Declaration

ELECTORAL REFORM

It's possible that the elections would have gone the same way, even without all the vote fraud, suppression, and voter intimidation which was reported. But what does it say about a system where tens of thousands of complaints were made, where only urban poor, blacks and liberal college students report standing in line for up to eleven hours while white suburban voters were unaffected by the misallocation of voting machines, where voting lists were purged, where voters were directed to the wrong precincts after waiting hours in line, only to receive provisional ballots which were later thrown out. Greg Palast and Rev. Jesse Jackson calculate that as many as two million voters were disenfranchised through various means in the 2004 election. Black voters were eleven times more likely than Whites to have their votes thrown out. Statistically speaking, this could not have been an accident. This is shocking. We are outraged. Do you hear anyone talking about it? Why not? Are we so jaded that this is just politics as usual? How heartbreaking !

Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democratic way of life. We need to restore our trust in the electoral process. Without confidence in the the system, we lose confidence in the legitimacy of our elected officials and this puts the whole political process at risk. We propose basic, far-reaching electoral reform to strengthen electoral integrity. Reform must be in place before the primaries for the 2008 elections. That is our goal. That is why we are contacting you. But first, we need to educate our citizens about has occurred in the last two elections, alternative solutions to the problems, and the need for a ballot with a paper trail. The mainstream press has dropped the ball on this, to their utter shame. The only way to achieve this is through a national grassroots campaign of education.

Ensuring universal voting rights needs to be of concern to every
American regardless of political affiliation.

Goal
We need a nationwide educational campaign to explore voting irregularities and various voting methods.
Our ultimate goal is to enable easy and universal access to voting, using an accurate and verifiable system. This will restore voting rights to Blacks and the urban poor who were disproportionately disenfranchised as well as minimizing the tossed-out votes.

Recommendations

1) Require a paper trail

2) Create a National Presidential Voting Holiday.

3) Secretary of State must be impartial, unbiased and non-partisan (i.e. not a member of election campaign team)

4) Open source code for electronic voting machines.

5) Support new legislation to close the loopholes adversely affecting voter civil rights.

6) Implement current technology to dramatically reduce the possibility of systematic vote fraud (Two Pass Voting)

Conclusion

If we cannot trust our voting system then we cannot trust our democracy. We ask you to join us in helping to forge a just election system.

For those who received this in a printed format this blog is at http://counteveryvote.blogspot.com/

CountEveryVote@gmail.com