With the entire state of California facing a massive budget crisis, and most, if not all, of its counties facing shortfalls this year, Riverside County’s Registrar of Voters, Barbara Dunmore, is refusing to collect at least $160,000 from Sequoia Voting Systems for the cost of manually counting paper trails produced by their touch-screen voting systems last November.
California counties which choose to use touch-screen voting systems to serve disabled voters are required to tally all of the so-called “paper trails” by hand after elections, as per requirements for their use as imposed by Sec. of State Debra Bowen in 2007, due to security concerns with such systems.
The cost for that tally is to be covered by the voting machine company, as per Bowen’s certification documents, which state: “Elections officials are required to conduct the audits, and the vendor is required to reimburse the jurisdiction.”
Nonetheless, Dunmore, who has an extraordinary history of failure during her tenure as Registrar, in both the distant and recent past, has failed to seek reimbursement. And her office now seems to now be fighting, on behalf of Sequoia, to keep the beleaguered e-voting supplier from having to pay the costs, despite clear terms of use for such systems in this state…
Dunmore’s Assistant Registrar Doug Kinzle told The Desert Sun that they had no intention of seeking to repay the costs incurred by use of the Sequoia touch-screen machines.
“My contract is with the vendor, not the secretary of state…If the secretary of state would like to bill them for our expenses, she can do so,” Kinzle reportedly told the paper. “I have a contract with (Sequoia) that doesn’t say that I can bill them for that.”
Riverside County, the first in the nation to force their voters to use insecure, touch-screen voting systems back in 2000 — at the cost of some $19 million to tax-payers — returned to paper ballots for most voters following Bowen’s new certification requirements. Yet, some 72,000 unverifiable ballots were cast in the county last November on Sequoia’s touch-screens, which are allowed for use, one per precinct, to ostensibly meet federal requirements for disabled voters.
Moreover — and at least as incredibly — despite Bowen’s requirement to manually tally all paper trails from such systems, Dunmore certified last November’s election as “full, true and correct” in time to meet the 28-day state certification deadline. Yet, unlike every other county in the state, and to the surprise of the SoS’ office, Dunmore had yet to complete the manual tally of thousands of paper-trails, as we detailed late last month, claiming the cost of doing so, in a timely matter in compliance with state law, would be too high for the county.
She finally completed the tally last week, three months after the election, and a full two months since she’d claimed the certified totals were “full, true and correct.”
Deputy Sec. of State Nicole Winger was as surprised to hear that Dunmore was refusing to bill Sequoia as she was to hear last month that Riverside was still counting paper trails, in secret.
“Vendors, not counties, apply to the secretary of state to have their voting systems approved for use in California,” Winger told the Desert Sun. “Certainly any vendor that has permitted a county to continue using a reapproved voting system did so understanding that all of the conditions of the system reapproval document apply — not just the conditions the vendor may deem more convenient or less costly.”
Tom Courbat, a former finance director for the county, and a local Election Integrity advocate who has been a long-time critic of Dunmore’s administration, said that “Failing to collect the legal reimbursement costs from Sequoia means that taxpayers are paying for what the voting machine companies should have paid for.”
“This is insane. It’s like totally free money,” he added.
Desert Sun’s Nicole Brambila notes that Riverside has failed to bill Sequoia for all three elections last year, even as they are currently facing a $90 million budget shortfall.
In 2007 the former managing editor of The Press-Enterprise, a Southern California newspaper, called for the bumbling Dunmore to “be fired” by the county Board of Supervisors, noting her “lack of competence” in a number of areas. At the time, The BRAD BLOG wondered, given her astounding record of incompetence, how it is that she could still have the job.
After another year and a half of continued bungling, failure, and waste, we still wonder how the hell it can be that she’s still at the helm of Riverside County’s elections. As usual, the voters deserve far better.
Just the mention of voting machines makes me incensed. I really think it is time for national election standards. I have no problem with the technology of the machines, but there needs to be a paper trail and the system needs to be foolproof. I read a great essay on the change we need to make to our election system called “Capturing Democracy’s Surge” by Stuart Comstock-Gay and Miles Rapoport. It appeared in the book Thinking Big. The essay calls for nat’l election standards, expanded access to elections (take it online!) and also talks about how to re-instill responsible citizenship in people.
