Dang! I did not know that SOS mail functions are privatized

[rumpel]

This is from an audit in WA State, King County:

Two Contract Elections
from an audit in 2005

Functions Also
Performed in Non-
County Facilities

In addition, King County contract elections functions are also
performed in two non-county facilities. These are:
•
A printing facility owned and operated by Diebold, Inc. in
Everett is the location for printing ballots and inserting
outgoing absentee ballots into envelopes; and
•
A mail processing facility owned and operated by PSI
Group, Inc. in Kent is the location for sorting, staging, and
shipping outgoing absentee ballots to the post office. The
PSI Group also initially sorts incoming absentee ballots
before sending them to the mail ballot operation satellite for
further processing and tabulation.

p 56
http://www.metrokc.gov/auditor/2005/Election.pdf

on edit: sorry, it states the County Registrar in the doc not the SOS (my OP) - have to see if I find SOS contracts....

[rumpel]

1. PSI Group:

http://www.psigroupinc.com/OpCenters.htm

So the P.O. Box is serviced by them In LA County?

For example :

Absentee Voting Section
Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
P.O. Box 30450
Los Angeles, CA 90030-0450

and we are talking about Sheriffs flying in the ballots on election day to the tabulation centers -
and all the ballot box security

where is the security here - US Post Office - Releases your absentee ballot or voter registration to a third party company?

[Wilms]

2. Not following.

What does the link have to do with LA County?

[rumpel]

3. from another post

referring to
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_bev_harr_061028_election_bulletin_3a_m.htm
in my post regarding the 2004 Florida problem
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=457943&mesg_id=458050

Next problem: DID YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT ARRIVE AT THE ELECTIONS DIVISION?

Some jurisdictions allow voters to confirm whether or not their ballot arrived (but this doesn't confirm whether their signature was accepted). In other jurisdictions, there is no easy way to find out whether the ballot you mailed in ever got to the elections division.

In Broward County, Florida, an extraordinary citizen named Ellen Brodsky spent months trying to track down over 50,000 missing mail-in ballots. In King County, Washington, bags of ballots were once found years after they were supposed to be delivered. Also in King County, incoming ballots were being taken from the U.S. Post Office to a private company called PSI Group, without an accounting of how many arrived at the Post Office, how many arrived at PSI Group, vs. how many arrived at the Los Angeles County Elections division.

Upon further reading of the Memomrandum of McPherson, I can envision a data software vendor. But if this outside vendor is physically handling the mail-in ballots also in California, as implied by bbv, I am really uncomfortable. However, I am trying to verify if such practice is explicitly stated acceptable or prohibited by the CA SOS. It does neither.
This bbv post shows up on various websites - or is it simply her alarmist statement?

This is from the CA SOS deal with the US DOJ posted at electionline.org:

HAVA also requires that local elections officials immediately update records after new data is received. SOS will promulgate regulations to require each county to update the Calvoter voter registration database with all changes the same day those changes are made to the county EMS databases. Processes will be established and maintained so that the Calvoter voter registration database is synchronized with all county EMS databases each business day. SOS will verify that county EMS vendors have developed technical processes to ensure that the daily update files, when applied to the Calvoter database, ensure that the data in Calvoter is identical to the data in each county's database. SOS will require each county to periodically upload its entire voter registration file so tfully and accurately synchronized.

page 7

emphasis mine - notice word "vendor"

Procurement The SOS intends to obtain or develop the fastest possible completion of the VoteCal implementation, while ensuring that the state obtains best value for the procurement in accordance with state law and regulations for competitive procurement. The SOS has selected a "business-based" procurement process to meet this requirement within the specific technical and business environment for statewide VR systems. This competitive procurement process will be used to select a bidder to be awarded a contract to become the system integrator for the project, responsible for all technical tasks associated with implementing the system.

p16

However I am still digging to get the facts on LA.

[Wilms]

4. Los Angeles is mentioned in the article in that one sentence about King County.

"Also in King County, incoming ballots were being taken from the U.S. Post Office to a private company called PSI Group, without an accounting of how many arrived at the Post Office, how many arrived at PSI Group, vs. how many arrived at the Los Angeles County Elections division."

At best, it seems a typo.

