How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
News
The volunteers who are guiding the theater's renaissance are currently gearing up for a major upcoming fundraiser, the second annual Concert Under the Stars on Sept. 8 at Jim Fetzer's Ceago Vinegarden in Nice.
On Monday evening, a small reception was held in the theater lobby, which included a tour of the renovations, for local wineries who are supporting the theater effort. They were able to see improvements including the theater's new heating, ventilation and sprinkler systems.
Donna Peterson, a member of the Soper-Reese Fundraising Committee, said they have open houses for the public about every six weeks or so and invite them in to see the theater's progress.
Peterson, a lifelong Lake County resident, said she is impressed that so many newcomers to the ocunty have such passion about this theater, a place where so many locals went on their first dates many, many years ago.
John Ross, chairman of the Renovation Committee, helped give the tour Monday.
“I was a member of the Clear Lake Performing Arts and we needed a theater – that’s how I got involved,” he said.
Ross and a dedicated cadre of volunteers got the stalled project back off the ground and are beginning to see some progress.
Moving forward has been a matter of putting one step in front of the other, said Ross. But in a short time the group has made remarkable progress.
Construction is taking place in two phases, Ross said. When it's completed, the theater will seat about 380 people.
In addition to theater productions, Ross said they also will show movies that you wouldn't see in local theaters at the Soper-Reese in a digital format.
Mike Adams, a member of the theater's building committee, said the special places in the county – the gazebo in Lakeport, the streetlights in Kelseyville and Lakeport, and now the theater project – build upon one another.
Jim Fetzer of Ceago and Rick Gunier, marketing director of Shannon Ridge Winery, visited the theater to see the work on Monday.
Wineries including Brassfield Estates, Six Sigma, Ceago, Langtry Estate & Vineyards and Shannon Ridge are banding together to help get the theater open, said Ross.
“We need this theater in the community,” said Fetzer.
Gunier agreed. “It's a good project for our entire community.”
Fetzer has supported the effort through hosting the annual fundraiser. “Last year’s event was spectacular and we believe this year’s will be even better,” he said.
Ross said they have high hopes for the fundraiser, which will help them overcome their next big hurdle, which is meeting a challenge to the community from Jim Soper, who has been a major contributor to the effort over the years.
Nina Marino, chair of the theater's fundraising committee, explained the challenge: If the theater's supporters can raise $300,000 from the community, he will donate another $200,000 to the effort. Right now, the group is at the $214,000 mark.
Ross called the community's support to far “impressive,” and also reported that the county gave the theater a $30,000 grant. “That's quite a vote of confidence.”
But they still need those extra funds in order to pay for the theater renovation's second phase.
Ross and Marino both believe the Sept. 8 event at Ceago will get them close to their goal.
Tickets for the event are $100 per person. The evening will feature a gourmet dinner and plenty of great wines from Ceago, Brassfield, Six Sigma, Langtry and Shannon Ridge; and a piano concert under the stars.
And don't forget the music. There will be performances by a string quartet, a harpist and a brass ensemble, as well as offerings of Bolivian and Peruvian music on instruments including flutes, panpipes and guitar.
The event also will feature a silent auction with some special prizes, including lunch with Jim Fetzer at Ceago.
Fetzer credits Ross' leadership with gaining community support for the theater project.
“We’re working it together and we’re having so much fun,” he said.
Tickets are going quickly; to buy yours call Nina Marino, Soper-Reese Fundraising Committee chair, 279-4082.
E-mail Terre Logsdon at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
- Details
- Written by: Lake County News Reports
State Department of Fish and Game Warden Lynette Shimek told Lake County News that three bull tule elk – one massive bull, another large bull and one spike – as well as a doe deer were found shot at about 7 a.m. Saturday.
Hunters in the area witnessed the killings, said Shimek. Each of the animals were found approximately 50 yards apart on private property on the northeast side of Cache Creek.
Shimek said a total of five Fish and Game Wardens – including she and Loren Freeman from Lake County and several others from other areas – were at the site all day Saturday, along with four Lake County Sheriff's deputies, California Highway Patrol officers and the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office Henry 1 helicopter.
Cal Fire also responded, helping recover the bodies of the animals, said Shimek.
“They assisted Fish and Game in processing all of the meat so that none of it would go to waste,” she said, adding that the meat has been donated to charity.
In the case of the tule elk, Shimek said they belong to a protected herd. While there is hunting for the herd, only two tags are issued each year for a hunt in October.
Shimek said that, despite these recent killings, this year's hunt likely will continue. An incredible effort goes into organizing the annual tag drawings, she said, with thousands of people putting in for the hunting permits.
No arrests have been made so far, said Shimek, with the investigation expected to continue over the next several weeks.
“We have several suspects that are going to be questioned in the case,” she said.
Shimek expressed her gratitude to the agencies that assisted Fish and Game in responding to the site of Saturday's poaching and conducting the initial investigation.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:2}
- Details
- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY – On Aug. 3, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen decided to decertify and recertify – with additional security measures – the Hart InterCivic eSlate electronic voting machines used by Lake County and several other counties.
