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Protest SF Mayor's praise of Sequoia voting machines

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Message Patricia Axelrod

Big trouble is brewing in Baghdad by the Bay. Read on and please help refute S.F. Mayor's praise of Sequoia Voting System in any way that you can. Please post as you may. I beg of you - make a call, write a letter, email the S.F. Chronicle, barrage S.F. Mayor's office. We use Sequoia here in the State of Nevada wherein I reside and vote. Your effort can help blackball defective and tamper prone Sequoia Voting Systems in California, Nevada and throughout the U.S.

BTW: S. F. Mayor Newsome ran a tight race against his Green Party Opponent. Post election some Greens cried foul and pointed to machine fraud and it was rumored that ballots were somehow dumped. Interesting....Huh?
Is it any wonder that Newsome would support the machines that elected him?

Patricia Axelrod


Solidarity and thanks to Brent Turner for the alert.

PS: Brent - please call me asap.
--- Brent Turner at Open Voting Consortium wrote:


Subject: [Legislation] FW: [OVC-discuss] Outrageous
Claims Need to be Countered Now -- PleaseHelp

Please forward to your lists and call for action- !!- thanks Brent

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Dechert
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 12:07 PM
To: Open Voting Consortium discussion list
Subject: [OVC-discuss] Outrageous Claims Need to be
Countered Now -- PleaseHelp

FYI, I just sent this to our announcements list. We need LETTERS and phone calls! NOW!

Dear Friends of Open Voting:

Yesterday, I received a call from John Wildemuth, staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. I explained what we have done in San Francisco to get officials receptive to an open source voting solution. Today, his article appeared in the Chronicle, "S.F. supervisors blamed for blocking new voting system." He did not publish anything I said. He mostly presented the point of view of Mayor Newsom. The monied interests are winning today.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/09/21
/MN8ASA8T4.DTL&type=politics

We need your help now to counter this misinformation. Please write to the
Chronicle. You can reach the author here: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com and/or call him at 415-777-7159
Also write to the editors: letters@sfchronicle.com

Newsom says the board made a mistake in rejecting the Sequoia $12.6 million
contract. We don't think so.

* Newsom implies that buying Sequoia would mean SF would "get it right."
The Secretary of State's top-to-bottom review uncovered a litany of problems with the Sequoia system. Is this what the Mayor means by getting it right?

http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/ttbr/sequoia.pdf
* A new voting system based on open source software would be much
better, fully transparent, and far less expensive. The could open the bid for such a system at any time. Even though no such system is currently certified, that work could be included in the bid. Here's an example of a system that uses FREE software based on an international standard:
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ad/ovs-0807.pdf
But if they don't like that one, it doesn't matter. Any vendor could provide a system to meet the bid requirements. We recommed that the bid specify OPEN SOURCE so everything is open to public scrutiny.
* When the Mayor advocates for Sequoia, he is advocating for private ownership of information that should all be public. This is wrong.

Here is a sample written by Alec Bash.
John Wildermuth's "S.F. supervisors blamed for blocking new voting system" ignores the key issue, that we need to be confident that every vote has been counted accurately. We have grown accustomed to instant election returns, but are also finding that electronic voting machines can be hacked and elections stolen. San Francisco is doing absolutely the right thing to not spend $12M on new Sequoia voting machines. They will soon be obsolete, because they cannot be trusted as long as secret, proprietary source code is embedded in every
machine. By blocking the new Sequoia voting system, San Francisco now leads the nation in demanding public disclosure of the source code in voting machines. Open source code must come next.

Let's not forget Ohio and Florida when we think about honest elections. Secretary of State Debra Bowen's review of all voting machines in the State shows that safequards are needed. We all want our votes to be counted,
and that's exactly what Bowen is trying to ensure.

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Patricia Axelrod is a Reno, Nevada-based weapons-systems analyst and expert in Gulf War I illnesses.
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