Black Box Voting : Latest Consumer Reports from Black Box Voting: 7-13-07: Riverside proud to be dropped from "Two 2 Worst Places to Vote" ------------------------------
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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.
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.