From Blackbox Voting
Utter failure of election transparency in Monterey County
by Jim March 6-6-08:
A member of the Black Box Voting board of directors

ELECTION TRANSPARENCY IN MONTEREY COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: A RECIPE FOR COURT ACTION

The June 3rd 2008 election in Monterey County was, in general, an utter failure of election transparency. It was impossible for any observer whether county staff or independent observer to confirm that the election's outcome was proper. There are inadequate controls against both malicious tampering and accidental glitches.

The collapse of transparency was deliberate and systematic, and violated state laws, the certification rules promoted by the California Secretary of State's office and democratic principles in general.

Should these local policies against transparent elections be allowed to stand, elections will remain at risk in this county. Worse, should this elections agency be allowed to get away with observation barriers to the degree documented herein, a precedent will be set allowing other elections offices across the state to misbehave in the same fashion.

Thus, what happens here in Monterey as a result of this election will affect the security of the November general election and all subsequent elections.

BLOW BY BLOW REPORT

Local citizens involved with SAVElections Monterey County (Valerie Lane and Brian Rothenberger) were subjected to harassment and verbal abuse during previous elections. On May 27th 2008 the abuse was ratcheted up – Mr. Rothenberger was first accused of moving a table that was blocking the observation window when in fact one of the staff had done so at Brian's request, and then Brian was falsely accused of pushing an elections official. Note that while they did make this claim and had the Salinas PD escort Mr. Rothenberger out of the building, they did not charge him with anything, likely because of the videotape recording in that location.

Note that Mr. Rothenberger is a very qualified computer tech local to Monterey who has been helping out the Green Party and SAVElections. He has been pointing out technical deficiencies in this elections agency and has consistently been branded a "troublemaker" by the county elections office. The pattern I saw is that any technically qualified person who looks at that agency will be vilified by them.

Ms. Lane contacted the Pima Cou... More