In the name of transparency
James Faulk / The Times-Standard
Article Launched:12/15/2006 04:22:18 AM PST
County pursues project to make ballot images available to all
EUREKA -- Humboldt County may be setting the bar as far as election transparency is concerned.
Humboldt County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Carolyn Crnich is working to develop and implement a system that would have made actual scanned images of every ballot cast in the county's elections available online or on disk.
The program is meant to increase transparency and help to ease people's minds about the election process.
"This is Humboldt County only," said Crnich.
Crnich was in Sacramento last week talking to staff members from Secretary of State Debra Bowen's office about getting the program off the ground. Bowen is looking to help Crnich and her staff get a pilot project ready for the upcoming November special district elections. They're working to put together a request for Proposition 41 funds to pay for equipment -- likely two high-speed scanners.
The ultimate vision is that the ballots could be seen and counted by anyone who has an interest.
"Then they could go about counting it any way they want," said Crnich.
It could allow people who favor hand counts to count ballots themselves and compare the total against the local machine counts, and it could help people developing open-source voting software.
The idea, created by Crnich and Humboldt County elections advocate Kevin Collins, has generated excitement among everyone from statisticians to election observers and bloggers. Even Harry Hursti, who famously hacked Diebold voting machines, has got the bug -- he' s designed software for Humboldt County to count the digital images, thereby generating another vote total for public consumption.
The issue was scheduled to be discussed at the Humboldt County Elections Advisory Committee Thursday.
"It's not off the ground yet, but I'm really excited about it," said Crnich.
A call to Collins was not returned by deadline.