Paul Jacobs: Throwing good money after bad

[MelissaB]

Throwing good money after bad

By: Paul Jacobs - Commentary

At last Tuesday's Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting, the public learned that elections in this county are a closed shop. The supervisors never refuse the registrar of voters, which is why they've spent 30 million of our tax dollars on machines that voters increasingly avoid using.

Since the introduction of electronic elections there has been a marked increase in the number of voters choosing to vote by absentee paper ballot. But the supervisors and their appointed registrar can never admit to making a $15 million mistake and then doubling it, so they keep throwing more money at a voting machine system that is incredibly complicated, unwieldy and unpopular.

The civic group Democracy for America ó Temecula Valley once again tried to convince the supervisors to form a year-round citizen's independent voting integrity commission to have a team approach to ensure Riverside County's election procedures are transparent, secure and accurate. The stubborn supervisors ignored sound arguments for having an outside audit of our election system and rejected the notion of citizens having access to meaningfully observe our votes being counted. Why do county officials insist on excluding citizens from the process?


All five supervisors have miserably failed their fiduciary responsibility to protect the public's interest in every conceivable way. Electronic elections promised to save taxpayers $600,000 in annual ballot printing expenses, but with the foray into electronic voting, the amortized cost has averaged $5 million per year. Thirty million dollars could have paid for the county's paper ballot elections for the next 50 years, and no voting machine will last that long.


More: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/07/16/opinion/jacobs/71506193035.txt

[Kurovski]

1. K&R.

The Economics of e-voting is a factor too often overlooked.

[Wilms]

2. Quite true.

I think the reform community missed the boat on that one.

A MEME could be, "They use your tax dollars to steal your vote".

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. the voters need to purge these officials

We launched a state wide effort to replace any
board of election officials who were pro DRE.

We also have tried to get rid of county commissioners.

Lots of political pressure was put on some county
commissioners who were pro DRE.

[mod mom]

4. It was never about saving money but controlling the outcomes while

providing a windfall to GOP operatives.