional candidate who did show up.

So that's a summary of the good news on our election system! Write your Congresspeople and senators and demand that our elections have integrity, that laws be enforced, that voting be made secure.

P.S. http://www.californiaconnected.org/tv/archives/406 has a great summary (short and understandable) of voting machine issues; go down the page and click on
Shortcircuits in our democracy?
Backdoors to Castle Diebold
Voting machines and hailstorms
Two sides speaking in code

[lindisfarne]

1. Jim Lampley is supposed to be discussing voting on Ed Schulz Friday.

He was at the townhall meeting but didn't speak.
http://www.wegoted.com/

[Einsteinia]

7. Thanks--I posted it on the CEPN!

Excellent. This is the ONLY report I've seen.

BTW who's the picture of on your post?

[lindisfarne]

10. Paul Wellstone. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

2. Thanks so much for this detailed report, Lindisfarne! It is greatly

appreciated!

I would only argue with one point: You urge people to write to their Congresspeople and Senators. The U.S. Congress passed the "Help America Vote Act"--a bill engineered by the biggest crooks in Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney , that is responsible for all these problems, including the egregious NON-TRANSPARENCY of these electronic voting systems. They are not going to legislate a transparent, verifiable voting system any time soon. I think it is a perfect waste of time to write to THEM about it. And, indeed, I WOULDN'T WANT THIS CONGRESS to address itself to the election system. They will only makes things worse. I think the strategy has to be local. The state/local jurisdictions--your local board of elections, your country registrar, your secretary of state--still make the decisions about voting systems--and still (importantly) have the legal option of paper ballots--and these are venues where ordinary people still have some influence.

Writing to Congresspeople and Senators should not be the emphasis. Write to them if you want to--especially if you have a particularly good representative--but DON'T EXPECT anything to come of it (the good ones don't have the power to do anything, and we want to keep the bad ones out of it anyway), and DON'T SPEND a lot of time and energy on it. Time and energy are MUCH BETTER spent pressuring local/state election officials, and educating the public.

[EFerrari]

3. Thanks for the blow by blow. So much to keep up with!

:hi:

[EFerrari]

4. Link to use McPherson's email form

http://www.ss.ca.gov/cgi-bin/print_form.cgi

:mad:

[lindisfarne]

5. Forgot to say: About those "security seals" they put on the voting

machines: they're a joke. They showed them in the movie clip. The could easily be photocopied. They easily peeled up and restuck - no one could tell they'd been removed and restuck. (and they weren't even put on all the San Diego county machines.)

[robinlynne]

8. just for the sake of accuracy. Those seals were changed after the film was

made. That info appleis to the 2004 election. (at least supposedly). But they are not sealing all of the places which need sealing. And in many cases, people just broke the seals and leave it at that. If I'm correct, there are 2 openings in the back where a memory card can be inserted, one sealed, and the other one left open.

[lindisfarne]

9. Thanks for the clarification. I wonder if a careful person with a razor

blade could still open the new seals? I haven't seen them except in pictures but from the pictures I saw, it seems that you could. I'm not clear on whether everyone across the US uses the same seals or what.

In addition, a person in San Diego County who took polling machines home in the June 6, 2006 election has said that although his machines were sealed, *he* was the person at the polling place to break the seals and no one was there to verify the seals were intact when he brought the machines in (bradblog.com has this). It's not too surprising - if the county claims they don't have the personnel to bring the machines to the polling places right before the election, they obviously don't have the personnel to verify the seals are intact morning of the election.

[robinlynne]

11. besides you can use wireless devices to reprogram the software anyway.

[lebkuchen]

6. My brother was amazed to see Diebold at his polling place

He votes absentee, but wife doesn't. She will in Nov.