Legislation Proposal (Precinct Data on the Internet)

[SomeTh...@aol.com]

Last winter, the Voting Rights Task Force (Alameda County, CA) submitted
a proposal for a bill "For the Publishing Of Election Totals On The Internet"

I am posting it to some EI lists for three reasons.

1) While the proposal was specific to California law, the concept can be
applied anywhere. Detailed precinct reports list how many votes each
candidate got in each precinct. It should be "easy" to copy those reports
and post on the Internet on election night in a format that could be used
for analyis by computer for review by anybody. The objective is to check
the totals calculated by the tabulators. Other states can be doing this too.
http://www.countedascast.com/california/electiondataoninternet15151.php

2) A comment was made to me that the structure of the proposal was useful
to have. It had been suggested to me by a legislative aide. Here it is:

o The Problem
o How This Bill Addresses The Problem
o Costs
o Benefits
o Existing California Elections Code
[These are the exact changes. Additions are underlined. Deletions 'struck thru')
o Related California Elections Code

In terms of strategy, you should be aware that California is getting ever more
broke and broken. Any proposal to spend one more dollar of taxpayer money
was going to go nowhere. So we found a section of the code that already
required counties to report to the SoS on election night, and rewrote that,
to simply change the format of the reports.

3) Results - We got to within 2 days of a deadline of having the proposal
submitted as a bill in the legislature. There were still, however,
cost issues, so it didn't make it. For lobbying, two of us spent two days
in Sacramento, talking to legislative aides until we found sympathic
ears. Some of the aides were calling the office of the SoS about it, which
helped us get a meeting with high level staff. I learned recently that
Secretary Bowen is now implementing this on a county-voluntary basis.
I hope the idea spreads.

We are now exploring the concept of making ballot images available for
public inspection, as done in the Humboldt County Election Transparency Project
(see http://www.humetp.org , www.mitchtrachtenberg.com )
In California, this would have to be county-voluntary, for cost reasons.
But we are trying to figure out how to break down barriers. There are
issues of voter privacy/ballot secrecy that are not fully clear to me yet.
The upside is, as became strikingly clear to me when I was checking the
KPFA /STV election last week, is that it really helps to be able to see all
the (anonymous) ballots and as much detailed data as possible. This
allows you to check the validity of the data, as well as how the votes
were recorded and counted.

Jim Soper

www.CountedAsCast.com