April 6, 2006 at 23:00:00

"Quandary" Responses, part 3: More letters from readers of OpEdNews

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By Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity Editor, OpEdNews (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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That's my two cents.

Shalom,

Aaron Freeman, political commentator, comedian, actor, author

***
That's what it all about. Getting people to talk and think and then do.
When the people realize there are way more of us, than there are of them...

God bless you!

AS, voting activist

***
The overwhelming majority of people know nothing about the perils associated
with touch screen voting. And the mainstream media is basically ignoring
the issue. Of course, the two are interrelated. One big key to make this
movement more effective is to reach more ordinary Americans.
One way to force the media to cover this issue and educate more people
would be to have Invisible Ballots Bus or Tours. Since Invisible Ballots
is on sale right now at steeply discounted prices, my idea is to pool
resources and purchase a huge quantity. Finding well-to-do donors to help
finance this project would help greatly of course.
There should be multiple buses in each state that would crisscross the
state in complementary driving schedules and hand out the videos to media,
civic leaders, public and college libraries, community TV access stations
etc.
At the end of the tour, the buses could meet at the state Capitol for a
rally that would generate more publicity. The tour would need a sharply
defined itinerary of cities and towns to stop and then the media and other
connections in each place could be contacted in advance. Rural areas and
towns should be included as much as possible, not just big cities.
Supportive people need to be located in advance of arrival for advice on
the best places to approach, possible lodging etc. In California, it might
be possible to rent some Green Tortoise buses. They have huge old Greyhound
buses in which the seats fold into sleeping bunks at night.

California voting activist who prefers to remain anonymous for this posting

****

Joan Brunwasser's thoroughly researched article on our voting machine system should be printed in every newspaper in the country. It's no wonder that citizens have become cynical and apathetic about voting. The campaigns are corrupt and the voting system is broken. Even if the candidates are impeccable, we can't be sure who the winners really are.

Barbara B.
Evanston, IL

***
Note: this email is in response to an article called
A Bit of a Quandary
published at
opednews.com/articles/opedne_joan_bru_060331_a_bit_of_a_quandary.htm

Joan,
You and I are on parallel paths. I also am a pre-menopausal suburban mom,
and I seem to be the only one in Maine concerned about the vote count. I was
busy working "globally" by writing and signing petitions and basically
educating myself. I scanned your list of reading material at the end of the
article and was surprised that I had read all of it and more. No wonder my
house is dirty! I felt good about Maine because for 200 years we have had
hand counted paper ballots. All of a sudden a scanner appeared for the 2004
election. Now I discover that about 80 precincts use them. It turns out that
Maine has a good rule for re-counts. They are always by hand. The bad news is
they, like most places do not do an automatic re-count unless the race is
very close. There is no mandatory random re-count. I have been struggling to
educate other people so that I do not have to confront our town manager and
our SOS by myself. I have already talked to the SOS once, and I am
determined that the next time I will have some kind of a group, so that I don't become "that kook". My town manager has said that he welcomes any
info I can bring him. My problem is I tackled him right after the Miami
Herald did that great article on the Hursti hack. You know how fast stories
broke after that. I kept going "ok I'll just print this one out, one for my
files, one for the town manager...and this one too..."

Next thing you know I have a whole shelf of notebooks, and my husband is going "you're going to scare him to death." Then I tried to enlist some friends who would be willing to "learn" about this issue from me so that maybe we could get them to be "out front". Especiallly the hubby. He knows everybody and, doesn't have crazy
hair. That didn't work. They were too busy to really take it all in and the
important info would have been diluted. So I went to the next town up the road that has an active progressive movement, to share with the "progressives", the "peace and justice" group, and the Democrats. It was great! I am showing your film "Invisible ballots" in May.

When I spoke to the Democrats I was so proud of myself. I had written the whole story on cards. The HAVA story, the Shelly/law suit/whistleblower/McPherson story, and the Ion Sancho story. I was able to tell it like an engaging story and then I finished by showing a visual of the Hursti attack which I am working on. I then finished up with Maine, where we are at, the good the bad and needs improvement. Like you, I mentioned HR 550, but I said hand counted paper ballots are the best. I paraphrased Chuck Herrin by saying that machines are for speed and PERHAPS accuracy. The accuracy is on balance just as good with hand counts.

Paper ballots hand counted however, have the highest perception of integrity. So then it becomes a choice of how much Integrity we are willing to give up for speed.
The most gratifying thing that was said to me was by this woman. She told me that
when she saw that "Does our vote count" was on the agenda her first thought was
that it was unnecessary because Maine is safe. She told me that she really
learned a lot.

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Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which exists for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election (more...)

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