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Life Arts    H2'ed 9/21/13

Brad Friedman Shines Spotlight on CA Bill to End Federal Testing of E-Voting Systems

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Joan Brunwasser
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In Los Angeles County, where Democrats are in charge of the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation, they are four-square behind the L.A. County Clerk's plan to implement a new, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting system here. They think it'll make voting easier (history tells us it won't, but that's a separate issue), so they're in favor!


Now, to be fair, in states and counties where Republicans think they will benefit from things like Internet voting, they have been pushing it there as well. For instance, Internet voting programs have been encouraged by federal law for overseas and military voters. Republicans think they get more military votes than Democrats, so getting them to call for Internet Voting for those folks was pretty easy.


It's also helpful that you mention 2004 here. That year helps underscore the serious concerns about SB 360, the terrible law that just passed in the CA legislature and is waiting for signature (or hopefully VETO!) from Gov. Jerry Brown.  Aside from ending all federal testing for voting systems in CA, SB 360 also has a provision that allows the Secretary of State to approve new e-voting systems for use in "a legally binding election", even if it has not been certified, or potentially tested at all, at either the state or federal level.  Support of the bill, passed on partisan lines, with little debate, seems to suggest that Democrats feel safe that they will control the Sec. of State's office forever and that whoever is in it will be someone trustworthy. But, as I wrote last week on that point:


Some might ask, particularly Democrats, who seem confident that the outgoing term-limited Democratic Sec. of State Debra Bowen is likely to be replaced in 2014 by another Democrat: "What's the big concern? No Secretary of State would approve an untested voting system for use in an actual election!"


Those Democrats need only look a few years back to when Democratic Sec. of State Kevin Shelley was forced out of office mid-term in 2005. Shelley had previously decertified Diebold's touch-screen voting systems in California, after it was discovered the company had lied to the state about using uncertified and unsafe components. The Republican governor at the time, Arnold Schwarzenegger (who had, himself, replaced Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in an unprecedented recall election held on many of those same machines) subsequently appointed a Republican, Bruce McPherson, to take the place of the Democrat Shelley as Secretary of State.


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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of (more...)
 

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