VIVA NY for Election Integrity
What do voters need? Assurance that we can mark a ballot privately and independently, that we can verify our votes as we marked them and know that those votes will be counted accurately. We need to trust the integrity of the system that allows all this.
Integrity must be built into the election system before the election begins. It doesn’t work as an afterthought. Board of Elections procedures and voting machinery must be chosen for their trustworthiness to prevent endless claims of fraud or theft after elections. VIVA NY would build integrity into our election system.
With VIVA NY, voters will continue to use paper ballots. Their votes marked on paper ballots will be counted from the marks they made, not from barcodes assigned by machines. The marked ballots, as the voter last saw them, will be available for recounts and audits. This paper ballot system has integrity. We have used it for at least a decade. We know it. We need VIVA NY to keep it.
Built-in integrity: good government groups in New York such as Let NY Vote, SmartElections.us, and Indivisibles like CCoHOPE Indivisible have helped develop and build pro-democracy legislators’ support for VIVA NY (S6169B/A5934B), currently before the NY legislature.
VIVA NY has strong support, but needs even more to be passed this session. Ask your Assembly representative and Governor Hochul for elections with built-in integrity. Ask them to make VIVA NY law this session.
Then, go with confidence to the polls, and bring your friends!
Catherine Ray, Ossining
