From a tweet

(Sorry I've misplaced the source; pls let me know it, if you do.)

Electronic Voting: Command Central

There's an excellent article by the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op about one of the major suppliers of electronic voting technology in Wis., Command Central:

Forty-six Wisconsin counties and 3,000 voting machines are being controlled by a two-person company operating out of a strip mall in Minnesota.

* * * * *
In his report of his experience with the November 2010 gubernatorial election for Scott Walker, John Washburn, an election integrity investigator and professional software tester for almost 20 years, states, “I have been to dozens of voting system test sessions and have never seen any of this faux ‘testing’ actually test the voting system software correctly. This is the professional opinion of a software tester testing software since 1994.”

* * * * *
Last September, Election Integrity investigators discovered that . . . Command Central sent those 46 districts an offer: trade out your old Optech Insight Scanner for two DRE Touch Screen models, at no charge. The Optech machine is the one that paper ballots are fed through to read and register the votes.

While these machines are also susceptible to hacking . . . it is possible to physically monitor the paper ballots as they are fed through the machine to see if they match the machine totals.

With DRE Touch Screens, however, one’s vote could be flipped and one would never know because there is no receipt or paper trail voters receive to confirm their vote was counted as voted. . . .

And according to John Washburn, this swap-out two-for-one offer violates the statutes issued by the GAB for State approved system as described on the Government Accountability Board’s website that requires the inclusion of an Optech Insight Scanner.

On January 13, 2012, Washburn emailed the GAB about this situation. When he did not receive an answer, he submitted an Open Records request to the GAB, with no reply. On May 2, he submitted another, again to no response. On May 4, he turned the case over to Dane County Attorney, and on May 14 he kicked it up to the Department of Justice.

Much more at the link. Similar situations now exist not only in other states but around the world.

(Earlier companies supplying electronic voting technologies, such as Diebold and ES&S, are gone, or at least their names are.)

Wisconson: 2004 Redux?

The excerpt below is from Wisconsin Wave; I hope you'll read the whole article, 'cuz it's a great summary of what happened in 2004.

But since I like to include visuals, I dug up the map at right. It was created in April, 2005 based on the exit poll data available at that time (click on the image for a larger version) and shows a "red shift" from the percentages reported by voters in the exit polls, which strongly favored Kerry by nearly five full points, to the percentages of the official, tabulated vote.

Per Richard Charnin, "[t]he unadjusted 2004 exit polls (state and national) were not released until about a year ago" (i.e., ca. June, 2011). According to the exit polls, out of the total respondents, 51.7% reported voting for Kerry and 47.0% reported voting for Bush (with the remainder voting for "Other"). Per the actual vote as tabulated, the final percentages were 50.7% for Bush vs. 48.3% for Kerry. This means the results shifted from Kerry being ahead by 4.7 points in the exit polls, to Bush being ahead by 2.4 points in the votes as tabulated, for a net, actual red-shift from the exit polls to the reported vote totals of 7.1 points. Can't believe you didn't hear more about it? Neither can I.

ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: The 2004 Presidential election was stolen via institutional fraud

* * * * *
The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark – they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16)

Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(18) In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20)

But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21)

(Emphasis supplied.) Footnotes and much more at the link. The issue of election integrity is, i.m.h.o., among the most under- and mis-reported of our time.

UPDATE: Bob Fitrakis has another great article on vote rigging, at The Free Press.

The Knowns and "Known Unknowns" in Wisconsin

What we know (see image right, from Labor's Pains):

What we don't know:

From BradBlog:

The early Exit Poll results had reportedly predicted the race between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett a virtual tie, leading media to plan for a long night tonight. A second round of Exit Polls results, however, were said to have given Walker a broader lead over Barrett. Even so, we were told, the race based on the Exit Poll data alone was still "too close to call." . . .

Of course, the raw, unadjusted Exit Polling data itself is no longer entrusted to us mere mortals. It can only be seen by members of the mainstream media, and we are simply left to trust them to report it all accurately to us or not. And when, after all, have we not been able to rely on the mainstream media to report everything accurately to us? But never mind the Exit Polls. We've got real polls, real votes, actual ballots now to tell us who won or lost. If only we'd bother to actually count them...

