Volunteers sought to monitor election

By: CHRIS BAGLEY - Staff Writer | Sunday, May 7, 2006 12:12 AM PDT ∞

A group whose members have been skeptical of Riverside County's touch-screen voting machines is launching an election-monitoring project to help minimize what they see as security risks in the voting and vote-counting processes.

Tom Courbat, a former county employee and a leader of the project, said volunteers will receive two hours of training in election monitoring and will be needed for about four hours each on election day. The project's name ---- "Save R Vote" ---- is an acronym for "Secure And Verifiable Elections Require Voter Observation of Touchscreen Equipment."

In most parts of the county residents, voters will be using the new touch-screen system for the first time. The system is similar to the one the county has used since 2000, but each machine now includes a printer that creates a paper record of each vote.

The paper records, intended to be used for any manual recounts, have been widely heralded as a crucial backup for the electronic machines, which critics have charged are vulnerable to fraud attempts. Members of Courbat's group say they're not convinced the new system is totally secure, but they also say volunteer monitors can help ensure that computer hackers don't gain access the vote-counting system, for example by inserting uncertified software into one or more of the voting machines.

The project is being organized by the Temecula Valley chapter of Democracy for America, a national group founded by Howard Dean, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2004. Members of the local chapter describe their election-monitoring efforts as nonpartisan, and Courbat said 30 people ---- members of all political parties ---- have signed up.

The monitoring project will run parallel to a panel of observers drawn from all political parties.

Volunteers in Courbat's group plan to monitor several stages of the elections process, including some of the testing of individual voting machines, which is scheduled to begin this week.

For more information, contact Jerry or Maxine Ewig at (951) 694-6582 or jewig71441@aol.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, e-mail addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. Attempts to misrepresent your identity or impersonate any person will not be approved. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.