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“Before the beginning of great brilliance and beauty there first must be a period of complete chaos.” - I-Ching
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WHO’S GUARDING THE GUARDS?
GLITCHES, HITCHES, ANOMALIES AND IRREGULARITIES
BLIND TRUST Examination of transparency and security in elections worldwide WHY? A rhetorical musing in search of rationale
ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION (EAC) Numbers, Numbers, Numbers... THERE MUST BE 50 WAYS TO STEAL ELECTIONS PAPER TRAIL OF TEARS Pros, Cons and Tricks with Paper Dozens of Suggestions and Links to get on board in the Election Reform Movement HATE MAIL CONTACT US
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"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." - Andrew Jackson
What can you do? Well, you can start off by sending a nice note or call of gratitude, or a donation, to Congressman John Conyers of Michigan-- or to any of the other following representatives listed below for all their relentless work in election integrity and reform.
Congressman John Conyers of Michigan: 2426 Rayburn House Office Bldg. Washington, D.C. 20515-2214
(202) 225-5126 (202) 225-0072 fax
Barbara Boxer Senator from California:
Sacramento
http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey: Show support for his Bill; ( HR 550 ) Voter Confidence & Increased Accessibility Act of 2005
District Office 50 Washington Rd. West Windsor, NJ 08550 (609) 750-9365 (609) 750-0618 fax
Washington Office 1019 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-5801 (202) 225-6025 fax
http://holt.house.gov/feedback-phone.cfm?campaign=holt&type=Contact%20Rush
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio : District Office Washington Office 3645 Warrensville Center Road, Suite 204 Shaker Heights, OH 44122
(216) 522-4900 (216) 522-4908 fax
1009 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-7032 (202) 225-1339 fax
http://www.house.gov/tubbsjones/contact.htm
What else can I do?
Join the BLACK BOX VOTING CANDID AMERICA PROJECT!
Black Box Voting
has asked everyone to
help release these actions into the wild.
We are glad to oblige! Spread the word Far and Wide!
Now is the time to
start. Join the Black Box Voting "Candid America" project. Grab your video
camera and catch vendors and public officials in the act of being themselves
-- the good, the bad and the shameless.
- Show others what good
public servants look like, and document the
-- Margaret Mead
Become the TOWN CRIER
“When even one American—who has done nothing wrong—is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.” - Harry S. Truman
A recent poll shows grim figures of only 9% of the 18-34 year old Americans trust today’s media and are flocking to the Internet for their news. This should serve as a beacon of hope for us and guide us as to where our nagging efforts to “educate” on this issue might be best spent.
Become the Media
Be the Town Crier on election reform— Blab, shout, scream, chat, email, blog, write, phone, text, screech, holler, yell, discuss, and inform relentlessly. Use the “Did ya know?” approach starting out—you will be astonished at how many people don’t know this story, stranded in the black hole created by the media’s refusal to cover it.
Who Should I Talk To?
Everyone: Talk to centrists, Republicans, skeptics, fence-sitters, doubting Thomases, right-leaning relatives, the uninformed, agnostics, independents and idiots! Everywhere: At the cleaners, gas station, grocery store, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, bank, office, gym, schools, parties, sporting events, mechanics, church, temple, malls, car wash, coffee shop, manicurist, hair salon, hardware store, theatre, PTA, carpool, parasailing conference.....you get the picture
Give everyone the link to this site www.whoscounting.net .
What Should I Say?
One possible opening might be the introductory “Good Question”, on page one of this report. It’s important when attempting to inform that you state the case in a rational framework. Be the VOICE OF REASON in the age of absurdity. The facts favor us in this case—so, use them. We have scores of computer science professionals, academicians, statisticians, and mathematicians on our side—call upon them as your expert witnesses.
