The Times is not giving the latest moves regarding our vote adequate coverage. Diebold has not passed Federal Qualification criteria, yet our Secretary of State gave Diebold what is essentially a green light for CA. Our County registrar is not responsive to the expressed wishes of the community she allegedly serves.

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Take a minute to draft a note to the LA Times. You can talk to them in three ways:

Send email to letters@latimes.com.
Submit a comment to the Readers Representative on the LA Times (our alleged advocate) at http://www.latimes.com/services/site/la-comment-readersrep-cf,0,3057606.customform.
You can post on their message board at http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-tsqaure-board,0,2274345.graffitiboard.

Key points to consider:
The Times is not giving the latest moves regarding our vote adequate coverage.
Diebold has not passed Federal Qualification criteria, yet our Secretary of State gave Diebold what is essentially a green light for CA.
Our County registrar is not responsive to the expressed wishes of the community she allegedly serves.

Then don't forget to call the SoS's office on Tuesday per my earlier message. If you need a copy of that again, let me know and I'll resend to any who ask.

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From: LLOYD DENT
Subject: RE: ACTION ALERT! SoS has certified Diebold

Dear Concerned California Voters:
There is something we can do right now! We have not seen any mention of the certification of Diebold machines in the LA Times (Sat or Sun). We can write letters to the Editor about this. We have been told by another group that you are more likely to get a letter published if the Times get a lot of letters on a subject, thereby showing general interest. I will write a letter, and I recommend that you send a message to your group encouraging as many as possible to also send a letter. The letters should not be a form letter, but rather have different approaches.

More information is available at the Secretary of State's website: http://www.ss.ca.gov/ under Voting Systems Information. Friday's Press Release is there, with the Conditions of the conditional certification at the very end of the document.

Lloyd A. Dent

Submitter: Joan Brunwasser

Submitters Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Submitters Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.


Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.

When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"

Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.