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Election Day Watchlist
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For an overview of citizen election monitoring -- what to look for, what questions to ask -- see this five-page digest:
BBV Guide to Gathering Election Evidence
For the "Top 5 Things You Can Do To Protect Election 2008" download Black Box Voting's
2008 Citizens' Tool Kit.
You can also request a free printed copy of the 2008 Toolkit in a 4.5" x 7" booklet format easy to carry in your pocket.
Go to the home page of Black Box Voting to request a copy.
For a comprehensive (118-page) year-round guide to election integrity activism, download Black Box Voting's 2006 edition of the Citizens' Toolkit, called "Take Back Your Elections"
Download the "2006 Citizens' Tool Kit"
Journalistic malpractice
Watch for the media to announce who "wins" instead of stating "We predict (name of candidate) will win." News channels are supposed to report the news, not create the news. Results as reported by the news never match the actual results, by the way.
What to do: Object and reject premature "calls." Get the facts, however long it takes, and report them, wherever you can.
Also watch for:
"The gray pie slice" -- In the 2008 New Hampshire primary, CNN used a gray pie slice without a name to represent Ron Paul. Other candidates, even when pie slices were smaller, were colored and had candidate names affixed.
What to do: Record coverage start to finish to gather evidence of any journalistic malpractice.
Also watch for: Eroding vote totals. You may see candidate totals go DOWN during the count.
What to do: Record coverage start to finish.
Also watch for:
Unusual fluctuations or insufficient variations with minor candidates.
In one Minnesota district in 2004, for example, ALL MINOR CANDIDATES received the same percentages of votes, until screen shots were posted
and questioned by Internet watchdogs. Then the vote totals were spread more normally. In Florida in 2000, at one point the Socialist Worker
Party candidate had more votes dumped into his totals in a single county than he received statewide. One strategy for electronic vote
manipulation involves use of minor candidate vote bins to store votes temporarily.
What to do: Record television coverage start to finish to retain and examine later, and take screen shots of incoming AP totals from sites like http://www.politico.com.
WATCH FOR AND DOCUMENT VOTING RIGHTS PROBLEMS IN THREE AREAS:
- Access to voting (voter rolls)
- Fairness (deceptive practices)
- Counting the votes
ACCESS TO VOTING
Watch for: - Registrations hijacked to a different party - Omissions and improper additions to the voter rolls The new "electronic pollbooks" help to block citizen oversight and also introduce sophisticated attack vectors.
What to do:
Gather evidence: Documents, records, video, audio and photographs.
Persevere - keep gathering proof, even after the election is over.
Example: When voter registration is hijacked to a different party, there should be a paper trail. Find out your state's regulations for the paperwork
needed to change a voter's party preference. Use public records requests to request the backup documents. If they can't produce them,
expose the fraud by propagating the evidence, to blogs, legislators, citizens groups. Get your evidence to at least five different entities.
Find out if your local jurisdiction is now using electronic voter sign-in instead of observable paper pollbooks.
DECEPTIVE PRACTICES
Watch for:
Omission of candidate names on the ballot or screen; misdirection about where/when/how to vote; misleading ballot design; confusing or
misleading instructions; intimidation tactics
What to do:
Gather evidence and propagate it.
If it happens in the polling place:
Call an elections worker over and show them; then ask that they write the incident down to document it, and watch to see that they do so.
Then submit a formal public records request for a copy of the incident report and any other incident reports throughout the jurisdiction.
If it happens outside the polling place:
Video, photograph, get documents, and if you obtain evidence, propagate it to at least five entities, including Internet sites, mainstream
news, legislators, elections officials and citizens groups.
VOTE COUNTING
Watch for: Whether you can see the chain of custody; whether you can see the votes themselves being counted.
CHAIN OF CUSTODY:
The greatest risk for manipulation of the count is from inside access.
The best way to prevent vote-counting fraud by insiders is to require a fully public chain of custody. If chain of custody is not public, even
spot checks, audits and recounts will fail to ensure integrity in the election. Your ability to review chain of custody varies depending on your jurisdiction. Most locations nowadays have removed chain of custody from public view - which means citizens must go to
extraordinary lengths to learn the simplest information, if they can get it at all.
Look for:
Weak links in the chain, or "narrow spots in the pipe" where just a few people, or just one person, has access to the votes before (or shortly
after) the vote count is announced. JUST ONE BROKEN LINK means the vote count cannot be trusted.
