2004 electronic voting logs sought

By George Bennett

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The 2004 presidential election is history, but the investigation of it continues for some hardy activists.

With a two-man documentary video crew in tow, a leading national critic of electronic voting plunked down a $4,500 advance payment at the Palm Beach County elections office Wednesday for internal logs from voting and tabulating machines used last fall.
The check was handed to new Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson by Bev Harris of Renton, Wash., the founder of the group Black Box Voting.

Harris is in Florida this week as part of her group's ongoing national "fraud audit" of the election.

Anderson said he doesn't know how long it would take to supply the data, which include paper summary tapes from each of the 4,270 touch-screen machines used last fall and log entries from the county's central tabulating system.

Black Box Voting asked for the information in November and filed a lawsuit accusing former Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore of stonewalling the group's public-records request.

At a gathering of Florida elections chiefs in Orlando on Nov. 30, Harris disrupted a tribute to LePore by bursting into a hotel meeting room and "serving" LePore with a copy of the lawsuit while the video crew recorded the event.

The documentary has the working title Votergate, one of the crew members said Wednesday.

LePore's office in December calculated that the information requested by Harris would cost $4,227 for copying and staff time.

Harris said she came up with the $4,500 estimate after additional talks with elections staffers.

Harris said the records should show whether vote totals add up and whether individual voting machines had to be shut down for trouble during Election Day.

Black Box Voting has not ped its lawsuit against the elections office, but Harris said Wednesday that Anderson "seems very cooperative. I'm very certain we're going to get the records."