OREGON VRC SUPPORTS ELECTION VERIFICATION BILL AT HEARING

HOW YOU CAN HELP....

1. LISTEN TO THE HEARING | Click here for the audio of the hearing on HB 3270

2. ASK YOUR LEGISLATORS TO SUPPORT HB 3270 | Click to find your legislator!

Contact your state legislators and let them know we need mandatory election verification in Oregon and to please support HB 3270. It’s easy to contact your state legislator by phone or email!

Call Your Legislator
Contact any state legislator by phone: Within Salem, call 503-986-1187 | Outside of Salem, please call 1-800-332-2313

Email Your Legislator
Representative's email address: rep.firstnamelastname@state.or.us (example: rep.betsyjones@state.or.us)
Senator's email address: sen.firstnamelastname@state.or.us (example: sen.ralphsmith@state.or.us)

3. CONTACT COMMITTEE MEMBERS

HB 3270 has been assigned to the Ethics, Elections and Rules Committee (EER Committee) for public input and deliberation.
It is important that you notify the Committee members directly of your support for this bill. Please encourage them to refer this bill to the full House for a vote so it may move to the Senate and eventually become law.

4. WRITE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Write a letter to the editor of your local paper and the Oregonian.
The Oregonian, 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, Or., 97201 | by email to letters@news.oregonian.com | by fax to 503 294-4193
Limit letters to 150 words and include your full address and daytime phone number, for verification only.

To suggest coverage of this issue: Michael Arrieta-Walden, Senior Editor/Online | Phone: 503-221-8518, Fax: 503-227-5306 | michaelwalden@news.oregonian.com

5. CALL LOCAL RADIO TALK SHOWS, COMMENT ON LOCAL BLOGS

Let your support for election verification be heard on Oregon’s radio airwaves and online. An outstanding local supporter of election integrity is Thom Hartmann. He welcomes citizen input on election matters and often takes calls on this subject. Call his show or comment on his KPOJ site. Call in to any other local talk shows as well, and mention this bill. Election integrity is not a partisan issue, it concerns citizens’ rights and democracy. So this topic should be welcomed by any talk show host or discussion board involving government, political or legislative topics.

Call Thom Hartmann at KPOJ: Weekday mornings from 6 to 9 am: 503 248-0620 / 24-hour listener comment line: 503 323-6620
(Leave a message that may be played on the air.)

6. THANK THE SPONSORS OF HB 3270

If your Representative is already a sponsor, please send a thank you for his or her leadership and let your representative know of your support for this important bill.

POINTS TO SHARE ABOUT HB 3270:

*HB 3270 will improve Oregon’s system by requiring verification of machine-counted vote totals. The procedure is scientific and will restore and strengthen confidence in the accuracy of the results.

*Software used to count Oregon’s votes is secret to citizens and election officials. A hand-counted random sample of the actual ballots cast is a vital step toward transparency required in a democracy.

*The Elections, Ethics and Rules Committee can and should make this one of their top priority bills this session.

*Oregon’s system requires a paper ballot, but does not require any check of the machine results against the paper ballots. Therefore although we have a good record of each vote, we do not have a guarantee that the machines have read the paper ballots accurately.

*The highly respected Brennan Center for Justice report, "The Machinery of Democracy: Protecting Elections in an Electronic World", (6/28/06) states:

“Systems with voter verified paper records provide little, if any, security benefit over systems without such records, unless there are regular audits and/or recounts of the paper records.”

*HB 3270 addresses this weakness in Oregon's election system.

*Oregon VRC is hopeful that Oregon will soon be a state where citizens can feel confident that our votes are counted as cast and that election results genuinely reflect the will of the people.