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Click on any highlighted link below
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Spring Training Alert! Save this
date--April 10th
Each day
presents opportunities to talk about the issue of voting
integrity, especially in an election year. Do you struggle with
knowing what to say and how to say it ? Have HAVA , HR2239 , and the
numerous other legislative bills gotten you confused? Do you worry
that someone will label you a Luddite or conspiracy
theorist? If you answered yes to any of these questions
you need to come to CFVI's April 10th training session! We
will educate you on the issues and train you to speak
knowledgeably. We will practice giving presentations and
provide materials so you may educate people in your
communities. Our goal is to empower people to speak with
confidence about the issue as we are receiving numerous
requests from across the state for educational presentations.
Attend CFVI's Spring
Training on April 10th and help us mobilize the voting
integrity movement! You can RSVP here.
An agenda
and event flyer
for you to distribute are available for download as well.
Message from the Director
Bob McGrath,
Director
People want to know where CFVI stands on HR
2239, "Voter Confidence Act," sponsored by U.S. Representative
Rush Holt, which is currently pending (in committee) in the U.S.
House. This legislation has received a lot of press because (1) it
allows for a paper "trail" (or receipt), (2) it mandates random
recounts in .5% of all voting precincts, (3) it opens voting machine
software code to the public, and (4) the paper receipts may be used
in the case of a recount. But Colorado law dictates that any recount
must be performed in the identical manner as the initial vote count,
meaning that votes cast on an electronic voting device must be
recounted on that same device.This is just one of the concerns we in
Colorado have with this legislation. For a more thorough examination
of the bill, a synopsis of the bill is available here.
An FAQ
from Rush Holt's office and my Pro's and Con's List is available here.
We
are grappling with several questions. Is HR 2239 an acceptable
"shortcut" that gets us a fair election for 2004? Would we diminish
CFVI's long-range credibility and impact by rushing to support HR
2239 in this election? Do we win a battle and lose a war in
advocating for HR 2239?
The CFVI Board has been meeting to
nail down a strategy for moving forward, with or without legislation
on either the state or national front, to achieve our desired goal
of trustworthy elections. We are examining a number of alternative
actions towards verifiable voting THIS YEAR, including possible
legal action.
We welcome your input on HR 2239. Please visit
the forum and post
your thoughts. Also attend the April 10th Spring Training where
we will have a dialogue about the various aspects of this issue.
Member / Volunteer Update
CFVI was at a recent
Democratic Central Committee meeting where eighteen new
members/volunteers signed on. The following week CFVI was
on the agenda at the Statewide Progressive Organizing (Democracy for
America) meeting in Denver . Joe Pezzillo, Deanna Jewell, Tracy
Abell, and Brad Thacker spoke about electronic voting issues and our
efforts toward a voter verifiable ballot. We also had the
CFVI educational table-top display along with literature
and membership/volunteer sign-up sheets. A big thank-you to
Lisa Knutson-Province and David Ellington who helped out on short
notice and signed on another twenty members. This past weekend
Peter Raich addressed the Eagle County Dems and gathered more
support for voting integrity. We're happy so many people have
joined our ranks, and we hope to build on this
momentum!
Please, if you know of an upcoming event that
would be a good fit for CFVI, let us know at info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
. These recent experiences prove that people are very
concerned about the electronic voting issue and that they want to
get involved; every time we talk to a group, we increase our
membership. The greater our numbers, the greater
our credibility in the media and the
legislature. CFVI is ready to get out there and talk
to folks but we need your help
locating events. Also, it would be a huge
plus to have a volunteer coordinating those
efforts. Any takers? Lisa Knutson-Province has tackled
another job for CFVI. She's currently researching the
existence of other voting integrity groups around the country.
Once we have that list compiled, we'll need volunteers to monitor
each group's activities (via websites) and serve as
liasions. Our hope is to share strategies and build
nation-wide coalitions. This volunteer opportunity isn't a big
time investment (for several people) but it could prove invaluable
to CFVI. We're trying to put out a weekly newsletter to keep members
current. We'd love writing and editing help. Please
contact Tracy Abell at 303.986.9501 or TresCeeA@xxxxxxx . If
we haven't yet described the perfect volunteer opportunity for
you, call Tracy. She'll help tailor a job that suits your
talents and time availability.
