[ale] [OT] SB500: Deadline to Save Our Democracy from Computer Voting Fraud

Thu Apr 1 02:52:25 EST 2004

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Vital, Urgent Information for All U.S. Voters!
Please Distribute Freely, Widely and Immediately!
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Paper is evidence.  On May 3rd, 2002, Secretary of State Cathy Cox ripped the 
evidence of our votes out of the election process for the entire State of 
Georgia. She recklessly gambled 54 million of our tax payer dollars on 
unproven Diebold computer voting systems, and thus forced the citizens of our 
State to totally abdicate control of our democracy and hand the counting of 
our votes to a cadre of corporate carpetbaggers.

Knowing that the electoral votes of any one State directly affect every U.S. 
citizen, our entire nation is now facing daunting deadlines in the Georgia 
Assembly for salvaging our democracy from unauditable, corporate controlled, 
paperless electronic voting.

SB500, which passed the State Senate 52 to 3 on March 17th and is currently in 
the House Gov. Affairs committee, will restore the necessity of public 
evidence to our elections by mandating that all of Georgia's touch screen 
voting computers be upgraded to provide the valid audit trail of a Voter 
Verified Paper Ballot printout.

If you are a US citizen reading this and Thursday, 3pm EST has not yet passed 
on the clocks in your time zone, Georgia's Voter Choice Coalition is again 
urging your support in demanding Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail upgrades to 
our State-wide electronic voting systems.

Please immediately call or fax to the Government Affairs committee members 
listed below and urge favorable passage of SB500 both in their committees and 
in the rest of the Georgia General Assembly:

- Alan Powell, Chair
  (404-656-7856, Fax 404-657-0499)
- Buddy DeLoach, Sub-Committee Chair
  (404-656-0202, Fax 404-463-6381)
- Doug Stoner, Secretary
  (404-656-0254, Fax 404-651-8086)
- Mike Boggs
  (404-656-0152, Fax 404-651-8086)
- Sue Burmeister
  (404-656-0220, Fax 404-651-8086)
- Howard Mosby
  (404-656-0298, Fax 404-651-8086)
- Austin Scott
  (404-656-0177, Fax 404-561-8086)

Then please call your friends and forward this email to others urging them to 
join us in this patriotic fight  for our democracy!

The bill is also still facing severe struggles with partisan politics in the 
rest of the General Assembly, so you are also invited to consider regularly 
contacting any of Georgia's other General Assembly representatives between 
now and April 15 via:
<http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2003_04/house/members_by_name.htm>
<http://www.legis.state.ga.us/cgi-bin/gl_peo_list.pl?List=stsenate>

For more information, visit and link from:
<http://verifiedvoting.org> and <http://www.voterchoice.org>

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Follow up:

The proprietary, secretive computer coding and closed door vote counting of 
paperless electronic election systems are a blatant invitation to hacking, 
corruption, error and fraud. So much so that, after independently testing the 
Diebold voting systems under Nevada's Gaming Control Board standards, 
Secretary of State Dean Heller said that they [quote] "Represent a legitimate 
threat to the integrity of our election process."[end quote]

Thousands of the leading technology professionals, companies and institutions 
across our nation agree with Nevada's Secretary of State and his decision to 
mandate VVPAT printers for their 2004 State-wide implementation of electronic 
voting. Some of the most respected names in the industry, including MIT, 
Stanford, UC Berkley, Princeton and Sun Microsystems, have signed the 
resolution at <http://www.verifiedvoting.org/resolution.asp> :

-- "Computerized voting equipment is inherently subject to programming error, 
equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering. It is therefore crucial that 
voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable audit trail, by which we mean a 
permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter 
before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after 
it has been checked. Many of the electronic voting machines being purchased 
do not satisfy this requirement. Voting machines should not be purchased or 
used unless they provide a voter-verifiable audit trail; when such machines 
are already in use, they should be replaced or modified to provide a 
voter-verifiable audit trail. Providing a voter- verifiable audit trail 
should be one of the essential requirements for certification of new voting 
systems." --

With Diebold paperless electronic voting in Georgia, Florida and several other 
States, defrauding America's democracy has gone high tech. The infamous vote 
rigging schemes which used to require a criminal conspiracy of dozens or 
hundreds of people manipulating the physical evidence of hundreds or 
thousands of guarded documents might now be done by one corrupt individual 
flipping a few invisible silicon switches from a remote spider hole, all 
without leaving a trace. Like the massive computer based felon role fraud of 
the Florida 2000 election, the crimes will likely prove impossible to 
prosecute.

Yet the solution of a public, printed paper audit trail is so obvious and 
complete, so broadly acknowledged as a logical necessity, that it defies 
comprehension as to why any elected official in America would not demand this 
accountability from the systems upon which their political legitimacy rests. 
Deceptive spin and stubborn resistance to a publicly audited voting process 
from top State election officials like Florida's Glenda Hood and Georgia's 
Cathy Cox can only lead informed voters to question their competency or 
suspect the integrity of their motives, further eroding the already scarce 
public confidence in our democratic institutions.

With sincere hope of your assistance and
support in restoring our democracy,
M. Aaron Ruscetta
Decatur, Georgia

Concerned voter, Veteran electronic media and IT professional,  
Member Georgia Voter Choice Coalition,
Member of the Electronic Frontiers of Georgia (efga.org),
Member of the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts (ale.org), and 
Contributing supporter of the Electronic Freedom Foundation (eff.org).

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This document was compiled and composed with the generous assistance
of members of the League Opposed to Virtual Elections, Count The Vote, the 
Georgia Green Party, Georgians Against Black Box Voting, the Voter 
Independence Project and many others.

If you would like to learn more about this important issue and what you
can do to restore the integrity and transparency of elections thoughout our 
nation, please visit any of the following sites:  

    http://www.voterchoice.org/auditableballots.php  
    http://www.verifiedvoting.com/
    http://www.countthevote.org/
    http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
    http://www.voteamericavote.com/krugman.html 
    http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/hava/hava.html

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