DFA Petition: Mandatory Paper Ballots

[jgraz]

Speaker Pelosi,

Across America, votes are increasingly being cast electronically with no paper record. Congress has the power to require that all elections take place using paper ballots.

I ask you to restore Americans' faith in democracy and make paper ballots mandatory in the first 100 hours of the Democratic Majority.

You can sign here: http://www.democracyforamerica.com/paperballots

[eliphaslevi]

1. for Democracy and 08

Clean and verifiable elections should be our highest priority. K & R

[GOTV]

2. Requires an email address - I distrust these petitions...

... as much as I'm for the topic of the petition.

Every organization that does one of these petitions requires an email address and when I sign the petition, I start getting emails on other items they're SURE I'd be interested in.

I suspect many of these groups (and I belong to DFA and attend their meetups) do these petitions only as a way to boost their email lists.

I put in a phony email for this one, but I'm close to just boycotting petitions that require an email address.

[jgraz]

3. Here's the reply I got

Hi,

Thanks for signing the petition. We'll deliver your message to Speaker Pelosi and we'll get this important reform on the table.

If you aren't yet a member, make sure to sign up on DFA-Link:

http://www.dfalink.com

It's our set of online tools for offline organizing, and we're using it to take our country back.

- The DFA Team

P.S. You can forward the following message to your contacts:

-----
Hi,

The Pennsylvania State House switched from Republican to Democratic this week thanks to the careful counting of absentee and military ballots in one close race. This powerful victory happened because every paper ballot was counted. But across America votes are increasingly being cast electronically with no paper record. Had the election in Pennsylvania been conducted electronically there is no saying how the race might have been decided.

We helped elect a new Democratic House and Senate in Washington, D.C. It's time to put our majority into action. Join me in asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi to put paper ballots on the agenda in the new Congress's first 100 hours.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/paperballots

Thanks!
-----



----------------------------------------------------
Authorized and paid for by Democracy for America,
and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's
committee. Contributions to Democracy for America
are not tax deductible.
----------------------------------------------------

Personally, I don't feel so bad about giving DFA my email, especially since they already have it, given that I'm a member. And, as far as building email lists, I'm all for it. The moveon.org email list was a key tool in our Call For Change campaign. It's not like they're selling your info to Sharper Image.

[GOTV]

5. I'm all for building mailing lists but they should be separate actions

I am also on DFA and moveon's lists. So I am not against organizations having a mailing list.

If an organization is really serious about the cause their petition addresses they should make the cost of signing as low as possible. A petition should not carry the penalty of more spam.

I suspect many organizations that run an online petition (DFA is probably different) do it half-assed because they are less interested in delivering a petition and more interested in beefing up their mailing lists.

There are dozens of petitions we hear about through the course of the year and there's no sense in being on everyone's mailing list. So many of them just repeat each other.


This is all separate from my suspicion that online petitions are not taken seriously by any petitionee.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Done.