Could the practice of separating ballots by party lines be a way to select which votes to toss out? After all, historically it's Democratic votes which are stolen. What about voting privacy when we are required to register by partisanship? Why should the government categorize us by our voting patterns? These are the questions in this letter. Please write similar open letters yourself.

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Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State
1500 11th Street
Sacramento, California 95814

(916) 653-6774 Legislative and Constituent Services

CC:

Elaine Ginnold, Marin County Registrar of Voters

Marin County Civic Center
Room 121
3501 Civic Center Drive
San Rafael CA 94903

(415) 499-6456

RE: Registration to vote in any particular political party

2-6-08

Dear Debra Bowen and Elaine Ginnold:

I am writing with a concern about the Marin County regulations requiring individuals to register as Democrat, Republican or Decline to State.

1) I believe it is imperative, not optional where democracy is concerned, for Any Individual at Any Time to be able to vote for the Candidate he or she chooses.

If somebody registers as Republican but decides at the last moment to vote Democrat, or vice versa, she or he cannot do so. If she or he writes in a Candidate of choice onto the ballot who belongs to another party, will that vote be counted since it appears on the wrong Party’s ballot?

This is just plain wrong.

2) To declare our voting intentions is to compromise our anonymity and secrecy in voting, as required by law.

3) According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, who broke the Florida voter roll purge story, and according to election reform authority Victoria Collier, it is historically Democratic votes which are stolen. It is not my intention to make a partisan statement here: Were it Democrats who stole votes on an historical basis, I would say the same about them. And the fact that Individuals of All Parties steal votes at times is uncontestable.

Greg Palast details that historically, it is black precincts which are nine times (9x) as likely to be stolen as any other area; Hispanic precints are four times as likely (4x); and poor Democratic areas are three times as likely to be frauded (3x). The reason has nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with the fact that all vote Democratic, writes Palast.

Is the separation of ballots by Party Lines a way to select which votes to toss out? This practice must be done away with!

Don’t we all have a right to shield our voting preferences from Government scrutiny?

What is the purpose of categorizing people on an official basis according to their voting patterns?

I am carbon copying this letter to the ACLU of Northern California and to the Internet for public viewing and comment.

I hope to see more Constituents stepping forward and voicing their concerns, state-wide and nation-wide, wherever this practice of requiring voter registration according to partisanship is in effect.

Thank you in advance for your concerned action and follow-through by officially and legislatively tossing out this privacy-invading practice.

4) I am very grateful to Marin County for always using paper ballots with fill-in-the-bubble format instead of ballot punching. No hanging chads, etc. Very good! The concern is that according to computer programmers, scanners are riggable too. Having served on an election reform think tank I know that these are less corruptible than the DRE’s, which “talk” to one another: IE only one DRE needs to be set to throw off the votes county-wide or state-wide. Being programmable by Satellite says it all. Scanners are an improvement in that sense.

I am concerned, however, that the method of tallying the votes at the centralized State and Federal levels remains undisclosed. Are DRE’s used in these areas? How is vote counting at the centralized levels overseen?

A solution which I proposed to election reform authority Victoria Collier, who said this would really work, is hand-counted paper ballots as filmed on public TV for verification, done by unbiased citizens summoned at random for the civic duty of vote counting, as with jury duty. I suggest results must be posted to the Internet prior to notifying the media, because historically the media has collaborated to falsify election figures in notorious ways. The best example of such media collaboration may be seen in Victoria Collier’s article on Truthout, titled “A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America”, at http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:HTyZ1Bn_-4EJ:www.truthout.com/docs_03/102503C.shtml+a+brief+history+of+election+machine+fraud+in+America&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Thank you in advance for your concerned follow-up,

Kathryn Smith, Marin County resident, concerned citizen

Authors Bio:
This quote summarizes the nature of my concerns and the content of personal experiences which stir my activism:

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement on human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves". --Paul Revere, House of Commons