About Us
"Election Defense Alliance is building a national citizen movement to expose electoral fraud and establish electoral integrity, so that governments accountable to the people are legitimately elected." Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is building a national citizen movement to expose electoral fraud and establish electoral integrity, so that governments accountable to the people are legitimately elected. EDA is a democratic, participatory organization bringing together citizen activists across the nation in a coordinated, full-time, full-range campaign for transparency and integrity in local, county, state, and national elections. We seek to restore electoral integrity as the foundation of American democracy, by alerting the citizenry to the illusions and dangers of privatized, computerized, fraud-prone voting machines, and working to replace this illegitimate system of secret vote-counting with hand-counted paper ballot elections, conducted by citizens in the precincts in public view, so that the vote-counting process is transparent, secure, verified, and fully accountable to the voters. EDA is building infrastructure [1] for the mass citizen movement that will be necessary to bring about this change, as we continue to monitor and defend elections against overt voter suppression and covert fraud and manipulation, starting from the local precincts and building upward. Ultimately, America's citizens will achieve electoral integrity by reviving traditions of citizen-conducted, precinct-based, hand-counted paper ballot voting, and establishing these principles and methods in state and federal election law to ensure electoral integrity and the legitimacy of government. Election Defense Alliance is a program of International Humanities Center, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS Code [FEIN: 33-0767921]. Dan Ashby, 510.275.5723 [voicemail] 510.740.0572 [fax] Sally Castleman, SallyC[at]ElectionDefenseAlliance[dot]org [3] Jonathan Simon, 617.538.6012
Our Mission
Donations to Election Defense Alliance are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.Contacts:
Dan[at]ElectionDefenseAlliance[dot]org [2]
Jonathan[at]ElectionDefenseAlliance[dot]org [4]
EDA principles, purpose, governance, coordinating council, endorsements, and affiliates
Coordinating Council
EDA founders and coordinators bring diverse backgrounds, experience, and a high level of commitment to election integrity activism to the important work of restoring our democracy. Here you will find background information to get to know the team. We are actively seeking leaders to help coordinate in various working groups. Please join EDA and sign up for a working group and help us fight for election integrity. Let us know if you would like to help as a leader.
Judy Alter, Ph.D., Council Member-at-Large
Judy Alter (Judith B. Alter Ed.D.), emeritus UCLA Professor, began working on election justice issues four days after the CA Oct. 2003 Recall election when Lynn Landes offered compelling evidence about how Diebold machines swung the election away from Bustamante to the current "governor." Before the Nov. 2004 election she urged elected officials to consider counting voters' filled in sample ballots to check the accuracy of the secret software being used in the election. Jeremiah Akin trained her in the thwarted Recount New Mexico effort. She subsequently analyzed the voting results in Santa Fe NM (posted on Solarbus and freepress) and since Jan, 2005, has given numerous talks about her findings there as a case study of voting irregularities in Nov. 2004. She started Study California Ballots [5] and signed up over 260 volunteers in 16 CA counties to work toward unsealing the 2004 ballots. In July some of her volunteers invited her to help audit the San Diego mayoral election where she led 23 volunteers from 7 counties in parallel elections at 5 polling sites (11 precincts). She directed a partial inconclusive recount there in Aug.2005. She conducted 8 parallel elections in LA County for the special election in Nov.2005 and helped set up others in four other CA counties (total 19).
Since then she continues to work in LA County; lobbying against ES&S precinct scanners for LA for Nov.2006; helping technical observers monitor election equipment in election headquarters; educating the public in more than 45 talks; analyzing the results of 1% manual recount and snap tallies; and circulating citizen petitions for hand marked, hand counted ballots at the precinct level.
Dan Ashby, Co-Founder and Director
Dan Ashby, the executive director of Election Defense Alliance, has been volunteering full-time as an election integrity researcher and organizer since Nov. 3, 2004, when he realized that the exit polls were correct, the official election results were corrupt, and that both major parties and the national news media were complicit in election deception.
For nine months leading up to the 2004 election, he organized a network of 500 volunteers participating in phone-banks to register new voters in the swing states of Oregon and Nevada.
In the days following November 4, be began mobilizing resistance to the illegitimate election.
