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LAKE COUNTY – On Aug. 3, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decided to decertify and recertify – with additional security measures – the Hart InterCivic eSlate electronic voting machines used by Lake County and several other counties.
As Lake County News reported Tuesday, Bowen's decision requires Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley to work with Hart InterCivic in order to create a plan to address the security concerns Bowen said her review found.
State Chief Deputy Secretary of State Evan Goldberg told Lake County News that the review looked at electronic voting machines and optical scan systems.
State law requires Secretary of State Debra Bowen to review voting systems, and she may do so at any time, said Goldberg.
So, why review the systems when they already had been certified previously by the federal government and previous secretaries of state?
“They were put through a review process but the review process never included security,” said Goldberg – either on the state or federal levels.
Bowen initially wanted to include eight voting systems in the review, but those machines not being used in the 2008 election were allowed to opt out, and the time frame and resources available also limited the study's scope.
“That's why it wound up there were only three systems that were reviewed,” he said.
Bowen's effort included a team of researchers – called the “Red Team” – from the University of California, Davis. A 14-page overview report from the team's principle investigator, Matt Bishop, stated that the team's specific goal was to identify and document how the systems might be vulnerable to tampering or error that could result in critical election data being altered.
The team considered several questions, said Bishop, including what the systems are required to do, who might threaten the systems, the environment in which the systems are used. They did not, however, evaluate the likelihood of any attack being feasible, but only described the conditions a hacker would need to be successful.
The team was split into two teams, one of which – led by Robert P. Abbott and based at the Secretary of State's Sacramento office – looked at the Hart eSlate system, which Lake County uses, and the Diebold system.
The team found that the eSlate's mobile ballot box could be altered during an election, and that post-election safeguards to prevent data from a tampered mobile ballot box from being counted “can be easily bypassed.”
Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley last year purchased 50 Hart InterCivic eSlate voting machines, one for each of Lake County's polling places.
Fridley said the mobile ballot box is secured in a judge's booth controller unit by a serial-numbered, tamper-proof lock. The number is recorded when it's issued and is confirmed when it's returned to the Elections Office. Elections Office staff removes the lock when the votes are downloaded to be counted during the official canvass.
They also found they could remotely capture the audio from a voting session on an eSlate with audio enabled, which would violate the voter's privacy, the report stated. In addition, the machines could be forced to accept multiple bar codes which could lead to erroneous vote totals.
Fridley said she has e-mailed Hart and they are looking into the concerns about capturing audio.
Regarding the eSlate machines, Goldberg explained, “The Hart System was deemed to be less vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks than the Diebold or Sequoia system.”
Counties like Lake that use the Hart machines must meet several conditions to guarantee security, and must submit a plan to the state within 45 days of Bowen's decision.
Of the state's 58 counties, 37 have only one voting machine per polling location, as in Lake County's case, said Goldberg. It's the 21 other counties, some of which have multiple machines per polling place, that will face the most change.
Elections official concerned about study
Steve Weir, president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials, told Lake County News that he's a healthy skeptic of electronic voting machines and that he welcomed a tough review of them.
But Weir said he was concerned with how Bowen conducted the review, beginning on March 22, when she gave county elections officials only six days to respond to the draft standards she proposed to use for the process.
Normally, according to state administrative code, such information needs to be in print for a month; Weir said that rule can be waived but only in extraordinary circumstances.
Goldberg responded that there is no legal requirement for the secretary to provide county elections officials a comment period, but that she did so anyway, although it was very short due to her “desire to get the review started as rapidly as possible.”
And, Goldberg added, Bowen didn't release her final criteria until May 9, which was because she had given elections officials more time to respond.
“She wanted to make the review process as open and transparent as possible,” said Goldberg. “I think she wishes the period could have been longer, and act it did turn out to be longer.”
Weir said Bowen again gave officials only days to respond when her initial reports on the review were released late in July. He said she released them on the afternoon of Friday, July 27, when hearings were scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, July 30. On Aug. 3 she released her final decision, when he said actually had until Aug. 6 to do so under his interpretation of election code.
