OpEdNews - Page 5 of Article: Utter failure of election transparency in Monterey County

LEGAL CONSEQUENCES AND VIOLATIONS - SUGGESTED CAUSES OF ACTION

1) This department violated Election Code 15004 in at least two ways: they did not allow even minimal testing, and they attempted to subvert the sketchy testing they did finally allow by sneaking into the room and messing with the exact data we were lawfully asking about. If allowed across the state, this behavior will destroy EC15004 as a check and balance.

2) Threatening us with arrest was a violation of our civil rights, and put us in fear of arrest for well over an hour. It was a detestable act. Had the threats been successful, election oversight under EC15004 would have been thwarted completely.

3) The "no cameras" policy is being applied unequally in violation of our 14th Amendment rights. See also the June 5th Monterey Herald newspaper which printed pictures of their staff happily working away on the election. Apparently non-technical photography of people's faces is fine, technical photography of illegal computer configurations is "evil?" This is also a further violation of both the EC15004 technical observation rules and the general citizen observation of the vote-tally rules.

4) While EC15004 observation is subverted and denied, regular "citizen observation" of the counting of the vote is also systematically subverted. Critical functions happen on election night deliberately away from observers (at Linda Tulett's office) and rather than being openly carried, memory cards are carried around in closed fists by people with closed mouths.

5) The presence of MS-Access on these systems is an open-and-shut certification violation. This county has a copy of the Sequoia "BPS" software to prepare their own ballot layouts. BPS writes it's data in MS-Access format. MS-Access could easily be used by hand to subvert any possible audit controls and basically take over the election. MS-Access is widely understood to be a "burglary tool for elections" and has no business being anywhere near a live voting system, period.

6) Finally, there is very likely going to be a public records fight, on two issues: what we get access to, and when we get it.

Our records request was made "pursuant to the California Public Records Act and Election Code 15004." There is a conflict between the public records laws and the election code: under the public records laws the county has the ability to "stall" for a considerable period. Following the 2008 Presidential Primary election, members of SAVElections received some data, but most of it not until two months post-election.

PUBLIC RECORDS ISSUES

Under the election codes, once the election becomes official (after the canvass) a five-day window opens up in which candidates can declare challenges and/or file for recounts. To do so intelligently, they need the public records relating to the election at the START of the five-day challenge window. That means audit logs, windows event log, directory listings and the raw electronic files generated by the county from the Sequoia BPS and WinEDS programs. Without such access, the age of electronic voting renders the five-day-challenge rule a useless taunting waste of the democratic process.

Setting that issue aside, this agency's dead-set stance against transparency in every other respect is likely to translate to "pulling public records will be like pulling teeth from a drunk warthog – with rusty tweezers." We can't sue for wrongful denial until we're denied of course, but we could get an injunction against delays that would render the five-day challenge window meaningless and combine it with the rest of the causes of action listed.

This report has been prepared for and in cooperation with:

Monterey County Green Party
http://www.greenpartymonterey.org
Black Box Voting
http://blackboxvoting.org
SAVElections Monterey County
myvotematters@yahoo.com

Monterey County has been placed on the Black Box Voting Election Protection Watch List for 2008.

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