Oregon VRC's Dialog with John Lindback, Director of Elections

After the calamitous events of the 2007 Oregon Legislative Session involving HB 3270, the election audit bill, Oregon VRC attempted to re-establish a dialog with John Lindback, Director of Elections, concerning the "placebo" audit law that had just been passed over the strong objections of the Oregon VRC.

In our recent dialog, we shared articles covering the ongoing crisis in American elections that can be traced to corporate trade secrecy protection --- secrecy that is totally unacceptable in fair and open democractic elections. In Oregon today, large corporate vendors of election equipment, primarily ES&S, wield exclusive control over the counting of our votes because it is their secret software (not clerks or other officials) that actually counts our paper ballots.

Our dialog with John Lindback is posted below. For every email we sent to John Lindback, we sent a copy to other individuals who need to be part of the solution to the secret vote counting problem in Oregon: our current SOS Bill Bradbury, as well as all the current candidates for Secretary of State (Vicki Walker, Brad Avakian, Rick Metzger and Kate Brown.)

For a long stretch in 2007 before and after the end of the legislative session, we heard nothing back from John Lindback despite numerous call and emails. Finally, we began to send pertinent articles concerning the serious problems with ES&S software and equipment in other states. At last his silence ended when we received a reply from him on Dec. 6, 2007.

We hope that John Lindback and all the SOS Candidates will take steps to engage in this dialog. This is a matter that is at the very core of Oregon's elections.

We hope that this public dialog will move Oregon away from the former situation, where it currently stands, and toward the latter, where it must go in order to become an open, democratic process.

Click here to see the Oregon VRC letters to John Lindback and his replies.