Three things about Bowen's study bother Weir. First, he said, she should have stated definitively that the machines included no “malicious code” and hadn't actually been tampered with in a real-world voting situation. Bowen could have settled that debate but didn't, said Weir.
Weir said he liked the idea of having the machines put through a tough test. “I like the idea of seeing my system tested against standards, and I mean really tested,” adding that he has a “healthy skepticism” of the voting machine vendors.
But his second issue with the process is that he said Bowen didn't have a protocol in place for the tests to penetrate the systems' defenses, which the National Institute of Standards and Testing had suggested was necessary.
He said the machines' defenses weren't tested, which he said was “patently unfair.”
His third concern is for the accessibility issue. By saying the machines had problems but were good enough to serve the disabled only “sent a terrible signal to the accessibility community” that they're separate and not really equal.
The need for voting accessibility, and Florida's voting issues during the 2000 election “landed us where we are today,” said Weir about electronic voting.
In the end, he said he believes Bowen simply ran out of time, with the California primary's deadline being moved up four months to February 2008.
At some point in the future, Bowen wants to review all systems, said Goldberg, although there's no time frame set up to do so at this point.
States including Ohio, Kentucky and New Jersey are now beginning similar voting machine reviews, said Goldberg. New Mexico and Florida already have banned the machines due to security concerns.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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“I know it affects us, but I don't know everything that affects us just yet,” said Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley.
Fridley said that Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Aug. 3 decision included Hart InterCivic's eSlate voting system, which Lake County uses.
Bowen withdrew approval for the Hart InterCivic system, then reissued a conditional approval, which will require additional security measures, according to Bowen's office.
The InterCivic system “will be required to comply with increased security and post-election auditing procedures,” a statement from Bowen's office explained.
Besides Lake, counties using eSlate include Humboldt, Orange, Madera, San Mateo, Sonoma and Yolo, according to the Secretary of State's office.
Bowen's office reported that direct recording electronic voting systems manufactured by Diebold and Sequoia also were decertified.
In the case of the InkaVote Plus system by Election Systems and Software, the company didn't submit information that would allow its system to be reviewed, according to the Secretary of State's office. That system was decertified and the company has since submitted the requested documents.
County purchases machines to meet federal law
The federal Help America Vote Act required counties to purchase the voting machines in an effort to comply with disability access requirements, said Fridley. The act requires at least one such machine at each polling place.
In accordance with that, in 2006 the county purchased 50 eSlate machines, one for each county polling place, at a cost of $567,910.67, said Fridley. That figure didn't include additional necessary equipment, such as a laptop computer.
Proposition 41 funds – in the amount of $321,390.02 – helped the county pay for the eSlate system, said Fridley. She is asking for reimbursement for the remainder of the costs from the Help America Vote Act, a lengthy and difficult process, she added.
She said she chose the eSlate system because she believed it was the most user-friendly.
Fridley said the electronic voting system was used for the first time in the June 2006 election.
In the system's most recent use in November, 53 votes were cast countywide using eSlate, said Fridley, out of 19,575 total votes cast. Fridley said out of 20 polling place sites, 11 machines were used and 9 weren't; not all of the machines were utilized in the November election.
Most of Lake County's votes were cast by absentee ballot, 10,316 to be exact, said Fridley.
With so many people switching to absentee voting, why the need for voting machines?
Fridley said not all states have allowed permanent absentee voting as California has.
System has paper backups
Lake County has a blended voting system, said Fridley, which includes not just the eSlate but the paper-based optical scan Mark-A-Vote, used since 1983.
Only Sonoma, Madera and Lake counties have that “blended system,” where the votes that are cast on the eSlates are actually duplicated on the Mark-A-Vote ballots, said Fridley.
Money had been available for Lake County to go to a completely electronic system, but Fridley said, “I'm glad we didn't,” in light of these recent problems and because of the fact that, if the county had needed to completely upgrade due to decertification, money might have been available for that effort.
Lake County uses a complicated auditing processing of checking eSlate paper receipts against the system's audit trail, Fridley said. A two-person auditing board then creates a Mark-A-Vote paper ballot record which is counted and tallied along with the official ballots. The backup will be the paper receipt off the eSlate along with the records from the mobile ballot box.