Instead, those ballots --- Wisconsin votes on mostly paper ballots --- are tabulated by computer optical-scan systems like the ones in Palm Beach County, FL which, in March of this year, had named several losing candidates to be the "winners". And like the ones in New York City which, in 2010, managed to toss out thousands of valid votes, including as many as 70% in one South Bronx precinct. And like the ones in Oakland County, Michigan where officials found the same machines failed to count the same ballots the same way twice in 2008. And like the ones in Leon County, FL which, in 2005, were hacked to entirely flip the results of a mock election.

In Palm Beach County, FL the failure was discovered during a state mandated post-election spot-check of 2% of the paper ballots. In New York City, it took nearly two years before the failures were discovered after the New York Daily News was able to examine the paper ballots via a public records request. In Oakland County, MI, election officials were lucky enough to discover the failure during pre-election testing. And in Leon County, FL, the hacker --- a computer security expert --- revealed the op-scan system flaw he exploited to flip the results of the election in an Emmy-nominated HBO documentary.

(Links to more info in quoted portions are omitted but can be found at BradBlog.)

And more of what we do know: Item 7 in my previous post here; see also here (and if you live in Wisconsin and don't know who Kathy Nickolaus is, see here); and see also the media-related labels below this post.

A Few Recent Headlines

Been out of town; so, in cased you missed these (more re- each item at the headline link) . . .

1. Don't Forget to Sign Up for the "Do Not Kill" List

A number of sources (including the Wall Street Journal) report that someone has used the White House's "We the People" website to start a petition asking it to create a "Do Not Kill" list similar to the "Do Not Call" list that has been reasonably successful against telemarketers. This follows the New York Times report that every week or so, a bunch of National Security People get together to flip through some PowerPoint slides and "recommend to the President who should be the next to die." The President, who you may recall won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, then personally approves names on the "kill list" for execution targeted killing by drone.

Sign the "Do Not Kill" Petition here. (For more on the "Kill List," see here and links therein.)

2. Occupy Buffalo Helps Convince City to Divest from JPMorgan Chase

City Comptroller Mark J.F. Schroeder has agreed to transfer $45 million . . . from a JPMorgan Chase account to local bank First Niagara Financial Group after Occupy Buffalo raised concerns about leaving the money at JPMorgan, the Buffalo News reports. The move comes with a number of benefits, including a higher interest rate and more local branches that make it easier for employees to cash paychecks . . . .

“It also sends a crystal-clear message to JPMorgan Chase that the City of Buffalo is not happy with their business practices," Schroeder told Buffalo News.

3. Collateral Damage in the War on Protesters: Neighbors of the NATO3 Cuffed, Held at Gunpoint

The . . . officer came up to me and told me he had a hard time believing I wasn’t associated with the people downstairs. His quote exactly was that I had ‘hateful revolutionary things’ in my house. He asked me why I had so many red-colored things (Olli got similar accusations because he was wearing his red work uniform). They were commenting about the red color – I have red curtains and my brother’s an artist, so all his paintings are hanging up, and they found that very suspicious and were trying to say it was part of some kind of conspiracy.

* * * * *
“They acted like asking for a warrant and a lawyer was unreasonable . . . ” Ben said, “but they didn’t seem to realize that they had kidnapped us in our own home. We were handcuffed on the ground in our own living room."

4. The US Government Is Running a Massive Spy Campaign on Occupy Wall Street

The US Dept. of Homeland Security finally released some docs in response to repeated Freedom of Information Act requests by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Although the docs are partially blacked out,

[Per the PCJF's Director, "t]hese documents show not only intense government monitoring and coordination in response to the Occupy Movement, but reveal a glimpse into the interior of a vast, tentacled, national intelligence and domestic spying network that the U.S. government operates against its own people."

* * * * *
In particular, the role of the “Fusion Centers,” a series of 72 federally-funded information hubs run by the NOC, raises questions about the government’s expansive definition of “Homeland Security.”

Created in the wake of 9/11, the Fusion Centers were founded to expedite the sharing of information among state and local law enforcement and the federal government, to monitor localized terrorist threats, and to sidestep the regulations and legislation preventing the CIA and the military from carrying out domestic surveillance (namely, the CIA ban on domestic spying and the Posse Comitatus Act).

5. Speaking of JPMorgan Chase . . . the bank's risk committee lacks any members who've actually worked at a bank or as risk managers; one of them was on AIG’s governance committee in 2008.

