Please Tell Your County (or NYC) to Keep Our Lever Machines!

Dear Fellow New Yorkers:

Please help us save our mechanical lever voting machines!

Please send the letter below (in blue) to your County Legislator
(NYC residents, send it to your City Councilmember)

Andi Novick
Re-Media Election Transparency Coalition
http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/

GREAT NEWS!

Last month Dutchess County became the first county in New York to UNANIMOUSLY pass a resolution to keep lever voting machines! You can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/dutchessres

NEXT STEP:

Now we need to pass more resolutions from more county legislatures!

Send the letter below (or your own letter) to your County Legislator (in NYC, City Councilmember) to urge him/her to pass a similar resolution to save our lever voting machines! The more legislators we can reach, the better!

WHY?

Our current fiscal crisis will prevent new computerized voting equipment from being handled responsibly. And we shouldn't waste our money on budget-breaking new voting machines when we already have superior, secure, reliable lever voting machines that won't cause the problems and skyrocketing costs other states have had with unreliable, computerized equipment.

Democrats, Republicans and members of other parties have praised our lever voting machines: NY State Election Commissioners Kellner, Aquila and Peterson; Nassau County Election Commissioners Biamonte and DeGrace; Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy; the entire Dutchess County Legislature and the over 1,500 New Yorkers who have signed our petition!

PLEASE ACT NOW!

1. Send the letter below to your county Legislator or NY City Councilmember

Find your county legislator: go to www.google.com and enter your county's name followed by the words "county" and "new york"

Find your NY City Councilmember: click here: http://council.nyc.gov

2. Send a copy of your letter to your county election commissioners

Find your county election commisioners here: www.elections.state.ny.us/CountyBoards.html

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letter to cut, paste, fill in your own info, and send to your legislator and election commissioners:
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Dear County Legislator (or NYC Councilmember),

Last month the Dutchess County Legislature unanimously passed a resolution to retain our lever voting machines (see: http://tinyurl.com/dutchessres). As the resolution says, "it is in the best interest of the public" to continue to use our lever voting machines.

In this time of economic crisis, it is not responsible to move ahead to computerize our elections. In other jurisdictions, computerization has raised the cost of running elections. Now is the wrong time to take actions that will end up requiring us to raise taxes or take monies away from other essential services.

We already have an affordable, secure, reliable voting system that doesn't need to be replaced.

The cost of transition to computerized voting machines will exceed funds received from the federal government. Worse, the money is not for a good purpose, because the new systems lack integrity and violate our constitutional rights.

New York's Election Reform and Modernization Act of 2005 (ERMA) requires replacement of our lever voting machines. The Voters Campaign to Save our Secure Electoral System is commencing litigation next month to have ERMA declared unconstitutional. ERMA precludes election officials from fulfilling their responsibilities to observe and safeguard the elections by surrendering their duties to invisible software processes. More information is at http://www.re-mediaetc.org.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) enabled citizens with special needs to vote independently and New York has satisfied this requirement with accessible paper ballot marking devices in every poll site. While HAVA provided some money to New York for the purpose of replacing our lever machines -- that money is inadequate -- so the additional funds to replace our superior lever voting machines with inferior software-based machines will have to be provided by the counties and New York City.

Finally, we urge you to consider the overwhelming scientific evidence against computerized voting systems (see: http://tinyurl.com/SciStudies). Other states have acted unwisely by computerizing their elections; we should not follow the same path.

Now that our state is HAVA-compliant, there is simply no need for New York to spend millions of additional taxpayer dollars to replace our lever voting machines.

Sincerely,

Your Name
Your Town or Borough
Your Address