Progressive Democrat Issue 89: NATIONAL FOCUS ON VERIFIED VOTING

This continues my focus on keeping our elections clean. From Verified Voting:

Verified Voting Offers Tools for Making Democracy Transparent;
Citizens to Monitor Electoral Process

Responding to requests for a user-friendly roadmap to empower everyday citizens to monitor the voting process, Verified Voting today released the first three of six total questionnaires intended to help volunteer observers capture crucial information about the electoral process. The questionnaires, which have been developed as part of Verified Voting's newly launched Election Transparency Project, are available at our website. Visit http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/transparency to learn more about the project and to link to the questionnaires page.

The first three questionnaires deal with "pre-election" matters and will help citizens assess the level of transparency in their state and county's electoral process, observe the pre-election "Logic & Accuracy" testing of voting machines, and witness ballot accounting (reconciling the number of voters signing in with the number of votes actually cast) at the time of poll closing during the early voting process.

"We want to empower everyone to get involved in strengthening our democracy," said Courtenay Strickland Bhatia, President of the Verified Voting Foundation. "Our goal is to provide the tools necessary to truly make a difference, and to remind elections officials across the country that citizen observation is a necessary ingredient for fair elections."

The Election Transparency Project, a multi-year, nonpartisan citizen observation program, welcomes the participation of both individuals and groups. Verified Voting is proud to be partnering with several local groups to make this observation possible. Persons wishing to sign up can do so on Verified Voting's web site at http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/modinput4.php?modin=110.

"Volunteers will be provided with all the tools they need to engage in effective observation, and will be able to submit the data that they gather (with sensitive information redacted) via online forms," said Dr. David Dill, Verified Voting Founder and Stanford University Computer Science Professor. "We intend to make our data public so that any organization that wishes can use it and, in addition, Verified Voting will use the data to make recommendations to improve the transparency and accuracy of future elections."

Explaining the genesis of the project, Dill stated, "Through Verified Voting's work to promote publicly verifiable elections by requiring voter-verified paper records and mandatory manual audits, we have come to recognize that what our electoral process needs is end-to-end transparency." He concluded that, "Voter confidence in our electoral process will only be restored if citizens are able to monitor the process by which the election results were reached."

In addition to the three pre-election questionnaires that are being released today, Verified Voting will soon be releasing questionnaires to help voters observe ballot accounting at the time of poll closing on Election Day, collect information on the audit process in states that already have a voter-verified paper record and mandatory manual audits, and assess the level of access to the electoral process for persons with disabilities. With each election season, Verified Voting will add guidelines and observation tools to build usable models for citizen oversight of the entire process.

Additional information about the project can be found in our recent newsletter located at http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6386 .
The Verified Voting foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(3) public education organization dedicated to protecting the right to vote by promoting publicly verifiable elections. Verified Voting seeks to identify reforms that will provide accuracy and transparency, minimize electronic failures and fraud, and preserve all voters' access to the ballot and privacy and independence at the polls. Verified Voting also calls for all aspects of the voting process to be open to and observable by the public, from the testing and certification of machines through the final tabulation and canvass of the ballots.