Yesterday was my last day working the polls in Santa Clara County - Auros and I have moved to San Mateo County (we made sure to have overlapping residency in scc so we weren't in violation for the election) so we'll be working up here next round. We were in precinct 2005, college terrace Palo Alto, right next to Stanford campus. We've worked that precinct before - me twice and him 3 times. The last time and this time he was precinct inspector. Fortunately this time they gave us the larger chapel room instead of crowding us into the tiny fireside room.
This election of course we were on paper ballots (optical scan) as our primary voting method but we still had one sequoia touchscreen machine as an option for disabled voters. This became relevant later.
(And in San Francisco, we have a coronation election for the Mayor! And please, please, please, if you know people in SF that haven't voted yet, tell them to vote Yes on A, No on H. They could be two of the most important props in SF for quite some time. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
For a thousand local elections across California, today is election day.
School board, city councils, fire districts, water districts, and assorted local measures are on the ballot.
Where I am, we've got city council, school board, a hotel tax, and an advisory measure about building an emergency underground water storage tank under a local park.
The Field Organization continues the slow trickle from their late July poll. Today, we get the data on confidence in voting machines (PDF). About 44% of voters have a great deal of confidence in the voting system. Folks, that's less than half of all voters that feel comfortable with how we vote. That's scary.
But the data that's really interesting is that even with all the money we've spent on those stupid touch screen machines, people still don't feel a whole lot more comfortable. In fact, given a choice between voting systems, 32% would choose optical scan, 31% would choose punch-cards, and 31% would choose touch screen. Practically 2/3 of the state would prefer we use old-school technology to count our votes. So then why are we paying Diebold, Sequoia, and ES&S millions of bucks when we could just be using Scantrons?
(Welcome Assemblyman! As per our policy of bumping diaries from electeds, up this goes. This issue is particularly important given SoS Bowen's recent revelations. I hope we can get this bill to Arnold, and get him to sign it. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
On November 4, 2008, millions of Californians will go to their polling places to cast their votes using electronic voting machines. By the end of that evening, we will know who will take office as our next President. What we will not know that night - what we may never know with certainty - is whether our votes were in fact properly counted by those electronic voting machines.
In response to the potential "logistical nightmare" of counting ballots by hand in February's primary election, San Diego county is starting a huge push for absentee voting. Reported today in the Union-Tribune, San Diego County's registrar of voters will send out postcards to more than 1 million voters pushing the absentee option, hoping to offset the number of paper ballots cast on election day. This, of course, is in response to Secretary of State Debra Bowen's ruling that only one touch screen machine per polling place would be allowed following her extensive study of potential security problems.
While San Diego has a particular love affair with Diebold which sets it apart from many other parts of the state (Diebold is, by contract, required to replace any decertified machines), it seems unlikely that it will be only San Diego that makes this sort of push for absentee voting. So what does this mean?
Hmmm... I didn't notice this in yesterday's OC Register:
A state law allowing voters to challenge at-large elections systems on the basis that they dilute the strength of minority voters will stand, after the California Supreme Court declined to review the case Wednesday.
The high court's refusal to hear the case leaves intact an appeals court ruling that upheld the 2001 California Voting Rights Act.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights sued the city of Modesto in 2004 on behalf of Hispanic voters there, charging that electing city council members to at-large seats instead of from districts diminished the strength of their votes. Though the city is one-quarter Hispanic, just one Hispanic has been elected to Modesto's five-member city council since 1911.
So what does this mean for municipal elections in California? Follow me after the flip for more...
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Committee meetings can be, well, how do I put this, uhhh, boring. And today's meeting of the Budget and Finance Meeting was exactly the same. A few conversations about a city car barn, and some greening on Alemany Blvd. The meeting picked up a bit when the topic of community choice aggregation came up. Several speakers from the Sierra Club told the Board that global warming is real. (Good point guys, but, let's not use Katrina as the right uses 9/11).
But the real reason I was there was an email from Democracy Action to get the Supes to force Sequoia to release their source code. As I said then, and I stick to now, I don't think that the city should be doling out about $9 million to provide business to a company that has already been shown to be unreliable. And by unreliable, I mean a recent report that computer scientists at Princeton have hacked Sequoia machines to flip votes from one candidate to another.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Richard Pombo, Buck McKeon, CA-50, voting, Republican corruption, Proposition 88, prisons, immigration, global warming.
John Myers points out a lawsuit against Bruce McPhereson in his capacity as Secretary of State. The case deals primarily with disabled voters and a provision of HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) which calls for at least one accessible voting machine at each precinct. The suit alleges that several counties' voting machines were not accessible without assistance, infringing the voters' interest in a secret ballot.
At the very least, the lawsuit will force a re-examination of how California is complying with the federal HAVA requirements. It also will force an examination of how the Secretary of State certifies some of these voting machines. Plaintiff's attorney John McDermott says it was McPherson's job, as a condition of certifying machines, "to insure accessibility for all people, to the maximum extent feasible. And that didn't occur." Capitol Notes
Do I think McPherson is actually trying to make it harder for disabled voters to vote? Honestly, no. But the process itself is messed up. We need a whole new system of certification for our voting machines, and a whole new viewpoint on how to do that. Debra Bowen understands these issues better than any other major political figure in the state.
One of the things that mystifies me about the CTA's endorsement of McPherson is the sentiment that I have heard expressed that CTA just wanted to endorse a Republican, and this was the only position where they felt they wouldn't get hurt too badly. But, as we can see from this story, there can be GOP malfeasance and incompetence in every position. And, does the CTA have such a short memory that they forgot the names Ken Blackwell and Katherine Harris, two secretaries of state who, in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000, respectively, helped plot Bush's victory. Now, it's doubtful that California will be in play in 2008, but do we really want to risk having a GOP Secretary of State if that is the case? The role is vitally important, whether or not the CTA understands that.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Phil Angelides, Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, Jerry McNerney, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, Proposition 90, Proposition 89, Proposition 87, voting, prisons, health care, immigration.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, CA-50, Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, voting, health care, immigration.
Today's California Blog Roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Arnold Schwarzenegger, CA-04, CA-11, CA-41, Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, Republican corruption, clean money, voting, lots of other stuff.
One of the banks near my house has been under renovation for a few months, so I haven't been there for a while. I stopped by on my way home from an errand to get some walking-around money, and when my turn at the ATM came, I found myself facing a friendly touch-screen machine with the name "DIEBOLD" clearly marked across the top.
The friendly Diebold ATM took my card.
The friendly DIEBOLD ATM asked me what language I wanted to use (English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Martian, Klingon).
English, please.
The friendly Diebold ATM asked me what I wanted to do
Fast Cash, please.
And the friendly Diebold ATM gave me my cash and a paper receipt showing the amount withdrawn and a current account balance.
A user verifiable paper trail. From Diebold.
Apparently, it can be done, if the customer demands it.
Today's news roundup is on the flip. Teasers: voting registration screw-up, projected housing slowdown and economic effect, immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration... [It's not just bloggers who are like 5-year olds chasing a soccer ball, it's journalists and politicians too.] ...immigration, immigration...
Today's blog roundup is on the flip. Teasers: Pombo's immigration failure, BradBlog on the radio, more CA-50 Republican shenanigans, and some more Arnold doublespeak.
