1 In A Million

A just released report says the likelihood of Bush winning by 2.5% when exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% just doesn't add up.

There is already a strong case that there were significant irregularities in the presidential vote count from the 2004 election. Nevertheless, critics are asking for firmer proof before going forward with a thorough investigation. We feel strongly that this is the wrong standard.

One cannot have proof before an investigation. In fact, the burden of proof should be to show that the election process is accurate and fair. The integrity of the American electoral system can and should be beyond reproach. Citizens in the world's oldest and greatest democracy should be provided every assurance that the mechanisms they have put in place to count our votes are fair and accurate. The legitimacy of our elected leaders depends upon it."

American Center for Voting Rights Is Really Tiny

Via Bradblog and DailyKos:


A 'group' claiming that Democrats are the real kings of voter intimidation (you can tell by their stellar record of success, I suppose).

Here's the headquarters of the group in question:




BradBlog has the scoop...

Free Press: Blackwell Says Ohio "A National Model"

The Free Press writes in more detail about the Blackwell testimony.

Some snips:

Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell finally testified – something he had refused to do in the Moss v. Bush Ohio election challenge before the State Supreme Court and refused to do in Washington, D.C. His testimony proved so contentious that at one point Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, D-OH, told him to “haul butt” if he was unwilling to answer questions about irregularities in the 2004 election.

“Mr. Blackwell, there have been many allegations put out there – you don’t want to hear that,” Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald said. “But they are out there… you did have long lines, therefore there was a certain amount of disenfranchisement.”

Blackwell – who turned his back to Millender-McDonald when she spoke and was told by the congresswoman to face him and speak up – had answers for all the problems cited. The shortage of voting machines was in part the federal government’s fault, he said, as HAVA required new machines – but only provided limited funding to buy those new machines. Thus he said he was unable to replace old machines or buy new ones, adding – and this is notable in itself – that even the newest electronic voting machines had unacceptable security flaws.

In sum, the House Administration Committee field hearing is likely to be one of the few chances the public will have the opportunity to hear Blackwell questioned and challenged in a legal forum. When the committee last asked him to appear– while he was in Washington, D.C. – Blackwell did not show up. Similarly, Blackwell refused to be deposed during the 2004 election challenge lawsuit process.

Blackwell did not answer many of the questions that would have been asked had he appeared before the election challenge legal team, attorney Cliff Arnebeck said. For example, Blackwell did not answer questions about specific vote counts in counties – where the number of votes tabulated was bigger than the number of registered voters. Those figures, which were certified and used to calculate Bush’s victory margin, were pointed out in the election challenge suit. Since then, Blackwell’s office has ‘corrected’ the official vote count, another election challenge legal team member said.

But the biggest point made at the March 21 hearing was this: if you accept Blackwell’s assertion that his administration of the 2004 vote was a model for the nation to follow, then this example of ‘best practices’ shows why elections have to be run based on one federal standard. Otherwise, you get what Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-IL, says are “13,000 separate and unequal” voting jurisdictions across the country.

Election officials like Blackwell and his county election directors all want to retain the power to run elections - creating rules, imposing barriers or removing them - as they see fit. That power, coupled with what Blackwell said were “security issues” with the latest electronic voting machines, even those with paper trails, shows why elections in the country have a long way to go before they can be fully free and fair.

Blackwell Testifies: Nothing Wrong in Ohio

Not as interesting as Congress meddling to keep a vegetable 'alive', but anyway:

The state's election chief told lawmakers at a sometimes-testy congressional hearing Monday that Ohio's presidential election went as smoothly as possible, given the resources available and some last-minute interpretations by state and federal courts.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell testified before members of the U.S. House Administration Committee during a special hearing at the Ohio Statehouse. Members of the committee peppered Blackwell with questions about provisional ballots, long voting lines and other issues in the election that gave President Bush the 20 electoral votes he needed to capture re-election.

His appearance came more than a month after he failed to appear before the committee at a hearing in Washington.

U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican and the committee's chairman, took Blackwell's absence as a snub, especially since Blackwell was in Washington the same day to lead a meeting of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

Blackwell, also a Republican, said he couldn't appear at Ney's hearing because of the previously scheduled institute meeting. Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, another Republican, also did not appear, citing a previous commitment in her state.

