Cross posted on
Common Blog Folks wanted to bring to your attention an important election reform related action we can all use your help with. I know rightly everyone is focused on Rove and latest culture of corruption related news of the day, but it really comes down to election reform. If we have had an election system that was not broken, we might have seen something different in Ohio and in Florida in 04 and in 00. So we are continuing to
chip away, and we can use your help again, as we are
targeting Kenneth Blackwell/Katherine Harrises of the world - Secretaries of States around the country in our latest action for paper trail. If you can kindly recommend this diary, and keep this action going all through the day it would be much appreciated. Thanks again so much for making us feel welcome to your community. If you have comments, suggestions, please post away, I will be answering as many questions or get the answers to you as possible. Thanks again. More after the flip.
Update (3:39 pm EST) - One of our members pointed out that our search page still lists the old California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. The contact information for the new California Sec. of State, Bruce McPherson is (916) 653-8814. Apologies for the oversight. We will update the search page to reflect the new info. Thanks so much again for making the calls! - MurshedThanks to
efforts of election reform activists, the drumbeat for a requirement that all voting systems in the U.S. employ or incorporate a voter verified paper audit trail continues to grow stronger.
This weekend, the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) is meeting in St. Paul. Not yet on the agenda but certainly in the strong rumor stage is a resolution calling for such a requirement for all newly purchased systems. This would force newly purchased DREs to come with a paper ballot printout, but optical scan machines and even hand-counted paper ballots would also fit the requirement. Such a move by NASS would be huge -- two thirds of the country's secretaries of state are their state's top election official.
We need to let all the members of NASS know that the voters are watching their proceedings. Remember Secretaries of States like Kenneth Blackwell (in 2004) and Katherine Harris (in 2000) can play crucial roles in how states like Ohio and Florida administer their election systems. Imagine the impact on our campaign for paper trail if this national body of crucial election officials passed a resolution calling for all voting systems to incorporate a voter verified paper audit trail. If we can get hundreds of calls to their offices today (the conference starts tomorrow), we can force them to pay attention and deal with this issue. Call them and get them to go on the record as either for the resolution, against the resolution, or undecided. They need to know that the latter two options may have painful political consequences.
To get contact information about your secretary of state, go to the following link or click on the image to your right:
www.commoncause.org/FindElectedOfficials
Then call today, and ask your secretary of state to support a NASS resolution calling for voter verified paper audit trails. Let them know how important this is for restoring voter confidence in our elections. Please also forward this information to anyone else you think would be interested in making a call for VVPAT.
We will be at the meeting. We'll try to keep you informed as the resolution progresses. Check back for more info during the weekend; the meeting ends on Monday afternoon.