John,

One year from this week, voters will head to the polls to elect their leaders on the federal, state, and local levels, including the next president and several key Senate and House seats. Yet millions of Americans face a very real threat that their vote will not be properly counted, whether as a result of faulty technology or deliberate interference.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee have already proven that Russian interference in the 2016 election took place in all fifty states, and efforts are already underway to try to undermine elections in 2020. Meanwhile, the use of easily-hacked electronic voting machines in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Tennessee fails to provide a voter-verified, reliable, physical ballot necessary to conduct an effective post-election audit and spot mistakes in the tallies made by the machines.

Congress has allotted just $250 million for states to update and secure their election technology ahead of the 2020 election. That’s not enough to combat such a critical threat.

Free Speech For People is fighting for free and fair elections with secure, verifiable, and reliable voting technology. Yesterday, we filed, on behalf of the National Election Defense Coalition and leading computer scientists (and with the assistance of the law firm Covington & Burling) an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit regarding the use of direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines in Shelby County, Tennessee. DREs have been shown to have major security flaws, including faulty touchscreen calibration and software issues that incorrectly record votes; significant vulnerability to hacking because they lack proper encryption technology, are often capable of connecting to the internet, and are designed with weak security protections; and the lack of an auditable paper ballot. Many states, like Tennessee, use DREs despite the overwhelming evidence that they are insecure and unreliable for properly counting votes 

We need your support to ensure that every American’s vote counts. Can you chip in to help us secure our elections?

Our election security efforts extend beyond Tennessee. We've teamed up with the National Election Defense Coalition to sue Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson for access to public records on the security and reliability of voting machines. And we are working with the NEDC and Citizens for Better Elections in Pennsylvania to challenge the Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth for sanctioning the use of new voting machines with serious defects, in violation of Pennsylvania election law.

With such a critical election on the horizon, we cannot afford to risk our right to vote. Can you help us ensure secure and reliable election technology in every state?

Thanks for all you do,

Ron Fein (Legal Director, Free Speech For People)