7-13-07: Riverside proud to be droppe...

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Author Message   Bev Harris Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 6470 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, July 13, 2007 - 12:20 pm:        A hand-picked Blue Ribbon Panel in Riverside County, California issued a report yesterday advising county supervisors to move "as quickly as possible" away from DREs (touch-screens) and over to voter-marked paper ballots and optical scan machines. While this will still have votes being counted in secret, on machines that government insiders ultimately control, it is a positive step. Here's a link to the report: http://www.blackbox1.org/CA/Riverside-Ditch-the-DREs.pdf - (440 KB) WORST PLACES TO VOTE IN AMERICA Riverside County has long been tied with DuPage County, Illinois in the Black Box Voting "Worst Places to Vote in America" rankings. As Riverside steps out of the top two, a contender from Kentucky threatens to blow by the whole bunch: Bullitt County, home of mismatched votes and family-run government. Updates on DuPage and Bullitt soon. BACK TO RIVERSIDE Riverside County, the first county in California to use electronic touch-screen voting machines (DREs, Direct Recording Electronic), has been under relentless pressure from its citizenry to stop hiding its elections from The People (who actually own their elections -- not the Riverside government). RIVERSIDE CITIZENS PIONEERED E-VOTING LITIGATION One of the first anti-e-voting lawsuits in the nation was initiated by a Riverside citizen, Susan Marie Weber. It did not win, but was soon followed by another Riverside lawsuit by candidate Linda Soubirous, litigated by Greg Luke. The court decided that no one had any right to look at anything, but attorney Greg Luke took what he'd learned from that contest to file another voting rights suit in Alameda County, where he won a smackdown decision yesterday that may result in an election contest being re-run. Jeremiah Akin It was in Riverside County that citizen Jeremiah Akin wrote the first expose on secretive and inappropriate "Logic and Accuracy" test procedures (County officials told observers to sign off on the test before it was complete, and made them leave the room for part of the testing). Art Cassel, at a considerably younger age Riverside's Art Cassell blew the whistle on a technician from Sequoia Voting Systems who took a card out of his pocket, loaded it into the central tabulator, uploaded an unknown file, then put the card in his pocket and left the state. This incident was reported on Black Box Voting and then investigated in detail by reporter Andrew Gumbel; during the midst of his investigation, then-Riverside Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend resigned, citing "family reasons." Shortly after the 2004 election, Riverside citizens mobilized into an organization called "SAVE R VOTE", led by local citizen Tom Courbat, along with Maxine Ewig, Jerry Ewig, Paul Jacobs, and many others. They mobilized 60 people to watch polls and conduct an in-depth audit, and successfully engaged local media in efforts to get the secrecy out of vote-counting in Riverside. See also: The Ultimate Insult: Paper Ballots entered into touch-screens http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/32791.html Riverside: One of Top 2 Worst Places to Vote: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/44142.html The Yellow Button story: Citizens find critical security flaw in voting machines http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/44823.html Riverside Rides Again http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/46915.html County withheld information on Logic & Accuracy http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/44341/44383.html Citizen confronts officials about secrecy http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/44341/44590.html Riverside citizens aren't done yet. Even with the recent findings of the Blue Ribbon Panel, SAVE R VOTE continues to build momentum to get Riverside elections more observable and responsive to the citizenry. SAVE R VOTE is now mobilizing even more volunteers to monitor the 2008 election. PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org

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