Dan co-organized the 51 Capital March in Sacramento, CA on December 12, 2004 to protest the Electoral College seating of the Ohio electors, and was an organizer in the Bay Area coalition that persuaded Senator Boxer to stand in protest January 6. He produced one of the nation's first two public forums on the contested election in a January 4 Rally for the Republic in Herbst Hall, San Francisco. On January 30, 2005 he traveled to Columbus Ohio to help found the J-30 Coalition of Ohio election activists.
In early 2005, Dan recruited many leading activists to join United for Secure Elections, the first national election integrity discussion list. Working with the Voting Rights Task Force [6], he co-produced the February 2005 National Teach-In on Election Rigging in Oakland, CA and the Elections in Crisis film festival and speakers' program in September 2005. He attended both the Nashville and Portland national election reform conferences.
As a founding member of Protect California Ballots [7], Dan helped design that organization, conduct parallel elections, and write or edit many of its publications, including a guide to conducting parallel elections.
For the next 18 months, prior to co-founding Election Defense Alliance, Dan was a full-time, freelance election integrity activist, researching and distributing information and action alerts to mailing lists he developed that reach more than 1000 citizens, news reporters, elected officials, political parties, and electoral integrity groups in California and the nation.
In spring, 2006, he began collaborating with fellow EDA co-founders Sally Castleman and Jonathan Simon, designing the organization that emerged on July 4, 2006 as Election Defense Alliance. Dan is involved in all phases of EDA strategy and operations, with particular emphases on communications, website development, fundraising, and volunteer mobilization.
Maintaining his involvement in local and state-level election activism, Dan continues to work with the Voting Rights Task Force [8] in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and with the California Election Protection Network [9] (CEPN). He has testified at numerous county and state voting system certification hearings, and is frequently interviewed by the press.
Sally Castleman, Co-Founder, National Chairperson
Sally Castleman has had close to 50 years working on political campaigns, both for candidates and for issues. Her work on the 2004 election, recruiting and training attorneys for election protection roles, led her to conclude immediately that the reported results were fraudulent. Her participation in the 2004 Ohio recount solidly confirmed this belief as she witnessed how Ohio's recount laws were flagrantly violated to falsify the recount.
Since then she has worked with a Boston-area group, Coalition against Election Fraud (CAEF), focusing her efforts on educating the general public, election officials, and decision-makers around the country about the prevailing conditions in our election system. Ms. Castleman played a vital role in the Election Assessment Hearing (EAH) (http://electionassessment.org [10]), held in Houston in June 005.
With two other colleague, Ms. Castleman organized two days of strategy meetings with election-reform leaders at the September, 2005 Portland Summit to Save Our Democracy. Some of the strategies ElectionDefenseAlliance.org will be implementing came out of those meetings.
In her professional life Ms. Castleman has several times conceptualized, designed, implemented and managed programs. She has also been a professional fundraiser. In her work on local political issues, she has often played the roles of publicist and strategist.
Tom Courbat, Election Monitoring Coordinator
For three elections Tom served as a poll worker and then as a poll inspector (in charge of the precinct workers), thus gaining valuable inside knowledge of the process at the polls. He has been working on election integrity issues since 2004, around the time of the General Election in November, 2004. He worked under the guidance of Dr. Judy Alter and Dan Ashby in a parallel election project in San Diego in 2005, and in the Mayoral Recount that year as well. He has provided occasional ad-hoc assistance in the CA-50 (Busby/Bilbray) group objecting to the use of the Diebold machines contaminated by “sleepovers”. He has done extensive study of publications regarding the Ohio debacle as well as the Florida 2000 shenanigans.
Tom is the former Finance Director of Riverside County, CA and is a 25-year veteran of local government at the executive management level. He has worked for the City of Pasadena, the Counties of Los Angeles, Shasta and Riverside. In addition, he served 10 years (won 3 elections) as an elected board member of the Murrieta County Water District, so he has a perspective from a candidate’s point of view as well. Mr. Courbat holds a B.S. in Marketing Management and Research from California State University at Los Angeles and an MBA in Financial Management from California State University at Chico. He has completed ½ of the courses required for an MBA in Public Administration.
Election integrity (EI) has become a passion for Tom. He took over a budding DFA-Temecula Valley (in Southwest Riverside County, CA) EI project in April, 2006 (SAVE R VOTE) and assembled approximately 70 volunteers that were trained to monitor the election process for the June 6th primary. On July 11, 2006, he presented a 13-page report outlining numerous problems with recommendations to the Board of Supervisors. The goal for November 2006 is to assemble 200 volunteers.
