Description
Full transparency and public accountability in elections are essential to a functioning democracy. Without them there is only an illusion of citizen self-government.
Unfortunately we as a society have ceded the most fundamental of our civil rights -- the right to choose our governnment -- to the proprietary voting machine corporations and the programmers who write the software.
That software in electronic voting machines decides how the votes are counted -- and no voter can possibly verify what's going on in those lines of invisible code.
So, it's time to reassert popular control over the voting process, and return the nation to hand-counted paper ballots, counted in public view, in the precincts, on election night.
Techonophiles may say that's impossible, but most democracies around the world conduct paper ballot elections, and so can we. Hand-counted paper ballot elections were the normal way of doing things in the U.S. as recently as 1965, when the first software-driven voting systems were introduced. It's been a long detour down the wrong road since then. It's time to get back on a democracy track.
Where to begin? Right in the county where you live and vote. All elections are local, and all elections are administered at the county level. That's the pressure point where we as citizens can bring all our intention to bear.
To learn more about reclaiming a public election system, visit
http://electiondefensealliance.org/takeaction
To offer your volunteer skills and services, see our volunteer inventory survey
Any skill or service you have ever applied to a public interest advocacy campaign -- fundraising, research, writing, speaking-- can be put to good use in the election integrity cause.
