CAMPAIGN FOR ELECTION AUDITS IN OREGON

LINK TO THIS AUDIT CAMPAIGN LETTER:
Download: Word Document
Online Link: http://www.oregonvrc.org/files/AuditCampaignLetter.doc

LINKS TO THE KEY POINTS:
Download: Word Document
Online link: http://www.oregonvrc.org/files/KeyPoints.doc

LINK TO OREGON COUNTY CLERK INFORMATION:
http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/other.info/clerk.htm

Dear Oregon Citizen,

The Oregon Voter Rights Coalition has studied Oregon’s election process thoroughly and has reached a conclusion: Overall, Oregon has a very good election process that is conducted with integrity and professionalism. However, it has a major vulnerability.

And you can help correct it.

Oregon elections need a mandatory election audit procedure. Oregonians vote with a paper ballot, but our ballots are scanned and counted by computers programmed by private corporations that use trade secret software that cannot be viewed even by election officials. These companies have highly partisan political and financial conflicts of interest. An election audit would be the most efficient way to verify that computer tallies reflect that the votes were counted as cast by the voter.

In an election audit, election officials hand count a scientifically determined random sample of paper ballots. This is a simple, reliable and inexpensive way to verify the accuracy of the computer count. The audit sample must agree with the computer count within a small margin of error. If the sample is outside this margin, all the ballots for that race must be recounted by hand.

How can you help?

Contact your county election officials to request that Oregon adopt a mandatory audit procedure for all national and statewide elections. When recently approached with the audit idea, the county clerks indicated that there had been no feedback indicating citizen concern about the vulnerabilities of computerized vote counting in Oregon. In order for the county clerks to support the idea of an audit procedure, we must convince them that the public indeed holds serious concerns about the vulnerabilities of computerized vote counting in Oregon.

Oregon’s election officials believe that the safeguards currently in place will ensure that our votes are being counted as intended. They do not see the vulnerabilities in our system that threatens the integrity of the vote counting.
Please write, e-mail or call the county election clerk in your county and express your concerns about the vulnerabilities of the computer software. You may also want to express your thanks to the county clerks for their dedication in conducting Oregon elections with competence, integrity and professionalism.

We need to continue to let our county clerks know that election audits are important to us to ensure verifiable elections.

FOR COUNTY CLERK INFORMATION GO TO: http://www.sos.state.or.us/elections/other.info/clerk.htm

Forward this information to other Oregon voters, requesting that they do the same. County election clerks in ALL Oregon counties need to hear our concerns.

CLICK HERE FOR A COPY OF THIS LETTER:
Audit Intro Letter (WORD)
Link: http://www.oregonvrc.org/files/AuditCampaignLetter.doc

CLICK HERE FOR A COPY OF KEY POINTS:
Key Points (WORD)
Online link: http://www.oregonvrc.org/files/KeyPoints.doc

Thank you for helping to promote integrity of Oregon elections,

Oregon Voter Rights Coalition

· Overall, Oregon has a good system - a vote by mail system conducted on paper ballots, which helps prevent voter suppression, disenfranchisement and fraud. Unlike some states, the paper ballots are also the official ballot of record, and the system is administered in a professional, non-partisan manner.

However, there is a cause for concern about the Oregon election system:

· Optical scan computer systems with desktop computers are used to tabulate and tally the votes and report the results. Since the private vendors refuse to open their software for independent or public review, any programming errors or code intended to change the actual vote may never be detected

· The logic-and-accuracy testing administered by the County Clerks is not sufficient to detect some types of software-code errors or manipulation.

· Many counties rely on the software/hardware vendors to program the computers.

· Two-thirds of the software used in Oregon to count the votes is provided by ES&S, and one third is provided by Sequoia. Both companies have been involved in suspect election results in other states, and have a history of a tremendous number of ballot programming errors. Both companies also have highly partisan political and financial conflicts of interest.

· Although Oregon’s voting systems are subject to federal and state certification procedures, these procedures do not adequately ensure that the certified software program is the exact same program that is distributed to the counties.

· It is our right as citizens to have every election verified. Validation of the reported results should be triggered automatically, not just when candidates or citizens request it (at a cost to the requestor).

· Oregon should adopt audits to verify election results to ensure that elections conducted with computers accurately reflect the votes actually cast by the people.

· If done through scientific random sampling, auditing election results will be highly accurate while requiring minimal time and expense.

· By adopting a process for auditing election results, Oregon’s election system could become the standard for how states across the nation could conduct their elections.

· It is extremely important to us as Oregonians to know that the remaining vulnerabilities in our state election system be remedied as soon as possible. We therefore urge our county elections clerks and county commissioners to make this issue a priority to be addressed immediately.