Marj Creech, Coordinator for Public Education
Marj grew up in the racist, classist South in the 50s and 60s and was witness to the division of society during the Civil Rights era. A creative, stubborn, iconoclastic streak led Marj to try adventurous things. After earning a degree in philosophy, she joined the Women’s Army Corps which assigned her to Walter Reed Hospital. There she saw many injured soldiers and became friends with the oppressed from all backgrounds who joined the Army to escape poverty. After the war she became active in the feminist and gay rights movements while entering the Christian ministry. After fighting for justice over the years, the 2004 election awoke Marj to the utter dysfunction of our democracy, despite the pall of normalcy cast by society and the media. She realized that the only way to bring justice is to create a movement, as powerful as the Civil Rights movement, to repair and restore our electoral system – otherwise virtually no other progress can be made. Her tasks in the movement are to help active people to respond to this crisis. Since the US has so much influence in the world, Marj understands that the struggle for election integrity is crucial to the struggle for the dignity and worth of all peoples of the world. Marj is an organizer, encourager, bringer of humor and lifter of spirits in local Ohio groups (J30 and CASE Ohio, and also a Licking County activist group –LICOPAC). She has participated in and helped organize parallel elections, records investigations, conferences and educational forums, parade floats, rallies, parties, coffee house events, and have generated numerous educational flyers to hand out at other people’s events, performs as The Honest Elections Cow, and co-hosts a website called OH-WAVE.
Jonathan Simon, Co-Founder
Jonathan Simon, a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, is a member of the Bar of Massachusetts. As a result of his prior experience as a political survey research analyst for Peter D. Hart Research Associates in Washington, he became an early advocate for an exit poll-based electoral "burglar alarm" system, independent of media and corporate control, to detect computerized vote shifting in Election 2004. In the absence of such a system, he was nevertheless able to capture and analyze critical official exit poll data briefly posted on the web prior to its election-night disappearance, data which served as an initial basis for questioning the validity of Election 2004.
Dr. Simon is a member of Alliance for Democracy and We Do Not Concede, and has worked closely with several key election integrity organizations, including National Ballot Integrity Project and National Election Data Archive. He has authored or coauthored several papers addressing statistical anomalies and other evidence of computerized election fraud, and has collaborated with Bruce O’Dell in the development of an effective handcount sampling protocol to be deployed as a check mechanism where computerized vote tabulation is used.
Because he believes that restoration of fair and honorable elections will depend upon exposure of the systemic fraud currently nullifying American democracy, and because he is deeply skeptical about the impact of proposed federal electoral reform legislation, Dr. Simon has focused much of his effort on the introduction of working hand-counted paper ballot voting methods and/or airtight handcount sampling protocols at the state and local levels.
Nancy Tobi, Legislative Coordinator
Nancy Tobi is cofounder, former Chair, and website editor for Democracy for New Hampshire (DFNH). She is current Chair of the New Hampshire Fair Elections Committee. Nancy has seen DFNH grow from 25 members when founded in February 2004 to what is now the Granite State's largest grassroots organization, recognized as an influential player in New Hampshire and national politics.
Nancy is the author of numerous articles on election integrity, including "The Gifts of HAVA: Time to Ask for a Refund," "What's Wrong with the Holt Bill," "We're Counting the Votes: An Election Preparedness Kit," and the newly released "Hands-on Elections: An Information Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People".
Nancy's focus on federal election reform legislation such as the "Holt Bill" and the HAVA-spawned White House agency, the Election Assistance Commission, has resulted in groundbreaking research, analysis, and reporting on the ramifications of federal acts and agencies to the integrity of the American Republic and its particular form of representational democracy.
Under her leadership the NH Fair Elections Committee has sponsored and helped to pass positive state election law legislation, while successfully blocking legislation that would have undermined the openness and transparency of the New Hampshire election system. The Fair Elections Committee has sponsored several public education gatherings with New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and other state and local election officials, and consults regularly with the NH State Legislature's Election Law Committee.
