The Hot Sheet

“Unlock the Vote” Poster Contest Winner announced!

Tags: allegheny county, download, election, Pennsylvania, poster contest, unlock the vote, vote for the future of PA, voter rights, Youth

Voting Machines: The Story’s (not) Over

Well, it’s official: The Allegheny County Elections Board has conducted a small random-sample audit of voting machine software. Apparently, they did it last weekend, with no need for a three-month bidding process, nor any guidance from the state of PA with regards to an audit protocol. (Well that wasn’t so hard, now was it?)

This would not have happened were it not for the incredible pressure we all put on the BoE within the last week. Jamming the phones on Thursday must have left an impression, forcing the Board to take action.

Even so, there’s still much more to be done. For starters, the process needs to be far more open and transparent than it was. In this day and age, there’s no reason to only talk about something after the fact, even if it takes place on a weekend — people will disseminate the relevant information virally via electronic communication. We could have known that the audit would take place when it did.

Also, the county needs to go through and check more than 18 out of the 4,700 machines — yes, that’s right, they checked fewer than 0.3% of the machines — that we will be voting on in just one week.

Why is this all so important? The software that our voting machines use was updated a few months ago, but we had no way of knowing that the updated software still complied with state and federal regulations. After a massive public outcry at a County Council meeting in September (see Success!), the Council passed a resolution calling on the Elections Board to audit the software.  The Elections Division, in turn, started stonewalling, claiming that the process would take too long — requiring a three-month bidding process before the audit could even start — and that there was no state-established protocol for an audit.

The moral of this story is that, public pressure prompts elected officials to act and do the work. Even though the method that the County decided to use in “verifying” the voting machine software is questionable and insufficient, at best the County Executive and the Board of Elections demonstrated that decisions could have been made in a more timely fashion, and that now the public has the upper hand in demanding a thorough inspection and testing of the voting machines before THEY are up for election in 2009.

If we can’t be confident that our voting machines will count our votes accurately, what’s the point in voting in the first place?

Tags: allegheny county, election protection, elections, voter rights, voting machines

Check our voting machines before the election!

TOMORROW, Tuesday Oct 20th at 10am there will be a Board of Elections Meeting at the County Courthouse, Conference Room 1. We should arrive en-masse to discuss software auditing as well as any other election issues. No one needs to sign up in advance to speak, but if you’d like to carpool down there or meet up early, email terry@theleague.com!

Tags: allegheny county, election, election protection, pa league of young voters, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, turnout, vote, voting machines, Youth Vote

Write a Letter to the Editor — check our voting machines!

Make sure every vote is counted correctly!

Write a Letter to the Editor urging County Executive Dan Onorato to have the voting machine software verified as soon as possible!

Electronic voting machines have been in PA for a few elections now, but the Allegheny County  hasn’t certified the authenticity of the software, which can be hacked or replaced fairly easily.

The Everest Report, commissioned by the Ohio Secretary of State, showed that these voting machines have almost no security features.  The voting machines are stored in an unwatched and unlocked warehouse, where it wouldn’t be hard for someone to tamper with them.  If we can’t have a paper trail, THE LEAST we can have is the assurance that our electronic voting machines have been checked by a third party for software authenticity.

County Executive Dan Onorato is on the three-person county Board of Elections for Allegheny County.
The other two members have publicly stated that they are in favor of certifying the software.

Follow this link to send a Letter to the Editor
encouraging Mr. Onorato to get our voting machines verified!

Read more:
Debate hot over e-vote security, Tribune-Review, Oct 6, 2008
County says it can’t audit voting machines, Post-Gazette, 10/4/2008
Trusted votes: The public needs confidence at the polling place, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 23, 2008

Tags: allegheny county, election protection, Letter to the Editor, paper ballot, voting machines

Registering Voters makes the News!

We got a spot in the Post-Gazette for our jail registration work in conjunction with Just Harvest; Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN; the Community Voters Project; Work for Progress; and Duquesne University nursing and political science students last week!

“Spearheaded by inmate program director Jack Pishke, it was the largest registration effort to date at the jail and the only one jail officials knew of statewide, in anticipation of the last registration day: Oct. 6.

In a dizzying two hours, the group helped to complete 456 new registrations and about 700 absentee ballot applications.

Unlike most of the younger volunteers, Ms. Rabinowitz, 67, of Park Place, had been in jail before. She was locked up with a group of organizers for two separate stretches in 1963, after the group was arrested for registering rural black voters in the south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Those voters, she said, were scared because “they’d never had the right to vote before and we couldn’t tell them it wasn’t dangerous.”

The jail inmates today were just eager. And hopeful.”

Read the full article

Tags: allegheny county, Allegheny County Jail, disenfranchised, election, ex-offenders, inmates, pa league of young voters, pa league of young voters education fund, Pennsylvania, registration, unlock the vote, vote, voter, Voting

It’s a new record!

Roxanne Banks-Williams and Terry Griffin (and former League interns Justin Witmer and Moshe Sherman) and about 50 more amazing volunteers registered the inmates at the Allegheny County Jail today — and came back with 456 new voter registrations!

Now don’t you wish you were there?  Volunteer to help copy and stamp all of these so we can turn them in to the Division of Elections!

Tags: allegheny county, disenfranchised, election, inmates, jail, pa league of young voters, pittsburgh, unlock the vote, vote, voter, voter registration

Canvassing Schedule!

With the election steadily approaching and the state and national economy in near collapse, it is more important than ever that we get out there to talk to as many voters as we can, and we need your help! We will be knocking on doors and calling voters based out of our headquarters in East Liberty and our field office in North Versailles all week long, and until we get out and make our voices heard on November 4th.

