Democracy Will Survive Voting System Flaws If Voters, Candidates, and Political Parties Act

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

Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) June 20, 2006 -- 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 respond to 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 in the absence of independent audits. If all voters do is vote on Election Day, they may be just providing more votes to tamper with. Extra steps can be taken to ensure that correctly elected candidates take office. Candidates should register for '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 build a public election data archive for independent analysis of election data; educate the public; and to ensure verifiably accurate election results. The Archive's statistical work on the 2004 election results has been cited in Rolling Stone and Harpers magazines, in the book "Fooled Again" and was wrongly "debunked" in a November 9, 2004 New York Times article.

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 is one of the only U.S. industries in which virtually no independent audits to detect errors are performed.

The Election Archive's full recommendations are available on http://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

For more information contact: Kathy Dopp, President, National Election Data Archive, 435-658-4657

Footnotes:
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[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 the detailed vote count data broken out by precinct and vote-type 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/

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