NJ voting rights activists needed for Parallel Election Project (PEP)

[SmileMaker]

I'd like to try PEP for the NJ Gov. election - but am having trouble finding a group to coordinate volunteers and support the printing of ballots for carrying it out. ACLU has an election protection project that some of NJ's most ambitious voter rights activists are volunteering with, but the committee considers PEP partisan and will not support it. :( The last person I contacted suggested I contact the Dem Party b/c they'll have poll monitors and lawyers in place at the polls. I think that, if the Dems did this, it would be considered biased and discredited by the usual smear merchants - but at this point, I just want to be certain that ANYONE who represents voters does exit polling and I don't think there is anyone doing it!

Does anyone have any suggestions? If so, please provide e-mail/contact info for people who might support PEP anywhere in NJ - even if it' needs to begin with one controversial NJ polling place.


 Lynn Landes' website is a clearinghouse for info on this cool new idea.
http://www.ecotalk.org/ParallelElections.htm

 I'm willing to take leadership, but I'll need some bigger group on board to
mobilize volunteers and pay for ballot printing (depending on the scale we
might be able to take on-the bigger the better, of course!).

  Below are excerpts from a PEP story in FL. Lynn's site also has a good story from a San Diego mayoral race.

Both projects documented problems with e- voting and had excellent participation rates.


First “Grass Roots” Parallel Election Project

Coconut Creek, FL, March 8, 2005.

By Ellen H. Brodsky

 http://www.ecotalk.org/FirstParallelElection.htm


This project was so simple yet  proved more accurate and more powerful than
any exit poll and provided hard  evidence
as to machine programming problems and clarified voting irregularities.

...

186 voters passed our table by  the main entrance. 125 voted the Parallel
Election Ballot, 61 did not want to  participate.
We opened the Parallel Election Polling site at exactly 7 am the  same as
the Official Polling Site. We gave voters a
handout describing the  Parallel experiment and asked people to vote in the
official election and then  vote in the Parallel
Election exactly the same way they voted inside. We had the  voters sign a
register to indicate that they participated.
There was a section  on the bottom of the ballot for signing in the event of
an election challenge;  this area was sealed
with a glue stick by the voter and poll worker if the voter  needed help.
This made the voters more comfortable who were
concerned about the  secrecy aspect, however, most were not concerned with
this issue who  participated and welcomed
any follow-up and even wanted to be contacted if there  was an election
challenge. The voter did not have to sign the
ballot to  participate. Everyone who participated did so because they
thought it was a  great idea and understood it was
an important experiment. They were excited to  finally be able to check the
accuracy of the voting machines. 67.2% an
overwhelming majority of those that passed our setup in order to vote
enthusiastically participated. Most people were
really excited to participate  and felt this type of testing by the people
should have been a long time  ago.

....

Until legislation is passed that mandates  that voter-verified ballots be
counted manually at each precinct, compared
against the machine results and declared the official election result, this
is  the most transparent and accurate method of
reconciliation. This is the most  democracy enhancing, effective and
downright joyous way for the citizens to  mark, cast
and count their own ballots while comparing the accuracy of their  voting
machines. With all the lawsuits, election
challenges and shenanigans by  partisan election officials the Parallel
Election Project provides hard evidence  that
could be used in a court of law. This could be the start of something big,
if the citizens have the courage to take back their
elections and the elected  officials support them in the public interest.
Everyone considered it “OUR”  Project!

[OnTheOtherHand]

1. not from NJ, just a general thought

What I take from Ellen Brodsky's account is that parallel elections may be more useful as a form of non-partisan poll monitoring than as "exit polls" per se. (In that case, they encountered a high rate of reports that a race was missing from the ballot!)

With the parallel election in San Diego, there was the substantial gap between the PE results and the vote tallies, but the random recount came back close to the vote tallies. The folks who ran that PE (and paid for that recount!!) did learn some things that can spur further work. But the raw results of the PE weren't so crucial.

I'm not really sure why our knowledge of 2004 election irregularities is so spotty, but for instance, we have gone around on this forum several times about fewer than 100 reports of touch-screen problems in the EIRS database. I haven't yet seen a systematic attempt to assess whether those 100-or-so reports represent a small number of voters or a large number. A lot of folks were plugged in with the EIRS operation, but seemingly not nearly enough to get a handle on what we do and don't know about the election. A more proactive effort to approach voters at various places and ask _them_ what happened might be really useful.

[Chi]

2. FogerRox is a Jerseyite, maybe he knows some NJ resources. n/t

[SmileMaker]

3. No word yet from FogerRox

This idea is such a no-brainer, I don't understand why I'm not getting more people to talk about it. If I don't get any organized group behind it, I'll do it myself somewhere in NJ.

[SmileMaker]

4. Got e-mail from Ellen Brodsky with more details about PEP

According to Lynn Landes' idea she indicated the need to print ballots for every voter registered in the selected precincts. I had originally chosen 7 precincts in Coconut Creek which had a total of 10,000 registered voters. If I was an SOE I would have to make sure 10,000 ballots were available, but in reality only a percentage of the voters actually turn out to vote and printing so many ballots proved a waste of money.  

 If you need more ballots, have someone standing by to print them as needed in your network of PE Polling Sites.


Since election occur during the day, unless the poll worker is paid you are dependent on diehard election reform activists or retired, elderly and students, etc. Most will not stay the whole day and shifts need to be set up. Only the key PE leaders at each site will have to remain all day. I recommend 3 at each polling location of key PE Captains. If you remember in my story, we had only 2 issues on the ballot. The Gambling referendum was very heavily financed and paid lobbyists and key political leaders to get people to vote for the referendum. At one location I selected it would have been ideal, except for the violent nature of the lobbyists trying to monopolize access to the voters and making the voters and pe workers unable to peacefully participate. These were the main reasons for my consolidation. I was firm on the principal that in order for the project to be a true parallel project it had to happen in the exact time and place of the real election. If the polls open at 7 am that is when precisely the pe polls must open, if there are voters that cast ballots after 7 pm the pe poll mirrors the real election by waiting to have these voters participate as well.



 



 



 



Rush Holt is the Congressman in our district and I just learned that he will come to a meeting of Drinking Liberally next week in Princeton.  I’m going to try and talk with him or someone in the Corzine campaign about  this.  Besides ACLU, who has said they don’t want to do this because it’s considered partisan – who else would you recommend to coordinate this? 



 



It would be good to try this out  now, even if it is a small sample  so that we’ll be really ready for ’06 and ’08 with something better organized and national.



 



Please send my regards to Rush Holt. I have met him a few times when I was lobbying with Verified Voting for HR 2239 and again this past June for HR 550 and the Vote Trust Leadership Conference. Rush obviously has his hands full. The PE Project is most certainly not partisan, but it has the danger if it is endorsed by a Dem that it will appear partisan.... Best bet to get two cosponsors. Dem and Repub. However, I think you will get lots of support from the local Green Party! I just recently did another PE Project on Aug. 30 with an IRV Twist. I have been a little slow in finishing the report. We had one race in Miramar with 12 candidates so I got the brainstorm.



 



Likely Participants.... Voting Rights Advocates, Green Party, Students at the University.



 



HOW MANY CANDIDATES ARE RUNNING IN YOUR RACE???? IF THERE IS A POSSIBILITY OF AN IRV ELECTION THAN I AM POSITIVE YOU WILL GET THE HELP OF THE GREEN PARTY!!!!



 



Give me a holler!



 



Best,



Ellen