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Posted by Bev Harris on Friday, July 13, 2007:
A hand-picked Blue Ribbon Panel in Riverside County, California issued
a report yesterday advising county supervisors to move "as quickly as
possible" away from DREs (touch-screens) and over to voter-marked
paper ballots and optical scan machines. While this will still have
votes being counted in secret, on machines that government insiders
ultimately control, it is a positive step.
Here's a link to the report:
http://www.blackbox1.org/CA/Riverside-Ditch-the-DREs.pdf - (440 KB)
WORST PLACES TO VOTE IN AMERICA
Riverside County has long been tied with DuPage County, Illinois in
the Black Box Voting "Worst Places to Vote in America" rankings. As
Riverside steps out of the top two, a contender from Kentucky
threatens to blow by the whole bunch: Bullitt County, home of
mismatched votes and family-run government. Updates on DuPage and
Bullitt soon.
BACK TO RIVERSIDE
Riverside County, the first county in California to use electronic
touch-screen voting machines (DREs, Direct Recording Electronic), has
been under relentless pressure from its citizenry to stop hiding its
elections from The People (who actually own their elections -- not the
Riverside government).
RIVERSIDE CITIZENS PIONEERED E-VOTING LITIGATION
One of the first anti-e-voting lawsuits in the nation was initiated by
a Riverside citizen, Susan Marie Weber. It did not win, but was soon
followed by another Riverside lawsuit by candidate Linda Soubirous,
litigated by Greg Luke. The court decided that no one had any right to
look at anything, but attorney Greg Luke took what he'd learned from
that contest to file another voting rights suit in Alameda County,
where he won a smackdown decision yesterday that may result in an
election contest being re-run.
[jeremiah akin.jpg] Jeremiah Akin
It was in Riverside County that citizen Jeremiah Akin wrote the first
expose on secretive and inappropriate "Logic and Accuracy" test
procedures (County officials told observers to sign off on the test
before it was complete, and made them leave the room for part of the
testing).
[art-cassel-sm.JPG] Art Cassel, at a considerably younger age
Riverside's Art Cassell blew the whistle on a technician from Sequoia
Voting Systems who took a card out of his pocket, loaded it into the
central tabulator, uploaded an unknown file, then put the card in his
pocket and left the state. This incident was reported on Black Box
Voting and then investigated in detail by reporter Andrew Gumbel;
during the midst of his investigation, then-Riverside Registrar of
Voters Mischelle Townsend resigned, citing "family reasons."
Shortly after the 2004 election, Riverside citizens mobilized into an
organization called "SAVE R VOTE", led by local citizen Tom Courbat,
along with Maxine Ewig, Jerry Ewig, Paul Jacobs, and many others. They
mobilized 60 people to watch polls and conduct an in-depth audit, and
successfully engaged local media in efforts to get the secrecy out of
vote-counting in Riverside.
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http://www.blackboxvoting.org
Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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