ELECTION ACTIVISTS REVEAL IRREGULARTIES IN JULY SAN DIEGO CONTEST

Parallel Election Reveals Descrepancies in July San Diego Vote: Parallel Coordinator Judy Alter to Present at Oregon Summit

From Raw Story, for full story, go to http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Citizens_Request_Recount_IN_SAN_DIEGO_MAYO...

**highly recommend reading the full story!

Exclusive: Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race
Miriam Raftery

"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies - a 4 percent shift - ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.

San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 26 local election as citizens' audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.

Diebold's Un-Accu-Vote

Now, a nonpartisan citizens' group that conducted a parallel election has requested a recount of 11 precincts. This time, the issue isn't unmarked bubbles, but the accuracy of Diebold Accu-Vote optical scan voting machines and the Diebold GEMS central tabulator used to count votes.

The Citizens Audit Parallel Election (CAPE) asked voters exiting polls to vote again and sign a log book attesting to the accuracy of their second vote. Sealed parallel election ballots were counted at KGTV's studio with a TV camera crew filming the counting process.

Nearly 50 percent of all voters participated in the parallel election, which included five polling places representing 11 precincts. The sample included more conservative than liberal precincts, with participation as high among Republicans as among Democrats. The tandem election results showed what most feel to be startling results.

"There is a shift of four percent of the vote, consistently," Joe Prizzi, (engineer and physicist,) reported at a press conference held by CAPE in front of City Hall. Frye received 50.2 percent of the votes cast in the parallel election - enough for an outright victory if those results reflect the outcome citywide. CAPE also found that the official count added approximately 2 percent to each of Frye's two Republican opponents, Jerry Sanders and Steve Francis.

A team of statisticians from California State University- Northridge - have analyzed the data from CAPE, concluding that the probability of luck or chance as the cause of the observed four percent deviation is less than one in 1,300 - or .000678.

Activists suspect fraud. "I am troubled by the prospect that we are losing our democracy very quickly. We've been voting on machines that were never intended to be tools of democracy," said Brina-Rae Schuchman, media spokesperson for CAPE, noting that Diebold machines utilize "secret software."

The nation's first parallel election was conceived by Ellen Brodsky, an election official in Coconut Creek, Florida. Held at a single precinct during a May 2005 special election on a gambling initiative, the Florida parallel election drew a 67 percent participation rate and revealed significant discrepancies, leading to revelations of programming issues with touch-screen voting machines.

San Diego's far broader parallel election was the brainchild of Judy Alter, an emeritus professor in the department of world arts and culture at UCLA who participated in the New Mexico recount after the 2004 presidential election. In Santa Fe, Alter detected a shift of third-party candidate votes into the Bush/Cheney column.

"That pattern has now been identified in eight states," Alter told Raw Story in an exclusive interview, adding that numerous other indications of electronic fraud have been found. "This is why I'm leading Study California Ballots, because we have to actually count," Added Alter.

CAPE filed a request with the Registrar on August 16 to recount the 11 precincts included in San Diego's parallel election. The request was filed by Schuchman on behalf of Donna Frye, although the Frye campaign was not consulted.

The San Diego Registrar has seven days to call a meeting of all candidates and other interested parties to devise procedures for the recount. "If any discrepancies are found, California law requires that a citywide recount of all precincts be conducted," Alter said.

(Ademdum from KC:)

ALTER TO BE AT OREGON NATIONAL ELECTION REFORM SUMMIT

Judy Alter will be a presenter at the upcoming National Summit to Save Our Elections, hosted in Portland by Oregon Voter Rights Coalition and Alliance for Democracy. The Summit, Sept. 30 through Oct. 2 is now accepting registrants. Alter is among many nationally recognized election reform activists who will take part in the Oregon Summit.

Registration Now Open!
A Call to Rescue Our Democracy
Portland, Oregon
9/30 to 10/2

Come and learn how corporate-owned electronic election systems affect your vote, and how you can help restore citizen ownership of our elections.

Click on the Paul Revere link, this page.