[rumpel]

5. I sure hope so. No wait - look at this post

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/15575.html?1134146319

"Yep. PSI Group was given the assignment of handling ballots for King County under Neil Dean, who is embezzler Jeffrey Dean's brother. Jeffrey Dean and convicted narcotics trafficker John Elder got their first jobs with PSI Group when they got out of prison.

PSI Group does outgoing ballot sorting and mailing for many counties in many states, and also handles the incoming sorting for large jurisdictions like King County and Los Angeles County. "


PSI Group, prior to PB buying them seem to be quite a bunch of characters, according to her.

[rumpel]

6. Found a LA County Contract with PSI

I wonder if this contract covers all county agencies or the Treasurer & Tax collector...

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
TREASURER AND TAX COLLECTOR
TO:
Louisa Ollague, Legislative Deputy, First Supervisorial District
Clinton Tatum, Senior Deputy, Second Supervisorial District
Brence Culp, Budget Deputy, Third Supervisorial District
Stacey Roa, Deputy, Fourth Supervisorial District
Angela Mazzie, Budget Deputy, Fifth Supervisorial District
FROM:
Mark J. Saladino
Treasurer and Tax Collect
KENNETH HAHN HALL OF ADMINISTRATION
500 WEST TEMPLE STREET, ROOM 437
LOS ANGELES, CA 90012
November 4, 2004
TELEPHONE
[phone]
FACSIMILE
[phone]
SUBJECT:
AGENDA ITEM NO. 42 FOR NOVEMBER 9,2004-
RECOMMENDATION TO AWARD ASSIGNMENT AND
DELEGATION AGREEMENT FOR PRESORT MAILING SERVICES
The Treasurer and Tax Collector (TTC) has filed the attached Board letter for the Board
of Supervisors' meeting of November 9, 2004 recommending approval of an assignment
and delegation agreement from Ancora Presort Partners (Ancora) to PSI Group, Inc.
(PSI) for the provision of presort mailing services. On October 4, 2004, Ancora
informed the County of Los Angeles (County) that, pursuant to a purchase transaction,
PSI Group, Inc. (PSI) would be absorbing Ancora operations and requested that the
Ancora contract for presort mailing services be assigned to PSI, under Sub-section 8.1,
Assignment and Delegation, of the contract.
Presort mailing services affords the TTC a significant savings in first-class postage.
Because the postage and postmarks are applied by the mailing services contractor,
delivery of the mail by the presort vendor to the United States Post Office (Post Office)
needs to be within 24 hours of pickup from TTC. Therefore, having a presort vendor
that has the requisite capacity and means to accomplish this task in a timely manner is
paramount. The current contract with Ancora expires on June 30, 2005, with two
additional one-year extension periods.

http://lacounty.info/omd/q4_2004/cms1_023143.pdf

[Wilms]

7. "The Treasurer and Tax Collector (TTC)", it says.

I don't know if that would include absentee ballots.

But then, there could be another contract for that.

Nice googlin'.

Can you dig up what contracts were let by the BoE? That could be of interest.

[rumpel]

8. Here is one with Diebold

I am actually on the County site - all contracts etc are there. Connie's weekly updates - I downloaded them all.

Here:

CONNY B. McCORMACK
Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
REGISTRAR-RECORDER/COUNTY CLERK
12400 IMPERIAL HWY. – P.O. BOX 1024, NORWALK, CALIFORNIA 90651-1024

September 26, 2006

TO: EACH SUPERVISOR
FROM Conny B. McCormack, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk

NOTIFICATION OF INTENT TO NEGOTIATE A SOLE SOURCE CONTRACT FOR CONTINUED MAINTENANCE AND SUPPORT SERVICES OF VOTER INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

In accordance with Board policy on advance notification of sole source contracts of $250,000 or greater, the Department of the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) intends to negotiate a non-competitive sole source agreement with the current contractor for continued maintenance and support services for the Voter Information Management System (VIMS). This contractor has provided exceptional maintenance and support services in a cost effective manner since the initial development and implementation of VIMS in 1998. The continuation of their services is paramount to the successful conduct of elections in the County of Los Angeles.