The exchanges Monday became heated at times, especially between Blackwell and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Cleveland Democrat who is not a committee member but sat in with the panel.

Tubbs Jones questioned Blackwell about a telephone message delivered to thousands of voters just before the election to make sure they voted in the correct precinct, especially if they had not changed their registration and needed a provisional ballot. Tubbs Jones wondered why he didn't say in the message that voters had the option to use provisional ballots at their local boards of elections.

Cast Yer Provisional, Take Yer Chances

WASHINGTON (AP) Two-thirds of the more than 1.6 million provisional ballots cast in last year's presidential election were counted, but there were wide differences from state to state. Alaska counted 97 percent of its provisional votes, Delaware just 6 percent.
The figures are from a study by electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for election reform information. It is the most comprehensive look yet at how states implemented the major change to grow out of the 2000 presidential vote in Florida, when administrative errors and voter registration database problems kept thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots.

In the 43 states where data were available, provisional votes accounted for just over 1 percent of the total votes counted. In Alaska, 7.2 percent of all the votes counted came from provisional ballots, the highest of any state.

A law enacted by Congress in 2002 required all states to adopt procedures to allow people whose names are not on voter lists but who believe they are registered to cast ballots that can be checked later to verify their eligibility. The law left it up to states to implement the provisional voting rules.

Provisional voting "was a success in many ways in terms of what happened in 2000 when people were turned away and had no fail-safe way of voting," said Elizabeth Schneider, one of the authors of the study. "With provisional balloting in place, a majority of the people were not turned away; they were given a chance to vote."

The electionline.org study found that 70 percent of provisional ballots were counted in states with rules that deemed such ballots valid if cast anywhere in the voter's county or township. In states that required provisional ballots to be cast in the voter's correct precinct to be valid, only 62 percent were counted.

Counting procedures also varied from county to county in some states. In Arizona, for example, state rules required that provisional ballots must be cast in the correct precinct to be counted. But at least two counties, Gila and Pinal, counted provisional ballots that were cast in the wrong precinct.

While Alaska counted the highest percentage of provisional votes, five other states - Oregon, Washington, Nebraska, Ohio and Colorado - counted more than 75 percent. Five states besides Delaware - Hawaii, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Kentucky and Indiana - counted less than 15 percent of such ballots.

Raw Story: Recount Suit Filed

The lawyers for Green presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, along with Kerry-Edwards 2004 have added election tampering to a civil suit filed against the state of Ohio over problems with the state's recount, RAW STORY has learned.

The suit, detailed here, alleges that a manufacturer of voting machines, Triad Election Systems, which serves 43 counties in the state, is tampering with the recount. It is unclear exactly what recourse the plaintiffs' seek; the filing adds on to an original suit to have the recount take place before Ohio electors meet, which failed in the courts. Green Party spokesman Blair Bobier said the party hoped to reform the recount process and suggested Ohio should secure or impound voting machines.

Raw Story has the exclusive...

Diebold Machines Performance Cover Up

According to county election officials and other sources, all Maryland voting machines have been on "lockdown" since November 2, 2004 due to statewide machine failures. Unable to explain the problems at its in-state location, Diebold has sent MD machines to multiple locations around the country for further analysis. "Given official statements that the November 2004 election went smoothly, these revelations suggest that there has been a cover-up by Diebold and Md's State Board of Elections.

"Election Day was anything but smooth. Votes were lost, computer cards storing votes were unreadable, thousands of error messages were reported, machines froze in mid-voting and machines refused to boot up. The problems with the machines were so widespread and serious that efforts to hide the problems have failed," said Linda Schade, director of TrueVoteMD.org. "It is not sufficient for Diebold and the SBE to investigate themselves. They have misled the public about this problem and an independent investigation is needed. Further, these problems indicate that the Diebold machines should be decertified as required by Maryland law and as provided for in the Diebold contract. This is an opportunity to correct the mistaken purchase of paperless electronic voting machines. Diebold should refund Maryland tax dollars and we should start anew with a system that voters trust because it can be independently audited and recounts can be meaningful."