The Committee, with its parent organization, Democracy for New Hampshire, was prime sponsor of the 2007 DemocracyFest, featuring an entire election integrity track, including training on running hand count, paper ballot elections. The Fair Elections Committee has organized numerous public actions in support of fair elections, including record-breaking turnout for the 2006 NH Ballot Law Commission hearing regarding the approval of Diebold voting machines, and "Citizens Gone Wild: Taking Control of Our Democracy", an action focused on passing local control ordinances limiting the use of secret vote counting technologies and corporate control of vote counting.
Nancy has been a featured speaker on radio and TV programs, as well as live grassroots and university programs, dealing with election integrity issues. She serves as grassroots representative on the New Hampshire Help America Vote Act (HAVA) State Plan Committee.
She is married to Ariel, and has two children. Nancy holds a Master of Science degree in Environmental Education and works professionally in the field of online learning.
Nancy believes that the laws, tenets, and principles embodied in our Constitution must be revived, and that groups like Election Defense Alliance and Democracy for New Hampshire can play a unique role as nonpartisan, grassroots organizations that can help this happen by empowering ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Abbe Waldman DeLozier, Member at Large
Abbe Waldman DeLozier is co-author and co-editor (with Vicki Karp) of the book "Hacked! High Tech Election Theft In America, 11 Experts Expose the Truth.” The book presents the work of eleven experts on the issue of electronic vote fraud, stolen elections, and best solutions to the crisis, explaining how elections in America have been privatized by large corporations, counting votes on secret software, and the imperative for citizens to reclaim transparency and public accountability in elections.
Ms. Delozier has co-produced press conferences in Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, on the issue of vote fraud, one being on September 22nd, 2004, at the National Press Club titled, "Hacking the Presidential Election: A Bipartisan Problem, Anyone Can Do It." There, Bev Harris, computer security expert Dr. Herbert Thompson, and Jeremiah Akin demonstrated six ways election software could be easily hacked. The other was co-produced in conjunction with True Majority.org and took place at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, coinciding with national activities supporting "The Computer Ate My Vote Day!"
Abbe DeLozier is a frequent guest on national radio shows, speaking on electronic voting and the crisis of legitimacy in American elections.
Dale Tavris, Co-Coordinator for Data Analysis
I have worked as an epidemiologist since 1976, most recently with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Epidemiology uses statistical analysis to assess the causes of disease. It has a lot in common with the data analysis that is used in the election integrity movement, which uses statistical analysis to assess the causes of discrepancies between exit polls and official election results.
I became interested in analytical assessment of election results following the 2004 Presidential election. I have analyzed reports of electronic vote switching from the Election Incidence Reporting System (EIRS), in which incidents favoring Bush over Kerry occurred at a ratio of 12 to 1, while the rate of such incidents occurring in 11 swing states compared to the other states occurred at a ratio of 9 to 1.
The other 2004 data I evaluated concerned the purging of registered Ohio voters apparently targeted at Democrats (likely more than 200,000 in Cuyahoga County alone).
Following the 2006 elections I did an evaluation of undervotes in the Senate race in Ohio's Diebold counties, and I have been working with Jonathan Simon and Josh Middledorf on evaluation of the Survey USA responses gathered from voters on election day in 16 strategically selected counties distributed across the U.S.
David L. Griscom, Ph.D., Co-Coordinator for Investigations
David L. Griscom is a co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, retired from a 33-year career with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC.
In 2004, while he was Adjunct Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Griscom happened to meet John R. Brakey. On Election Day 2004, Brakey was Democratic Cluster Captain for four precincts in Arizona Congressional District 7, which had 80% non-Republican, predominately Hispanic registration, yet would be recorded as having voted 42% for Bush.
Having witnessed suspicious behaviors by poll workers at three of his four precincts, John Brakey launched a 1,000+ hour audit of the voting at precinct #324, and called on David Griscom for assistance in analyzing the voting records.
Eventually, the investigative duo uncovered a pattern of poll-worker fraud, and Griscom was able to use simple gambler’s odds to prove that the probability of seven different irregularities being committed exactly 11 times each, was less than one chance in 20 million if they were seven random accidents due to poll-worker incompetence.
Conclusions: The poll workers did these things on purpose, and they religiously followed a
formula whereby they could have swung the vote by as much as 12.8% -- without being detected in a manual recount of the ballots.
In 2005, Dave was invited to speak on John’s and his research at the National Election Reform Conference (Nashville), the Election Assessment Hearing (Houston), and the AZ Democratic Committee Meeting (Flagstaff). Dave also presented a research paper on these findings at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, February 17, 2007, in San Francisco.
