Despite objections from a dozen public speakers who said electronic voting machines put democracy at risk, San Diego County supervisors ended an 18-month process Tuesday by agreeing to spend $30 million to buy 10,200 computerized, "touch screen" voting machines.
... some good news. Our hardy band of crusaders-for-the-right-to-have-our-votes-counted (ahem: counted accurately) stood up to be heard this week in San Diego, and though we didn't win, we didn't lose either.
We met first with Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's staffers and asked them to please point out to Mr. Shelley that 2006 is too late to provide voters with a paper ballot as a way to trust the electoral process; we have an election year coming up. Duh.
The next day we testified to the Board of Supervisors requesting they halt the purchase Diebold Accu-vote TSx equipment to the tune of $30M+, a move which pushes the number of CA voters that will be voting on touch-screens without a voter-verified paper ballot in 2004 over the 50% mark. (Think about it.)
The testimony was stellar; we even had one of the authors of the Johns Hopkins Report"Analysis of an Electronic Voting System", computer security/cryptography expert Yoshi Kohno, whose rapid-fire litany of the glaring security flaws in Diebold's equipment made the Supervisors' eyes glaze over... though I think they did actually get it. (I got the impression they'd vote "absentee ballot"--paper--next time around.)