CA Public Hearing re: HAVA Compliance *** Wednesday, January 18th

[nicknameless]

Received today from State Senator Bowen's office:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 13, 2006

HOW WILL CALIFORNIA VOTERS BE CASTING THEIR BALLOTS IN 2006?
PUBLIC HEARING

WHO: Senator Debra Bowen (D-Redondo Beach),
Chairwoman of the Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committee

WHAT: The Senate Elections, Reapportionment & Constitutional Amendments Committeewill hold a hearing to examine how California will comply with the Help America Vote Act.

WHEN: Wednesday, January 18, 2006, at 10:00 a.m.

WHERE: State Capitol, Room 3191

WHY: The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires every polling placeused in a federal election to include at least one voting machine that disabled voters, including blind and visually impaired voters, can use to vote independently. California law requires all direct recording electronic (DRE) machines to be equipped with an accessible voter verified paper audit trail (AVVPAT), which allows voters to verify their votes were correctly recorded. Furthermore, the AVVPATs must also be used for voter-requested recounts and the 1% manual audit of the results following each election.

As of now, one non-DRE machine that meets HAVA’s access requirements for disabled voters has been certified for use in the state, and one DRE has been certified for use in the general election, but not in the primary election. A number of counties are awaiting word from the Secretary of State as to whether the systems they’ve bought or want to buy will be certified for the 2006 elections.

“I want to get a snapshot of where we are, where we need to get to, and how we’re going to get there by the June primary,” said Bowen. “A number of counties are holding out hope the Diebold TSx will be re-certified for use in June, but I’m not interested in seeing any machine used if we can’t be sure it’s secure and that people’s votes will be counted accurately. If we just make it easier for people to vote without ensuring their votes are counted correctly, we’ll have defeated the purpose of HAVA, wasted millions of dollars, and pulled the rug out from under our democracy in the process.”


Witnesses scheduled to testify before the committee include:

o Secretary of State Bruce McPherson

o Deborah Seiler, Elections Manager, Solano County

o Jill LaVine, Registrar of Voters, Sacramento County

o Elaine Ginnold, Registrar of Voters, Alameda County

o Conny McCormack, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, Los Angeles County

o Neal Kelley, Registrar of Voters, Orange County

o Deborah Hench, Registrar of Voters, San Joaquin County

o Cathy Darling, County Clerk-Registrar of Voters, Shasta County


** Members of the public may testify once the scheduled witnesses have finished their remarks. **

CONTACT: Evan Goldberg (Sen. Bowen's office)
[phone]
[phone]

... Some witnesses x(

[Wilms]

1. What's with the face?

From what Boewn has written, it seems like the intent of the hearing is to hear from the BoE's.

Given that, it would seem that the BoE's would be the witnesses.

What am I missing? :shrug:

[nicknameless]

2. Kicking for public input

:kick:

[nicknameless]

3. Wednesday is coming up soon...

Sounds like activists will get more than just a stenographer + recording device this time.

:)

[nicknameless]

4. Is this the same Deborah Seiler who was Diebold's chief sales

representative in California?

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=942&IssueNum=51

[Wilms]

6. Correct.

Deborah Seiler, was chief of elections under California Secretary of State March Fong Eu.

Also, worked for ES&S.




Diebold Rep Now Runs Elections

By Kim Zetter

Sep. 30, 2004

An influential employee of voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems left the company recently to take a job as elections manager for a California county.

Deborah Seiler, a sales representative for the beleaguered voting company, was hired a week ago and started Monday in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco in California's wine country. The position puts her second in command of elections in the county, under the registrar of voters.

"This is outrageous. This is just a total runaround of the democratic process," said Douglas MacDonald, of the Community Labor Alliance, an activist group that pressured Solano County to end its contract with Diebold. "There was an open debate and discussion, and the county (supervisors) decided that Diebold is not the company, is not the philosophy, that we want behind the running of elections in Solano County. Then what happens? They go out and hire the person who was advocating that philosophy."

But Ira Rosenthal, Solano County's registrar of voters and chief information officer, defended the hire, saying that Seiler was the best-qualified candidate for the job. She had been California's chief elections official in the mid-1980s before taking the job with Diebold.

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65120,00.html




Ex-Diebold employee to run Solano elections

By Warren Lutz Fairfield and Suisun City Daily Republic

29 September 2004

FAIRFIELD Diebold Election Systems may have lost Solano County's voting machine contract, but that didn't stop the county from hiring a former Diebold employee to run local elections.

Deborah Seiler - who helped sell Solano County nearly 1,200 touchscreen voting machines that were not officially certified and were later banned and returned to their manufacturer - became Solano County's elections manager this week.

Although a county official described Seiler as the most qualified candidate for the job, the move jarred at least one county supervisor who voted to end the county's contract with Diebold several months ago.

