Berkeley, CA:  Grammy-winning artist and activist Bonnie Raitt has donated a limited number of premium-seat tickets for her San Diego concert – a stop on her “Souls Alike” Tour with Special Guest Keb’ Mo’ – to benefit Voter Action, www.voteraction.org, a non-profit, non-partisan public advocacy group providing legal, research, and logistical support for grassroots efforts to ensure the integrity of elections in the United States. Sales of the donated “Gold and Silver Circle” tickets and passes to the aftershow reception with Bonnie and Keb’ Mo’, will benefit Voter Action’s legal work to halt the use of unreliable and untrustworthy electronic voting systems in San Diego, other California counties, and other states.

“We deeply appreciate Bonnie Raitt’s support of our legal actions in California and several other states to ensure that every vote is recorded and counted as it was intended to be. The purity of our elections is fundamental to the preservation of democracy, and far too precious to turn over to private electronic voting machine vendors with no accountability,” said Holly Jacobson, Co-director of Voter Action.

Gold Circle tickets in rows 1, 2 and 3 in the center section are available for $200 and include an aftershow reception with Bonnie and Keb' Mo’. Silver Circle tickets are in the center section, rows 4, 5 and 7, and priced at $100.  Tickets are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.  Tickets are on sale now and can be ordered on-line at www.guacfund.org or by calling (800) 728-6226.

The ticket sales will help support Voter Actions' legal actions in California and several other states to block the use of Diebold and other electronic voting machines, with a history of security and reliability problems, before the November elections.  Touch screen electronic voting systems have proven vulnerable to hacking, loss and switching of votes, and break downs - causing long lines and disenfranchising voters.  They are difficult if not impossible to audit for recount purposes. More trustworthy and less expensive options are available, which is why eight California counties and hundreds of others across the country, as well as several states, have switched to paper balloting with optical scan systems -- which can be more reliably verified.