PSI Group Sorts Absentee Ballots?

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Author Message   Jason Aaron Osgood Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Zappini Post Number: 1 Registered: 12-2005 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Thursday, December 8, 2005 - 1:49 pm:        Does anyone know why sorting returning absentee ballots is outsourced? The issue came up on our election reform list, copied here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wa-fairelections/message/318 Hi Tim [Borders]- > Absentee ballots are sent from the Post Office to PSI, which is a > Diebold contractor based > in Kent, so that those ballots can be sorted by legislative > district. From PSI, they are sent > to King County Elections, where the envelopes are opened and the > ballots are processed > and counted. Thanks for the confirmation and clarification. I just did a quick google. Seems like both the "left" and "right" political alignments are grumpy with this. I'd like to learn the rationale for this decision. How hard could it possibly be to sort ballots? Assign zip codes for each legislative district. (Or for whatever granularity is required.) Use those zip codes for the return address. (Pre-printed bar codes, of course.) Set up a container (or whatever) per zip code to receive the ballots. The US Postal Service sorts them for you. Practically for free. The articles I read also mentioned that PSI Group, Inc. presorts ballots to be sent out. Having done a bit of bulk mailing, I'm guessing the reason is to get the bulk mail price break. Outsourcing this function as a separate step is complete crap. Mailing list management is trivial these days. The ballot mailers should come out of the press in the correct order. In fact, if we're going to pay someone to print these absentee ballots, they should do the whole thing, starting with paper and ink and ending with the postal tractor trailer picking up the boxes. The government has observers in place to watch dog everything. Diebold tells King Co the hours their ballots are being produced. The King Co rep(s) and State Patrol rep(s) stands around and watches and signs off. Video tape the process if needed. Cheers, Jason --- zappini.blogspot.com   BBV Admin Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2927 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, December 9, 2005 - 8:34 am:        Yep. PSI Group was given the assignment of handling ballots for King County under Neil Dean, who is embezzler Jeffrey Dean's brother. Jeffrey Dean and convicted narcotics trafficker John Elder got their first jobs with PSI Group when they got out of prison. PSI Group does outgoing ballot sorting and mailing for many counties in many states, and also handles the incoming sorting for large jurisdictions like King County and Los Angeles County. Thanks to Kathleen Wynne's investigative work, we obtained a recent employee list. We found a convicted sex offender and a number of apparently illegal non-English speaking workers from southeast Asia and Africa, and some employees without last names ("Jack Jack" for example). PSI Group works with a Diebold ballot printing plant employee, Harm Patria. The role of PSI Group, which was founded in Omaha and then spun off to Pitney Bowes, should be carefully scrutinized, as it gains high-security inside access for millions of ballots, and both its security procedures and its hiring practices leave much to be desired. Bev Harris   BBV Admin Board Administrator Username: Admin Post Number: 2928 Registered: 12-2004 Best of Black Box? N/A Votes: 0 (A keeper?) Posted on Friday, December 9, 2005 - 8:38 am:        By the way, the ballot printing itelf is done by Diebold's printing plant in Everett. They print ballots not only for Washington State but for other states like Georgia, Maryland and California. That plant was run by John Elder until about a year ago. Its management was then assigned to David Ashworth, who lives in Alabama.

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