Here is the full text of the speech delivered by Judy Hess of the CA-50 Action Committee on July 21, 2006.
Hello, and thank you for coming to this Rally to support our rights as voters.
My name is Judy Hess, and I am the Coordinator of the CA 50 Action Committee, an organization formed to respond to the security failures in the June 6 Primary and Special Election in the 50th District of the State of California.
As you may know, members of the CA 50 Action Committee and other voting integrity groups appeared before the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to ask that they have open hearings about those security vulnerabilities. I was not allowed to complete my statement before the Board, and I would like to share it with you now.
I am Judith Hess, Precinct Leader for Precinct # 532870 and Poll Watcher there.
On June 6, 2006, we went to our polling places and filled out the appropriate spaces on our paper ballots, and fed those ballots into the optical scanners. However, it is my belief that none of us actually cast legal votes. Instead, we all engaged in an exercise which looked like voting, and felt like voting, but was not, in fact, and as a matter of law, actual voting.
The reason is this: before our optical scanners and touch screen machines arrived at the polls, they had been technically decertified by the removal, days and weeks before, of these machines from the safekeeping of the Registrar of Voters. They went into homes, garages and cars, and stayed there until the morning of the election. These security breaches rendered them decertified by Federal and State standards.
Moreover, these particular machines—the optical scanners on which almost all of our votes were counted have profound security vulnerabilities.
One person, in one minute, can hack this model, change the results of an entire election and leave NO trace of the hacking.
At my polling place at Olympic View Elementary School in Eastlake Greens, we shared space in the school auditorium with Precinct No. 533120.
My polling place opened promptly and efficiently at 7am. However the optical scanners, ballots and all other equipment needed by Precinct No. 533120 were absent without leave. They remained absent until 11:18 am while a parade of horribles took place.
The person delivering everything could not be found. Pollworkers at the direction of the Registrar of Voters made 3 attempts to meet with the individual who had the equipment—at a Lowe’s parking lot, at an IHOP parking lot, and in front of a 7/11 store directly across the street from Southwestern College, but the poll workers returned to the auditorium, each time empty handed and unhappy. This individual simply did not show up at the rendezvous points. I was told by a poll worker that they understood the Registrar was about to have the police search for her.
Ultimately the machines arrived, and the polls opened a few minutes after noon. But no one can know where they had been, for how long, or what had happened to them.
I submit to you representative photographs of events as I personally recorded them.
I point out that I am a Democrat, but the Precinct on whose behalf I speak today is predominantly Republican. This is an American issue, not a partisan one.
I submit to you that having these voting machines out of the custody of our Registrar and rendered insecure and decertified is a violation of the sanctity of our most fundamental democratic process.
I urge you to investigate these sleepovers, and the entire voting process in San Diego County for November, lest we again engage in what a court of law may later deem a sham exercise.
This story tells us that we need the CA 50 Action Committee.
We have formed to make all of our votes matter. We have formed to call this Registrar to account. We have formed to make sure that this election fiasco cannot happen again, and we are prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to make our voting process secure.
The June 6 Congressional Election in the 50th District was the first in the election cycle of 2006, when we will, as a nation, decide our collective future, in a time of great world peril.
This San Diego County elective process, with hackable machines in homes, cars and who knows where, is no way to start the cycle with 435 House Seats will be on the ballot in November.
Therefore, the CA 50 Action Committee has drawn a line in the sand.
We will make San Diego County an example for the rest of our great nation, and we declare that:
“WE WILL FIGHT THIS BATTLE HERE, SO WE DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT IT ALL OVER THE COUNTRY IN NOVEMBER!”
We are getting real help. Brad Friedman of BRAD BLOG is telling our story, and we are putting it out to the press regularly. National Attention has been drawn to San Diego County and our Election Machine Sleepovers. Lou Dobbs has shown film of the machines in a garage, and found this frightening and unacceptable. Court TV’s Catherine Crier featured the San Diego County Sleepovers in an excellent overview of the election integrity issues. Yesterday, she had Brad, a founding member of CA 50, on her program with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to talk about these election issues.
We will take action. We ask for the support and help of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens—all voters who want our elections to be secure and transparent.
But we need your help. Please go to our website www.nosleepovers.org and join us. There is a Contributions link on our website, and also a store to buy logo merchandise. This fight will be costly. We need your help. All donations are needed and welcome. Please be as generous as you can afford to be.
Our democracy is depending on you.
