Ask your County Court to stop funding DRE's or other insecure voting machines!

[Melissa G]

I just got back from testifying about the insecure nature of our votes on Hart voting machines. Person after person testified from excerpts of the California study, The Ohio Study and various lawsuits. At some point, the commissioners got tired of listening and asked us if someone was going to get around to asking them for something. So I did.

I told them that a bunch of us across the country worked very hard to get folks elected into Congress that would stop the war. That was documented as the main reason we elected them. Congress holds the purse strings and could stop the war if it wanted to. We have unfortunately been disappointed on that issue.

BUT we were in Travis County, where we do things right. We have been showing the court instance after instance of the corruptibility of Hart Inter civic voting machines. The Court has the power to cut off the purse strings for these insecure machines. Yes, we are talking to the folks who run the elections where we live, but folks often use the excuse "Well someone else funded these machines, so we have to use them" and we get caught in Catch 22 situations.

If our County courts and equivalents to county courts around the nation stop funding voting machines, then the folks who run elections will have to do something different. We will keep talking to the folks who run the elections as well, but we must also ask our commissioners to cut off the funding for these insecure, potentially vote stealing machines.

Ask Your County Court or local area funding body today!

[EFerrari]

1. Good job, Mellissa B! Thank you!

:toast:

[Kurovski]

2. K&R #5

[bleever]

3. KRZ.

Kick, recommend, and good night. :)

[Melissa G]

6. large grin...

KRZ...:rofl:
I hope you got some good rest, Bleever. :hug:

[diva77]

4. in Los Angeles County, CA, it's the Board of Supervisors who are the$$$ gatekeepers

The courts here, besides being technophobic, tend to "trust" in the elections officials and go along with whatever they concoct for testimony

[Melissa G]

7. Upon reflection, I think the money arguments are the better

case with the purse string holders. Since they don't really deal with elections, they don't make the connection that they can stop the bad practices by not funding them, unless we were repeatedly explicit.

Someone in our group was tasked with doing research on anecdotal cost stories. Because of all the various ways elections are administered, chart compilation is a bit dicey. I also like stories of the impossibility of recounts due to prohibitive cost in big states like Texas. Plus even when we do have massive, compelling evidence of voting problems, like in Florida and California- they just swear them into office fast and Congress wimpily leaves them there.

The County Judge who presides over the court did offer to set up a meeting for a committee of us to meet with 'She who runs elections' which in our case is sadly the Tax Assessor Collector.(remember poll taxes:eyes:)

We usually can gather enough folks to read about an hour into the testimony record in the alloted 3 min bursts given us. We generally choose to coordinate testimony, but I find personal stories mixed in help hold the audience's interest. It was fine for testimony for the SOS's office to be mostly technical- excerpts from studies and lawsuits and computer experts.(The 'pubs control the SOS office and are going to ignore us anyway. (I have little confidence that those tapes are even viewed by the folks intended to see them, but I feel compelled to try anyway.)

Ah well, one fights the good fight and prays for the hundredth monkey to kick in.

[eridani]

5. Another good argument to add to corruptibility is that they screw up elections by their very nature

Conflating tabulation with voting slows the process down to the speed of the voter, which is why just one or two opscans can handle a single polling place and it takes dozens of DREs. They are automatic disenfranchisement machines for anyone under a time crunch.

[Melissa G]

8. True That...

The check in process by computer instead of poll book has also really slowed things down. Makes a big fat traffic jam with only one or two computers available, Handy for creating more long lines.
So many ways to suppress the vote here in Texas.