This is interesting: Lawsuit in Alameda County over DRE inauditability

[Carolab]

January 12, 2005
Sham Recount Process on Diebold E-voting Machines
Lawsuit Challenges Berkeley Election Officials in Measure R Recount

<snip>

"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."

"While it was easy to watch the recount of the paper ballots to make sure every vote was counted, the recount from the electronic voting machine was simply a 'rerun' of the original election results and gave us no assurance that the results were correct," added Debby Goldsberry of Americans for Safe Access.

"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."

<snip>


http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2005_01.php#002210

[Raksha]

1. You're right, it's very interesting...

...especially to a California resident. Thank you for posting this. I'm going to e-mail Mr. Zimmerman tomorrow to see if he has a mailing list or some way of keeping interested parties informed about the status of this case. I'm VERY interested in finding out how the hearing on March 2nd turns out.