If we do NOT do this, watch for the next step: Privatization of poll workers. The latest theme is that we can't get enough poll workers -- but what we need to do is stop penalizing people financially for helping at the polls. We need to make working at the polls a legitimate reason to take a day off, with pay.
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I'm seeking as many groups as possible to give input and sign onto the tag line for this, which will go out in its final form to newspaper editorial pages across the country next week. We are having success in getting them to print our editorials.
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Editorial draft
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Voting on machines: It all boils down to this: Election procedures are not computer security issues -- they are transparency issues, and we must insist on policies that keep the people involved in "We, the people." Citizens must be allowed to participate in their own voting system.
- We have stripped poll workers of their power, by not allowing them to help count the vote.
- We have stripped poll watchers of their power, by not allowing them to observe the counting of the vote.
- We have stripped election judges of their power, by not allowing them to participate in the counting of the vote, or even observe the counting of the vote.
- We have stripped the central count room of its security, by not allowing citizens to observe it, forcing us to put full trust in the handful of county employees and vendor technicians with access.
- We have stripped our county supervisors of their power, by making them reliant on vendor technicians, who are often temporary workers whose names are never provided to citizens.
- We are stripping elections of their checks and balances, by putting audits into the hands of just a few people and eliminating some audit measures altogether. Touch screen machines have eliminated physical ballots; Diebold has now produced card encoders designed to eliminate the physical poll book, which gives a human-verified record of how many people signed in to vote. Do we really want invisible ballots, invisible poll books, and invisible central tallies?
- Even paper ballots (when there are any) have been stripped of a certain level of integrity, because they are no longer counted immediately, and usually are not counted at all. Instead they are put into a central location for storage, a room which is not observable by the citizenry. Counting paper ballots (when it takes place at all), is now done later, giving the ballots -- which have at that point traveled in cars, been toted around in boxes, and secreted in unobservable rooms -- less integrity than paper ballots counted immediately at the polling place.
Citizens should be allowed to participate in counting and observing the counts. We, the People, will be more interested in voting if we are allowed to participate in the process.
County supervisors lament that it is hard to find enough people to help on election days. And is it any wonder? What fun is it to sit there for 14 hours, with a computer that doesn't always work, with minimal instruction, with the "help line" to the county tied up, when you can't even count the votes at the end of the day? It will help get people involved if we restore the poll workers' right to count votes, and citizens' rights to observe the counting.
Consider getting citizen initiatives on the ballot for this: We can vastly increase the number of citizens who get involved in elections, if we require employers to give poll workers and election judges the day off, with pay. Make the day a national holiday to encourage everyone to vote, and make it a
paid day off for anyone who can show that they worked in the election.
By the way, technology has its place. We should consider an inexpensive idea: Add webcams and a live Internet feed so that citizens everywhere can watch the counting of the vote. To protect voter privacy, cameras would be activated when the polling place closes. Webcams can transmit all phases of absentee ballot counting and the central count room, 24 hours a day.
When computer scientists start focusing on ways to use technology to increase citizen participation and bring full transparency to the process, instead of advocating complicated encryption schemes and finding new ways to tinker with the black box, we'll know we're getting somewhere.
We'll restore trust in our elections procedures more quickly if we identify the problem accurately:
It is citizen participation and transparency, not technological security, that best defines democracy.=============================
By the way,
Black Box Voting is now a nonpartisan nonprofit, focusing in the immediate future on continuing an investigation into kickbacks and the money trail behind the procurement of electronic voting machines and, beginning in August and continuing for five months, mobilizing two thousand citizen auditors for the primaries and then the Nov. election. We'll be "coming out of the box" with announcements on those actions shortly.
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And also:
Citizen audits (email
[email protected] with "volunteer" in subject") for the citizen auditing. Examples of why we need to audit the core numbers --
Teller Colorado: More votes than adults in that county
Prairie County Arkansas More votes than voters (40% turnout not bad for a primary; this county had 117%)
Alabama: 300 votes showed up after the fact. The excuse: They were stuck in the modem (you heard me).
Black Box Voting's citizen auditing will compare core audit numbers and catch the machines in the act of miscounting. You can do this under your own group's name. We are coordinating with many other groups on this. We are also catching counties in the act of preventing citizen auditing.
Our immediate focus is on August and September primaries. Black Box Voting will be mobilizing over 2,000 volunteers to compare numbers and catch discrepancies. These results will be sent in immediately to the Black Box hotline, and we will push for immediate action to safeguard November elections based on proven miscounts in the primaries. The whole concept is
rapid response and
massive, coordinated citizen action. It's not too late to make a difference.
Bev Harris