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San Diego's registrar of voters, Deborah Seiler, is suing Secretary of State Bowen because she thinks that auditing extremely close elections is not feasible. Please note that Seiler is a former paid representative for Diebold! Yes, the same voting systems that need to be audited because they have been proven to be unreliable. I sense a conflict of interest here. Do you?
--Bill

Bowen faces vote lawsuit
A post-election audit rule went too far, county claims.
By Jim Sanders - jsanders@sacbee.com | Published 12:00 am PST Thursday, December 20, 2007

Challenging the state's top election official, San Diego County is suing Secretary of State Debra Bowen for allegedly exceeding her authority in cracking down on electronic voting machines.

The suit, filed Tuesday, takes aim at one of many conditions imposed by Bowen after a state-funded study revealed security faults in three voting systems studied.

The suit is not intended to spark new controversy over the reliability and accuracy of electronic voting machines, however.

Deborah Seiler, San Diego registrar of voters, said the Feb. 5 presidential election is not threatened by the suit and that the county specifically is targeting post-election auditing, not security standards for voting systems.

"It's not a fight about whether we get to use electronic voting machines," she said of the civil action filed in San Diego Superior Court.

The suit targets a directive by Bowen that counties using any of four electronic voting systems conduct a manual tally of 10 percent of randomly selected precincts if a contest's margin of victory is less than one-half of 1 percent.

Nearly every California county is subject to the post-election tally, because it applies to local governments that use Premier, Sequoia, Hart or ES&S electronic voting systems.

The expanded auditing requirement is meant to guard against the possibility of machine error, but San Diego's suit claims that Bowen exceeded her authority and infringed upon legislative policymaking by issuing the order.

"We're objecting based on the fact that it didn't go through the Legislature, it didn't go through any kind of regulatory process, and it isn't really a workable plan," Seiler said.

Bowen, in a letter to San Diego officials last week, declined to rescind the manual tally requirement and said the state Elections Code grants her the right to review, approve and place conditions upon the use of electronic voting systems.

Nicole Winger, Bowen's spokeswoman, said the state intends to contest the suit.

"California law is very clear about the secretary of state's authority," she said.

Bowen, in her successful 2006 campaign, vowed to carefully scrutinize electronic voting machines for accuracy and to ensure that they can't be easily tampered.

San Diego's suit claims the recount requirement is excessive, could force the reassignment of scarce resources, and potentially could prevent the county from fulfilling its legal duty to complete an election canvass within 28 days.

"Failure to timely complete the official canvass would prevent Bowen from certifying California's election results," the suit said.

Taxpayers potentially could be left holding the bag for such a tally if manufacturers balk at Bowen's directive that they pick up the tab, Seiler said.

Stephen Weir, Contra Costa County registrar and president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said he agrees with the lawsuit's claims.

Weir said "it's not necessarily a bad idea" to require additional post-election auditing, but he thinks Bowen went too far.

"I believe that (Bowen) has entered a field that's been pre-empted by the Legislature – and the Legislature should be asked to address that," he said.

Winger countered that Bowen did not unilaterally develop the requirement.

"This has been a collaborative process over the last several months with all of the counties," she said. "I'll leave it at that."

San Diego seeks a court order that it not be forced to comply with Bowen's audit order.

Other counties are not a party to the lawsuit but conceivably could be affected by its outcome.