As Lake County News reported Tuesday, Bowen's decision requires Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley to work with Hart InterCivic in order to create a plan to address the security concerns Bowen said her review found.
State Chief Deputy Secretary of State Evan Goldberg told Lake County News that the review looked at electronic voting machines and optical scan systems.
State law requires Secretary of State Debra Bowen to review voting systems, and she may do so at any time, said Goldberg.
So, why review the systems when they already had been certified previously by the federal government and previous secretaries of state?
“They were put through a review process but the review process never included security,” said Goldberg – either on the state or federal levels.
Bowen initially wanted to include eight voting systems in the review, but those machines not being used in the 2008 election were allowed to opt out, and the time frame and resources available also limited the study's scope.
“That's why it wound up there were only three systems that were reviewed,” he said.
Bowen's effort included a team of researchers – called the “Red Team” – from the University of California, Davis. A 14-page overview report from the team's principle investigator, Matt Bishop, stated that the team's specific goal was to identify and document how the systems might be vulnerable to tampering or error that could result in critical election data being altered.
The team considered several questions, said Bishop, including what the systems are required to do, who might threaten the systems, the environment in which the systems are used. They did not, however, evaluate the likelihood of any attack being feasible, but only described the conditions a hacker would need to be successful.
The team was split into two teams, one of which – led by Robert P. Abbott and based at the Secretary of State's Sacramento office – looked at the Hart eSlate system, which Lake County uses, and the Diebold system.
The team found that the eSlate's mobile ballot box could be altered during an election, and that post-election safeguards to prevent data from a tampered mobile ballot box from being counted “can be easily bypassed.”
Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley last year purchased 50 Hart InterCivic eSlate voting machines, one for each of Lake County's polling places.
Fridley said the mobile ballot box is secured in a judge's booth controller unit by a serial-numbered, tamper-proof lock. The number is recorded when it's issued and is confirmed when it's returned to the Elections Office. Elections Office staff removes the lock when the votes are downloaded to be counted during the official canvass.
They also found they could remotely capture the audio from a voting session on an eSlate with audio enabled, which would violate the voter's privacy, the report stated. In addition, the machines could be forced to accept multiple bar codes which could lead to erroneous vote totals.
Fridley said she has e-mailed Hart and they are looking into the concerns about capturing audio.
Regarding the eSlate machines, Goldberg explained, “The Hart System was deemed to be less vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks than the Diebold or Sequoia system.”
Counties like Lake that use the Hart machines must meet several conditions to guarantee security, and must submit a plan to the state within 45 days of Bowen's decision.
Of the state's 58 counties, 37 have only one voting machine per polling location, as in Lake County's case, said Goldberg. It's the 21 other counties, some of which have multiple machines per polling place, that will face the most change.
Elections official concerned about study
Steve Weir, president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials, told Lake County News that he's a healthy skeptic of electronic voting machines and that he welcomed a tough review of them.
But Weir said he was concerned with how Bowen conducted the review, beginning on March 22, when she gave county elections officials only six days to respond to the draft standards she proposed to use for the process.
Normally, according to state administrative code, such information needs to be in print for a month; Weir said that rule can be waived but only in extraordinary circumstances.
Goldberg responded that there is no legal requirement for the secretary to provide county elections officials a comment period, but that she did so anyway, although it was very short due to her “desire to get the review started as rapidly as possible.”
And, Goldberg added, Bowen didn't release her final criteria until May 9, which was because she had given elections officials more time to respond.
“She wanted to make the review process as open and transparent as possible,” said Goldberg. “I think she wishes the period could have been longer, and act it did turn out to be longer.”
Weir said Bowen again gave officials only days to respond when her initial reports on the review were released late in July. He said she released them on the afternoon of Friday, July 27, when hearings were scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday, July 30. On Aug. 3 she released her final decision, when he said actually had until Aug. 6 to do so under his interpretation of election code.
Three things about Bowen's study bother Weir. First, he said, she should have stated definitively that the machines included no “malicious code” and hadn't actually been tampered with in a real-world voting situation. Bowen could have settled that debate but didn't, said Weir.
Weir said he liked the idea of having the machines put through a tough test. “I like the idea of seeing my system tested against standards, and I mean really tested,” adding that he has a “healthy skepticism” of the voting machine vendors.
But his second issue with the process is that he said Bowen didn't have a protocol in place for the tests to penetrate the systems' defenses, which the National Institute of Standards and Testing had suggested was necessary.
He said the machines' defenses weren't tested, which he said was “patently unfair.”
His third concern is for the accessibility issue. By saying the machines had problems but were good enough to serve the disabled only “sent a terrible signal to the accessibility community” that they're separate and not really equal.
The need for voting accessibility, and Florida's voting issues during the 2000 election “landed us where we are today,” said Weir about electronic voting.
In the end, he said he believes Bowen simply ran out of time, with the California primary's deadline being moved up four months to February 2008.
At some point in the future, Bowen wants to review all systems, said Goldberg, although there's no time frame set up to do so at this point.
