I always believed that the best way to get some sanity into the process of how we count votes in this country is to make it an election issue. It sounds paradoxical, but if you could get a Secretary of State elected who is sympathetic to the concerns of voting rights advocates, then you put powerful forces in motion to get some accountability out of the big e-voting conglomerates like ES&S and Diebold. You hold the only thing that matters to those organizations: the power of the purse strings. And now, California has the most knowledgeable and vociferous critic of unaccountable e-voting in that position.
Today Debra Bowen, California’s recently elected Secretary of State, hired Lowell Finley, the lead attorney for VoterAction.org, as the lead official in charge of supervising and authorizing the state’s voting machinery.
On the flip…
Finley has lots of experience dealing with e-voting machines. He’s sued just about every manufacturer, as well as every county and every state who’s authorized them (including Florida, in the current case in the 13th Congressional District, where 18,000 ballots were simply lost by the e-voting machines). From the SF Chronicle article:
Finley is co-founder and co-director of Voter Action, a group that has been very leery of the safety, security and fairness of electronic voting. Voter Action last year sued Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson to block his approval of a Diebold Election System touch screen system used throughout the state and coordinated a suit to block Alameda County from using the Sequoia e-voting system it purchased. He was also involved in a 2004 suit that forced Diebold to pay a $2.6 million settlement to the state for making false claims about its voting systems.
Finley is dropping out of the suits he’s involved in with Voter Action and will recuse himself from any decisions in the secretary of state’s office involving suits he’s been involved with, said Evan Goldberg, a spokesman for Bowen.
He’s also succesfully sued Governor Schwarzenegger in the past for illegally loaning his campaign $4.5 million dollars during the recall election. The Governor had to pay the money back out of his own pocket instead of raising campaign contributions to cover the costs. This guy will sit in an office in the same building as the governor. How incredible is that?
BradBlog has more on this major development.
In his new capacity, Finley will oversee testing and certification for all voting machine technology in the State of California. In a phone call this morning, Finley confirmed that he would be working closely in his new role with key national associations like the National Institute for Science and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC).
E-voting critics and at least one California Registrar of Voters have hailed both the swearing in of Bowen as SoS and her appointment of Finley, expressing delight to The BRAD BLOG over the news, characterizing it as a “colossal surprise” and a “very, very good sign for the future of voters’ rights in California.”
America’s voting machine companies are less likely to feel quite as happy about the news.
All of us who supported Debra Bowen’s candidacy expected a bold move like this. She is the sharpest elected official on voting rights and election integrity in the entire country. The impact of this appointment, which will doubtlessly put pressure on the major e-voting manufacturers to conform to acceptable standards or lose the business of the largest state in the country, will resonate nationwide. This, along with the continuing battle in FL-13, is the turning point in the election reform movement. It shows that the responsible reaction to voting concerns was to make it a big-time issue, build a movement behind voting integrity, and get the leaders of that movement involved in the oversight of the machines. It sounds almost impossible, but that’s exactly what happened.