Humboldt Co. CA group honored for work on election transparency

Humboldt County Election Transparency Project pioneers Mitch Trachtenberg and Kevin Collins have been given the Award for Excellent Innovations in the Field of Election Transparency and Integrity from the Grace Institute for Election Integrity. The county registrar of voters, Carolyn Crnich, and two officials from neighboring Yolo County were also honored.

The Transparency Project passes every ballot cast in an election through an optical scanner after it's officially counted. Images of the ballots are then placed online along with open-source software created by Trachtenberg that allows viewers to sort and count the ballots as they see fit. Thanks to the project, election officials noticed a discrepancy in Humboldt County's vote count in the November 2008 election and ultimately discovered that almost 200 ballots disappeared from the county's final vote tally. The discovery ultimately led to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's withdrawing the state's approval of the Premier Elections Solution system used during the election.

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