Meeting #4
Take Back Elections Looks at Voting Technology: Prime III
Take Back Elections began looking at voting technology with Prime III, or the Premier Third Generation Voting System, an open source voting system developed by Dr. Juan Gilbert of the Human-Centered Computer Lab at the University of Florida. After trials in Oregon, Wisconsin and Florida, it was used statewide in 2016 in New Hampshire, the first state to certify use of the machine.We felt that, if using voting machines, they should be secure; verifiable; auditable; with low-cost, off-the-shelf technology meeting certain standards and criteria; accessible; using software that is true open-source, with general public license; includes layers of checks-and-balance; have machine-marked, machine-printed-at-the-poll, ballots on durable paper; the marked, voted ballots, checked and verified marked as intended; possibly, an audit imaging/scan technology; followed by/coupled with as many hand-counted paper ballots at the polls, once voting stops, before the polls close, for however
Take Back Elections Looks at Various Voting Methods (Meeting #2)
Take Back Elections is examining the best voting methods to provide more fairness in our elections. We have been studying and examining these following:First Past the Post (FPP)/ Plurality. We have added FPP with Majority (51% or another number required!) to look at with run-off later.Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) or Instant Run-off Voting (IRV)Range or Score VotingApproval – a less expressive, simpler version of Range or ScoreThere are other possible methods. We feel any method MUST be able to be hand-countable! Thus our second meeting was a very brief over-view of these popular methods, with a focus on a hand-count demonstration.We focused on Ranked Choice Voting in this meeting with an eye to the ability to hand-count. We easily found the difficulty and challenge of counting RCV in a 20-ballot, multi-race demonstration count. We point out that RCV cannot be hand-counted
Introductory Strategy and Draft Outline
Dear Members, Friends and Visitors, If you’ve read our Take Back Elections home page – you know we have all been, vetting, researching, discussing, and brainstorming reforms and best policies and practices for saving our small ‘d’ democratic election process. This includes all aspects of our election process from registering to vote, to learning about ballot questions, policies and all candidates, to how we cast our ballots after marking them and what voting method is best to use for better representation and better outcomes. It includes ‘leveling the playing field’ and much more. In our national online Zoom meetings and in working groups, large and small, we discuss and vet problems, ideas, solutions and concerns to get to best practices we will write into language for state constitutional amendments and ultimately a federal constitutional amendment to be passed by direct democracy
Introduction and Background
This work on unified, comprehensive reform of our vote began just after Arizona’s 2016 Primary disaster and right before the New York and California primaries joined Arizona and other states in blowing up our election crisis, election theft and end of a Democratic Republic based on trustworthy, transparent, functioning electoral process.After a couple of calls to Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, who offered some foundational points she felt must be present to take back this situation at the polls and a few of her friends and co-workers on this issue to connect with I, then, started to work – more research, writing, reaching out, along with other primary election commitments, working overtime, hoping to impact better primary results in the still-to-come primary election and then general election, which showed me just what we are up against in this broken election