madmark.myfastforum.org

Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

(Does it strike anyone else as totally insane that these people have been investigating and documenting election fraud for years, know that there is no way to ensure their votes count, know that even if they could, there is no way to prevent unelected candidates from being sworn into office, and yet still keep voting? --Mark)

Utter failure of election transparency in Monterey County

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/...rd-auth.cgi?file=/1954/75144.html

Excerpt:

The June 3rd 2008 election in Monterey County was, in general, an utter failure of election transparency. It was impossible for any observer whether county staff or independent observer to confirm that the election's outcome was proper. There are inadequate controls against both malicious tampering and accidental glitches.

The collapse of transparency was deliberate and systematic, and violated state laws, the certification rules promoted by the California Secretary of State's office and democratic principles in general.

Should these local policies against transparent elections be allowed to stand, elections will remain at risk in this county. Worse, should this elections agency be allowed to get away with observation barriers to the degree documented herein, a precedent will be set allowing other elections offices across the state to misbehave in the same fashion.

Thus, what happens here in Monterey as a result of this election will affect the security of the November general election and all subsequent elections.
...

Under the election codes, once the election becomes official (after the canvass) a five-day window opens up in which candidates can declare challenges and/or file for recounts. To do so intelligently, they need the public records relating to the election at the START of the five-day challenge window. That means audit logs, windows event log, directory listings and the raw electronic files generated by the county from the Sequoia BPS and WinEDS programs. Without such access, the age of electronic voting renders the five-day-challenge rule a useless taunting waste of the democratic process.

Setting that issue aside, this agency's dead-set stance against transparency in every other respect is likely to translate to "pulling public records will be like pulling teeth from a drunk warthog – with rusty tweezers." We can't sue for wrongful denial until we're denied of course, but we could get an injunction against delays that would render the five-day challenge window meaningless and combine it with the rest of the causes of action listed.