Exactly what to look for and video on Election Night to protect the count. While most people are out watching the VOTING, not nearly enough people are watching the COUNTING. Your patriotic services are badly needed. This video shows what happens to the vote data on its journey before results are reported.

The action in this video is the #1 most important thing you can do to Protect the Count.

PROTECT THE COUNT

If you are a credentialled observer or poll worker, please stay 30 minutes extra and video or photograph the results BEFORE they leave the polling place.

If you are not a credentialled observer, you can still capture evidence. Plan on spending 90 minutes on Election Night to visit polling places and video or photograph the results tapes, which should be posted on the door. These results should be publicly posted and you will not need to enter the polling place to capture evidence. Hardly anyone does this, but these results are important because they are printed BEFORE middlemen see them.

The first Protect the Count video moves a mile-a-minute, so be prepared to hit the "pause" button for a closer look.

Let it be known: Public citizens, observers, poll workers, will be Protecting the Count anywhere, randomly, unpredictably. Would-be cheaters: In 2008, tamper at your own peril. You'll never know where you're being watched!

Pass this along to everyone you know.

We are working together with Election Defense Alliance, YouTube and many other organizations. Let us know if your organization would like to be part of Protect the Count!

You may have read about this, and Black Box Voting has sent an ELECTION ALERT about this. Here are the details and what to do about it:

THE PROBLEM: "Straight party voting" on voting machines is revealing a bad pattern of miscounting and omitting your vote, especially if you are a Democrat.

Most recently (Oct. 2008), a firm called Automated Election Services was found to have mis-coded the system in heavily Democratic Santa Fe County, New Mexico such that straight party voters would not have the presidential vote counted.

Straight party voting is allowed in 15 states. Basically, it means that you can take a shortcut to actually looking at who you are voting for and instead just select a party preference. Then the voting machine makes your candidate choices, supposedly for the party you requested.

Additional details follow, but first: PROTECT THE COUNT

1) NEVER CHOOSE THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE OPTION, because it alerts the computer as to your party preference and allows software code to trigger whatever function the programmer has designed.

2) SEND THIS INFORMATION OUT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, blog it, root n' toot it out there to get the word out.

3) ESPECIALLY GET THE WORD OUT TO PEOPLE IN THE FOLLOWING STATES, which have straight party voting options:

- Alabama
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kentucky
- Michigan
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- Texas
- Utah
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin

(Missouri and New Hampshire had straight party voting in earlier years, but have cancelled the straight party option for the Nov. 2008 election; however, the Straight Party software is still on Missouri and New Hampshire election management computers.)

4) DEMAND COMPLETE AND CAREFUL TESTING OF THE STRAIGHT PARTY OPTION IN LOGIC & ACCURACY TESTS. Bring copies of the citations in this article to buttress your case for why this is needed, if you have to. Witnesses for L&A tests in the straight party option states should specifically watch for and note whether (a) the tests were done and (b) the results were accurate.

5) LOOK FOR UNDERVOTES (high profile races with lower-than-average number of votes cast) and flag them, post them, bring them to the attention of others for additional scrutiny.

Undervotes may reveal straight-party programming fraud after the fact, but can never be reconstructed to know who the voter would have voted for. Such programming malfeasance, when found, disenfranchises voters.

MORE DETAILS ON THE STRAIGHT PARTY TRAP

October 2008: In Santa Fe, New Mexico the machines were NOT counting straight party ballots correctly, and now it turns out that voting machines have been caught giving straight party votes to the other party's candidates, omitting the counts for some straight party votes, and generally creating mischief.

Most recent news on this can be found here:
More on that here:
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/30557559.html?elr=KArksac8P3iUec7Pa P3iUqc8P3UU
with archive copy and commentary on the claims made in the article here:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/159/78362.html


California citizen Judy Alter discovered a high number of undervotes in the New Mexico presidential race in 2004. She traced these back to straight party votes that skipped counting the presidential race. Here is Alter's write-up on what she found:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/US/avoid-straight-party-option.pdf
(46 KB)

This is the short version of Alter's study of the 2004 Presidential Election of Santa Fe, New Mexico; It shows how Alter figured out that the straight party voting option did not contain a vote for president (or defaulted to Bush). She explains that the straight party option created the huge under-vote in NM and the other states with straight party voting.

According to Alter, most of the biggest exit poll shifts occurred in the straight party states.

Alter also has a long long version of the article, with charts and graphs as well as examples of the evidence she has from the hand filled out paper ballots counted on Sequoia scanners for early voting and absentee voting and the internal memory tapes of the Sequoia pushbutton DRE.

Her study in also posted on my website: http://www.protectcaliforniaballots.org

BOTH DRE AND OPTICAL SCAN SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN CAUGHT MISCOUNTING STRAIGHT PARTY VOTES

Alter provides evidence from the absentee and early voting reports from Sequoia optical scan machines (paper ballots) that the straight party option for minor party candidates omitted votes. Two votes for straight Green party showed no votes for Cobb (the 2004 Green Party presidential candidate) next to his name.

According to articles archived on Voters Unite, straight party votes have been caught miscounting straight party votes in Wisconsin and Alabama as well.

ES&S Optical scan system: In Medford, Wisconsin, ES&S ballot scanners failed to count straight-party votes at all. About 27 percent of all votes cast in Medford during the Nov. 2004 election were not counted by voting system computers. -- http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=5061

ES&S optical scan system: In Baldwin County, Alabama, the ballot programming for straight ticket voting went awry in November 2006 by identifying one Republican as a Democrat.http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=6868

It's not just ES&S: The following overly cryptic Diebold Product Advisory does not reveal what the "issues" are that cause unexpected results from certain straight party voting programming methods: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/Product-Advisory-Notice-straight-party-voting.pdf
(17 KB)

Something happens. Something unexpected. Quietly now, "call Diebold" it says, for more information.

BEWARE, THE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTE MAY NOT INCLUDE PRESIDENTIAL RACE AT ALL

In North and South Carolina voters a straight party ticket does not include any vote for president. Yes, it's the law there. Voters need to also vote separately for president.

EVEN IF YOUR STATE DOESN'T HAVE STRAIGHT PARTY VOTING, YOUR VOTING COMPUTERS DO HAVE IT

Instead of creating two different systems, voting machine vendors put the straight party software into ALL voting computers, and just turn it "off" in states that don't allow straight party voting.

Both kinds of straight party voting -- with the presidential race included and with presidential votes omitted -- are actually on the election management computer that programs the ballots. It's up to the programmer to to choose whether to use straight party voting and, if so, whether it will register a vote for president or not. While it's true that systems like the Diebold GEMS Election Management system provide a drop-down menu where election programmers can choose their state system, they can also opt to choose some other state's system, or the generic "US" system (whatever that is), thereby enabling a giant OOPS excuse if caught.

ENTER THE PRIVATE CONTRACTORS

New Mexico's recent problem has been attributed to Automated Election Services, a firm that programs memory cards for New Mexico's ES&S M100 voting machines and also prints the ballots and provides election support services.

New Hampshire, which now prohibits use of the Straight Party function, uses LHS Associates to program their voting system. Therefore, whatever switches LHS flips on the election management system will be in effect, regardless of whether voters and New Hampshire election officials "see" a straight party option. ...