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Great job, Joe!
Dick Mueser
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 11:25
AM
Subject: Fwd: EVOTING: CO Election Law
Reform Legislation
FYI and for posterity in the archives...
Begin
forwarded message:
From: Joe
Pezzillo <jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx>
Date:
December 10, 2003 11:11:10 AM MST
To: alice.madden.house@xxxxxxxxxxx,
moe.keller.senate@xxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
AlKolwicz@xxxxxxxxx,
dana_stefanelli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Bob___PI_Mkt Mcgrath <bob.mcgrath@xxxxxxxxxx>,
Michelle Mulder <michelle.mulder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject:
EVOTING: CO Election Law Reform
Legislation
12/10/2003
Greetings:
At their
meeting last night, Bob McGrath of Coloradans for Voting Integrity suggested
I contact you regarding legislation that you may be working on to address
the many citizen concerns about Electronic Voting.
I am the
spokesperson for the Boulder County based group "Citizens for Verifiable
Voting" which has been extremely active on this issue primarily as it
relates to Boulder County's pending purchase of a new voting
system.
We are also in contact with Michelle Mulder (cc'd) of
Congressman Rush Holt's (NJ) office regarding their legislation HR2239, the
Voter Confidence Act, and I have taken the liberty of contacting and
including Dana Stefanelli of Senator Bob Graham's office regarding the
legislation they have introduced, S1980.
I want to alert you in
particular to concerns that our group has regarding the Help America Vote
Act (HAVA) and Colorado HAVA, and the Colorado Recount Law. These concerns
were detailed in our 12/4/2003 presentation to the Boulder County
Commissioners, the slides for which (including the relevant legal language)
are on our website at http://www.coloradovoter.net, which I encourage you to
visit for complete access to and background on our work.
In Federal
HAVA (Title III Subtitle A Sec. 301.3(B)), which clearly trumps State HAVA
for purposes of federal elections, the language clearly indicates that
Counties ARE NOT REQUIRED to purchase Direct Record Electronic voting
systems (DREs). In Colorado, our state implementation removes the
alternative language, leaving a tremendous ambiguity and misinterpretation
by Clerks.
See:
<http://www.joepezzillo.org/evoting/cvvbccpre/cvvbcc_06.html>
Under
Colorado Recount Law (1-10.5-108), any recount to be performed must be done
using the SAME MEDIA as the original vote was cast, unless the Secretary of
State or presumably a court of competent jurisdiction were to intervene.
THUS, if a vote is cast and recorded electronically, that is the media by
which the recount must be performed. This is unacceptable to the citizens of
Boulder County.
See:
<http://www.joepezzillo.org/evoting/cvvbccpre/cvvbcc_07.html>
Our
group believes that we resolve many of the security and verification
concerns with a simple solution: PAPER BALLOTS.
The Department of
Justice has already ruled (see slide 6 above) that Paper Ballots would be
consistent with both HAVA and ADA. A class of devices known as "Vote
MARKING" systems (as specifically distinguished from "Vote RECORDING"
systems) would provide all of the benefits of Touch-Screen voting (audible
ballots for disabled voters, multiple language and ballot style support,
prevention of over- and under-voting) yet the output of such a system would
be a voter verifiable full-text PAPER BALLOT that the voter places into a
ballot box as they have traditionally. These paper ballots are suitable for
optical scanning by multiple vendor's systems for verification, as well as
easily hand counted to provide spot checking or a manual count.
Our
group has more than 50 active members representing the high-tech
professional community here in Boulder County (home to among many other
entities: NIST, NOAA, NCAR, IBM, CU) as well as "just plain citizens" who
are deeply concerned about this issue which is so fundamental to our
Democracy. Our group has held public meetings and done extensive outreach to
citizens and the media, collected hundreds of physical signatures, drafted a
resolution endorsed by all four of Boulder County's active political
parties, worked with local election officials to evaluate systems, and
presented our concerns to the Boulder County Commissioners.
We ask
that you please take our concerns into consideration as you work on
legislation to correct the problems that exist with today's laws and
systems.
Please do not hesitate to contact me directly if we can be
of any assistance to you in your efforts. I will also gladly put you in
touch with others in our group who are more knowledgeable than I, or other
citizen activists I know of nationally who are working on this
issue.
I believe I can safely speak for the diverse voices in our
group when I say THANK YOU! We truly appreciate your work on this
issue.
Sincerely,
Joe Pezzillo, Spokesperson
Citizens for
Verifiable Voting
Boulder County, Colorado
USA
http://www.coloradovoter.net
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