Humboldt County citizen Mitch Trachtenburg developed an application to allow citizens to sort and count ballots scanned on a high-speed scanner, to confirm the results, after Humboldt County citizen Kevin Collins helped persuade the county to purchase an off-the-shelf high speed scanner to scan all ballots to disk, made available to the public. Using this method, citizens discovered that the Diebold software had missed counting hundreds of votes. California's Open Voting Consortium has been advocating and developing open source (public) software for our voting systems. In our Tool Kit 2008 ( http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit2008.pdf ) Canadian citizen volunteer John Howard details how to use free Web capture software to grab and freeze incoming election results and exit poll data as it rolls in, allowing analysis of data time slice to time slice. The article below describes how applications are being developed to give citizens all kinds of access to legislative bills, campaign data, and more. Mainstream news article about citizen-based public interest software:
http://gcn.com/Articles/2009/05/04/Data-democratized.aspx?Page=1
(PA) 5/09 - PHILADELPHIA: CITIZENS ASSERT RIGHTS, CITY FINALLY AGREES TO PUBLISH ELECTION RESULTS
After news coverage and citizen assertiveness, there has now been an about-face (see "update" at end of the article below) and Philadelphia has agreed to publish its election results. Hats off to the Committee of Seventy and others for their advocacy.
Mainstream news article about citizen-based public interest software:http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/heardinthehall/Election_officials_wont_post_online_primary_election_results.html
AND TWO QUICK NOTES:
(CA) 5/09 - LOS ANGELES: COUNTY RELEASES 2008 ELECTION STATS, REPORT -
Detailed statistical data is necessary for citizen oversight of election results and procedures. Los Angeles County has produced a report for 2008 that provides lots of detail for citizen elections watchdogs. Los Angeles County, with 4.3 million registered voters, represents a massive force in the California political landscape.
Armed with detailed statistical information, citizens can crunch the numbers to spot anomalies, such as ghost voters (more voters than voters), stuffed voter lists (more voters than eligible citizens over 18 years old), missing or over-represented absentee votes (precincts with a lower or higher number of absentee ballots than could be expected; this anomaly in Humboldt County California led to discovery of a Diebold voting system software flaw); and actual vs. anticipated political trends.
Black Box Voting has been a frequent critic of Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan, but we commend the elections office and appreciate the release of this data. This kind of detail is often hard to find, and is very necessary for effective citizen controls. LOS ANGELES FULL REPORT: http://www.lavote.net/VOTER/PDFS/POST_ELECTION_REPORTS/Post_Election_Report_2008 _General_Election_Full.pdf
(177,869 KB)
(AL) 5/09 - STATE: STEALTH "GOAT ELECTION" HELD, IMPOSING STATEWIDE TAX WITH JUST 400 VOTES -
All right, this is not the most pressing issue I suppose, but an odd little letter to the editor in Alabama caught my attention. The underlying complaint -- a statewide election that is so secret it achieved only 400 votes, total -- raises some interesting issues about transparency.
Apparently if you own two goats in Alabama, you now have to pay a special fee, which was voted in by a statewide election that no one heard about. Who gets the special "goat fee", why it's even there, how this came to be is not explained. A former Pennsylvania election official, V. Kurt Bellman, provides some interesting insights into these kinds of stealth elections in the discussion area on this item, here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/80379.html - Yep, it's true, such things happen and more often than not it involves raising your taxes.
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