OpEdNews » Riverside CA proud to be dropped from "Two Worst Places to Vote"

Tags for This Article:

Populum Tag Cloud Control Panel
	Fine tune your search to access content

Articles	Links
Diaries	Products
Events	All

All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs

From:
Month Day Year

To:
Month Day Year

Alphabet Popularity	Count ON Count OFF
This Level	Sub-levels

Tag(s): Activism; Electronic Voting; GrassRoots; Lawsuits; State; Voting Machines; Voting Technology
Add to My Group

July 15, 2007 at 07:20:25

Riverside CA proud to be dropped from "Two Worst Places to Vote"

by Bev Harris Page 1 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

SAVE FAVORITES

VIEW FAVORITES

View Ratings | Rate It

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"
------------------------------

------------------------------

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.

See also:
The Ultimate Insult: Paper Ballots entered into touch-screens
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/32791.html

1 | 2