Need help with a letter

[BeFree]

This letter will be passed around and hopefully will make it up to the state level. It needs to be a one page letter, be concise and convincing enough to get them off their asses and audit the damed machines. Your help is needed. Thanks.
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Not merely a local problem but one of state and national implications.

The reason is that the machines which count the votes are from nationally owned corporations, with no local oversight of the way votes are counted. Whereas in the past, counts had many eyes and hands producing the results, these new machines have little local control, so the count, in reality, is produced in secrecy.

The computer code is written by someone unknown to anybody but the vendor.

That code which controls the additions of the votes can be, and has been shown to be unproperly written and the mistakes only discovered by hand counts. Until now nobody but the vendors have been allowed to inspect that code.

In this state the law now allows the Democratic party to inspect the code but there remain two problems with that inspection: 1) acquiring an expert to examine the code,

and 2) being certain that the code inspected in the Capitol is the same code that is used in each county.

There is only one way to double-check the machine produced counts. That one way is to hand count some of the actual paper ballots.

What is being proposed is that a percentage of the ballots are counted. From every 100 ballots processed by a machine, twenty ballots are pulled, at random, and one or more races are hand counted.

A 20% percent audit such as this should be able to easily determine the veracity of the machine count. If the totals nearly match, then the machines can be found to be properly programmed and the machine results be accepted.

In a case where the numbers from an audit and a machine count substantially differ, a more thorough audit can take place until authorities are satisfied that the true intent of the voters is determined.

It is a responsibilty of election officials to ensure voters that their votes are counted as cast. In the current atmosphere of privately owned voting machine vendors coming up with numbers derived in total secrecy, no voter can be assured that his or her vote has been properly recorded and added to the totals.

We must have a human count of ballots independent of the machines to openly and publicly verify the real numbers.