(CA) State to join ballot probe - (LA) Software change not pre-approved [View All]

[Wilms]

Thanks to dzika for posting this on the Daily Election Fraud, Reform, & Updates Thread

State to join ballot probe
Software change not pre-approved

L.A. Daily News
Thursday, March 17, 2005

By Troy Anderson and Beth Barrett, Staff Writers

The California Secretary of State's Office announced Wednesday that it will investigate why City Clerk Frank Martinez changed the software on the voting system used in Los Angeles' mayoral primary without state approval -- one of several steps he took that slowed the count and raised questions about the integrity of the process.

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"Obviously, we have our vote tally software that has been certified," said Martinez, earns $185,018 a year in the post he was appointed to in September by Mayor James Hahn. "Our card reader and the InkaVote system was certified. This was a peripheral adjustment that we didn't think went to the core of the system."

-snip-

John Medcalf, president of VOTEC, the elections software and hardware company that sold the city its ballot-counting system in 1989 and has serviced it ever since, said the software change was because a mark in the upper left corner of the ballot that tells the counting machine what offices and questions to read was printed darker than normal. That caused the ballot reader to stop periodically.

"They didn't want the reader stopping frequently so they wanted me to make a small change. It was one line of code in the software that runs the card readers and tells them whether to continue and read the next card. I did that a month ahead of the election, giving them ample time to test it. They were looking to eliminate as many distractions as possible in managing such a big operation."

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http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2766831,00.html