(Rep. Robert ) Wexler asks court to ensure manual recounts in close races

(1) We the People have a right to have confidence in the results of our elections.

We are the sovereigns here. We the People, through our representatives, have defined our election laws to ensure our elections are free and fair and accurately reflect our will. A free and fair election is one in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to cast their vote and have that vote accurately counted. Any rationalization that justifies violation of this right cannot be tolerated.

(2) When election results are called into question, the burden is on the state. To restore confidence, election officials must prove our votes were accurately recorded and tabulated and our citizens were afforded equal access to cast their votes.

When we fail to keep it simple and get caught up in details of a specific election -- details intended to prove the election invalid -- we buy into the illogical position that the burden is on us to prove the results to be wrong.

The burden is not on us. Our right to have confidence puts the burden on the state to prove the results to be accurate and fairly obtained.

In our criminal justice system, the presumption of innocence minimizes the chances of convicting the innocent. In our electoral system, when reported results are called into question, we must start with a "presumption of inccrrectness" to minimize the chance of putting someone into office that was rejected by the electorate. When results are presumed to be incoorect, the burden is on the state to prove the results are accurate. See Burden of Proof in an Election.

(3) Disparate treatment alone is sufficient to invalidate an election.

Every citizen and leader must answer the following question for themselves: "Are hours-long poll-tax-lines for poor, minority voters AND none for affluent, white voters a tolerable condition for you?"

No rationalization can justify different public and private answers to this question (e.g., “Well, it’s intolerable to me, but elections have always had problems.” "Discriminatory treatment is not actionable if the margin of victory is large") To tolerate such disparate treatment in an election is to become complicit with the perpetrators of the condition.

(4) Secret Vote Counting is intolerable.

Many people, particularly those who are comfortable with technology, miss the key problem with using DREs to record and tabulate votes. Inability to secure the systems against data loss or corruption isn't the problem, so arguments about the security or insecurity of a given DRE system are irrelevant. The problem is secret vote counting.

For the electorate to have confidence that they are being afforded free and fair elections that reflect their will, the processes for qualifying to vote, registering, casting votes, tabulating votes, reporting results and verifying results must be open, understandable, and accessible to every citizen. The guy down the street who dropped out of high school must be able to make sense of the how every aspect of our elections are conducted. (He may or may not bother to find out, but if he does, he needs to be able to make sense of it all.)

Not many people on this planet have the expertise required to make sense of computer security, therefore, the role of computers in our elections must be limited. DREs have no place at all.

We don't need a paper trail. We need official counts to be based on counting physical ballots in the open. With video technology, the process can be open to any citizen, not just designated representatives of the parties and public interest groups.

People reject secret vote counting as a matter of principle – no convincing needed. Rejecting DREs as secret vote counters is not much of a stretch.