Bev Harris Update, BBV Charity Better Business Bureau

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

If you want to contribute to an organization, how about
http://www.auditthevote.org/
http://www.uscountvotes.org/
http://www.votersunite.org/
http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
http://www.51capitalmarch.com/

You can see their results for yourselves.
UPDATE:
:puke: :puke:

Bev remembers to ask for donations, more allusions to evidence.

An update from Black Box Voting, and a look toward 2005:

First, thank you so very much for your donation. It was very much appreciated and needed. In the interest of brevity, you are going to receive three separate e-mails from us in the next 48 hours:

1) Information specific to donors
2) Information about current investigations and audits: HELP AMERICA AUDIT
3) Information about current volunteer actions: ACTIVATING THE EAGLES

This message is the first one, for donors.

We received thousands of small donations in November and December ($1 to $5) and very much appreciate these. They did slow down our processing, because for accounting and tax reasons, we account for each and every donor separately, and we were caught by surprise. We did not have enough staff in place to process the volume. Therefore, please accept our apology for the delay in communicating with you.

You will soon receive a customized thank you note that provides the records you need to tax-deduct your donation. We are working on those right now.

We are commissioning an independent audit of Black Box Voting, Inc. by a major public accounting firm, which will examine all of our financial transactions from the inception of our organization. This is our first year, and we want to make sure that we provide our supporters with trust, transparency, and a solid foundation. Thus, year-end activites are extremely busy.

AN UPDATE FOR DONORS:

- We are focusing on building long-term infrastructure (Internet, personnel, reporting functions and equipment).

- We are concentrating on the HELP AMERICA AUDIT effort that launched by Black Box Voting on Nov 2, 2004, which began with a massive Freedom of Information request. We have collected tens of thousands of pages of documents, are in the process of converting those to Internet-friendly format. We have set up an online workspace for “open source” public auditing of the voting machines used in the 2004 election.

Our most important effort of all is ACTIVATING THE EAGLES: We are beefing up our messy old American democracy, by empowering LOCAL CITIZENS to act effectively, independently and forcefully to return transparency to our election system.

“Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds flock together. Eagles soar alone, and must be gathered one at a time.”

The key in "Activating the Eagles" is to find and encourage those citizens who are self-starters, with common sense and the courage to deal with adversity. To this end, we have launched the Black Box Voting “ACTIVATING THE EAGLES” project. This is quite revolutionary; instead of doing the expected, by launching chapters in each state, trying to control the whole thing with a top-down structure, we are focusing on empowering independent groups. In the long run, this will create a much more stable infrastructure for resistance to inappropriate governmental procedures.

Please visit our Web site to see the “New Look” for Black Box Voting – We have purchased several new domains, and we are in the process of integrating them into a more effective whole.

http://www.blackboxvoting.org – The portal to all the action
http://www.bbvforums.org – The workspace for volunteers and following current happenings.
http://www.bbvdocs.org – This is inactive this week, but is being developed as a repository for election-related source documents and audit logs.

In addition, we are putting up mirror sites that we control, hosted on other servers. When they are up, we’ll list them on the main page.

The most important part of the new Black Box Voting Web site is the FORUM WORKSPACE. It has just been activated, but is already getting quite busy. Please stop in, register, and post a message to let us know that you are behind this effort:

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/discus.

Here you will:
- Collaborate with others to clean up elections
- Quickly find the latest news
- Locate state and local resources
- Ask questions and get them answered promptly
- Participate in "Help America Audit"

# # # # #

Because you are a donor, the three update e-mails have already been automated to send. We protect your privacy and do not allow ANY OTHER individual or organization to have your contact information. If you receive ANY message from another group or individual that you suspect came from your donation to Black Box Voting, please notify us immediately.

Now, please hit “reply” and type ONE of the following messages in the subject line:

- Please send me weekly updates
- Please send me monthly updates
- Please send me NO updates at all
- Please send me a custom response (type your question in body of message)

Here's an update on Black Box Voting:

On November 12, seeking answers to a specific vote-fraud question on the
Diebold voting machines, Black Box Voting went to Florida for one day. We didn't get back until Dec. 9.

While in Florida, together with local citizens, we found significant problems in
Volusia County (Diebold - audit did not check out; note the outstanding contributions of Florida Fair Voting Coalition and citizen Susan Pynchon),
Pinellas County (Sequoia - stay tuned on this one, outstanding work by local citizens),
Brevard County (Diebold -- obstructiveness and lying about public records) and
Palm Beach County (Sequoia -- all kinds of problems, with very important work by local citizens), in addition to what's been reported elsewhere.

Black Box Voting met with citizens in Florida who are making a real difference.
WHAT'S IN STORE FOR AMERICA: The key word is "relentless." We have not given up. We will not give up.

1. Unfortunately, the Black Box Voting "volunteer action" forums are
compromised; hackers broke in and removed our own ability to use or moderate our own forums. Good people are working on that and we will solve it soon.
2. The Black Box Voting Cleanup Crew plan: ACTIVATING THE EAGLES

"Doves, sparrows, and other low-flying birds gather together, but eagles soar alone and must be gathered one at a time."

You, as an individual citizen, are America's best hope to clean up elections, which must be done starting at the local level. Using your own common sense, get started on your own local elections. Take an action, and let us know what you've done. Black Box Voting investigators will be traveling to meet with citizens who show that they take initiative on their own.

Our republic will revive when we have REAL grass roots growing, that is, people who are taking independent action on a local level, using their own common sense. This does not always require a group. One person can make a real difference.
We can help you by giving you ideas, technical advice, and by sending an investigator to you.

- If actions taken by Black Box Voting make sense to you, try something similar in your local jurisdiction.

- A Black Box Voting investigator may arrange to meet with you or your group, to help educate you, share ideas, and fund-raise. We will select those who show initiative on their own, with creative ideas that make things happen independent of our organization.

When we say "fund-raising," we are not talking about fund raising for Black Box Voting. We visit you on OUR OWN dime. Whatever you arrange for fund raising during our visit
will go to YOUR group, to empower action, purchase your local public records, pay court costs, whatever you need to use it for.

Grass roots activism, in the form that is most dangerous to corporate-controlled power, is activism that is not centralized. A national organization with chapters in each state, which issues official position papers and directs/organizes actions, is using a corporate model itself.

Black Box Voting is more revolutionary: We encourage independent action, which we do not control or directly organize. We are looking for relentless, clever, loosely allied

people, taking actions they have figured out for themselves, using their own common sense and whatever resources they can bring to bear.
This creates a swarm that becomes impossible to fight.

Usually, before we will send an investigator to help you, you must show that you are taking action on your own. We are more interested in auditing elections and enforcing transparency than we are in holding rallies, and we are most interested in helping citizens who are self-directed, gutsy, sensible, and difficult to discourage.

Relentless. Eagles. You can make it happen. We'll help.

# # # # #

Bev Harris - Executive Director
Black Box Voting (.ORG) - http://www.blackboxvoting.org
To donate: Mail to Black Box Voting, PO Box 25552 Seattle WA 98165 or donate online: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
:puke: :puke:

[paula777]

1. "We will not give up" ........ the video tape

Black Box Voting met with citizens in Florida who are making a real difference.
WHAT'S IN STORE FOR AMERICA: The key word is "relentless." We have not given up. We will not give up.