DNC calls for all ballots to be manually-counted in CA-50 election [NEW Video]

Did you think that the Bilbray / Busby election in California was over?

Think again.

The Democratic National Committee’s Voting Rights Institute has now issued a statement on their website demanding that every vote be counted in the election that occurred on June 6th, 2006.

Howard Dean is to speak at the Voting Integrity Convention in San Diego on Saturday(?)

The DNC statement echoes what many bloggers / experts have been telling us about this election that should not have been certified…
From the statement:

On the facts:

1. We know for a fact that San Diego County election officials have admitted that a number of the voting machines were taken home in violation of the federal security regulations and guidelines and that a number of the machines showed evidence of tampering (broken seals, which should also have immediately disqualified those machines from use according to state laws implemented in just the last several months in response to new severe vulnerabilities discovered Diebold’s optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems.)

2. We know that under state and federal guidelines, any such breach of security seals or the new “secure storage” requirements for these machines and their memory cards should have immediately disqualified those machines from use in the election for the reason that they became effectively decertified for use upon such security and chain of custody violations.

3. We also know that both the Diebold optical-scan and touch-screen (DRE) machines have been proven to be vulnerable to tampering in test after test by industry experts, including a team of computer scientists and security experts convened by California’s Secretary of State in response to recent revelations concerning the hack ability of Diebold voting systems.

4. We know that serious security issues and efforts by Diebold to obfuscate problems with their hardware and software led California’s former Democratic Secretary of State to decertify Diebold touch-screen systems in 2004, only to have the Republican Secretary who succeeded him reinstitute the machines over the objections of scores of computer scientists and experts and hundreds of election integrity advocates.

The San Diego election Registrar, Mikel Haas, has refused to count the votes after giving a quote of the costs involved which is 6 times the cost of the hand counting in the surrounding counties.

For more on this story, please see the incredible Brad Friedman’s piece HERE.

Brad also posted an excellent in-depth PBS video on the problems with e-voting machines. In the video there is a computer scientist who was hired independently to investigate the security flaws in these machines. He found that the security problems were so severe that a single person could change the outcome on multiple machines with a single attack. You’ll also see a Diebold spokeperson’s rebuttal. He obviously thinks we’re a bunch of idiots.

I’ve transferred this video to YouTube:

Here’s a Flash summary I made awhile ago showing what happened (for those who need to get up to speed quickly)…

OTHER MEDIA OUTLETS PICKING UP ON THIS NEWS:

DNC Demands “Swift and Verifiable” Recount in Race Marred by Diebold Machine “Sleepovers” – ROLLING STONE