THIS WEEK:

Tuesday: 3:30-8, North Versailles

Wednesday: 3:30-8, North Versailles

Thursday: 3:30-8, North Versailles

Friday: 3:30-8, East Liberty

Saturday, two shifts, 11-3 and 4-8, East Liberty

USW District 10
1945 Lincoln Highway
North Versailles, PA 15137
The North Versailles field office is in USW District 10 Headquarters on Route 30.

PA League of Young Voters
6101 Penn Avenue, Suite 302
Pittsburgh, PA 15206
The League office in East Liberty is on Penn Avenue in the Liberty Bank Building. Use the door next to H&R Block to call up to be buzzed in.

Holler at Mac (mac@theleague.com) or Terry (terry@theleague.com) if you can make it out this week,
and together we are going to work for the future of Pennsylvania!

Tags: allegheny county, canvass, East Liberty, election, north versailles, schedule, vote, voter outreach, voter registration, westmoreland county

Lobby the County to Protect our VOTES!

If you’re gonna do all that work to get people registered to vote, to learn about their candidates, and get out to the polls, then you’ve gotta take it that last step of ELECTION PROTECTION to make sure that all those votes get counted.

That’s why we’re going to be at the County Council Hearing TUESDAY to encourage them to look into the authenticity of the new electronic voting machines’ software.

JOIN US TUESDAY and let officials know that the voters in their county want their votes counted!

Audit Our Voting Software

County Council Meeting - Tuesday at 5pm, Sept. 9th

4th Floor, County Courthouse - Gold Room

Sign up to speak to council before Monday at 5pm with this link here:
http://www.county.allegheny.pa.us/council/meetings/recomm.asp

We’re asking everyone who works downtown to pop over for the meeting after work! Stay long enough to miss rush hour, and contribute to the collective concern represented there to our elected county officials.

LEARN MORE:

Excerpt from VoteAllegheny’s press release:

“Because the ES&S iVotronic voting machines used in Allegheny County provide no way
for voters to personally verify that their votes have been correctly and accurately recorded,
voters must trust the iVotronic program code to be correct. The inspection and certification
process carried out by the Secretary of the Commonwealth is meaningless unless the County
ensures the machines run exactly the same program the Secretary certifies.”

“Election Commission Bails Out Voting Machine Maker In Time for May Primary,” March 11, 2004
“EVEREST: Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards, and Testing,” Sections 6.3 and 7.2.2

See you downtown!
PA League

Tags: accountability, allegheny county, county council, election, protection, Upcoming Events, volunteer, vote, voter

Fighting (in court) for the constitutional right to educate voters!

We’re still locked in a court battled with the Port Authority over their refusal to let us advertise ex-offender voting rights on buses. But the ACLU has our back, and we’re waiting for our jury trial to be scheduled to see if they think the Port Authority acted constitutionally by rejecting the ad.

Here’s a summary, taken from Judge McVerry’s opinion against partial summary judgment in our favor:

“Plaintiffs, Pittsburgh League of Young Voters Education Fund (“Fund”) and American Civil Liberties Foundation of Pennsylvania (“ACLU”), brought this lawsuit on December 8, 2006 by filing an amended complaint pursuant to 42 U.S. C. § 1983 alleging that defendants violated their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by refusing to accept and display their proposed ex-offender voter-education advertisements.

Plaintiffs have filed the instant motion for partial summary judgment in which they contend that they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law on the issue of the defendants’ liability because 1) Port Authority designated its bus-advertising space as a public forum, 2) Port Authority acted unreasonably and committed viewpoint discrimination by refusing to run their advertisements despite having run similar advertisements in the past, and 3) Port Authority’s advertising policy is unconstitutionally vague.”

(Read the rest if you’d like…)

Tags: ACLU, advertising, allegheny county, American Civil Liberties Union, constitution, constitutional, court opinion, ex-offender, pa league of young voters, Pennsylvania, pittsburgh, Port Authority, rights, United States Constitution, Voting

Campaign to Stop the Bus Cuts!

 

 

Snow days usually mean sleeping in, sledding in Frick Park and Hot Chocloate.  But on March 7, 2007, snow days took on a whole new meaning at the Allegheny County Court House as nearly 100 people, including the League of Young Voters, rallied to tell County Chief Executive to Stop The Bus Cuts.

 

Nearly 100 people braved the elements and risked frostbitten toes to gather on the court house steps as the Campaign to Stop the Bus Cuts launched with a spirited rally. 

 

Minrose Straussman, a Schenley Sophmore spoke on behalf of the Leagueand passionately relayed her story of what the proposed cuts would cost her and the other 5000 public school students who rely on Public Transit to get to school.

After the impassioned series of speakers, Barney Oursler, from the Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, led the fired up crowd in a March around the building, through the metal detectors and up to the door of the County Executive Dan Onorato.

 

Despite security’s attempts to turn the crowd away at the door Campaign leaders Khari Mosley and Gabe Morgan insisted they be allowed to enter the office to offer the petitions to Mr. Onorato.

 

With News Cameras keeping steady watch, Mosley and Morgan spoke with Mr. Onorato for 15 minutes, encouraging him to address the crowd and receive the petitions.

 

Success!  Onorato came into the hall to announce that he would be going to Harrisburg within two weeks to talk to legislators about the need for dedicated public transit funding. Then he personally accepted the over 12,000 signatures, handed to him by each of the rally participants.

 

While the event was a success, it represents a beginning, not an end. Today started the campaign.

 

Keep the petitions coming and watch for what’s next, because you know it gets fun from here!

Tags: allegheny county, pa league of young voters, public transit, vote