Learn to present your case effectively and reasonably to doubters by always being prepared with a few strong links (memorized),with accompanying backup verification and data. In other words, do your homework. When dealing with conservatives, I like to cite the Republican’s who are on board and offer their links... computer systems specialists like Chuck Herrin and Jim March. If they’re tech savvy, they may want to visit Chuck Herrin’s “Hack the Vote” site and try their hand at hacking on a mock-up GEMS tabulator system. It’s so easy! Memorize not only the website links, but a few key quotes from them as well. Some are sprinkled throughout this study.
Utilize target-specific analogies to everyday situations which illustrate the farce of the systems failures we’re expected to tolerate and overlook in elections, while at the same time demanding near perfection in our other daily electronic interactions. Some examples are listed below, but don’t be afraid to get creative and invent your own.
Presenting an unwelcome or uncomfortable new idea to someone already predisposed to doubting you, isn’t unlike feeding spinach to a baby... gently offering up one teeny-tiny-little spoonful at a time, served in a warmhearted, non-threatening fashion, checking the temperature first, monitoring the responses closely. Baby frowning and pulling away? OK, time to change the subject...Come back to it later. Baby spitting up spinach in your face? Well, sometimes you need to pick your battles, recognize the Immovable Beast when you encounter it, and know when to move on.
Closing Arguments
Think Switzerland. Stay neutral. Election integrity should not be a partisan battle. Even if the players who “govern” over the election kingdom have made it so. If you attempt to make it one, you weaken the effort and the chances of succeeding for everyone. Just the facts, ma’am....
I always like to wrap up with, “But don’t take MY word for it...”
Again, the voice of reason, don’t proselytize. Suggest they do their own research, draw their own conclusions, while you’re busy scribbling the 3 most objective links for them, that you have, of course, memorized. Light flattery doesn’t hurt at this point, guarding against patronizing or insincerity;
“You seem like an astute person--- someone who’s capable of differentiating between a credible source and a non-credible one....”
Self deprecation might help dispel any stray notion that you’re a pushy know-it-all-- trying to win somebody over for the sake of argument alone.
“I’m no computer nerd, but that Chuck Herrin has more letters after his name than there is space on a business card....and you should see what HE has to say about it—“
Won’t all of this negative information discourage voters from going to the polls?
Good question.
Some fear that overtly broadcasting this chink in the electronic armor of voting equipment might be contraindicated or flat out detrimental to GOTV efforts (Get Out The Vote). That it further erodes and diminishes voter confidence, thereby decreasing voter turnout. Why bother to get off the sofa and drag yourself to the polls if you’ve been told your vote might not be counted anyways?
Voter confidence is already at an all time low, and not without reason. It’s too late to return to earlier years’ confidence levels, unless you intend to lie to the electorate—which is what some have chosen to do, but not a recommended solution. Education is desperately needed to get the public outrage decibel high enough to reach the corridors of Legislature and impact needed reforms.
Why would we condemn earnest volunteers to spinning their wheels and resources to Get Out the Vote if in fact that vote won’t be properly counted? There has to be a concurrent and collaborative effort amongst both sides of the coin—GOTV workers and election integrity advocates. They can delicately work hand in hand, one side should not invalidate the other. Healthy GOTV grassroots efforts create an informed, more observant and vigilant electorate—more likely to recognize when numbers are seriously off kilter-- like in 2000 and 2004.
One sterling example of this type of collaboration in the grassroots can be seen in the parallel elections staged in the recent San Diego, California Mayoral race, July 26, 2005. This is one of my favorite ideas to come along that helps insure transparency on multiple levels.
From the Raw Story website:
Exclusive: Citizens Request Recount in San Diego Mayoral Race Miriam Raftery
"Enron by the Sea" shows strange electoral anomalies - a 4 percent shift - ODDS OF SUCH A DISCREPANCY OCCURRING BY CHANCE ALONE ARE LESS THAN 7/100 OF 1%, STATISTICIANS REVEAL.
San Diego Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Frye, may have been robbed of her mayoral seat in the July 26 local election as citizens' audit parallel election vote shows shift of 4 percent, Raw Story has learned.
