Demand a vote on fair elections

by Gary Boatwright, Sun Nov 07, 2004 at 11:16:18 AM EST

There is a simple and effective solution to getting fair elections. The key paragraph in this story linked text discusses a bill that has already been introduced.

Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a vote, thus insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about a third of the 2004 electorate ...

(more in Extended Entry)

Let's just email our Senators and Representatives and demand a vote. Here's a link to an online directory of all members of Congress. linked text linked text Just plug in your address and up pop your Senators and Representative.

I've seen the following ideas over at dkos:

(1) Call for public hearings
(2) Ohio residents should demand recount
(3) Start a nationwide petition
(4) Dems have requested and OMB investigation
(5) The latest entry over at dkos is organizing statewide initiatives

How many more elections are we going to have before any of these options can be implemented?

Why don't the Democrats simply demand a vote on the current bill? If DeLay and Hastert don't give them a vote, shut down the government.

Honest elections are an issue of fundamental fairness. Newt Gingrich lost the battle to shut down the government because he was trying to advance blatantly partisan issues. In the upcoming lame duck session Congress must vote on raising the debt ceiling. Democrats should demand that the fair elections bill be brought to the floor or shut down Congress.

George Bush says he has a whole bunch of political capital from his mandate. Let's see how much of his capital he wants to use up fighting against honest elections.

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Text of the bill?

Do you have a link to the text of the bill? One of the things I think needs to be in it is that there not simply be a paper trail, but that there be random audits of the machine counts--by counting the paper trail. Otherwise we might never have evidence of fraud even where it exists. Perhaps each candidate should also be able to ask for some limited number of quality control checks, so that if some precincts vote much differently from either exit polls or expectations, (some of) those precincts could be checked. Then if anything turned up, there would be sufficient grounds for a complete recount.

by Omark 2004-11-07 12:07PM | 0 recs

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Re: Text of the bill?

Here's a link to Congressman Holt's site that has a summary of the bill. linked text

I'll keep looking.

by Gary Boatwright 2004-11-07 12:14PM | 0 recs

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The only information I have

is what was in the article. I'll do a google search and see what turns up.

by Gary Boatwright 2004-11-07 12:11PM | 0 recs

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The text of the Bill

The name of the bill is the Voter Confidence Act [The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239)]

You can access the bill itself by putting in a query for HR 2239 here: linked text

For a summary of the Holt bill you can go to the
Daily Princetonian linked text

And there's a buzzflash interview here linked text

by Gary Boatwright 2004-11-07 12:24PM | 0 recs

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A link to verifiedvoting.com

There are companion bills in each house linked text

H.R. 2239 is presently in the Committee on House Administration. S.1980 is presently in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. We must bring both these bills to action and get them passed immediately after the Congress resumes in January.

Why should we wait until January? Shouldn't we be pushing this in the lame duck session?

by Gary Boatwright 2004-11-07 12:52PM | 0 recs