Some counties have an entirely electronic system, including audits and optical scans. “We do have issues but not as many as those counties that have the total package,” said Fridley.
Fridley said her office is working with Hart to come up with a plan to meet Bowen's requirements for security and auditing. She said many of the security requirements have been in place since the eSlates were used in June 2006.
An Aug. 4 statement from Hart InterCivic said Bowen's assessment was not a realistic risk assessment.
“Putting isolated technology in the hands of computer experts in order to engage in unrestricted, calculated, advanced and malicious attacks is highly improbably in a real-world election,” the Texas company's statement read.
Hart InterCivic said it will work to meet Bowen's requirements, and that it is continuing to improve the security and technology of its machines, which are used in thousands of jurisdictions across 11 states.
Fridley said she spoke with Hart representatives on Aug. 9, and said a working group composed of representatives from counties and cities that use the machines will meet to discuss the security procedures that Bowen is requiring.
Lake and Madera will actually be represented by an elections official from Sonoma County, said Fridley, because those three counties use the same blended voting system and have the same concerns.
Fridley said she doesn't foresee having to buy new machines. “As long as we meet the security issues we shouldn't have a problem.”
In June, Bowen announced she was forming a Post-Election Audit Standards Working Group to review security and reliability of the state's voting systems, and decide if post-election audit standards needed to be strengthened.
At the same time, Bowen launched a “top-to-bottom review” of voting systems currently certified for use in California elections, according to her office.
Bowen didn't specifically look at blended systems like Lake's, said Fridley.
Fridley also voiced her concern that the systems were tested in a lab, not a real-world scenario, and that Bowen's criteria for the review “was pretty broad and not very specific.”
Tomorrow, the state chief deputy secretary of state discusses the reasons the review was necessary; the president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials explains his concerns about the review protocols.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Alterra resident Tyler Elsa said he looked across the street and saw smoke coming from a field behind residences on the north side of Alterra Saturday afternoon.
Neighborhood residents, still shaken up by a fire that broke out in the area on June 23, grabbed shovels and buckets of water to try to contain the fire.
Elsa said he called 911 to ask for more help as the fire started burning toward a woman's house. By that time he said the first firefighters already had arrived on scene.
Captain Rick Bergem of Lakeport Fire Protection District said Sunday that the fire call came in about 4:15 p.m. Saturday.
Lakeport sent two engines and a water tender to the fire, said Bergem. In addition, Kelseyville Fire and Northshore Fire's Upper Lake station sent one engine each, with the US Forest Service sending an engine and water tender. About 15 firefighters responded.
Bergem said several neighborhood residents were using garden hoses to keep the fire off the fences lining Alterra.
Alterra Drive's water system has low pressure, said Elsa, which made it difficult to use hoses on the fire.
Firefighters didn't have issues with the neighborhood's low water pressure thanks to the water tenders, said Bergem.
The fire burned a pumphouse, partially damaged the garage of a home on Wright Lane and scorched about two acres of grass in an adjacent field and got into some trees in an old walnut orchard in the area, Bergem said. No other structures were in immediate danger.
Firefighters were at the scene until 6:30 p.m. mopping up, said Bergem.
Elsa said his neighbors' fast action was responsible for stopping the fire from doing more damage. Even children were out working to stop the fire, said Elsa.
The fire's cause is still under investigation, although it appears to have started in the field next to the homes, said Bergem. The field had been mowed but some cut grass hadn't been removed.
The June 23 fire on Alterra was caused by a man who was mowing a lot in the heat of the day, sparking the fire, adjacent to the neighborhood of about 30 homes.
That fire caused several homes to be evacuated while 36 firefighters from Lakeport, Northshore, Kelseyville, Lake County Fire Protection, the Forest Service and Cal Fire fought the blaze with 10 engines and air tankers, according to a report from Lakeport Fire Chief Ken Wells.
The 4.5-acre blaze destroyed a barn, one family's playhouse, neighborhood fences and some junker vehicles, as Lake County News previously reported.