"If the gubernatorial race in 2006 is as close as 2002 it would only take four errors per precinct to change the outcome of the election. Maryland cannot risk the election disaster that is impending. Maryland was lucky the presidential election in Maryland was not close; otherwise we would be embroiled in scandal to this day. It is time to put in place a system that is reliable and that voters can trust," concluded Schade. "Three independent reports have raised serious concerns with the security of Diebold machines, now we have seen the worst come to pass. These machines are unreliable and insecure. How many more warnings to Maryland officials need in order to take action to protect the vote?"

A Real Majority?

The Gadflyer points out this little noticed fact again:

Although Republicans gained four Senate seats in the 2004 elections, Republican Senate candidates actually lost the nationwide popular vote. In 33 Senate races across the country, 41.6 million Americans cast votes for Democratic candidates, while just 38.1 million voted for Republicans.

Though only a third of the Senate was chosen in 2004, the 2002 election had a similar bias: Republicans won 65% of the available seats with just 50.1% of the popular vote (52% ignoring votes for third parties). In 2000, Democrats won 56% of the available seats with a bare plurality of the popular vote, but this was not enough to balance the results of 2002 and 2004. In all, over the past three Senate elections, Democrats have beaten Republicans by nearly 2 million votes -- yet Republicans hold a 55-seat Senate majority.

This is the second time in four years that the popular vote has failed to determine control of the federal government. In 2001, we inaugurated a Republican President even though a plurality of voters had chosen a Democrat. In 2005, we have a Republican-controlled Senate even though a plurality of votes were cast for Democrats.

These failures have the same basic cause: Democratic votes tend to be concentrated in large urbanized states. In the 2004 Senate race, Democratic candidates won three large states (Illinois, California, and New York) by more than 2 million votes each; Republicans had a million-vote victory in only one state (Ohio). Overall, in 2004 Democrats won 15 states by a total margin of 10.8 million votes, while Republicans won 19 states by a total margin of 7.3 million votes.

"By reference to the one person, one vote standard," write the political scientists Frances Lee and Bruce Oppenheimer, "the Senate is the most malapportioned legislature in the world."

Jim Crow Revisits Georgia

Ever used your birth certificate or Social Security card as ID? Not good enough to vote in Georgia...

Immediately after a 7 p.m. vote that would eliminate 12 of the 17 forms of identification that may be used at Georgia polls, a majority of Senate Democrats, including all black members, left the chamber.

Republican sponsors of the bill said it was an effort to cut down on voter fraud.

"My intention was to make sure in Georgia that next election, or down the road, we don't end up with all the lawsuits or all the voter irregularities we've heard about," said Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, the bill's sponsor.

The bill, which passed 32-22 along party lines, would require a photo ID to vote.

It would remove other forms of ID, including a Social Security card, birth certificate or student identification, from the list.

Democratic critics compared the effort to the poll taxes, literacy tests and other laws aimed at suppressing black votes during segregation. They said poor and minority voters are more likely to be without photo ID than other voters.

"What's happening today is just an updated form of Jim Crow," said Fort, referring to segregation-era laws that suppressed black voting. "You may be more polite about it ... but we know who's going to be disenfranchised."

Bradblog's Latest Scoop

If you've followed the Clint Curtis story broken by The Brad Blog
you can skip ahead. If not...

On December 6th, 2004 , The BRAD BLOG (www.bradblog.com) published a sworn affidavit by Florida software programmer Clint Curtis. In his affidavit and videotaped sworn testimony presented before members of the U.S. House Judiciary committee, Curtis claims to have been asked by U.S. Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) to design a "vote-rigging software prototype". This request took place in October 2000 during meeting at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), a computer consulting firm in Oviedo, Florida.

(snip)

The original Inspector General assigned to the case, Raymond Lemme, had contacted Curtis in mid-June of 2003, after both Curtis and the other whistleblower on the case had been fired without cause – both on the same day. (Eventually, both of them would win their whistleblower cases against FDOT on the matter.) Curtis says in his sworn affidavit that Lemme had advised him in mid-June that he would be very happy about his upcoming report and he should keep his ears open for it because, he told Curtis, "this goes all the way to the top."

Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia motel room.

The police report determined the death was a suicide.

Here's the news:

The case of the mysterious suicide of Raymond Lemme of the Florida Inspector General's office was reopened by Valdosta, Georgia police last December shortly after we broke the story of computer programmer Clint Curtis' sworn affidavit charging that he had built a "vote-rigging software prototype" at the request of Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)!

Furthermore, graphic and disturbing photos from the crime scene -- said in the original police report to have not existed due to a failure in the camera's "flash memory cards" -- have recently been published on the web!

Go here to read the latest...

Theresa Speaks Out

Teresa Heinz Kerry is openly sceptical about George Bush's victory some four months after the election, questioning the legitimacy of the optical scanners used in some states to record votes.

"Two brothers own 80 per cent of the machines used in the United States," she said during a fund raising event in Seattle.

They are "hard-right" Republicans, she claimed, arguing that it was "very easy to hack into the mother machines".

Heinz Kerry urged Democrats to push for accountability and transparency, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"We in the United States are not a banana republic," she said. "I fear for 2006. I don't trust it the way it is right now," she added, referring to mid-term elections.

Orwell In Grave Update: Still Rolling

From an interview with Robert Kane Pappas, director of the mass media-critiquing documentary "Orwell Rolls in His Grave:"

I think it was November 4th of 2004 that I was listening to "Imus in the Morning," which had a phone interview with Jeff Greenfield of CNN. Imus asked something like, "What about this disparity between the exit polls and the vote?" Greenfield set him straight immediately (I paraphrase): "Oh that's all clear now, we found out through the exit polls that to voters it was about values . . . this was the unforeseen factor that made all those new voters break for Bush" . . . (voters who historically break for the challenger). Judging from his tone of voice, Greenfield had already internalized the new truth. That was it. End of analysis. End of Imus' foray into exit poll discrepancies. As Orwell wrote, "All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory."

Sun Still Revolving Around Earth

In order to believe that Bush won in Ohio, you have to ignore deadly accurate exit polls and all observable data to avoid the Bush family theft. By refusing to consider this CIA-connected family’s history, one must accept the following ridiculous political conclusions: that Bush supporters were shy in Ohio and Florida and reluctant to answer exit poll questions, but not shy in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana; that pollster Zogby’s Election Day calls for Kerry in Ohio and Florida were wrong, as well as the Harris poll; that Mitofsky’s exit polling is flawed in the U.S. but an accurate predictor in the Ukraine for fraud; that Kerry easily carried the metropolitan areas of Cleveland and Columbus but lost due to an unobserved Bush surge in rural Appalachia; that Bush won despite an incumbent approval rating under 50%; that Bush got 80% or so of the undecided vote although all professional pollsters agree that undecideds generally vote for the challenger; and private partisan companies that secretly count the vote without paper trails are fair and honestly doing their job.

Then you can read more about the Bush dynasty, the CIA, and the connections to other elections around the globe.

More Blackwell Hypocricy

A spokesman for the Green Party's 2004 presidential campaign, which initiated the Ohio recount, today blasted the suggestion by Ohio's Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell that he would need to take depositions from John Kerry and John Edwards as part of the Ohio recount litigation.

"Mr. Blackwell's contention that he needs to depose Senators Kerry and Edwards is a laughable and blatantly political move. Mr. Blackwell has refused to be deposed himself about the Ohio election, has refused to appear before Congress and has refused to answer questions from members of the House Judiciary Committee who have been investigating allegations of election fraud. To suggest that Kerry and Edwards should be deposed to address a legal technicality while Mr. Blackwell continues to avoid any public scrutiny of his own misconduct in the Ohio election is the height of hypocrisy," said Blair Bobier, Media Director for the 2004 Cobb-LaMarche campaign.

The report by the House Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff on the Ohio election and recount states that "there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio."

Blackwell's intention to depose Kerry and Edwards was made known by Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro in the latest round of legal filings concerning the Ohio recount. In February, Federal Judge Edmund Sargus in Columbus asked the parties in the Ohio recount case to submit filings to his court addressing whether the litigation should be transferred and consolidated with a Toledo case brought last November seeking to expedite the start of the recount. Blackwell's filing was in response to that request.

