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Register to Vote Dear Onward Oregon Online Member,
The Oregon primary election was May 20th. If you've
moved recently or you wish to change your political party, you
must re-register to vote. To do so, download a
registration form, fill
it out and mail it to your county elections office to arrive no
later than October 17 to vote in the November Election. Your vote in this election is especially important. Thomas Jefferson said: "Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights." Well, things have gone wrong. Now it's up to us to set them right.
Thank you, The All-Volunteer Team at Onward Oregon
www.OnwardOregon.org
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https://www.govote.org
Register to
Vote!
(and remember to Vote!) The 2008 election is just around the corner.
We want
you
to go vote!
That's why
we're
e-mailing to
remind you. With govote.org, registration is easy. Working Assets and Mobile Voter have teamed up to give you simple ways to fill out your voter registration form on the Web, on your mobile phone browser or by text message. (Para español, haga click aquí.) If you need to update your voter registration or get registered for the first time, click here to complete a voter registration form. Remember, once you fill it out online, you'll need to print, sign, stamp and mail it to your Secretary of State (the address is provided on your form). Your form must be postmarked by October 17. Are you sure you are on Oregon's voter registration rolls? If you have questions about your registration, call your Secretary of State and make sure you are able to cast a vote on Election Day. For your Secretary of State's phone number plus information about voting-related deadlines, click here. |
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| The elections of 2004 and 2006 were questionable, at best. These has been lingering concern but infrequent action when it comes to replacing the machines owned by Republican partisans who have expressed their willingness to do "anything" to insure the election of their sponsors. During the 2006 elections, Robert Kennedy Jr. indicated that there was a tweaking of the vote which altered the results and plunged our nation into deficts, disaster, and dishonor. So... do these machines still pose a risk? Has anything been done? And what more can we do to insure that the American people are not disenfranchised, ignored, contradicted, or betrayed?| | ||||
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I read the article in the New York Times
which indicated that states are replacing the Republican
owned machines... but the article also said this
replacement would not be widespread until AFTER the 2008
election....
"it is also clear that the changes will not come without a struggle. State and local election officials are still reeling from the last major overhaul of the country’s voting system, initiated by the Help America Vote Act in 2002, and some say that the $150 million in federal aid proposed by Mr. Holt would not be enough to pay for the changes. Advocates for the disabled say they will
resist his bill, because the touch-screen machines are the
easiest for blind people to use. And the voting machine
companies say they will argue against making the software
code completely public, partly out of concern about making
the system more vulnerable to hackers." COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A Treo and a magnet would be tools enough to tamper with the workings of electronic voting machines used in Ohio as well as across the country, the political swing state's top elections official said Friday. In a $1.9 million
review with national implications, both corporate and
academic scientists identified a host of ways in which votes
cast on touch-screen technology are vulnerable to
manipulation. Such machines have been purchased across the
U.S. to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act."
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Sunday's cover story in The New
York Times Magazine makes plain the threat: The winner of
the 2008 presidential election could be decided by flawed,
insecure, and hackable electronic voting machines.1 This is the most prominent news coverage this issue has ever gotten, so it could be our one last chance to get this right before the election in November. Congress is poised to consider a new emergency paper ballots bill next week—but we'll have to convince them to act right away.2 Can you sign this urgent petition asking local, state, and federal officials to require paper ballots for our votes? Clicking here will add your name: http://pol.moveon.org/paper2008/o.pl?id=11873-1923106-i3wVLE&t=3 The petition says: "We must act quickly to secure our elections with paper ballots and audits before November." Elections are run at the state level, so we'll deliver your signature and comments to local election officials in addition to members of Congress. Electronic voting machines are so unreliable and insecure, we
might elect the wrong person president in 2008. As
The New York Times Magazine
reports:
[Voting machines] fail
unpredictably, and in extremely strange ways; voters report
that their choices "flip" from one candidate to another
before their eyes; machines crash or begin to count
backward; votes simply vanish. (In the 80-person town of
Waldenburg, Ark., touch-screen machines tallied zero votes
for one mayoral candidate in 2006—even though he's pretty
sure he voted for himself.) Most famously, in the November
2006 Congressional election in Sarasota, Fla., touch-screen
machines recorded an 18,000-person "undervote" for a race
decided by fewer than 400 votes.3
You can read more from this scary report at the end of this email—and forward it along to your friends and family. It's really compelling. Congress hasn't been able to solve this problem yet, but there's one more chance next week. Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey is expected to introduce an emergency bill to offer funding to states who switch from unreliable electronic voting machines to paper ballots and audits.4 We'll ultimately need a mandate for these things, but this bill would be a crucial first step to prevent some of the most dire threats to the 2008 election. But to pass the bill in time, we'll need to light a fire under Congress. At the same time, we'll have to urge local election officials to read The New York Times Magazine story—and replace electronic voting machines with paper ballots and audits before November. Sign this emergency petition to stop the threat from electronic voting machines right away. Click here to add your name: Can You Count on Voting Machines?
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Some useful links: Writing Resources
