Resolution - : FOR OPEN AND HONEST PUBLIC ELECTIONS WITH HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS

WHEREAS, LULAC is our nation’s oldest and largest Hispanic civil rights organization addressing education, employment and civil rights issues in the United States of America since 1929; and

WHEREAS, all legitimate government power comes only from We the People who have the right to alter and abolish our government via elections; and

WHEREAS, our government is not derived from “trust” or maintaining “public confidence” in elections, it is instead based on distrust of the election process which can only be abated by continuous oversight and supervision by the people; and

WHEREAS, unsupervised, i.e., secret, vote counting leaves We the People completely insecure in our right to remove incumbents, renders government accountability to the people impossible, and permits the alteration of election results without detection; and

WHEREAS, since the 2000 election and the passage of the Help America Vote Act of 2002, nearly all American votes are counted secretly by computerized voting machines, both screen and scanner types; and

WHEREAS, it is commonly accepted by computer security experts that no computer or computer-based system can be made completely secure and numerous academic, governmental and institutional studies since 2000 have discovered that the security mechanisms and testing protocols for these voting systems are inadequate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results; and

WHEREAS, voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) printers, which always fail to print every vote cast, random post-election precinct ballot counts (misleading called “audits”) and expensive recounts (which can be and have been found to be rigged) are all useless to detect stolen elections; and

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the League of United Latin American Citizens will continue to fully and actively support and demands absolute and non-negotiable public oversight and supervision of all aspects of our elections, including, but not limited to election day voting, absentee voting, and post-election day vote counting.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that The League of United Latin American Citizens recognizes the following voting systems as the only system that allows total oversight and supervision by We the People and demands the sole implementation in all our elections of:

(a) Paper ballots that are voter-marked* and voter-cast into a secure ballot box that is always in public view,
(b) Vote counting that uses both partisan and independent counters and observers checking and balancing each other with public supervision and video recording freely allowed,
(c) Immediate and unencumbered access by the public to all information about precinct counts and results before the ballots and other election documents are removed from the precinct polling place,
(d) A secure, uninterrupted and publicly-observable chain of custody of all aspects of elections from the moment ballots are cast on Election Day to the public posting of the election results at the precinct polling place, and
(e) A guarantee of speedy and effective open investigations and remedies for any election-related irregularity reported by the people.

*In order for voters with a broad range of visual or dexterity impairments to mark a ballot privately and independently as required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), an electronic ballot-marking device, such as the Auto MARK or a non-electronic voting-assist device, such as the Vote-PAD (now discounted), which allow the disabled voter’s ballot to be publicly hand counted could be used. Only one of these marking devices per polling place is required by HAVA.

Approved this 17th day of July 2010.

Margaret Moran
LULAC National President