NEWS RELEASE: MARCH 2, 2005

CONGRESSMAN JOHN CONYERS FORMALLY ENDORSES
VELVET REVOLUTION'S "DIVESTITURE FOR DEMOCRACY"!

Civil rights champion and ranking U.S. House Judiciary Comm. member
sends letters to American Voting Machine Companies urging them to adopt
VR's recommendations or "not receive another dime of public money"!

Today Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), one of the great champions of civil rights and the ranking minority member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee strongly and formally endorsed Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" Campaign in an unambiguous statement on his web log (scroll down to the entry for 3/2/05).

Additionally, Mr. Conyers sent letters to all nine of America's Voting Machine companies urging them to immediately adopt VR's Recommendation for the good of this country, or face potential legislation which would deny such companies millions of dollars in Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money which is being allocated to purchase new voting machines across the country. That letter, and one sent to VR is posted below.

On his blog, Mr. Conyers eloquently shared his thoughts on the importance of this campaign and his support for it an article titled "Preserving Democracy: The Fight Continues and The People Have the Power":

As a veteran of struggles for civil rights legislation for the last four decades, I know that the legislative process is always very slow, especially when it comes to passing a law of any import, especially when it comes to doing it right. In this political climate, where Republicans control the House, Senate and the White House, the outlook is murky for election reform legislation to pass. I am also concerned that in a Republican congress, election reform legislation could become a trojan horse for schemes to take away the voting rights of Americans. Indeed, Senate Republicans have already sent the clear signal that they will do just that.

I continue to press for my election reform bill, the Voter Act, and receive valuable input about it. At the same time, one has to wonder whether a political party, the one that controls the federal government for now, that has benefited so much from the current disrepair of our election systems and civil rights laws, is really interested in fixing it.

It is also unfortunate that, as is frequently the case in politics, the issue of election reform has become a bit diffuse as lawmakers push for their own competing and complementary bills. The periods and commas in every bill are of vital importance when a bill actually moves through the legislative process. But, for a bill to move at all, we must have unity of purpose.

Where does that leave us? Do we have to settle for another questionable election where many of us doubt that the official results reflect the true will of the voters?

No. Not if the political movement that brought about the challenge to Ohio's electors has anything to say about it. The activists over at VelvetRevolution want action now in their "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign. Today, I am formally endorsing this campaign and have sent letters to every single voting machine company asking for their support of this effort.

The idea behind this campaign is to urge the voting machine companies, recipients of large sums of our tax dollars, to do the right thing -- voter verified paper ballots on every voting machine, open source code, and refraining from partisan political activity. I hope they do.

But what if they don't? As they say, there is an easy way and a hard way. If a voting machine company refuses to take these fundamental steps, it is my position and the position of the divestiture campaign that they should not receive another dime of public money.

Just as it was with the Ohio challenge, this will be a citizens movement. We will take this fight to the Congress, to the States, to State Ballot Initiatives, and to the voting machine companies. Collectively, I have no doubt that in the end we will prevail.

Here is a copy of the letter Mr. Conyers sent to Walden O'Dell, the CEO of Diebold, Inc. He sent similar copies to the heads of all of the other voting machine companies to whom VR sent our original letter:

As well, Mr. Conyers also sent a letter to Velvet Revolution Co-Founder, Brad Friedman:

VR has been asking the citizenry to join us in the campaign by donating to VR (we are currently funded solely by citizen contributions!) and by sending an email to the companies stating their support for this campaign (we've set up a page to send email to all 9 companies in less than a minute!).

For more information on Velvet Revolution's "Divestiture for Democracy" campaign, please write to DV4D@VelvetRevolution.us or Media may contact publicist Ilene Proctor at (310) 271-5857.

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