Category: Open Government
Voting Reliability vs. Convenience
PRI Concerns about e-voting
Voting machine programmer casts doubts on the use of e-voting machines. [audio]
NPR Voting Problems Emerge As Early Ballots Are Cast
While voting has gone smoothly in many areas, some voters have already encountered defective machines.
Wired Voting Groups Want Former Diebold Saleswoman Ousted from San Diego Elections Job

Two voting groups descended on San Diego's board of supervisors today to protest the recent appointment of former Diebold saleswoman, Deborah Seiler, as the county's new registrar of voters. They also want Seiler's new assistant registrar, Michael Vu, ousted due to controversies surrounding his tenure as elections director in Ohio. Vu resigned as elections director from Cuyahoga County, Ohio, last year after two of his staff members were convicted of rigging the 2004 presidential recount and after reports revealed numerous problems with the way elections were administered during his time on the job.
SEDC Copies Encinitas Tactic
VoSD S.E.D.C Won't Produce Documents
On previous occasions, when I have gone to view records requests at SEDC, I have been confronted with documents that have had nothing to do with what I’ve actually asked to view. Instead, SEDC provides me with, literally, thousands of pages of irrelevant documents.
Pacific View and the Naylor Act
UT The future of Pacific View school takes twists and turns
After five years, only now are city leaders talking about the possibility of a park.
Save Email for 5 Years!
HS Treat state e-mail the same as other public documents
The notion that e-mails need to be deleted every two months to keep from clogging a computer's hard drive is absurd, even though State Archivist Susan Shaner claims there is simply too much e-mail to save it all. A North Carolina panel studying that state's e-mail policy has recommended that e-mail messages be stored for at least five years and has endorsed an archive system that would be capable of storing them even longer.
Corporations with archiving systems store hundreds of millions of e-mails for years, according to William Tolson, director of legal solutions for California-based Mimos Systems Inc. "If companies can do it, why can't the government?" he asked the AP.
State Sen. Les Ihara points out that modern technology allows inexpensive storage of e-mails and other computer files. Ihara should follow through with legislation requiring state e-mails to be stored for at least five years.
See Also: More Sunshine in Oakland
Shut Down for Violating Open Gov Standards?

NCT District May Revoke School's Charter
...The district could argue that the alleged charter violations are so serious that the academy should be closed while the appeal works its way through the system, he added. The district has evidence that the school's board members appear to have repeatedly met in violation of the state's open public meeting laws, he said.
An 18-page report issued by the district Thursday states that the school's board "routinely held meetings at times and in locations not noticed to the public, and on more than one occasion deliberately began meetings privately an hour before the district's representative to the (academy's) board was told to arrive."...
Open Meetings/Text Messages
PD No texting for City Council
[excerpt] The new policy is intended to assure the public that officials aren’t being secretly lobbied on critical issues via text messages and to guarantee to those who speak at council meetings that the council has their undivided attention.
Encinitas is in need of a similar policy.
