CA: Well well, Riverside...Glitches in system slowed vote count

[rumpel]

Hand counting may not be so bad after all....No wonder results did not show at the SOS site on election night.

The Desert Sun
Nicole C. Brambila • The Desert Sun • February 7, 2008

Glitches in system slowed vote count

The $500,000 ballot-counting system bought by the Riverside County Registrar three months ago malfunctioned on election night, delaying results from Tuesday's presidential primary.

Touted at the time of the buy as having the ability to count 400 ballots a minute each, the county's six Sequoia Voting Systems machines actually ran at a tenth the advertised speed.

The counters - which required one staff person to feed ballots into the machine and another to catch the ballots as they flew out - took more than 12 hours to count 182,000 ballots.

At some point in the middle of the night, Sequoia sent a technician to fix two of the machines.

"The ballots and the scanners need to work together," said Michelle M. Shafer, a Sequoia Voting Systems spokeswoman.

"The slowness of the machines is due to the printing problems Riverside experienced with the vendor."

At least 60,000 of the county's 250,000 absentee-ballots were deemed defective, in many cases torn.

San Bernardino, Shafer said, experienced similar problems.

http://www.mydesert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/NEWS0301/802070313/-1/newsfront

[Peace Patriot]

1. Ah, Riverside and San Bernardino! Two of the "bad actor" counties! What a surprise!

These counties, like San Diego and Los Angeles, have Registrars who are tight with the corporate vendors--San Diego's Registrar, Deborah Seiler was Diebold's chief salesperson in California, before she took up her "public service" in San Diego!--and tight with each other. San Diego/Seiler filed suit against SoS Bowen, to stop modest reforms of the ballot auditing, and Riverside and San Bernardino joined them! Anything for non-transparency. Anything to do the bidding of Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia!

They lost. But still. Bad attitude. Time for the hook for this crew.

You will find them all quoted or cited in the Contra Costa Times article, which predicts slow returns for Feb 5 and blames them on SoS Bowen's reforms. Seiler laments having to protect paper ballots from the rain. It's such a drag.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8157074?source=rss

Also in this article, the infamous Steve Weir, head of the state county election officials' lobbying group, and Registrar of Contra Costa County. Here's what he said, of SoS Bowen, in August 07: “This election, if it's a failure, it's on her."

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070812-9999-1n12bowen.html

McCormack retired in Dec 07, after over a decade of secretizing and corporatizing Los Angeles elections, but even she chimes in, in this Whittier Daily News article, six days ago, criticizing SoS Bowen's reforms:

http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_8153626?source=rss

It's a gang called "The Non-Transparents." And they need to all go the way of McCormack. Out. The. Door.

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Good source on the corruption in Riverside's election system--and a kickass election integrity group in that county: SaveRVote.
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/SaveRVote