Attorneys for Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik, who jointly requested the Ohio recount, have already filed their response to the Judge's question. Kerry and Edwards, through their Ohio attorney, filed a one sentence statement with the Judge supporting the Cobb and Badnarik position. Kerry's lawyer also filed a short, two page summary charting inconsistencies observed by Democratic Party witnesses to the recount.

The matter is pending in the Eastern Division of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, before Judge Sargus.

Still Doesn't Pass the Smell Test

Brian Joiner wishes he could "just get over it."

He wishes he could ignore the thousands of reported voting irregularities that occurred in the Nov. 2 election, accept the fact that George W. is going to be around another four years and just hope that we haven't created even more enemies or fallen even deeper into debt by the time 2008 rolls around.

"I'm sure the Republicans would like me to forget all that stuff, just like they wanted everyone to forget all the strange things that happened in the 2000 election," the retired 67-year-old UW-Madison statistics professor said this week.

Well, sorry guys, but he can't.

There were, Joiner says, too many things that occurred on Nov. 2 that "still don't smell right." He can't just pretend everything is rosy, he says, when he reads that Steven Freeman, a respected University of Pennsylvania professor, says the odds of the exit polls in the critical states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania all being so far off were about 662,000 to 1.

And since no one in the mainstream media has yet to provide a plausible explanation for such discrepancies - "investigative reporting essentially is just dead in this country," he groans - Joiner and many of his colleagues are going to continue to speak out and demand that government leaders provide some answers.

So that, at the very least, we don't find ourselves in the same situation in 2008.

But if the irregularities are as suspicious and troubling as he claims, why aren't John Kerry and other top Democrats making similar demands?

"Boy, I wish I knew," says Joiner, who was a volunteer observer for the Ohio recount in early December. Because you can sure as heck bet that Republicans would be screaming and demanding an investigation if Kerry had won under similar circumstances, he says.

The Democratic response? Certainly not screaming, but there is this:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced the members of its Ohio Election Task Force. This group of seasoned professionals in the electoral and technology fields are taking an in-depth look into the issues of voter registration problems, long lines at the polls, the issuance and counting of provisional ballots and voting equipment irregularities that voters faced during the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. The team has been hard at work since January, conducting surveys and reviewing election data from all across the state. The task force will submit its report to the DNC with suggestions for moving forward.

"I am confident that Voting Rights Institute (VRI) Chair Donna Brazile and her team of experts will properly investigate what went wrong in the Ohio election process," said DNC Chairman Governor Howard Dean. "This investigation will ensure that every vote will be counted and everyone who is eligible to vote will be able to secure that right."

"This team is hard at work, analyzing voting irregularities," said VRI Chair Brazile. "We are putting the efforts and resources into this project because it is vital that we find out what went wrong, how we can fix it, and restore the faith of the American people in our voting system."

Is there any hope? More from Joiner:

"I think the Democrats read the tea leaves and think that people don't want to make a big fuss over this stuff. They'd just rather be quitters and move on."

Joiner knows full well some people will roll their eyes while reading this and dismiss him as yet another shoot-from-the-hip conspiracy nut.

Not quite.

In fact, he's among a group of prominent statisticians and academicians who contributed to a recent study that refutes a report by exit pollsters Edison and Mitofsky that exit poll errors on Nov. 2 were responsible for the unprecedented 5.5 percent discrepancy between the exit polls and the official results.

The study, done on behalf of US Count Votes, a volunteer scientific research project, not only disagrees with the Edison/Mitofsky findings but concludes that "the possibility that the overall vote was substantially corrupted must be taken seriously" and urges a thorough investigation.

Does Joiner personally believe the election was stolen?

"I don't know, that's a very tough question," he says. "But it's not clear to me that it wasn't, so it's a question of where the burden of proof is."

At the same time, Joiner says, he does believe the country's making a big mistake by relying so heavily on electronic voting machines.

"It's just too easy to hack those machines," he says. "And if they are hacked, how would we ever know?"

