Subject: Thank You & News from Coloradoans for Voting Integrity Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 14:44:01 -0700
Thank you for attending the meetup on election reform held in Denver 2 weeks
ago. Since that time a lot has happened, and I wanted to share some
information with you:
1. Thank you to Peter Raich & Donna Plutschuck. They have made it possible
for our group to have a physical address, a phone number for taking
messages, and have donated monies to help launch our website. Please join
me in thanking them for helping us get off the ground and to gain the tools
necessary to appear professional and legitimate quickly! This means we are
not seeking any additional funds from anyone at this time. Please know that
we appreciate and encourage everyone to simply support us with your presence
and participation at this time. It is important to us that you understand
that we do not wish anyone to have any barriers to participating in this
group, such as feeling "hit upon" for our need for initial start-up funds.
It's done and we're on our way.
2. We hope to have our website up by this weekend. This will enable us to
collect articles, allow people to post to a weblog (blog for short) and
archive helpful information in the various on-line forums related to the
topics of voting integrity. We hope to include links to helpful websites
and provide people a way to effectively network with others on these topics.
We encourage your suggestions on whatever else you would like to see on this
site. We will send you notification of the web URL once it has been
registered.
3. Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, December 9th. We will send
you an e-mail notifying you of the location and time once we have confirmed
a location. The agenda for this meeting will be some time to educate people
on the issues (since there will be newcomers) and we will discuss how the
group would like to proceed in prioritizing the many issues related to
protecting our vote. I have agreed to act as the group's director until
elections can be held for how we wish to organize ourselves.
4. The Boulder-based, "Citizens for Verified Voting" has been meeting on
this issue for the past 2 months and is presenting at the December 4th
meeting of the Boulder Election Commissioner's meeting on their desire to
hold off on purchasing electronic voting machines since the standards have
not yet even been written, and to opt for paper ballots in this interim
period until verifiable paper trails are incorporated into any purchased
systems. It is possible to join their list serve to read the many posts
from concerned citizens in Boulder, who face an impending deadline of
December 15th for a decision by the county election commission on this
issue.
5. We have been approached by Bev Harris, author of "Black Box Voting" (see
http://www.blackboxvoting.com) to join their website of activists to create
public awareness and join them in a multi-state effort to delay or halt the
use of electronic voting machines, until certain issues can be addressed
that can help increase confidence in their use. We have established an
on-line presence in the Colorado forum of her website, and you may register
on-line there as an interested party if you wish.
6. Please continue asking your friends and other interested citizens to join
with you in this issue. It will take a lot of citizen education on these
issues for policies to change.
7. We will be needing people to help us in dealing with the media. I
would like to encourage our group to develop a speaker's bureau on this
topic, so that many of us may be equipped to speak on the topics related to
election reform, such as use of DRE's and the over-zealous purging of voter
rolls. If you are interested in being part of this effort, please let us
know at our December 9th meeting or contact me.
8. Speaking of the press, I was able to be a guest on a Denver Cable TV show
on Tuesday, November 18th called "We Said No Nukes" sponsored by a number of
Peace & Justice groups in Denver. I was joined by Joe Pezillo of the
Boulder group Citizens for Verifiable Voting. We hope to obtain a video
copy of this presentation and add it to our website. There will be upcoming
opportunities to appear on TV and radio shows as well as to offer copy to
newspapers, and we will encourage many of you to consider participating!
9. We may have some additional people attend our next meeting who are
interested election officials. Due to the holidays in December and the need
for our group to organize itself, I would ask that we hold off on inviting
members of the media until January or later, so that we may have a more
cohesive message to deliver to the press and to other election officials.
If you have particular ideas for our next meeting's agenda, please send them
to my attention at this e-mail address. Thank you!
Bob McGrath, Acting Director Coloradoans for Voting Integrity 2801 Youngfield Street, #300 Golden, CO 80401 Tel. 303.231.1031 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yourvotecountscolorado
"Your Vote Counts!"