9 million CA votes at serious risk today from "bad actor" county election officials

[Peace Patriot]

The California counties with the worst "bad attitude" Registrars of Voters--anti-transparency, anti-reform, anti-voter, pro-corporate--San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino, and also Los Angeles ("bad attitude" Registrar resigned in Dec 07, replaced by her hand-picked successor) comprise about 9 million of California's 15.5 million voters--more than half!

These voters are at the most risk today, in the Feb. 5 Primary, of election fraud and disenfranchisement, and these are also the counties where citizen observers are most likely to meet obstruction in trying to see what's going on and obtaining information, in an election system that remains highly non-transparent and riggable, overall, despite the best efforts of CA's new Secretary of State, Debra Bowen (only one year in office), and many kickass citizen election integrity groups around the state (notably in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego). (San Bernardino kickass citizens, where are you?).

San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties all have "centralized vote tabulation" (the most insecure method). The first three now use mainly optiscan voting machines (San Diego-Diebold; the other two-Sequoia), and L.A. has an optiscan-type system. The security of this system ("central tabulation," and optiscans) is very dependent upon the Registrar's vigilance and objectivity--public service attitude--a component of the system that has been seriously lacking in all four counties (and some others). Case in point: San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties recently sued SoS Bowen to stop implementation of Bowen's modest reforms in the ballot auditing system.* They lost in appellate court (1/29/08). Bowen's reforms stand. But the fact that they tried to do this--to stop simple, minimal transparency measures--is one more evidence of their "bad attitude" toward transparent vote counting and public accountability.

Two recent corporate news articles point to an anti-Bowen campaign that may involve "slow" returns in CA's Primary tonight (and into tomorrow), and, lo and behold, three of the "bad actor" counties mentioned above are cited in one of them--the Contra Costa Times (AP) article (2/3)--which predicts "slow" returns, partly due to SoS's Bowen's reforms: San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties--the ones who sued SoS Bowen to stop her reforms. The article includes a quote by San Diego's Registrar, Deborah Seiler--who was Diebold's former chief salesperson in California before she got into "public service" (can you believe it?)--and Steve Weir, head of the county election officials' lobbying group (and Contra Costa Registrar), who has a history of opposing reform.** Seiler laments having to protect paper ballots from possible rain, and they all whine and complain about having to deal with actual ballots, when they had so looked forward to the slick, zippity-do-da touchscreen returns--no fuss, no bother, nothing TO recount or audit, no questions askable.

They couldn't stop these reforms--at least for now--but they no doubt have other schemes to undo current reforms and prevent any more. And if they're scheming against modest reforms with lawsuits, what else are they scheming? Here's what Weir said about Bowen's reforms in August 2007:

“This election, if it's a failure, it's on her.” --Steve Weir, 8/12/07
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070812-9999-1n12bowen.html

One of their strategies may be to claim that the administration of elections in CA has been "politicized" by election reformers--an absurd charge recently stated by former Los Angeles Registrar, Conny McCormack, in the Whittier Daily News, a couple of days ago. Absurd because all three of the major corporate vendors in California--Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia--have very close ties to the Republican Party, the Bush-Cheney regime and/or far rightwing causes. (Sequoia hired former CA Sec of State, Republican Bill Jones, to peddle its machines.)

McCormack led the group of "bad actor" registrars in their bitter campaign against former CA SoS Kevin Shelley (a reformer) and drove him from office after he sued Diebold for fraud in 2004. McCormack resigned in Dec 07 amidst a storm of controversy over her coziness with corporate election vendors. (She did a sales brochure for Diebold, tried to segue Diebold touchscreens into L.A.'s system via early voting (something Bowen essentially stopped), gave Diebold the entire concession for Absentee Ballot printing in L.A. and is best friends with Seiler.) McCormack may be out of office, but she is not out of the picture. She represents the "culture of secrecy" in corporate-run elections that is plotting its return, and that is putting at least 9 million California voters at serious risk in the Primary voting today, and all 15.5 California voters at considerable risk today and in the future, due to private, corporate "trade secret" vote counting and the "culture of secrecy" around elections that has infected California's and the entire nation's election system.

