Wow. A courageous and correct stand taken by a DNC politician. Will wonders never cease. Of course, now the GOP courts--enabled by the DNC for reasons which baffle me--will have their say and probably say "Nevermind. We like the unaccountable machines." But let's see what happens...Related: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, author of the horrible voting reform bill that wouldn't reform bill, finds Bowen's findings disturbing but her bill does nothing to address the concerns of the election integrity movement.


from Bradblog:

PAPER BALLOTS FOR CALIFORNIA! - SECRETARY OF STATE ANNOUNCES DE-CERTIFICATION/RE-CERTIFICATION PLANS FOR E-VOTING SYSTEMS

Debra Bowen Announces DRE (Touch-Screen) Machines to be Used Only One Per Polling Place for Disabled Voters with 100% Manual Count of Paper Trails

Dramatic Late Night Press Conference Held at 11:45pm in Sacramento...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Plano, TX, with help from Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us and Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE...

In a dramatic late-night press conference, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified, and then recertified with conditions, all but one voting system used in the state. Her decisions, following her unprecedented, independent "Top-to-Bottom Review" of all certified electronic voting systems, came just under the wire to meet state requirements for changes in voting system certification.

Bowen announced that she will be disallowing the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by the Diebold and Sequoia companies on Election Day, but for one DRE machine per polling place which may be used for disabled voters. The paper trails from votes cast on DREs manufactured by those two companies must be 100% manually counted after Election Day. DREs made by Hart-Intercivic are used in only one California county and will be allowed for use pending security upgrades.

The InkaVote Plus system, distributed by ES&S and used only in Los Angeles County has been decertified and not recertified for use after the company failed to submit the system source code in a timely manner to Bowen's office. LA County is larger than many states, and questions remain at this time as to what voting system they will use in the next election.

As The BRAD BLOG has been reporting in great detail for the past week since the reports were released, the "Top-to-Bottom Review" had found that all Electronic Voting Systems certified in California were easily accessible to hacking. A single machine, the testers discovered, could be easily tampered with by an Election Insider, Voting Machine Company Employee, or other individual in such a way that an entire election could be effected without detection.

The Certification/Recertification documents for each of California's voting systems, including security mitigation procedures and other requirements for use, are now posted on the CA SoS website.

And she expects to be sued. Count on it.

Why couldn't you make this announcement earlier?

I probably could have made the general announcement but wanted to provide you with the [legal] documentation to back it up. We had to take all of the info we got at Monday's hearing, work through all of that, we had some very, very good suggestions and thoughts there, and things came in as late as this morning that we were still going through. "It would not be shocking for us to be sued, so we had some pretty good lawyers..."

Q: "You expect to be sued?"

"It wouldn't be shocking."

Q: Should the prior SOS have done a top-to-bottom review?

Read the whole thing here.