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Never before in our electoral history have so many eyes been on election irregularities and fraud. Never before has so much of it been reported. Over 38,000 reports were taken by Election Protection during the November election. California was among those states where more than a thousand were reported. The other states in this category are Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Florida.
Voting Democracy actions are proposed for January and beyond to overcome the latest stolen election and make certain it doesn't happen again in 2006. There are calls for a re-vote in Ohio since a legitimate recount cannot take place. And a Voter's Bill of Rights is being circulated on and off the internet. This document lists many reforms including: a voter-verified paper trail for all voting machines; partisan oversight replaced by nonpartisan election commissions; election day honored as a national holiday; re-enfranchisement of ex-felons; public financing of campaigns; instant runoff voting; proportional representation; abolishment of the electoral college; and more.
Here in California we are planning to attend the Voting Systems and Procedures Panel and the Voting Modernization Board meetings in Sacramento on January 20th and 21st where the decisions are made to certify and pay for electronic voting systems. We also expect new legislation to be introduced at both the state and federal level. For more information go to:
www.verifiedvoting.org,
www.freepress.org, and
www.electionfraud2004.org.
This story is accompanied by a cartoon by bülbül showing a woman at a voting booth which is connected by a cable to a computer where a man with a tie sits talking on the phone. He is saying "Our election machine software has many new features.", and the computer's screen shows the menu choices "delete", "misalign", and "add".
Three members of the Peace and Freedom Party State Central Committee have become leading national activists in the fight to make sure votes are counted accurately. Maureen Smith and Mike Smith of Aptos in Santa Cruz County became involved in the struggle over electronic voting machines in May 2003, when they attended three meetings in Sacramento in one month of the Secretary of State's Voting Systems and Procedures Panel.
Horrified at what they found, they joined an e-mail network of people around the country who have been monitoring the electronic voting corporation. They helped put together the basic demands of the movement, including for a verifiable paper ballot to be printed by machines for each voter so that votes may be checked and recounted. Since then, Maureen or Mike or both have attended at least a dozen meetings in Sacramento, as well as one in Washington DC.
Maureen sends and resends informative e-mails on the subject to over a hundred people involved in the issue, and is an important nexus in the flow of information about the problems with voting systems, and the solutions that are needed.
Jeremiah Akin of Riverside was appointed to represent the Peace and Freedom Party at a "logic and accuracy test" of the Sequoia electronic voting machines in Riverside County in September 2003. He was shocked to find that the machines' accuracy could not be verified, and practically everything officials said about them was inaccurate. As a professional programmer, he learned a lot from the "test" that other panel members missed, and he wrote a "Preliminary Report to the Central Committee" that was widely circulated.
This report brought him to the attention of voting security activists around the country, some of whom consulted him on newly-uncovered voting machine programs. He was able to point out serious problems with several programs, and learned that some of the programs are designed with "back doors" and other means by which votes may be changed without detection.
He has worked with leaders of all parties in Riverside County to pressure the Board of Supervisors to change their insecure system (without success as yet), and with more success has provided information to the California Secretary of State that was influential in sparking actions taken to clean up the electronic voting mess in many California counties.
He has traveled to Sacramento and Washington DC, recently flew to New Mexico to train Green and Libertarian observers for a requested recount, was quoted in Newsweek, and gets calls from all over the United States (and recently Britain as well) from attorneys, election officials, reporters and activists seeking information and consultation.
While the electronic voting companies hate and fear them, the Smiths and Jeremiah Akin have built considerable respect for the Peace and Freedom Party as they help the movement for honest and accurate elections.
Although Microsoft operating systems are susceptible to viruses, the labs do no testing of these critical components to determine how viruses could affect voting systems.
Only some software is inspected. All "third-party" software is exempt from inspection, no matter how faulty it may be.
All the major voting machine vendors have their equipment certified to standards that were written in 1990. There are newer 2002 standards, but no major vendor is certified to them!
Not all certified software has actually been tested. Amazingly enough, it is not required that "ballot management" portions be tested, so bugs or malicious code could go undetected.
The "Logic and Accuracy Test" before each election tests only a special test mode, not the program settings used on election day.
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