Humboldt County, CA Chooses Vote PAD Paper Ballot System

["Joe Pezzillo" <jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Eat your Hart out Boulder County!

The VotePAD is a HAVA-compliant yet low-tech voting system that uses  
paper ballots, a variety of accessibility options and a privacy  
sleeve to protect the secrecy of the voter's ballot during any needed  
ballot handling as part of the casting process, getting around what  
is apparently the only stated objection to the AutoMark system in  
Colorado, despite these devices Federal certification and use in  
other states.

"Humboldt County, CA County Clerk Chooses Vote Pad"

http://www.co.humboldt.ca.us/board/agenda/questys/MG92450/AS92496/ 
AI95815/DO95960/BOSAgendaItem.pdf

[ alt url: http://tinyurl.com/zsmh3 ]

The conculsion recommends "that the Board of Supervisors approve the  
purchase of the VotePad system for use in each polling place by  
disabled voters; That the Board of Supervisors approve the transfer  
of $213,980 (base price $199,515 plus sales tax) from reserve for  
contingencies to department 140 for the purchase of the VotePad  
system. These funds may be reimbursed by HAVA funds as they are  
directly related to the accessibility issues addressed by HAVA."

Apparently the Clerk there really likes it, they changed their minds  
and decided not to buy the Diebold touch screens (right up to the  
last minute, too):

http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2006/03/vote-pad-demo-well-received-in.html

[alt url: http://tinyurl.com/qqt43 ]

(note the local citizen journalism!!!)

And, guess what, they're far less expensive to purchase by a long shot!

They're going to outfit the county's 80 precincts for $200K, that  
sounds like $2500 per precinct to me.

At that price, our 250 precincts would cost $625,000 one-time to  
outfit. Plus, "these supplies should last for several years with  
virtually no maintenance costs and only nominal replacement fees."

Wouldn't it be worth a potential savings of a couple hundred thousand  
dollars for Boulder County to investigate how to get this device  
certified ASAP, not to mention that it meets the citizen's  
requirements for paper ballots?

Check out the VotePAD and the AutoMark and see what we're missing out  
on because our elections officials won't advocate for all voter's  
fundamental rights and trustworthy elections in which we can have  
confidence:

http://www.vote-pad.us/

http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html


Joe

Joe Pezzillo
PO Box J
Boulder, CO 80306 USA
jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx
303-938-8850