Reply #24: Kerry Won Alaska: Alaska Democratic Party (Support the Alaska Dem. Party

[autorank]

State rebuffs raw vote demand
STANDOFF: Democrats want 2004 base election data; machine firm is playing coy.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/7386582p-7298824c.html

By LISA DEMER
Anchorage Daily News

Published: January 24, 2006
Last Modified: January 24, 2006 at 02:26 AM

The state Division of Elections has refused to turn over its electronic voting files to the Democrats, arguing that the data format belongs to a private company and can't be made public.

The Alaska Democratic Party says the information is a public record essential for verifying the accuracy of the 2004 general election and must be provided.

The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of, the Democrats said Monday. A detailed analysis of the underlying data could answer lingering questions about an election many thought was over more than a year ago, they say.

"Basically what they say is they want to give us a printout from the (electronic) file. They don't want to give us the file itself. It doesn't enable us to get to the bottom of what we need to know," said Kay Brown, spokeswoman for the party