BBV: Mischelle Townsend

[Andy_Stephenson]

May 4th, 2004
Dear Registrar of Voters Townsend,
I was extremely disappointed to see that you have written and posted on our county’s web
site an article that completely misrepresents statements of Dr. Avi Rubin1. I first noticed
this article when it was published on the KCEQ news web site2. It was bad enough when
you used the press to spread misinformation about Dr. Rubin, but to use county resources
to spread misinformation is truly unacceptable.
In your article you make your position for paperless voting machines sound better by
completely misrepresenting Dr. Rubin’s statements concerning electronic voting.
Your article states:
Personal Experience with Electronic Voting: Professor Avi Rubin
recently wrote a paper critical of one DRE voting manufacturer and
its products and has not yet had the opportunity to evaluate other DRE
systems. However, to his credit, he volunteered on March 2nd to
serve as an election officer in his home State of Maryland. As with
many skeptics of electronic voting, personal experience with the
voting units generally brings some different perspectives as evidenced
in some of his observations:
"At the same time, I started realizing that some of the attacks
described in our initial paper were actually quite unrealistic, at
least in a precinct with judges who worked as hard as ours did
and who were as vigilant.
One thing absolute amazed me. With very few exceptions, the
voters really LOVED the machines. They raved about them to us
judges. The most common comment was 'That was so easy'."
It should be noted that you failed to give a reference for these quotes. By not telling
people where the quotes came from, you made it harder for the readers of your article to
discover the complete context of these quotes.
If you had been responsible enough to include a reference to Dr. Rubin’s article3 then
your readers would have been able to see that right after the sentence that says:
“At the same time, I started realizing that some of the attacks
described in our initial paper were actually quite unrealistic, at least
in a precinct with judges who worked as hard as ours did and who
were as vigilant”
1http://www.election.co.riverside.ca.us/ts/vvpat/ElecVotingSecurity.pdf
2http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=1697000
3http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html
Dr Rubin adds the following line that you omit:
“At the same time, I found that I had underestimated some of the
threats before.”
If you pointed your readers to the whole article written by Dr. Rubin, instead of just
pulling out the portions that you wanted them to see, your readers would have seen that
Dr. Rubin also said:
“I continue to believe that the Diebold voting machines
represent a huge threat to our democracy. I fundamentally
believe that we have thrown our trust in the outcome of our
elections in the hands of a handful of companies (Diebold,
Sequoia, ES&S) who are in a position to control the final
outcomes of our elections. I also believe that the outcomes can
be changed without any knowledge by election judges or
anyone else.”
You have presented portions of Dr. Rubin’s article out of context in order to make your
argument seem stronger. By failing to cite your source you made it harder for people to
discover that you took the quotes out of context in a way that reverses their meaning. I
believe that it is irresponsible for an election official to engage in distortion of the facts to
the degree that you have done in your article.
In addition to the immediate removal of this article from the county’s web site you should
write an apology both to Dr. Rubin and to the general public for writing and publishing
such a misleading article. Please let me know when you have removed the article from
the county's web site.
Thank you,

Thank you,
JJ

WOW now here is today's message from JJ

Unfortunately, Ms. Townsend will not admit to misrepresenting Dr. Rubin. In response to my letter Ms. Townsend sent an email that said:

“JJ,

I did not misquote Dr. Rubin. Rather, it was simply pointed out that by serving as a poll worker, perspectives can be different afterward with respect to some of the checks and balances that are in place. The subsequent paragraph you cite validates the earlier one; and I will be pleased to include it. Mischelle. "

Ms. Townsend's assertion that she did not misrepresent Dr. Rubin is completely incorrect. In the document attached to this email I have detailed the type of misrepresentation that Ms. Townsend engaged in as well as pointed out that her reply does not make sense in context to the whole of her original document. It should also be noted that Ms. Townsend has not changed the article posted on Riverside County's web site. Please read my letter and feel free to pass it along to anyone who might be interested in it.


JJ

Dr. Rubin's original article:

http://www.avirubin.com/judge.html


Mischelle Townsend's article that misrepresents Dr. Rubin's position:

http://www.election.co.riverside.ca.us/ts/vvpat/ElecVotingSecurity.pdf

[althecat]

1. Impressive....

Mischelle can't even spell her own name... see what I mean about morons.

[althecat]

2. Ooops... looks like it was her parents who couldn't spell..

I have never seen a mischelle before but I see there are a few around on Google....

[dusty64]

3. More "election" officials

in diebold's pocket. Has anyone ever dug into the possibility of bribery?

[RedEagle]

5. Actually, Townsend is in Sequoia's pocket

And if she has taken Rubin out of context such that his message has been corrupted, the best person to take Townsend to task and demand a correction, (print his WHOLE article on the site) retraction of her article, and apology, then the best person to do that is Rubin.

Contact Rubin profusely and ask him to make Townsend and the county she represents, print facts and all the facts. Is there potential for making it sound like Rubin said one thing when in fact, another is true, treading on libel?

[Andy_Stephenson]

6. I just called and e-mailed Avi

lets see what he does with this.

[DWright]

7. Good job GBNC!

I hope Avi Rubin confronts her over her little deception.

[BevHarris]

8. That's what the 90 day road trip is all about.

Black Box Voting - we are specifically investigating kickbacks now. Have the first article and half of the second done. You'll see.

Bev

[Bushfire]

4. Too important not to fall into the archives just yet

:kick: Thanks for posting GBNC.

[govegan]

9. Listened to Jim Adler ramble on last night.

Adler is the co-founder and CEO of VoteHere. He rambled on about the glories of electronic voting while totally misrepresenting the opposition to today's systems. He compared requesting paper ballots to wanting to kill cats to stem the plague of the black death in 14th century Europe (or sometime in the middle ages). WTF?

He also rambled about the "bipolar debate" (paper vs. machines), and compared the debate to people wanting to use horses instead of cars back at the beginning of the twentieth century (part of the modern dark ages). He says he has "studied a lot about this."

He also at one point stated that Dr. Rubin has his detractors. Now I see. He was probably referring to Ms. Townsend and others like her.

I am sure these folks are looking forward to allowing us to vote wireless from our cell phones while driving down the freeway. And a synthesized computer voice will call us back and verify our vote.

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