Election Reform & Related News, Friday 4/6/07 VR BULLETIN: BAN DRE's [View All]

[rumpel]

Message from VR:

CONTACT CONGRESS TO BAN DRE
VOTING MACHINES AND AMEND HR 811

snip

An election in Orange County, CA was recently overturned in a recount. Absentee ballots were scrutinized for voter intent. Marks on those paper ballots convinced the Registrar in ten cases that the votes had been counted wrong, and the outcome flipped. The DRE paper trail was never used; the DRE votes were recounted electronically.

Despite California's paper-trail law for DRE audits, a manual recount of the paper trail was deemed too expensive and difficult, so the judge approved the electronic recount. Congressman Holt maintains that his bill would not have allowed this, but Californians thought the same thin g when they passed its paper-trail law. Americans must eliminate this situation altogether by banning electric ballots.

DREs can target neighborhoods and minorities for electronic disenfranchisement. Civil rights leader Dolores Huerta recently brought that message recently to Capitol Hill, bearing a study from New Mexico that showed undervote rates soaring when Native Americans and Spanish language voters used DREs. Rates were similar to that in Anglo communities when New Mexicans went to all opti-scanned paper ballots.

DREs, touted as necessary for special-needs voters, are as insecure for those voters' intent as for others. Touch-screen computers that do not tabulate but assist voters with disabilities and language needs to mark their ballots can restore security to those voters as they improve acessibility.


2 places where you can take action:

VotersUnite:
http://www.votersunite.org/takeaction/ban-e-ballots.asp

Progressive Democrats of America
http://capwiz.com/pdamerica/issues/alert/?alertid=9406781

Velvet Revolution
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/

All members welcome and encouraged to participate.

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