Congrats to Roxanne and all our voting machine activists! If we can save GA maybe there is hope for Florida.
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Act Now to Preserve the Integrity of Georgia's Elections
Urgent action is needed to preserve the integrity of Georgia's elections. This Tuesday, April 6th, the state legislature will hold its final day of deliberations for the year. A bill to require voter-verified security for Georgia elections must pass Tuesday.
After the 2000 election debacle in Florida, Congress made funds available to states to upgrade their balloting technology. Georgia used these funds to purchase touch-screen voting machines from the Diebold Corporation. Unfortunately, Diebold voting machines have been shown, in Georgia and other states, to be notoriously problematic. Machines have failed to start or have crashed with votes in them. In several studies the touch-screen machines were found to be vulnerable to tampering.
When something goes wrong with these paperless voting machines, there is no way to recover lost votes, nor is there any way to conduct recounts or settle disputed elections.
There is a simple solution. Electronic voting machines can be fitted with printers to produce a paper version of each ballot, which the voter can check for accuracy and then turn over to election officials for recounts or random audits. State Sen. Tom Price has introduced legislation (SB-500) to require all Georgia voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper ballot. That legislation is now stalled in the Committee on Governmental Affairs. The committee must act on this bill on Tuesday, or it will die.
To send a fax to Election Subcommittee Chairman Buddy DeLoach and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Alan Powell, just click "reply" and "send" in your e-mail program (text below). Let them know you want to protect the integrity of Georgia's elections, and that they should do it by passing SB-500.
If this was forwarded to you, click here:
http://action.truemajority.com/index.asp?a...gaa1&ref=496115About This Campaign:
TrueMajority members have urged passage of federal legislation requiring these simple remedies, but the congressional leadership refuses even to grant the bills a hearing. So TrueMajority launched a campaign to urge state election officials protect their citizens from these inaccurate voting machines.
Through grassroots pressure of faxes and phone calls, news conferences, op- eds, letters to the editor and paid advertising -- TrueMajority members have organized to protect America's votes. Eight states have committed to providing a solid paper trail for their elections; Georgia should too.
Matt Holland,
"Computer Ate My Vote" campaign co-ordinator
PS: For more information about our campaign, check out
http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=496115&l=458. For more information about computer voting systems, check out
http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=496115&l=459 or
http://action.truemajority.org/ctt.asp?u=496115&l=460.Here is the letter we'll send to Rep. Buddy DeLoach and Rep. Alan Powell:
Georgia's touch-screen electronic voting systems have some benefits, but without a voter-verified paper trail these machines threaten the reliability of our elections. Even leaving aside the questions which have been raised over the security of the machines, common software bugs or hardware glitches can lose votes. It's just common sense to back up the electronic machines with a voter- verified paper trail.
As the chair of your committee, you have the ability to protect our elections by passing SB-500. I urge you to make this a top priority, and not to let us go into the 2004 presidential election with unreliable machines.
Officials in Nevada, West Virginia and Missouri have already used their own authority to protect their citizens by requiring that computer voting systems there provide a voter-verified paper trail. I deserve the same protection.
Sincerely, (We'll put your name and address here.)