TAKING ACTION FOR VOTING MACHINE SECURITY
Here are some actions you can take
if you are concerned about the security problems posed by electronic voting
machines.
Inform yourself
Good web sites to visit are
Verified Voting <http://www.verifiedvoting.org/>
and Black Box Voting <http://www.blackboxvoting.org>.
They have frequently-updated information on the constantly-changing situation
with electronic voting machines.
A number of other voting-related
organization websites are listed in
this document.
Support Election Security
Urge your members of Congress to become cosponsors of
Visit the Verified Voting website to find out about these bills and others at the Federal and state levels.
Educate Local Officials
Download copies of the booklet Myth Breakers: Facts about Electronic Elections from the Voters Unite website <www.votersunite.org>. Read the booklet and give copies to your local officials.
Educate the Press
Call reporters in your state who have written on this topic. A good way to find recent news articles is to use "news.google.com" and type "[name of your state] electronic voting" into the search box.
Get the Word Out
Tell your friends and people you know in political organizations about the problems with electronic voting and direct them to this website and other good websites. Also send out notices on mailing lists where people will be interested (but try not to spam or generally irritate people).
Election Security in Your County
Decisions about voting equipment and procedures are most often made at the county level. This means that you can take action locally, where you may have better access to public officials. If possible, ally yourself with local friends and neighbors who also want secure elections. Goals to consider:
Short term (before the elections in 2006): The situation you are facing depends on the state and county where you live…
· If you live in a county with touch-screen (direct recording electronic or DRE) voting machines that do not create a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or ballot at the time that a person votes, get the equipment upgraded to include a VVPAT. So how does anyone do that? They should lobby their public officials to get only systems with a VVPAT.
· If not possible, vote absentee yourself, and encourage everyone else in your county to do the same. If you are allowed to do so in your county, it is best to have the absentee ballots delivered to any precinct in your county on Election Day rather than mailing them in. Check with your elections office to see what the options are.
· If your county is considering buying touch-screen DREs, lobby to urge that your country hold off until a VVPAT option is available and include that feature in the purchase contract. Also ask that regular voters (like you) have a chance to see the equipment options before they are decided upon, to be sure that the VVPAT design is workable for the average person.
Longer term (by no later than 2008):
Communicate with the Registrar for your county and your state officials.
· Ask that elections be run with the maximum degree of transparency. Election procedures, in all their details, should be open to the public.
· Lobby for state legislation that will require an automatic manual recount (an audit) of at least 2% of ballots cast in any election. Make sure the legislation specifies that the official ballot is the voter-verified paper document, not the electronic record inside the voting machine.
· The selection of precincts to be subject to the manual recount should be made publicly, and only after the polls close and precinct results are tabulated. Many states don’t have a manual recount law, and current DREs can’t be recounted meaningfully.
· All voting machines must not be connected to any networks extending outside of the control of elections staff, from the initial election testing until after the official canvass. This is a technical matter, so inform yourself about what to look for if you want to help ensure that your county’s voting machines are not hooked up to outside influences during the election and vote counting process.
· The raw precinct totals (how many votes for each candidate and ballot measure, not just total number of voters) should be made public as soon as possible after the polls close. Putting precinct totals online is even better than posting the results outside the polls.
·
Require VVPAT, open source code and transparent
equipment testing procedures. In addition, counties should avoid signing
contracts with secrecy clauses. The vendors want the business and may be
willing to give up the secrecy clauses. Citizen lobbying pressure can be an
important factor in making sure of this.
Ó Commonweal Institute, Inc., 2005