---Put your Name and Address here---

 

September 4, 2007

 

Honorable ----put Representative’s Name here---

United States House of Representatives

Washington, DC 20515

By Fax:  ---put fax number here, look it up here ---

 

 

RE: Oppose H.R. 811 unless it is amended to ban DREs NOW!

 

Dear Representative:

 

H.R. 811 has been modified since you signed on as a sponsor. Activists are now calling the bill “Microsoft 811” because it is so favorable to vendors and software makers. Citizens’ voices were drowned out when Microsoft and voting machine vendors started to re-write the bill earlier this year.

 

H.R. 811 allows American elections to continue to be held with secret software and invisible electronic votes and voting counting. The bill is worded to deceive you and the American public, by calling a paper trail a “paper ballot.”

 

Paper trails are a placebo unless they are counted to determine election tallies. But they will not be counted for tallies under H.R. 811, which only requires 3-10% of paper trails to be used for “recounts” many days after elections -- after the winner has already been accepted by public opinion based on “trust-based” electronic tallies. Besides, many voters are incapable of verifying a paper trail, and vendors have delivered such shoddy printers that many paper trails are unreadable.

 

Congress must ban DREs (“touchscreens” or “Direct Recording Electronic” voting machines).

 

Congress must require voter-marked paper ballots,which are understandable to all, easily observed by citizens, and easily manageable to local election staffs.

 

I urge you to work for – and vote for -- an amendment to H.R. 811 to ban DRE electronic voting machines.

 

If H.R. 811 is not amended to ban DREs, please Vote NO on Microsoft 811.

 

Sincerely yours,