One of the greatest challenges facing our country today is the validity and trustworthiness of the voting process.  In just the past four years, we have witnessed virtually the total control of the vote counting process for the entire country taken over by nine companies closely tied to the Republican Party.

These companies, Diebold, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), TriadGSI, Danaher-Guardian, Unilect, HartInterCivic, MicroVote, Advanced Voting Solutions, and Sequoia Voting Systems, have made the corporate decision to hide their software source code from those who hope to ensure the integrity of free, fair and transparent elections. They have also endeavored to dispense with any paper ballot that would help to ensure that their tabulations can be verified and recounted when necessary.

The result has been that the past three national elections were riddled with irregularities, including allegations of outright fraud by these companies, and a collapse of confidence in election results by a huge swath of the American electorate and international observers.

We view this as a greater threat to democracy than most anything else facing us today. 

In light of these facts, Velvet Revolution has sent a letter to the CEOs of the above companies, supported by scores of VR Affiliates, representing millions of patriotic citizens, offering those companies 60 days (until April 23, 2005), to state publicly, that they will institute the following changes prior to any further use or sales of their voting and tabulation machines:

1)     Make public all hardware and software used in their vote taking and tabulating machines including all updates;

2)     Submit all such machines and software used in them to independent companies and organizations for verification and security analysis with all results thereof made public both before and after elections, and correct all deficiencies found during such analysis;

3)     Institute auditable, voter-verified paper ballots for every vote cast and a paper trail of all tabulations made by the voting machines;

4)     Institute safeguards to ensure that no networking of voting machines can occur during elections;

5)     Institute a zero tolerance corporate policy prohibiting all executives of the companies from supporting any candidate for public office in any way, and prohibiting these executives and the companies from donating any money to any candidate or officeholder.

6)     Institute a corporate policy to respond to all document requests in the same manner as would a government entity;

7)     Disclose all data from the past three national elections, upon request;

8)     Allow independent observers of the vote counting process; and

9)     Adopt all feasible best practices recommended by a panel of election experts.

If the companies make these changes, VR will recognize their work and publicize their dedication to electoral reform.

Should, however, they fail to do so, VR, along with our Affiliates and millions of Americans, will lead an aggressive campaign of divestiture and boycott of these companies through the following actions.  We will

1)     urge all stockholders in the public companies and their parent companies to sell their stock, and all stock brokerage and mutual fund companies to drop those stock from their portfolios;

2)     urge all investment banking companies that are invested in the companies to wholly divest from them;

3)    urge all states and counties not to buy the companies’ machines and to use all legal means to cancel all existing contracts with the companies, and urge bondholders to withdraw their bonds from those states and counties that continue to support these companies;

4)     urge all media to reject advertisements placed by these companies;

5)     urge politicians and others to speak publicly against using the companies’ machines and using HAVA (Help America Vote Act) funds to pay for the machines;

6)     urge private businesses to boycott the companies by denying them supplies and space to hold conferences and other sales events;

7)     urge all parties who do the above to inform the companies of their rationale of divestment and boycott; and

8)     create an education campaign through the media to focus attention on the grave threat to democracy posed by these companies.

VR’s campaign is an effective and patriotic method of combating the scourge of voter disenfranchisement, something that civil rights leaders have fought against for centuries.  With this carefully planned campaign, we are expressing solidarity with those great leaders, and we expect to have a very effective impact on both corporate and public policy. Indeed, our campaign is an expression of conscience by the democratic community against a system that is antithetical to democracy itself.

The act of divestment is a clear and unambiguous statement of protest against the status quo. It is an act of peaceful opposition using the weapon of economics. But it is not the only means for effecting change in the vote taking and tabulation process in the world’s most important democracy. VR also supports all legislative and political means to secure the same results we are demanding from the companies.  However, it is our position that companies that do not voluntarily make the changes set forth above do not deserve to have the support of the American public or the economic community.  We believe such companies are as undemocratic as those who propped up the apartheid government of South Africa , and they must suffer the same fate.

VR has the support of more than 80 Affiliate organizations in this effort, representing millions of Americans, and more are joining up every day! Please join the revolution by sending an email to all nine companies stating your support! VR also appreciates any donations you can make towards funding this effort! We're all in this democracy together, and without you, we're nothing!

And so begins the revolution…