6. Congressmen Seek to Lift Propaganda Ban

An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the independent Broadcasting Board of Governors . . . . The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.

The bi-partisan amendment is sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State.

7. US E-Voting System Cracked in Less than 48 Hours

Researchers at the University of Michigan have reported that . . . . "Within 48 hours of the system going live, we had gained near complete control of the election server", the researchers wrote in a paper that has now been released. "We successfully changed every vote and revealed almost every secret ballot." The hack was only discovered after about two business days – and most likely only because the intruders left a visible trail on purpose.

(Yes, electronic voting and/or tabulation is still a very, very bad idea.)

Re- the US Presidential Campaign Debates

WASHINGTON, DC —"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing its sponsorship of the presidential debate . . . because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter," League President Nancy M. Neuman said today.

"It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and honest answers to tough questions," Neuman said. "The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."

From a press release dated October 3, 1988.

A few headlines via DU today

("DU" meaning democraticunderground.com.)

Report: Obama top recipient of [Murdoch's] News Corp. donations

Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation. (More at The Hill.)

Cenk Uygur was removed due to "political pressure"; Phil Griffin: MSNBC is "part of the establishment"

After a nearly six-month tryout for the Internet talk show host Cenk Uygur, the cable news MSNBC is preparing to instead hand its 6 p.m. time slot to the Rev. Al Sharpton. . . . Mr. Uygur, who by most accounts was well liked within MSNBC, said in an interview that he turned down the new contract because he felt Mr. Griffin had been the recipient of political pressure. In April, he said, Mr. Griffin “called me into his office and said that he’d been talking to people in Washington, and that they did not like my tone.” He said he guessed Mr. Griffin was referring to White House officials, though he had no evidence for the assertion. He also said that Mr. Griffin said the channel was part of the “establishment,” and that “you need to act like it.” (More at The NYT.)

The "Gang of Six" deficit-cutting plan

Sen. Bernie Sanders warned, "The plan would result in devastating cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and many other programs that are of vital importance to working families in this country. Meanwhile, tax rates would be lowered for the wealthiest people and the largest, most profitable corporations." (More at Common Dreams.)

How to save $2 trillion

There are 23 million Americans who can't find full-time work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There are 50 million Americans who can't see a doctor when they are sick, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

There are more than 15 million American families who owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth, according to Zillow. That's almost a third of all the families who own homes.

* * * * *
I'll be honest – the federal deficit for the year 2021 is not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, these days. But let's assume – arguendo, as they used to say back in Ancient Rome – that for some reason, there were some compelling, emergency need to work out how to cut $2 trillion from projected federal budget deficits over the next ten years.

I have an idea about how to do that. It's a very simple idea. In fact, I can sum it up in one word, with five letters: PEACE. (More from Alan Grayson at DU.)

New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked

A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio's vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush's unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a small plane crash.

Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell's company, GovTech Solutions. Also included is a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State's election night server layout system.

Prior to the filing, Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: "Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not." (More at freepress.org.)

(Originally b&w image above by Ansel Adams, Internees Reading Newspapers, Manzanar Relocation Center, from the Library of Congress.)

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us

From xkcd.

Ditto re- net neutrality et al.

SWF Seeks Mr. Right, Inc.

Per The Utne Reader,

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in the widely condemned Citizens United case that corporations enjoy the legal status of people – so a Florida woman is seeking the hand of a corporation in legal marriage.

Sarah “Echo” Steiner of Lake Worth, Florida, will hold a press conference on Saturday, January 22, to announce her search for a suitable corporate spouse, reports the Undernews blog of Sam Smith’s Progressive Review, citing a Facebook press release put out by Steiner.

One of Ms. Steiner's Facebook friends comments, "[s]omeone mentioned being satisfied on the consummation night, and I am thinking 'Too Big To Fail' might have a whole new meaning." Another suggests, "[i]f the courthouse won't issue a marriage certificate, there is another option. When the baby is born, list the corporation as the father of your child. The father is responsible for disproving parenthood . . . . "

Or perhaps a civil union . . . .

Utne also embeds this video about a corporation running for Congress:

For What It's Worth . . .

