| STATE
HOUSE PRESS CONFERENCE
FORCE PAPER BALLOTS INSTEAD OF ELECTRONIC MACHINES
FOR NEW JERSEY
VOTING
The Princeton-based Coalition for
Peace Action will have a press conference on Monday, October 25,
at 12 noon in Room 14 of the State House Annex to discuss the law
suit for which they are the primary plaintiff to be heard starting
the next day in New Jersey State Superior Court in Trenton. The
Rutgers Constitutional Litigation Clinic filed the suit on October
19 seeking to block the use of 8,000 electronic voting machines
in New Jersey. The suit advocates instead using paper ballots that
can be optically scanned for rapid vote counting.
Among the confirmed speakers at the press conference are:
- Stephanie Harris and Glenn Cantor, two
New Jersey voters who had great problems with the electronic
voting machines
at the center
of the law suit, whose votes may not have been counted.
- Dr. Andrew Appel, Professor of Computer Science
at Princeton University, who will be an expert witness at the
trial.
- 7 Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.
- The Rev. Robert Moore, Executive Director, Coalition
for Peace Action
- Irene Goldman, Chair, Coalition for Peace Action
The right to have ones vote
recorded and counted accurately is fundamental to our democratic
right to vote. We are headed for
a train wreck, with the Presidential race being extremely close.
Just a few hundred votes lost or over-counted could change the
outcome for the whole country, as in Florida in 2000. We must avoid
this at all costs. The accuracy of vote tallies is sacrosanct,
said the Rev. Robert Moore, Executive Director of the Coalition
for Peace Action (CFPA).
The Coalition for Peace Action has co-led an eight month campaign
that included educational forums; a petition drive with over 20,000
New Jersey citizens as signers; lobbying elected officials at the
federal, state, and county levels with visits, letters, faxes,
and phone calls; and public demonstrations and rallies. Having
exhausted all these remedies to accomplish a voter verified paper
trail in time for November 2, the Coalition authorized the Rutgers
Constitutional Litigation Clinic to file the suit.
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