Now, a nonpartisan citizens' group that conducted a parallel election has requested a recount of 11 precincts. This time, the issue isn't unmarked bubbles, but the accuracy of Diebold Accu-Vote optical scan voting machines and the Diebold GEMS central tabulator used to count votes.
The Citizens Audit Parallel Election (CAPE) asked voters exiting polls to vote again and sign a log book attesting to the accuracy of their second vote. Sealed parallel election ballots were counted at KGTV's studio with a TV camera crew filming the counting process.
Nearly 50 percent of all voters participated in the parallel election, which included five polling places representing 11 precincts. The sample included more conservative than liberal precincts, with participation as high among Republicans as among Democrats. The tandem election results showed what most feel to be startling results.
<snip>
The nation's first parallel election was conceived by Ellen Brodsky, an election official in Coconut Creek, Florida. Held at a single precinct during a May 2005 special election on a gambling initiative, the Florida parallel election drew a 67 percent participation rate and revealed significant discrepancies, leading to revelations of programming issues with touch-screen voting machines.
San Diego's far broader parallel election was the brainchild of Judy Alter, an emeritus professor in the department of world arts and culture at UCLA who participated in the New Mexico recount after the 2004 presidential election. In Santa Fe, Alter detected a shift of third-party candidate votes into the Bush/Cheney column.
Alter, meanwhile, is organizing citizen volunteers to hold parallel elections statewide for the fall special election called by Governor Schwarzenegger.
The answer lies not in if we inform the voters, but how. The message shouldn’t be delivered in a shrill doomsday cry, but with hope for a practicable, workable solution attached to it. It’s more a “Look, this is a grave threat we are facing, and we need all bodies on board to tackle it, at national, state and local levels....Here’s how.” Parallel elections and their subsequent on-camera vote counting are one step in the right direction.
It only took a small group of corporations to blemish our voting systems, but it appears it will take an entire citizenry to repair the defects.
Analogous Scenarios from the world of elections to daily life
For the Sports lover
It’s the World Series game, Yankees vs Marlins. George Steinbrunner (Yankee’s Owner) announces he will personally be officiating the ballgame, supervising all the calls, and bringing in his very own Yankee-trained umpire crew to help out. George assures us they’re well-trained and well-paid by the New York Yankees management. Don’t worry though-- George crosses his heart they won’t show any bias towards his team.
Oh—and they’ve decided to eliminate all cameras and recording devices this year...NO broadcasting allowed anywhere in the stadium. Oh yeah, and I forgot to say, the series will not be open to the public this year either. How will you know the score? No problem. George says he will personally keep track of all scoring privately during the game, on his own laptop. He will announce the results to the public later that night after the game has finished, and he’s had a chance to add it all up.
George and the team said they just didn’t feel it was necessary to broadcast/ record the play and the running scores, and besides....it would cost more. He says” You gotta trust the system.” After all, they promise not to cheat.
Play Ball!
What are ya? Some kinda conspiracy nut?
For the Frequent Flyer
It’s 7 PM-- you’re just finishing up your final cup of coffee before landing in New York for a career making business meeting that evening, when the Pilot announces you’ll be arriving in Cleveland instead of at JFK, due to an “irregularity” at air traffic control. You anxiously round up the nearest flight attendant for inquiry, and she politely informs you with a smile, “These things happen. Computers aren’t perfect, you know. Have a nice evening in Cleveland, and thank you for flying Glitch Air!”
Would you whine? Or just get over it and move on....in Cleveland?
Our vote tabulators have tested at a 16-28% error rate....would you fly to London if you knew the plane’s instrumentation panel had an up to 28% error rate?
For the Fine Diner
You’ve just taken your in-laws and extended family out for a four star dinner at your favorite dining establishment and, because you don’t leave home without it, you hand the waiter your credit card with a grand gesture, dismissing your father-in-law’s feeble attempts to chip in. “No, no...this is my treat!”
