UPDATE: SoS Now Claims They've 'Abandoned' Previous Procedures, but --- in Yet Another Apparent Violation of State Law --- Have Failed to Issue Any New Ones!
By Brad Friedman on 7/9/2006, 1:56pm PT  

From BlackBoxVoting.org yesterday...

the California document called "Procedures for Approving, Certifying, Reviewing, Modifying and Decertifying Voting Systems" has disappeared from the secretary of state's Web site --- a remarkable coincidence, since many citizens are looking for it.

They want to know how it is that the Secretary of State can claim procedures were followed, given the sorry state of security and accuracy in many of the voting systems now being used in California.

See the BBV link for more details, and a "found copy" of the document via Archive.org.

According to Joseph Holder, the lead plaintiff in the VoterAction.org lawsuit against the State of California to halt the use and purchase of Diebold touch-screen voting machines, "Within the last month the link was still there and working."

But now it's gone. Go figure.

BBV sends the following update this morning...

We've posted an update. (1) Sec. State claiming they've abandoned the Procedures (2) In California, it's illegal to abandon or modify regulations without public hearings etc (3) Therefore Sec. State appears to be claiming that the Admin Procedures present in both [former Secretaries of State] Bill Jones and Kevin Shelley's tenure were "drafts" and somehow not "real" --- but the law says they have to create regs then, and the creation of regs requires...you guessed it, public notice, public involvement, public comment.

[Current Secretary of State, Bruce] McPherson's been in office for a year and a half and has created no regs. Do they exist or not? If so, why aren't they following them and if not, can they support the claim that the Procedures in place were "drafts" and "not real" and if hat's the case, why haven't they created new ones as they are required to do?

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