[pfp2006news] Sec of State bungles "Mock Election"

[Kevin Akin]

Margie Akin for Secretary of State
20212 Harvard Way, Riverside CA 92507
(951) 787-0318  margieakin at hotmail.com
For Release 2 November 2006

"The Gang That Can't Count Straight" Strikes Again:
Secretary of State's Office Bungles Student Vote

(Riverside.) Bruce McPherson's office has failed to record votes properly, 
failed to notice that a local election was conducted incorrectly, and failed 
to meet his own deadline for announcing results, according to challenger Dr. 
Margie Akin of the Peace and Freedom Party.  The votes at issue are those 
cast in the California-wide Student Mock Election conducted on October 24, 
but Akin says this is a bad sign for the November 7 General Election.

Speaking to a group of supporters Wednesday night, Akin pointed out that the 
Secretary of State's website promised early last week that the final student 
poll totals would be posted on Friday, October 27.  Only partial results 
were posted then, and more were added on Monday and Tuesday.  As of 
Wednesday no more had been added, but the results were plainly incomplete, 
with under 80,000 votes posted from only 377 of a projected total of 545 
intermediate and high schools.

Akin pointed out that her party was doing well in the poll for a smaller 
party, with about 16% of the vote for both Governor and US Senate. "When we 
checked the school-by-school totals, they made sense, with our Party doing 
quite well in minority areas and working-class neighborhoods, but we found a 
strange anomaly in Santa Ana.  One school had plainly not conducted the 
election properly, or reported results correctly.  And the Secretary of 
State's office failed to catch it."

The mistake, reports Akin, gave Peace and Freedom Party Senate nominee 
Marsha Feinland about one thousand votes too many.  "This school did not 
follow the rules, and only allowed students to vote for Democrats or 
Republicans.  Then the Democrat votes for Senate were reported for Feinland 
instead of Feinstein."  Akin suggests that because the non-partisan rules 
were not followed, that all votes from Villa Fundamental Intermediate School 
be tossed out.  This would lower the percentage for Feinland to 16.52% 
instead of the incorrect 17.55%.  But the mock election percentage for Peace 
and Freedom governor nominee Janice Jordan would rise from 15.69% to 15.95%.

"Because this is a mock election, the faulty vote counting does not threaten 
our democracy.  But if this is a fair sample of the work of the Secretary of 
State, we may have trouble next week," said Akin.  "When McPherson showed in 
February that he could not read the Elections Code, and tried to throw the 
Peace and Freedom Party off the ballot, he worried a lot of people.  We 
forced him to correct that mistake.  But his certification of faulty voting 
machines is a mistake that he refuses to correct, and it may come back to 
haunt us."
             					           *   *   *   *   *