UNCOVERED: CA SoS Threatened ES&S Decertification After Recent Election!

[BradBlog]

UNCOVERED: CA Sec. of State Threatened Decertification for ES&S After Failures in Recent Election!
Letter from SoS to Voting Machine Co. Warns of Numerous Problems Discovered on Touch-Screen, Optical Scan Machines!
State Senator Outraged, Comments to BRAD BLOG, Calls for Full Release of Information by State!...And Releases Statement on Related Matters...

Holy cow...perhaps this explains why California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson suddenly started turning inexplicably back to Diebold some time around mid-November of this year after having decertified them already back in 2004, and then finding them to have failed massively in a recent mock election test over the summer.

AP's Juliet Williams reports today on a letter written by McPherson's office to voting machine vendor, Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) after the recent Special Election here on Nov. 8th. The letter documents a number of very serious problems discovered on ES&S voting equipment during the election. Apparently the SoS threatened ES&S with decertification in the bargain, similar to the one Diebold faced in the state back in 2004 under the previous Sec. of State Kevin Shelley.

Documented (and video-taped!) problems include touch-screen votes being registering for different candidates, software incorrectly reporting total turnout figures, and touch-screen display problems "making it impossible" for voters to correctly confirm their choices!

State Senator Debra Bowen comments to BRAD BLOG wondering why we've "been in the dark" about problems with ES&S for five weeks (while CA has been in the final process of selecting new voting equipement!), and she calls on McPherson to release all related information on the matter immediately...

COMPLETE STORY AND MUCH MORE FROM BOWEN:
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002193.htm

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[Warpy]

1. ES&S touch screen machines robbed 17,000 of us in NM

of our votes in the last election. That's the difference between the tally in the judge races and the tally kept by the election board and the number of votes recorded in the general election.

Democrats swept the judge races.

This is a small state in terms of population, so 17,000 votes is a huge total. To say this state had its electoral votes robbed is an understatement.

Paper ballots, counted by human beings! Anything else is tyranny!

[Gabi Hayes]

2. they just discussed this on AAR w/Mark Crispin Miller

he links to the bradblog story, too....great site

http://www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/

[seabeyond]

4. nm and southern texas. vote straight dem and would mark bush

and third, fourth, fifth time voters couldnt get check off bush so they could mark kerry. new two weeks before election in early voting adn still had it happening election day

[feelthebreeze]

3. ES&S trying to certify both touch scren and OPSCAN in New York...

This is good stuff and might be used to help battle this here. If ther are any other NYers out there, send this to Bo Lipari, NYPIRG and League of women voters. Looking for links now. If you have them, the links, then post em here. Thanks and keep up the battle. We win this and 2006 is ours.

[Peace Patriot]

5. Correction 2nd para: McPherson didn't do anything as Sec of State in 2004.

Shelley was Sec of State throughout 2004, and was the one who decertified Diebold. He resigned in Feb 2005. McPherson was appointed by Schwarz a short time later. So the following sentence is wrong **, 2nd paragraph of OP:

"Holy cow...perhaps this explains why California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson suddenly started turning inexplicably back to Diebold some time around mid-November of this year **after having decertified them already back in 2004**..."

The sentence should read:
"Holy cow...perhaps this explains why California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson suddenly started turning inexplicably back to Diebold some time around mid-November of this year after Kevin Shelley decertified them already back in 2004**..."

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And I don't quite understand the sentence. Why would McPherson "turn back" to Diebold, given its failure rate on tests, because ES&S also makes crappy, hackable voting machines? Why wouldn't he "turn to" Sequoia, or to an open source nonprofit, or to paper ballots? Do you mean that, because ES&S machines are also failing, McPherson then started trying in every way he could--including giving Diebold more favorable testing conditions that might hide their flaws, and running interference for them with the public (not notifying the public of meetings, hiding in his office and sending a secretary and a tape recorder to a public meeting)--to get Diebold re-certified?

And, if so, what do you think is behind this desperation? Is is truly because of the HAVA deadline? Or because the state, under REPUB Sec of State Bill Jones (who now works for Sequoia) had foolishly and corruptly spent billions of dollars for electronic election theft machines, and its an embarrassment? Or is something more specifically corrupt going on?

Why would ANYBODY "turn to" Diebold, of all companies, because ES&S was failing?

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MANY THANKS for the info! It's about time the truth came out about ES&S! Diebold and ES&S are brethren in more ways than one--run by two brothers, once the same company, similar computer architecture, and both with rightwing Republican connections.