TECHIES: Ensure The Accuracy of Voting Machines: Help Black Box Voting!

I am a financial contributor to Black Box Voting, an organization founded by Bev Harris to uncover the myriad problems, illegalities, glitches, and potential for fraud inherent in using voting machines from Diebold and others.

Diebold incidentally has changed the name of their voting machine division to Premier Voting Solutions, presumably because of the hundreds -- indeed thousands of complaints abotu their machines.

One of the great things about the tech community is its near unanimous belief in doing the right thing and in fair play. Your nation needs you to ensure those things in November.

The potential for errors and indeed vote rigging through these lousy machines is enormous.

Anyway, BBV has asked that supporters post this call to action on blogs. So here goes (excerpted):

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Widest possible distribution needed. Please do spread this in blogs,
etc:

This post will no doubt produce howls of objection for the vendors that
read it. Black Box Voting is encouraging all individuals with a
technical background to search and apply for temporary tech ELECTION SUPPORT
jobs for the November 2008 election.

Hiring is underway for temporary technicians to help with voting
machines this fall. Vendor dependence is undermining the structure of US
elections, as described here in the new report by Voters Unite.org.

In a presidential election year, voting machine vendors will hire and
train thousands of technicians staffed around the country. For example,
anywhere that Election Systems & Software has a machine, they are under
contract to provide an on-site support tech. Hart Intercivic, Premier
(Diebold), and Sequoia also use Election Day support technicians.

Temporary election tech support jobs have been spotted on hotjobs.com,
rollouts.com, and local tech temp firms like (in 2006) DecisionOne. The
tech services firm may be a subcontractor for the big four voting
machine companies. Sometimes you'll find the positions advertised by your
local county.

Sites like Rollouts.com have you register in their E-tech database.
They search for techs based on skill set and area. There isn't much in the
way of a skill set needed for the election projects.

QUIETLY APPLY FOR THE JOBS

Anyone with tech skills interested in safeguarding the November
election is encouraged to register at technical recruiting sites and apply for
any election-related projects.

CONSIDER ASKING FOR TIME OFF ON YOUR FULL TIME JOB TO DO THIS.

This
November, there may be no better way to watch the behind-the-scenes
process than to be a stagehand, so to speak.

It is not the vendor, and not the government, that has the right to
elections information, it is the PUBLIC. Citizens have inalienable rights
to sovereignty over the government they created and pay for. These
rights cannot be honored without mechanisms to see all information related
to elections, and ultimately, to have control processes that honor
citizen sovereignty.

That said, it ain't gonna happen this November. Therefore it is
entirely appropriate, patriotic, and important, for citizens to apply for
temporary positions as voting machine technicians to provide inside public
oversight for the process.

There will be nondisclosure agreements, which are not appropriate at
all for public elections, but it's a reality now that vendors are
trespassing on citizen right to know. There may be issues that arise which the
public clearly has a right to know. When that happens, a decision must
be made.

YOU WON'T BE THE FIRST

We have already been in communications with other patriotic volunteers
who have successfully obtained these positions in the past, and are
doing this for November.

THERE ARE ALWAYS WAYS TO DEAL WITH IMPORTANT ISSUES IF THEY ENDANGER
THE PUBLIC GOOD. You, the People, are needed on the inside of the
elections industry this November.

This is a public service bulletin from Black Box Voting.

Black Box Voting Tool Kit 2008 - free download here:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/toolkit2008.pdf