Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Eureka T-S Balances Facts With Official Blather
This "he-said, she said" reporting is so old (see below). I want a sit-down with Times-Standard editor Charles Winkler, and others around here. They can't keep offsetting the position of the election integrity community with moving lips from the elections department and expect this to wash. Sending machines home is a violation of chain of custody provisions because the memory cards are not secure and the equipment can be in the possession of fewer than two people. The tamper seals are effectively useless. Cards can be tampered with even when sealed in the machines, and the machines have other means of access besides the card ports. These are verifiable facts (.pdf). The media seem as disinterested in doing the verifying here as they do when it comes to determining the accuracy of the vote count. And have we had enough of the excuses from the elections department saying there is not enough people or space to do the hand counting? If they thought it was important enough they would make it work. Clearly this is not their aim. If the elections department is not going to prioritize a transparent, secure and verifiably accurate count, what exactly do we have them for? If newspapers are going to print that procedures are legal, because the state says so, without regard for the information showing the state is behaving lawlessly, then what do we have either the state or the media for? They are acting as one.http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3958659 (archive)
Article Launched: 06/20/2006 04:15:18 AM PDT
Election critic challenges county
James Faulk The Times-Standard
But election official cites safeguards, established procedures
EUREKA -- Citing the fact that Humboldt County's voting machines were sent home with election officials before the vote, a local election advocate claims the results cannot be trusted.
Dave Berman of the Voter Confidence Committee has long maintained that the voting machines used by the county are illegal, and that they were improperly certified by the secretary of state.
He's now added a new twist to the reasons he offers for doubting local election results -- election officials store the machines at home just before election day.
"We have documentation from security experts who have shown how to alter results of elections within a minute or two, if they have access to the memory cards," he said.
Humboldt County Elections Officer Lindsey McWilliams said the county has two choices -- either let the voting machines sit unsupervised in the polling places for days, or let elections officials take them home before dispersing them to the various precincts prior to the vote.
"We find it to be more secure and trustworthy to give them to an election official who is responsible for its safety and security and who also charges the battery before taking it to the polls," said McWilliams.
The county has been doing this since 1995, McWilliams said.
He said the county keeps a chain of custody log and that there are security seals on the machines to prevent tampering. They all came back in good shape, he said.
The machines, on the day of the election, also print out a long receipt that indicates whether the machines have any votes in their memory bank.
Berman said the county isn't following the chain of custody rules, and that those provisions "cannot really be boiled down to putting a tamper seal over the memory card."
McWilliams said the county is following the rules.
"The handling procedures require that the devices have security seals attached and that's what we've done," he said. "We've got logs of it."
Berman has long maintained that the only way to verify the county's election results would be a hand counting of the ballots. It took the county three days -- with two groups working -- to count only 2,000 ballots. McWilliams said it would take weeks to county every vote by hand.
The issues Berman raises are not peculiar to Humboldt County. The California Election Protection Network recently issued a press release also declaring a lack of confidence in the San Diego primary election and others.
Berman is a member of that group, and wrote the press release.
"There is no proof of this election's legitimacy," said network member Jim Soper in the release.
The county's Diebold machines have been certified by the California secretary of state.
Read or Post a Comment
<< Home