"Help America Vote Act" Reform

Note:  This is an old resolution that has been superceded by a new version on voting reform.


WHEREAS voting is the cornerstone of any democratic republic and without every vote having equal weight and every voter having equal rights to free expression there is no democracy but only hypocrisy and dictatorship; and

WHEREAS the elections of the years 2000 and 2004 clearly illustrated the flaws in the current voting methods, but no fair alternative has been proposed; and

WHEREAS every electronic voting machine system thus far submitted and demonstrated has been manufactured by, their computer software provided by and installed by corporations whose owners or managers have been clearly shown to be loyal members of only one political party and at least one of them promised to "deliver" the election to his party’s candidate; and

WHEREAS every demonstration of those electronic voting machines has uncovered irregularities and improprieties which only serve to demonstrate their infeasibility; be it therefore

RESOLVED, that We, in keeping with the principles of democracy, support the following measures:

• All voting machines shall have a paper printer which shall print, on location, a legible, verifiable paper receipt which the voter can read to determine that their intention has been recorded by the voting machine and the election officials and judges can use to verify that the electronic data gathered matches the votes recorded by paper receipts; and
• All electronic voting machines shall have an open source code software which can be examined and verified by independent investigators and shall be available to the public for scrutiny and critique; and
• Every individual electronic voting machine shall be tested before being used for polling to determine that predetermined outcomes have not been programmed into them; and
• All electronic voting machines shall be kept safely secured under lock and key by law enforcement officials sufficient to preclude tampering; and
• If these first four provisions cannot be met for any reason then paper ballots which can be marked with a pencil or pen shall be provided by the federal government to all precincts.