Contact [11]
Gail Jonas, Acting Coordinator for Organizational Liaison
Gail Jonas started working on behalf of public funding of campaigns in 2003. By January of 2004, it became obvious that there was a more serious problem related to voting, and that was with how our votes are being counted.
One of Gail's initial efforts was to organize a van full of people to attend a Voting Systems and Procedures Panel meeting at the California secrtary of state's office in Sacramento in April of 2004.
In November of 2004, Gail served as a "commander" (supervising attorney, one of about 95 across the U.S.) for the Election Protection Coalition national voter protection hotline, 866.OUR.VOTE. Two days after the election when it was evident that Ohio was the "hotspot," Gail spent the next couple of months finding recount observers and attorneys from across the country to go to Ohio. Twelve recount observers and six attorneys went to Ohio to help challenge the election. Eighteen additional attorneys offered research assistance.
Gathering up $2,000 in small donations from 50 personal contacts, Gail Jonas, Dan Ashby, and three more California activists flew to Columbus, Ohio on January 30, 2005, and helped the citizens there organize the "J-30 Coalition," an election integrity group that has done primary research on the 2004 ballots, proving fraud in that election and in the recounts that ensued.
In the 2006 election cycle, Gail again served as a commander on the national voter protection hotline coordinated by National Campaign for Fair Elections (NCFE) with the goal of acting as liaison between that organization and EDA. While on the hotline, one of Gail's tasks was to alert Video the Vote to incidents occurring at the polls so that they could speed there and capture the incident and upload it to YouTube.
What is most gratifying to Gail is that the issue of accurate vote counting, persistently raised by a "rag-tag" group of individuals for several years, has now gained national attention.
John Brakey, Co-Coordinator for Investigations
On Election Day 2004, John Brakey was Democratic Cluster Captain for four precincts in Arizona Congressional District 7, which had 80% non-Republican, predominately Hispanic voter registration, yet would be recorded as having voted 42% for Bush.
Throughout Election Day, John witnessed suspicious behavior by poll workers at three of his four precincts. An hour after the polls had closed, he caught poll workers at one of these stations in the act of altering the poll books. Shocked, John immediately launched what would grow into a 1,000+ hour audit of the voting at precinct #324, beginning by salvaging the poll-worker-annotated “Advice to Voter” slips from the trash the next morning and then buying copies of all other pertinent public records. John entered all of these data on Excel spreadsheets and began e-mailing them to Dave Griscom with highlighted oddities and irregularities.
Eventually, the team of Brakey and Griscom uncovered evidence of an elaborate "hack and stack" poll-worker fraud designed to alter the optical scan ballot count and evade detection in a recount. Griscom was able to calculate the probability of the seven irregularities the found being committed exactly 11 times each. The odds that these seven irregularities were random accidents due to poll-worker incompetence, were less than one chance in 20 million. Conclusion: The poll workers did these things on purpose, and they religiously followed a formula whereby they could have swung the vote by as much as 12.8%--without being detected in a manual recount of the ballots.
John Brakey is a co-founder of AUDIT-AZ (Americans United for Democracy, Integrity, and Transparency in Elections, Arizona) and the Special Task Force Leader of the Arizona Democratic Party Election Integrity Committee, in which he works with EDA Investigations Co-Coordinator David Griscom.
Contact [12]
Sherry Healy, Volunteer Coordinator
Sherry Healy has been singularly dedicated to the election integrity cause since 2002, having written more than 70 articles, essays, press releases, and position papers, ranging from the “Titanium Standard” protocol for election auditing, to commentary on centralized voter registration included in the Election Assistance Commission hearing record, to a humorous play titled, "How to Maintain Our Democracy's Election Hygiene," performed by CodePink at the Sparc Theater in Venice, California.
In addition to her role as Volunteer Coordinator for Election Defense Alliance, Sherry is a co-founder of the California Election Protection Network, chairs the election reform committee of Marin-Democracy for America, and is a Democratic Party delegate for California's 6th Assembly District. During the 2004 presidential election campaign she was the volunteer coordinator for Marin County's highly efficient team of 600 Howard Dean for President volunteers. Recently, Sherry was invited to join the board of directors for California's Tangible Ballot Initiative.
