(Riverside, CA) County to consider new vote machines

[question everything]

County to consider new vote machines

SUPERVISORS: Board members will be asked to fund 3,700 touch-screen devices with printers.

10:33 PM PST on Sunday, January 8, 2006

By KIMBERLY TRONE / The Press-Enterprise

Riverside County may buy 3,700 new touch-screen voting machines with printers that allow voters to review their choices on paper before casting ballots.

Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore is expected to ask county supervisors Tuesday to spend $4.78 million on the machines from Sequoia Voting Systems. State law requires electronic voting machines to provide voter verifiable paper trails this year, and Dunmore wants the new machines to ensure the county is ready for the June 6 primary elections. Voters will be able to review, but not touch the paper backups.

Sequoia systems, based in Oakland, introduced touch-screen voting units in Riverside County during the 2000 presidential election, making the county the first in the state to employ the technology. Dunmore said it would be more expensive and time-consuming to retrofit the county's old machines to provide the paper trail rather than replace them.

(snip)

Secretary of State Bruce McPherson announced last week that electronic voting systems operated by Riverside County and five other counties in the Nov. 8 statewide election operated with 100 percent accuracy.

(snip)

Reach Kimberly Trone at [phone] or [e-mail]

Online at: http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_vote09.8763bfd.html (registration)

[msongs]

1. Riverside CA, here - emailed this author the following letter ->

"Hello,
Msongs here from Riverside CA.
Interesting article. Are you up on the latest on e vote irregularities? Sorry, don't
mean to be rude, just curious as to how much research you have done on the topic in general.
Do these machines have open source code available to the public?
Do these machines create a paper copy that is kept by the county to be used in recounts
as the ballots of record (not using the electronic tabulation as the record).
Are the machines daisy chained together?
Are they completely inaccesible to the internet or any outside input?
We have a proposal for evote changes here in California on our website at
www.msongs.com/vvpb.htm if you'd care to read it.
Not likely something that a republican party secretary of state would favor however.

Msongs

www.msongs.com for batik art, music, t shirts & more!"

Since our hometown newspaper is a subsidiary of the Dallas Morning News....
Will be curious to read the reply, if any.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/clark2008.htm