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Ramon Sevilla, Election Monitoring Co-Coordinator
Ramon Sevilla brings to the EDA Council lifelong experience in diverse campaigns to secure voter rights and expand access to the electoral process. Beginning with his own emancipation at the age of 16, Ramon became an advocate for full access to the electoral process for emancipated youth.
Ramon became the youngest person appointed to a city commission in Berkeley, CA, first serving on the Youth Employment Council, and later being appointed to the Human Relations and Welfare Commission and the Citizens Budget Review Commission.
After co-authoring the Youth Law Handbook for Berkeley Youth Alternatives, Ramon was appointed to the White House Council on Youth during President Carter’s administration.
As a student at UC Berkeley, Ramon was a founding member of the Steering Committee for Campuses United Against Apartheid, organizing colleges and universities to divest their investments in companies doing business with the then-apartheid government of South Africa.
In 1985 and 1986 he served as a volunteer consultant on the Election Monitoring Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees, developing an election infrastructure for South Africa.
Ramon has long been an advocate for the rights of all citizens to vote, having served as director of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (1979–1981), chair of the Voting Rights Committee for the Hispanic Caucus of the California State Democratic Party (1983–1985), and national co-chair of the National Consultation for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (1986–1991).
As a member of the Hispanic Caucus of the State of California Democratic Central Committee (1983-1985) Ramon led the drive to amend the Simpson, Rodino, Mazzoli Bill (Immigration Reform Act) to extend voting access to U.S. residents in the process of obtaining naturalized citizenship. Although that amendment was omitted from the final bill, Ramon and the National Consultation on Immigrants and Refugees were successful in increasing by millions the quota numbers allowing persons to apply for the amnesty program that became part of the Immigration Reform Act.
Ramon has also been at the forefront of the movements to secure workers collective bargaining rights and fair living wage, having served as legal and community affairs director for the Teamsters and United Farm Workers unions
(1983–1985).
Ramon is currently a project coordinator with Organizing for America, Neighbor to Neighbor, and the Latino Census Development Project, all projects that emphasize the primary importance of voting rights in struggles to fulfill every other human right.
He is active with Organizing for America in promoting uniform laws in all states to restore full voting and constitutional rights to citizens convicted of nonviolent felonies who have completed their sentencing, or who have had their convictions overturned or their sentences commuted.
Ramon has served as a Contra Costa County (CA) Election Board Member and Inspector since 2000. He brings his experience supervising pollworkers and monitoring the election process as a county elections inspector to his role as Co-Cooridinator for the EDA Election Monitoring Working Group.
In his professional work life, Ramon Sevilla is the chief technical officer for a National WIFI/WIMAX internet implementation company with its main office in San Jose, California.
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Tom Courbat, Election Monitoring Co-Coordinator
Tom Courbat has been working on election integrity issues since the time of the November, 2004 general election. For three elections Tom served as a poll worker and poll inspector (supervising precinct workers), thus gaining valuable inside knowledge of election processes at the polls.
He worked under the guidance of Dr. Judy Alter and Dan Ashby in a parallel election project in San Diego in 2005, and in the mayoral recount that year as well.
He has provided occasional ad-hoc assistance in the CA-50 (Busby/Bilbray) group objecting to the use of the Diebold machines contaminated by “sleepovers,” and has extensively studied the Ohio 2004 and Florida 2000 electoral debacles.
Tom is the former finance director of Riverside County, CA, and a 25-year veteran of local government at the executive management level. He has worked for the City of Pasadena, and the counties of Los Angeles, Shasta, and Riverside. In addition, he won three elections and served 10 years as a board member of the Murrieta County Water District, so he has a perspective from a candidate’s point of view as well.
Mr. Courbat holds a B.S. in marketing management and research from California State University at Los Angeles, and an MBA in financial management from California State University at Chico. He has completed ½ of the courses required for an MBA in public administration.
Election integrity (EI) has become a passion for Tom. In April, 2006 Tom became director of a budding DFA-Temecula Valley (Riverside County, CA) election integrity project called Save R Vote, and assembled and trained approximately 70 volunteers to monitor the election process for the June 6th primary. On July 11, 2006, Save R Vote presented a 13-page report detailing serious election security problems and corrective recommendations to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.
In November 2006 Tom expanded the Save R Vote monitoring team to 200 volunteers, and has continued to produce election monitoring reports that have resulted in significiant reforms in the conduct of elections in Riverside County.
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Election Monitoring
Description: Until we have secure and verifiable voting systems under public rather than private control, it will be necessary for citizens to closely monitor all phases of the voting process and to conduct independent checks of official election results.
The Election Monitoring Group studies all aspects of the electoral process with emphasis on opportunities for public observation, then organizes and trains volunteers at the precinct level to monitor and record all phases of voter registration, elections, and recounts, before, during and after, covering every form of voting on every voting and counting occasion.
Voting monitors will be trained how and when to file public records requests for every relevant item of election data.
Other volunteers will be trained to conduct "parallel elections" in which voters voluntarily cast unofficial paper ballots that duplicate their official ballots cast on electronic voting systems. The paper ballots afford a basis for statistical comparison with the official vote count, and may provide indication of suspicious official vote results warranting further investigation, including recounts.
The Election Monitoring Group will be involved in the planning and execution of EDA exit polls of selected target precincts and contests around the country, and will arrange for wide and timely publication of the exit poll data in comparison to officially announced voting results.
Co-Coordinators:
Tom Courbat CA
Ramon Sevilla CA
Members:
Judy Alter CA
Albert Zepeda TX
Chuck Garner CA
Chandra Friese CA
Lewis Miller NJ
Ron Watt CA
Sharon Mullen MA
Suzanne Warden CA
Ellen Brodsky FL
Max Prejean PA
Michelle Gabriel CA
Francene Blanchard CA
John Belmonte NY
Mark Hardin CA
Conrad Sieber OR
GO TO THE FORUM (Forum access requires Working Group registration)
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