More Voting Machine Follies: CA Ed.

Submitted by chicago dyke on Sat, 2008-01-12 10:11.

More than a hundred computer chips containing voting machine software were lost or stolen during transit in California this week. Two cardboard shipping tubes containing 174 EPROMs loaded with voting machine software were sent via Federal Express on December 13th from the secretary of state’s office in Sacramento to election officials in San Diego County for use in optical-scan machines made by Diebold Election Systems. But on Monday, the two shipping tubes arrived empty.”

Avedon asks:

I can’t help having a fantasy that brave freedom fighters are trying to prevent the use of these machines by direct action….

It would be nice, and it’s a fantasy I share.

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Why tinfoil sales keep rising

Submitted by bringiton on Sat, 2008-01-12 17:32.

Skeptics of election honesty don’t need to look very far in San Diego to find reasons. From Kim Zetter at WIRED, lightly rearranged for dramatic purposes:

May 22, 2007 Two voting groups descended on San Diego’s board of supervisors today to protest the recent appointment of former Diebold saleswoman, Deborah Seiler, as the county’s new registrar of voters.

They also want Seiler’s new assistant registrar, Michael Vu, ousted due to controversies surrounding his tenure as elections director in Ohio. Vu resigned as elections director from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, last year after two of his staff members were convicted of rigging the 2004 presidential recount and after reports revealed numerous problems with the way elections were administered during his time on the job.

Joe Hamilton, co-founder of Secure Accurate Elections, one of the groups that protested at the supervisor’s meeting today, told Wired News that the combination of the two hires goes beyond reason.

A San Diego county spokesman released a statement about Vu’s hiring, saying there’s no evidence he was involved in the wrongdoing of his staff, and that San Diego hired him for his “technical election skills.” But it was those technical skills that were called into question by two reports examining the primary he ran last year.

Hamilton said Seiler was one of a team of four Diebold salespeople who sold San Diego County $31-million worth of Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003. The machines, it turned out, weren’t federally certified, though Hamilton says Seiler’s team assured San Diego supervisors they were certified.

“We’re waiting for Katherine Harris to be hired next,” he said in a phone interview. “We’re kind of perturbed she hasn’t been hired for something here. It’s not fair.”

Another election nears, with Seiler and Vu still in position. More tinfoil, please.