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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Santa Fe & Bernalillo County Clerks to Buy Unreliable Touchscreen Voting Machines
According to an article in today's Albuquerque Journal (subscription required), more than half of the voting machines to be purchased in New Mexico to serve disabled and non-English voters will be the dreaded touchscreens that are at the heart of an ongoing voters' lawsuit in the state. This, despite the fact these Sequoia Edge machines are known to switch votes and have trouble handling Spanish language ballots.
The County Clerks of the state's biggest counties, Mary Herrerra of Bernalillo and Valerie Espinoza of Santa Fe, decided to go with the touchscreens, ignoring a strong citizen lobbying effort urging them to select AutoMark voting machines that provide paper ballots and were the preference of many disabled voters.
The good news is that 19 counties will be purchasing the recommended AutoMarks, including Catron, Curry, De Baca, Eddy, Grant, Guadalupe, Harding, Hidalgo, Lea, Los Alamos, Luna, Mora, Quay, Roosevelt, San Juan, San Miguel, Sierra, Taos, and Union.
The 14 counties selecting Sequoia AVC Edge touchscreens were: Bernalillo, Chaves, Cibola, Colfax, Dona Ana, Lincoln, McKinley, Otero, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Socorro, Torrance, and Valencia.
According to the Journal article,
Clerks in Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties especially contended with e-mails, phone calls and faxes leading up to Tuesday's deadline to select machines as activists sought to steer clerks toward what they said were more accurate machines.
But some clerks would not change their decision.
"It's absolutely disturbing," said Holly Jacobson of VoterAction, an activist group, of the majority of touchscreen machines being ordered. "They have a history of not counting Spanish language votes, of switching votes. The list goes on and on."
Also disappointing were Herrerra's and Espinoza's refusals to meet with concerned citizens to discuss the pros and cons of touchscreen machines. Espinoza cancelled a scheduled meeting with citizens at the last minute and Herrerra's office was locked when citizens paid a visit the day before the decision on purchasing the machines was due. I guess in this era, public officeholders are content to listen to campaign contributors and political insiders rather than "risk" a meeting with mere voters and members of the communities they allegedly serve. A sad situation, indeed, especially since both Herrerra and Espinoza are Democrats.
December 7, 2005 at 10:25 AM in Local Politics | Permalink
Comments
Bah, humbug.
Posted by: JC | Dec 7, 2005 11:26:33 AM
I'm glad Taos County went with the paper ballot machines. I will never understand why so many Democrats in New Mexico appear to be against efforts to make voting more reliable.
Posted by: taoseno22 | Dec 7, 2005 12:01:48 PM
this is a big big strike against mary herrerra now bernalillo county clerk, running for secretary of state for 06. I am sure she is the dem party leadership favorite. The constant resistance our own party has to allow every vote to be counted astounds me.
Posted by: meb | Dec 7, 2005 2:04:31 PM
Me, too, mebs! Astounded! Has the party been infiltrated or what?
Posted by: | Dec 7, 2005 6:08:34 PM
Infiltrated? No doubt. By the machine companies and their campaign pay-offs. How else is Mary Herrera going to raise money for a state-wide campaign after throwing out so many ballots in 2004?
It just makes sense that the Sequoia people have bought out all the larger population areas--I think Mary will be mighty surprised when she starts talking to voters about counting the votes.
It would be logical to think she might suspect that votes for Mary Herrera might not be counted. Someone yesterday wondered how she can be in charge of elections if she is running? All I can think is that in addition to the promise of campaign cash she got Sequoia to promise to deliver the votes to her as well.
Posted by: Barbara | Dec 8, 2005 12:34:30 PM
Paul and Laura pass along this info. It seems the independent testing companies aren't really independent and they certify machines they know are flawed (See the following)
"There were several overriding themes that emerged at the voting systems testing summit. Perhaps the most prevalent one was that the ITAs consistently decline to appear at these meetings. Why? Well the main reason is that they are fraught with conflict of interest and incompetence. In fact, had they shown up, they would have been raked over the coals by some of the voting system examiners that attended the summit. For instance, an examiner from Pennsylvania wanted to know how come so many systems that passed the ITA testing still had serious security and even operational flaws. The Systest representative, who had the misfortune of representing his entire industry alone, replied that they were only required to test against the standard. When pressed about whether or not the ITAs would fail a system if a serious flaw was found, the reply was that a memo would be written, but that the system would still pass. I couldn't believe it. The company that was tasked with certifying machines for elections in the United States would still pass them, even if a serious flaw was found, as long as the machine did not violate any aspects of the standard. Unbelievable."
Posted by: suz | Dec 16, 2005 4:16:27 PM