Sherry frequently lobbies California elected officials in Sacramento advocating election integrity reform measures. She has produced a number of election reform public events, including a highly successful San Diego Town Hall meeting hosted by Ed Asner and featuring prominent national election integrity leaders. The event received extensive airplay on Link TV and other television channels in the critical week prior to the November 2006 election that resulted in Debra Bowen’s election to the office of California secretary of state.
Sherry is co-founder of a successful communications/graphics business, where she handles project management, technical writing, and art direction, as well as creating illustrations, utilizing skills she acquired by earning her master’s degree in fine art from San Francisco Art Institute. She has received awards and favorable reviews for her art exhibitions and published art criticism. Pursuing her commitment to honest and accountable elections, she has applied her creative and entrepreneurial experience in co-creating Equalivote [13], a HAVA-compliant, noncomputerized ballot-marking device for voters with disabilities.
Bob Wilson, Registration and Voting Systems Coordinator
As a member of Election Defense Alliance, Bob Wilson serves as coordinator of the Registration and Voting Systems workgroup, treasurer and as a member of the executive committee. Like many, Bob’s introduction to election integrity issues was the 2000 election, followed by the anomalous mid-term 2002 election results. After the passage of HAVA, he became especially interested in the role of electronic voting machines and the threat from privatization of elections. After a period of individual investigation and analysis he joined the election integrity battle in earnest.
Bob is a member of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project and serves as chairperson of the Suburban Cook County Chapter, a member of the board of directors and executive committee and acting general counsel. The Mission of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project is to inform and educate the public, media and government officials about important election integrity issues and to promote the adoption of legislation and policies designed to secure the democratic process.
IBIP has been active in opposing the certification of Direct Recording Electronic voting devices and systems, devoting much of their efforts toward attempting to educate and persuade the Illinois State Board of Elections, an eight-member appointed body which certifies voting systems. Wilson has authoring a number of white papers on such topics as "The Case Against DREs" as well as specific vendor-focused papers on Sequoia and Diebold. IBIP was active in helping to develop significant changes to the Illinois Election Code in 2005, including VVPAT and a 5% audit of DREs, post-election. Current efforts are being directed toward the state legislature to further strengthen the code.
Wilson has taught at Washington University, Roosevelt University and Parks College and served as president of Laclede School of Law and vice president of marketing & communications for Triton College. He has contributed articles to print and online publications on a variety of topics such as Medicare and prescription drugs, tax reform, trade deficits and election integrity. His work against Social Security privatization led to presenting testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Committee on Finance. His background includes a corporate career with his last position as president of a major international subsidiary of a US company. Education: undergraduate program (political science) – University of Chicago and Washington University, masters (econometrics) – London School of Economics; terminal degree (law) – Laclede School of Law. Member: California Bar – practice: state and federal courts and various regulatory agencies. Wilson is currently managing partner of a strategic consultancy and lives in Evanston, Illinois.
Affiliations
Election Defense Alliance welcomes individual and group endorsements and affiliations with local, regional, and national organizations all working toward our common goals of transparent elections and government accountable to the citizens.
If an organization you work with endorses the general principals and methods evinced by EDA and votes its approval for Alliance affiliation, please let us know and we will glady display your organizational banner, description, and contact links on these pages, along with those of the regional EDA affiliates you see listed below.
Premise:
Although all elections are local, and the prime locus of election integrity reform is at the local level, restoring a national government accountable to the people of these United States is going to require coordinated efforts arising from local electoral jurisdictions, culminating in institutional reform at the state and national levels.
Practice:
Election Defense Alliance encourages cooperative networks of autonomous county and state election integrity groups sharing information, experience, and material resources toward this ultimate goal of restoring election integrity and legitimacy in government at the local, state, and national levels.
Working Groups:
The EDA Working Group Forums [14] hosted at this website provide shared virtual workspace for such collaboration. The Working Groups [15] also constitute a participatory structure for shaping policy for a national election integrity movement.
Collaboration through Communication:
Additionally, we encourage your participation in building a national election integrity communications network [16] to transmit e-mail messages along an expanding chain of cooperatively-linked lists.
