Revised Petition Statement

[ChrisPhx]

Address The Biggest Threat To Our Democracy Petition

To: Electoral Reform Groups, U.S. Congress

We have grave concerns about voting in our Democracy. We believe the main threat to our Democracy is not currently being addressed.

Paper trails for ballots only matter if an election is close enough to "justify" a recount, and if an honest recount can be accomplished.

The Tabulators can be hacked into in order to create an artificially large difference in votes between candidates. So without a recount, the "paper trail," if it exists remains irrelevent.

If a recount is done, there is no guarantee it will be done openly and honestly (Ohio 2004), so again the paper trail may be irrelevant. Also recounts are costly as was seen this election cycle.

We have to get it right the first time, by addressing the Tabulator and Electronic voting problem. We need to get Electronic voting and hackable Tabulators out of our election system.

Until and unless they can developed with open source code and non partisan verification of their accuracy and security, we can not have faith in a system that relies on electronic voting and Tabulators.

Otherwise we see no point in taking part in any actions to demand a paper trail and/or deal with myriad types of vote fraud and intimidation. If we ONLY take care of all the other problems, we could easily find ourselves wondering again in 2006 and 2008 "what went wrong?"

We will not participate until and unless the Tabulator and Electronic voting problem is first or simultaneously addressed.



Below is more of what will be included with the petition. The part in purple is what we need someone to be willing to use their name and email address for:



"I have read the Address The Biggest Threat To Our Democracy Petition to Electoral Reform Groups, U.S. Congress, and I hereby sign the petition:
Name: (required)

Email Address: (required)

Comments: (optional)

City, State: (optional)


Please note: All information you provide on this petition signing form will be public on the petition signatures page, except your email address, for which privacy is set here:
Email Address Privacy Option: (choose one) Private
Available to Petition Author
Public

Explanation of Email Address Privacy Options:
- "Private" means your email address is stored in a secure private location, for signature validation only.
- "Available to Petition Author" means your email address will not be available to the public, but will be available to the petition author, as well as being stored in a secure private location for signature validation.
- "Public" means anyone viewing the signature pages on the Web for this petition can get your email address and send you email.




The Address The Biggest Threat To Our Democracy Petition to Electoral Reform Groups, U.S. Congress was created by and written by Chris XXYYZZ(emailATaddress.com). The petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form."

[katinmn]

1. I agree with the contents of the petition, but why do you ask

someone else to give their email address out when you won't?

Or am I misunderstanding something?

[ChrisPhx]

3. Due to

personal reasons.

[Stevepol]

2. Great Idea! Count me in. But you might want to add,

since it's doubtful the machines will be eliminated, a requirement for a paper ballot printed out and completely open, hand-counted, and random AUDITS for all elections in which both parties participate. And if recounts prove necessary due to errors in the count then the paper has to be the official count. Also recounts must be made mandatory when the exit polls are substantially different from the results and private parties do not have to pay for them or if they do and significant differences are found, then the voting machine companies must foot the bill and reimburse all parties. And companies who practice fraud in elections must be subject fo SEVERE penalties, huge fines and long imprisonment of officials and owners. The vote counting process must be made completely transparent subject to lawsuits and huge judgments when it's not.

[ChrisPhx]

4. That all sounds good

I'm not sure how likely all that is to pass either.

In the interests of keeping the petition more general, perhaps your ideas would be one of the ways of addressing the problem, as the petition calls for it to be addressed?

I don't have enough expertise in any number of areas to spell out the details of the solution and put them in a petition.