Federal election commission (EAC) eyes Humboldt

[GuvWurld]

added emphasis mine - Dave

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_11328669
archived at: http://www.guvwurld.org/cgi-bin/live.cgi?d=%2FVoting%2FEureka%20Times-Standard%20-%20Federal%20election%20commission%20eyes%20Humboldt%20-%2012-29-08.txt

Federal election commission eyes Humboldt

Thadeus Greenson/The Times-Standard

Posted: 12/29/2008 01:33:58 AM PST

(snip)

The commission chairwoman, Rosemary Rodriguez, said she received a letter from North Coast Congressman Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, early this month alerting the commission that Humboldt County had certified inaccurate elections results due to a programming error in its version of Premier Elections Solutions software that led to almost 200 votes being dropped from the county's final results.

(snip)

But, unlike the Federal Aviation Administration, Rodriguez said the EAC doesn't have the authority or capacity to launch independent investigations. So, Rodriguez said her commission is currently awaiting reports from Humboldt County Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen detailing the error and how it was discovered.

The commission, Rodriguez said, will then use the reports in two ways in an attempt to ensure these types of errors don't pop up again: It will pass them along to the federal elections systems testing laboratories so it can test for precisely these types of problems; and it will widely disseminate the information so every election official using the same type of software is aware of the problem and how to work around it.

(snip)

One of the issues the error in Humboldt County has raised, Rodriguez acknowledged, is whether similar problems may have occurred elsewhere but gone unreported, simply having been dealt with between the vendor and the local elections officials where the problem occurred.

”I think that's an appropriate concern,” Rodriguez said. “There's this very confidential relationship between counties and vendors, and I think issues have been resolved as they've arisen with these kinds of work-arounds, but who knew. The voters certainly didn't know, and elections officials aren't going to necessarily want their voters to know there are problems. So, it's resulted in this kind of unhealthy situation.”

Because of that, Rodriguez said she's proud of Humboldt County, and especially of Crnich, for stepping forward and acknowledging there was a problem.

”The fact that they're sharing this information is a gift, I think, for other counties,” Rodriguez said. “We're all learning together and Humboldt County is really going to help us in that process... I really commend the county for engaging in this transparency project, and Secretary Bowen certainly has established the appropriate climate of scrutiny, and I just think there's lots of good that comes from this very unfortunate situation. Votes aren't to be trifled with.”