Help Needed for Volusia WED 9am- Stop Diebold

Reposting this over here. It's late but maybe some people can attend:


Please see common ground common sense forum thread for more information on this topic - wundermaus)
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=32544&view=fin dpost&p=322201

Urgent!!!!!! This is the BIG ONE!!! We need your help!!!!!
Time and Place: 9 am, Wednesday, June 29, County Council Chambers, second
floor, County Administration Building, 123 W. Indiana Ave., DeLand, FL 32720.

Dear Friends and Supporters of Verifiable Elections:

"Voters vote occasionally; money votes all the time."

While we have given our all to fight the Diebold "paperless" touch-screen
machines, Diebold is just gearing up for its biggest attack yet on our right to
verifiable as well as accessible elections.

Wednesday should be the Council's last vote to accept or reject the Diebold
"paperless" touch-screen voting machines.

They have called in Jim Dickson, Vice-President of the American Association
of Persons with Disabilities (AAPD), who is coming from Washington D.C. to try
to convince the County Council to go with Diebold. While the AAPD is an
excellent organization, Dickson himself has been a vocal advocate for Diebold
around the country.

We have been actively fighting to protect the rights of all Volusia voters to
have both an accessible and verifiable vote. But tomorrow, we can't protect
that right without your participation.

Please be there. Otherwise, please don't complain in the next election if
your vote disappears into cyberspace.

Little else you have scheduled for tomorrow could be more important than
protecting verifiable elections for yourself, your children, and the causes and
candidates you support. Please be there.

Sincerely,
Susan Pynchon
Executive Director, Florida Fair Elections Coalition
susan@floridafairelections.org
P.S. We will be in the rotunda of the administration building from 8:30 am to
8:55 am to hand out information, speaker cards, and to answer any questions.
(See additional information below)
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BACKGROUND INFORMATION
AND WEBSITES FOR TOUCH-SCREEN PROBLEMS:

For more background information, please read my editorial in today's Daytona
Beach News Journal under "Community Voices." Please feel free to email me at
susan@floridafairelections.org or at susanpynchon@yahoo.com if you have any
questions and I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

Touch-screen machines have been the cause of hundreds of thousands of lost
votes in hundreds of elections nationwide. These votes were not retrievable --
they were lost forever. For more information on these problems, go to
http://www.votersunite.org and look at the "Myth Breakers" document offered online for
free. While there is much other available documentation of problems, this is
one of the best single references on the subject. Particularly look at the
section beginning on page 4 entitled "Ten Common Electronic Election Problems."
This section describes common problems, then gives examples of each one that
have happened in different places around the country. Another excellent
section begins on page 54 and is entitled "Distinguishing Truth from
Misinformation." Another interesting website is http://www.verifiedvoting.org

I am very sad that we have been painted as being against the rights of the
disabled when nothing could be further from the truth.

I feel as though I have read the equivalent of "War and Peace" a thousand
times in studying this issue, and truly believe that the well-intentioned
individuals supporting the Diebold machines are either misinformed, have not studied
the issue enough, or are being duped by touch-screen proponents. These
machines have a documented history of failure and lost votes. What good is a
private vote if that vote is never counted accurately? In addition, for a democracy
to exist and thrive, its citizens must be assured that its election process
is accurate and reliable. Verifiability and accessibility should go
hand-in-hand so that no voter is disenfranchised.

Volusia already has opscanners. The Touchscreens are needed for blind. While I hate touchscreens, very few voters in Volusia will use them.

It is a big deal. What would stop them from slowly replacing the opscanners? These machines have too many problems as is.

trying to fight the worst of the worst, while ALSO making fundamental points about transparency and verifiability. The touchscreens are NOT needed for the blind--and will not be used just for the blind. That is just a ruse. They will instead be used to blind us all, so that we see less and less of how our votes are recorded or how they are counted.

These Bushite companies need to be completely banned from our elections--and it is a perfectly valid strategy to oppose them whenever and wherever they show their faces to peddle their shoddy, unreliable, insecure, hackable, fraud-prone machines.

Thank you, Florida Fair Elections, for taking this fight to the enemy! Your work is heartening to all election reform activists!

wakeme2008, you can go back to sleep now, and think beautiful thoughts in your dreams, while someone else fights for your right to vote!