Action news

What actions we are involved in, and how you can help

In addition to specific items like the below, we'd like people to endorse CRV goals, join CRV, and recruit new endorsers and members. If we do not have enough members and endorsers, we can't accomplish much.

• Oct 2011: Sign these petitions to the white house online.
• Feb 2007: Congressman Rush Holt (NJ) now is pushing the HR 811 "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007" about voting and voting machines. [The following is based on VotersUnite.org.] HR 811 includes these good things:
  1. ban on wireless communications,
  2. requirements for disclosed source code and manual audits,
  3. testing labs must actually be contractually independent from vendors.
  But:
  1. We caution against redefining the term "paper ballots" to include printouts from direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines, more typically called a "voter-verified paper trail" or just a "paper trail." "Paper ballot" should retain its historical definition as a ballot marked by the voter's hand or by a non-tabulating ballot-marking device.
  2. Studies show that most voters do not verify the "paper trail" of their ballot, printed by a DRE. By contrast, voter-marked paper ballots are inherently verified by the voters, and thus provide a true record of voter intent.
  3. HR 811's proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(11), as currently written, would allow the central Election Management System (EMS) computer of a voting system to be connected to the Internet. That's unwise.
• Nov 2006: Sign a petition to urge passage of HR 550 voting reform bill. HR 550 would mandate a voter verified paper record for every vote cast, and:
  1. establish a mandatory uniform national standard that states that the voter verified paper ballot -- the only record verified by the voter rather than the voting machine -- is the vote of record in the case of any inconsistency with electronic records;
  2. provide Federal funding to pay for implementation of voter verified paper balloting;
  3. require a percentage of mandatory manual (by hand count) random audits of actual election results in every state, and in each county, for every Federal election;
  4. prohibit the use at any time of undisclosed software, wireless communication devices, and internet connections in voting machines;
  5. protect the accessibility mandates of the Help America Vote Act.
• Sept. 2006: Help national movement to get Nationwide Popular Vote Later note (Dec): Gov. Arnold Schwarzennegger vetoed Nationwide Popular Vote.
  Later note (Feb): The NPV proposal has some serious flaws that need to be repaired.
• June 2006: Tell Yahoo to implement Range Voting: This seems to be a rare opportunity to give feedback to Yahoo groups. Suggest everyone ask them to add Range Voting (a.k.a. Score Voting) as a polling method. [Note, they already have Plurality and Approval available.] Try this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/local/newemail.html and click on "Share your thoughts".
• June 2006: Tell your congressman to maintain "net neutrality" Here is a web page about net neutrality and the implications of destroying it: Save The Internet, and here are some pages about the recent US House vote to kill net-neutrality-preservation:
  http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3612256
  http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060427-6689.html
  
  Here is an email I just fired off to my congressman, so he can ignore it and vote the way the big money media companies tell him to like usual. "Net neutrality" is the concept engineered into the internet that all info packets are treated the same by transmittors & routers. Lobbyists are currently flooding Washington to abolish that.

  The move to get rid of "internet neutrality" is an outrage intended to start a sky-is-the-limit bidding war for internet bandwidth priority. Right now, people can already get charged more for more information transmitted. That is fine. That makes sense. They want it to be: not only how much info, but "how much priority" that info has based on how much the website pays. There have already been several cases of internet censorship by communications companies acting against their perceived rivals such as unions. (And I'm tired of my taxpayer money going to fund spying on me, besides going to fund media conglomeration.) If you get rid of net neutrality, then you get rid of the developing independent media, you get rid of democracy, and you ram the likes of Fox News and Chinese censorship down our throats, and this'll be one angry voter.

• December 2005: Tell internet voting/polling service-providers to do range voting: Here is a list of internet voting/polling service providers. You can tell them to add range voting to their list of supported methods – and a hyperlink to CRV at !!
• September 2005: Comments on proposed EAC guidelines for USA voting machines: Send in your comments about the (rather horrible) US government proposed "voluntary guidelines" for voting machines. You can download those guidelines here. You can email your comments (deadline: sept. 30) to votingsystemguidelines@eac.gov. More info. Warren Smith's own evolving comments about this may be read here. [Deadline now expired.]

Return to main page