Dems for Optical Scan; Cap Beat for vacation
There should be a short story in tomorrow's (Wednesday's) paper that is pegged to N.C. Democratic Party Chairman Jerry Meek urging local boards of elections to go with optical scan equipment. I need to give a tip o' the hat to the person who originally e-mailed me the letter, but don't know if that person necessarily wants the recognition.
I have no idea whether others have reported this - the letter is dated Dec. 8 - but I hadn't seen it until last week. Meek's letter is interesting to me because you don't see a whole lot of other high profile political types weighing on this around here.
See a PDF of the letter by clicking here.
Meek said that issues surrounding voting machines were by far the issue upon which rank-and-file constituents contacted him the most since he took office in the Spring.
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Cap beat is taking an end-of-year break but will be back on Friday. In the mean time, lottery watchers should keep an eye out for stories out of Wednesday's N.C. Lottery Commission meeting. The commission had cancelled the remainder of its meetings for the year, so it will be interesting to see what they felt the need to teleconference about.
See y'all back here on Dec. 30.
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NCACC issues Jihad on Public Confidence in Elections Act.
The NCACC sent a letter to Governor Easley on Dec 22, 2005 asking for him to call a SPECIAL SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE to REPEAL or amend S223.
http://www.ncacc.org/documents/electionslettertoeasley_122205.pdf
I just figured out today why the NC Association of County Commissioners might do that, plus why they would almost weirdly dedicate the home page of their site, www.ncacc.org entirely to critice S 223.
It almost looks like a sort of anti S223 shrine!
Well, it turns out that Kitty Barnes is not only the President of www.NCACC.org, but also the Chair of the County Commissioners of Catawba County.
http://www.catawbacountync.gov/commish/
Catawba ignored Gary Bartlett's advice to hold off on purchase of new voting equipment until new standards for voting systems were issued.
They surely regret not listening now.
On January 20, 2004, the Board of Commissioners authorized the purchase of eSlate voting tabulators made by Hart InterCivic of Austin, Texas.
http://www.co.catawba.nc.us/catawbavotes/background.asp
The county commissioners authorized $1.4 Million on this purchase.
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6374
Further, this purchase was bad for another reason:
2004 - North Carolina study shows that Catawba County's switch to paperless voting coincides with jump in undervote rate of 40% - 130% higher than it was in 2000
http://www.ncvoter.net/jmoore.html
Catawba County's machines would not be HAVA compliant, Hart Intercivic only certified
to 1990 federal standards at that time.
http://www.nased.org/NASED_Qualified_Voting_Systems_11_18_05_Paged.pdf
Posted on December 27, 2005 10:28 PM
Maybe all political parties, and all people want their vote to count.
We see that Warren County GOP chair had the guts to say - let the process be followed, check the machines first before certifying.
Now, you see the Dem Chair following excellent advice that has been stated by many non partisan computer scientists.
Since the Dems have the majority of the positions on Boards of Elections, it is their responsibility to make the best decision.
The DREs do not have a trustworthy paper ballot,
this ballot is the consistency of toilet paper, and we now know that if they jam, the ballot can be destroyed.
All political parties want their votes to count, and they want to be able to recount an election, and then people, all people, can have confidence in the results.
My hat is off to Jerry Meek for doing the right thing.
You should thank him as well, because this protects everyone's votes, republican, democrats, libertarian or green or other.
On DREs, there might not be anything to recount.
My hat is off to the NC DEM chair, and to the Warren County GOP chair. Both good men!
Posted on December 27, 2005 10:38 PM