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Join The Fight For Democracy

I’d have to say that, without a doubt, my proudest moment thus far (of DFIA's one-month-long existence) was the other evening when I realized that the word “Democracy” was NOT just another word that started with “D” that made a good replacement for “Dean” in Dean for America.

After Democracy for Iowa had been going for about two weeks and Blog for Iowa was just days old, Alta and I received word from an old contact in the fair elections movement.  Her name was Ellen Theisen (pronounced ty-son) and she is the former Executive Director at VerifiedVoting.org.  Ellen had just gone out on her own, creating her own website for a new organization she co-founded, called VotersUnite!

She realized through her work with VerifiedVoting.org that many local election officials were terribly under-informed about what was required by the new Help America Vote Act that was actually enacted to remedy the hanging-chad/punch-card situation but, in effect, created far more problems than it solved.  In fact, with so many new, unproven, untested, and unreliable electronic touch-screen voting machines being put into place, our very system of Democracy was being called into question.  If you couldn’t see your vote as recorded on a paper ballot, ensuring some system for a manual recount, could you be certain that a “computer” had actually counted your vote for the candidate of your choice?  Experience with these machines has proven there are many problems of this nature, and in one case, Hinds County, Mississippi, had to throw out an entire election and schedule a re-do!

Ellen’s idea was to educate the state and local election officials through a system of hand-delivering a document she created with everything local elections officials would need to know to make well-informed decisions about the very voting machines upon which our democracy depends.  Thus, Project Myth Breaker was born.

When Ellen asked for our help, I was eager since Fair Elections has been a pet project of mine since last fall, but I wondered just how much help we could be?  Democracy for Iowa was two weeks old!  We had hardly just begun to find our people!  How would we organize such a massive campaign to have the Project Myth Breaker documents HAND-DELIVERED to every county election official in Iowa?  And with just two-weeks lead time?

And up to the plate stepped Dr. Alta Price, MD, heroine extraordinaire.  Alta would organize Project Myth Breaker for Democracy for Iowa.  After all, she didn’t have anything else to do – just a full-time medical practice, a home and family, constant DFIA conference calls, emails, decisions to be made, book clubs, a district convention – in other words, she had plenty of free time, bless her heart!

Thus, DFIA’s first official collaboration with a like-minded organization was born, just like we indicated we planned on doing in the DFIA Mission Statement.  And Iowa is the first state to officially sign on board with Project Myth Breaker as a state-wide hand-delivery event.  Leading the way by EARNING it!

As for me, oh, I’ll be delivering the document to Buena Vista and Cherokee counties, but what’s more, I’ve come to the realization that Democracy is not just a great name or an abstract concept; Democracy is what we are fighting for.  Please join the fight.

Don’t just worry and fret about the inaccuracy of touch-screen voting and the fundamental threat to our Constitution and to everything we believe in.  As Ellen Theisen says on her VotersUnite! website, pray with your feet!

You can join the fight for Democracy here and here.

Linda Thieman, Storm Lake