. . . i.m.h.o., Dem losses are attributable mainly to their failure to beat back conservatives w.r.t.:

1. Election integrity (both electronic voting and campaign finance, including corporate money);
2. Media integrity (the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and restrictions on ownership consolidation); and
   
3. Public education (destruction begun long ago and currently continuing under Obama appointee Arne Duncan).
   

Americans are not stupid; they're miseducated and brainwashed. "A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking."– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

And it's not that Dems can't message; it's that they've lost control of their own message, because it's either distorted or not reported by the media. Reality is now almost wholly overshadowed by emotional manipulation and spectacle created by a media largely controlled by the right.

Remember this from 2004 re- the term, "Reality-Based Community":

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove): The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." . . . "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued . . . ."

(Wikipedia; footnotes deleted.)

B.t.w., there's just one state – California – in which easily-hacked electronic voting machines have been pretty much eliminated. And in that state, EVERY statewide elective office went to Dems. Probably just a coincidence.

Netherlands Returns to Paper Ballots

"'We Do Not Trust Voting Computers' set out to ensure that the election process in our country would once again become as fraud resistant as it was before the advent of paperless voting computers. And that is what we got. On September 27, 2007 the Election Process Advisory Commission issued its 'Voting with confidence' report. The State Secretary for the Interior immediately announced that the 'Regulation for approval of voting machines 1997' will be withdrawn. On October 1, 2007 the District Court of Amsterdam decertified all Nedap voting computers currently in use in The Netherlands. The court order is a result of an administrative law procedure started by 'We do not trust voting computers' in March 2007. On October 21, 2007 the 'Regulation for approval of voting machines 1997' was finally withdrawn.

"On May 16, 2008 the Dutch government decided that elections in the Netherlands will be held using paper ballots and red pencil only. A proposal to develop a new generation of voting computers was rejected."

More here.

Still Think We Don't Need Paper Ballots?

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers:

"WASHINGTON — The CIA, which has been monitoring foreign countries' use of electronic voting systems, has reported apparent vote-rigging schemes in Venezuela, Macedonia and Ukraine and a raft of concerns about the machines' vulnerability to tampering.

(snip)

"In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

"Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

(snip)

"Stigall said that voting equipment connected to the Internet could be hacked, and machines that weren't connected could be compromised wirelessly. Eleven U.S. states have banned or limited wireless capability in voting equipment, but Stigall said that election officials didn't always know it when wireless cards were embedded in their machines."

(Emphasis supplied. More at McClatchy, one of the few decent print sources left.)

UPDATE: You can find an updated analysis of the stats from the last few national elections here.

Why Must I Be a Teenager in Luv?

Last week I and a niece saw Twilight. The vampires were icy-hot. Also thanks to my niece, I'm totally enjoying some anima and manga.

I just want to lose myself in the romance -- the more over-the-top, the better. Maybe reality's been a bit much for me lately.

Meanwhile, finally, despite media consolidation, electronic elections, and other hurdles, we've managed to elect Obama.

He'll inherit one of the most horrific sets of problems faced by any new President in U.S. history. And we can't wait 'til he does: we hang on his every word; we can't stop talking about him -- why have his cabinet picks been so retro, will he in fact be able to direct them toward fixing all the problems, etc.; we're breathless, even gasping with anticipation. And it's still almost two more months before he'll be inaugurated.

SO Reassuring Re- Electronic Machines

More Tips to Try to Make Sure Your Vote Counts

Evidence has been coming in fast and furious of all kinds of voter caging and other "dirty tricks" (see. e.g., this CNN story) including electronic machine malfunctions.

Here are a some suggestions, including a few new ones.

First, check canivote.org to try to make sure you haven't been dropped from the rolls for some reason.

Second, there have been reports of misinformation provided to voters re- WHERE they should vote. E.g., a reliable acquaintance in California says that while looking for the best website to tell people to confirm their polling locations, she discovered discrepancies between the CA Sec. of State's website and the League of Women Voters -- and it turned out the LEAGUE's website was the correct one. So best to cross-check your polling location with both your Sec. of State and your local League of Women Voters.

Also, please check with your local elections authority to confirm what kinds of machines will record and tabulate votes if you vote early vs. on election day vs. by absentee ballot, and if at all possible, vote when and where a paper ballot will be generated. For example, in Dallas County, Texas, ALL early voting will be ENTIRELY electronic, without any paper trail whatsoever -- so it will be impossible for there to be any meaningful recount or audit of those votes. On the other hand, on Election Day, many polling places will use machines that generate a paper record of your vote. So, in Dallas County, it's recommended that you wait to vote on Election Day if possible -- but what's best may vary from county to county.

