5/17-Alameda County,Ca-Rov & Board of Supes to buy Diebold VVPAT

[JunkYardDogg]

Tuesday, 5/17 the Alameda County RoV, Bradley Clarke will be asking the Alameda County Board of Supes to Purchase Diebold VVPAT Equipment.
No Diebold VVPAT has been Federally Qualified and State Certified Yet
If you live in the Bay Area and can attend, please go to the meeting
There will be people from California Election Protection Network
there to contest this .
The Alameda RoV, Bradley Clark will leave that positon to become the SoS Election Division cheif in June.

The CEPN ALERT:

Urgent action is needed, as noted below. Please contact the members
of
the Alameda County Board of Supervisors by telephone, fax, and/or
email,
and please plan to attend the meeting on Tuesday, if your schedule permits.

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting
Tuesday, May 17, (9 a.m., closed session)
10:00 Set Matters and Regular Calendar
1221 Oak Street, Room 512
Oakland, CA

will consider the following agenda item:

"14. Registrar of Voters--Authorize the Registrar to negotiate a
contract with Diebold election Systems Inc. (Principal: Thomas W.
Swidarski; Location: McKinney, Texas) for an upgrade to its voting
equipment that includes a voter verified paper audit trail printer for
use in the November 8, 2005 Consolidated District Election--CAO
Recommends: Approve."

Please contact members of the Board of Supervisors to say that you
recommend: DISAPPROVE.

CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS:

Here is the link to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors:
http://www.co.alameda.ca.us/board/index.htm

On that link, you can find contact information for all five members, as
well as information about the agenda of the upcoming Tuesday meeting.Tuesday meeting

[Wilms]

1. Alameda calling! n/t

[garybeck]

2. tell them it is NOT a VVPAT!!!

"Voter Verified" means it can be verified by the voter without the aid of anything. Diebold's "VVPAT" requires a magnifying glass. Check out this article:

http://www.votetrustusa.org/blogs/newdieboldprinters.htm

[JunkYardDogg]

3. I'm Passin' it on

Thanks

[Noneoftheabove]

4. Small, initial victory in Alameda County re: Diebold contract

Going into the meeting, the Supes were about to entertain RoV Bradley
Clark's motion to begin contract negotations with
Diebold for purchase of Diebold's AccuPrint VVPAT add-on printers to Alameda County's installed base of 4,000 AccuVote TS touchscreen machines.

After a dozen election activists presented testimony and educational materials to the board, the board chair set aside the contract talks pending a hearing to address the concerns we raised.

Board chair Keith Carson acted on a suggestion proposed by Jim March, to call the RoV staff and Diebold
technical personnel to a hearing before the Board of Supervisors,where members of the public could put questions directly to them.

The hearing date is to be announced, but will be
sometime in advance of the June 16 VSPP hearing in Sacramento.

The California Election Protection Network is organizing activists around the state to pack the VSPP certification hearing and demand that Diebold be barred from CA for repeated election law violations documented in the state's Diebold audit report filed in Fall of 2004.
Continuing violations in CA and MD since then only strengthen the case for Diebold's debarment.

Lowell Finley, Jim March, Judy Bertelsen, Jerry Berkman, Jim Soper, Lara Shaffer, myself, and several other OVC and IRV activists each spoke for 2 to 3 minutes.

In addition to establishing that Diebold has already committed more than enough offenses to be debarred from the state, speakers pointed out that there is no need to rush into a contract for VVPAT printers when certification standards for such devices are still unresolved, and when better and cheaper alternatives can be developed in time to meet HAVA deadlines.

I was called first, which was handy, since I had documents to present each of the supervisors and their chief of staff.

As the Supes listened to our speakers, they were paging through the
seven articles and reports documenting Diebold's repeated offenses running uncertified election systems in CA and MD, the problems with the proposed add-on VVPAT printers, and factsheets exposing touchscreen myths and hacking vulnerabilities.

In sum, the message conveyed to the Supervisors was:
Why enter into any more contracts with a vendor that has a history of exploitative price gouging, equipment failure, illegal machine tampering and outright lying, when there is no imperative need to do so, and when time remains to examine better alternatives?

Alameda County Registrar of Voters Bradley Clark was present throughout thehearing and was called on by the board chair to respond.

Clark said we had spread a lot of "misinformation" and proceeded to assert that all Diebold systems in the county were certified, that the Diebold VVPAT printer add-on had just received federal certification "this week," that OVC does not have any system with federal and state certification,and that the Diebold AccuPrint device is the only VVPAT system currently certified.

In a followup question about the AccuPrint paper trails, Supt. Haggerty asked Clark how long HAVA requires election records be preserved, and how that compares to the shelf life of thermal paper.

Clark said he didn't have the answers to those questions.

I spoke up from the audience to say, federal elections records must be preserved for 22 months, and the life expectancy of thermal fax paper is 7 to 8 months. That information comes from John Gideon of Voters Unite, whose report on VVPAT standards and current devices was included in the packet of info presented to the supervisors.

Clark said he was confident Alameda County would be approved for
$8.7 million in HAVA funding for equipment purchase, and that replacing the installed Diebold systems or adopting them with components from other vendors would not be viable options. He said completely replacingthe county's Diebold system would cost about $14 million.

We intend to follow up and respond to each of Clark's assertions,
several of which I think are highly questionable--beginning with his
claim that Diebold's AccuPrint federal certification came through "this week" and that all of Diebold's software, firmware, and accessory devices in Alameda County are in compliance.

[JunkYardDogg]

5. For the Audio of the Hearing

check this out
from another person at the hearing:

The audio from the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting is online.
Download it be going to:

http://www.acgov.org/jsp_app/board/bos_calendar/ag_min.jsp?subType=REG

looks for the 5/17 meeting, and click on the far right "yes" under "audio".

It downloaded a file named:
bos_reg_05_17_05.rpm
Which I played with Real Player. The question of negotiating the upgrade with
Diebold is item 14; fast forward to 1:38:45 in the audio. Public testimony
began with:
1:41:05 Dan Ashby
1:44:46 Lowell Finley
1:48:20 Jim March, BlackBoxVoting.org
etc. (about 10 others)
followed by board discussion.