by Evan Ravitz, director, Voting by Phone Foundation

The October 1994 MacWorld Magazine’s big survey showed the number one capability both citizens and readers want from the ‘Information Highway’ is to “Vote in elections”! These folks need to know that no highway, computer or modem is needed with phone voting! “Televote” technology was developed and used for polling in 1974 for the National Science Foundation by our associate Dr. Vincent Campbell.

State Government News featured us in their October, 1994 issue. Sandia Labs continues to lumber along developing a multi-million-dollar phone voting system for the state of New Mexico. These are the people who developed nuclear weapons for the Pentagon. $600 hammers, anyone? Systems from our friends Omni Software are available for $1000 and up, about $13,000 for a city the size of Boulder (100,000 people). This is in line with the NSF study. A single Boulder election now costs $60,000!

The September 26, 1994 TIME excerpts famed Republican analyst (and Nixon speechwriter) Kevin Phillips’ “Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics”. He supports more `direct democracy’. When leading Republicans advocate what our opponents in the ’93 campaign called “true democracy”, can Democrats be far behind? The people are way ahead: polls for years show 80% of us want true democracy.

CU Law Professor K.K. DuVivier is publishing her paper: “By Going Wrong All Things Come Right: Using Alternative Initiatives To Improve Citizen Lawmaking” in which the Dr. writes: “The major benefit of the alternate initi ative is that it wrests this agenda control away from a single interest group.” How to get more alternatives? Lower initiative petition requirements, we think! Increased use of the initiative can be accommodated inexpensively by quarterly or monthly phone voting.