THE GREEN PARTY OF CALIFORNIA
www.cagreens.org
GREEN PARTY OF SAN DIEGO, CA
www.sdgreens.org
August 07, 2006
Released Aug 04, 2006
A Resolution of the Green Party of San Diego County, California calling for the
removal of electronic voting machines from the County of San Diego.
The Green Party of San Diego County does not endorse the protocols used for
obtaining and tabulating votes during the June 6 primary and previous elections.. As we outline below, the process is fundamentally insecure leading
to election results that are neither accurate nor verifiable.
Whereas voting machines are known to have gone home overnight with poll workers
who had not undergone background checks, and who had unsupervised access to
these voting machines, as documented by Pamela Smith, Nationwide Coordinator,
www.VerifiedVoting.org and Verified Voting Foundation, and poll workers Terry Olson,
Brian C. Baer, Patricia Mack Newton, and others, and admitted to by Registrar of
Voters Mikel Haas, who told the Union Tribune, that the practice of sending home
voting machines with poll workers "has been followed without incident for about
40 years." (Electronic voting machines have not been in use for 40 years, so the
Registrar's statement appears to be inaccurate.)... (1)
Whereas the multiple means of a single individual undetectably "hacking" both
optical scan and touch-screen machines have been documented by the Brennan Center
Report, the second report of the Irish Commission on Electronic Voting, and the
Hursti Reports... (2)
Whereas the Secretary of State has ignored his own technical advisory panel
regarding security safeguards submitted in their report on November 8, 2005...(3)
Whereas the machine count on optical scan machines used in two different Iowa
primary elections were found by a hand recount to have been inaccurate and to
have altered the results of the elections...(4)
Whereas observers have noted that there does not appear to be any public
oversight of the security of ballots between an election and a recount, the
recount process is no more transparent than the first tally, and the costs of
recounts are prohibitive ..(5)
Whereas the electronic voting machines to be used in the November election in
San Diego county produce no paper trail and cannot be verified or audited to
ensure accuracy...(6)
Whereas all vote counting must be public and it is humanly impossible to view
any tallying of votes which takes place within optical scan, touch screen
machines or central tabulators so as to ascertain that they have not been
programmed to display an incorrect result....(7)
Whereas the costs of the maintenance of electronic voting machines are
prohibitive... (8)
Whereas the Registrar of Voters apparently plans to hire, at taxpayer expense,
at least one extra poll worker per precinct, a specialist whose duties include
turning the new voting machines on and off..(9)
And whereas all electronics quickly become obsolete and must be replaced, while
the costs and reliability of paper and pencil have remained relatively steady
for hundreds of years......
It has been resolved by the Green Party of San Diego County to call for the
Board of Supervisors of San Diego County to terminate the contracts with Diebold
for costly voting machines that do not and cannot meet certification standards,
and to put in place verifiable elections procedures, preferably paper ballots
that would be hand counted at the precincts in full public view.
This resolution adopted by the County Council of the Green Party of San Diego
County:
SOURCES:
1 http://votetrustusa.org/
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2932
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/32802.html?1152131323
2 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf
http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htm
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
3 http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/2005_pmp_report_final.pdf
4 http://votetrustusa.org/
5 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070706B.shtml
6 http://www.votetrustusa.org/
7 http://brennancenter.org/programs/downloads/Executive%20Summary.pdf
http://www.cev.ie/htm/report/download_second.htm
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
8 http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/19518.html
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/9658.html
9 Registrar of Voters employment application