This Week's Priorities:
1)
Did you register with CFVI on-line or attend one of the Election
Reform meet-ups? If so, we may not have complete
information on file about you. Please click
here for our Volunteer Registration Form and tell us more
about your talents and skills, and how you'd like to participate
with CFVI. We have a variety of needs, and you may choose
any level of commitment. By telling us more about yourself, we
can best match you with upcoming
opportunities.
2) CFVI can only be effective if
we capitalize on every member's skills. We need to
mobilize our growing membership to engage with the public
and decision-makers in the voting community about our issues.
We've prepared a rough overview of CFVI committees
and priorities. Please click here
to fill out an online volunteer/member form or e-mail us
to learn more about where you can plug in your
particular talents and interests.
Legislative Update
Read the analysis
of Colorado House Bill 04-1227 : Concerning Voting Systems, and
Making an Appropriation in Connection. Full
text of HB 04-1227, Fiscal
Impact Statement, and Committee
of Reference Report available in the forum. Post your comments,
we'd like to know your viewpoint.
It looks like HB1227 comes before the Appropriations Committee
next Wed, Apr.7th at 7:30 AM! There are ten bills listed for that
time! To get this schedule, go to www.leg.state.co.us. Then under the
House, click on Calendar. We need to write each and every member on
the appropriations committee regarding this bill.
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Events:
Event
Date: Apr 10, 2004
Volunteer Activity - "Spring Training"
- Protecting Your Vote:
What: Speakers, Videos, Workshops,
Resources
* Electronic Voting Machines
* Working with the
Media
* How to Give Presentations
* Pending Legislation
*
Coalition-Building & Outreach
* Defining Terms
*****
Poll Watching Training Has Been Postponed to A Date Closer to the
November Elections*****
Please visit the CFVI
Forums (Events) for more information.
Sponsored by
Coloradoans for Voting Integrity, a non-partisan group of citizens
concerned with verifiable voting. Co-sponsored by AUMC Peace &
Justice Commission, City of Arvada Peace & Social Justice
Committee. Seeking additional co-sponsors and speakers.
Find
out more.
Event Date: Apr 20, 2004
Meetings
- CFVI / Election Reform Meetup:
PLEASE NOTE: THE MEETING
DATE FOR APRIL HAS BEEN MOVED OUT BY onE WEEK TO APRIL 20TH DUE
TO THE COLORADO CAUCUS ON APRIL 13TH.
(2nd
Tuesday of every month.)
Nominations for a Venue are open
at:
http://electionreform.meetup.com/
and we are suggesting that everyone vote for the Arvada United
Methodist Church this month.
Coloradoans for Voting
Integrity
7114 West Jefferson Avenue, Suite 100, Lakewood, CO
80235
Phone 303-231-1031, Fax 303-980-0609
e-mail: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.cfvi.org
Find
out more.
Latest News Articles:
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A Paper Ballot, a
Newspaper, and a Polaroid
Camera |
OpEdNews.Com
by
Allen Snyder
-----------------------------------------
'May
I have a paper ballot, please?'
If you're
any kind of concerned, informed, and registered
American voter, fearful and distrustful of the
current system's multiple shortcomings, worried
about how whacko neo-conservatives from the
GOP's right-wing have corrupted it almost beyond
recognition with their myriad dirty tricks and
Nixonian ratfucking, these will be the first
words out of your mouth when you go to the polls
in November to cast your vote against
Bush.
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Posted by: BobMcgrath on
2004-03-30 20:02:45
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How E-Voting Threatens
Democracy |
Wired
News
By Kim
Zetter
02:00 AM Mar. 29, 2004
PT
In January 2003, voting activist Bev
Harris was holed up in the basement of her
three-story house in Renton, Washington,
searching the Internet for an electronic voting
machine manual, when she made a startling
discovery.
