Missouri: Senate Bill 375 And House Bill 773

From Laura Hausladen:

I am sending you this email to ask you to help with the effort to pass the “Making paper ballots the official ballot in MO” bills.  These are companion bills–the Senate one is SB 375, the House’s is HB 773.

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What the Bills Will Do:

1. End the use of the touch screen voting machines (called DREs) for all but the handicapped.  (No more DREs could be purchased and the old ones could only be used by the handicapped.  Ballot marking devices would replace them for use by all handicapped voters.  (These machines create paper ballots so that there is a physical ballot that can be used in recounts and audits.)
2. Require that there be hand-counted publicly viewable audits of at least 5% of the ballots before the election is certified. (This is not much of a change from what is already required. However, it is extremely important because the opti-scan machines, which count the paper ballots in essentially every county in Missouri,  have also been proved to be hackable just by tampering with the memory cards that get inserted into them.)
3. Ensure that the public has the ability to gain access to the election records and ballots after the election has been certified, without having to first fight and win a battle in court.

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Why We Need These Bills:

1. A knowledgeable computer expert with access to JUST ONE of the DREs in St Louis (or one of the other counties throughout the state) could change the outcome of a statewide election.
2. If the vote were tampered with in some way, it would be virtually impossible to prove that this had been done.
3. Right now if a re-count is necessary, all of the votes cast on the DREs are not actually recounted, because there is nothing tangible to recount.  The program is just run again.  (Interestingly enough, when this was done in one MO recount, the re-run submitted a vote that was one vote off from the original count.  How do you explain that?!)
4. Right now there are vendor programmers whose lines of code are not able to be viewed by any of our state’s county clerks or legislators or members of the computer programming literate public, and these ‘unknown’ programmers are responsible for how vast numbers of Missourian’s votes are cast and how virtually ALL of Missourian’s votes are counted.
5. Computer viruses could change the results of elections and no one would even know that this had happened.
6. Missouri’s Constitution provides for open elections.  Our elections are NOT open if the general public doesn’t have access to a process which they themselves can understand/verify the means by which their vote is recorded and counted.  Paper ballots and publicly viewable hand counts are the only way to achieve open elections in Missouri!

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What You Need to Do!  Steps 1 & 2 are ESSENTIAL and only take a couple minutes. 
(Don’t worry if you don’t have time to do more! But DO THIS!)

1. Fill out witness form for SB 375 BELOW by clicking the link  and recording your name and address.  Add comments as simple or as thorough as you would like.  (Copy them before you submit so that you can use them on the next witness form, and in case your submission returns the phrase “database not selected”.  If this happens, just wait a bit and try again.)
2. Fill out witness form for HB 773 BELOW by clicking the link.
3. Forward this email or one of your own with the links to the witness forms and ask people to fill them out. The more there are the more likely this bill will get passed out of committee.
4. Send email (preferable), or call the Senators (listed at the end of this email) to tell them you want them to support this bill.  (Or do both!)  They are the ones who must vote it out of committee so that it can get scheduled for a vote on the floor of the Senate.) REMEMBER, if you are one of their constituents, be sure to let them know!
5. Send email (preferable),  or call these Representatives to tell them you want them to support this bill.  (Or do both!)
6. Write Sen. Brian Nieves to thank him for sponsoring SB 375; write Rep. Sue Entlicher to thank her for sponsoring HB773 and hearing it in her committee; write Sen. Wasson to thank him for hearing it in his committee.
7. Attend the hearings on Monday March 25th at 2:00 p.m. in the Senate Lounge for SB 375, and on Tuesday March 26th at 8:15 in Hearing room 5 for HB 773

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Witness form link for SB 375 — Paper Ballots

Witness form link for HB 773 — Paper Ballots

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CONFERENCE CALL:

Feel free to join the Conference Call this evening with the non-partisan citizen group who are spearheading the push for this bill.  We will attempt to answer any and all questions.  We will also outline what we need to do to get this bill passed.
TONIGHT! Wed. March 20th at 8:30

• Call: 1-267-507-0240
• Code: 206137

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SENATE (FINANCIAL AND GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS) AND ELECTION COMMITTEE 

(click the link to go to their page and find their phone and email. Or just remember the formula.  [email protected]  For example: [email protected]  Tell them you want them to support this bill in every way possible.)

• Jay Wasson 20th, Chairman
• Mike Cunningham, 33rd, Vice-Chairman
• Bob Dixon, 30th
• Will Kraus, 8th
• David Pearce, 21st
• David Sater, 29th
• Wayne Wallingford, 27th
• Joe Keaveny, 4th
• Paul LeVota, 11th
• Scott Sifton, 1st

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HOUSE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE

(click the link to go to their page and find their phone and email. Or just remember the formula.  [email protected]  Ex. [email protected]  Tell them you want them to support this bill in every way possible.)

• Entlicher, Sue, Chair
• Neth, Myron, Vice Chair
• Butler, Michael
• Conway, Pat
• Cox, Stanley
• Dunn, Randy
• Gosen, Don
• Hurst, Tom
• Kolkmeyer, Glen
• McGaugh, Joe Don
• Newman, Stacey
• Pfautsch, Donna

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Thanks so much for working alongside us in this fight for open and fair elections in Missouri!
Laura Hausladen

P.S. If you want to spread the word through video messaging try these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsB2UYsPPq0   (Specific to St Louis Co. and Missouri and created by Phillip Michaels of Missourians for Honest Elections.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hCyVsUir8k  Another Example of the 1 Minute E Voting Machine Hack

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4aKOhbbK9E  Proven voting fraud! Gov’t programmer testifies voting machines are rigging elections

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vclCSczJIvY  Democracy at risk: Voting machines might be hacked (including optiscan systems)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx5YyiyWOH4  Rigged Voting Machines

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL9dXwBlpSs  Obama is Rigging the Electronic Voting Machines (St Louis vote-switching highlighted–Gary Fuhr)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r16LLDoWwhU  Hacking Democracy An Indepth Analysis of ES&S Voting Systems (Part 2 of 7) (We use these machines in St Louis Co. Whole series recommended.)