To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate
STOP "Behind Closed Doors" Ballot Tabulation
A revolution has occurred in the past decade with little notice: Voting has moved from a transparent neighborhood controlled process to a process dominated by secret corporate-owned proprietary software.
Today, in the vast majority of elections in the United States, the ballots' audit trail, if there is one, is reviewed long AFTER our anonymous ballots are moved from the local site where they were cast.
Yet, if our ballots were cash--a similarly untraceable valuable pieces of paper--this would never be permitted.
Our ballots are extremely valuable. They determine who has the power to control the distribution of public money used for lucrative government contracts. Power and money are the oldest motives for crime.
Therefore, "We the People" need to restore our local, direct, and public control over the ballot tabulation process. To date there is no perfect voting system, but to centralize OUR ballot tabulation to corporate controlled software is the easiest to hack.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." --Thomas Jefferson
Why is this important?
I used to assist my grandmother with the election process in our neighborhood. She used to stay up until 3 am tabulating votes in public. The results were transmitted before she left the election site. My mother-in-law also did this. My experience working with ballots made me realize that our democracy is literally in OUR hands. Somehow a generation has lost this connection. Budget and time conscious people have moved to the cheaper more efficient systems without understanding the high consequence. So many people have lost their lives for this freedom and it has been watered down to a very weak system that is far too easy to corrupt. We must have a system that will stand --not in our best days--but in our worst days. The time-honored precinct system--though not perfect--was in the local citizen control.