RR/CC is responsible for the registration of voters, maintenance of the voter files, precincting, absentee voting, petitions, and precinct officers/polls maintenance and the conduct of federal, state, local and special elections. On February 10, 1998, your Board adopted a five (5) year contract with three (3) one-year renewal options with Data Information Management Systems, Inc. (DIMS) for a client server environment voter information management system.

VIMS replaced the voter registration and election management system designed and developed in 1976 by Internal Services Department. This system operated on the County's IBM mainframe computer system and was cost prohibitive to continue at an average annual cost of $1.05 per registered voter, compared to the greatly reduced VIMS annual maintenance cost of $0.07 per registered voter. In addition to cost savings, VIMS enabled increased reliability, operational efficiencies, service delivery and improved automation of functions. With VIMS, the County was able to grant full on-line access for VIMS Election System use to City of Los Angeles in 1999 and City of Long Beach in 2004. These partnerships with VIMS and the cities have helped to improve the quality of the voter data, pollworker and polling place data used by all jurisdictions.

Each Supervisor
September 26, 2005
Page 2

In 2003, DIMS became a wholly owned subsidiary of Diebold Election Systems, Inc. DIMS currently provides voter information management systems for 38 counties in California, which represents 52% of the registered voters in the state of California.
The current contract will expire on February 9, 2006. Due to proprietary software issues, complexities with managing voter information system and mission critical need for uninterrupted services, DIMS is the only source that can provide maintenance and support services for VIMS.

Unless otherwise instructed by your Board within two weeks, we will proceed to negotiate the sole source contract with the current contractor.
CBM:NU:rl
c: Chief Administrative Office
County Counsel
Chief Information Office

http://lacounty.info/omd/q3_2005/cms1_034371.pdf#xml=http://search2.co.la.ca.us/omd/xmlread.asp?K2DocKey=http://lacounty.info/omd/q3_2005/cms1_034371.pdf@OMD&QueryText=

[rumpel]

9. interesting that the contract expired in 2/06

and she writes this in 9/06

must be a typo because it is filed under 05

here is the subsequent one:

January 31, 2006
The Honorable Board of Supervisors
County of Los Angeles
383 Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration
500 West Temple Street
Los Angeles, California 90012
Dear Supervisors:
APPROVE AMENDMENT NUMBER TWO TO EXTEND AGREEMENT NUMBER
71246 WITH DATA INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
FOR VOTER INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SERVICES
(ALL DISTRICTS) (3 VOTES)
IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOUR BOARD:
1. Approve and instruct the Mayor to sign Amendment Number Two
(Amendment) (Attachment I), to Agreement Number 71246 (Agreement)
with Data Information Management Systems (DIMS) to extend Voter
Information Management System (VIMS) maintenance and support
services for up to an additional twelve months, on a month-to-month basis,
effective February 10, 2006 at a cost of $32,616 per month for a total of
$391,392 if all twelve months are needed. Funds are available in the
Department of the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) operating
budget.

2. Authorize the Registrar, or her designee, to execute the attached
amendment (Attachment II) to the agreement with the City of Los Angeles
for on-line access to VIMS at no additional cost to the City of Los Angeles
for the duration of the month-to-month extension period.

17 pages of her pitch

http://lacounty.info/omd/q1_2006/cms1_038931.pdf#xml=http://search2.co.la.ca.us/omd/xmlread.asp?K2DocKey=http://lacounty.info/omd/q1_2006/cms1_038931.pdf@OMD&QueryText=

[rumpel]

10. it's proprietary!

The current Agreement, including option years, will expire on February 9, 2006.
The existing Agreement was established through a competitive bid process. On
September 26, 2005, due to the proprietary nature of the VIMS software, RR/CC
notified your Board of our intent to negotiate a sole source contract with the
incumbent Contractor for continued maintenance and support services of VIMS.
Due to unforeseen workload demands, in part caused by the November 8, 2005
Special Election, the procurement process will not be completed prior to expiration
of the current Agreement. The new sole source Agreement documents have been
developed and are currently under review.

p 3

[rumpel]

11. info on DIMS

http://www.votingindustry.com/VR_Review/Top%20Tier/DIMS/dims.htm

[rumpel]

12. Well combining the Diebold voter data contract with the PSI mailing

I think we have a group of not so friendlies running our elections and registrations.

