Reply #12: Response from my Clerk Recorder

[pauldp]

Several of us in our local election reform group in San Luis Obispo County have written to our county clerk recorder
inquiring whether or not they knew that uncertified Diebold software was used in the '04 election. Here is the response I
got:

(snip)
"Yes it was. The issue raised its head in the recall election and
uncertified software was used for that election. I know for those
that are Diebold detractors there is no excuse, but there were many changes
going on at the State level at that time about what needed to be certified
and what did not. Counties and the state were also to blame in part
as the Secretary of State was not communicating with counties about the
certification needs and counties were all so embroiled in trying to conduct
an election with very little notice that we were not asking the right
questions. Now in order to install new software (which is often
needed for changes in the laws or to fix bugs) we must receive
authorization from the Secretary of State."
(snip)

This CCR has also repeatedly made the point that we use optiscan ballots and we conduct
mandatory 1% recounts. She has been very accommodating to us local election reformers
in terms of meeting with us but she seems to think the suspicions surrounding Diebold are overblown.
She seems nice and hard working - possibly overworked, but all of that aside, if votes are being counted
with secret source code it doesn't matter, we need to fix it. The issue in SLO county is the GEMS software for the central tabulators.
So we are debating what steps to take next.

Note: I will post this to the main thread as well.