Know what kind of i.d. to bring. You can check on this, too, through canivote.org.

Next, many states offer the option of "straight-party voting"; that is, instead of having to separately vote re- each office on the ballot, you can just select a particular party once to indicate that you want to vote for all the candidates of that party. Some reported electronic machine malfunctions have involved voters attempting to vote a straight Dem ticket who found their Presidential vote flipped to McCain (confirmed by Snopes). So please do NOT vote using the "straight-party voting" option; instead, please go through and vote for an individual candidate for each office on the ballot.

Use video, audio, or photographs to record your vote, and if you encounter a problem, try to record or write down the evidence, such as the names and phone numbers of witnesses, as well as voting machine serial numbers, names of poll workers, and the time of day. And if you do record or encounter a problem, get the word out about it.

At the first sign of a problem*, stop what you're doing and ask to speak to the polling place supervisor (skip the poll worker). Explain your problem. If they try to wave you off, call your main election commission number and ask to speak to the election commissioner until your problem is satisfactorily addressed. Poll workers/supervisors may try to blame you -- "operator error." Remain calm and courteous, but do not leave your polling place until your problem is well-documented and addressed to your complete satisfaction and, if the problem is with the machine, the machine is quarantined. Oh, and you've gotten to vote.

File reports wherever possible. Your local polling place should have incident reports available to you. If they do not, call the main election commission for your county and ask for someone to bring one to you. Make sure that both you and the supervisor sign it. An example of a report is here. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission also lists on their website where you can find out how to file a report in your state.

Also report your incident to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-Our-Vote, especially if you feel you are being bullied or your incident is not being taken seriously. The ACLU also has a hotline at 1-877-523-2792. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast offer suggestions as well in their comic StealYourVoteBack.org.

*Problems can include: machine problems, polling place problems (machines not set up on time), switching or closing of your polling place, voters forced to vote on a provisional ballot, long lines/waits, intimidation, unusual ID demands, poll workers asking inappropriate questions, etc.

Stop, Drop, & Poll: What to Do if You Have Problems Voting

Anecdotal evidence is coming in fast and furious of early-voting incidences including voting machine malfunctions in Ohio, Putnam, and Jackson Counties in West Virginia and Davidson and Decatur Counties in Tennessee, as well as hidden problems with "straight ticket" voting (confirmed by Snopes) in Texas and West Virginia. A more complete list of the problems so far can be found at VotersUnite.org.

It CAN happen to you. If it does, here are a few suggestions on what to do:

1) Video Your Vote.
Use video, audio, or photgraphs, and if you encounter a problem, try to record or write down the evidence, such as the names and phone numbers of witnesses, as well as voting machine serial numbers, names of poll workers, and the time of day. And if you do record or encounter a problem, get the word out about it.

2) At the First Sign of a Problem*, Stop.
At the first sign of a problem with your machine or if you have any other problem listed below, stop what you're doing and ask to speak to the polling place supervisor (skip the poll worker). Explain your problem. If they try to wave you off, call your main election commission number and ask to speak to the election commissioner until your problem is satisfactorily addressed. Poll workers/supervisors may try to blame you -- "operator error." Remain calm and courteous, but do not leave your polling place until your problem is well-documented and addressed to your complete satisfaction and, if the problem is with the machine, the machine is quarantined. Oh, and you've gotten to vote.

3) File reports wherever possible.
Your local polling place should have incident reports available to you. If they do not, call the main election commission for your county and ask for someone to bring one to you. Make sure that both you and the supervisor sign it. An example of a report is here. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission also lists on their website where you can find out how to file a report in your state.

Also report your incident to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-Our-Vote, especially if you feel you are being bullied or your incident is not being taken seriously. The ACLU also has a hotline at 1-877-523-2792. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast offer suggestions as well in their comic StealYourVoteBack.org.

4) Call the Election Protection Hotline.
Report your incident to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Election Protection Hotline at 1-866-Our-Vote, especially if you feel you are being bullied or your incident is not being taken seriously. The ACLU also has a hotline at 1-877-523-2792. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Greg Palast offer suggestions as well in their comic StealYourVoteBack.org.

