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IS THE US BECOMING A BANANA REPUBLIC??[/SPAN]
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[SPAN class=raised]July 9th, 2006[/SPAN]
[/DIV][!-- BEGIN POST --] [DIV class=post] [DIV id=post-3045]
[DIV class=ItemHeadline]EXCLUSIVE: Busby/Bilbray Registrar's Office Quotes Three Different Prices for Cost of Hand Count to Voters, Media; No Explanation Given for Disparities!
[DIV class=ItemSubHeadline]Election Integrity Advocates told Hand Count Fees to be $6000/day, While Media told Fees Would be $2000-3000/day
[DIV class=ItemSubSubHeadline]ALSO: No Documents for Ballot Chain of Custody, Machine Audit Logs, 1% Random Audit, as Requested by Hand Count Filing, Have Been Produced by San Diego County Registrar's Office Despite Demand for $6000 Payment Due Tuesday...[/DIV][!-- Print the time the article was posted --][!-- The article content --][!-- [div class="post-content"] --] The San Diego County Registrars office seems to be playing games with the amount they are attempting to charge for the cost of a manual hand count request as filed for accountability in the June 6th Busby/Bilbray U.S. House special election.
As we [A href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3036"]reported originally[/A], the SD County Assistant Registrar of Voters, Tim McNamara, had informed an Election Integrity advocate via email that the cost of such a count was estimated to be "in the range of $110,000 to $130,000 and would take approximately 24 to 30 working days." The total estimated cost would be $6000 per day. (Complete email from McNamara at bottom of this article).
However, a [A href="http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/07/07/news/top_stories/21_12_437_6_06.txt"]story from Friday's North County Times[/A] in San Diego on the manual hand count request (they, inaccurately, call it a "recount request") quotes an estimate from the RoV's office that is less than half that size:
[DIV class=media]Registrar of voters spokesman Mike Workman said that county counsel is now reviewing Jacobson's request for a recount...a process which can cost the requesting party as much as $2,000 to $3,000 a day, Workman said.
Further, SD County Registrar Mikel Haas has FedExed a letter to the requester of the manual hand count, informing her that she must pay $6000 by 3pm this Tuesday, July 11th, to begin the count which he estimates in his letter will to be "between $120,000 and $150,000."
His letter also failed to include responses to numerous documents requested, such as chain of custody logs for ballots and voting machines, any of the audit logs from the machines used on election day, or any of the information requested on precinct voter breakdowns as allowed to the requester by state law ([A href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/code/code.html?sec=elec&codesection=15620-15634"]CA Election Code 15630[/A] and other related sections) before such a hand count can begin.
All three sets of numbers for the fees associated with the count also failed to give any accounting for how the fees to be charged have been set. (Complete letter from Haas is also at the end of this article.)
"I have received no responses to any of my requests for information," Jacobson told us. "Not even any information on the required 1% manual audit that was supposed to have been done prior to the certification."
With three different sets of numbers now given from three different RoV sources, the question arises as to how they come up with such numbers in the first place.
All of the estimates, even the lowest of them, are far higher than similar quotes from other California country Registrars, as we reported previously. The highest of the numbers quoted by Haas come to nearly one dollar per vote, while in Orange County, CA, the registrar is reportedly charging some 14 cents per vote for a similar count.
Why the disparity in all of these numbers? It would be good to know.
Election Reform watchdog organization [A href="http://www.velvetrevolution.us/"]VelvetRevolution.us[/A] has taken up a collection for the costs associated with the entire legal battle over the Busby/Bilbray election. [A href="http://www.velvetrevolution.us/donate.php"]Contributions may be made here[/A].
Meanwhile, Haas seems to be continuing his public misinformation campaign concerning the so-called Diebold voting machine "[A href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2932"]sleepovers[/A]"...
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