States including Ohio, Kentucky and New Jersey are now beginning similar voting machine reviews, said Goldberg. New Mexico and Florida already have banned the machines due to security concerns.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:3}
- Details
- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
“I know it affects us, but I don't know everything that affects us just yet,” said Lake County Registrar of Voters Diane Fridley.
Fridley said that Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Aug. 3 decision included Hart InterCivic's eSlate voting system, which Lake County uses.
Bowen withdrew approval for the Hart InterCivic system, then reissued a conditional approval, which will require additional security measures, according to Bowen's office.
The InterCivic system “will be required to comply with increased security and post-election auditing procedures,” a statement from Bowen's office explained.
Besides Lake, counties using eSlate include Humboldt, Orange, Madera, San Mateo, Sonoma and Yolo, according to the Secretary of State's office.
Bowen's office reported that direct recording electronic voting systems manufactured by Diebold and Sequoia also were decertified.
In the case of the InkaVote Plus system by Election Systems and Software, the company didn't submit information that would allow its system to be reviewed, according to the Secretary of State's office. That system was decertified and the company has since submitted the requested documents.
County purchases machines to meet federal law
The federal Help America Vote Act required counties to purchase the voting machines in an effort to comply with disability access requirements, said Fridley. The act requires at least one such machine at each polling place.
In accordance with that, in 2006 the county purchased 50 eSlate machines, one for each county polling place, at a cost of $567,910.67, said Fridley. That figure didn't include additional necessary equipment, such as a laptop computer.
Proposition 41 funds – in the amount of $321,390.02 – helped the county pay for the eSlate system, said Fridley. She is asking for reimbursement for the remainder of the costs from the Help America Vote Act, a lengthy and difficult process, she added.
She said she chose the eSlate system because she believed it was the most user-friendly.
Fridley said the electronic voting system was used for the first time in the June 2006 election.
In the system's most recent use in November, 53 votes were cast countywide using eSlate, said Fridley, out of 19,575 total votes cast. Fridley said out of 20 polling place sites, 11 machines were used and 9 weren't; not all of the machines were utilized in the November election.
Most of Lake County's votes were cast by absentee ballot, 10,316 to be exact, said Fridley.
With so many people switching to absentee voting, why the need for voting machines?
Fridley said not all states have allowed permanent absentee voting as California has.
System has paper backups
Lake County has a blended voting system, said Fridley, which includes not just the eSlate but the paper-based optical scan Mark-A-Vote, used since 1983.
Only Sonoma, Madera and Lake counties have that “blended system,” where the votes that are cast on the eSlates are actually duplicated on the Mark-A-Vote ballots, said Fridley.
Money had been available for Lake County to go to a completely electronic system, but Fridley said, “I'm glad we didn't,” in light of these recent problems and because of the fact that, if the county had needed to completely upgrade due to decertification, money might have been available for that effort.
Lake County uses a complicated auditing processing of checking eSlate paper receipts against the system's audit trail, Fridley said. A two-person auditing board then creates a Mark-A-Vote paper ballot record which is counted and tallied along with the official ballots. The backup will be the paper receipt off the eSlate along with the records from the mobile ballot box.
Some counties have an entirely electronic system, including audits and optical scans. “We do have issues but not as many as those counties that have the total package,” said Fridley.
Fridley said her office is working with Hart to come up with a plan to meet Bowen's requirements for security and auditing. She said many of the security requirements have been in place since the eSlates were used in June 2006.
An Aug. 4 statement from Hart InterCivic said Bowen's assessment was not a realistic risk assessment.
“Putting isolated technology in the hands of computer experts in order to engage in unrestricted, calculated, advanced and malicious attacks is highly improbably in a real-world election,” the Texas company's statement read.
Hart InterCivic said it will work to meet Bowen's requirements, and that it is continuing to improve the security and technology of its machines, which are used in thousands of jurisdictions across 11 states.
Fridley said she spoke with Hart representatives on Aug. 9, and said a working group composed of representatives from counties and cities that use the machines will meet to discuss the security procedures that Bowen is requiring.
Lake and Madera will actually be represented by an elections official from Sonoma County, said Fridley, because those three counties use the same blended voting system and have the same concerns.
Fridley said she doesn't foresee having to buy new machines. “As long as we meet the security issues we shouldn't have a problem.”
In June, Bowen announced she was forming a Post-Election Audit Standards Working Group to review security and reliability of the state's voting systems, and decide if post-election audit standards needed to be strengthened.
At the same time, Bowen launched a “top-to-bottom review” of voting systems currently certified for use in California elections, according to her office.
Bowen didn't specifically look at blended systems like Lake's, said Fridley.
Fridley also voiced her concern that the systems were tested in a lab, not a real-world scenario, and that Bowen's criteria for the review “was pretty broad and not very specific.”
Tomorrow, the state chief deputy secretary of state discusses the reasons the review was necessary; the president of the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials explains his concerns about the review protocols.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
{mos_sb_discuss:3}
- Details
- Written by: Elizabeth Larson