Here's another activist opportunity.
It looks like the DNC has left Election Reform on the
back burner.In Ohio,
Bob Fitrakis goes further, saying;
The Democratic National Committee's investigation into Ohio's 2004 presidential election irregularities is the perfect postscript to the party's 'election protection' efforts last fall: it is a shocking indictment of a party caught completely off-guard in its most heated presidential campaign in years, and a party that still doesn't fully understand what happened and how to avoid a repeat in the future.
The report primarily documents the fact that Jim Crow voter suppression tactics targeting Democratic African-American voters were rampant in Ohio's cities during the 2004 presidential election. It cites and spends most of its time analyzing the most visible problems: from shortages of voting machines in minority precincts, to unreasonable obstacles to voter registration, to disproportionate use of provisional ballots on Election Day among new voters and Democratic constituencies, to inadequate poll worker training and election administration, to poor post-Election Day record keeping.
But the DNC reports says those factors do not mean John Kerry won the election, nor does it mean that the new electronic voting machines are unreliable — even though some of the precincts with the highest percentages of reported problems were outfitted with the new electronic voting machines, known as DREs. The DNC asked for access to the new electronic voting machines and their software, but was denied by local election officials and the private manufacturers. The report leaves the matter there.
It is statements like this one, on page 189, and a failure to follow-through that make the report more than a disappointment to election protection workers, voter rights advocates and those grassroots activists who worked for John Kerry's campaign. Speaking of the new electronic voting machines, the DNC report states, that "many of the county boards (of elections) do not actually control the electronic records created during the tallying process." When the Fairfield County Board of Elections was asked for election results, they merely forwarded data from a private vendor.
In short, we're on our own to force action from legislators.
One of the best resources for activism on Digital Voting Machines is
VerifiedVoting.org.The founder of Verified Voting is David L. Dill, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University. He recently testified before the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, June 21, 2005. Here is some of his
testimony;Unfortunately, paperless e-voting technology is almost totally opaque. No one can scrutinize critical processes of the election, such as the collection of ballots and counting of votes, because those processes occur invisibly in electronic circuits. Voters have no means to confirm that the machines have recorded their votes correctly, nor do they have any assurance that their votes won't be changed later. Paperless e-voting, in its current form, is a threat to democracy.
The basic problem of e-voting can be understood without an in-depth knowledge of computer technology. Here is a helpful analogy: Suppose voters dictated their votes, privately and anonymously, to human scribes, and that the voters were prevented from inspecting the work of the scribes. Few would accept such a system, on simple common-sense grounds. Obviously, the scribes could accidentally or intentionally mis-record the votes with no consequences. Without accountability, a system is simply not trustworthy, whether or not computers are involved.
You don't need a Ph.D. in computer science to understand the basic problem with computerized voting. Computer systems are so complex that no one really knows what goes on inside them. We don't know how to find all the errors in a computer system; we don't know how to make sure that a system is secure or that it hasn't been corrupted (possibly even by its designers); and we don't know how to ensure that the systems in use are running the software they are supposed to be running. Technologists have not been able to solve these problems even with measures that are far more sophisticated (and costly) than those used in the design and certification of voting equipment.
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Our democracy is too precious to entrust to an ill-conceived and flawed technology. I would urge you to take up legislation in this session to ensure that our election systems allow each voter to verify that his or her vote is properly recorded. Several bills requiring voter-verified audit trails on all election equipment by the 2006 election have been introduced already. If you act promptly, it is possible that every voter could use such a system in the next major election.
You can learn how to frame the debate, address the issues, be organized, have lots of lawyers, win the media war and still lose the election.
Do you think an administration that would lie to justify an invasion would have any qualms about engaging in voter fraud?
Think again.Get involved.-----------------------------
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