Candidates Respond To Hand-Counted Ballot Push

Voter committee asks, Lovelace, others don't answer

Humboldt Sentinel
News 6/2/08
By Sentinel Staff

EUREKA -- Confidence in local candidates varies, at least for members of the Voter Confidence Committee, who released last week the results of their short survey of local candidates.

One question alone dominated their dialogue with candidates for Humboldt County Supervisor, State Assembly and Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee: Do they want our ballots to be hand-counted or tabulated by electronic voting machines?

Fully 40% of the candidates surveyed failed to register any reply with the VCC prior to their release, including supervisorial candidates Lovelace, Clendenen, Vevoda and Smith, as well as Johanna Rodoni, whose late husband Roger remains as a choice on the ballot next Tuesday. Also ignoring the survey was former State Senator Wes Chesbro of Arcata, who is running for the Assembly seat being vacated at the end of this year by Patty Berg.

Those registering support for switching Humboldt County's election system to hand-counted ballots included Arcata Councilmember Paul Pitino and former KMUD radio host Estelle Fennell, who are running for the third and second district supervisorial seats, respectively. Also in favor of hand-counting are Jake Pickering, Richard Marks and Charlene Cutler-Ploss, who are running for the county democratic central committee from the Eureka area.

In their release, the VCC contends that all electronic voting machines used in California can be tampered with, and that a review of the recount results of the January 2008 New Hampshire primary revealed that the same type of equipment used in Humboldt County had an error rate several times higher than hand-counting.