All tied to Diebold

Press release of DIMS purcahse in 2003
http://www.diebold.com/news/newsdisp.asp?id=2926

and I am so uninformed, anyone knew this? The signature is verified by their software, which tolerance level can be adjusted?!

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/8542.html?1143751407

Congratulations LA for a wonderful voter registration system :sarcasm:


Victoria Lovegren, Ph.D.
Founder, Ohio Vigilance
www.ohiovigilance.org

Report revised March 20, 2005

Problems with Diebold DIMS Voter-Registration System

Through personal observations, analysis of DIMS reports or data extracts, and discussions with Cuyahoga County Board of Elections employees, I have documented the following problems with the Diebold DIMS Voter-Registration System and the data maintained within DIMS system.

1) DIMS allows the entry of bad addresses (incorrect street names). These bad addresses can be entered without notification by the system that the street name is misspelled. Only later are these bad addresses flagged as “Fatal Pending.” They should be flagged at the point of data entry, or, better yet, “selected” from a set of valid county street names. Many of these “fatal pending” individuals were denied their vote because of data-entry errors of their address. (See “Fatal Pending” analysis at--http://ohiovigilance.org/Counties/Cuyahoga/Analysis/CuyFatalPendingAnalysis.pdf)

2) DIMS doesn’t have a good means of preventing duplicate records for the same individual. According to a BOE manager, the system is “not very forgiving.” I saw numerous examples of duplication in the poll books as well as in data extract files.

3) When I went to vote absentee, the clerk tried to find me “in the system” by my name, but couldn’t. She then asked for my address, and was able to find me by my address. She related that she had to resort to that “workaround” fairly often (i.e. look up people by their address rather than their name) and said that the system was new (implemented in September 2004) and still had bugs. When I asked if they were going to fix the bugs before the election, she replied “Oh, no, there isn’t time. They’ll have to fix them after the election.”

4) Many people tried to locate their correct precinct through the Cuyahoga Board of Elections website, but were unable to do so. I tried entering my address several times, without success, before finally locating my correct precinct. Others weren’t so lucky. The data used for the website “precinct lookup” had to come from DIMS, the voter-registration system.

5) I found a handful of duplicate precincts in the database—same precinct name, but different internal precinct numbers.

6) There are several tables, where “would-be voters” are maintained: (1) valid voters, with status of “A” (active) “I” (inactive) or “C” (cancelled) ; (2) provisional voters—voters who voted provisionally on election day, probably because their name failed to show up on the voter-registration poll books; and (3) “fatal pending” individuals -- people who were ineligible to vote because there was something wrong with their registration (bad street name, missing date of birth. The DIMS database design allowed the same person to be located in two or three of these tables, each with slightly different spellings of name or address. (See “Fatal Pending” analysis at--http://ohiovigilance.org/Counties/Cuyahoga/Analysis/CuyFatalPendingAnalysis.pdf)

http://ohiovigilance.org/Counties/Cuyahoga/Analysis/CuyProblemDIMS.htm

Oh boy:
I remember this map by Joe Knapp

By the way, who was the database company that began handling voter registration for Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 2004? It was Diebold. The county flash-cut over to the new Diebold/DIMS electronic-registration system in September.

The map shows that minority voters in Cuyahoga had to overcome more hurdles to cast a vote; were more likely to have to vote by provisional ballot. This map reflects provisional ballots accepted and counted, by census tract indicating the racial composition; these are not rejected votes, they are 'higher hurdle' votes because voters' names did not appear on the electronic registration rolls.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/17/02212/3566

[nicknameless]

13. Perhaps this kind of thing contributed to Broward County (FL) voters not receiving

58,000 absentee ballots last year.

[rumpel]

14. It is a major concern...

it is not transparent at all. We should all check into this issue in every county and state, and fix it before it is too late for 2008.

McCormack seems to be required to send a "weekly update" to our county supervisors about how she is progressing.
It is, however basically just a pre-formatted itinerary of functions she is completing. Everything is well and beautiful of course.
Not a single mention of: that as of 11/6 late afternoon, when I called to check on my daughter's registration status - they were still not done. Not a single mention of how many registrations remains to be entered. Just "progressing as planned".

