April 28, 2006

More on Dismissal of Counties from Diebold Lawsuit

From a Eureka Reporter story:

"Humboldt County Elections officials said they are pleased with the announcement this week that Humboldt, along with six other California counties, were dropped from a lawsuit aimed at stopping touch-screen voting machines from ever getting under voters’ fingers.

The California Voters lawsuit, Holder v. McPherson, filed in San Francisco Superior Court last month seeks to nullify Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s conditional certification authorizing the purchase by counties of Diebold electronic touch screen voting equipment.

Its critics say the machines have a history of security, verifiability and disability access problems for use in California elections, according to a news release.

As reported previously in The Eureka Reporter, Diebold spokesman David Bear stated tests that were conducted on Diebold equipment, which its critics say show security vulnerabilities, were not done in a real environment and therefore do not reflect a realistic outcome.

Although initially included in the lawsuit and at risk for potential litigation and associated costs, Humboldt County hadn’t formally approved to actually purchase any of the devices.

Humboldt County Recorder and Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich said the county signaled its desire in late February and approved last month a pilot program to implement the non-electronic Vote-Pad voting equipment for the June election to come up to speed on federal Help America Vote Act disability access laws.

Vote-PAD, a non-electronic, booklet-style voter-assist device, which helps people with visual or dexterity impairments to vote, can be customized for different elections’ hand-counted or optically-scanned paper ballots.

“We just decided that it would be the most secure way at this point,” Crnich said Thursday."

Posted by Randy Riddle at April 28, 2006 09:06 AM