Reply #10: Kick, and . . . [View All]

[WeHoldTheseTruths]

I reformatted it to help sink it into my slow brain:

Berkeley, CA - Jan 13

A sham recount using Diebold e-voting machines will come under court examination.

Berkeley Measure R, the Patient's Access to Medical Cannabis Act of 2004, lost by only 191 votes. Under the law, the proponents were entitled to seek a recount, which they did.

Alameda County election officials engaged in a "going through the motions" exercise.

They ran the same electronic vote data through the same counting machines and, predictably, reached the same result. They did not consult the machines' audit logs, redundant memories, or any other relevant materials.

"California law guarantees every voter the right to a recount and requires election officials to produce for public review all materials relevant to that recount," said Gregory Luke, attorney at the Santa Monica firm of Strumwasser & Woocher, which represents the plaintiffs Americans for Safe Access, and three individual Berkeley voters.

"Because the Diebold machines purchased by Alameda County do not retain any ballots for the purpose of a recount, election officials must, at the very least, look at the information produced by the system's existing security features to give voters some circumstantial evidence that the machines performed properly and that vote data was not damaged or altered."

"Alameda County's refusal to allow the public to examine the audit logs and redundant memory renders the so-called 'recount' they conducted utterly meaningless."

Yesterday , the county announced that the recount had failed to change the result. They altered the final margin of defeat to 166 votes, attributing the change to absentee and provisional ballots -- the electronic voting machine count remained the same.

"Recounts are one of the most important ways we detect vote fraud and error," said Matt Zimmerman, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is consulting on the case. "Even after Californians have voter-verified paper trails in 2006, it will be important to ensure that audit logs, redundant memory, and other security measures are checked during a recount, along with the paper trails. Banks and credit card issuers use these measures to make sure our financial transactions are safe. Our votes deserve at least as much protection."

A hearing in Alameda Superior Court is currently set for March 2.

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid... /