Lancaster, PA: The Constitution Party encourages support for the National Clean Elections Lawsuit (N-CEL). The suit was filed against ten states: New Hampshire, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, California, New York, Illinois, Oregon, South Carolina, and Texas.

The Constitution Party, the country’s third largest party based on voter registration (Ballot-Access News) warns against electronic voting in its platform. The party points out that since 1988 all but a handful of the 3,142 counties in the US have delegated the "counting" process, done in secret, to several mega companies, Diebold, ES&S, Hart and Sequioa. All 50 secretaries of state have approved these systems.

The Clean Elections lawsuit, in the process of expanding to all 50 states, charges that the use of any computer (direct-recording-electronic- or DRE) systems which obscure ballots from the people for any period of time before a count is completed and the results are announced are unconstitutional.

The Constitution Party joins Citizens for a Fair Vote Count and plaintiffs in the Clean Elections Lawsuit in calling attention to the potential for vote fraud with electronic voting systems. According to the suit, the use of computer and machine election systems violates each citizen’s right to vote, as defined at least twice by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1915 and 1964 the US Supreme Court ruled that a citizen’s right to vote consists of two parts: 1) the right to cast a ballot; 2) the right to know that his ballot has been counted accurately.

“Paper ballots, always accounted for in plain sight, are the only option to make sure our votes are cast and counted honestly”, said Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer.

“When credentialed computer scientists from prestigious institutions such as Princeton (itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ts-paper.pdf) and Stanford (http://utahcountvotes.org/ddill.html) universities have proven time and again electronic voting systems can’t be trusted, it’s imperative we move to stop computer vote fraud immediately”, Clymer added.

“Since ballots leave the sight of the people in the precinct before the votes are counted, breaking the chain of custody of the ballots, the illegality and unconstitutionality of electronic voting is clear”, wrote Citizens for a Fair Vote Count’s Jim Condit Jr.

“To make matters worse, the private companies controlling the ballots then give the “results” of electronic voting, gathered through touch screens with no paper trail, directly to the Big TV Networks -ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, & FOX. Centralized counting and reporting have no place in a free country. While the United States government sends monitors to make sure third world countries conduct fair elections, the fox is guarding the ballot box hen house here at home” Clymer remarked.

The Constitution Party challenges other political parties and all voters to support the National Clean Elections Lawsuit while demanding accountability from state, county and federal elections officials.

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The Constitution Party will formally adopt this resolution at its upcoming National Committee Meeting 10/25-27 in Council Bluffs, Ia.

"Impress upon your children the truth that (voting) is a… duty of as solemn a nature as man can… perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself."

~ Daniel Webster, 1840