New yorkers - make 3 calls on 5/12
Sign Up So We Know You Are Calling
Pick a time in this sheet. We are calling from 8am - 5pm.
WHO ARE WE CALLING?
- NY State Assembly Member Latrice Walker (Chair: Election Law Committee)
(718) 342-1256 or try (518) 455-4466 if you get a recording at the other number.
- NY State Senator Edward Rath III (Elections Committee Ranking Minority member)
(716) 631-8695 or try (518) 455-3161 if you get a recording at the other number.
- NY State Assembly Member Michael Norris (Election Law Committee Ranking Minority member)
(716) 839-4691 or try (518) 455-4601 if you get a recording at the other number.
IF YOU GET A RECORDING - FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A MSG - OR TRY THE OTHER NUMBER.
If you cannot call all 3 - Just make as many calls as you can. Thank you!!
What Are We Saying?
Here is a link to a suggestion of what to say!
Say what you are comfortable saying.
The main point is:
Please put A1115/S309 on the Election Committee agenda and pass it immediately. It is urgent. Thank you!
After You Call - Please Let Us Know
After you make your calls, please write a quick comment in the comments section next to where you signed your name, saying what happened like "I left a voicemail with a message" or "I spoke with Beth and gave her my comments."
Or can send a quick email to contact@SMARTelections.us with the subject “MADE MY CALLS”, if that’s easier.
Thank you so much!!
Together we will make a powerful impact!
We Must Pass This Bill By The End of the Session 6/10
If not, millions of voters could be using these "bad" machines soon all across the state..
Learn More About Hybrid Voting Machines
Attend our next forum!
Forums return on June 15th -- Join Lulu on Facebook for updates on pending election legislation!
We are taking a month off to focus on educating the public about state and federal election legislation that is pending.
Lulu Friesdat, the SMART Elections Executive Director, will be doing live hits on her Facebook page each week to discuss those bills.
Tues/Wed/Thurs at 5 pm ET
https://www.facebook.com/lulu.friesdat
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Next Forum Episodes
* Tuesday, June 15 • 7–8 pm ET
* Tuesday, June 29 • 7–8 pm ET
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- Thousands of viewers are watching our forums every other Tuesday at 7pm ET.
- Join our active, smart, fun community by attending regularly!
The #ElectionProtection forums are a vibrant, revealing dialogue about the problems with our elections & what's needed to improve them. We discuss election security, disability issues, voting rights, and election reform, from perspectives across the political spectrum. You won't get this information anywhere else!
Moderator: Lulu Friesdat, Election Security Journalist, Co-Founder & Executive Director of SMART Elections
Co-Host: Bennie Smith, Shelby County TN Election Commissioner & Software Developer
Get reminders & updates for our forums. Watch past SMART Elections forums. Be sure to subscribe!
Series sponsored by SMART Elections
Co-sponsors: DemCast USA • Democracy Counts • Citizens for Voting Integrity NY • Indivisible Long Beach NY • Indivisible Scarsdale NY • Sierra Club (Lower Hudson Group)
YOUR VOTE IS UNDER ATTACK
The New York State Board of Elections rejected certification of the ExpressVote XL at their meeting on 1/28/21. The ExpressVote XL is a "hybrid" voting machine that has a design flaw called a "shared paper path." It is considered very risky by security experts.
Learn more about hybrid voting machines with a shared paper path.
Professor Rich DeMillo, Chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech, said, “It is encouraging that the commissioners refused to certify the ExpressVoteXL, an all-in-one ballot marking device that poses extraordinary risks for the voters of New York.” DeMillo is one of a group of over 50 experts, good government and disability rights groups who signed a letter opposing certification of the voting machine.
However, the vendor ES&S is actively working to overcome the issues that were raised during the certification process and is already in conversation again with the NY State Board of Elections to have the system certified. Additionally there are other voting systems being marketed, and even in use here in New York that have the same security issues.
So the next step in protecting New York voters is to pass legislation to permanently ban hybrid voting machines with a shared paper path from being used in the state.
That legislation has been introduced in both the Assembly and the Senate:
Security experts have said that the ExpressVote XL is not secure, and that, "Elections conducted on current BMDs [ballot-marking devices] cannot be confirmed by audits." They do not recommend this type of voting machine. They recommend hand-marked paper ballots, for all voters who are able to mark their ballot by hand, and ballot-marking devices that follow security best-practices for voters with disabilities.
Here are few reasons why so many groups, experts and advocates are against the use of the ExpressVote XL.
- It is a touch screen voting machine. Touch screen machines can go out of calibration and change votes.
- New York has never approved voting on touch screen machines as a primary method of voting and now is not the time to deteriorate our security and our ability to have confidence in our elections.
- The ExpressVote XL miscounted tens of thousand votes in a 2019 Pennsylvania election.
Join us every Friday at 12pm EST to discuss what can be done. We are
- Sending letters to New York legislators. We have sent over 800 letters so far! Please send yours today!
- Working to pass A1115 / S309
- Researching better voting machines for New York
Register in advance for this meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkd-mqrDwqEtRAy0Vvl5tHTqU0cyRCOeMp
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email and the zoom link.
SMART Elections Featured in Washington Post
Voting machines didn’t steal the election. But most are still terrible technology.
by Cory Doctorow
Feb. 3, 2021
... the industry-leading, private-equity-owned ES&S, has seized on the moment to threaten members of SMART Elections, a journalism and advocacy group, with a lawsuit for spreading “false, defamatory and disparaging” information about one of its machines, the ExpressVote XL. These claims — factual observations, really — include that the machine “can add, delete, or change the votes on individual ballots” and that it is a “bad voting machine.”
Because SMART Elections is a collective of committed, individual activists — who translate academic research and relay it to state regulators — ES&S threatened to hold the members of the group “personally and individually liable”: ominous threats coming from any large company, but one that might especially worry activists, given ES&S’s history of litigiousness. (ES&S, a company that makes billions by charging the public millions to count its votes, is such a habitual litigant that sometimes it seems like the voting machines are a sideline for the lawsuits.)
But nothing SMART Elections is saying is controversial, let alone libelous. The definitive research on electronic voting system incompetence is the annual report from the “Voting Village” at DefCon, the gigantic Las Vegas hackers’ convention ... The hackers have been pointing out many of these problems for years.