What to do:
Get evidence of broken links, narrow spots in the pipeline, or inside-only access/oversight. Evidence means documents and videotape. Persevere
- it may take time to evaluate even one link in the chain. When you get evidence that the chain has been broken or left public view, propagate the evidence to at least five entities, like blogs, voting rights groups, open government groups, the media, and public officials. Prepare
a report with a local group of citizens, submit it to those with authority in your jurisdiction, request remediation of individual
issues before the next election.
ACCURACY OF THE VOTE COUNT Except in hand count locations, you will be unable to see your votes being counted. The counting is now controlled by government insiders and voting machine programmers. Your right to citizen sovereignty over your own government is at stake, and you have been placed in the position of trying to get circumstantial evidence to authenticate the count. This places an extraordinary and unsustainable burden on the citizenry. You can surrender the voting process to government insiders now, or you can put up a fight.
Look for:
On DRE (touch-screen, dial-a-vote) systems - observe screens carefully, watch for vote-hopping to selections you did not choose. The vote may hop to another choice immediately or after a delay, or even after you have page to a new screen.
What to do:
Stop the process immediately, call an elections worker over, see if you can replicate it, request that they write the incident down, stay and
watch while they do so, make a formal request for the public record of their incident reports and all other incident reports in your jurisdiction. Double and triple check before casting votes, and document all anomalies. (If you witness vote-hopping on a dial-a-vote system like the Hart eSlate, document it using every means necessary and contact Black Box Voting, BradBlog, and VotersUnite.)
After polls close, videotape poll closing activities and videotape the results tape and any other reconciliation forms filled out by poll
workers. If they won't let you videotape, then videotape them telling you that you cannot watch, or that you can't capture evidence of the
poll closing and counting procedures.
On optical scan systems (fill in bubble, draw arrow):
Observe whether the vote count increments when you deposit your ballot. After polls close, videotape poll closing activities and videotape the results tape from the optical scan machine and also videotape any other reconciliation forms filled out by poll workers. These should include number of ballots provided, cast, unused and spoiled, along with number of voters checked in to vote.
If you live in New York:
Most New Yorkers are voting on lever machines, which -- unlike the scanners and DREs -- are extremely difficult to tamper with in a wholesale, nontransparent way. However, many New Yorkers do not realize that customized Sequoia scanners are used to count tens of thousands of
absentee votes. Start asking questions about those votes (chain of custody, counting). Ascertain your rights to observe and examine your
computerized absentee counting system.
Also: New York public records laws include the VENDORS in freedom of information requirements.
Consider submitting public records requests directly to Sequoia Voting Systems. Ask for things like correspondence, incident reports,
invoices, contracts. These vendor-directed records requests are especially important because it looks like New York's Nov. 2008 elections will be run on Sequoia computerized systems, or something similar.
IF YOU LIVE IN GEORGIA, KENTUCKY, CONNECTICUT:
You, too, can request public records DIRECTLY FROM THE VENDOR. Let's get to work on opening them up.
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE ABOUT ACCURACY OF THE VOTE COUNT
Compare number of voters checked in to vote with number of votes. Note any arithmetic that doesn't add up. You may also want to visit the main elections division for your jurisdiction to observe and record procedures and activities. If you cannot view and record the computer screen, you are being blocked from viewing even circumstantial evidence of the count. Check your state election law as to whether counting votes in secret has ever been authorized. Persevere. Take as much time as it takes to gather real evidence, including evidence of efforts to obstruct your right to oversee chain of custody and counting.
Evidence means: Documents, video, audio and photos.
SURRENDER NOW OR DIG IN FOR THE LONG HAUL
The Government is currently displacing citizen sovereignty over election processes. Assert your right to sovereignty via documentation and
oversight to authenticate election procedures and results, and when your rights are obstructed, gather evidence of this and propagate it. All
evidence you acquire during the primary election cycle should be applied towards regaining citizen sovereignty over elections in the
Nov. 2008 election.
It's easy to become overwhelmed. Yet, if many different citizens simply welcome the awakening of their own civic
duty, trust to their own common sense and innate creativity, and take just one step, the next will become clear.
Trust me on this. Good luck and God bless, Bev Harris Founder - Black Box Voting
Guide to Gathering Election Evidence: A 5-page digest. Download BBV's "Gathering Evidence"
Citizens' Toolkit 2008: A five-point guide to essential monitoring actions on election day Download BBV 2008 Citizens' Toolkit
Citizens' Toolkit 2006: A general guide to year-round election monitoring and investigation Download BBV 2006 Citizens' Toolkit
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