California Voting Alert

I received the following from fellow doubter and activist Dan Ashby (he's the activist; I'm a fellow doubter)and think it needs more exposure.  Hence my copying it to a Diary here.  I give Dan's contact info at the bottom.  He needs help.

Friday afternoon 11/4 a copy of the following letter was sent to the county central committee chairs of a major California political party.
The party, opposing most of the statewide initiatives on the November 8 ballot, invests all of its formidable resources in traditional GOTV tactics, apparently without thought to the possibility that they can outmobilize the voter base of their smaller political opposition and still lose the election--as indeed the national party did in 2004, 2002, and 2000.

Sometimes it takes a long time for a lesson to sink in, and even longer to begin asking the right questions. One such question might be: Who counts the votes?

Dear Central Committee Chairs,

I wish to call your attention to a little-known provision in the California Elections Code that authorizes the county central committee of qualified California political parties to designate up to two technical experts to inspect and observe all phases of voting system preparation and operation before and during an election.

Some of you may be aware that such inspection teams have been organized by party central committees in seven counties for the upcoming Special Election.  It is not too late to file a request to inspect the voting machines and software conducting elections in your own county.

Below is the text of Section 15004.  To see this section in the context of the whole Elections Code, a convenient, searchable presentation of the code is available here:

/a"http://www.election-reform.us/...

15004.  The county central committee of each qualified political party may employ, and may have present at the central counting place or places, not more than two qualified data processing specialists or engineers to check and review the preparation and operation of the
tabulating devices, their programming and testing, and have the specialists or engineers in attendance at any or all phases of the election.

I have attached to this e-mail communication a document file titled 15004 Letter.rtf,  that serves as a model letter requesting this access for technical review and observation of voting machines and software.

According to reputable polling surveys, as many as 40% of voting Americans believe that the 2004 presidential election results were fraudulently altered to change the official outcome.  The primary evidence for this supposition is the statistically extraordinary deviation of the offical vote results from the exit polls, which initially showed a Kerry victory but were inexplicably switched in the final hours by a 5% poll reversal representing nearly 8 million votes, for which no sustainable explanation has been offered.

You may also be aware that both before and since November 2004 numerous technical reviews of voting system software have documented glaring security vulnerabilities.
The General Accounting Office has issued such a report this October.  

There have also been demonstrations of actual vote-changing hacks that have eluded detection even when executed under the observation of  elections officials.

All of these considerations and more are addressed in a second file attachment to this e-mail, titled "PE_CA_PressRelease_3pg.pdf,  which I invite you to read and consider.  The press release tells about an innovative citizen action to independently evaluate the reliability of public elections conducted by private corporations using secret software.  I hope the central committees in each county will consider participating in and promoting future parallel elections as a politically and legally effective method to educate the citizenry,  test official election results for validity, and if warranted by evidence, establish a cause for demanding election recounts.

There is still time to invoke your party's right to inspect the voting systems counting the votes in the Special Election on November 8.
We think it highly significant that this election--in which so much political capital is invested selling propositions unpopular with the public-- will be the last "paperless" election in California,  conducted before a legislatively-mandated voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) takes legal effect on Jan. 1, 2006. Approximately one-fourth of the votes this coming Tuesday will be counted on unverifiable direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines; 100 percent of the votes will be counted on secret software; and approximately 80% of all California's votes will be counted on proprietary machines and software owned and largely operated by just three corporations, all of them politically and financially allied with your party's primary opposition. Whatever your political values, this is not a healthy situtation for a democracy.

Please consider taking prudent civic defensive action by independently examining the voting machinery on which the fortunes of your party and your constituencies depend.

On behalf of studycaliforniaballots.org and the pursuit of verifiable democracy,

Daniel Ashby

E-mail:   [e-mail]
Phone:        [phone]
Voicemail and Fax:   [phone]

•  Second ballot outside the polling place?

  Sorry, but I think that the "action" pushed by the studycaliforniaballots.org site, asking voters emerging from polling places after voting to fill out a second paper ballot, is a bad idea. I make my own contribution to ballot security, and I have served as the official observer of the Democratic Party and of specific candidates previously, watching the counting process in various southern California counties. For this election, I am an election inspector, which means that I will be running the voting at a heavily Democratic polling place, located in a church in Isla Vista, the student residential area which adjoins the UC-Santa Barbara campuc. I also have worked in many elections in GOTV efforts, and, during the elections when I haven't helped conduct the voting or served as an observer, I have contacted voters before they enter the "protected zone" around each polling place within which such actions are prohibited. I don't think that the people who planned this "audit" have much experience working with voters. Some people will participate happily, probably because they'll grasp immediately what the auditors are doing. But others don't like being approached at the polls, either by campaign workers, exit polling efforts, or people asking them to fill out second ballots. With luck, I won't have to deal with any such problem at my polling place.

  by JTML on Sun Nov 06, 2005 at 02:44:33 PM PDT

  •  Sorry

    I'm very sorry.  I still had "HTML Formatted" selected from an earlier message.  Hence, no paragraphs.

    Please pretend that each of you is an English teacher correcting the work of an especially slow learner.  Sorry.

    by JTML on Sun Nov 06, 2005 at 02:47:37 PM PDT

•  It all depends

  on whether you think the possibility of fraud is high or low.  (I happen to think the possibility of fraud is high.)

  I don't trust the process so long as the machines can be hacked.

  With absentee ballots being counted by machines that can be hacked (and no paper tally printed) and the fact that huge numbers of voters are voting absentee, I think every check possible would be nice, including parallel voting.

  So what if voters are disturbed by being asked to vote again?  They can always say NO.

  I too work as an Inspector in the elections and although I felt comfortable with the paper tally before the results from a precinct are transmitted via modem to the central office, I am really alarmed now to learn that all the absentee ballots will be counted by machines that can be hacked.

  by Janie on Sun Nov 06, 2005 at 05:29:49 PM PDT