Green Party Presidential Candidate Sends Letters to Vote Companies!
Urges adoption of VR Recommendations to restore 'Confidence in Electoral System', 'Respect for Voters' and 'Democratic Ideals'!
By Brad Friedman on 3/16/2005, 2:14pm PT  

Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb has today sent a letter the voting machine companies of America, urging them to stand with Velvet Revolution's campaign to restore integrity to our country's Electoral Process!

Cobb, along with the Libertarian Party's Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik, was responsible for the demanding a recount of Ohio's Presidential Election after thousands of documented irregularities began to emerge out of the state after the election.

A letter of support was also sent to yours truly as Co-Founder of VR.

Here is the text from Cobb's letter sent today to the leaders of all nine of America's major voting machine companies:

March 16, 2005

Dear {Voting Machine Company Head}:

As an American citizen and a recent presidential candidate, I want to have faith in the vote counting process. Unfortunately, with more than 50,000 documented instances of irregularities in the past election, I am unable to trust either the vote counting process or its results without an open, accountable and independent method of public verification.

Public involvement and oversight in the voting process is essential. The integrity of our democracy demands that steps must be taken immediately to restore faith in our elections and the winners that they produce. These steps must include: having a paper ballot for each vote cast, independent analysis of voting machine software and hardware, open software source code, no contributions from voting companies to candidates for public office, no networking of machines and the public dissemination of all relevant voting data and documents. These steps are supported by millions of Americans and scores of voting rights organizations including VelvetRevolution who has already contacted you in this regard.

Your company is, in essence, performing a governmental function by counting the votes cast for political candidates and ballot measures and therefore must be accountable to the voters. Unlike the past, where voting machines produced a paper ballot that was counted by elections officials, many voting machines now receive, store, and tally votes, all without a single elections official knowing for sure if the votes were properly cast and accurately counted. This has greatly undermined public confidence in our electoral system.

I am writing to you now to specifically request that your company demonstrate its respect for the voters of this country and its democratic ideals and take the steps outlined above to restore integrity, accountability and transparency to our elections.

Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

David Cobb
2004 Green Party presidential candidate

Please see this page for the letter sent to Brad Friedman.

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