Election Day Action Plan
What You Can Do to Defend the Vote on Election Day -- and Beyond
1. Vote (on a real paper ballot, in person, in the precinct, whenever possible)
2. Be a Pollworker for Democracy
4. Conduct a Citizens' Election Verification Exit Poll (EVEP)
5. File Poll Incident Reports with Voter Story, Watch the Vote, CNN, EDA, NPR, Twitter, and MORE
6. Protect the Count: Record Precinct Vote Counts and Watch the Ballots
7. Monitor the Central Count at your County Elections Department
8. Be Prepared to Protest Suspect Election Outcomes
1. VOTE
(on paper, of course!)
Voting in person in your local precinct is always the best policy.
If you have the option of requesting a paper ballot in lieu of voting DRE, always vote paper, not vapor.
If you have an absentee (mail-in) ballot that you haven't already mailed, walk it in to your local polling site on election day, or take it in person to the county election department any time prior to election day.
If you are voting on an optical scan system, the most reliable way to have your vote correctly read is to mark your vote with a firm Number 2 lead pencil!
2. Be a Pollworker for Democracy
Throughout the US boards of elections are desperate for poll workers. The average age has been creeping up over the past decades, and in many instances there are critical shortages. We have significant testimony from poll workers who saved literally hundreds of votes in 2004. The power of even a single poll worker inside a polling station who is committed to democracy can be immense.
Read more
Sign up: http://act.credoaction.com/pollworkers/index.html
3. Video the Vote
We also urge citizens to join the Video the Vote teams that will be going to thousands of polling stations. The bare but vital footage that was shot at besieged inner city precincts in central Ohio 2004 has stood as a vital beacon to show the tip of how thousands of voters were deliberately disenfranchised. This time, we need saturation coverage to protect against and document every possible violation of our rights as citizens.
Learn more and sign up: http://www.videothevote.org/
4. Conduct Independent Election Verification Exit Polls (EVEP)
Election Defense Alliance, Election Integrity and The Warren Poll are organizing an Election Verification Exit Polling (EVEP) project as a safeguard for the November 2008 presidential election -- and we're calling on you to help. Exit polling provides an independent check on "official results" reported by suspect computerized voting systems. Unlike the national exit poll conducted by a private consortium of newsmedia corporations, who withhold their raw polling data and heavily "adjust" their results to match the reported election results (!), this Citizens' Exit Poll will fully disclose the data so there can be no doubt about the truth of the numbers and what they reveal about the purported truth of the official election results -- and, for that matter, the purported truth of the corporate newsmedia exit poll.
5. File Poll Incident Reports
with Voter Story, CNN, EDA, 1-800 Our Votes, Watch the Vote, Twitter, NPR, and more
6. Protect the Count
Record the Precinct Vote Totals and Watch the Ballots
Watch the pollworkers print out the machine end-of-day vote reports from the voting machines. Then, with a video camera, record the "poll tapes" as soon as the pollworkers post them on the outside of the polling site. Slowly pan the length of the tally tape, recording all the vote totals on it. As soon as you can, upload this information to the Protect the Count Project: (upload links at YouTube and Black Box Voting forthcoming; check back soon.)
There are 3 additional parts to Protect the Count/ Tactics vary according to the nature of the electronic voting systems where you live.
Read and download the 4-page instructions here: Protect the Count
7. Observe the Central Count
Monitor County Election Headquarters
You are a member of the voting public and have the right to observe election procedures so long as you don't obstruct the election workers.
Don't let anybody tell you any different.
Things to bring: Clipboards, notepads, pens, digital cameras, video cameras, tape recorders, cell phones, and binoculars (to see the tabulator monitor screens).
For further instructions on Central Count Monitoring, LOOK HERE
Additional Guides to Election Day Monitoring
Download the 5-page overview, "Gathering Election Evidence"
BlackBoxVoting.org's Election Monitoring Watchlist: What To Watch For
Also: Download the comprehensive 2006 Citizens' Toolkit by Black Box Voting Citizen's Tool Kit
Ohio Election Justice Campaign: Quarantine That Machine!
(Treat election violations as a crime scene)
8. Protest Suspect Election Returns: Code Orange Rapid Response Demonstrations
On election night, the EDA Data Analysis Working Group will be rapidly checking election results against the citizen-organized Election Verification Exit Polls (EVEP) and other baseline data such as pre-election tracking polls and voter registration figures, to determine if and where the "official" (computerized) vote counts are suspiciously at odds with observed reality. Please sign up now to be notified where and when to assemble for Code Orange vigils on election night.
The purpose of these peaceful but resolute public demonstrations will be to convey these messages to the nation:
1. Insist that the news media not report as fact what they cannot verify (see Open Letter to the Media)
2. No concessions until all the votes have been counted (see Standing for Voters Pledge)
3. Candidates must challenge suspect outcomes
4. Reject suspect election results and demand handcounts of the voter-marked paper ballots
For an overview of the Election Day Rapid Response plan and how you can join in, see
EDRR 2008: A Six-Part Plan to Defend the Vote
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