The Digital Ballot Images Are Public Record

SUBJECT LINE: "Digital Ballot Images Are Public Record Act" Dear [NAME OF YOUR STATE SENATOR OR STATE REPRESENTATIVE], We your constituents are asking election officials and our state house members to support a law which will result in the preservation of important electronic documents for the verification of election results: the digital ballot images created of each ballot by modern ballot scanning machines. We are all familiar with these machines in our state. When you push your ballot into the slot of the machine at your polling place, it takes a jpeg picture of each ballot in milliseconds, and stores it in the memory. It is supposed to be part of the audit trail, which can be examined by citizens who obtain the electronic files. Although not all jurisdictions have this feature, soon all will. The machines purchased under previous Help America Vote Act (HAVA) grants are in the process of being phased out.  They are over 10 years old and were never mea

It basically works like this. I am asking election officials and our state representatives to support a law which will result in the preservation of important electronic documents for the verification of election results, the digital ballot images created of each ballot by modern ballot scanning machines. We are all familiar with these machines. When you push your ballot into the slot of the machine at your polling place, it takes a jpeg picture of each ballot in milliseconds, and stores it in the memory.  It is supposed to be part of the audit trail, which can be examined by citizens who obtain the electronic files. Although not all cities have this feature, the ones that don't are in the process of being phased out, as they are over 10 years old and never meant to be in service that long.  But some election officials are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep these image secret, and even to have the choice to destroy them. Our law at Digital Ballot Images are Public Record wou