Nothing, nada, rien, zip. It's money, money, money, money, money, money and nothing else.
Sure, go to work, take care of your families, go to the mosque, temple, or church to worship. Do what you have to do….
But you cannot escape the harsh economic reality that our right to freedom has its bottom line reality. It takes money…… and lots of it.
This is especially true in the era of Bush, Inc. where two elections have been literally stolen (there is mathematical data to support this claim) and where lobbyist reign supreme in influencing U.S. policy, which is bought, sold and delivered by their mega contributions to the GOP, which, in turn guarantees the lobbyists’ interest and attendant wealth.
It is like we have to anty up to pay the piper for our freedom.
It takes a city of billionaires to bring happiness to billionaires and harsh economic realities for the rest of us. Like, over $2.30 for a gallon for gas when oil companies are swimming in profits. CEO’s must be purchasing their 3rd vacation homes, while the lowly mid level managers are adding swimming pools with hot tubs on the side to their back yard estates in the far suburbs.
How much is your commute to work costing you now, especially if you bought into the American dream of owning a gas inefficient SUV? And, you had to buy far outside The City, USA because you couldn’t afford the house in the urban center, close to work
There are but a handful of billionaires but they do have billions where the rest of us have perhaps hundreds. If fortunate, some may have thousands.
Let 99% of us eat cake?
I, for one, will not eat cake.
Will you?
If you refuse to eat cake, please help this poor college student find a way to raise some $$$$$$$ for US Counts Votes. I am not suggesting that you personally donate; I am imploring you to think creatively in how to raise significant funding to keep this much-needed group afloat. LS
Message from a summer intern for U.S. Counts Votes in dire straits for what else to keep going? You got it...they need MONEY
Hello Everyone,
My name is Zeb Thomas, and I’m interning this summer as Business Manager for USCV. This is crucial work that I’m excited about, but we need your help because there is so much work remaining.
BUDGET
I’ve compiled a summary of our financial records since US Count Votes was founded in November, 2004.
Please note the following budget issues:
* As shown under Board Donations, the Board members, primarily President Kathy Dopp, have put about $5,000 of their own money into USCV - an average of over $550/month. Kathy Dopp is putting all her time and effort into USCV, but she is overextended, personally and financially because she is trying to do the work of several people with little support.
This has two implications. First, she cannot long continue to do full-time volunteer work, while partially funding USCV out of her own pocket. We need to raise enough money to start paying Kathy at least a small stipend. Secondly, the National Election Data Archive project cannot be completed in time for the 2006 national elections without substantially more funding to hire the necessary personnel.
* The entire amount of income from donations in over 8 months has been $12,500 - an average of under $1,500/month.
To hire enough people to accomplish this project in time, we'll need a minimum of more like $20,000 per month. In reality, this is a modest amount for what we are trying to accomplish. We have to hire full time programmers, a statistician, and a system administrator. Additionally we need to hire part-time or full-time (depending on finances) a liaison officer, executive director, business manager, and legal council to accomplish everything in time for November 2006.
* The only salary we have been able to afford so far has been Thomas Knight’s vital work on system administration & other technical work.
The National Election Data Archive project is not a trivial project that can be implemented in six months. Although its design has been accomplished in just six months by volunteer programmers, its implementation cannot be accomplished with part-time volunteer programmers because it will take many hours of intense focus on the part of programmers to implement it.
We need to get going on the implementation, but USCV cannot commit to hiring programmers and a statistician until after it has an adequate income stream from donations to pay for them.
FUNDRAISING – HOW YOU CAN HELP
Thank you so much to all of you who have contributed to date. You have kept us going in the fragile early stages of the development of NEDA. However, we need to accelerate our fundraising ten or twenty times if the National Election Data Archive project is to be implemented in time to ensure that the correctly elected candidates are sworn into office following the November 2006 election.
Anything you can provide to help us compensate Kathy for her devotion of time, effort, and money – and hire the needed programming and other services - will help USCV get closer to achieving its mission.
Here’s how you can help us achieve our fundraising goals:
We are planning to have fundraising house parties all over the country on Saturday, August 27th. Please put this on your calendar now, and plan to have a USCV house party at your home.
USCV also needs additional committed people to join our board to lead our fundraising efforts with other volunteer fundraisers and to lead our PR and marketing effort.
Please put August 27th on your calendar for a party and let your friends and local press and political groups know about it.
You can help test our new volunteer signup and login system by going to
In addition to signing up yourself, please encourage your friends to check out our website and sign up for our email list by emailing
If each of you on our email list gets just one friend to sign up as a sustainer, we’ll have ten times the funding we do now!
NASS Conference
Kathy’s trip to the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in St. Paul, MN was quite fruitful. She got some great information from other election activists there, and made some fantastic contacts with secretaries of state. This will go a long way to helping us obtain the data required for NEDA.
Another benefit of the NASS conference contacts was a tip to attend the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) conference in southern California beginning Friday, so she is excited to go there and continue her progress. This is yet another reason we need strong fundraising, but the trip will be well worth it.
The expense/income summary is now posted on our website, along with a balance sheet through June.
Zeb Thomas
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Mission:
The National Election Data Archive is a scientific project whose mission is to investigate the accuracy of elections through the creation and analysis of a database containing precinct-level vote-type election data for the entire United States. By making this detailed election data publicly available and, when warranted, to informing election officials and candidates of possible errors in local vote counts, our goal is to ensure that correctly elected candidates are sworn into office in future elections.
Please donate to help implement NEDA:
USCV brochures are available:
US Count Votes
P.O. Box 682556
Park City, UT 84068
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