[EL] SIGN-ON LETTER REQUEST: California Secure the VOTE Act (AB 1784)

[Trent Lange]

 Hello California and national money-in-politics and election law allies --

While there's a national push to help secure elections by ensuring that
voting systems use paper ballots, and also for risk-limiting audits,
there's another crucial weak link that we're trying to address out in
California: The fundamental lack of security and transparency when votes
are counted using proprietary voting systems from private vendors using
secret software.

At the 2017 DEF CON security conference that tested proprietary voting
systems, *“every piece of equipment … was effectively breached in some
manner”.*  Their report concluded it was a *“national security threat".*

*California's AB 1784, the Secure the VOTE Act (Santiago-Chiu-Gonzalez)
will address this problem by speeding the development and certification of
publicly owned open-source paper ballot voting systems that will be made
freely available to every county in the nation to use instead of
proprietary systems from corporate vendors.*

"VOTE" stands for “*V*oter-verified *O*pen-source paper ballot *T*ransparent
*E*lections”.  As former CIA Director James Woolsey said, *“If we are to
properly defend against outside (and possibly inside) interference, or
“hacking,” the software can not remain private and secret. For national
security, the election system software must be what is used by NASA, the
Air Force, and the Department of Defense. It must be open-source.” *

AB 1784 would provide a total of $16 million in matching funds to counties
to speed their development, certification, governance, and distribution of
open-source voting systems to other counties.  Any county that receives
matching funds must license the voting system’s software under an OSI
approved open-source license to ensure other counties can use and modify it
for free.  Also, all votes must be recorded and tabulated using voter
verified paper ballots.  A higher match rate is available to any county
that licenses their system under GPL 3.0 so future generations of code
always remain public.

*1) Can your organization. or you as an individual, sign the attached
coalition sign-on letter of support for AB 1784, along with the separate
letter supporting the parallel state budget requests?*
The letter goes in more detail why this open-source budget proposal is so
important and the benefits that it will have for the whole country.  The
state budget coalition letter is the same as the AB 1784 letter except
referring to the parallel budget request instead of AB 1784.

*2) Can your organization cosponsor our Clean Money Campaign Secure the
Vote Campaign Kickoff?*  It's in San Francisco on Saturday, 5/11.  Author
Assemblymember David Chiu and coauthor Senator Scott Wiener will be
speaking, and we expect a great list of other legislative and city leaders
as well as experts and advocates speaking.  Attached is an initial flyer.

Cosponsoring just means (1) you add your organization's name to the
cosponsors and (2) send out an email blast and/or social media inviting
your supporters to attend (we'll send examples).  It would be great if
you'd like to send someone to speak briefly and/or be recognized, but not
necessary.

Also attached is the AB 1784 Fact Sheet, along with as Assemblymember Chiu
and Senator Wiener's actual initial budget request letter.

Many experts have long believed that open-source paper ballot voting
systems will be more secure and transparent than proprietary voting
systems, in addition to having substantially lower costs.  But because
there's no profit involved in creating such public software, no full open-
source voting system has been built yet.  This budget proposal is probably
the best chance anywhere in the country to break that cycle and get the
first open-source system developed for the whole country to use and build
on.

Please let me know if can sign on to the coalition letter and/or cosponsor
the kickoff, or if you have any questions.

Thanks,

- Trent

-- 
Trent Lange, PhD
President and Executive Director
California Clean Money Campaign
(310) 428-1556
*Sponsor of AB 249, the California DISCLOSE Act, now law!*
www.YesFairElections.org <http://www.YesFairElections.org>


*Become a member today to help end the dominance of Big Money in politics:*
www.YesFairElections.org/join
<http://www.YesFairElections.org/donate/member.php?ms=gmail-signature>
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