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MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 - (415)868-0502(fax) - P.O. Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924

November, 2005

Volunteers Needed for Marin County "Parallel Election"

Nov. 8 Hand-Counting Paper Ballots as a Check on Electronic Voting Machine Results
Marin County, CA (10/24/05) - An elections watchdog group, Citizens' Audit Parallel Election (CAPE), is seeking volunteers to conduct a "parallel election" on November 8. Volunteers will invite voters at selected poll sites to duplicate their vote on paper ballots that will later be hand-counted in public. The paper ballot count will be compared to the official machine tally to see if votes are being counted as cast.
"Parallel elections enable citizens to double-check the accuracy of official election results," said Judy Alter, founder of Citizens' Audit Parallel Election.
"The official ballots and vote tallies are recorded on optical scanners, electronic voting machines, and central tally machines that are operated with trade-secret software not disclosed to the public, not even to public elections officials. California election officials cannot demonstrate that our votes are actually counted as we cast them when our ballots are counted with secret software."
Public concern has mounted recently as computer experts have demonstrated the potential for mass election fraud on voting machines running proprietary software, including optical scanners that read paper ballots. For example, a team of researchers found that the memory card used in Diebold's AccuVote version 1.94 optical scan voting system that counts approximately 25 percent of the national vote can be compromised by a lone programmer, such that standard canvassing procedures cannot detect election manipulation (see www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/5921.html).
Marin County uses Diebold AccuVote version 1.96.4 optical scan voting system.
An October 2005 report issued by the US General Accountability Office found security and reliability flaws in the electronic voting process that merit the focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities responsible for election administration (see www.truthout.org/docs_2005/102105Q.shtml).
Hand-counting the parallel election ballots provides a comparative election data set enabling statistical analysis that may detect discrepancies between the reported official tally and how citizens themselves say they voted. The ballots may also provide legal evidence for election challenges in court.
The public and the media are invited to observe the parallel election and the counting of the ballots. The locations of the polling sites where parallel elections will occur, and the public meeting place where the ballots will be counted, will be announced on election day. Parallel election results will be posted at www.studycaliforniaballots.org.
StudyCaliforniaBallots.org seeks to organize citizens' audit parallel elections in every county statewide for the November 8, 2005 special election. People wanting to volunteer to conduct parallel elections in Marin County or other Northern California counties can call 510-233-2144 or email
volunteer@StudyCaliforniaBallots.org.
People wanting to volunteer in Southern California can call 310-559-8987. Complete instructions and forms for conducting parallel elections are available for download at www.studycaliforniaballots.org.