Here is what she says in her "THE STRATEGIC PLAN OF THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY REGISTRAR-RECORDER/COUNTY CLERK", May 2003 in regards to registration data entry

Election administration is affected by serious, ongoing issues in addition to
technological challenges. One such issue is the barrage of legislative and legal
mandates that whipsaw Registrar operations. A sampling of these mandates
include:

State law that became effective in 2001 now requires counties to accept and
process new voter registrations up to 15 days prior to an election (the
previous deadline was 29 days). This provision makes it impossible to
finalize data entry of tens of thousands of voter registration forms executed
by the deadline but mailed and received up to 10 days prior to the election to
be included on election day precinct rosters of voters. (The 5,000 precinct
rosters must be printed and collated – 500,000 pages – 19 days prior to the
election). This deadline forces supplemental lists of voters to be mailed to
each precinct inspector’s home. Additionally, although voters rejected a
November 2002 ballot proposition that would have required implementation of
election day registration, interest in this daunting prospect continues among
legislators.

In the same report she projects over a million absentee ballots for 2006 - so why is she not dealing with the data entry?
Perhaps, this database is not as swell as she seems to sell to the county supervisors after all.

As for absentee voter requests
Her report to the supervisors of 11/3/06says

We have mailed over 692,000 absentee ballots for this election, the second highest in our history. Touchscreen Early Voting closes today at 16 satellite sites. It continues through the weekend and Monday and Tuesday at our Norwalk headquarters. To date approximately 18,000 voters have cast ballots via touchscreen equipment for this election.

In a report to the county supervisors 10/30/06:

Absentee Ballots/Early Voting Statistics
Absentee ballots have been mailed to more than 640,000 voters. Approximately 25% of
these have been voted and returned to our office. The deadline to apply for an absentee
ballot is tomorrow, October 31. Early voting at touchscreen locations is proceeding at a
brisk pace (see attached chart). On Saturday I dropped by one early voting site and
overhead a gentleman say: “What’s all the fuss about? This is a great way to vote!”

selective quoting - and I am going to scrutinize the percentage of absentee votes that she finally reports as cast. I can hardly believe people request absentee ballots and not turn it in.

We all know, she is pushing and transitioning LA County to an all electronic elections in phases. From voter registration, signature verification, voting and tallying.

Interesting to note - that this phased transition began implementation in 1999, when the voter database system was transferred from an IBM system to the then DIMS and now subsidiary of Diebold system.

[nicknameless]

15. And how many people had to RE-register because McPherson had them purged?

26 thousand at least, in LA County alone.

How is it that more voters took part in the primary than the midterm election? You’re right. Something is VERY fishy there!

McCormack is obviously trying to facilitate Diebold’s taking over all aspects of LA’s elections. This must be stopped.
Hopefully voters can work with Bowen’s office to remove this crooked vendor’s influence and participation.
I hope 2007 brings an end to Diebold vote-rigging systems -- at least in CA.

LA County voters really should flood their Board of Supervisors’ offices with complaints about this horrible woman.
They appointed her. It’s time for a change.

[rumpel]

16. Yes, remember, when McPherson put out a statement that CA

has more repubs registering than dems?

It was not so long ago - and I thought wait a minute - this does not sound right.

[nicknameless]

17. I hadn't heard that.

He is such a compulsive liar.

Wonder which vote-rigging company he's going to find employment with. Diebold?

[EFerrari]

18. Remember when his office returned my call and did not

answer my question (who is the vendor for the reg database?) at length except to keep repeating that it was "in house". Oh, really? They have a staff of programmers in house?

:eyes:

[rumpel]

19. what a toad

We would have to have a cleansing ritual at the SOS office before Bowen moves in. :evilgrin:

[autorank]

20. Excellent point, if I may poke my head out after falling

for what is apparently a little prank regarding CT results (oh,lord):hide:

You and Wilms have both clues. It's my understanding that the King County BoE official responsible for the wonderfulness at up there in 2004 is now at the LA County BoE. There's another employee there with some big time election snafus behind him/her,I think.

We'll just call it the "dream team."

This is ridiculous. The county has the funds to set up an ad hoc group to take these ballots and handle them. Why would they give it away? Who knows but LA County is not well served by
"the worst tech company of the year" (2003, Fortune Magazine)

Good morning:)