The waiter returns in a few short moments, hands you your card-- “Thank you and have a nice evening!” and turns to leave. You call him back, “Wait – you forgot my receipt!” He replies, as if accustomed to this customer confusion, “The restaurant owners don’t feel it’s necessary to provide paper receipts to the customers—Don’t worry, your account will be debited the correct amount. The system and the owners are very trustworthy.”
You try again—“But...But I need---“ only to be interrupted by the now incredulous waiter; “What are you? Some kind of conspiracy theorist? You think we’re all out to rip you off or something?!! Hahahahaha! Geeeez--What a nut!!”
And he walks away, laughing at you.
For the Investor
Your Mutual Fund statement arrives and it shows your account with negative $75,000, along with an envelope and an invoice requesting that you pay Friendly Financial Institution the $75,000 you now owe them. But you remember from last month having six figures in the account – there have been no withdrawals and two very hefty deposits since then. Turns out a computer error was responsible for counting your recent deposits backwards (as did the Florida, Georgia and Ohio vote tabulators), subtracting them rather than adding them. Will you shrug it off, try to get over it? It is an anomaly. Do you move on... or do you attempt to correct the situation, thereby risking being perceived as a “sore loser”?
Participate at National, State and Local Levels
Money talks. Donate generously to your favorite advocates or organizations working on the problem or supporting election reforms. Make multiple copies of those checks because you’re going to reuse them to convince those who are NOT working on the issue to do so.
The next time you receive a request for funds from a congress person or political organization who has not addressed the election systems problems, here is one way to respond. Take the donation card and mark the box “Other” – write in “Donation pending.” Then staple your previous check copy and copy of the accompanying note if there was one to the donation card. Find a place to write something to indicate that there is “more where this came from as soon as you address election integrity issues.” It doesn’t hurt to indicate you are part of a larger group (if you are)—ie, a PAC, MADD, Sierra Club, etc. Then send it off and repeat the same with each request you receive.
Learn your state’s Secretary of State contact information, your Board of Election members, local officials. Follow their actions by tracking votes on city and state websites. Write and call frequently, but don’t forget to reward those doing good with donations or simple appreciation notes and educate those doing wrong...send links not loathing. There may be issues they simply aren’t aware of.
Support Legislation that makes sense
This year New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt, a former Princeton physicist, has a modified version of his previous HR 2239 Bill —HR 550. It calls for a voter verified paper trail and has 130 bipartisan co-sponsors. Bearing their official seal of approval, VerifiedVoting.org refers to HR 550 as the “Gold Standard” of all the similar bills currently floating around Congress.
Caveat, however, Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org feels it’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig and the entire system needs a ground-up overhaul to have any serious, long lasting effects. She has some excellent ideas on her site, including initiating a moratorium on machine voting altogether, but unfortunately, it appears all but impossible to get legislators on board with any radical changes to the current systems.
To see where your State stands amongst current legislation regarding paper verification, VerifiedVoting.org has this map where you may click on your State and read over official documents relating to recent election laws. Contact your Senators and State Representatives if your State has not been brought into the fray.
An organization aiming to improve election protection by stressing citizen involvement called National Ballot Integrity Project , has formed a coalition supporting public oversight of all election aspects and consistent enforcement of regulations.
AccuPoll, at a cursory glance seems to be a voting system worth serious consideration. No convicted felons on the management team—That alone caught my attention! Offers DRE’s with paper trails off the bat, offers Open Source Code. Uses Linux -- no Windows system in the tabulators. Based in California, they appear to have received Federal Certification in 2002. Where were they in November, 2004?
