Ballot Integrity Project
                       Minutes of 4/14/04 Meeting
                           Drafted by Roy L.

Present this evening were--
Larry Q.
Roy L.

As a quorum was not present, no official meeting was
convened.

Nevertheless, Larry and Roy had a lively discussion
which lasted from 6:40 PM to 9:04 PM.

Here is their report.

1. Emergency measure.

Larry and others are promoting the adoption of a
"Manual Parallel Accounting System" for the November
election, to provide a check on the accuracy and
fairness of touch-screen voting systems.

Employing a parallel accounting system is standard practice
in business when an old system is in the process of
being replaced by a new one.  Both are used alongside each
other for a period of time, until the bugs in the new system
have been worked out and it has proven itself stable and
accurate.

The same strategy makes eminent sense when switching
from an older voting system to a newer one.

The need is not merely theoretical:  The news media continue
to carry reports of malfunctions in touch-screen voting systems,
even as late as March 2004.

Larry is asking that our group sign on to participate
in promoting this strategy as a mandatory requirement for
all state and federal offices in the fall 2004 elections.
He is also asking that we use our website as an "epicenter"
for this campaign, which would include a webpage for each
State's affiliate.

Roy presented comments on the documents that Larry has
produced for this campaign.  During the discussion,
some of Roy's misunderstandings of details in those
documents were cleared up.  These included details
about the nature and sponsors of the envisioned exit
polls, and about the legal status of the proposed
mandatory paper ballots.

Since other readers might develop similar misunderstandings,
Larry asked if Roy would offer suggestions for clarifying
those details.  Roy agreed to do so.


2. Media campaign.

Larry reported that, since time is growing short, we should
seriously consider what actions we might take immediately.

One of these is a massive media campaign to promote the
above parallel accounting system as a stop-gap measure to
ensure an honest vote in the national elections this fall.

Larry mentioned numerous contacts in the media and in
national government that might be drawn upon for assistance
in such a campaign.


3.  Next meeting.

The next meeting of our group will be on May 12, at our
usual time and place: 7:00 PM at Healing Earth Resources,
3111 N. Ashland, Chicago.