message from Alan Dechert

Alan Dechert asked me to send along this message to the list. Please send him any replies to his private email:

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Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is looking for constitutional and/or election law experts that are willing to provide advice regarding lawsuits we are contemplating. In addition, if anyone is willing to get involved in the proposed litigation, we want to hear from him or her. We don’t have money at the moment, but expect to have some next year. Also, if we have people lined up to do the work, and the work has a reasonable chance of success, we can probably raise money specifically for the lawsuit(s).

We are contemplating lawsuits against state government(s) that may help make our case against paperless voting, and against the use of secret proprietary software in elections.

My organization, Open Voting Consortium (OVC), helped get a resolution (ACR 242) passed through the CA state legislature last year that calls on the Secretary of State to investigate using open source software for elections and issue a report on that by Jan 1, 06.
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/03-04/bill/asm/ab_0201-0250/acr_242_bill_20040831_chaptered.html

They have asked me to be on a panel, and have asked me for input on the organization of the panel. Here's a letter from McPherson to Assemblymember Goldberg talking about the "committee" he is putting together: http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ad/sos-letter-824.pdf

Since I am working okay right now with the CA State Gov, I am reluctant to pull the trigger here on a lawsuit against California. Probably, we'll decide after the first of the year on that. The report from the Secretary of State to the State Legislature is due at the end of this year. If all goes well, we may get everything we want without the lawsuit.

I'd really like to see the lawsuit(s) happen in another state or states. To review, there are two possible angles for lawsuits that I envision:

1) 14th amendment argument that a person’s vote is less protected where Direct Record Electronic (DRE, paperless) voting machines are in use. This could be a case where a whole state using such machines (e.g., Maryland, Georgia, etc) is being compared to a state that is using systems with tangible ballots (about 30 percent of the vote in NOV 2004 was cast on paperless systems nationwide). Or, perhaps more likely (given Bush v. Gore), a county within a state using DREs is compared to another county that uses tangible paper ballots within the same state.

2) Since tabulation is supposed to be public, secret software violates state law since it makes it impossible for the public to meaningfully observe tabulation. This argument will depend on what exactly state law already says. I think that California state law is pretty clear that tabulation is supposed to be public. I haven't studied state election law in other states enough to know how strong this argument might be in other states.

So, specifically, I am looking for experts in election law that are willing to work with us. I believe that California election law is pretty clear that tabulation is supposed to be done in public. What about election code other states?

MORE ABOUT OVC
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We will introduce an Open Voting Bill in the CA State Legislature early next year. Also, we expect the Secretary of State to use some Help America Vote Act money to fund Open Voting in California. For an overall view of what OVC is up to, here is our updated Strategic Plan:

http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/ad/ovc-strategic-plan921.pdf

Thanks in advance for any help. If you have any information, advice, or other things to offer, please contact,

Alan Dechert
President, Open Voting Consortium
http://openvoting.org
alan@openvoting.org
9560 Windrose Lane
Granite Bay, CA 95746
916-772-5360
cell 916-792-1784
916-791-0456 (message if all else fails)