Training Material

We hope that you can take the time to become informed on these issues, and inform others.

Contents:

• Our Voting Security Issues page
• Resources for studying the electronic voting machines issue, websites devoted to the issue, and other collections of links.

Note - We consider these articles, reports and other resources thought-provoking and worth reading. Our recommendation does not imply that we necessarily agree with all the perspectives presented, nor does it imply that we have checked the articles for factual accuracy.

Articles and reports discussing problems with electronic voting machines:

Voter News Service: What Went Wrong?
Larry Barrett , Baseline Magazine, January 13, 2003
and Sideshow's essay linking to this.

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The “Talking Politics with People Unlike Ourselves” workshop provides new tools for reaching the uncommitted, the wavering, and people unlike oneself.  Workshop participants become more effective in talking with others and are better able to move them to action. They learn how to apply lessons from social psychology and personal experience in discussing politics with family members, neighbors, work colleagues, and/or strangers.
 

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Information About the Right

This is Commonweal Institute's collection of articles, reports and resources for studying the right-wing ideological movement.

We hope that you can take the time to become informed on these issues, and inform others.

We also have a Progressive Infrastructure Information page with articles, reports and resources focusing on development of Progressive infrastructure organizations and a Progressive Philosophy and Values page, with articles, reports and resources focusing on Progressive philosophy and values.

Contents:

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Part of "Electronic Voting Machines Project"

The security of elections and the ability of citizens to participate in the political process by voting are fundamental to our democracy. However, the history of elections has shown that when there are opportunities for fraud and deception, there will almost certainly be individual and organized efforts to exploit them. Various forms of disenfranchisement and voter intimidation have also long been a feature of elections.

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 Black Box Voting

Beginning with the swing states, and then proceeding to counties whose election officials have been secretive, members of BBV’s Clean Up Crew make formal requests of public records under FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act) to force officials to disclose their electoral procedures, and take them to court if they refuse. Headed by e-voting activist Bev Harris, Black Box Voting has been a leader in documenting investigations, exposés, whistle-blower accounts, and many examples of flawed elections. Currently BBV has a Help America Audit campaign and is drawing attention to VoteHere’s  cryptographic “solution” that would make a farce of voter verifiable paper trails.

California Voter Foundation

Active lobbying in California and at the national level on voting issues. CVF has a good list of the types of errors that were reported with electronic voting machines in Nov 2004 election.    

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This concise summary regarding recommended election procedures is based on the Commonweal Institute's testimony at the Election Assessment Hearings in Houston, TX, on June 29, 2005.  The testimony itself was developed by Dennis Paull and Katherine Forrest.

View the summary.

The Preliminary Report of Findings: Vloice of Election Customer Surveys, was published on September 22, 2005, at http://www.ElectionAssessment.org.

If you’re like many people, you care more about elections now than
ever before in your life. You want to make a difference -- and here’s
how you can do it.

This article explains some simple techniques you can use to:

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This tabular presentation is an overview of a number of problems with the U.S. election system, with some of the proposed solutions.  It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to give others a starting point.

See table.