Yesterday I received an e-mail from People for the American Way (PFAW), urging me among other things, to support the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 (CEVA).
Here is PFAW’s
summary of the Act.
Here is the
full text of the Act.
And here is the
petition that PFAW is asking us to sign.
Here are the introductory paragraphs to PFAW’s summary of CEVA:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, along with others, recently unveiled a sweeping federal election reform bill, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
The Count Every Vote Act addresses an impressive number of the problems that Election Protection volunteers documented in 2004, and there's good reason for that. People For the American Way and the Election Protection coalition advised the bill's authors after spending weeks and months poring over the incident reports and voter testimonials which EP volunteers helped gather.
This bill is what we've been working toward since November 2, and it needs your support now.
Other Senators who are co-sponsoring CEVA are Boxer, Kerry, Lautenberg, Dayton, and Mikulski (There are no Republican co-sponsors.) Other civil rights and voting rights organizations who have praised CEVA include Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, NAACP, Common Cause, the National Voting Rights Institute, DEMOS and the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, as noted by foo_bar in
this post.
Since I had not previously heard of CEVA, I posted information on it on ERD yesterday and received some helpful comments from
hedda_foil and
PeterPan, both who appear to be quite familiar with the bill and agree that it is very good, although they also note that it doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of passing in this Republican Congress.
So, if it stands no chance of being passed by this Congress, why are progressive/liberal organizations and Senators urging us to support it? There appear to be two reasons: One is to publicize some very important issues, and the other is to get a feel for how much support there is out there for these issues. I think that we can further both of those goals by signing the petition.
What does CEVA intend to accomplish?Here are some excerpts from PFAW’s summary of CEVA’s purposes, with my comments below the excerpts:
Ensure a paper trailCEVA would require that all voting systems produce a paper record that can be verified by the individual voter and that would constitute the official record for any recount.
Comment: The use of directly recorded electronic (DRE) voting machines is one of the greatest threats to our democracy. Without an accurate paper trail to accompany the machine record of our votes there is no way to conduct an independent recount. Therefore, programming of the computer software to switch or delete votes, for example as
Clint Curtis testified he was asked to do prior to the 2004 election, may go completely undetected.
Voting system securityCEVA would establish new security standards for voting equipment manufacturers, including a ban on using undisclosed software and wireless communications devices in voting systems.
Comment: The purpose of this is to prevent the manipulation (switching, deleting, or adding) of our votes by the voting machines – though I do not understand the technical details of how this is done.
Prevention of massive voter registration purgingCEVA would:
Allow voters to register and cast a ballot on election day.
Require states to act in a uniform and transparent manner when attempting to purge voters from state registration lists.
Prohibit election officials from rejecting voter registration applications that are missing information which has no effect on the specific voter's eligibility.
Comment: There is a
great deal of evidence that massive illegal purging of duly registered voters in Ohio in 2004 was responsible for the stealing of tens of thousands of net votes from the Kerry/Edwards ticket, and may very well have been responsible for the full margin of Bush’s victory. The above provisions should substantially interfere with the ability of this type of election theft to be carried out.
Prevention of voter suppressionCEVA would:
Require states to provide in-person early voting opportunities before Election Day.
Give voters more options for proving their identity to election officials.
Prohibit election officials from rejecting voter registration applications that are missing information which has no effect on the specific voter's eligibility.
Provide for the prosecution of those who engage in deceptive practices to keep people from voting in federal elections.
Comment: In 2004 in Ohio (and elsewhere as well, but Ohio is the best documented, since that is the state whose electoral votes handed Bush the election), the Republicans used every dirty trick in the book to disenfranchise legal voters, as documented by Rep. Conyers’ report of the House Judiciary Committee’s Democratic Staff, Preserving Democracy:
What Went Wrong in Ohio, and by public hearings such as
this one. The above noted measures should help to prevent that kind of disenfranchisement.
SummaryA great deal of election fraud was perpetrated on the American public in 2004, and that is probably the reason why George W. Bush occupies the White House today. If the election problems that allowed this to happen are not fixed, we can expect more of the same in 2006 and 2008. A prerequisite for fixing the problems is to publicize them. I think that there is a good reason why no Republican Senators or Representatives support CEVA.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
