[CAVO] Filing of complaint in Ohio

[Brent Turner]

A recent complaint filed by Hillary's legal team in Ohio  - with our note
to the team below--



Here's the filing-
http://www.dispatch.com/content/downloads/2015/05/Filed_Complaint.pdf



Our note-



Dear Ohio Organizing Collaborative and Associated Counsel :



The California Association of Voting Officials is interested to see your
efforts toward best voting practices in Ohio  These efforts toward the
curtailment of " front end " disenfranchisement are valid and will
hopefully result in the betterment of current procedures.



We are interested in imparting further information regarding " back end "
disenfranchisement for your consideration and inclusion . This information
recognizes that certain practices regarding " front end "
disenfranchisement ( voter suppression etc ) can co-exist with the
possibility of " back end" disenfranchisement resulting from irregular and
possibly incorrect vote tabulation procedures.



Currently the voting systems in Ohio and all other US jurisdictions operate
on privately owned proprietary software that is not subject to appropriate
oversight or regulation  This vendor owned tabulation/ system software
commonly operates upon a Microsoft platform. These systems have been found
to be inappropriately insecure by government study.



http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting-systems/oversight/top-bottom-review/



The lax security inherent to the current voting tabulation systems allows
for a lack of certainty regarding the proper enfranchisement of the voting
public.  Those allowed to vote may in fact not have their votes counted, or
those votes may be counted incorrectly. We believe this " back-end"
disenfranchisement issue is appropriate for inclusion in your current
filings.



This issue has become apparent and obvious in many disputed elections
including Bush v Kerry 2004.  Also, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, along
with Dennis Kucinich and others, encountered this issue in the New
Hampshire primaries of 2008.



There has been volumes of research written to support the existence of this
problem, but solution has been difficult due to issues  attributed to
"political will". To further efforts toward solution, the California
Association of Voting Officials ( CAVO ) was formed as a vehicle to put
forward best practices for voting systems and tabulation, specifically
toward open source ( General Public License ) voting systems.



www.cavo-us.org



In California - then Senator now secretary of State Alex Padilla authored
SB-360 which allows California to " opt-out" of the current " broken"
federal certification process and for the state to self certify open source
software voting systems.  The CAVO plan is to have counties pool resources
and have certified a proper voting system which can then be used as a
blue-print for jurisdictions nationally.  Though we are still in the battle
vs Microsoft and the intellectual property lobbyist community, there are
gains being made and hopefully more to come.



http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB360



In closing, we have briefed all layers involved.. from counties and states
to NIST.. the EAC..The DOJ-  The White House Office of Science and Tech
Policy and many state and fed  office holders. Our hope is to see a day
when the election process is made appropriate, and we hope to be a part of
your efforts to that end.



Please let us know if we can be helpful in your efforts.



Best regards,



Brent Turner



CAVO Secretary



650-726-1133
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