Wednesday, January 16, 2008

In The Meantime, We Want Our Money Back

By Victoria Parks

 

Secretary Brunner should immediate decertify the touchscreens and go to 100% paper in those Ohio counties that use touchscreens. In the optical scanner counties, she should organize citizens for a truly random, 10% in-precinct audit before the ballots go anywhere. I speak of the central tabulation point in each county. Even though Secretary Brunner wants centralized tabulation in a chain of custody she prescribes, it is still necessary to allow citizens to verify their own votes. In this way the vote count would be voter-verified before being made vulnerable in any chain of custody. All precinct totals should be posted at the precinct for at least 15 days. Secretary Brunner, that is how you will restore voter confidence.

 

In the meantime, taxpaying voters want their HAVA money back. Because Jennifer Brunner has such a difficult task ahead of her restoring voter confidence in Ohio, I urge Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann's office to pick up the ball and build the Election Integrity Unit he promised us in '06. Then he should sue these vendors on behalf of Ohio taxpayers through his Consumer Fraud Division as I suggested before AG Dann's Assistant Chief for Governmental Affairs, Michael Deemer, in a meeting with the OEJC on December 17, 2007 where 16 members of the OEJC were present.

 

We requested this action by the Ohio Attorney General's office because taxpayers have been sold a bill of goods and now we are broke. Secretary Brunner needs the funding. Her predecessor Blackwell, drained the treasury and we still have never had an accounting of how all the HAVA money was spent in '05. Secretary Brunner will need that HAVA funding to help assist Ohioans in the conduct of clean elections.

 

And here is another reason we need 100% paper in a 100% hand-count: 

Vendors should not be rewarded with more state contracts with yet more of our taxpayer money. They should not be enriched further. They need to be sued. We taxpaying voters want our HAVA money spent on clean elections and now we want our HAVA money back. Ohio voters deserve nothing less.

 

 

Victoria Parks

The Ohio Election Justice Campaign

 

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