5) Pledge to Stand Up to Stolen Elections.
Go to NoMoreStolenElections.org and pledge to not concede until every vote is counted -- and counted as cast.

*Problems can include: machine problems, polling place problems (machines not set up on time), switching or closing of your polling place, voters forced to vote on a provisional ballot, long lines/waits, intimidation, unusual ID demands, poll workers asking inappropriate questions, etc.

(Thanks, Uncounted Mary!)

Please share this info.

Hand-Counted Paper Ballots

Good article at opednews via the Center for Hand-Counted Paper Ballots. The author observed how it's done in three precincts. Guess what: it works great and saves money.

More Re- Election Fraud

Here's a tip. Many states offer the option of "straight-party voting"; that is, instead of having to actually vote re- each office on the ballot, you can just check one box or whatever for a particular party to indicate that you want to vote for all the candidates of that party.

Please do NOT do that. Please go through and vote for an individual candidate for each office on the ballot. Investigation has shown that the electronic voting machines seem to be particularly error-prone when you vote straight-party. Blackboxvoting.org has stated, "[v]oting machine miscounts of straight party votes were proven by California researcher Judy Alter in the 2004 New Mexico presidential election; in Alabama Democrat straight party votes were caught going to a Republican; and [in] Wisconsin a whole slew of straight party votes disappeared altogether. Both DRE and optical scan machines are vulnerable." (Note, blackboxvoting.org is not my preferred source of info on this subject, but the general idea is consistent with other sources.)

Also, obviously, we NEED a landslide in order to overcome the cheating; but even if it becomes plain that we'll have a landslide in Obama's favor, cheating will still occur for TWO reasons:

1. Even if the presidential election can't plausibly be stolen, thousands of Congressional and other offices can be.

2. There is value in rigging elections to appear closer than they really were, because it sets precedents for interpreting the reliability of results in subsequent elections. E.g., if a Dem wins a certain office in a certain county by 2 points when the exit polls predicted 6, and in a subsequent election, the exit polls predict a Dem win by only 3 points, a Repub win by 1 point seems more plausible based on the previously-established historical discrepancy. Note that this since electronic cheating is believed to have been going on since the 2000 elections, we probably already have several cycles of distortion -- much of the country may be a lot blue-er than we realize.

Election reform must be a top priority of the next administration. We must have paper ballots, and the tabulation must be an entirely open process supervised by representatives from all parties and subject to complete audit.

UPDATE: Snopes has confirmed the risks of straight-party voting; see also VotersUnite ("Misprogramming has often caused voting equipment to tabulate straight-party votes incorrectly. . . . in prior elections, misprogramming caused straight-party votes to be dropped or counted for the opposite candidate, for example, in Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin. . . . Straight-party vote-flipping has already occurred in this [2008] election on two different e-voting machines in Texas -- the ES&S iVotronic in Dallas and the Hart InterCivic eSlate in Houston.") Also see another, excellent new RFK article via Rolling Stone (Thanks, Craig!)

$100,000 Reward for Info Tying Rove to Election Rigging.

"Citing testimony from [Republican] technology expert named Stephen Spoonamore, Velvet Revolution [the group offering the reward] accuses the Republican Party of rigging elections for years by using [computer expert Michael] Connell to exploit electronic voting systems.

"Spoonamore filed an affidavit warning that the coming presidential election will be stolen by the GOP unless [the election fraud] is exposed. A colleague of Connell, Spoonamore [wrote,] . . . .

"'Mr. Connell is a devout Catholic, . . . . He has admitted to me that in his zeal to 'save the unborn' he may have helped others who have compromised elections.'

"The statement by Spoonamore also ridicules the Diebold voting system as 'riddled with exploitable errors.'"

More here.

Seems like a small sum for someone to risk their life -- heh, heh.

More from Spoonamore on Electronic Voting

This is the first of 10 segments of a new interview taped 9-11-08 in Washington, D.C. The remaining segments are at the links below:

2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadsHqxid8I
3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbxuXC4QlMk
4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOHkY7sJ4ZI
5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KHOo8tkM
6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHmuG8d2bQ
7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7DK3LgiOA
8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WTe8ppEIic
9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lrFkRHrRDI -- In this segment, Spoon predicts the outcome of the 2008 election.
10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07oi2G_K4c

For Spoonamore's previous statements, click here.