Voting official turns to DA

ALLEGATIONS: County registrar asks the prosecutor to review her critics' complaints.

By MICHAEL CORONADO / The Press-Enterprise

Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in a letter Friday asked District Attorney Grover Trask to investigate whether she violated any laws surrounding the March 2 election.

Townsend said she wanted independently to refute the "groundless and politically motivated innuendo" in news accounts and Web sites that alleged she violated conflict-of-interest laws and exceeded government gift limits and that the county's electronic voting system may have been tampered with.

"I'm confident that it will clear up the misrepresentations that were made to the media," Townsend said by phone. "The media has given such credence to the allegations, and we may have people in the public arena who believe what they read rather than what is fact."

Supporters of the Linda Soubirous campaign this week asked that Townsend be put on paid administrative leave while the Fair Political Practices Commission investigates a complaint filed against her alleging that she didn't file conflict-of-interest statements and exceeded the government's $340 gift limit.

Soubirous formally requested a recount late Friday evening, Townsend said.

County supervisors Bob Buster, John Tavaglione and Roy Wilson called "ludicrous" the suggestion that Townsend and her office somehow participated in vote tampering or violated conflict-of-interest laws.

Allegations of possible vote tampering stem from the days just after the election.

On Friday, Brian Floyd, Soubirous' campaign manager, said after the March 2 elections, a room inside the registrar of voters' office used to tabulate votes was left unsupervised so that anyone could walk in amid the voting machines.

"I witnessed some things that were inappropriate," he said by phone. "In elections, the appearance of impropriety is just as dangerous as true impropriety."

Soubirous lost to incumbent Buster in the March 2 race for 1st District supervisor. In that contest, Buster narrowly avoided a November runoff.

Supervisors said that the thought of the county's voting machines being tinkered with was absurd.

"It's ridiculous," Tavaglione said. "Some of these folks are grabbing at straws. It's very unfortunate that we're seeing some of these tactics."

Activist Bev Harris operates a Web site that acts as a voting watchdog group. She said Friday that she indeed was not present to see any vote tampering. She was quoted as saying she was present in The Los Angeles Times.

Instead, Harris said, Soubirous campaign officials told her about the possible impropriety in an interview she conducted during the filming of a "voting issue" documentary last week in Riverside.

Alfie Charles, a spokesman with Sequoia Voting Systems, said by phone that the company might pursue legal action to set the record straight.

Harris said electronic voting machines aren't error-proof, and their results can be manipulated.

In a statement, Sequoia officials said access to the system is granted only via a user ID and by a password provided to authorized individuals by the county.

The system had not been compromised in any way, and Sequoia officials said the allegations are reckless and unnecessarily shake voter confidence.

In the days after the election, Sequoia employees were onsite in Riverside County to help with post-election activities, such as file backup and the generation of reports, Charles said in a statement.

Townsend said vendor support is provided in every election in each county.

"I resent the fact that such an allegation would be made without any type of basis," she said "It is totally a disservice to the public to infer such misleading statements."

Wilson, the Fourth District supervisor, called the whole thing a disgusting political ploy.

"There are losers. And then there are sore losers," he said.