President Obama Vice president Joe Biden We Demand Audits or Full Hand Count of the Paper Ballots

[kster]

in the polling place at the close of election.


A procedure must be put into place NOW that allows any voter that request an audit/hand count of a particular polling place before the ballots leave that polling place are provided with the tools to do it.


Vice President Joe Biden knows how to make this happen


#1) All states required to put in place a paper ballot system, optical scan or ballot box for all federal elections.


#2) A voter who follows the procedure and request a full hand count/audit of the paper ballots at the polling place, must be provided with the tools to do it. No questions asked.


#3) At close of election the machines or ballot boxes must stay in sight of the voter that requested the count and the witnesses.



#4) Ballots MUST be removed from the Optical scanner/ballot box at the polling place in full view of voter and the witnesses.



5#)Encourage all states to follow the Federal procedure.



Vice President Joe Biden says

We should pass a federal law mandating that the same machine with paper trails be mandatory for every federal election.


Mandating, Mandating that we have a paper ballot with a standardized machine standardized requirement



Should be a standardized federal electoral process for federal offices meaning President,Vice President, house and senate

(Video Joe Biden)
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/853216/candidate_challenge_joe_biden



Vice President Joe Biden is now in the position to make this happen, lets put some pressure on him.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Election procedures are governed by state law.

Not sure there's a Constitutional justification for federalizing them. And even if there were, it would have to be done by a statute passed by Congress, not mandated by the Vice President or any other member of the executive branch.

[Vincardog]

2. WE can provide federal money to comply with the preferences.

[kster]

15. Yes and if we add the" Italian paper electoral procedures" to Joe Biden's federal plan

Italian paper electoral procedures (Hand Counted Paper Elections)
The counting procedures are the following:

26) Ballot papers (voted and not voted) must remain, at all times, inside the polling room they started off in. The ballot boxes are visible to everybody at all times. Ballot papers are only taken to their final destination when the counting is over and the results of the polling room are made public.

27) Each ballot paper is checked by all six of the polling station workers and any of the parties representatives. In case of disagreement about who to assign the vote to, the president decides a temporary "position", but that ballot paper is sent to Court for a final decision. The counting is simultaneously managed by two scrutineers who both have their own paper record. Paper records have one page for each party and candidate, each page is made of small numbered squares: 1, 2, 3, 4 and so forth. As each vote is assigned to a party (and/or a candidate) scruteeners find its page on their own paper record, cross the next empty square and loudly read its number. All the time the two voices say the same number there are no problem, as soon as they differ everybody stops and check what has happened.
The final result of each party (and/or candidate) is simply the number of the last crossed little square of its own paper record.

28) At the end of the count, each polling room sends all the ballot papers and the official stamp to the competent authorities along with one copy of the official statement, signed by all six workers of the polling room. These are kept for a number of years. The government calculates the official figures from the official reports of the polling rooms. The second copy of the statement is collected by the local authorities.

29) Each local authority collects the results of its polling rooms and therefore calculates the results on a local level, independently of the national government.

30) Even parties calculate the results independently, since they have their representatives in each polling room. They can therefore compare their calculations with those of the government.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=497539&mesg_id=497539

[Gregorian]

7. Thanks for the reminder. Perhaps the fed can create incentives in lieu.

Make it so paper ballots are federally funded. For all I know that may also be prohibited.

I'm just trying to think of ways to fulfill the sentiment of the original post. Because this is another great benefit of having The Big Chief in office.

No more election fraud. How can we accomplish this?

I'm not even against electronic voting machines if they are audited in a way that keeps them from being manipulated. Because after all, electronic is extremely accurate. It's the pilfering that has done the damage.

[kster]

12. As long as the machines aren't used to smuggle the ballots out

of the polling places, the key here is "hands on at the polling place" you can do a 10% audit or a full hand count of the ballots but it must be done at the polling place.

[peacetalksforall]

3. I don't like this sentence:

"A procedure must be put into place NOW that allows any voter that request an audit/hand count of a particular polling place before the ballots leave that polling place are provided with the tools to do it. "

I assumed that it was full coverage not what is described above?
Before the ballots leave the polling place?

What does that mean?

We need full spectrum protection.

Lock the machines and provide in/out security for access to storage.

Make every person who fixes anything to be document exactly what the problem was and how it was fixed.

Protect the process all along the way and over time - not just at the polls.

[Betsy Ross]

4. Please volunteer at the next election to be a poll worker.

I think the entire procedure must be looked when adding more procedures. I believe that people can watch the count being done in some states. How would the above be different?