Clicking on a link for a file
transfer protocol site belonging to voting
machine maker Diebold Election Systems, Harris
found about 40,000 unprotected computer files.
They included source code for Diebold's AccuVote
touch-screen voting machine, program files for
its Global Election Management System tabulation
software, a Texas voter-registration list with
voters' names and addresses, and what appeared
to be live vote data from 57 precincts in a 2002
California primary election.
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Posted by: Admin on
2004-03-30 11:43:48
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No paper? Vulnerable
elections |
The
Miami Herald Opinion Page
Posted on
Sat, Mar. 27, 2004
BY AVI
RUBIN
I became embroiled in the national
debate about electronic voting security when I
co-authored a report exposing serious security
flaws in Diebold's AccuVote-TS
machines.
The day before we released our
report in July, Maryland officials announced
that they were buying $55.6 million worth of
these machines. Rather than asking me to work
with them, which I offered to do several times,
state officials immediately targeted me with
criticism and discounted my findings. They
continue to do so despite three subsequent
studies, two of them paid for by the state,
which confirmed our initial findings.
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Posted by: Mlambie on
2004-03-30 10:36:51
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Protecting Our Vote a
Non-Partisan Issue |
By Bob
McGrath, Director,
Coloradoans for Voting
Integrity
He turned off the news. He
was tired of seeing the demonstrations on CNN,
Fox and all the networks.
It didn't seem
quite possible that only 48 hours ago all the
pollsters had projected a clearcut win for the
challenger. A Vietnam vet, the challenger's
record had become part of his appeal for a
change in national defense
priorities.
Hard to believe that when the
polls closed last night, the networks and the
pollsters were confounded once again as the
President appeared to have swept the election -
in several states, actually converting his
projected double-digit losses into double-digit
wins.
So the protests began. The calls
for recounts, the filing of legal challenges,
and the spiriting away of the infamous
electronic voting machines, or "DRE's," all
became precursors to the riots that followed in
state capitols and major metropolitan areas -
350 at last count - that resulted in police
curfews and civil defense patrols.
It
could have been avoided. He thought about how
people could have insisted upon paper ballots as
a check on the unauditable DRE's. As news broke
of mysterious overvotes and last-minute
variances in vote totals around the country,
voting officials had simply recorded the votes
for the President and his party. In several
instances, the voting totals made no sense. How
to explain that every Congressional race in
Maryland, for example, won by the same margin,
of 818,181 votes? Funny how those numerals
translated to HA HA HA in alpha
characters.....
Guess it was time to
reconcile himself to another four years of
President Kerry, and hope Sen. McCain would
consider running again in 2012.
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Posted by: Mlambie on
2004-03-29 16:08:18
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MAKING VOTES
COUNT |
NY
Times Opinion: When the Umpires Take
Sides
Published: March 29,
2004
When Katherine Harris had to
decide which candidate won Florida in 2000, many
people were disturbed to learn she was both the
state's top elections official and co-chairwoman
of the Florida Bush-Cheney campaign. This year,
that kind of unhealthy injection of partisanship
into the administration of a presidential
election could happen again.
Ms. Harris's
successor is staying out of partisan politics
this year, but other secretaries of state are
diving right in. In Missouri, as important a
swing state as Florida, the secretary of state
has a top position in the Missouri Bush-Cheney
campaign. In Michigan, another battleground
state, the secretary of state has signed on as
co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign, and
has been supporting an openly Republican voter
registration drive.
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Posted by: Mlambie on
2004-03-29 14:52:49
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Name: Email:
Coloradoans for Voting Integrity
7114
West Jefferson Avenue, Suite 100
Lakewood, CO 80235
Ph: (303)
231-1031 | Fx: (303) 980-0609 |
CFVI
respects your right to privacy and will not share your information
with others unless you expressly permit such sharing.
www.cfvi.org | info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
© 2004 Coloradoans for Voting Integrity. All rights
reserved.
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