The other item of interest was a "no cameras" policy for all observers. A stated reason was given in the observation policy manual: cameras were banned "for the privacy of staff and voters".
There were no voters allowed anywhere near the central tabulator room, and the area within and around the room was covered by county-owned video cameras which produced video that is accessible via public records, making any expectation of privacy anywhere near those machines something of a joke.
BPS PROGRAM ISSUES
Mr. Valenzuela (assistant Registrar of Voters) noted during our conversation that he had read my report on the election conduct and process in Maricopa County AZ. We discussed how both Maricopa and Monterey are Sequoia customers who use the BPS (Ballot Preparation System ) software in-house. The report he referred to can be seen at:
I made Ms. Tulett aware that I wanted to check to make sure the systems used certified voting system components in a legal, certified configuration. She stated that she would have to study Election Code 15004 and consult with counsel on it. We agreed that was reasonable and departed.
On Monday June 2nd around 8:30am we arrived and spoke to Linda again. She noted that she had not yet talked to counsel and would be meeting with them later that day around 4:00pm, which we again accepted as reasonable. We dropped off the public records request reproduced as appendix A of this document, discussing it with her briefly (noting that most of it asks for items which either didn't exist yet or couldn't legally be released yet). Linda stated that the afternoon of the day of the election would be a somewhat slow period for her office; we agreed on a time somewhere between 2:00pm and 3:00pm for the EC15004 system inspection.
I stated at that time that with mutual cooperation, the EC15004 exam process should take no more than 15 minutes. My stated goal with her was to ensure that the central tabulator room voting systems were of a legal and certified type and in a certified configuration.
NETWORK CABLES AND HIDDEN CONNECTIONS
Also on Monday we examined the central tabulator room through the "observation window". We noted a number of problems: network cables inter-connecting the voting systems are allowed, but these ran through the floorboards out of sight and could have been split off and diverted.
In this fashion the "who is winning and losing" data from before the election (based on the mail-in vote) could have been stolen or the databases could be back-door-tampered by other machines. Worse, a huge wiring cluster in the corner of the same room acted as the central Internet gateway for that building's regular office computers; it would have been easy to cross-wire the voting systems to the Internet through the Cisco router built into that wiring stack.
We asked permission to photograph the room as it was empty and "personal privacy" wasn't a factor. This request was denied, meaning their "personal privacy" excuse on photography was fraudulent.
STALLING & RESTRICTING THE INSPECTION
On the day of the election (Tuesday 6/3/08) we arrived at the elections office at 2:15pm. Present were myself, Ms. Lane, Mr. George Riley, an official with the Monterey County Green Party and Jeanne Turner of SAVElections.
Ms. Tulett met us at the front counter and presented her "plan" for observation: she would allow us to confirm the version numbers and timestamps of the Sequoia voting system software, period. She claimed that her county attorneys had determined that the Sequoia software fit the description of "device" in EC15004. I replied that the term "device" should refer to the entire computer that the software was running on, and that in order for that software to be certified under California's rules, the rest of the software and hardware environment had to be of the certified type – and that I should be allowed to confirm this.
She disagreed.
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