Dear fellow citizen,
We need to save our most basic democratic right. The last election was ruined by fraud and ineptitude. Please do not certify this election.
Regards,
Frank Dederich
Given that we are setting an example for the rest of the world regarding fair and just electoral process, we should be sure that our own is without misconduct and fraud. If there is ANY question of the process, it needs to be investigated and corrected.
Voting is the primary civil right on which all of our other rights depend.
Our system of representative government is based on a secure ballot. If a growing number of people across our nation feel that their votes are not being counted, the underpinning of our system of government begins to rot.
This time it is Democrats who feel disfranchised; next time it may be Republicans. As long as anyone fears that their vote has been lost, misinterpreted or stolen, there is trouble in our system. The more widespread that feeling, the more our democracy is threatened.
There is nothing more important that a citizen can do than vote. Voting, like justice, must not just be done, it must also be seen to be done. It must be fair. It must be transparent. Why, then, leave the counting of that vote to unintelligible machines, built by people who are openly partisan, running incomprehensible code that is, nevertheless, vulnerable to hackers?
People need to see and understand. Electronic machines will always engender doubts. However great those doubts, so great will be the threat to our Republic.
I urge you to contest the election result.
Thank you!
Respectfully,
John Banich
This should be looked into. Given the information about the 2000 election which has since surfaced, and the exit polls in the 2004 elections and Diebold's statement about delivering the State of Ohio to Bush, I believe that there is credible evidence to suggest that certain people within the Republican party may have rigged the results of the two elections in Bush's favor.
Electronic balloting is a no-brainer to me and my family. Given the easy potential for manipulation and abuse, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is not the way to proceed.
If Ukraine can do it, so can we. It is imperative for a democracy like ours not to look like a joke.
Chris & Lisa Pilot
Dear Senators,
I urge you NOT to certify the election on January 6th due to significant evidence of voting irregularities in Ohio and other states. The lifeblood of our democracy -- every citizen's right to vote -- is at stake. Please stand up and do the right thing.
Sincerely,
Sara Schley
Wendell, MA
I have been a supporter and volunteer of the Democratic Party for my whole adult life. I am not an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, but am at a loss to understand the discrepancies in this last election. Why is no one investigating this vigorously? Please don't take other Democrats silence as aquiesence. We are watching and waiting to see leadership on this issue. It will determine our next vote.
My address is 202 Fourth St. in Old Town, Maine. The fact that there are essentially no paper trails of electronic votes, and potential for easy electronic manipulation of tallies should cause all of us to re-design our voting system.
Please stand up for those of us who donated much money and time to this election by contesting the electors from Ohio and reviewing the record publically.
By NOT certifying the election, you will give me and everyone else who signs this petition hope. The next step is to abolish the electoral college before brother Jeb vies for the seat in 2008.
It is up to a senator to stand up and support the Representative Conyers and others of the House of Reps. to challenge the 2004 election results. I urge the Senator to be the one to stand for honest and just elections in this nation that prides itself in democracy.
Please stand up for democracy by speaking up and challenging the certification of this election.
Our future as a democracy may depend on your courage.
Thank you.
Please help fix our election system. We shouldn't have so many questions about voting machines, ballots, etc. in the U.S. -- a model of democracy for the world.
Unless our votes are counted, and counted correctly, then we are no better - no more democratic - than the countries that we are supposedly attempting to liberate today in the Middle East.
When do we start to reclaim democracy in this country? Please be courageous and question this election. Better still, sponser a bill to clean up the election mess!
Thanks.
DO NOT WIMP OUT ON DEMOCRACY! NEVER AGAIN! DO THE RIGHT THING THIS TIME!
I still have John Kery's bumper sticker on my car. Does he?
John Edwards said they would ensure that every vote be counted. Stand up with John Conyers and DO SOMETHING to make it happen.
Oh, hey, what she said, #1942: "DO NOT MAKE THIS COUNTRY INTO THE LAND OF THE DISENFRANCHISED AND THE HOME OF THE CRAVEN COWARDS." I like that.
