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Voting Rights Task Force (VRTF)

• The Voting Rights Task Force, a committee of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, has been working since 2004 to achieve secure, open, and verifiable elections.

• Our focus is on education and lobbying about voting systems, "auditing", election procedures and related issues.

• VRTF Meetings are the 3rd Mondays of the month, from 7 to 9 pm. The location varies, but it's usually in north Berkeley. Please sign up to the VRTF discussion list for announcements.

• To join the VRTF discussion list, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voting-rights/join or send an email to: Voting-Rights-Subscribe@YahooGroups.com

• Discussion group home page : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/voting-rights

• Contact: Richard Tamm or Jim Soper at VRTF@WellstoneClub.org. This email will be received by both of them.

Achievements

The Voting Rights Task Force and its member had done the following :

• Jim Soper aided in the organizing and publicizing of the Tunisian voting centers in San Francisco and Los Angeles (10/11)

  • Tunisia's Election Brings the Arab Spring to San Francisco
  • L.A.-area Tunisians vote in their country's elections

• Eva Waskell was coorganizer of the national conference "Election Integrity - Past, Present & Future" held at MIT (10/11)

• Working with Debra Bowen's office and Verified Voting, the VRTF was instrumental in blocking SB908, a bill to introduce email voting into California (7/11)
  www.CountedAsCast.org/sb908/
  Election Integrity Advocates Take On Internet Voting In California

• Jackie Riskin sent thousands of emails to media outlets about election integrity issues (2007-10)

• Michelle Gabriel publishes "Monitoring Electronic Voting Systems in California", a groundbreaking document that describes what to look for when monitoring electronic voting machines and processes involved in the counting of the voting. (9/06 - 10/08)

• Jim Soper was instrumental in convincing the German Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs to cancel an official Internet voting pilot project (summer, 08)

  • this lead to a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom to drop out of the Internet voting software business (Fall/08)

  • as a side note : the German Constitutional Court would later rule that elections systems that cannot be retraced were unconstitutional (3/09)

• VRTF spearheaded a campaign to defend Debra Bowen's new election regulations from attack during the primary elections (2/08)

  • on Election Day, media editors received over 500 letters and emails supporting her regulations (2/08)

• Presentation to Melanie Nutter, Deputy District Director for Speaker Pelosi, June 26, 2007

• Presentation to Adrienne Bousian, Deputy State Director for Senator Boxer, April 20, 2007

• Presentation to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, April 5, 2007

• Presentation to Jim Molinari, State Director for Senator Feinstein, March 15, 2007

• Dan Ashby and Jim Soper organize a symposium "Are We a Democracy? Vote Counting in the United States" in coordination with the Election Defense Alliance (2/07)

• VRTF made several major contributions to the election of Debra Bowen as Secretary of State (06)
  www.countedascast.com/bowen/bowen.php

• VRTF lead the public protest against the purchase of new Diebold systems in Alameda County (05-06)

  • Diebold was thrown out of Alameda County

  • for the first time ever in California, all votes cast on a DRE were hand checked; this later would become standard procedure in all of California (11/06)

  • the county conducted a security assessment (06)

• VRTF members co-found the California Election Protection Network (spring 05)

• VRTF hosted the first national symposium on election integrity (2/05)

• VRTF sparked the campaign to have Senator Boxer support Ohio representatives in demanding a review of the results of the 2004 presidential election, which she did (1/05)

Web Sites Authored by VRTF Members

• Jim Soper : www.CountedAsCast.com

• Jim Soper : www.CountedAsCast.org

• Jerry Berkman : www.Election-Reform.org

We only fail if we quit. And we are not quitting.