October 11, 2006

"Alameda County elections chief promises 'secure' voting"

"Alameda County's election on Nov. 7 will be among the most secure in California, election chief Dave Macdonald said Monday during a display of procedures intended to safeguard the vote.

Steps include shrink-wrapping the county's new vote scanners before distribution to polling stations and securing the polling equipment with bar-coded security tape that poll workers must match to a separate list.

"We are not just doing the minimum," Macdonald said. "We are going above and beyond what's required."

The announcement comes a week after a handful of Alameda County voters filed a lawsuit to block the county's use of its new Sequoia voting system this November.

The nonprofit Voter Action organization said Alameda County has not performed independent, expert security vulnerability testing on the system's equipment.

But Macdonald said the county's security analysis had been under way well before the lawsuit and believes much of the voter groups' concerns have been addressed.

Macdonald plans to submit Tuesday the results of an independent security analysis to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. The study concludes that all potential security risks can be handled with appropriate countermeasures and declared the Sequoia system secure.

Alameda County was forced to dump its old touch-screen Diebold voting machines after the Secretary of State banned the use of electronic voting machines that lacked a paper audit trail."

The story is here.

Posted by Randy Riddle at October 11, 2006 08:31 AM