Local and state fire officials have reported that equipment such as mowers are a leading cause of fires during the summer fire season.
Bergem said the fire season for Lakeport Fire has been “pretty quiet,” with a lot of little incidents but no major fires so far.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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Leading experts in all things sustainable, green and organic will be on hand Aug. 18 and 19 at the Solar Living Institute in Hopland to answer questions and give workshops with hands-on demonstrations.
In addition to the workshops, over 150 exhibitors will be showcasing the latest in energy and fuel-saving technology and products.
While you’re browsing the exhibits and attending workshops getting inspired about what you could incorporate into your life and home, you can sample tasty organic foods, beer and wine as well as listen to world-class music and entertainment.
District 3 Supervisor Denise Rushing believes events like SolFest are important for Lake County residents to attend.
“We have a great deal of work to do to create a healthy relationship with this place in which we all live,” Rushing said. “That work starts with imagining what is possible.”
Rushing believes in sustainability so much that for the last year, Massey Burke, a Solar Living Institute instructor who specializes in natural building and permaculture education, has been leading workshops on Rushing’s organic walnut farm to construct a straw bale and cob cottage where some Lake County residents are learning what natural building is all about.
“At Solfest, we can learn and share: we learn what others are creating and share information and great ideas including ways to harness energy from the sun, natural building materials and methods, ways to restore damaged lands and waters, and ways we can sustain our own spirit and joy in the work ahead,” Rushing said.
Speakers and entertainers at this years’ event include world-renowned author Alice Walker, legendary songwriter and guitar wizard Bruce Cockburn, singer and songwriter Dar Williams and even the Big Tadoo Puppet Show that will ride into Hopland in their bus fueled by vegetable oil.
“One of the most exciting elements of SolFest is the opportunity to attend over 60 workshops related to almost every aspect of sustainability,” said Lindsay Dailey, workshop director for the Solar Living Institute. “From business opportunities in solar to green burials to international community-building.”
There are workshops on how to drought-proof your land, home wetland/gray water systems, natural building, the future of food, permaculture, pumping water with wind power and much more.
“There will be experts traveling from around the country to share their expertise in our six workshop tents,” Dailey said, “and we invite the local community to partake in this unique educational opportunity.”
For more information, visit the following sites.
Denise Rushing’s cottage in progress:
www.lakefuture.org/2007/08/solfest-and-natural-building.html
Schedule for SolFest:
www.solarliving.org/pdf/SolFest2007CompleteSchedule.pdf
Solar Living Institute:
www.solarliving.org/default.asp
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LUCERNE – As concerns begin to mount about potential new rate increases for Lucerne's water system, two groups who focus on the town's water issues will host a community meeting this week.
Lucerne residents will meet Saturday, Aug. 18, to discuss the latest rate increase requested by California water service (CWS). The meeting will be at the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, country club Drive at 10th Ave., at 12:30 p.m.
Lucerne Community Water Organization and LucerneFLOW sponsor the meeting. They offer a 50-percent rebate on breakfast at the senior center to those who attend the meeting. Breakfast is served from 8 a.m. to noon and costs $6. Both organizations will open nominations for new members of their boards of directors. Elections will be in September.
The current application from CWS affects several other of their water districts in California, including Chico, Salinas, East Los Angeles, Livermore, Los Altos, Mid-Peninsula, Stockton and Visalia, with requested increases ranging from 21.3 percent in Lucerne to 49 percent in Chico.
The company serves about 500,000 customers in California and has districts in New Mexico, Washington State and Hawaii.
The CPUC public advisor's office said this week that organizations or individuals which wish to intervene in the case must file a notice of intent within 30 days of the CPUC pre-hearing conference, which has not yet been scheduled.
The company said the current request is necessary because the California public utilities commission (CPUC) is attempting to streamline its process, and the next general rate increase will not be filed until July 1, 2009, with rates agreed on from that filing to be effective Jan. 1, 2011 or later.
