Sequoia Bites the Dust in Washington State: Terminated by Visible Voting [View All]

We can now for all practical purposes pronounce the state of Washington DRE-FREE!!! There will be no more DRE computers placed between voters and their ballots to make elections inherently unreliable, unless such "assistance" is really needed by disabled voters.

Sequoia, under pressure from lawsuits as well as political pressure from the (newly Democratic majority) Snohomish County COuncil, finally succumbed to the political pressure in a 3-2 publicly visible roll call vote of the entire County council. Sequoia's machines now will be unused and unusable come September of 2005.

At that point, Snohomish county will no longer have polling place voting, but instead will vote by mail, with regional drop off places for those who don't want to use the mails.

YAKIMA COUNTY, having already ditched their DREs for vote by mail earlier this year, left Snohomish as the only county in the state of Washington with DREs used throughout their polling places (as opposed to being used occasionally for disabled persons' voting).

But now, you can mark Washington state on your map as BLUE and DRE-FREE BABY!!!! Of course, the influence of the Snohomish study and lawsuit is "unknown", except that I know Somers beat Sax to shift the balance of the county council, and Somers doesn't like DREs, so you do the math!

LandShark
"helping to make the nation safe for democracy, one county at a time"

NOTE: I was not at all involved in the county council vote or lobbying regarding it, whether wise or not....

SEE:
HeraldNet: County OKs all-mail voting
Facing high election costs, the Snohomish County Council voted Wednesday to close its polling places and switch to all-mail elections starting in September.
http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/01/05/100loc_a1voti...