Posted on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - 6:12 pm:

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Honorable Riverside County Board of Supervisors and Registrar of Voters,

There comes a time to abandon a company that cannot be trusted. Sequoia's days are numbered and so should the days that Riverside County continues to hang on to a secret vote counting system controlled by foreign nationals with interests generally considered to be contrary to the U.S.

1. On October 14, 2005, Antonio Mujica, CEO of Smartmatic, was refused entry into the United States. His Visa was revoked by the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela. See http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200510160629

VotersUnite.Org's Information Manager, John Gideon said, "The irony of this situation shows how irrational the administration of elections in the U.S. has become. While U.S. law allows this Venezuelan man to control the secret counting of Americans' votes, the U.S. State Department doesn't consider him fit to enter the country, even temporarily."

The organization's Executive Director, Ellen Theisen, added, "It's also ironic that when we take vote-counting to Iraq, we take it in the form of paper ballots deposited into clear plastic ballot boxes, but in our own country, vote-counting is in the form of electronic ballots and secret software controlled by a man our government has declared ineligible to set foot in the country."

2. Recently (in the last 60 days) the federal government initiated an investigation into the Sequoia/Smartmatic purchase which may have violated U.S. laws - allowing a foreign company to control voting systems in the U.S.

3. Today we learn the Brennan Center has to issue a special media alert after Sequoia tried to claim ""Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge, a touch screen Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting system, received the top usability rating of any voting machine in the Brennan Center for Justice ", along with two other fallacious claims. The Brennan Center release, below, states "Nothing could be further from the truth".

http://www.amhersttimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2867&
Itemid=0

4. Please support legislation introduced today by Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold and Christopher Dodd to reimburse counties for making paper ballots available to all voters.

The election integrity community in Riverside County will NOT stand by quietly while our election system (costing many, many millions more than the purchase price) utilizes equipment and secret software that make it impossible for citizens to verify the reported outcome. A total cost calculator will be issued by the Brennan Center next week to show what E-Voting is REALLY costing us. It will show what we have been telling you all along - it is incredibly expensive and a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, while at the same time providing no security that our votes are counted as cast.

As Art Cassel told you on September 12th, it is YOU that are out of sync with the American public - 90%+ of survey respondents believe that electronic voting machines should NOT be utilized until/unless it can be proven they cannot be manipulated. And as the Princeton University hack of last week clearly demonstrated, E-Voting machines CAN be easily hacked, opened with a mini-bar key, the result completely reversed, and no trace left behind. Not even the election officials or the Board of Supervisors would know unless they were personally involved.

There are many outstanding uses for computers. But electrons and elections do not mix.

Tom Courbat

Courbat then pointed to this article:

SEQUOIA MISLEADS NEW YORK
Written by ReformNY
Sunday, 24 September 2006

On Wednesday, Sequoia voting systems issued a press release claiming that their AVC edge received a "top usability rating of any voting machine" in our usability ( http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/dem_vr_hava_modusability.html ) study. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Sequoia makes at least three misstatement of facts:

1) "Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge receives best rating in new Brennan Center report on usability."

2) "Sequoia Voting Systems' AVC Edge, a touch screen Direct Record Electronic (DRE) voting system, received the top usability rating of any voting machine in the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law's recent report."

3) "Sequoia's AVC Edge, which was used statewide in Nevada for the 2004 presidential election, produced a residual vote rate of 0.3% - significantly lower than all other comparable systems."

All of these statements are untrue. First, and most simply, the Report does not rate any voting systems. The first two statements are therefore patently false.

Second, as explained on page 16 of our usability report ( http://www.brennancenter.org/programs/dem_vr_hava_modusability.html )because no states other than Nevada include a "none of the above option", which reduces the residual (or lost) vote rate, and because no states other than Nevada used the DRE system with VVPT, the Report states that the data for the DRE system with VVPT "are too limited to draw any conclusions regarding residual vote rates," and that the .3% residual voter rate "is not directly comparable to that produced by other jurisdictions with different ballot options." Therefore, Sequoia's statements that suggest a comparison of the Sequoia Voting System with other voting machines are false and misleading.