"I am so angry," District 1 Supervisor Barbara Kondylis said. "And it's done without telling us. I got it from another employee."

Kondylis was also upset to learn the county's Vallejo election office won't be open for the November election. The election office distributes voter election information and collects absentee ballots. The Fairfield office will remain open and information will be available on line.

http://votersunite.org/article.asp?id=2990

[nicknameless]

5. About Deborah Hench, Registrar of Voters, San Joaquin County:

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051122/NEWS01/511220337/1001

Voting machines draw fire at hearing

Greg Kane
Record Staff Writer
Published Tuesday, Nov 22, 2005

SACRAMENTO -- Touchscreen voting machines that San Joaquin County officials hope to use in June's primary election drew heavy criticism during a 41/21/2-hour hearing Monday near the state Capitol.

County Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench was the only person to support Diebold's TSx equipment out of more than 50 who spoke to a panel of Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's staff. More than 1,600 of the controversial machines are sitting in a Stockton warehouse because the state decertified them last year after the vote-counters experienced problems in other counties.

Critics believe the touchscreen equipment is vulnerable to freezes, paper jams and hacking, and encourages voter fraud. They also say Diebold -- which former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley accused of lying about the TSx's certification for the March 2004 primary -- has too spotty a record to be responsible for ballots.

Hench told the panel that the system's flaws have been corrected through adjustments and by adding a printer so votes can be verified through a paper trail. She also said that, unlike San Diego and Alameda counties, San Joaquin had no problems with the touchscreen equipment during the March 2004 election.

"We need this system," Hench told the panel. "It is a good, accurate system. Others may question that, but I do not."

[nicknameless]

7. The notorious Conny McCormack

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2669&IssueNum=121

Reform Now for the Future
The new Carter-Baker Commission report acknowledges that America’s electoral system is out of control
~ By ANDREW GUMBEL ~

<snip>

The problem for any electoral commission, in the end, is that no reform agenda can entirely thwart the baser instincts of a political system that has for too long regarded elections as a form of elemental struggle in which rules are not nearly as important as clinching victory. Local officials are much too inclined to look out for their political interests first, and worry about democratic accountability only as a distant second. How else to explain our own Conny McCormack, L.A. County’s registrar-recorder, lobbying actively against transparent auditing of electronic voting machinery, as she has in leading the opposition to state senator Debra Bowen’s reform bill, SB 370? There’s something truly twisted about a prominent election official campaigning against the integrity of the very system she is supposed to be defending. We still have a long, long road to ride.

http://socalgrassroots.blogspot.com/2005/12/latest-on-diebold-conny-can-you-hear.html

Saturday, December 17, 2005
The Latest on Diebold (Conny Can You Hear Me?)
Carol and I have been following the saga of Diebold and Conny McCormack/LA County.

I just downloaded this white paper from VotersUnited.org titled "Myth Breakers: Facts About Electronic Elections". (Subtitled: Essential Information For Those Entrusted With Making Decisions About Election Systems in the United States") Should be an interesing read and follow-up, since Conny made the outrageous admission last week to our grassroots organization that she was not all that interested in statistical abnormalities (to characterize them lightly) in Ohio elections:

MODERATOR: I don’t want to go over the same ground, but I’ll ask something about previous problems that we’ve noted in Ohio. Various statisticians, including a group writing for US Count Votes, have prepared scientific papers claiming that the outcome of the 2004 election was statistically impossible to have been so different from the exit polls. What do you think of those claims and do you believe any of these reports about that?

CONNY: Well, you know, I’m not a statistician and I’m also not someone who does polls, so again, it’s outside of the area of my expertise. Do people answer polls differently than they vote? I don’t know. I have no idea if they do or not. When an election’s very close are polls ever very accurate? I don’t know. It’s not an area of expertise for me, so I don’t know why I should be expected to know about polls anywhere in California, let alone in Ohio. All I know is we count the votes as they come into us and we count them as accurately as we can and I don’t rely on polls. Polls are just what they are – they’re a poll is a subset of people that responded to the poll. They’re not everybody’s ballots. But, you know, I don’t think it’s a very fair question to ask me about polls in Ohio. Are you – are you done with your questions?

MODERATOR: (faint) I’m sorry, but we were just asking your opinion of whether that seems possible to you—

CONNY: Well, you know, I don’t know. I mean, it’s just not my area of expertise to know whether or not it’s possible or not. I’ve read the same articles. I certainly have read them....

Taking her last comment at face value, she may have read them, but our county's chief election officer apparently didn't think it important enough to get these claims evaluated by our own local experts. Outrageous.

[nicknameless]

8. The hearing is THIS Wednesday. Public input is welcomed.

:kick:

[nicknameless]

9. LOCATION OF HEARING MOVED! NOW: ROOM 447

(Notice received late this afternoon from Bowen's office)