Democracy Will Survive Voting System Flaws

MEDIA RELEASE June 20, 2006

DEMOCRACY WILL SURVIVE VOTING SYSTEM FLAWS
If Voters, Candidates, and Political Parties Act

06.20.2006 SALT LAKE CITY – CNN's Lou Dobbs, Newsweek , the New York Times, The Washington Post , and the Rolling Stone magazine have all recently reported on the security flaws of electronic voting machines which can be used to undetectably rig elections.

To overcome the new threats to U.S. democracy from flawed voting equipment, the National Election Data Archive (NEDA) recommends that voters, candidates, and political parties each take unique steps to ensure that correctly elected candidates are sworn into office.

According to the National Archive's June 20th recommendations, "candidates, prior to conceding, should obtain detailed vote count data that is normally with-held from the public and have it independently analyzed. "

Kathy Dopp, President of the National Election Data Archive, says that "One insider could undetectably rig an election using voting machines. If all voters do is vote on Election Day, they may just be providing more votes to tamper with. Extra steps can be taken to ensure that correctly elected candidates take office. Candidates should conduct 'parallel citizen vote counts'; and request detailed data and manual counts. Political parties are in a unique position to observe vote-counting. Voters have a right to know that our votes are counted accurately!"

National Data Election Archive (NEDA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational and scientific research organization comprised of volunteer mathematicians, statisticians and election activists. Its mission is to ensure verifiably accurate election results. Its statistical work on elections was cited in Rolling Stone and Harpers articles, in the book "Fooled Again" and was wrongly "debunked" in a Nov. 9, 2004 New York Times article.

Ron Baiman, a Policy Research Analyst and Ph.D. Econonomist says, "Without: a) real-time precinct-level election data releases, b) routine random audits based on voter verified paper trails, c) publicly funded exit-polls, and d) laws that allow citizens to legally challenge all election outcomes, it is going to be hard to trust official results." Baiman is the Vice President of the National Election Data Archive.

Manual audits of vote counts are recommended by the U.S. Government Accountability Office , the Carter-Baker Commission , the Verified Voting Foundation , and "A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections" (Project ACCURATE ) which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The elections industry performs virtually no independent audits that would detect malicious or innocent errors.

The full recommendations are available on ElectionArchive.org.

Synopsis: What Political Parties Can Do to Ensure Accurate Vote Counts
http://electionarchive.net/docs_pdf/info/US/political-parties-act-short.pdf

Candidates: Assure that Vote Counts are Accurate
http://electionarchive.net/docs_pdf/info/US/candidates-act.pdf

Political Parties Can Help Ensure Vote Count Integrity
http://electionarchive.net/docs_pdf/info/US/political-parties-act.pdf

Voters: Democracy Will Survive U.S. Voting System Flaws If Voters Act
http://electionarchive.net/docs_pdf/info/US/voters-act.pdf

Kathy Dopp
http://electionarchive.org
National Election Data Archive
Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections

[1] "Will Your Vote Count?"
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12888600/site/newsweek/

[2] "Debating the Bugs of High-Tech Voting"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/29/AR2006052900816.html

[3] "A Call for Investigation: Electronic Voting Machines Pose a Great Threat to Democracy"
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10463874/editorial_a_call_for_investigation

[4] The DNC did not make legal requests for this detailed vote count data following either the 2000 Florida or the 2004 Ohio elections.

[5] September 2005 GAO Report "ELECTIONS Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed" pp.19,24,46,77,80,78,69, etc.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05956.pdf

[6] September 2005 "Building Confidence in U.S. Elections, Report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform", p. 25
http://www.american.edu/ia/cfer/report/full_report.pdf

[7] "Verified Voting Applauds League of Women voters Passage of Resolution in Support of Voter-Verified Paper Records, Audits"
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6363&printsafe=1

[8] Project ACCURATE at http://accurate-voting.org/

This media release is found on-line at http://electionarchive.net/docs_pdf/info/US/media-release-2006-06.pdf

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