retabulation of votes, dupage county.

[mopinko]

wed. i went out to dupage county to witness an audit of the illinois primary vote in dupage. i am told this is done after every election, but i have never heard of it. if i didn't know better, it might have made me wonder if elections are really rigged.
they recounted 5 percent of the ballots, both op-scans, and vvpt-s. opcans were counted in one room, run through the counters again, reports compared to election day totals. they had 6 county workers running them through.
in another room, the toilet paper rolls were counted by pairs of workers, one reading, one making hashmarks. there were 3 teams. (a note about toilet paper- i asked the archival quality of the ink. i was told that although they were thermal printed, they were the highest quality available, and expected to be readable well beyond the 22 months that they were required to be kept. however, i saw a lot of smeared tapes.)
the officials were polite, answered all questions, allowed witnesses to check what they wanted. melissa, from illinois ballot initiative (sorry, not sure the exact name of the group.) wanted to write down the serial numbers of the opscans, and they were dutifully lifted up and turned around so that she could do that without having to bump into any materials on the tables.
i was told that some of the workers were county employees, others were temporary workers. i was told that both parties had been invited to send representatives to witness, or act as counters, but no one was sent. there was a so-squeaky-clean-and-spiffy-that-is-was suspicious guy that i assumed was from sequoia.
they said the precincts to be counted were given to them by the state board of elections. they said they had the option to pick them, but chose to let the state.
i saw nothing out of the ordinary, no stickers, no paper jams. the precincts that ended while i was in the room came up matched. the counters were friendly, and earnest.

but here is where it smells- i asked, when and where will the results of this audit be available? :shrug: we send them to the state board, we don't know what they do, but we have never seen this publically reported.
and here is where i got pissed off- no party or candidate observers were present. if i had lost by a hair, i would sure enough had someone out there, makin' hash marks, and watching all day. in fact, i would have sent 2 people, one for each room, for the whole day.

other tidbits- from dir. of elections. they have an extra extensive licensing agreement, that means that they rely less on vendors that other jurisdictions. they are working on training their own employees so that they will be fully self sufficient.
they were also negotiating legislation to create a new position of technical judge- so that one judge per polling place would have extra training on the care and feeding of vote eating machines. they would have to be certified, they would get extra pay, and would get a little more pay each time they come back to work another election. i am so there.

[Wilms]

1. Great post, Mo.

Can you tell us more about the "extra extensive licensing agreement".

I'm beginning to wonder what agreements We the People sign with vendors, apart from a purchase order.

I didn't learn of details but read that Yolo County, Ca's BoE was not comfortable with the agreements ES&S needed, and so she passed them up and went with Vote-PAD.

Thanks.

[mopinko]

2. vendors

you know, if i had gone in with more knowledge about what, exactly, they are already doing, i would have been in a better position to ask questions. but then, that is the problem all around, isn't it.
he made it sound like- we paid extra to get control in our own hands. we will soon be paying more to get them out of the process entirely. and we will be doing training ourselves to have these new tech pollwatchers.

i was very pissed off that no party or candidates were there. if i had lost by a handful of votes, i sure enough would have had someone there all day. i really regretted that i couldn't stay all day. if i had had more notice, i would have. i am hoping a local group will file a foia for this.

a little bird told me that they had that list of "random" precincts either right after, or maybe on election day. i'd like to see the list of seal numbers.

you know, we really need a knowledge base of all the mechanics of all this shit. i went in there with my fingers crossed, my eyes open and some general knowledge. but if i had gone in there with a copy of the precinct list from the state board, and the serial numbers on the seals, and the published totals for all those precincts, .......

[Land Shark]

3. this is the specific work that in the end is the foundationformost of

what we do. thanks mopinko

[mopinko]

4. just wish i had more ammunition

but doing is learning, fershur.