MARIJUANA BACKERS SUE OVER RECOUNT

Medical marijuana activists have sued the Alameda County registrar of
voters over the handling of a recount of a closely contested Berkeley
ballot measure that would have eased restrictions on medical marijuana
sales and possession.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, seeks access to backup data from individual
electronic voting machines, as well as audit logs of activity on the
machines, logic and accuracy test results and chain-of-custody records
concerning electronic vote records.

The plaintiffs are backers of Measure R, which would allow medical
marijuana clubs to move into retail areas without public hearings and also
would erase limits on the amount of pot patients could have. According to
the county's certified results, the measure narrowly lost Nov. 2, 25,167
votes to 24,976.

County Registrar Bradley Clark ruled that the only electronic data to be
used in the recount would come from memory cards used to collect data from
the individual voting machines. Those cards can provide vote totals or
generate prints of individual ballot images for counting by hand. Clark's
office also is recounting all paper absentee and provisional ballots by
hand. Results are expected next week.

Americans for Safe Access, a pro-medical marijuana group that is the lead
plaintiff, calls the county's method for recounting electronic votes a
"reprinting'' and insists that without the backup data it is impossible to
know whether error or fraud occurred.