“TinkyWinky” –
If that’s what your book advocates, then no thanks, I’ll skip it.
If you have “no problem with the technology of the machines,” then apparently you know nothing about them. We already have “paper trails” and they don’t work (see above, for just one example). We need a hand-marked paper BALLOT — one that is actually counted — for every vote cast in America.
There is no “foolproof” system, which is why you need 100% transparency, which you cannot get from a system that produces a paper trail, a computer-marked ballot, and certainly not from the Internet!
The citizens are doing just fine. The election officials, however, and those who are interested in continued to game the system, are not, and continue to make it impossible for citizens to fully oversee their own elections in almost every single state.
I’ve not read the essay you reference (happy to, if you wish to email it to me), but if that’s the message it offers, then no thanks! I’ll stick with folks who understand the voting system instead.
You know Brad that they are going to continue to twist and spin and make their own reality until they get what they want.
And that is computerized shit.
The US has gone down the tubes, sold lock, stock and barrel to the Corporations.
Who you kidding, Flo? You ain’t giving up. Neither am I.
Thanks B, I’ve been hammered so hard by the Gubmint and the insurance companies the last 7 years with no recourse…I wonder sometimes.
A job injury I wouldn’t wish on my worst emeny after this.
The actual cost for all three elections (Feb, Jun and Nov) is likely closer to $500,000 or so. For the November election alone, Dunmore reported to the Press Enterprise (in an Opinion Piece she wrote) that they have expended “tens of thousands of hours” on the November 100% tally. TENS OF THOUSANDS OF HOURS!!
Typical cost for county employees including salaries, benefits and overhead would equate to about $30 per hour. If “tens of thousands of hours” is just, let’s say 20,000 hours, then that alone equates to $600,000 for November. Now, if half the hours were put in by temps, paid let’s say $15 per hour, then the cost for November would be $450,000. And that is JUST for November.
February had a huge turnout (not as big as November) and June was low.
The more I look at this, the more I am convinced we are talking a MINIMUM of $500,000 if the time is captured properly and billed to Sequoia.
To NOT bill this to and collect from Sequoia is an act of fiscal irresponsibility. Riverside County taxpayers can’t afford to absorb hundreds of thousands of dollars of cost that Sequoia should be paying!
From the Riverside area here; it’s sad when I need to get news this important from Bradblog about my own city. In all this time not nearly a beep from the Press Enterprise of LA Times in this area.
Speaking of Bill’s…
On Rules.House.Gov
http://www.rules.house.gov/bills_details.aspx?NewsID=4149
From: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/final-draft-on-stimulus-bill-complete-with-last-minute-edits/#more-8997
“The two pieces of the bill – a 496-page appropriations section, and a 577-page tax package ”
(cough) anyone have a MIRROR of that 496 page app sec?
e.g.
http://www.house.gov/billtext/hr1_legtest_cr.pdf
404 PAGE NOT FOUND
On cryptome.org I found one with 1434 Pages and one with 758 pages.
What is up with this nonsense?
Hmmmm – is she doing evwerything she can as a public servant to avoid any hint of impropriety?
This is malfeasance. I believe that even in CA, citizens have the right to pursue criminal and civil action against officials for malfeasance.
A campaign on government waste would be good against this travesty.
well if they are able to recoupe the labor hours for the 100% recount I wonder what the replacement parts or future service contracts from sequoia will get renegotiated to – a $7000 nasa hammer will seem like a bargain.
I have it on reliable sources that Dunmore facilitated all voters, not just disabled people, in using the touch-screen machines. She thereby greatly inflated the number of votes cast requiring 100% manual audit. In Alameda county, which had a similar turnout to Riverside’s, voters were not automatically offered the option of using touch screens (although the option was available). About 1000 people, or 1 in 800, ended up voting on the touch screens. So Dunmore created the conditions where all this extra work was required, and then refused to bill the vendors whose crappy machines necessitate 100% audits.