Friend --

Happy Holidays!

As 2019 comes to a close, we’re writing to thank you for your tireless support for just and secure elections. With our campaign now in its fourth year, we write to update you on exciting developments and additional streamlining of our operations.

Thanks to your help, what began as an insurgent recount campaign has now become part of a widespread, unstoppable movement for voter-verifiable paper ballots and rigorous audits as foundations of elections we can trust. We began as a battle to recount the 2016 presidential vote in three key states vulnerable to hacking and error in their voting systems. That battle, powered by over 161,000 small donors, was unjustly blocked through legal, administrative and financial obstruction by an establishment intensely resistant to public scrutiny of the vote.

Then an amazing thing happened, thanks to the ingenuity of our legal team, and the dedication of election integrity activists. What was intended to be a weeks-long struggle for recounts was expanded into a years-long legal campaign for urgently-needed structural reforms to guarantee our right to an accurate and secure vote. We have supported the work of our legal team in the court of law with ongoing efforts in the court of public opinion - including extensive engagement with the press, social media, recount supporters and election integrity activists.

Check out our Voting Justice website for recent highlights from our ongoing legal battles.

We’ve won critical victories in Pennsylvania, with the Settlement Agreement that guarantees all voting systems will use a voter-verifiable, auditable paper ballot. We’re now vigorously defending that guarantee by fighting for decertification of the deeply flawed ES&S ExpressVote XL. In Wisconsin we are closing in on an unprecedented state-wide independent examination of the voting machine “source code” - a crucial piece of voting machine software used across the country that controls the actual counting and tallying of the votes. 

Despite important progress in both of these cases, the end is still not clearly in sight. With each legal victory, we’ve been faced with appeals by the voting machine corporations and their political cronies, costing us months and years of delay. At the same time, FEC rules prohibit us from raising money to pay ongoing or future costs, as we are classified as an inactive political campaign committee. To continue stretching the initial funding to pay a fourth year of costs, we have further cut our skeleton staff and operations to the bone. This includes minimizing the use of mass emails, relying instead largely on press, social media and our website for communications. We’re confident we can maintain our impact and visibility thanks to the strategic relationships with journalists, experts and activists we’ve built over the years of the campaign.  

In the meantime, we look forward to vigorously pursuing legal action in PA and WI, and continuing to support that work in the court of public opinion, and with advocates doing critical work on the ground. To keep up with the latest developments, follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and check our website at VotingJustice.us.

Many reforms are needed to fully restore confidence in our broken elections - including an end to voter suppression and gerrymandering, the adoption of open debates, public financing of elections, ranked choice voting, an end to the Electoral College, and a national ban on hackable, insecure voting machines. Thanks to your support, we’re closing in on vast improvements in election security and accuracy. Winning these reforms in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin raises the bar for election integrity across the nation. 

We look forward to continuing the fight together, as long as it takes, to create elections elections we can trust, that are accurate, secure and just!

Wishing you the best for democracy, justice and peace in 2020!

Jill Stein
http://www.jill2016.com/