Thank you.
Hello, and thank you for coming to this Rally to support our rights as voters.
My name is Judy Hess, and I am the Coordinator of the CA 50 Action Committee, an organization formed to respond to the security failures in the June 6 Primary and Special Election in the 50th District of the State of California.
As you may know, members of the CA 50 Action Committee and other voting integrity groups appeared before the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to ask that they have open hearings about those security vulnerabilities. I was not allowed to complete my statement before the Board, and I would like to share it with you now.
I am Judith Hess, Precinct Leader for Precinct # 532870 and Poll Watcher there.
On June 6, 2006, we went to our polling places and filled out the appropriate spaces on our paper ballots, and fed those ballots into the optical scanners. However, it is my belief that none of us actually cast legal votes. Instead, we all engaged in an exercise which looked like voting, and felt like voting, but was not, in fact, and as a matter of law, actual voting.
The reason is this: before our optical scanners and touch screen machines arrived at the polls, they had been technically decertified by the removal, days and weeks before, of these machines from the safekeeping of the Registrar of Voters. They went into homes, garages and cars, and stayed there until the morning of the election. These security breaches rendered them decertified by Federal and State standards.
Moreover, these particular machines—the optical scanners on which almost all of our votes were counted have profound security vulnerabilities.
One person, in one minute, can hack this model, change the results of an entire election and leave NO trace of the hacking.
At my polling place at Olympic View Elementary School in Eastlake Greens, we shared space in the school auditorium with Precinct No. 533120.
My polling place opened promptly and efficiently at 7am. However the optical scanners, ballots and all other equipment needed by Precinct No. 533120 were absent without leave. They remained absent until 11:18 am while a parade of horribles took place.
The person delivering everything could not be found. Pollworkers at the direction of the Registrar of Voters made 3 attempts to meet with the individual who had the equipment—at a Lowe’s parking lot, at an IHOP parking lot, and in front of a 7/11 store directly across the street from Southwestern College, but the poll workers returned to the auditorium, each time empty handed and unhappy. This individual simply did not show up at the rendezvous points. I was told by a poll worker that they understood the Registrar was about to have the police search for her.
Ultimately the machines arrived, and the polls opened a few minutes after noon. But no one can know where they had been, for how long, or what had happened to them.
I submit to you representative photographs of events as I personally recorded them.
I point out that I am a Democrat, but the Precinct on whose behalf I speak today is predominantly Republican. This is an American issue, not a partisan one.
I submit to you that having these voting machines out of the custody of our Registrar and rendered insecure and decertified is a violation of the sanctity of our most fundamental democratic process.
I urge you to investigate these sleepovers, and the entire voting process in San Diego County for November, lest we again engage in what a court of law may later deem a sham exercise.
This story tells us that we need the CA 50 Action Committee.
We have formed to make all of our votes matter. We have formed to call this Registrar to account. We have formed to make sure that this election fiasco cannot happen again, and we are prepared to take whatever legal action is necessary to make our voting process secure.
The June 6 Congressional Election in the 50th District was the first in the election cycle of 2006, when we will, as a nation, decide our collective future, in a time of great world peril.
This San Diego County elective process, with hackable machines in homes, cars and who knows where, is no way to start the cycle with 435 House Seats will be on the ballot in November.
Therefore, the CA 50 Action Committee has drawn a line in the sand.
We will make San Diego County an example for the rest of our great nation, and we declare that:
“WE WILL FIGHT THIS BATTLE HERE, SO WE DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT IT ALL OVER THE COUNTRY IN NOVEMBER!”
We are getting real help. Brad Friedman of BRAD BLOG is telling our story, and we are putting it out to the press regularly. National Attention has been drawn to San Diego County and our Election Machine Sleepovers. Lou Dobbs has shown film of the machines in a garage, and found this frightening and unacceptable. Court TV’s Catherine Crier featured the San Diego County Sleepovers in an excellent overview of the election integrity issues. Yesterday, she had Brad, a founding member of CA 50, on her program with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to talk about these election issues.
We will take action. We ask for the support and help of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens—all voters who want our elections to be secure and transparent.
But we need your help. Please go to our website www.nosleepovers.org and join us. There is a Contributions link on our website, and also a store to buy logo merchandise. This fight will be costly. We need your help. All donations are needed and welcome. Please be as generous as you can afford to be.
Our democracy is depending on you.
Thank you.
posted by Terry at 12:14 PM
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