[Sosfbay-discuss] Electoral Integrity Sunday Night in Palo Alto 7 p.m.

[Brian Good]

An evening with Dr. Steven Freeman and Paul Lehto.

Dr. Freeman, you may recall, did the statistical analysis of the
2004 presidential election that showed bizarre anomalies in
Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

Paul Lehto filed an innovative lawsuit against Snohomish County
in Washington State alleging (if I remember right) that counting
the votes electronically by the Sequoia Systems voting machine
company represented an illegal outsourcing of the registrar's job.
He also spearheaded the lawsuits in the San Diego Busby/Billray
congressional election case.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Election_lawyer_to_file_legal_contest_0731.html

Given the recent publicity about Princeton University's finding
that the Sequoia Systems voting machines can be easily hacked (1),
and the fact that Santa Clara County uses Sequoia Systems
machines, this county has the potential to be ground zero for a
"reject the vapor ballots" initiative.  Dr. David Dill, one of the
foremost experts on electronic voting, is right here at Stanford.

I observed the vote counting in 2005 and saw potential vulnerabilities
in Santa Clara County's system.  First off, using a paper absentee
ballot makes no difference at all.  They are counted on optical scan
machines that are not simple unhackable appliances at all.  Each
scanner is as big as the largest copy machine you ever saw.  Each
one has a keyboard and a monitor.  All the scanners are networked
together to an accumulator PC, and the counts from this are
transmitted to the same refrigerator-sized computers in the back room
that count the votes from the electronic modules.

Second, the registrar's office can not run a vote count with its own
personnel.  When I was there three Sequoia Systems people were
essential to the process--in the most computer-literate county
in the world, running Arnold's very simple special election.

This state of affairs is ridiculous, and if we can't assemble an army
of nerds to get rid of the black box machines here, we can't do
it anywhere.

So I encourage everybody to come to hear Dr. Freeman and Mr.
Lehto on Sunday.

When:  	Sunday, February 18 2007 @ 07:00 PM PST - 09:00PM
Where: 	Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto
505 E. Charleston Rd.
Palo Alto, CA 94036
Description: 	An evening with Steven Freeman and Paul Lehto.

Dr. Freeman is the co-author of Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? 
and is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in the 
Graduate Program of Organizational Dynamics.

Paul Lehto is a Washington state attorney and was selected as counsel for 
the election contest related to the Busby Billbray special election in 
California's 50th Congressional District.

http://peaceandjustice.org/calendar_event.php?mode=&eid=20070207151203966

1.  http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4141

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