Bowen plans full review of voting machines (Debra Bowen)

[cascadiance]

Hey folks! Check out Debra Bowen's jumping right up to the plate to go after all of the abuses by the evoting machines! She's not wasting any time talking about the things we've been complaining about for the last few years in California. Certain machines may get decertified, whether we spent a lot of money or not on them. She's going to go after "sleepovers"! She's going to go after excessive charges for hand recounts! She's going to ensure we have a proper paper record of ballots too! Her election is the best local election result for Californians in 2006 statewide!

From:
http://www.venturacountystar.com/vcs/opinion/article/0,1375,VCS_125_5257345,00.html

Bowen plans full review of voting machines

By Thomas D. Elias
January 5, 2007

An anxious time is just about to begin for the two interest groups that have done more than anyone else in recent years to make Californians feel uncertain about the integrity of their elections.

Those two groups: The makers of electronic voting machines of various types, many of whose devices have been shown to be both hackable and problematic in other ways. And county voter registrars who bought those machines largely with many millions of dollars derived from the federal Help America Vote Act, which was more concerned about speed of conversion to new technologies than whether they were trustworthy.

Now comes Democrat Debra Bowen, elected last fall and just now about to move into her new job as secretary of state, California's top elections officer. As a state senator from Marina del Rey for the last eight years, Bowen was the Legislature's leading skeptic of new-fangled voting machines and their bells and whistles.

Her appointed predecessor and defeated autumn opponent, the former Republican state Sen. Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz, was anything but a skeptic, certifying virtually any machine any county registrar wanted to buy and imposing questionable checks on their performance.

Those easygoing days are over for machine makers like Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems and others, and for the registrars who bought their products, often under tight federal deadlines to do something.

"We are going to do a top to bottom review of every voting system in use anywhere in California," Bowen said in an interview. "Yes, I would consider decertifying machines that my predecessor approved. Unfortunately, we've spent a lot of money on equipment that's not ready for prime time. Any Fortune 500 company would have sent those machines back with a letter saying they just don't do what they're supposed to."

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