This may be our last, best chance to get voter verified paper ballots mandated nationwide, folks! Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550) now has 157 co-sponsors and there is some real indication that the bill may actually be marked up in October.
There is concern, though, that the House Administration Committee may use the recommendations of the Carter-Baker Report to weaken Holt's language. VoteTrustUSA has set up a legislative action page where concerned citizens can sign up and automatically send an email to their Representative and urging them to pass HR 550 as written.
Please help us in this effort by sending an email to your Representative and signing a petition that will be delivered to members of the House Administration Committee. Just go to
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=1 where you can let Congress know that you are still paying attention.
We would also appreciate your help in publicizing this action alert. Have a look at the form email on the sign-up page and feel free to use any of the copy below in contacting other concerned citizens and posting to blogs you visit. Thanks for helping out!
Thanks, DUers!!
Joan Krawitz (aka hedda_foil)
Executive Director
VoteTrustUSA.org
http://votetrustusa.org -------------------------------------------
Sample blog post -- email to friends
Send an email to your Representative and to the House Administration Committee urging them to pass HR 550 as written!
The recently-released report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform called on congress to establish a requirement for a voter verified paper record of every vote and mandatory audits. VoteTrustUSA hopes you will join us in using the Commission’s recommendations as a catalyst for speedy enactment of Rep. Rush Holt’s Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550) which organizations like VerifiedVoting, Common Cause, Working Assets, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Velvet Revolution, and many other national and state election integrity groups have been advocating for more than two years. In so doing, the forces of democracy can score an early and important win moving into the battle to prevent massive voter disenfranchisement. To contact your representative,
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=1 .
The Commission recommended that Congress require a voter verified paper ballot for every vote and routine random audits to check the accuracy of vote counts in federal elections. However the report went on to recommend that the status of the voter verified paper ballot should be determined by states rather than mandated as the ballot of record nationwide. This means that any state can decide to disregard the only record that the voter has confirmed in favor of the “vapor trail” record inside the voting machine and make the voter verified paper ballot a meaningless and expensive placebo.
The report also recommends audits to verify the accuracy of voting systems but it is unclear about the mechanism through which such audits shall be conducted. Meaningful audits require hand counts – it is not possible to confirm the accuracy of machine counts with more machine counts. Publicly observed hand counts are the only means to achieve complete certainty of the vote totals and should be required in all audits and recounts.
Many states have spoken already on this issue: the voter-verified paper record must be the document used for audits and recounts and must govern in case of discrepancy. The Holt bill would ensure this requirement protects the vote in all states.
We believe there is a window of a week to ten days to apply grassroots pressure on Congress, particularly the members of the House Administration Committee to send HR 550 to the floor as written. VoteTrustUSA has set up an email web tool to facilitate this action alert. Please send a message to Congress to pass HR 550 now as written!
http://www.congressweb.com/cweb4/index.cfm?orgcode=VTUSA&hotissue=1 Emails sent from this web tool will be directed to the signers’ individual representatives as well as the members of the Committee. The signers’ names will also be compiled into a physical petition, which will be delivered to the Committee.
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