Requests for Election Accountability and Security to Allegheny County Board of Elections

Letter from voting guru and advocate of fair elections in the city, county and state, Richard King, Ph.D.

Dear Mr. Wolosik,

As you are aware, a volunteer audit found that about 40% the Allegheny County precincts in the 2008 presidential election contained discrepancies between the "Numbered List of Voters" and the number of "Total Ballots Cast" as recorded by the touchscreen voting machines in each precinct in Allegheny County. Since then, for each election, we have sought a summary listing of these discrepancies from your office, from the Board of Election, and/or from County Council.

At the last Board of Election meeting, At-Large Councilman, Chuck McCullough, requested that you meet in your office with me to come to some agreement regarding these requests. I have made two email requests of you to schedule a meeting which has yet to be scheduled. Please schedule this meeting before the May 18th election and please:

1) Arrange to provide the summary listing of the precinct discrepancies for the the May 18th, 2010 primary election and make the agreement to do so today. This will save us from the effort placing these requests before our county council and our BOE once again.

The information requested can easily be captured by listing the following for each precinct. This should be done in the canvass or review and reconciliation process which is scheduled to begin three days after the election. It will require minimal additional effort on the part of your office.

The summary of the precinct discrepancies should include:
a) "PRECINCT ID"
b) Total Number of Voters
c) "TOTAL BALLOTS CAST"
d) Discrepancy

Please have your office create this summary listing for each election and make it immediately available upon request to all interested parties, i.e., when the discrepancies are initially reviewed in your office so that the information is available for comment by the public at the next Board of Election meeting.

2) Additionally:

In November of 2008, public pressure requested software verification go hand in glove with the implementation of video security on our voting machines. Yes, video cameras were placed in the warehouse, but curiously they were not actually viewing the voting machines in the warehouse. This lack of surveillance of the voting machines pointedly breaches the intention of the security cameras. The purpose of the complete, direct and secure video surveillance of the voting machines from the time of the software verification process was to document that the voting software had not been tampered with once it was verified.

Meanwhile, workmen have been remodeling the warehouse space that the voting machines are stored and its been shown that replacing voting machine software with vote stealing software requires only two minutes of access to a voting machine.

Please, remedy this situation. Document that once the software in our our county's touchscreen voting machines has been verified, that it has not been tampered with in the warehouse. Place all of the the voting machines within the view of the video cameras.

Appreciatively,

Richard King, Ph.D. (phone number removed by blog administrator)

Voter Verified Paper Records with Routine Audits
http://www.pa-verifiedvoting.org/