Another promising looking group on-line with electronic systems using Open Source Code, and endorsed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, is the non-profit Open Voting Consortium. You can check them out here: http://openvotingconsortium.org/index.php
Bob Fitrakis of the Free Press is currently working on initiatives for Ohio that would entail the appointment of non-partisan officials who would oversee the election process. This would be a vital first step towards transparency and getting the vote back from the hands of the corporations to the hands of the people. Every step would require oversight for maximum effect, from voter registration to the final tabulation -- a concept not dissimilar to Canada’s Scrutineers. (See “Blind Trust” Chapter)
Yet another encouraging sign out of Ohio—there is a bi-partisan coalition led by former Ohio Supreme Court Justice, Andy Douglas and Ohio political elders, pushing for a Statewide vote on three constitutional amendments to be put on the November, 2006 ballot. One amendment would remove the election administration role from any Secretary of State, thereby preventing the kinds of conflicts of interest we saw with Kenneth Blackwell being Bush/Cheney campaign chair and Ohio Secretary of State.
The other two amendments deal with redistricting and limiting the amount of corporate political donations to $10,000.
To see what pioneer Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting envisions as the most efficient remedy to the problem, read her June, 2005 responses to (Questions for John Conyers).
She calls for a complete rebuild of the system, starting with the thorough evidence of the hacking she has thus far compiled, moving to expose the fraudulent certification systems, holding those who perpetrated the fraud accountable, and revoking those certifications found to be a sham. As an incentive to more probing investigations by Congress, she throws in an amnesty for elected officials who may have inadvertently benefited from the system, provided they work for election reform.
Bev Harris presents some innovative ways to get around the tabulator problems. She suggests you verify the machine tally at the polling place before phoning, modeming or delivering them to the County offices. Post these numbers on the precinct door and make copies of it for the Press as well. Afterwards, a comparison of the precinct/ polling place tallies against the County central tabulators’ totals should help prevent the mystery vote switches we see occurring during the GEMS “witching hour.”
Perhaps we could look to a French system called the “many eyes” method which allows for as many independent parties as possible to monitor the vote counting. Christopher Bollyn told Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org about one such election he personally witnessed in France. After the ballots are cast (on paper), the room becomes crowded with citizens—as many as the room will hold—to observe the vote count. Sworn election officials from each of the parties count the ballots, in piles of 100, in direct view of the throng of observers-- announcing each tally of 100 as they complete it. All of France’s votes can be counted in this many eyes fashion in a matter of hours....After all, the Statue of Liberty importation didn’t fare too badly for us, couldn’t we at least consider a serious appraisal of France’s more transparent and democratic voting practice?
We need clean up.....major housecleaning. There is no one silver bullet solution that trumps all others to cure the ills that have festered in the election industry over the past years, but the more minds and bodies we have on the ground, working together, the more likely we can overcome this Goliath and secure our democracy.
“This democracy can survive a plot to hijack an election. What it cannot survive is our indifference to, or unawareness of, the evidence that such a plot has succeeded.”
- Mark Crispin Miller; None Dare Call It Stolen, Harper’s magazine, August 2005
Please get involved
USEFUL links for more involvement and research:
US Count Votes Great site - offers objective scientific commentary.
Thorough overview—and suggestions of what to do in: “What can we the people do about election fraud?” 4/26/05
Chuckherrin.com/ConservativeEmpathy This is a wonderful piece to refer to your conservative doubting Thomas’s or skeptics.
Ecotalk.org/VotingMachineCompanies.htm Extensively researched site.
Great weblog for all the latest breaking news in election information. Brad Friedman of BradBlog also leads the Velvet Revolution.
Coalition of 80 progressive groups seeking to bring transparency to the top 9 voting machine manufacturers.
VoteTrustUSA Home Page.
The Squanderer.com/votingmachines.html Good overview of all issues.
36 pgs of information.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Non-Profit for digital rights.
Good site w/companies links
The top ten reasons the Bush Ohio win “does not compute” – Bob Fitrakis.
OHIO organization promoting election integrity.
Rush Holt’s HR 550 text
Link to all links!
Fitrakis, BBV, Landes
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