What You Can Do

**We can actively support candidates at the national, state, and local level who take action to protect the
integrity of our right to vote. The recent actions by our California Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, to decertify Touch Screen Voting machines for 2008 has greatly improved voting integrity in this state. However, each county still has many important choices ahead. The San Diego County Registrar of Voters is choosing to scan all of our paper ballots with a Diebold electronic optical scanner and then use Diebold/Premier GEMS electronic central tabulators to count our votes in 2008. Our Supervisors fully support our Registrar and her plans for 2008, and any additional expenditures needed to support electronic/secret vote counting. Dianne Jacob and
Pam Slater-Price are up for re-election in 2008, and Greg Cox, Ron Roberts and Bill Horn are up in 2010. For more on the unreliable GEMS tabulator that will count your votes in November,
and to see how an optical scanner might count your paper ballots in Novemer,

**Each state determines how elections will be conducted within state boundaries. However, federal election laws can prevail, as in HAVA. We must all contact our California state senators and state assembly members to let them know that we want legislation that protects our vote and we must contact our federal senators and representatives to let them know the urgency of our request for legislation that would provide election integrity for the November 2008 elections.

In the Conclusion of his recent book, WITNESS TO A CRIME, Richard Hayes Philips, author and true patriot, states:

"Our elections are rigged. By means of voter suppression, ballot tampering, ballot box stuffing, failure to count all the votes, and wholesale alteration of the vote count, the winner can lose and the loser can win."

"People should care that our elections are rigged. This is not a laughing matter. Our founders braved the guns of the Redcoats and the winter of Valley Forge, in order that we might establish this noble experiment of self-government."

"Suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton devoted their lives to secure for women the right to vote, and did even live to see the fruits of their labors."

"The freedom riders and civil rights workers in Mississippi and Alabama risked their lives, and some even gave their lives, in order that all citizens might have the right to vote, no matter what the color of their skin."

"And now, when Jim Crow rears his ugly head in Ohio, shall we look the other way? What shall we say to our children? We're sorry. We did not bequeath unto you that which our ancestors
entrusted unto us. How soon we forget."

"To the casual observer, and the wishful thinker, nothing much has changed. We still have three branches of government, and elections are held on a regular basis. But this is the appearance, not the reality. The executive power is not checked, the branches of government are not balanced, and the election results are not to be trusted."

It is a very Machiavelli world that we find ourselves living in today in the United States.
Many are now beginning to realize that if over 4,000 American troops have recently died to protect American freedom, then every patriotic American owes it to them to do our part here at home to do whatever it takes to stand up for the right of every American to be able to vote and to be able to verify that every vote was counted, and counted accurately. The successful efforts of some in the Republican party to not count the votes of many of the troops serving overseas is the ultimate insult to all Americans. The time for public silence and inaction has passed.