Finally, Sequoia uses these misstatements to suggest that New Yorkers should purchase their full face DREs. But one thing is quite clear from our study:

full face DREs have significantly higher residual vote (or lost vote) rates than other electronic voting systems.
( http://www.brennancenter.org/presscenter/releases_2006/pressrelease_2006_08
28.html )

So the Brennan Center study most certainly does not make this suggestion.

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This is an update to information you put in your Tool Kit from Douglas Dye,

Riverside County. I feel I have proof Riverside County Certification of the June Primary was invalid because they did not follow California Election Code 15302. I got this information with a public records request that said show me documents that prove you are in compliance with Election Code 15302.

They provide two audit reports in response two the public records request.

The two Audit Reports they used to reconcile the count of voters from poll place index books and count of absentee ballots envelopes do not match the statement of vote figures. They are off in every precinct. I have pointed this out to them. I have reported this to the Secretary of State.

The Riverside ROV said they are going to set up a meeting on this subject.

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Your e-mails to Barbara Dunmore (and not copied to me) do not accurately reflect what I very clearly and repeatedly said to you that the differences we were looking at could be caused by two things. These are: failure to return a complete set of ballot cards or processing errors on our part. The vast majority of the differences are due to the first reason. The two processing errors are made evident by using this tool which causes the error to be researched and corrected as appropriate.

Your further questions can best be answered with a face-to-face meeting here at the ROV with technical staff. If you would like to further research these numbers, please provide us with your questions in advance so that we can be sure to be able to respond quickly and accurately at that meeting. Please call me if you want to meet.

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Mr Kinzle

Thanks for your reply. I would be glad to meet with you and your staff. If you prefer I will send my emails directly to you and not Barbara.

Can you provide and details of the process through which "processing errors" found in the C Card Audit have been corrected in the past?

My impression although, I am not an accountant, is that the term reconcile used in the election code would mean that you would produce a report which lists the type and quantity of each processing error you detect. That view is reinforced when I read the document called 'Canvass Requirements".

An example of a report of Canvass is provided on page 11-11 of that document Do you create a report similar in structure to that example?

This document was provided to Shirley Walton when she asked Barbara for a document that explained how an election is certified in Riverside County.

My current question is how the Card audit relates to the statement of Vote. The C card Column for each precinct in the Audit does not match statement of vote absentee figures for the same precinct. I have included my figures below.

How can I match the numbers in the Statement of Vote with the two Audits I was given? What is the name of the second Audit? What do you call the Audit that Compares signatures with turnout?

It seems to me that it would be important too compare these Audits directly to the Statement of Vote since it is the Statement of Vote that is being certified.

I have also determined that when I compare the Statement of Vote precinct by precinct with vote totals taken from my copy of the voter registration data base I get a closer match of values. I can provide a table of these values.

I believe comparing Statement of Vote precinct vote totals directly with the method of vote Column in a copy of the voter registration data is more accurate and more appropriate way to do the reconcile required by Election Code 15302 sections B and D. It is also possible for members of the public to do this independently of the Registrar of Voters staff. This is an important point since the unexplained differences I have found by doing is are in the range of a fraction of a percent. If the public does this for several elections it will serve to build confidence in the accuracy of the Statement of Vote.

Thanks for your attention to these matters.

Douglas P Dye

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Mr Tibon,

Back in August I discussed Riverside County compliance with Election Code 15302. Since that time I have received a response to my public records request.

I requested documents that would show Riverside County is in compliance with EC 15302 during the June 6, 2006 primary. What I received where two hard copy audit reports.

When I examined them I found that they only provide more evidence of none compliance. I am including an email below that I sent to Doug Kinzle. Doug manages the voters registration data base for Riverside County. EC 15302 requires a reconciliation of data.

Reconciliation means you must produce a balance sheet that brings numbers into agreement.

Riverside has not done this. The unexplained difference in votes is around 1400. I am currently waiting for Mr Kinzle or Barbra Dunmore to produce a proper Reconciliation.

Even if the differences listed in such reconciliation turn out to be small the public as a right to know what these numbers are. The public must be able to monitor these numbers. By monitoring these numbers the public can detect when an election result is has unexplained difference that warrant and investigation. I hope you agree with me that it is the public who should judge when errors in election results warrant an investigation. I hope you will convey this to Ms Dunmore. I hope you will require strict compliance with Election Code 15302. EC 15302 is absolutely essential to election integrity.

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