".. Recall Decision Based on Study Sponsored by Touch-Screen Manufacturer"

[phoebe]

Apologies if already posted

snip
Media Ignores Big Recall Story

There is a big story not being told about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and its Monday decision to halt the recall. One of the arguments the ACLU used to file its lawsuit was based upon the contention that the ''punch card ballots are flawed and that minorities will be disenfranchised.'' In other words, the ACLU is intimating that minorities are too stupid to figure out the ballot.

The ACLU based that opinion on a UC Berkeley study that inferred that punch-card systems installed in six counties would produce the result that ''40,000 voters who travel to the polls and cast their ballot will not have their vote counted at all.''

This sounded highly subjective and speculative to Eric Leonard, an investigative journalist for KFI-640 (Los Angeles). Leonard reported on Tuesday that the core logic behind the ruling was indeed based on the Berkeley study, but added that the study was funded by Sequoia Voting Systems, a major provider of touch-screen voting machines, now actively seeking additional contracts to install its equipment in California counties.

snip

Talk show host Al Rantel of KABC-790 took the investigation even further by interviewing the Sequoia Public Affairs Director Alfie Charles on the air on Wednesday. Charles, who once worked for the office of the California Secretary of State, acknowledged Sequoia's participation in Berkeley study, but did not endorse the ACLU conclusions about proof of minority disenfranchisement. Charles stated that there is no way to tell if there are any voting error differences between minority and non minority voting precincts.

http://www.chronwatch.com/editorial/contentDisplay.asp?aid=4294

[Must_B_Free]

1. This has nothing to do with minorities being "stupid"

"In other words, the ACLU is intimating that minorities are too stupid to figure out the ballot."

This is dead wrong.

it is because the technology itself is flawed, and it is used in their districts predominantly

If two cards get stuck together, both votes are invalidated. Nothing to do with a butterfly ballot type if issue.

[Noordam]

2. If as in Florida they did not clean out the clads from the last

elections, you could have more "hanging" clads because you did not get a clean punch.