See "California Election Integrity Assessment 2008," for more details (and tools for analyzing today's results):
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4380748

The Contra Costa Times and Whitter Daily News articles were first posted here:
(Comments 2,16 and 7)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x496612
http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8157074?source=rss
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_8153626?source=rss

San Diego Pollwatcher's Guide (useful in any CA county)
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_8153626?source=rss

California Voter Foundation list of county election system types:
http://www.calvoter.org/issues/votingtech/currentdirectory.html

CA COUNTY REGISTRARS --contact info/web sites
http://www.calvoter.org/voter/government/ceo.html

Discussion of the "slow" returns issue:
Feb 4 blog entry: Counting votes -- it ain't fast food, folks!
http://calvoter.org/news/blog/index.html
(Note the lie a San Bernardino official tells about it!)

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*Note: The San Diego (and Riverside/San Bernardino) lawsuit against SoS Bowen sought to prevent a required 10% audit (count of actual ballots against machine totals) in contests with a 0.5% margin or less, and escalated auditing where serious anomalies are found in the standard (and very inadequate) 1% audit. They lost. These rules are in place.

**Note: Weir's county, Contra Costa, has an ES&S voting system. SoS Bowen recently sued ES&S for $15 million for selling nearly one thousand uncertified voting machines to five CA counties including San Francisco. ES&S may actually be worse than Diebold for lying, fraud and shoddy practices, but it's hard to choose. And the two corporations are closely related. ES&S was a spinoff of Diebold, and, until recently, two brothers ran these corporations--Bob (Diebold) and Tod (ES&S) Urosevich. ES&S has even more hair-raising far rightwing connections than Diebold, which has a Bush/Cheney campaign chair as CEO during the 2004 election era.
Nov 19 2007 blog entry with news links, about the SoS lawsuit against ES&S
http://calvoter.org/news/blog/2007_11_01_blogarchive.html

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. As worrisome as this all is, the simple fact is there will be minimal

tampering today - it would make no sense to tamper with a primary vote, and bring the problems into the daylight 8 months before the election. They will want this to go as smoothly as possible to 'prove' that there is no tampering, so that come November people will be once again lulled into thinking their vote is secure. The last thing they want is for problems to become manifest now, resulting in a broad-based move to hand-counted paper ballots in November.

[Peace Patriot]

3. It's difficult to know what the global corporate predator plan is, NCevilDUer.

These "bad actor" county registrars, so in the pocket of the global corporate predators' voting machine giants, have their own agenda of reversing and preventing reform. Steve Weir said it: “This election, if it's a failure, it's on her.” And if they mess it up, they will try to use that to impose MORE non-transparency. Mess-ups (machine breakdowns, disenfranchised voters, "slow" returns) can also easily serve other nefarious purposes.

I have a theory that they want to put Hillary in the White House--THEN they will crash the economy and send oil prices even further through the roof, and...well...all the next awful things they have planned (breadlines, food riots, old grannies in wheelchairs protesting the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare, anti-Draft protests - when that happens - anti-war protests when they go for Venezuela's oil - Darth Vader cops everywhere beating up on Americans, like in Seattle) (when B. Clinton was president), to make way for their Hitler II scenario in 2012. They need a pro-corporate, anti-reform president for this--with a "D" in front of her name. Obama might just change things, as he promises. He can't be trusted to protect corporate looting rights. So, IF this is the plan, they have motive to (s)elect Hillary today, and then (s)elect her again in November.

But it's difficult to know, in this obscure and Byzantine political/corporate media system, what the hell is going on. Maybe Hillary's the one with the secret plan (a plan to restore good government, and do some house-cleaning). Maybe she's just kept her head down (out of bullet range) and bided her time. Really, I can't tell. No one can. Is she in the Bush Cartel's pocket? Is Obama up for sale? Do the bad guys have dirt on one or the other (and thus, control)? Do they really think they can get away with inflicting McCain on us? (I'll take a bought Hillary, or buyable Obama, any day, over THAT.) Or is their plan more devious? Four years of corporate "liberalism" (with their enormous gains under Bush essentially protected, and consolidated), followed by the full-on Fascist Boot when the big S hits the fan?

Dunno. Just know we need to restore TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING real soon.

And I love your handle.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. True - there are wheels within wheels within wheels...

And many of the players may have differeing, if equally nefarious, agendas.

And as you said, vote transparency is essential, which is why I think there will be minimal shenanigans today, when the real contest is in November. Too much of the public is easily lulled into complacency if there are not recent reminders of what is going on.

And, thanks.

[annabanana]

2. k&r. . There is no legitimate reason for the counting of votes to be

anything LESS than completely transparent and public. Secrecy = shenanigans..