[EL] Hypothetical ballot privacy issues vs actual rights

[Bev Harris]

I would note that current practices exist to deal with privacy issues, while
still preserving public right to know and without inserting a layer of
cryptography in between the public and its right to know.

Let me provide three examples:

1) Humboldt County Calif: The ballots are examined by a panel and any ballots
with identifying marks are removed and duplicated (much as ballots that are
unreadable by machine, torn, stain whatever are duplicated for the machine).
This is done transparently and in full public view and the original is kept.

2) In Aspen Colorado, Marilyn Marks asked to examine the anonymous ballots. That
means, though there could be argument as to whether she should have to omit any
ballots which are "not anonymous", she took that issue off the table. Yet they
still refused her request to examine even the anonymous ballots.

3) As I mentioned, the right to see and authenticate includes four areas: 1) Who
can vote 2) Who did vote 3) Chain of custody and 4) the count

Regarding "who did vote", each jurisdiction has a very small list of protected
voters. These consist of policemen, stalking victims, and so forth. The number
is so small that it is not likely to come into play in an election contest, but
if it does, the remedy is to have the judge do an in camera review of this
protected list.

Now, for Joe Hall: I may be incoherent, but I certainly do work with many
election officials, and have professional relationships with hundreds in the
industry. However, my primary "client" is the public citizenry.

Two weeks ago, I met with the full election commission for Shelby County TN, to
provide a courtesy heads-up for my findings when reviewing their voter list
data.

I have a series of five detailed reports coming out this month on that,
pertaining to:

- Racial dilution (race identification was changed on 64,000 voters);

- Timing issues when adding large numbers of new registrations (and I will be
recommending that the cards must be turned in within 48 hours by groups doing
the registering; I will show with real data how the last-minute registration
card dumps are hurting both Democrats and Republicans);

- Design flaw in electronic pollbooks which has, and is likely to again produce
inaccurate voter histories;

- A significant problem in which staff altered voter records without telling
anyone.

So now I have to get off this email list and finish those reports. Cheers,

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.



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