Help with Ohio Parallel Election (contact info)

[mod mom]

INVITE TO CITIZENS' PARALLEL ELECTIONS - PLEASE FORWARD

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has confirmed that voting machines have caused problems in recent elections and, in some cases, have affected the outcome.http://reform.house.gov/UploadedFiles/GAO-05-956.pdf

Since, we have voting machines in Ohio, many of us believe that we should check how they are doing.

Many of us are doing citizens’ parallel elections which are non-partisan citizen polls of the voters who have just voted. It is done by secret ballot on one race or issue. We have done this in parts of Ohio twice before, and it is being done in other states. Most voters are very cooperative. After the election, we compare our results with the voting machine totals for the precinct. In our experience, parallel elections help make the elections accurate in the precincts in which they are done.

We will be doing this in Ohio during the Tuesday, May 2 primary. The race we will be polling on is the Ohio Governor’s race.

We have two teams for each precinct consisting of three people each. Some people work with the voters and others help them, as they wish. One team starts in the morning and finishes after lunch, and the second team starts after lunch and works past the end of the election hours to count what votes the voters have given us.

We found it very interesting working with the voters. And we got to know people on our team, and voters, which was fun.


If you would like to help, please send me an email with your name, email address, what county/counties you would like to help in, and which shift you would like–a.m. or p.m.

We would also like to know if you are interested in being a leader in your precinct group. Leaders will get training beforehand in their county of choice.

If you are interested in helping, or have any questions, please contact me at

[e-mail]

Thank you,

Jo Anne Karasek

[RufusEarl]

1. I assume this is smiler to exit polling,

only on a larger and scale? I'm just curious about how accurate the count will be, thinking it may need to see the inside of a court room.

Good luck with this, i hope it helps Ohio voters in the coming election. And if it's successful there, perhaps it can be used in other areas throughout the country.

[GuvWurld]

2. Volunteers Also Needed For Northern CA Parallel Election

The Voter Confidence Committee conducted Humboldt County's first parallel election last November and we are actively planning for the June 6 primary. Our next training for volunteers is Monday, May 1 at 6pm at the Redwood Peace and Justice Center in Arcata. For more info contact [e-mail]

[nicknameless]

3. Excellent.

I had never heard of this being done, but had wondered about its possibilities.

Edited to add: This should be pursued in other states as well.
K&R for more to see.

[sean in iowa]

4. Good tool, but BE CAREFUL.

Parallel elections can become very high visibility events, if a disecrepancy is shown. This happened in the San Diego mayor's race last year. They used Diebold optical scanners and the parallel came out with a 4% different from the official count. The result was a partial recount that matched the Diebold count nearly perfectly. Incredibly, no one seemed very alert to how the ballots were stored when they demanded a recount. I am not denigrating the work of the activists involved, and if I have the facts wrong, someone correct me.

The rule is, don't use these parallel elections to trumpet alleged irregularities unless you become an expert on the paper ballot chain of custody. If you are willing to posit computer tabulation fraud, you should give equal weight to simple paper fraud.

After all, the vendors do quite a lot of plain old ballot printing for op-scan counties; see two examples.

1) Diebold

See the full article; it's a must read. But here is a sample:

The Dean's ballot printing company was acquired by Diebold in the Global Election Systems acquisition.

2) ES&S

Again, the full article is a must-read, but here is a quote that nails the issue:

Meanwhile early voting began in Indiana and Nebraska. 69 of the 93 counties in Nebraska have no paper ballots from their vendor, ES&S, and no ballot programming for their voting machines. 11 counties in Indiana have the same problems and they are threatening lawsuits. Prebel County Ohio reported they had not gotten their paper ballots. On March 29 the Texas Secretary of State sent an urgent memorandum to all county clerks, elections administrators and county chairs noting that many officials had not received electronic programming or paper ballots for primary runoff elections to be held on April 11.

Be ready for the recount. Know the chain of paper custody, and be ready to cry foul on its weaknesses!!

[mod mom]

5. Training in Cental Ohio:

Training session for parallel polling (election) this Sat at 1 pm-3 pm at the Free Press/Ohio Honest Elections Offices at 341 S. 3rd Street, Columbus (Mound and S. Third).

Parallel polling, or elections, are a way for ordinary citizens to take control of oversight of our elections. The voting machines have been shown to be insecure, either through faulty software or hardware, or through intentional manipulation. Also no audits are required in Ohio of the ballot counting, and recounts are discouraged by officials and by the cost. Legal challenge of federal elections has just been outlawed by HB3. SOS Blackwell issued a directive to Boards of Election last year that said that "recounts do not need to be mathematically random." Non-random precinct recounts are worthless, because they can be pre-screened to see if they match machine totals, as they were in the 2004 recount.

Therefore, taking a parallel poll is one of the few ways we have left to ensure accuracy of our elections. In a parallel poll/election, we sit outside a polling place and ask people to re-vote exactly how they voted inside the official polling station. They sign a book with their name and address, stating that they will vote as they just did officially. We try to get as many as possible to vote with us, by paper and by secret ballot placed into a transparent ballot box. Later we count the ballots in a public place with any witnesses who choose to participate. It is surprising what kinds of information we receive in this way, comparing issues and candidates, and totals we get versus what the official count says. If we catch an outright difference in totals, we can go back and ask for affidavits of our parallel voters.

So, if you can spare morning or afternoon on May 2, please email me back at [e-mail], or show up on Sat. It would be good for you to check in anyway in case the time should change. If you can't come to the training, but can come on May 2, please let me know. We need six people to hold each parallel poll/election. They will probably be in Central Ohio Counties. (Of course, if we have six willing people in any county, we can hold one there.)

Thank you for caring about our democracy.

PS If you have already been in contact with JoAnne Karasek about doing this, please continue to work with her. Thank, you, Marj