NYTimes Editorial Board: Say No to Computerized Voting Machines

The 2008 presidential election is fast approaching and some states are still using unreliable paperless computerized voting machines.

That is a big mistake. The danger is too great of votes being recorded wrong — or stolen.

Touchscreen machines — which resemble a bank ATM — are simply too prone to glitches like “vote-flipping,” in which votes for a candidate are recorded for his or her opponent. And it is too easy to plant malicious software that changes votes without anyone noticing.

Many states, but not all, now require their touchscreen machines to produce a “voter-verified paper trail” — a paper record of the vote that a voter can review, which becomes the official ballot. These paper records can be audited, to ensure that the recorded vote totals are correct.

Voter verified paper trails are an improvement, but the best solution is to avoid touchscreen voting machines entirely.

ACLU of Wisconsin and NAACP Wisconsin Community Summit on Fair Elections

From an email I received today:

ACLU of Wisconsin and NAACP Wisconsin Invite you to a Community Summit on Fair Elections

Help build the movement to repeal the most damaging of Jim Crow laws still in effect in Wisconsin.

Enfranchise all citizens in our community, including those who have finished incarceration sentences.

Thursday, July 19
11:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
NAACP Headquarters – lower level
2745 N. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, Milwaukee

Over five million people in the U.S. have been disenfranchised due to felony convictions. In Wisconsin, even after incarceration, citizens deemed safe to live in our communities, work, pay taxes, raise families and are still denied the right to vote if they are “on paper.” Some of them for years! This restriction adds confusion and bureaucracy. It even makes voting, the most sacred responsibility of a citizen in our country, a crime.

Join us in bringing Wisconsin up to date with most other Midwestern states who are streamlining their rules on voting.

This is a brown bag lunch event, however, if you RSVP by July 16, 2007, lunch will be provided. We are accepting $5.00 donations to offset the costs of lunch.

Please RSVP to Angie Vasquez in the ACLU of Wisconsin office, (414) 272-4032 x11

For more information on this issue, contact Renee Crawford, Associate Director of the ACLU of Wisconsin at: rcrawford@aclu-wi.org

Pocan/Risser Introduce Clean Elections Bill

It's all here:

Here are the first few paragraphs that cover most of it:

Madison – State Representative Mark Pocan (D-Madison) and State Senator Fred Risser (D-Madison) introduced the most comprehensive campaign finance reform measure to date at a press conference this afternoon. The Clean Elections Fund would provide full public funding of state elections, patterned after laws in Maine and Arizona. Twenty-one organizations have already endorsed the legislation (attached).

“This is the most sweeping campaign finance reform Wisconsin has ever seen and I am grateful that so many grassroots groups have stepped forward to help clean up our government,” said Pocan. “Campaigns should be about the candidates and the voters, not the special interest groups buying elections with their expensive negative attack ads.”

The record amounts of money spent by independent groups in last Tuesday’s Supreme Court election came under fire from clean government groups and editorial boards across the state. The bill creates a Clean Elections Fund that provides 100 percent public financing for state political campaigns for the State Assembly, Senate, and other state elections including the governor’s office and the State Supreme Court. To run “clean,” a candidate must get a certain number of small $5.00 donations from district residents to qualify for funding. Once approved, they receive a spending limit and funds for their campaign.

As a disincentive for excessive campaign spending, if someone who runs “clean” has an opponent who is not running “clean” and who spends more, the “clean” candidate receives dollar for dollar up to 2.5 times the original grant. The incentive to keep spending down also applies to “independent” expenditures and “issue” ads on behalf of candidates similar to those seen during the recent Supreme Court race.