TELL YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO "PASS H.R. 550 AS WRITTEN"

VelvetRevolution.us supports legislation requiring accountability and transparency in elections. Although there are several bills presently pending in Congress proposing to address this, and none of them does everything we hope for, VR believes that a bill introduced by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 550), (complete text of the bill in PDF format here, more info available here) is currently the most comprehensive on this subject and has the best chance of passage. If it does pass, it will begin to fix multiple fundamental problems with our voting systems in time for the 2006 election cycle. Moreover, it currently has over 150 co-sponsors and several of them are even Republicans! This bill is a good starting point and if we pass it now, we will be on a much stronger footing to continue our fight for truly verifiable and transparent elections in the world's most important democracy.

We want Congress to hear what you have to say about this issue and this bill, and therefore, we have made it simple to fill in the form below to quickly send your personal message to both of your Senators and your House Representative. We'll even look them up based on your address, and send them to all the right ones! The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 550) should be taken up by the House and passed into law this year; signing this petition will submit the message beneath the form below plus your own personal comments. Even if you don't think your particular representatives would agree with your position, it is important for them to hear from you so they will know that people such as yourself are concerned about this issue. As we have seen from the recent tragedy along the Gulf coast, who is elected is really a matter of life and death. Citizens must be able to see proof of their votes, and be able to verify that they are accurately counted.

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This action page will also send the following message to the members of the House Administration Committee:

Members of the House Administration Committee
1309 Longworth House Office Building
Washington DC 20515

Dear Members of the House Administration Committee

On September 19, 2005, the Commission on Federal Election Reform co-chaired by President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker issued its Final Report. The Report, among other things, called on Congress to enact legislation requiring both a voter verified paper ballot of every vote and routine random audits to check the accuracy of electronic voting.

Voting integrity activists who have been championing this cause for several years are pleased that the Commission confirmed the need for this critical security measure. However, the report also recommends that the status of the voter verified paper ballot should be determined by states rather than mandated as the ballot of record nationwide. This means that any individual state can decide to disregard the only record that the voter has confirmed in favor of the record inside the electronic machine and make the voter verified paper ballot a meaningless and expensive placebo. In addition, the report suggests that pre-election machine "audits" may also be acceptable. Such audits would constitute simply another pre-election machine test, and should not be confused with meaningful independent audits of actual election results.

Rep. Rush Holt's Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (HR 550) will, however, mandate an effective and meaningful voter-verified paper record and independent audit requirements. It already has the bipartisan support of 1/3 of the House of Representatives, and has been endorsed by VoteTrustUSA and VerifiedVoting.org as the "gold standard" in verifiability legislation. Not only would it mandate a voter verified paper record for every vote cast, it would also:

(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) require full implementation by 2006; and

(6) protect the accessibility mandates of the Help America Vote Act.

The language in this bill was carefully written with input from computer scientists, disabilities organizations, and election reform advocates. It should be passed as written and in time to protect the 2006 elections.

There are many politically contentious election reform issues mentioned in the report but making sure that votes are counted accurately is not one of them. Elections are the foundation of a representative democracy, and representative democracy lives or dies based on the integrity of its elections. HR 550 will help restore voters' confidence and ensure the accuracy and integrity of America's elections.

We urge you to pass HR 550 as written immediately.