LA city clerk's decision to re-ink ballots in mayor's race criticized

[Wilms]

LA city clerk's decision to re-ink ballots in mayor's race criticized

Associated Press
Posted on Sat, Mar. 12, 2005

LOS ANGELES - The city clerk defended his decision to have election workers use blue highlighter pens to re-ink thousands of ballots cast in Tuesday's mayoral election after the action drew criticism from elections experts and some of the candidates.

City Clerk Frank Martinez said he ordered the workers to re-ink ballots whose bubbled areas next to candidates' names had been only partially or faintly filled in by voters. The action was taken, he said, to make sure those ballots were counted.

-snip-

Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack saw no reason for the re-inking.

"It's certainly not our procedure and there was no need to do it," McCormack said, adding Los Angeles County has counted more than 5 million ballots under the InkaVote system since 2003-04 and never had a problem.

-snip/more-

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/11118722.htm

:eyes:


The Daily News has a fuller AP report:

http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200~20954~2758409,00.html

[Ken Burch]

1. Did the re-inking affect any results?

[Wilms]

2. The articles didn't indicate the # of ballots involved. n/t

[zann725]

10. I saw the coverage on TV, and it look all quite 'odd.' Sounded strangely

pre-emptive...as if in anticipation of Fraud charges. My guess is it was, despite all their sqawking to the contrary. Especially when you consider that Repug pattern thus far is to publicize one thing, and actually do the exact opposite.

Plus, I thought it was odd that there's going to be a "run-off" election of the top Mayor candidates in a couple months. I've lived in L.A. over 25 years, and unless I have amnesia (which I could possibly), I don't EVER remember there being a "run-off" election before here. The even odder part was that they kept talking about the "run-off" election BEFORE the first vote?!!! They were promo-ing it so much as a "possibility" that the more they promo'd it, the more I was convinced there were "going that way"...no matter the outcome. Kind of like naming "Democracy Plaza" to a place that would be broadcasting the FAKE results of the 2004 election. There too, I knew the results the head of time, merely by the promo.

[Demit]

3. Sounds completely aboveboard, from the article.

They followed guidelines, it was public, and the special pen allows you to see the voter's original mark. It's nice for a change to hear election officials caring about voters intent, and all votes counting!

[Wilms]

5. Good points.

I read the, fuller, Daily News article after posting the Mercury link. It left a different impression.

But we also have McCormack saying there has never been a need to do that before. So if it isn't happenstance, what else could be going on?

[JunkYardDogg]

4. Now we gotta Check out Frank Martinez

That's kinda a weird deal
But in reading about Inka Vote,
there were reports of votes not counting because the spaces weren't filled in completely
If Hubby designed the InkaVote, Conny Dearest is not going to admit deficiencies.

[Wilms]

6. But Conny Dearest didn't just not admit it.

She claims there were never such problems when the system was previously used.

Hmmm. Wonder if someone could challenge that assertion?

[berniew1]

7. McCormack's statements are silly. Isn't it obvious?

McCormack says they've counted 5 millon ballots and never had a problem. But how would he know??
Has there ever been an audit to check the machine counts against hand counts? If there haven't been big ones under the circumstances of this one where it appears there might have been deliberate fraud(or incompetance), you could not possible know if the previous counts were accurate. They just weren't contested.

But the error rate might have been 50%. Or 5% Or 1%
and all of these could have an effect on some races.


McCormack doesn't seem to think the intent of the voter is very important.

[JunkYardDogg]

8. The Less Effort the Better

What Me Work??
When Electronic Election Integrity is left up to County Level Civil Service Employees, who are under little or no integrity, electronic knowledge education, and vendor relationship accountability and monitoring, then the only important thing for these people becomes how little effort and inconvenience they must exert and how much they must make sure that there is never any questions about their decisions. They will put more effort into Covering up their poor decisions than they will in ensuring any level of Election Protection.
For McCormack, she believes that it is just too much work to Comply with SB1348, After all, Diebold has everything she needs. Who gives a good fuck what is best for American Citizens and the sanctity of the Democratic Vote. What is important, is what is best for Conny McCormack.
Who says that she must obey the law.

[JunkYardDogg]

9. I've come across some Error rates on Inka Vote

But I'd have to dig around and try to remember where I saw that info