Citizen Group on Election Meeting Now with Assembly Attorney

I'm at the City Hall listening in a a meeting between the Citizens Group that ponied up the $1500 to pay for the recount of 15 precincts from the April Municipal election.

This post is being written on the fly.  So bear with they typos.  Plus I got to this meeting late because I had a previous meeting so I might have missed something that happened before I go here.  The meeting is still going on. 

People here include  most of the Citizens Group folks,  the Assembly attorney Julia Tucker, the Municipal Clerk-to-be Barb Jones, and two other employees of the clerk’s office who have worked on elections, and two Assembly members - Harriet Drummond and Dick Traini - and a representative of the ACLU.  








The citizens group presented a 110 page report of concerns and recommendations to make future municipal elections more secure.

It will be interesting to compare this report created by volunteers who paid, as a group, $1500 to have the election recounted, to the official report the Muni is paying up to $30,000 for.  I understand the two reports aren't reviewing exactly the same thing.  

There were six different topics identified in newsprint on the wall:

1.  Accuvote issues


2.  Protocols for
    a.  recount
    b.  ballot accountability
    c.  Precinct stamp to track ballots and questioned ballots by precinct
    d.  determining # of ballots by precinct
    e.  Training
    f.   procedure for hand count






3.  Title 28
    a.  ballot accountability report
    b.   determining # of ballots by precinct
    c.   Election worker/trouble shooter training
    d.   28.50.090  suspect qualifications
    e.   % of precincts that should be counted by hand
    f.    Recount - absentee and Questioned ballots 
          28.90.040C  needs to conform and make sense with the code
                 clarify “separate precinct” when they are pooled
4.  Questioned Ballots
    a.  to be counted by precinct or race
    b.  if precinct, then machine count or hand count?
    c.  what is NOT a questioned ballot?
    d.  numbering questioned ballots envelops
    e.  if by precinct, then
        1.  where voted
        2.  where actually reside

5.  Value Issues
    a.  Security, space, organization
    b.  Ballot bag review
    c.  Public observers/Tech for machine programming
    d.  Ballots should be numbered/ not stub only

I must say that the tone in this room is very open and people are listening to each other and asking serious questions about the problems being raised and how to resolve them in the future.   I've got some video which is not comprehensive, but which does give a sense of the tone of the meeting.