How a Small County Sparked a Statewide Change

The Elections Transparency Project was born out of a simple question: “Can we trust the system that counts our votes?”

That question came in 2003, shortly after Carolyn Crnich was appointed Humboldt County’s Registrar of Voters. Two concerned local fishermen walked into her office and voiced their fears about a proposed change in the Diebold system then in use—a system that scanned paper ballots and tallied them electronically. Their concern was about a proposal made by the existing election manager to eliminate the paper ballots - replacing them with touch screen computer units that had no paper audit trail.  Carolyn studied the issues raised by the fishermen and decided in favor of retaining the existing system with paper ballots that could be used to confirm the computer reported vote tallies. But it raised another issue,  that unless you seriously examined the paper ballots in order to verify the reported count - then little has been accomplished. California at the time mandated a 1% manual audit of ballots, but that left 99% unexamined…?

This moment of concern would eventually spark a quiet revolution in election transparency.

The Early 2000s: A National Crisis of Confidence

Across the U.S., trust in elections was shaken by the 2000 Presidential Election with older styled ballots with hanging chads. In response, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to modernize elections and make voting accessible to all—especially voters with disabilities.

To address these HAVA goals, election equipment vendors introduced their newest line of voting machines, paperless touchscreens, that neither used, nor produced any paper record of how the voter voted. 

Many counties adopted touchscreen voting. But Humboldt County held on to its paper ballots.

Still, questions remained: Could the system be hacked? Were the digital tallies accurate?

A Community Solution Takes Shape

To address growing concerns, Crnich and then-Supervisor Jimmy Smith convened the Elections Advisory Committee, made up of local residents from across the political spectrum. Ideas ranged from hand-counting ballots to scrapping machines altogether. But hand-counting was time-consuming, resource-intensive, and often inconsistent.

Eventually, the group proposed a unique approach:

Scan all ballots after the election, and let the public verify the results.

They envisioned a system where ballot images could be reviewed by anyone—candidates, watchdogs, academics, or curious voters. The motto became:
“Count them yourself.”

Building the Tools for Transparency

In 2006, the Elections Office ran a pilot, scanning ballots from a small Southern Humboldt election. It worked—but there was one key concern: Would people trust ballot images scanned by elections staff?

The solution: have volunteers, not county employees, do the scanning using independent, stand-alone equipment.

Enter Mitch Trachtenberg, a volunteer with a background in open-source software. Mitch spent thousands of hours developing a program that could read and count votes directly from scanned ballot images. His tool, the Trachtenberg Election Verification System (TEVS), became a critical part of the project.

Another volunteer, Wes Rishel, stepped in to develop technical templates that helped streamline the process: grouping ballots by precinct, flagging errors, and making scanning more volunteer-friendly.

2008: A Turning Point

In the November 2008 Presidential Election, the Elections Transparency Project scanned every ballot in Humboldt County.

After Crnich certified the official results and sent them to the Secretary of State, Mitch noticed something was off. Within minutes, he found a batch of 200 ballots had not been counted. He could tell exactly how many ballots were missing and which precinct they came from.

Crnich immediately reported the issue. A full investigation followed—and as a result, the California Secretary of State decertified that version of the Diebold system statewide.

What’s Happened Since

Since 2008, the Elections Transparency Project has:

• • Verified the accuracy of every county-run election in Humboldt.
  • Caught additional mechanical and human errors.
  • Prompted improvements in poll worker training.
  • Supplied ballot image sets to academic researchers, bond measure committees, and local journalists.
  • Helped build a model of citizen oversight that has earned deep community trust.

 

In one close mayoral race, a reporter asked the candidates if they’d demand a recount.
Their response:

“If Crnich counted them, they’re good.”

That confidence didn’t come from a slogan. It came from a transparent process that anyone could review.

Looking Ahead

The work continues. Our scanners require ongoing maintenance. Our volunteers need support. And every election brings new opportunities to improve public trust in democracy.

We hope our history shows what’s possible when a community comes together—not to tear down elections, but to make them stronger, more open, and more accountable.