Respectfully yours
I'm not in favor of overturning the election. I just want to make sure that the election was conducted fairly. If the US is challenging the Ukraine for the same allegations of voting fruad, we ought to step up to the plate and acknowledge responsibility. Let the chips fall where they may.
Dear Senators: I implore you to please contest the vote for G.W. Bush on Thursday. Al Gore should have been president these last 4 years. And we don't really know who won this election but I am highly suspecious that it was not Bush. There are too many questions, fraud, misconduct, and gross negligence, voter supression, etc. Please, be brave, don't be wimps. We democrats will be furious if some of you don't stand up and contest this vote. Our country may never be the same. We are losing what democracy we have.
Thank you, Nancy Shaw
Please don't certify this election. Stand for democracy: one person one vote, counted no matter what. The government of this country is by the will of the people, not the will of a party or the will of one small group. The people who vote are exercising the right of the governed to select their governors. The Senators are able to support that right. Will any Senator have the courage to stand in support of the right of the voters? Senator Boxer? Senator Kennedy? Senator Obama? Anyone? I beg each of you not to repeat the debacle of the 2000 election when no Senator stepped forward to support the Black Caucus in their challenge of the Florida vote. Support Rep. Conyers in his effort to keep our Democracy safe. Do not make this country into the land of the disenfranchised and the home of the craven cowards. I know the Senate is not all Stepford Republicans. There are 44 heroic Democrats there...aren't there?
I was a Kerry volunteer in YOungstown OH for 10 weeks. On election day there was obvious evidence of voter obstruction (huge lines in the black precincts) and, more seriously, many, many machines which brought up "Bush" when the voter pressed "Kerry" -- which an observant voter could correct, but only if he or she caught it in time. I firmly believe the election was stolen, again. Peter N. Simon
Mr. Diebold, as the maker and owner of so many electronic voting machines, should never haver promised that he would do everything he could to insure that Bush Carried Ohio. This was dumb, if nothing else. But this election shows the need to be able to have a "paper trail" for every precinct in every election.
Please do not certify the election. It is important to stand up to this administration and insist on restoring a true democracy to this country. As long as our elections are rife with corruption, harrassment, and 10 hour waiting lines to vote, we do not live in a democracy.
There is such a great possibility of election fraud in the U.S., we must do something about the way we vote. I am not at all confident that the past election was valid. I am for a unified ballot and system of voting for national elections in the U.S.A.
Martha Brantigan-Stowell
All we ask for is free and fair elections in which every eligible voter is allowed and encouraged to vote and EVERY vote is counted. What is wrong with this country that we cannot seem to accomplish what other countries are able to accomplish?
If you, our Democratic leaders, do not stand up for what is right, then you are clearly not worthy of the office to which you were elected. Do we have to turn elsewhere to find courageous women and men to hold the standard of democracy? Do not disappoint us this time!
Prior to the November 2 election, I was very troubled by what I saw as deliberate attempts to disqualify "certain" voters by actions from Secretaries of State in Ohio, Florida, etc...... even here in Minnesota. Other problems surfaced with regard to availability of absentee ballots and early voting, and confusing or mis-information. Why was a bill to require a paper trail held up in committee for two years?
During the day of November 2 and the days following, more and more reports of machine malfunctions, of inadequate number of machines in certain precincts, of voter intimidation, of exit poll discrepencies with final vote counts, etc. surfaced. These problems should in general raise alarms and especially when the impact predominately affected one party.
How can we say that America stands behind honest/fair elections in the world as a pillar of democracy when it seemingly looks the other way in its own elections? How is it the Collin Powell defends the results of exit polls in the Ukraine while US politicians and media pundents debunk the validity of exit polls in our Novemeber 2 election?
On January 6, please step forward to call for an investigation of the Nov. 2 election and of the recount in Ohio
Thank you for considering my comments.
Close friends served as observers during Election Day both in Florida and in Ohio. They felt those elections were completely fraudulent both in the computer equipment and in good old fashioned Jim Crow manipulation of minority rights, Please stand with Representative Conyers, with other congressmen and senators in rejecting the Ohio electoral votes.
