Rhetoric 101: Will Your Vote Count?

Electronic voting machines installed all over the country are proving to be extremely unreliable, with problems including easy vote tampering, miscounting votes, machines that simply break down, and most importantly, no way to run a recount if an election is close. An in-depth General Accounting Office investigation found this to be a very serious issue (Full General accounting Office Report - PDF).

All this means that if you have to vote using one of these machines, you might as well stay home - since no one will ever know if the vote you cast will be the vote recorded.

There is a way to deal with this problem: House Resolution 550 (H.R. 550), the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, introduced by Senator Rush Holt of New Jersey. This bill has tremendous support by both parties, and has been endorsed by the bi-partisan Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform.

Unfortunately, the bill is being held in limbo in the House Administration Committee, which is chaired by Robert Wilson Ney (OH-18th). Maybe he needs hackable voting machines in his district ... after all, the headlines certainly aren't helping his chances in his re-election campaign:

Identified in new court documents as "Representative No. 1," Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio has become the poster boy in the Jack Abramoff bribery probe, a beneficiary of trips, tickets and campaign donations, allegedly in exchange for official acts.

You can't call it a democracy if the vote you cast doesn't match the vote counted. It is the duty of everyone who cares about the legitimacy of our democracy to step forward and make sure this bill passes. No one should have to question whether his/her vote was properly counted. Period.

So what can you do?

Step 1:

Go to Congressman Holt's web site and sign the petition in support of H.R. 550.

Let Congress know that we want all of our votes to be counted - left, right, middle, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever. This is not the time for politics.

Step 2:

If your representative is on the list below (the House Administration Committee Members), CONTACT THEM - TODAY. Each name below links to that Representative's constituent web contact page - your 9-digit zip code must be from their district. Find your 9-digit zip code here).

Call, write, fax, whatever works for you, just do it:

Representative Robert A. 'Bob' Brady (Democrat - Pennsylvania, 1st District)

Representative John T. Doolittle (Republican - California, 4th District)

Representative Vernon J. Ehlers (Republican - Michigan, 3rd District)

Representative Zoe Lofgren (Democrat - California, 16th District)

Representative John L. Mica (Republican - Florida, 7th District)

Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald (Democrat - California, 37th District) Ranking Member

Representative Candice S. Miller (Republican - Michigan, 10th District)

Representative Robert William 'Bob' Ney (Republican - Ohio, 18th District) Chair

Representative Thomas M. Reynolds (Republican - New York, 26th District)

Step 3:

Phone or FAX the Committee:
- Phone: 202-225-8281
- Fax: 202-225-9957

You don't need to be from a committee member's district for this.

Step 4:

Call your Representative. Ask him/her to co-sponsor the bill, or, if he/she is already a co-sponsor, thank him/her for supporting your voting rights.

Find youru Representative's contact info here, then call.

Click here to see if your Representative was a co-sponsor at the time of this posting.

Step 5:

Blog This!

If you have a web log and are not already part of this effort, please join in. You can join this blogswarm by joining the Big Brass Alliance.

Current Co-sponsors of H.R. 550: