re: Thursday's Presentation

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

If we're doing this to win, I would suggest making it clear that this
secret process to buy secret software before the NIST standards are
available is UNacceptable, and will result in massive citizen protest.

I sent the below message yesterday, and 2 other people who do
Boulder emailings re-sent it. It works because it's strong, not
because it's warm or fuzzy. I expect twice the previous turnout.

Evan

From: Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>
To: BoulderVoters@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Thurs 2PM: County Commissioners hearing on outrageous vote system
    proposed


Friends, Boulderites, voters,

It's unbelievable! County Clerk Linda Salas and her Elections
supervisor Tom Halicki, are advising the Boulder County Commissioners
to buy a Hart InterCivic election system, without providing any
written explanation of their decision process. Neither is a
programmer; nobody is allowed to inspect the actual vote-counting
software to see that it's honest. Boulder's Citizens for Verifiable
Voting (www.ColoradoVoter.net) believe EVERYONE should be able to
inspect it. It seems our election officials have made their decision
based on Hart's "reputation."

NIST (Nat'l Istitute on Standards & Technology) is years away from
issuing standards for computer vote-counting. Our group is saying we
shouldn't buy ANY system until then.

When non-technical bureaucrats decide highly technical issues which
have resulted in VERY suspicious election results (see Paul Krugman's
NY Times article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/23/opinion/23KRUG.html) you have
a recipe for disaster

We need a large turnout this Thursday the 29th at 2PM at the Boulder
County bldg on the Pearl St. Mall between 13th & 14th St.

We have an op-ed in today's Daily Camera:

http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/insight/article/0,1713,BDC_2494_2600279,00.html

Personally, I think until there is an open process ending in buying a
system using publicly-inspectable software, we should return to
hand-counting paper ballots so that people know they get what they
vote for. It would also employ locals to count votes instead of
sending money to shady companies, many of which are heavy contributors
to Republican politicians.

Evan


"When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you
suffer." (Stevie Wonder's "Superstition")


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