Open Voting Consortium gaining momentum! We can do more with your help.

[helderheid]

Dear Friends of Open Voting Consortium,

Do you want to see election technology available by 2006 so results can be meaningfully audited? Today, we need extra help from all of you!

The prospect for open voting in America is very bright. There are many good signs. However, we are at a critical point, and we need your help to keep our project moving forward. Specifically, we need money. Software certification fees are estimated at $150,000 to $250,000 alone. We plan to get public funding (there is money in the HAVA bill for Research and
Development) for most of what we need, but we need continued and increasing help from our supporters to move the Open Voting Consortium project to the next level.

We are organizing large events, co-sponsoring events with other organizations, and getting meetup groups going all over America. Recent successes include written endorsements from Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, as well as some of the leading figures in the Green Party. We're finding more Republicans, too, that realize the need for open voting (elections could be rigged against them too). Everyone that supports democracy and has an IQ above room temperature understands the need for open voting.

We also have a new web site that reflects all the new events and activities in which we are involved. Please visit http://openvoting.org Our great volunteers have worked hard to bring the project this far along over the last year-and-a-half. Geniuses like Doug Jones, Arthur Keller, Amy Pearl, Karl Auerbach, David Mertz, Laird Popkin, Jan Karrman, Peter Maggs, Charlie Strauss, Lou Montulli, and Joe Hall (to name a few, there are many! See our About Us page for more info) contributed mightily to our project last year. You can see that Lara Shaffer and I are currently putting in very long hours without pay.

To keep on track with our plan, we need to raise $8,000 in the next two weeks! We need about $700,000 for the remainder of 2005 and about one million over the next 12 months. If you want to know more about where we plan to get the money and how we intend to use it, you can see our strategic plan here.

http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ad/ovc-strategic-plan31.pdf

Keep in mind that this is a draft - board approval expected at our next board meeting (MAR 22). I'm sure you will see the importance of your financial contribution. If you want to do more than contribute money, we can use a lot of help -- especially with our meetup groups forming all over the country. Patti McCarron ([e-mail]) oversees our meetup organizing so please contact her.

We don't make such appeals often. Please act now! Your support is critical in order for the Open Voting project to flourish. Please go now to our web site to contribute via PayPal. Contributions to OVC have averaged around $40, so we're looking for contributions in the $10 to $100 range (become a supporting member for $10 per month! PayPal works great for that). You can also send a check to the address below. Contributions to Open Voting Consortium are not tax deductible. You will be helping to secure democracy for generations to come!

If you are interested in making a larger contribution and/or you require that your donation be tax deductible, please contact me. Also, if you want to contribute by using your credit card without PayPal, please contact me.

Alan Dechert
President, Open Voting Consortium
http://openvoting.org
[e-mail]
9560 Windrose Lane
Granite Bay, CA 95746
916-791-0456
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the development, maintenance, and delivery of open voting systems for use in public elections.

[helderheid]

1. http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Medea Benjamin and Bob Fitrakis Endorse OVC!

[Wilms]

2. kick for OVC n/t