Ohio
J30
Election Reform Coalition
http://www.freepress.org/journal.php?strFunc=display&strID=288&strJournal=32
by Mark Huntress
March 21, 2005
On January 30th at Whetstone Park, Columbus, Ohio there was
a meeting of groups interested in election reform. The purpose was to,
"Combine the efforts of the various election reform groups, as well as
allow for communication between the groups so no one's efforts are
duplicated," according to organizer activist Rady Ananda,
Among the 120 people present were members of CASE-Ohio, Ohio
Vigilance, MeetUp, and Redefeat Bush. This cooperating group of organizations
has dubbed themselves the "J30 Coalition." Blackboxvoting.org's Bev
Harris encouraged each group to continue to work independently, in order to
attack election problems from different angles, while at the same time keeping
channels of communication open.
One of the problems that the J30 Coalition is addressing is
conflict of interest in the electoral process due to party affiliations of
members of the Board of Elections, and the privatization of voting machine
contracts. Diebold is owned by a vocal Republican supporter, and
Blackboxvoting.org revealed that ES&S is owned by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb)
and his campaign finance director, Michael McCarthy.
The J30 Coalition supports the Voting Integrity and
Verification Act, or VIVA 2005, which is waiting to be introduced into the US
Senate. This bill would allow the voter to examine a paper ballot to make sure
it matches his intentions, and would make the paper ballot the official ballot
in the case of a discrepancy or a recount. It has the potential for bipartisan
support, as it was introduced by Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada, and
is backed by Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin.
Reps. John Conyers and Stephanie Tubbs Jones are working on
another piece of legislation, the VOTER Act, which is supported by the J30
Coalition. It would insure that provisional ballots are counted, regardless of
where they are cast, and would require that the code used to program voting
machines be available to the public.
There are eight points that are central to the agenda of the
J30 Coalition:
# bipartisan statewide elections commission, accountable to
the public
# paper ballots, ink marked, hand counted
# public access to observe vote count
# instant runoff voting
# automatic voter registration upon turning 18
# publicly financed campaigns
# election day holiday, or voting on a weekend
# end redistricting by adopting full representation
The influence of the Coalition is essential because, as
Ananda said, "We don't have a democracy until we have fair elections, and
we don't have fair elections."
To get involved, you can contact Rady Ananda at
rady.ananda@sbcglobal.net, or go to electionreform.meetup.com/join/?submit=1.
.