BOE's Election Data Archival Process

In late July/August, 2006, in the midst of election data retention concerns, with the federal 22 month deadline approaching while the Richard Hayes Phillips investigation of 2004 punch card ballots was still proceeding and showing many "anomalies", I asked and became aware of SoS Blackwell's Advisory 2005-04. It supposedly allows BOE's to "transfer" (undefined) electronic election data to CD-ROM (in an undefined process) for non-federal races, after only 60 days after an election - wiping off memory cards, presumably for (vendors' ridiculously high) cost reasons.

Further alarmed, I began to question if the Cuyahoga BOE was going to "transfer", and if so, what and how they would do that - the latter of which, my answerers did not know. I also asked for notice to be posted on their website so the public could witness the process.

Very late Friday 9/22/06/early Saturday a notice popped up on their site for transferring on Sunday 9/24 at 8:30am, a time when many are in church and also a Jewish High Holy Day. Unable to attend because of the latter, I called a videographer to ask if he would go and film for me.

Though he then originally would not share the film, he did tell me about it. After I shared the news with some others, the videographer has been persuaded to release some of it the internet.

The clip here is a portion of the 10/2/06 Cuyahoga board meeting, where I asked them about that "transferring" process. The other video clip shows what really happened on 9/24. This press release issued by ESI and Ed Felton discusses the implications of the BOE's actions.

Compare for yourself - and be shocked by both the process and response.