Progressive Democrats of Sonoma, Election Defense Committee (CA)
Progressive Democrats Sonoma County [17] PDS is a local chapter of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). PDA is a fast-growing and dynamic group of progressive grassroots activists from across the country who work to support other progressive activists locally. PDA exists to carry the progressive agenda from the American grassroots to Congress to guide the development of progressive legislation, fight for its passage into law, and support the realization of progressive policies at the state and local levels. To learn more about PDA and how it is providing the organizational structure for a unified national progressive grassroots voice, please visit www.pdamerica.org [18]. Sonoma Election Defense is the PD Sonoma election integrity committee. The Election Defense Committee has regular biweekly meetings, 1st and 3rd Thursday of every month. Time: 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm Progressive Democrats Sonoma County is a California State Political Action Committee (PAC). We believe that the greatest need of our nation is to redirect the resources of our government from destruction to creation, from war to peace, from military spending to social spending, from sickness to health, from selfish desires to universal needs. The future of humanity and our planet is at stake. We strive to work in our local community to support the mission and goals of PDA, to support our newly formed California State Democratic Progressive Caucus, and to work collaboratively with like-minded individuals and organizations to achieve our mutual goals — justice and democracy at all levels, and the preservation and restoration of The Commons. We invite you to join the growing grassroots movement to strengthen progressive values and politics. Political change begins with social movements and ends with politicians — Stand Up! Take Action! Vote! "PDA is the real thing. The organizers of PDA are smart, tenacious, and committed. PDA stood by my side when we battled the corrupt vote count in Ohio, when we held our hearing on the lies exposed in the Downing Street Minutes, and every single day as we keep our eyes on the prize of ending this war in Iraq. PDA is helping take our party back for our side — and none too soon!"
Location: Coffee Catz
City State Zip: Sebastopol
Description: in Gravenstein Station
- Rep. John Conyers, US House of Representatives
Election Integrity Update from SEDC:
http://www.pdsonoma.org/article/sonoma-county-election-defense-committee... [19]
Solar Bus Election Justice Center (VT)
Your home for updated information on the fight for democracy in America
Archives: http://www.solarbus.org/election/archives.shtml [20]
General Email: election(at)solarbus.org [21] [22]
Election Justice Newsletter
Archives:
- March 11th, 2005 [23] (html)
- April 20th, 2005 [24] (pdf, please print and distribute)
request an email text version here [25].
Sign up for the free newsletter: election-email(at)solarbus.org [26]
The Solar Bus Election Justice Center is maintained by the Solar Bus project [27].
Coalition Against Election Fraud (MA)
Home page: Coalition Against Election Fraud [28]
http://www.caef.us [29]
Coalition Against Election Fraud formed in response to the numerous reports of voting irregularities and election law violations that took place during the 2004 election. There were 57,000 complaints of voting violations delivered to the House Judiciary Democrats. When hundreds of thousands of voters are affected by machine problems and acts of voter suppression, it calls our American democracy into question.
A delegation of CAEF members visited Washington, D.C. to ask Senators to object to the certification of the election. On January 6, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Sen. Barbara Boxer submitted an objection to the certification of the election, forcing the House and the Senate to break into a two-hour debate on voter disenfranchisement in Ohio. We have transcripts of the House debate and the Senate debate from thomas.loc.gov.
We are pleased that the Massachusetts electors have passed a unanimous resolution [30] calling for an investigation into the voting irregularities in the 2004 Presidential election.
We have audio from our Jan. 3 Rally for the Republic [31] and our December 12 demonstration [32] available for download.
[34]
Taking Action
If you aren't sure what you can do to help, then take a look at our Next Steps [35] flyer.
This link makes it easy to write your election officials in support of paper ballots [36].
Create a letter to your state official [37] to ask that hand-recountable optical scan ballots be used rather than DREs.
Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, January 26, 2006 at 7 pm at 620 Commonwealth Ave (BU biology building [38]) in Boston, Room 117. Do not park in the parking lot in front of the building or you will get towed.
We have a low-volume announcement list [39].
To subscribe, send an email to coalfraud-ann-subscribe@lists.riseup.net [40].
If you want to contact us, please write to reply@caef.us [41]
If you still have vigil-related questions, please contact us at vigil@caef.us [42]
Links to some outstanding websites:
- bushstole04.com [43] - by Joseph Lopisi, member of Coalition Against Election Fraud
- Solarbus.org [44]
- National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI) [45]
- blackboxvoting.org [46] - by Bev Harris
- wheresthepaper.org [47] - by Theresa Hommel