The purpose of the current filing is to pass on to the rate payers centralized services costs in 2008 but delay the next general rate increase until January 1, 2011. Cal Water filed a General Rate Case for the Redwood Valley District's Lucerne system in August 2005, which resulted in a 121-percent rate increase that became effective in August 2006.
Because of discounts negotiated when attorney Steve Elias intervened before the CPUC on behalf of Lucerne, most ratepayers saw increases of about 65 percent. The company had asked for a 246-percent general increase.
Centralized services costs include payroll, benefits (including employee health care and pension costs), taxes, transportation/fuel, and facilities maintenance that are common to all operating areas.
In contrast, the General Rate Case review examines local costs specific to each district, such as local operation and maintenance expenses, plus a reasonable return to the company and its stockholders for the investments in infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, main replacements, wells, and storage tanks.
On Aug. 1, the San Jose corporation announced its second quarter 2007 financial results and declared its 251st consecutive quarterly dividend. The dividend per common share is $0.37, compared with $.31 per common share in the second quarter of 2006. Net income was reported at $7.7 million, up from $5.7 million for the second quarter of 2006.
Revenues increased by $14.7 million, or 18%, to $95.8 million, attributed to a $9.9 million increase in water sales to existing customers, a $4 million increase in rates, and $0.8 million in sales to new customers.
See the full release at http://ir.calwatergroup.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=108851&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1035455&highlight=.
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Eric Hoffmann is battalion chief for fire prevention in the Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit, which also covers Solano, Colusa and Yolo counties.
Hoffmann investigates the causes of fires throughout the unit. He gave a report on the causes for the July fires.
– July 28: A fire that originated at the back of Robinson Rancheria's property burned 128 acres as it moved up into the hills and in the direction of Nice. A few small sheds were destroyed but no major structures were in danger, and no injuries were reported.
The blaze's cause, said Hoffmann, was children with matches.
Because of the circumstances, Cal Fire is putting together a package to bill the parents of the child responsible, although he said they haven't determined the specific child.
The fire required extensive use of aircraft, including four air tankers for the space of a few hours, and three helicopters throughout the fire's duration. Although the fire was contained that same day, firefighters remained on the scene until Monday to put out hot spots.
Hoffmann estimated the cost would be over $50,000. “We don't even have an estimate right now.”
Children playing with fire cause about 1 percent of the fires Cal Fire deals with every year, said Hoffmann. Locally, he added, the percentage of playing with fire cases is slightly higher.
Cal Fire's fire prevention specialists train on how to deal with juvenile fire setters, said Hoffmann. They have a special program geared toward children ages 6 through 11, which is intended to educate them about the dangers of fire and playing with matches.
Hoffmann said for more of those younger children, fire is an object of curiosity. By the time the children hit their early teens, their fascination with fire can cross the line into reckless fire starts.
The program has been successful, said Hoffmann; he said a veteran fire specialist reported she never had a child go through the program who was a repeat offender.
– July 16: A fire that ignited in the afternoon moved quickly through 100 acres of dry grassland near the Noble Ranch subdivision off of Spruce Grove Road between Lower Lake and Middletown. There were no structures damaged and no injuries.
The tentative cause of the fire was a plastic tarp that blew into a power pole. The tarp caused two lines on the pole to short, Hoffmann said.
The short caused one of the lines to break, Hoffmann explained, and when it hit the ground it ignited the grass.
– On July 14, a fire broke out along Highway 20 in Clearlake Oaks, burning between 15 and 20 acres.
That fire, said Hoffmann, was the only one of the three for which they were unable to find a cause.
Hoffmann said the biggest cause of wildland fires in the Cal Fire unit is a combination of equipment and vehicles, which account for about 30 percent of fires.
Among pieces of equipment, which alone account for a 25 percent of fires, the No. 1 culprit is the lawnmower, especially those heavier mowers made for irrigated lawns, now dry fields, said Hoffmann. Welding, cutting and grinding tools also have caused fires.
Vehicles account for about 12 percent on their own, said Hoffmann, with fires usually starting due to faulty exhaust systems that come in contact with vegetation. That was the case last summer, with fires along Highway 29 near Middletown attributed to a catalytic converter.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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