Join the "Healthcare NOT Warfare" campaign!
PDA 2006 Election Video
» 56K modem
» broadband
Stop Funding War Video
» All
formats
Click here for the Congressional Schedule
![[Improve and Expand Medicare! Send your FREE Fax!]](http://www.1payer.net/ads/1payerfaxad.jpg)
The U.S. election system is in crisis, and American voters can no longer trust or verify the results of public elections, in large measure because of the increasing privatization of our public elections. That was the unsettling conclusion of each speaker on the PDA Progressive Central Panel on clean, fair, transparent elections. As panel moderator PDA Board chairperson Mimi Kennedy asked, if the election of 2004 has not been stolen would we be in Iraq today and would 4000 Americans and countless tens of thousands of Iraqis have died for a lie? It is axiomatic that election results matter.
So how do we ensure election integrity, including the tamperproof unbiased maintenance of voter registration databases, the tallying of votes, and the means whereby we audit and recount election outcomes when proprietary software is involved and when the Diebold Company itself admits that their tabulation software--in use for years in dozens of states--actually loses votes?
According to panelist Brad Friedman of the Brad blog, we must first demand that no candidate concede any election before every vote is counted and, secondly, we must assure that all elections at the federal, state, and local level are accessible, verifiable, accurately recorded, and accurately counted.
In this regard, panelist Steve Rosenfeld, who distributed over 200 copies of his well documented book “Count My Vote, a Citizen’s Guide,” said without election integrity, including gracious voter “accommodation,” we are faced with major cracks in the bedrock of our democracy. The book includes state by state information on voting requirements and is available at www.alternet.org.
John Bonifaz, legal director of Voter Action, founder of the National Voting Rights Institute, and PDA Advisory Board member also spoke on the panel about the dangers posed by reliance on electronic voting machines. He urged that PDA members demand the exclusive use of verifiable, auditable, reliable voter marked paper ballots in every state in the union. Bonifaz also called for a full congressional investigation, akin to what was done with big tobacco, and asked PDAers to sign the petition to demand a full investigation into the abuses associated with privatization of elections.
The panel also heard from Harvie Branscomb, an inspiring Colorado election protection advocate, and Bob Edgar, the magnetic former congressman and president of Common Cause. PDA has long asserted, as did all the members of this panel, that we can have no confidence in our democracy if we cannot have confidence in the fair and unbiased access of the citizenry to the ballot and to having their ballots fairly counted.
PDA National News RSS Feed