The mission of the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition is to restore public ownership and oversight of elections, and to ensure the fundamental right of every American citizen to vote and to have each vote counted as intended in a secure, transparent, impartial, and independently verified election process.
Summit Review on OSPIRG blog
Submitted by Ginny on Mon, 10/03/2005 - 6:15pm.
October 03, 2005 / The National Summit to Save Our Elections
OSPIRG Blog / http://www.ospirg.org/blog/home/archives/000241.html
I was fortunate to be able to attend a conference over the weekend about a critical topic...our elections process. It was called "National Summit to Save Our Elections: A Call to Rescue Our Democracy". It was held right here in Portland, sponsored by Alliance for Democracy and the Oregon Voter Rights Coalition. If you also attended the conference, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought.
I was particularly interested in the research of one of the panelists from Saturday morning, Matt Pescarella, who works with Greg Palast. The focus of Mr. Pascarella's research is the privatization of statewide voter registration databases, which are required to be developed since the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). Within the next three months states must complete their statewide voter file in compliance with section 303 of HAVA. These statewide files should be great tools for improving the accuracy of election rolls and the vote. However, many states have signed (or are in the process of signing) contracts with major information brokers like Accenture (formerly Arthur Anderson) to develop and manage these systems...and there are more than a few concerns about the contracts, the taxpayer expense of these agreements, privacy of the public's personal information, and barriers to voting. I urge you to look into this issue further and to contact Oregon's Elections Division about their plans regarding HAVA compliance.
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VIDEO: “Protecting Your Vote”
