Letters: Act Now! You Can Block E-Voting in Boulder County

["Joe Pezzillo" <jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx>]

12/30/2005

Attn: Letters to the Editor
Boulder County Newspapers


Act Now! You Can Block E-Voting in Boulder County

Please act now to stop the forced introduction of e-voting in Boulder  
County.

The County Clerk is planning to purchase Direct Record Electronic  
(DRE) voting computers in Boulder County and eliminate local  
precincts with "super size" vote centers.

The DRE computers are the worst possible technology for voting, as  
has been proven repeatedly around the country in election day use and  
professional testing. If you haven't heard the facts or read enough  
horror stories about e-voting errors already, visit http:// 
www.votersunite.org

A better technology is the ballot marker, which offers all the  
accessibility benefits of technology, but prints out the vote onto a  
standard paper ballot. Ballot markers are also the number one ranked  
devices in real world testing by the disability communities in Oregon  
and New Mexico.

The Clerk is sneaking the computers in by shutting the public out,  
allowing comment on an insufficiently prepared proposal for only a  
few days around the Christmas and New Years Holidays.

Instead, the entire community should be included in a thorough  
discussion and analysis process about any elections decisions. We're  
putting more time and process into where to put the train station  
than how we're going to run elections in our democracy for years to  
come!

PLEASE TAKE ACTION TODAY! Write letters to this newspaper, the  
Commissioners (commissioners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) and the Clerk  
(lsalas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx).

Please take time today to write down your objections to electronic  
voting and vote centers in Boulder County, and how you feel about the  
privatization of our elections in the hands of for-profit companies.

Join the local discussion online at < http://www.coloradovoter.net >  
including a local e-mail list and document archives.

Thank you for taking the time to act on this fundamental issue. We  
must have trustworthy elections, our democracy is at stake.

Sincerely,

Joe Pezzillo
PO Box J
Boulder, CO 80306 USA
jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx
303-938-8850

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(298 Words in Body of Letter)

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