 Note: Petition now closed to additional signers, Thank You.
ANNOUNCEMENT: CTVotersCount is initiating a “Petition To Enhance Confidence In Connecticut Elections By November 2008”. Addressed to Connecticut Secretary of the State (SOTS), Susan Bysiewicz, and the Government Administration and Elections Committee (GAE).
It is now the time to begin creating support for changing the law in the short legislative session next year, if we are to have elections of integrity and confidence in Connecticut for the November 2008 elections. Elections which include President, 5 U. S. House races, along with the complete Connecticut House and Senate. The time to start, for citizens is NOW!
Over the next few weeks we will have updates and further posts addressing the details of the petition and questions we receive about the petition. I will start today with a few background comments:
Last May in a meeting with two Senate members of the GAE and three members of the SOTS’ Office, it was pointed out that in addition to testifying to the Legislature, any person or group may submit proposed text for legislation to the Legislature, just as the SOTS does. That is our intention here at CTVotersCount to submit proposed text to the GAE for consideration in the 2008 session, which will suggest language that will implement what we propose. Toward that purpose the Petition outlines the changes, and only your support can cause election integrity, by signing the Petition. (this may take 30sec to load)
The law, unfortunately, must necessarily be carefully drawn and often complex, sometimes technical and obscure. Election law can be quite technical: covering financial contribution rules, advertising, voter registration, and candidate petitioning. Voting law and procedures are complex: covering security, poll setup, poll worker conduct, and now computer security, programming, testing, and auditing.
Our goal is protect our elections for the next several years, starting where we are with Diebold Premier AccuVote-OS election equipment, with little additional disruption, without unnecessary costs. Recent election history seems to be a series of hasty, expensive fixes, to long term problems that provide unintended aggravation to the problems addressed, at the expense of Democracy. There are long term safe and economical solutions which may take four to six years of effective research, planning, and legislation. We believe we have outlined a reasonable solution appropriate to protect our votes in the meantime.
Our petition is detailed and based on statistics. The law we will propose will be more detailed. We could have produced a petition that was simpler and more open to interpretation. Perhaps more would sign such a petition. Being more vague, we could provide the details later, avoid detailed criticism, and avoid debating details with others committed to the same goals. But, that would likely result in inadequate law open to the interpretation that it satisfied our goals or a simple general law leaving the details to regulation, subject in turn to falling short.
The window to change election law in time for November 2008 is short. It is not too early to begin.
