[CAVO] Election systems and local issues

Sat Nov 12 20:00:46 UTC 2016

To California Association of Voting Officials ("CAVO") 

               (with BCC to some Mendocino County citizens):

I have been working on other legal issues besides our CAVO open source
election systems. Specifically, here in California and Mendocino County, I
have been supporting reasonable and effective cannabis laws. Prop 64 passed!
Personally, "Yeah!"

What I now discover is that our own local Mendocino County election systems
aren't working. We can't tell if votes from local citizens were recorded.
The local voter phone verification system also is dead so we can't even
verify that our votes were received. I'm sure it wasn't just cannabis votes
that are uncounted! Maybe our president-elect's votes were miscounted too!

Politics is both local and national. Voting is both local and national. See
my "local" email copied below, below which I copy some local complaints
about the cannabis votes of "small rural farmers" who must vote by mail.

I am copying this email in BCC to our Board of Supervisors, County
Executive, County Assessor Clerk Recorder, and the local County Counsel. If
we don't keep complaining to them they might think we don't care about
voting.

/Larry 

Regardless of voter choices, I am a zealot for accurate and complete vote
counts. I serve on the board of the California Association of Voting
Officials ("CAVO"). This is some of what I spend my time doing as an
attorney when I am not agitating for reasonable cannabis laws. What I read
here bothers me!

I have previously written to our Board of Supervisors, County Executive,
County Assessor-Clerk Recorder, and the County Counsel about electronic
voting systems that will solve these citizen rights issues. I advised them
specifically that the California Secretary of State, as well as San
Francisco and Los Angeles counties, are already funding open source voting
software that we can eventually use to solve our own Mendocino County
problems.

They have completely ignored my emails. Typical!

Should this issue become my new pro bono Mendocino County legal effort now
that the cannabis issues here are "settled"? Can I help ensure that our
votes count?

/Larry

***********

From: Genine Coleman
Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2016 10:21 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: check on your ballot for AF

Indeed. I called both numbers. Same experience. 

This is yet another component of Mendocino County voter disenfranchisement,
along with the fact that there are only a little over 30 polling stations
open for one of the geographically largest counties in Ca, forcing our rural
voting population to vote by mail. Of 51,000 registered voters, 40,000
requested vote by mail ballots! 

Then there is the press and even one of our electeds, 3rd district
supervisor John McCowan incorrectly stating publicly that AF has failed by
large margin, having only counted 12k votes that were predominately from
these 30 polling stations, mostly located in towns. 

This is systematic disenfranchisement of the rural voters of Mendocino
County, and who lives in these areas? Growers and AF supporter!

What are we going to do about this? Who wants to step up and be a voter
observer while they count our County's precious 2/3 of remaining votes?!?!

Lets flood the County Assessor-Clerk Recorder's office with calls and let
them know their phone numbers to check absentee ballot status are dead, and
we demand they fix the problem! 707-234-6800

Genine Coleman

BrainBloom Cannabis Education & Advocacy 

Measure AF Campaign Coordinator

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 12, 2016, at 9:52 AM, Mary Pat Palmer wrote:

Note: 

Called both of these at 8 AM. No answer for the 234 number - just rang and
rang. The 800 number plus 4371 reached a recording that said the number was
incorrect or disconnected. I'll try again on Monday.
The URL link does work & I used that successfully. ~ Mary Pat

Dear Supporters of Measure AF:

Here are the specific ways we can check on our absentee ballots and also let
them know we are watching:

by email:  http://www.co.mendocino.ca.us/acr/vbm.htm

by phone, or with questions:  "If you have any questions, please call
707-234-6819 or outside Ukiah area call 1-800-992-5441, when prompted,
please enter 4371."

Here's the message I got when I checked mine:  "Ballot for Judith Thilman
has been mailed but not received in return."    I will call. :)

thank you.

jude, for Measure AF

Jude Thilman
BhutanTM/Dragonfly Wellness CenterTM
17851 North Highway 1
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
707.962.0890
Bhutanwellbeing.org <http://Bhutanwellbeing.org> 
Dragonflywellness.org <http://Dragonflywellness.org> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/cavo_lists.opensource.org/attachments/20161112/5ffd0236/attachment.html>