Joiner, incidentally, isn't the least bit surprised that the study - which was released Jan. 28 - has been virtually ignored by the media. Neither is Bruce O'Dell, vice president of US Count Votes.

"I think the mainstream media - like most Americans brought up to be proud of our Democratic traditions - simply assume that elections are honestly counted in the United States," O'Dell says. "They discount anecdotal reports of election irregularities and refuse to believe that systematic corruption could occur - even though serious, systematic vulnerabilities both in voting equipment and in counting procedures have been well-documented."

He notes that when reports of widespread voting problems occurred in Ukraine last year, both local and international observers quickly concluded the election had been stolen.

"But when precisely the same scenario occurred here, not only were mainstream journalists not alarmed, they quickly labeled those who questioned the results as conspiracy theorists."

O'Dell says US Count Votes wants to develop "a single database of nation-wide precinct-level election results, along with matching U.S. Census demographic information and the type of voting equipment in use."

Its ultimate goal "is to be able to gather and analyze data as it comes in on election night, and to spot vote counting problems in time for candidates to request an investigation or recount - before they concede."

And it hopes to have such a system in place by 2006.

House Repubs At it Again

House GOP Votes Against Fair Allocation of Machines and Poll Workers

In another astounding display of political hubris, today every single Republican voted against a Conyers-Waters amendment to provide that states provide a minimum required number of functioning and accurate voting machines and poll workers for all precincts.

The purpose of the amendment was simple, and one would have thought, non-controversial - to avoid the misallocation of voting machines and poll workers that led to lines of ten hours or more in the Ohio presidential election and disenfranchised tens of thousands of thousands of minority voters. (The amendment was offered in the context of an arcane continuity bill, providing for expedited elections in the event of an attack on Congress -- so for procedural reasons, it was limited to the special elections).

What did the Republicans have to say about this common sense proposal to protect and preserve the right to vote - essentially, nothing. Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) said there are a lot of election reform bills out there, and we'll deal with them in due course - of course you could say that about every single legislative proposal known to man. Next, none other than the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, said we needed to pass the continuity bill to strike a blow against terrorism - basically, he was saying lets just have the special elections, and the hell with whether or not they are fair.

Conyers Hits the Floor

From truthout:

Rep. John Conyers forced the issue of election reform on the House floor this afternoon.

The House is now considering a bill to provide continuity in congressional representation. In plain english, the bill attempts to address the problem of what would happen should a significant portion of congress get wiped out by a terrorist attack. Basically, it establishes a new system of deadlines and special elections in that event.

Rep. Conyers finds it ridiculous that the House is spending so much energy (and acting with such speed) to solve a hypothetical problem, about a hypothetical election, when there are so many real problems with our real elections.

In a surprise maneuver, which is called a 'Motion to Recommit' (basically an amendment offered at the end of consideration of a bill; the GOP generally do not get more than five minutres notice of it, and the debate is five minutes per side), Conyers forced the issue.

His official statement reads as follows:

Mr. Speaker, for a measure that purports to protect our democracy, I have to admit the manner by which this legislation has been brought before us today considerably undermines those very principles.

On the substance, this bill - the subject of so much concern - falls for short of fixing what is wrong with our democracy.

When it comes to elections, this is not even close to our biggest concern. Why are we worrying so much about hypothetical problems about a hypothetical election when we have had two consecutive elections in this country where ACTUAL VOTERS were disenfranchised?

Rest here...

Count Every Vote!

From Barbara Boxer, Democrat with Known Spine:

On February 18th, Senator Hillary Clinton and I introduced the "Count Every Vote Act" -- critical legislation that will bring overdue reform to our election system and restore the faith of all Americans in their most basic, fundamental right.

Every citizen of this country should be guaranteed that their vote matters, that their vote is counted, and that in the voting booth, their vote has as much weight as that of any CEO, any member of Congress, or any President. Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation, and we must take action now to ensure that the American people have full confidence in our electoral system.

Today, I ask you to join the fight. Email your Members of Congress using the form below, and ask them to join Senator Clinton and me in the Senate, and Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones in the House, to co-sponsor the "Count Every Vote Act."

In Friendship,