Democracy Action: Election Reform Committee

Election Reform Committee

The Election Reform Committee identifies election reform issues and conducts DemocracyAction’s election reform activities, including interaction with other organizations and individuals who share a common goal with DemocracyAction.

ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES

Since 2004, the Democracy Action Election Reform Committee ("DAER") has been fighting for transparency in our elections. Currently, the voting machine vendors have too much control over election processes in this country. They are not required to reveal the technology that determines how our votes are counted and consistently cut corners, producing sloppy technology and unsecure equipment. The federal voting system certification process is broken.

The New York Times recently presented some of the issues associated with electronic voting machines in the article "Can You Count On These Machines?". Clive Thompson reports: "As the primaries start in New Hampshire this week and roll on through the next few months, the erratic behavior of voting technology will once again find itself under a microscope. In the last three election cycles, touch-screen machines have become one of the most mysterious and divisive elements in modern electoral politics. Introduced after the 2000 hanging-chad debacle, the machines were originally intended to add clarity to election results. But in hundreds of instances, the result has been precisely the opposite: they fail unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways."

DAER helped elect California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to office because of her understanding of the voting machine problems and her passion to fix our election systems so that voters will be assured that their vote will count. As promised, she has taken the problems on full force and mandated a top to bottom review of voting systems used in California.

One solution is to move toward Open Source voting systems (see www.openvotingconsortium.org) . DAER helped to assure that a clause was included in SF’s recent contract with voting machine vendor Sequoia Voting Systems, that will require them to disclose its source code if an open source system is certified in California.

VOTER RIGHTS

In elections past, there have been a fair amount of dirty tricks played and unethical tactics implemented to intimidate or prevent voters from casting their ballot. Staffing “challengers” in the polling places, denying poor communities a reasonable amount of voting machines, and sending threatening letters to voters are a few examples.

For further information contact the Committee Chair.