BBV: Mischelle Townsend to retire immediately

[BevHarris]

How unusual is it for the Registrar of Elections to retire right before a national election?

According to the Press Enterprise, Riverside County elections registrar is retiring as of July 17.

Sequoia says an employment agreement is not in the works.

Art Cassel hit her with two more public records requests on Friday.

There is a morals clause in Townsend's contract. Any conviction will cause loss of retirement benefits.

Bev

[nostamj]

1. I'm sure she....

wants to spend more time with her family....

[BevHarris]

2. According to the newspaper:

"Mischelle Townsend cited family reasons for ending nearly 30 years in government"

[displacedtexan]

3. Very interesting...

Who will replace her?

[SoFlaJet]

4. Thank you Bev Harris

for your tireless efforts for the American people-dems AND repubs.Let's say what happened to us in 2000 2002 happened to THEM,how would THEY feel when and if we said "get over it,move on?"

[Trajan]

5. Wow Bev ....

This BBV juggernaut is ON FIRE ! ....

Townsend was a particularly bad player, and needed to be reduced by the light of american 'glasnost' ...

I swear: I wish I could offer more to the cause ... I wsh I had both time and money to contribute .... alas: I dont ....

The best I can do is spread the word, which I do ....

Thank you Bev ..... thank you for your tremendous and selfless effort to straighten this mess out ... for us .....

[Trajan]

6. Add Link ...

http://www.pe.com/localnews/riverside/stories/PE_News_Local_retire22.5832f.html

Riverside County elections chief to retire

11:10 PM PDT on Monday, June 21, 2004

By MIKE KATAOKA, BETTYE WELLS MILLER and BRADLEY WEAVER / The Press-Enterprise

Riverside County's registrar of voters, who ushered in electronic voting, is retiring July 17 and moving to Pismo Beach.

Mischelle Townsend, 57, cited family reasons for ending nearly 30 years with Riverside County government, the past seven in charge of elections.

Although California's secretary of state has halted electronic voting in the state, because of problems with a different computerized system, Riverside County experienced 29 "flawless" elections with the new technology under Townsend's administration, said Roy Wilson, chairman of the county Board of Supervisors.


Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend reveals plans to retire in July.



"She took us from paper ballots and scanning machines to an electronic system with 4,200 individual voting machines," Wilson said by phone. "That's not easy to do, and she did it flawlessly."

-snip-

"Flawlessly" ? .... chuckles .... yeah: there is such a thing as a 'perfect crime', but THIS isnt it ....

I used to live in Riverside ..... a smoggy desert with gridlocked Freeways ... Hated it ...

[LynzM]

7. Wow, good news.

Do we know yet who her replacement will be?

[BevHarris]

8. Andrew Gumbel is in the middle of writing an investigative article

on Mischelle Townsend. He recently interviewed the witnesses to the central tabulator access during the March 2 election -- the district attorney, who concluded after a "thorough investigation" that Townsend had done nothing wrong, never interviewed the witnesses.

He also recently interviewed Jeremiah Akin and sent a list of questions to Mischelle Townsend to be answered.

She refused to give the zero reports from the March 2 election, despite a public records request and a formal request during a recount. She also prohibited a recount candidate from comparing the machine results to the cartridges (flash memory, supposedly the "redundant data storage" that gives "auditability" for touch screens)

Her husband retired too, and the second in command in the Riverside elections division is also now gone.

They will reportedly keep the upcoming management team in house, though.

Bev

[BevHarris]

9. Kick.

Andy is writing up an article, including a little bit of new info on problems. It will be posted late today.

Bev