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The Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition www.reformcoalition.org and VerifiedVoting.org www.verifiedvoting.org invite you to an organization meeting for area university undergrads, law students and volunteer professionals. (view flyer)

Casa McCrea
6200 SW 63rd Court, South Miami
Phone: 305-667-6702
Call if you need directions

If you’re unable to attend, please consider sending a contribution payable to:

Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition Inc.
All checks should be mailed to:
MDERC
c/o Edmund Campbell
PO Box 524297
Miami, FL 33152-4297
RSVP to dan@mccrea.us

-----Original Message-----
From: Swayland@mindspring.com
Sent: Aug 16, 2005 2:12 PM
To: Reformcoalition@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ReformCoalition] MDERC 3rd Anniversary Party!

Dear MDERC Members and Friends,

As we approach our 3^rd anniversary, we invite you to attend our celebration and fundraising event. Since igniting by spontaneous combustion in September 2002, MDERC remains fiercely non-partisan and dedicated to improving elections for all voters in Miami-Dade County, the State of Florida, and around the country.

Our first toast will be to member Francisco Pardo, who will be starting George Washington University in a couple of weeks. He will become part of our Washington team under the direction of Bobbie Brinegar who heads our D.C. office, one of many MDERC milestones reached in 2005.

MDERC has had a very busy year indeed.

We published a groundbreaking report on poll-closing observations, ballot accounting, and electronic security from the November 2004 election. It exposed serious weaknesses in the conduct of elections in Miami-Dade, including detailed reporting on yet-to-be-resolved electronic ballot stuffing at precinct 816. MDERC members volunteered thousands of hours to create and conduct the study, analyze mountains of public records, and perform the solid detective work to understand and evaluate a voting system that has become terribly technical and complex.

The report, called Get It Right The First Time, immediately buzzed all around the state and the country. Members testified on its contents and hand delivered it to Miami-Dade County, the Florida Division of Elections in Tallahassee, the US Senate Rules Committee in Washington DC, and the Election Assistance Commissionâ€™s hearings on their Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, in New York City.

In Tallahassee we again lobbied tirelessly as the State re-wrote much of the Florida Statutes pertaining to election law. MDERC has earned respect from both sides of the isle. This year, Legislative Chair, Sandy Wayland circulated our carefully crafted position paper widely. We were able to help write language for numerous bills and amendments. In June, we were back in Tallahassee testifying on the proposed recount rule. We made progress but there remains much work to do at the state level. We continue to monitor rule changes and develop our relationships and our positions for the 2006 legislative session.

Here in Miami-Dade, we meet regularly with the Supervisor of Elections and the County Manager, sharing our concerns regarding issues past, present, and future, including Miami-Dadeâ€™s current consideration of scrapping its touchscreen DRE voting machines. Having been the largest county in the country to acquire touchscreens in 2002, Miami-Dade would now be the largest to scrap them.

We held multiple press conferences and issued press releases continuing to share our important work through the press. And we continue to work with other organizations around the country.

Please join in this celebration and support this important work. If you cannot attend, please support MDERC with your generous contribution. Details are on the attached flyer, and Thank You!

The Miami Dade Election Reform Coalition

RSVP to dan@mccrea.us

-->2005 Sunshine State Journalism Award:
Matthew Haggman; Daily Business Review;
..inspired by the MDERC, article "Count Crisis" wins 2 awards for an article for best Investigative Reporting and best Governmental/Political Reporting.

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Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition to Release Post-Election Report on Problems at the Polls in November 2004

MIAMI – At a 4 p.m. news conference today, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition will release an in-depth analysis of problems at the polls during the November 2004 presidential election.

The findings of the coalition, which are outlined in the following detailed 30-page report: ("Get it Right the First Time" - "Appendices"), indicate that during the November election, Miami-Dade County experienced serious problems with policies and procedures that are supposed to protect the integrity of the ballot count.

The post-election analysis by Martha R. Mahoney, Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law, includes detailed statistics and summaries of problems that were uncovered during early voting and poll closing, including vote-counting problems, discrepancies between the number of voters and the number of ballots and touch-screen voting machines breakdowns.

Who: Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, Chair, Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, Dan McCrea, Government Relations Chair, Martha R. Mahoney, Professor of Law at the University of Miami School of Law and Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida, a member of the coalition.

What: News conference to release November 2004 election report entitled GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME, Poll Closing Observation, Ballot Accounting, and Electronic Voting Security

Contact: Dan McCrea, MDERC Government Relations Chair, 305-984-2900 (cell) or Lida Rodriguez-Taseff at 305-960-2242 (office) or 305-582-1255 (cell)

Alessandra Soler Meetze (asoler@aclufl.org)
Communications Director
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida
4500 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 340
Miami, FL 33137-3227

Phone: (305) 576-2337, ext. 16 - Fax: (305) 576-1106

Visit the ACLU of Florida on-line at www.aclufl.org

-->Read MDERC PRESS RELEASE 07 July 2004: Undaunted by Governor's Initial Refusal to Order Statewide Audits of the State's Voting System, Miami Election Reform Group Launches Citizen Action Campaign to Change the Governor's Mind.