www.voterconfidencecommittee.org
This is an organization that has been formed in Humboldt County, CA to pursue passage of the Voter Confidence Resolution (below) and to individually advocate for implementation of the reforms listed therein. Our work has led to a town hall forum in Eureka on preferential voting; the resolution is expected to get a public hearing soon in Arcata; and we are lobbying the County Supervisors not to continue their negotiations for the purchase of Diebold machines and instead to support the development of the
Open Voting Consortium's awesome open source solution.
Voter Confidence Resolution
(v6.0, LAST UPDATED: 4/23/05 11pm)
Whereas an election is a competition for the privilege of representing the people; and
Whereas each voter is entitled to cast a single ballot to record his or her preferences for representation; and
Whereas the records of individual votes are the basis for counting and potentially re-counting a collective total and declaring a winner; and
Whereas an election's outcome is a matter of public record, based on a finite collection of immutable smaller records; and
Whereas a properly functioning election system should produce unanimous agreement about the results indicated by a fixed set of unchanging records; and
Whereas recent U.S. federal elections have been conducted under conditions that have not produced unanimous agreement about the outcome; and
Whereas future U.S. federal elections cannot possibly produce unanimous agreement as long as any condition permits an inconclusive count or re-count of votes; and
Whereas inconclusive counts and re-counts have occurred during recent U.S. federal elections due in part to electronic voting devices that do not produce a paper record of votes to be re-counted if necessary; and
Whereas inconclusive results have also been caused by election machines losing data, producing negative vote totals, showing more votes than there are registered voters, and persistently and automatically swapping a voter's vote from his or her chosen candidate to an opponent; and
Whereas inconclusive results make it impossible to measure the will of the people in their preferences for representation; and
Whereas the Declaration of Independence refers to the Consent of the Governed as the self-evident truth from which Government derives "just Power";
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:
Because inconclusive results, by definition, mean that the true outcome of an election cannot be known, there is no basis for confidence in the results reported from U.S. federal elections; and
Be it also resolved:
Ensuring conclusive results is only one necessary step toward creating a new basis for voter confidence in U.S. federal elections. Additional reforms that would take further steps toward building voter confidence include:
1) voting processes owned and operated entirely in the public domain, and
2) clean money laws to keep all corporate funds out of campaign financing, and
3) a voter verifiable paper ballot for every vote cast and additional uniform standards determined by a non-partisan nationally recognized commission, and
4) declaring election day a national holiday, and
5) counting all votes publicly and locally in the presence of citizen witnesses and
credentialed members of the media, and
6) equal time provisions to be observed by the media along with a measurable increase in local, public control of the airwaves, and
7) presidential debates containing a minimum of three candidates, run by a non-partisan commission comprised of representatives of publicly owned media outlets, and
8) instant runoff voting (see H.R. 5293) and proportional representation to replace the winner-take-all system for federal elections;
Be it further resolved:
When elections are conducted under conditions that prevent conclusive outcomes, the Consent of the Governed is not being sought. Absent this self-evident source of legitimacy, such Consent is not to be assumed or taken for granted.
***
The permalink for the Voter Confidence Resolution is:
http://guvwurld.blogspot.com/2005/04/voter-confidence-resolution.html**
An archive of related prior works can be found
HERE.
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