Thursday, July 29, 2004

More Computer Ate My Vote Successes 

alerts@truemajority.org

In Response to Citizen Pressure, Officials Safeguard Voting Machines inOhio and New Jersey
In case you missed this great news, Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell has blocked further deployment of paperless voting machines.  When the Computer Ate My Vote campaign started the year in Ohio, a crucial battleground state, 31 counties were considering unsecure computer voting machines.  Now, every one of them has decided against these problematic machines for this November’s election.  That’s some victory, thanks to the efforts by members of TrueMajority, our partner groups, and especially the Citizens’ Alliance for Save Elections in Ohio.

In New Jersey last week, we ran a radio ad during Thursday morning drive time urging listeners to call the Mercer County official who’s in charge of local elections and ask him to offer the paper ballot option.  Before the day was over, County Executive Brian Hughes faxed TrueMajority confirmation that he will seek permission from state Attorney General Peter C. Harvey to do just that.  We shifted the ad to a "Thanks, Brian Hughes" message to honor his action.  Next, we’ll make sure Attorney General Harvey issues the "all clear," then get New Jersey’s other counties to follow Mercer County’s lead.

We are running ads in New Mexico and Washington as TrueMajority goes down the list of localities that are still bent on using unsecure machines.

All the efforts to educate citizens, register them to vote, and get them to the polls will be for naught if the votes aren’t counted.  Ensuring that votes actually get counted is our goal, and we’re honored to have a hand in it.

In thanks for your part,

Matt Holland and Mark Floegel
The Computer Ate My Vote coordinators

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