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Informed citizens can make a difference. Find information about the subject straight from those who are knowledgeable
about the issue. Formulate a letter, fax, comment for public comments at an official meeting. Be brief, but show
you know what you are talking or writing about by including references.
This is the best suggestion - right from David Dill.
Our biggest problem at this time is making people aware of this problem. Most people haven't a clue that there is even
a controversy. They assume that election officials, manufacturers, politicians, or somebody must have made sure that
the voting machines are secure. So you can help with this problem:
- Mention it to friends.
- Link to this web site (and Vote Fix, too!)
- Write letters to your local newspaper, talk to the reporters and columnists about the issue.
- Bring it up on mailing lists and web sites where readers may be interested (but please don't spam people!).
- Communicate (by email, phone, fax, or US Mail) with your elected officials at the local, state and federal level to let
them know you are concerned about the issue.
- Find out what is going on in your community and/or state. Are they planning to buy new machines? To find out more, see
our web pages about what's happening around the U.S.
Vote Fix provides links for your information and your independent action and activism.
EEF About electronic voting technology
Electronic Voting Machine Quick Reference Guides
PDF format links to analysis of vendors of electronic voting systems, including several vendors which presented
information to an audience of elected Fayette County officials, election judges, poll workers, and public citizens interested
in this issue.
verified voting Analysis voting machines and more information
Article: 2004-11-03 Watchdogs Spot E-Vote Glitches
wirednew.com
The National Protection Coalition, composed of several nonpartisan groups that include the Electronic Frontier
Foundation and Verified Voting, reported Tuesday afternoon it had received more than 600 calls from voters complaining about problems with e-voting machines
around the country. ...
Voters in Florida and Texas complained about calibration problems with touch-screen machines. Problems occurred when voters
touched the screen next to one candidate's name and an "X" appeared in a box next to another candidate's name. The Election
Protection Coalition also received more than 32 reports from various states that spread across all the top e-voting brands
made by Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic and Sequoia.
These problems involved e-voting machines that appeared to record votes correctly when voters touched the screen, but indicated
a different selection on the review screen before voters cast their ballot. In some cases voters had to redo their ballot
five or six times before the correct votes took. ...
Michelle Shafer, spokeswoman for Hart InterCivic, said the problem that occurred in Texas with her company's machines were
caused by voters rather than by the machines. The Hart machines are not touch-screen machines but instead use a wheel that
voters turn to make their selections. Shafer said after choosing the straight-party option, many voters turned the wheel to
manually go through the races and click their choices individually to emphasize them, not realizing that in doing so they
de-selected their choices. Shafer said they probably then mistakenly moved the wheel to select a candidate from another party.
"It's not a machine issue," Shafer said. "It's voters not properly following the instructions."
More http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0.2645.65579.oo.html Voters Unite.org
Published: Wed, Nov 3, 2004
Errors plague voting process in Ohio, PA
The Electoral College
Library information
Computerized Voting Systems Pose Unacceptable Risks
Government
Technology - Jan 31, 2003 -- PALO ALTO, Calif. --
Warning of programming error, equipment malfunction and malicious tampering,
computer scientists from around the country, led by Stanford professor David Dill, argue that computerized voting machines
should provide a voter-verifiable audit trail.
Eighty-eight computer scientists and technologists from universities
and laboratories across the nation have signed Dill's "Resolution on Electronic Voting."
The resolution states that it is "crucial that voting equipment provide a voter-verifiable
audit trail, by which we mean a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote
is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked."
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.phtml?docid=2003.01.31-39430
Note the recent date! So Vote Fix is right on the forefront of this issue!
David L. Dill (elections@chicory.stanford.edu)
June 1, 2003
This is really not an ideological issue: if you believe that elections should be
honest and accurate, the only remaining question is how great the risk of touch-screen machines, and whether their other potential
advantages outweigh those risks.
It seems to me that few people opposed to the idea of a voter verifiable audit
trail. The biggest problem is that much of the rest of the population is uninformed or apathetic
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