MA Secretary of State and MD U.S. Senate Candidates, Election Defense Alliance all Issue Statements, Call for Manual Hand Count of Ballots...
By Brad Friedman on 6/20/2006, 2:09pm PT  

The number of organizations and individuals now declaring "No Confidence" in the reported results of the Busby/Bilbray special election to fill the U.S. House seat of the jailed Randy "Duke" Cunningham is now increasing exponentially. The race, as we've reported since it was held on June 6th, was run on easily-tamperable Diebold voting machines that were effectively illegal and decertified on both the state and federal level after they were sent home with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election in contravention of laws, regulations, and of course, common sense.

I'd continue to encourage you to support candidates and organizations who are willing to speak up on these issues! As well as not support those who don't! And feel free to let them know why!

So far today, joining the burgeoning list of groups and individuals and candidates who have already declared "No Confidence" in the race and who are demanding a manual hand count of the ballots (you can do so yourself via VelvetRevolution.us' petition here) are the following:

Massachusetts Secretary of State candidate, John Bonifaz --- who's also a Constitutional attorney --- joins the "growing number of citizens" in declaring "No Confidence" in the unverified Busby/Bilbray election results. In his statement, he declares, "We face today a crisis in public confidence in the integrity of our elections. This crisis threatens the foundation of our democracy."

His statement then goes on to add...

We cannot claim to serve as a model of democracy for the world, when our own election outcomes are not trusted here at home.

As Massachusetts Secretary of State, I will build and lead a coalition of secretaries of state from around the country to stand up to the private voting machine companies that are undermining the public's trust. I will set a standard for Massachusetts and for the nation: We will not contract with any private voting machine companies that do not guarantee a paper trail and hand-recorded paper ballot, access to the source codes and data within the machines, and opportunity to publicly own the machines in full.

We must reclaim our democracy. Count every vote.

In Maryland, U.S. Senatorial candidate Kevin Zeese calls for a hand count and says in his full statement:

It is impossible to have confidence in the vote count in the Busby/Bilbray election when the security of the electronic voting machines was so lax, e.g. allowing judges to take machines home the night before, when combined with the well documented ease of manipulating the machines in ways that could effect the vote count by itself raises serious doubts about the accuracy of the vote count. Election officials in California and throughout the country know that the machines used include illegal interpreted code that allow for manipulation of election results. The security holes in these machines allow for software to be changed in ways that could effect the vote counting in a matter of minutes.

The recently formed Election Defense Alliance, dedicated to bringing together and helping local groups fight for issues of electoral integrity, has also issued a "No Confidence" statement in the Busby/Bilbray election:

What took place in California on June 6 is exactly the kind of thing Election Defense Alliance is working to eliminate. There should be no doubts in the minds of Americans about the validity of our election outcomes. The very possibility that our electoral processes are open to wholesale electronic corruption is a violation of our very system of democracy.

The folks above, with more to come as I understand it, join several other notable groups and individuals who have already declared "No Confidence" in the announced results and have demanded a manual hand count of the ballots used in the race. Some of those groups currently include the California Election Protection Network (CEPN), Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), VelvetRevolution.us, Tribune Media columnist Robert Koehler and U.S. House nominee (CA-49) Jeeni Criscenzo.

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