Listen Up! Today on KPFT: Judy Bertelsen on California election integrity developments

JUDY BERTELSEN is a primary care physician in the East Bay of the San Francisco area. She has been an election integrity activist since after the 2000 election. Judy calls the recent comprehensive, top-to-bottom review of election systems by California Secretary of State Debra Bowen "a watershed." Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will discuss the results of the review with Judy, including a look at the equipment used in Harris County, Texas -- Hart InterCivic. In addition, we'll look at Judy's perspective on whether post-election auditing can be relied on as a tool to secure fair elections.

Judy is co-chair of the Voting Rights Task Force (VRTF) in the East Bay. The VRTF was asked to help with election protection for the Jerry McNerney campaign in Congressional District 11. Her task was mainly with the effort to observe the 1% manual tally in the 4 counties that make up that congressional district. That effort clarified for her that California's 1% manual tally does not, in its present incarnation, serve in any serious way as an audit of the election. (The group's report is here: http://www.countedascast.com/docs/CD11_Manual_Tally_Report_Jan01.pdf.)

Members of the VRTF worked hard to elect Debra Bowen Secretary of State, and they trek to Sacramento for key occasions, such as the public hearing in early July that opened the work of Bowen's Post-Election Audit Working Group, and a recent all-day hearing on Bowen's Top to Bottom Review. The Post-Election Audit Working Group included a statistician and a forensic CPA; the group has endorsed a professional standard for election audits.

Besides being a primary care physician and geriatrician, Judy has a Ph.D. in political science.

Including Report on Hart InterCivic by University of California Red Team:

Hart InterCivic (.pdf, 376KB)
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/ttbr/red_hart_final.pdf

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL OF INTEREST ON ELECTIONS:
DAN RATHER REPORTS VIDEO: 'The Trouble with Touch Screens'

Will be HUGE Trouble for Sequoia, ES&S and Maybe the Republicans from the 2000 Election!
August 15, 2007
Bradblog.com
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4960 includes links to the Dan Rather video

VoterAction calls for Congressional Investigation (http://www.voteraction.org):
[The HDnet] broadcast by Dan Rather Reports of "The Trouble with Touch Screens" raises serious questions as to whether US voting systems companies have engaged in commercial fraud by knowingly marketing defective products to jurisdictions throughout the country. It also serves as a wake-up call to the nation of the dangers associated with the outsourcing of key election functions to private vendors. Voter Action today calls on the US Congress to launch a full investigation into the increasing influence and control that private companies wage in the way we conduct our elections and to determine whether certain US voting systems companies have committed crimes under federal and state anti-fraud statutes which should be referred to the appropriate authorities for prosecution.