Action Plan, Step One: Improve the Voting Process

It's time to go to work again.

The first thing that must be done is to bring integrity to the voting process. This is not going to happen nationally, because of the republican coup that occurred Tuesday.

Instead, it is going to occur state by state, and it will either have to occur by initiative process or by legislation enacted in states in which there exist a democratic majority.

More below the fold.

A good place to start might be with this report:

Caltech Report

From initial reports it appears that the electronic voting (as opposed to tallying) technology worked well.  See LA Times Article

In fact, it may well be that the technology promises less "spoilage" than with paper ballots, and thus a better vote.  But the absence of paper trail is troubling, as is the unwillingness of Diebold to share its code with the rest of the world.

The vote counting integrity is only part of the story though.  On a flight yesterday from Chicago to Seattle, I sat with a man who took all of his savings with him to Ohio for 3-4 days of GOTV.  Thank you Rick Kalamar.  He told me stories of long long lines in predominatly minority voting areas, and very short lines in affluent precincts.  This has to stop as well.

I'm sure there are several more issues that need to be addressed. I would like to form some kind of working group to being this initiative/legislative process.

The first step is to identify all possible issues to be addressed and decide which ones are essential to go forward with.  Please help.

•  My email's in my profile, if anybody's interested

  n/t

  by digdugboy on Thu Nov 04, 2004 at 04:36:01 PM PDT

•  Agreed

  But several group were lobbying to get machines that left a paper trail as well as force Diebold to open up thier source code.  
  Problem was, very few people paid much attention and the politicians could essentially ignore us.
  So what, is there energy to boycott Diebold products?
  Or can we put together a ballot initiative is, say, California that will force the largest potential buyer of the equipment to use only open-sourced machines with a paper reciept?
  

  by SWicklund on Thu Nov 04, 2004 at 04:44:15 PM PDT

•  Timing is everything

  When we know how much the Afghanistan and Iraq elections cost the US taxpayers, allocating a small percentage of that to our own will seem more reasonable

  by seanflynn on Thu Nov 04, 2004 at 04:58:59 PM PDT