[kster]

11. So voters don't have a say unless they volunteer?

Absolutely the procedure has to be looked at.

Taking the ballots out of the boxes at the polling place and hand counting 10% or all of them would put the optical scan manufacturers and the politicians on notice.

[GuvWurld]

5. K&R for more discussion

[4 t 4]

6. I think this is great and it needs to be worked on

now so they can never steal another election I think this administration knows how hight the stakes are for another election.
'We should pass a federal law mandating that the same machine with paper trails be mandatory for every federal election'

[robinlynne]

8. exactly. much more to discuss...

[kster]

14. Three great articles on the subject...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x511671

:)

[UTUSN]

9. Quite a bit LATE after 2000, but O.K.!1 (NEVER AGAIN A BUSH!1) n/t

[BeFree]

10. Why not?

Can we risk another election like we had in 2004? No.

We got lucky in 2008. Well, lucky in that a lot of states DID use paper ballots and lucky that so many of us raised hell after 2004 that the stealing had to be very limited this time.

Joe Biden could get this done. Congress can mandate that all federal elections are voted on paper ballots; the states will fall in line with the rest of the votes.

And we need the auditing possibilities. It will keep the vote counters honest.

We can't afford another 2004 type of election.

[kster]

13. Cash a check at the bank for five hundred bucks the

teller takes a stack of twenties throws them in the counting machine, the machine counts out five hundred bucks but for some reason the teller takes the bills from the machine and hand counts them in front of you the customer, then you promptly hand count them again in front of the teller why doesn't any one trust that bill counting machine, why even have the machine? :shrug:




The moral of the story: I don't want our ballots to leave the polling place without a hand count for the same reason the bank doesn't want their bills leaving before they are hand counted.


:)

[California Griz]

16. I am so tired of statements like

Electronic voting is ok the machines can be made with a paper trail. I been repairing electronics for 36 years. There is nothing worse for electronics than sitting. This is life of a voting machine getting hauled out once every year or 2 for a vote. If we really want to ensure every vote gets counted there is only one way to go paper ballots. Optical scanners can also be used in the following manner. After filling out your ballot you take it to the scanner. You feed it in the results are displayed on a screen. If you have a problem with the results you hit a reject button the ballot is returned to you to discuss with an election official. If you approve your ballot the vote is recorded and your ballot goes into the lock box. This system should eliminate most needs for recounts since any problem would be detected by the voter when they examine their on screen vote summary.

[Allyoop]

17. What about early voting?

I advise you to go talk to your Board of Elections officials and they can explain to you how ballots are handled in their district and they will be glad to reassure you (I hope) that most election officials do the very best they can to make sure voting is protected from any kind of tampering.

Most precinct workers are little old women like me who volunteer for the job. It's not easy. We set up the room the night before. We must be at the polling place by 6a.m. and are not allowed to leave until voting is over at 7:30p.m. and after we have printed out the results (Optical scanner). We then call in the information from the print-out to the Board of Elections. We then put all the voted ballots into a plastic envelope that is self-sealing and which can't be tampered with without tearing up the envelope. Same for provisional ballots and spoiled ballots. Our ballots used must add up to whatever the print-out says (plus our count of spoiled ballots). All the judges must sign off on all the envelopes we turn in. Ditto on the last form in a book that records each voter. Then we have to fill in our "employment forms". Then we have to turn off and pack up all the equipment and put the room we were using back in order. Then we drive into the County Courthouse at about 8:30p.m. to turn over all our envelopes, etc. and if things don't match up properly (never happened in our precinct so far), we are accountable for explaining why.

If you showed up at our precinct at the end of one of these grueling days and asked us for a handcount, 3 or 4 little old ladies would probably stomp on you!

There are provisions for observers who must stay quiet and not try to influence voters or precinct officers.

Why don't you volunteer to help at your precinct next time?

[Stevepol]

18. Amen and Amen!!!!!!!!!!!

[autorank]

19. I'm late! Lets make th eMN model work.

Imagine if there was a truly professional paper ballot designed to be hand counted?

Imagine if citizens were called for election duty like they are for jury duty?

Imagine a big counting night, enough people to make it work and election county witnesses, some of who would be called like the election workers (witness duty).

Then we'd have an election end to end that would inspire trust, presuming that we get the rotten influence of money out of the elctions.

MN was a throughly counted election. It took forever because optical scan forms are not paper ballots designed to be hand counted. Make the ballots as has been suggested and have them out there.

Great post!!!!1