Reply #12: Our Parallel Election had 60% participation

[DefenderD]

See our summary at DefendersOfDemocracy.com
It was difficult getting as many volunteers as we did (about 9), but with more planning and more volunteers we might have had even greater participation.

The linked summary is somewhat dry, as we were trying to avoid charges of bias. The precinct we ran it at was geographically as near to ideal as possible, as most of the voters had to walk past our parallel polling booth to get to the polling place door.

Demographically, this precinct was somewhat odd compared to DeKalb County, Georgia as a whole, with the precinct being mostly white, as well as it being home to a number of editorial writers for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who had strong opinions against certain candidates, which seemed to be reflected by many voters in that precinct.

The big anomaly during the election was the visit from a representative of the Secretary of State's office. We do not know if she manipulated the machines when she was inside the polling place. Our election monitor was not on duty at the time. The SoS representative wanted us to quit approaching voters to participate in our parallel election before they went into the polling place as well, but she backed down when she realized we were videotaping her.

You have to carefully educate yourself on local election law as to not violate it while running a parallel election.