San Diego Memory Lane - Bilbray recount issue not the first...

[rumpel]

Posted 11/7/2004 10:34 PM Updated 11/8/2004 8:45 AM

Surfer-activist may win San Diego mayor's post
By Valerie Alvord, USA TODAY
SAN DIEGO — A surfer is riding a wave of populist support that could make her this city's first write-in mayor.

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Known for sunshine and pristine beaches, San Diego is facing a swarm of troubles, including the downgrading of its credit rating and a $1.7 billion deficit in the public employees' pension fund and health care benefits for retirees. The shortfall, and accusations that Mayor Dick Murphy was hiding the bad news, has earned it the unwelcome nickname "Enron by the Sea." The FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating.

Three of the nine City Council members were indicted last year on bribery charges, accused of taking money from a strip club owner seeking looser restrictions on contact between customers and dancers. They pleaded not guilty. Two are still serving on the council, awaiting trial next year. The third died in August of a liver illness.

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She ran against two Republicans: Murphy, 61, a former councilman and Superior Court judge, and Ron Roberts, 62, an architect who left his job to serve first on the City Council and then the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/local/2004-11-07-san-diego-mayor_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

Exclusive: Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race
Miriam Raftery

"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies - a 4 percent shift - ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.

San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 26 local election as citizens' audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.

Frye, who served three years as a council woman in San Diego, California, previously ran as a write-in candidate in November 2004, but was deprived of San Diego's top seat due to the city's Registrar of Voters, Sally McPherson, blocking the count of 5,547 ballots on which voters had written Frye's name, yet failed to also fill in bubbles. The disputed ballots would have given Frye a victory by 3,439 votes.

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Diebold's Un-Accu-Vote

Now, a nonpartisan citizens' group that conducted a parallel election has requested a recount of 11 precincts. This time, the issue isn't unmarked bubbles, but the accuracy of Diebold Accu-Vote optical scan voting machines and the Diebold GEMS central tabulator used to count votes.

The Citizens Audit Parallel Election (CAPE) asked voters exiting polls to vote again and sign a log book attesting to the accuracy of their second vote. Sealed parallel election ballots were counted at KGTV's studio with a TV camera crew filming the counting process.

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Computer experts hired by Black Box Voting to penetrate voting systems in Leon County, Florida (with permission of an election official) demonstrated the ease of reprogramming Diebold optical scan voting machines and changing votes through the Diebold central tabulator - the same voting systems used in San Diego during the recent election.

Informed of these facts, Haas nonetheless allowed hundreds of San Diego poll workers to keep voting machines at home overnight - including programmable memory cards protected only by seals that could easily be removed with pliers and resealed.

March and other observers contend that San Diego's central tabulator was hooked up to the Internet on election night. An Internet connection would violate Diebold's own procedures manual, which states: "The GEMS server should not be connected to any network that has an external Internet connection." State certification required that manual procedures be followed.

"If that manual isn't followed, it's an illegal installation," says March. "They ran a completely illegal election."

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Citizens_Request_Recount_IN_SAN_DIEGO_MAYO_0818.html

4th request filed for S.D. mayoral recount

UNION-TRIBUNE

December 11, 2004

Television station KNSD yesterday asked for a recount in the San Diego mayor's race, the fourth such request.

KNSD filed the request "in connection with" three San Diego registered voters: Matthew J. Quinn, Michael C. Abrams and Jeffrey A. Barnes. It said the three voters are asking for a recount on behalf of the three candidates in the mayor's race: Mayor Dick Murphy, Councilwoman Donna Frye and county Supervisor Ron Roberts.
"The news organization is interested in looking at ballots not originally counted because an oval beside the name of a candidate was not filled in," states the request by Chuck Westerheide Jr., assistant news director at KNSD.

Two of the other requests also were filed by news organizations: The San Diego Union-Tribune and a consortium of The Los Angeles Times, KGTV and KPBS.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20041211/news_2m11request.html

Where was the media? Where is the media?

And we will have another election, WHEN?