Urgent! Save California Election Integrity!

[Liberty Belle]

Dear Progressive Friends,



Your help is urgently needed to drive Diebold out of California and protect the integrity of our elections.



At a hearing of the VSPP committee (a hand-picked panel chosen by our new Republican Secretary of State) on June 16th in Sacramento, testimony was taken on the vulnerability of Diebold and other electronic election equipment. The committee made numerous attempts to suppress testimony from election reform experts, but a boisterous crowd stood up for Democracy and insisted that the truth be heard.



The Secretary of State now has 30 days to decide whether to allow California to purchase more voting systems using secret software, including Diebold systems recently shown to be intentionally programmed for easy hackability, according to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting.



Please help by sending this letter to the officials below. Thanks.



Miriam Raftery

California Election Protection Network member

Chair, Media Subcommittee, AD 77 Committee

Chair, Media Committee, San Diego For Democracy



Dear:

I am writing in regard to the VSPP hearings held June 16th on election equipment. It is imperative that no Diebold or other partisan-owned election equipment be allowed in California! We can’t trust Diebold, ES&S etc. anymore than we can trust Enron. Citizens and elected officials must not tolerate VSPP panelists with conflicts of interest (such as a panelist who has lobbied for Diebold and another who is a major Schwarzenegger fundraiser) or who hold vested interests in voting systems.

We must have voter-verified paper ballots as the ballots of record, counted in every precinct with hefty compulsory audits in each precinct. Not one penny of HAVA (Help America Vote Act) money should be spent on proprietary vote-counting systems, which can be hacked and changed by a chimpanzee! A better use of HAVA funds would be to fund development of an open-source software, secure voting system through the University of California, using a voter-verified paper ballot.

Free and fair elections are crucial to a democracy. Please stand up for our rights to have every vote counted accurately!


Sincerely:


Send your letters to the Secretary of State, with copies of your letters to the Elections Committee for the Legislature, as well as your own State Senator and State Assembly representative, so that the Secretary of State will know that his actions cannot behidden from public scrutiny. Contacts:



Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, 1500 11th St., Sacramento, CA 95814, [phone]


The Elections Committee of the Legislature:
Senator Debra Bowen, State Capitol, Room 4040_Sacramento, CA 95814_Voice: (916)
445-5953_Fax: (916) [e-mail]
Senator Jim Battin (Vice-Chair)_State Capitol, Room 3067_Sacramento, CA 95814_Phone:
[phone]_Fax: (916) [e-mail]
Senator Joseph Dunn_State Capitol, Room 2080_Sacramento CA 95814_(916)
445-5831_Fax: (714) [e-mail]
Senator Kevin Murray_State Capitol, Room 5050_Sacramento, CA 95814_(916)
445-8800_Fax (916) [e-mail]
Senator Charles Poochigian_State Capitol, Room 5087_Sacramento, CA 95814_Phone:
[phone]_Fax: (916) [e-mail]
Senator Gloria Romero_State Capitol, Room 313_Sacramento, CA 95814_(916)
445-1418_Fax (916) [e-mail]

[genius]

1. This was why they got rid of Shelley.

Once Shelley was gone, it was all over.

[Liberty Belle]

3. Yes, the fix was in.

Please DU the action alert and circulated this widely.

[ooglymoogly]

2. letter to all and recommended

[Liberty Belle]

4. Thanks for recommending! Please forward this to others, too.

Let's flood the capital and SOS office with thousands of letters!

[Kelvin Mace]

5. If you want to save elections in CA

stop citing Bev Harris.

She and Jim March sold you boys out months ago for $76,000 a piece.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x340188

[ailsagirl]

6. Done but I can't nominate it (it's over 24 hours old) :=(

[yurbud]

7. done

[laugle]

8. Done!!! recommended......

[ntisuzi]

9. what happens now?

This is a very good article about e-voting. The national group is accepting comments for 60 days. It is time to let them know what we want.

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,68116,00.htm

I have sent this to my techie friends who understand systems and programming and quality and audit. Your friends may want to see it also.

We can do "hard work" to stop the ones who don't really "work hard" at all.