http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4380748Don't judge an election system solely by what you can see in the polling place, or experience voting. What's most important is what happens to your vote after you leave. L.A.'s InkaVote system is fairly easy to use--much like the old punchcard system (without the "hanging chads"). The problem is what they do after that. All those voting cards with dots filled in (the "votes") and no candidate names--up to 4 million of them--are hauled to assembly spots, and then are all sent to ONE place to be tabulated by ONE **ELECTRONIC** central tabulator system, manufactured by ONE corporation*, and run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with only an extremely inadequate 1% audit (count of the actual ballots against the machine totals). All of this hauling around of up to 4 million voting cards is done
before any tallying occurs. There is no official tally at the precinct level, and nothing is posted there (for local people to look for weird totals). The opportunities for fraud are greatly enhanced by these "central tabulation" systems (used by about half of CA's counties). Add in the immense danger of a central tabulator run on "trade secret" code, and the ease of voting in this system becomes unimportant next to the vast insecurity of the tallying of the votes.
*To make matters worse, in L.A., that central tabulator is probably a Diebold GEMS tabulator--one of the worst. The county has been secretive about who made what they call their "Micro Tally System" (the central tabulator), and no one is allowed to observe its operations. Local election integrity groups have reason to believe it's Diebold.
Additionally, L.A. has had one of the worst "bad actor" county registrars in the state, for over a decade--Conny McCormack who just resigned, in Dec 07, amidst a storm of controversy over her coziness with the corporate vendors, which includes trying to segue Diebold touchscreens into L.A. via her early voting program, giving Diebold the entire Absent Ballot concession, doing a sales brochure for Diebold, and awarding ES&S (brethren to Diebold) a $25 million contract just to make the little InkaVote-Plus scanners that check for overvotes, and that provide "snap tallies" (unofficial totals) in 20 (of 4,000+) precincts for the convenience of corporate exit pollsters and media.
McCormack led the dirty campaign to oust CA's previous reforming Sec of State, Kevin Shelley, after he sued Diebold for fraud prior to the 2004 election, and is in league with current "bad actor" county registrars in San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, who just sued SoS Bowen to prevent implementation of mild new auditing reforms. They lost. Bowen's rules stand. But their lawsuit is typical of their anti-transparency, pro-corporate attitude, and they are causing SoS Bowen no end of trouble. San Diego's Registrar, Deborah Seiler, is the former Diebold chief salesperson in Calif, and is McCormack's best friend. McCormack was in the newspapers just three days ago complaining about SoS Bowen's reforms, and accusing her of "politicizing" the election system--a charge that is positively Rovian in its outrageousness.
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_8153626?source=rssDiebold and ES&S have very close ties to the Republican Party, the Bush-Cheney regime and/or far rightwing causes. Sequoia (the third major vendor in CA) hired former SoS, Republican Bill Jones, to peddle their machines. It is
they who have "politicized" the election system--and corporatized it, and secretized it.
Seiler of San Diego has also been in the papers, along with other anti-reform county officials, abetting corporate media 'hysteria" about slow returns in CA due in part of Bowen's reforms.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8157074?source=rss And lest anyone think that L.A. is rid of McCormack's influence, her hand-picked successor is now running things--Dean Logan, an election official with a troubled history in Washington State, who was much less qualified than many people in the lower echelons of the L.A. registrar's office. McCormack may be out of office, but she is not out of the picture. Expect more from her--and from the other reform-resistant registrars who owe their allegiance to corporate vendors, not to the voters.
There are many ways that a "bad attitude" registrar can disenfranchise and disempower voters and citizens--by denying access to information, by failing to permit observation of the process, by incurring huge taxpayer costs from corporate vendors, by--as McCormack did--failing to include Absentee Ballot votes in the 1% standard audit, by not following the rules for security and for voters' rights, by pushing non-transparent voting systems and lobbying for their corporate manufacturers, and on and on. Many of these may not be obvious to ordinary voters. That's where election reform activists come in--the brave, intrepid warriors for transparent vote counting and open government.
One L.A. activist, Judy Alter, of Protect California Ballots, was very helpful to me, in researching and writing my CA Assessment:
http://www.protectcaliforniaballots.org/Pages/Main.htmThere are many others. Get in touch with them, support them, donate to their non-profit groups, cheer them on!
See also:
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org
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